The Seattle Times--your "locally owned" "independent" newspaper actually owned by corporate chain Knight Ridder--has a long and miserable record as the willing mouthpiece of the region's big employers. Bill Gates, the University of Washington, Boeing, and anyone who regularly buys ad inserts can count on the reprinting of fawning press releases in any and every section of the paper (including Sports), often on the front page. But the Times' recent suppression of an investigative series by the Philadelphia Inquirer's Donald Bartlett and James Steele managed an unusual low point in integrity.

In case you missed it, the two Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters wrote a ten-part series called "Who Stole the American Dream?" A follow-up to their widely read 1991 series, "America: What Went Wrong," it focused on corporate welfare, abuses of the public trust, and how in our WTO/NAFTA Brave New Global Mall a few are getting richer, with the U.S. government's enthusiastic help, while the rest of us get screwed. The Times ran the first installment of the series on the front page September 1st, and then mysteriously dropped it. Executive Editor Michael Fancher's column Sept. 15, in response to many complaints, stated that the series didn't live up to the Times' high standards for investigative reporting, wasn't objective, and that besides, it was all stuff we'd read before.

Well, any glance at the Times verifies that having read it before, even if it were true in this case, is rarely used as a criteria for refusing stories (or ads); the objectivity of corporate media is a sick joke; and nobody's noticed a whole lot of Pulitzer-toting staff people at Fairview and John. What wasn't said by Fancher was that the second piece in the series dealt with how corporations that rely heavily on government subsidies get parts made on the cheap overseas, shipping out U.S. jobs. The story focused on Boeing, which outsources to Mexico and several East and Southeast Asian countries for much of its work these days, as a prime example of this syndrome. And the Times censored it.

Parts of the Inquirer series are available at a web site (http://www.phillynews.com). To get the full series, one must subscribe to the Inquirer's on-line service, which is what one loyal ETS! reader did. For the first time in the Puget Sound, here are some Boeing highlights that offended the Times' "local interest" sensibilities:

Airplane parts once made in America by Boeing employees now are manufactured by subcontractors in other countries and shipped back to the United States for assembly. To sell planes in those countries, Boeing agreed to move a portion of its manufacturing to those nations--to provide employment for people there to make aircraft parts. That eliminated jobs of U.S. workers.

For example, Boeing buys parts of 737 and 747 wings from China's Xian Aircraft Co. China has imposed that requirement as a condition of buying Boeing jets. Eventually, the Chinese factory--where some 20,000 workers earn $50 a month and live in government-run barracks [Communism: a workers' paradise!--ETS! ed.]--will produce the tail section for the 737, which now is made at the Boeing plant in Wichita.

An American labor leader who has observed the Boeing-China trade process close-up, and who is sympathetic to Boeing's predicament, had this to say about the arrangement:

"Because China is such a huge market, they say to Boeing or Airbus or whoever wants to sell there: `We'll buy 30 737s. We'll want to produce the back end of the 737 in China. You give us the machinery. You give us the engineers. You give us the technology. You help us set up the facility. And then we'll buy the airplanes.' The Chinese see this as a blueprint for the development of their aerospace industry. You see a top Boeing executive saying, Boeing is committed to developing the Chinese aerospace industry..."

Like much of American business today, the Boeing-China deal was made for short-term gain, at the expense of any long-term commitment in America. It was also made at the expense of the American taxpayer--on two counts.

First, the Export-Import Bank of the United States, an independent agency of the federal government, guaranteed loans totaling $1.4 billion from 1993 to 1995 for China's purchase of Boeing aircraft. Thus, a U.S. government agency supported by American taxpayers helped finance the sale of planes to China that will be built, in part, by workers in China. Or, if you will, U.S. government financing will create jobs in China.

Second, Boeing and rest of the civilian aviation industry--perhaps more than any other U.S. industry--owe their technology leadership to the tens of millions of taxpayer dollars spent on research and development of military aircraft. Now, some of Boeing's technology is being given away to the Chinese.

Boeing's role in the global economy underscores why Washington's trade policies have been such a failure for the ordinary working American...

What's most surprising is that none of this should be news to anyone with even a dim awareness of how the global economy now works. Indeed, the same info could easily be pieced together from the Times' business pages. What's missing, and what the Times apparently didn't see fit to print, is what those pieces add up to--what they actually mean not just to Boeing stockholders, but, say, to 32,000 machinists who waged a bitter strike last year over exactly this issue, and to the rest of us whose tax dollars are making Boeing richer.

This writer travelled in the Soviet Union in 1988 and was astounded at how much better informed on world issues Soviet citizens were than their U.S. counterparts, even when all media was heavily censored by the government. Because it was obvious that the state-controlled media was biased and self-serving, nobody trusted it and they knew to look elsewhere (e.g., shortwave radio) for information. And eventually, they brought down their repressive government.

Mainstream media in the U.S. has become many heads with one monotonous corporate state voice, serving the interests of those who own it and advertise with it. We would do well to learn from the Russians and Ukrainians I met: know the bias, seek news elsewhere, and draw your own conclusions.