MEMO FROM THE EDITOR
MEMO from the Editor Same Old Gang The lead article in the June 1978 issue of The Progressive was headed Who Owns America? The Same Old Gang. The author, Maurice Zeitlin, then as now a professor...
...At the other end of the spectrum, the picture is equally static...
...So long as we deny this unpalatable truth, preferring to hang on to the illusion that this country is 'classless' or its economic life has been democratized, no real political struggle to achieve those aims is possible...
...And, speaking of criticism of journalism, the following comes from Carl Jensen, director of Project Censored at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California: "Congratulations...
...Another member of The Progressive's Editorial Advisory Board, Ben H. Bagdikian, has been awarded the 1990 Lowell Mellett Award for outstanding media criticism...
...The author, Maurice Zeitlin, then as now a professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, carefully documented his thesis that no significant redistribution of wealth had occurred in the United States in more than a century...
...A small, privileged class owns America...
...Let's say it plainly," Zeitlin concludes...
...Remarkably, economic historians who have culled manuscript census reports on the past century report that on the eve of the Civil War the rich had the same cut of the total: The top 1 per cent owned 24 per cent in 1860 and 24.9 per cent in 1969...
...In the new article, Zeitlin notes that "of the Rose Bowl's 104,696 seats, two-thirds would be empty if only Americans with a net worth of $5 million or more—averaging about $11 million apiece, $538,000 of it in cash—came to cheer...
...Your article was among more than 500 nominated for Project Censored's most under-reported stories of 1989...
...Most of us own next to nothing—and always did...
...Our national panel of judges...
...In this issue, Wisconsin artist Andrew Ewen appears on Page 43...
...Another 20,000 seats would be taken if everyone owning $1 million in corporate stock got in...
...In particular, they cited Bagdikian's essay, "Missing from the News," which appeared in the August 1989 issue of this magazine, as an article that "symbolizes his sustained contributions to the improvement of journalism through critical evaluation...
...Through all the tumultuous changes since then—the Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves, the Populist and Progressive movements, the Great Depression and the New Deal, progressive taxation, the mass organization of industrial workers, and World Wars I and II— this class has held on to everything it had...
...Zeitlin, a member of The Progressive's Editorial Advisory Board, recently updated his research and published his findings in the Los Angeles Times...
...The judges said Bagdikian's name has been synonymous for more than thirty years with "principled, informed, and courageous criticism of journalism on a national scale...
...They owned America then and they own it now...
...It turns out—surprise, surprise—that twelve years later the same old gang still owns America...
...The richest 1 per cent own a quarter, and the top half of 1 per cent a fifth, of the combined market worth of everything owned by every American," Zeitlin wrote...
...The article turned out to be one of The Progressive's classics, reprinted in at least a dozen college texts and cited in scores of other works...
...Glancing downward a bit, the richest 1 per cent own one-quarter of the net worth of all adults...
...Those 58,200 individuals alone own roughly one-fifth of the value of all the corporate stock and two-fifths of the bonds and notes...
...selected your story from among the top twenty-five nominations on the basis of the quality of the story and its perceived importance to the American public...
...Though it may bring a SWAT team of the new Arts Gestapo to The Progressive's door, I'm obliged to acknowledge, gratefully, our third annual grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board, with funds from the state of Wisconsin and the (shh...
...Your article (May issue) about The Wall Street Journals censoring Mary Williams Walsh's story of biased CBS news coverage of the Afghan war was named as one of the top ten 'censored' stories of 1989—a story which deserved far more attention than it received in our national news media...
...National Endowment for the Arts, to help underwrite the cost of publishing the work of Wisconsin graphic artists in this magazine...
Vol. 54 • September 1991 • No. 9
