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Having forsaken hopes of a settlement to avert the self-imposed austerity cuts known as “sequestration,” progressive critics of the unfolding events continued to decry the folly on Friday.

Not reserving their ire for politicians alone, critics put much of the blame for the current state of affairs squarely at the door of the media, who busily made work of the “blame game” in Washington but generally failed to recognize the larger context within which the sequestration battle was occurring.

As Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, which led a spirited campaign to repeal the cuts, writes Friday:

 The media is focused on the possible effects of the cuts.  But what is actually being sequestered is any sensible debate about the fundamental changes needed to revive the middle class and make this economy work for working families once more.  The old economy – and the failed economic ideas that drove it – benefited the few, while undermining the broad middle class, even before the collapse.

And his colleague Richard Eskow adds that the media’s role, though deplorable, should not mistake one simple fact:
“this is an act of Congress.” What the media failed to address over and over, he writes, is that the entire charade of “crisis” was invented by Congress in the first place.