Having just read Thomas Friedman's letter to the President of China, I can't help thinking of Doris Kearns Goodwin's latest, The Bully Pulpit and The Golden Age of Journalism, where the story of McLures magazine and their muckraking team of reporters was told. I read other books on Teddy Roosevelt, but never one that so clearly delineated the outside force that well documented and reasoned journalism can provide to a country ossifying into its camps of privileged and not so privileged. It appears that we as a country have a way of regenerating. China has had a huge growth spurt to the front ranks by picking the low hanging fruit of commerce. It is now in a new leg where intelligent allocation of resources is required. It requires a free press, certainly one that documents and reasons well enough to expose crony capitalism. By shutting out this outside force, China's economic bloom will be short lived.
No comments:
Post a Comment