BlackRock emerged as one of their principal advisers as the agencies bailed out major companies and tried to put a price on their toxic assets. BlackRock is also managing tens of billions of dollars worth of AIG assets for the government. In August, officials selected the company to help arrange the purchase, partly using taxpayer money, of toxic assets from banks. Although BlackRock, which avoided the plague of toxic assets, has turned to Washington by choice, some firms have been forced to Washington.

Schwarz's response can hardly contain his excitement:

Impressive! Impressive work there by BlackRock! Let's stroll over to BlackRock's own website, so we can find out who owns them and extend our congratulations:

Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bank of America Corporation, and The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. own approximately...47.4 percent and 31.5 percent of BlackRock’s capital stock...

Whoops!

Bailout Recipients

Bank of America $45.0 billion
Bank of America, NA $6.0 billion
PNC Financial Services $7.6 billion

But Schwarz really feels "there's no need for the Washington Post to report on what's going on in this universe," since "it would only upset and confuse their readers."

The public is bombarded with carefully crafted images meant to confuse propaganda with ideology and knowledge with how we feel. Human rights and labor groups, investigative journalists, consumer watchdog organizations and advocacy agencies have, in the face of this manipulation, inundated the public sphere with reports and facts. But facts alone...make little difference. And as we search for alternative ways to communicate in a time of crisis, we must also communicate in new forms... This style, one that turns the abstraction of fact into a human flesh and one that is not afraid of emotion and passion...will permit us to counter the force of corporate propaganda....

We will have to descend into the world of the forgotten, to write, photograph, paint, sing, act, blog, video and film with anger and honesty that have been blunted by the parameters of traditional journalism. The lines between artists, social activists and journalists have to be erased.

Despite their great efforts, Schwarz feels ANP still are "suffering from exactly the problem Hedges describes. To start with, what is the Fed? How does it work? Perhaps 900 people total in the U.S. could tell you. So for everyone else it's automatically like gossip about strangers--i.e., extremely boring."

Thinking that maybe "it would be news if Swagel had stated that Paulson, Bernanke and Bush's attempts to foment panic to pass the bailout have 'surely' contributed to the current recession," Schwarz lays out some quotes showing that actually "he did": "The way in which the TARP was proposed and eventually enacted surely must have contributed to the lockup in spending," and "they could plainly see that the U.S. political system appeared insufficient to the task of a considered response to the crisis. Surely these circumstances contributed to the economic downturn."

To Schwarz, "this was obvious at the time. Back on September 26, I (among many, many others) asked: 'How have things turned out before when the president, Treasury secretary, Federal Reserve chairman and a leading presidential contender all scream in public constantly about how we're on the verge of a giant financial meltdown?'":

In any case, there are no references to Swagel's statement anywhere online except in the original document.

Likewise, Swagel suggests the mid-September financial situation might have been dealt with without an immediate appropriations bill by Congress: "A counterfactual to consider is that the Treasury and Fed could have acted incrementally, with backstops and a flood of liquidity focused on money markets and commercial paper—but not the TARP."

That too has been mentioned nowhere online. Oh well.

All of which earns Schwarz' scathing headline declaring the corporate media silence "Another Triumph for American Journalism." Read the FAIR magazine Extra!: "Going All Out for Bank Bailout: Media Paint Crisis as Too 'Urgent' for Skepticism" (1/09) by Dean Baker & Kris Warner.

But the real problem comes in CBS's quote of the Graham response: "Well, they've always been through the Bible at least, God's timepiece. He has judged them from generation to generation and yet used them and they've kept their identity." Schwarz asks us,

What do you think about Graham's response there? True, he didn't stand up to Nixon's rambling insanity, but at least he deflected it. He comes out looking pretty good!

Too bad this is how the conversation actually went (mp3):

Graham: Well, you know I told you one time that the Bible talks about two kinds of Jews. One is called the Synagogue of Satan. They're the ones putting out the pornographic literature. They're the ones putting out these obscene films.

[three minutes of talking]

Nixon: It may be they have a death wish, that's been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries.

Graham: Well, they've always been through the Bible at least, God's timepiece. He has judged them from generation to generation and yet used them and they've kept their identity.

Schwarz closes with a further "P.S.": "CBS is also wrong that Nixon was talking about anti-Semitism being generated by the shooting down of the Libyan plane. Nixon was actually responded to Graham being angry about a rabbi criticizing a new attempt at widespread evangelism." But this is all part of a great tradition in the U.S. press: Corporate media have diligently worked to clean up the good reverend's image for just about as long as he's been around.