Posted by Frank James at 9:11 am CDT
Paul Wolfowitz said something in his BBC interview broadcast yesterday that virtually everyone in the Washington press corps would agree with.
“You don’t solve problems unless you expose them.” The soon-to-be former World Bank president said this, with no apparent sense of irony, in an interview in which he seemed to blame the media for his unhorsing as the institution’s president.
Wolfowitz was talking about exposing the problems of corruption in Third World countries, particularly Africa, where money for important public projects has a habit of disappearing into the private accounts of corrupt leaders.But he showed little understanding in the interview that once you set yourself up as someone in the business of exposing problems, it would be wise to make sure you don’t have any of your own that could be ripe for exposure. He had placed himself in a situation where, like Caeser’s wife, he had to be above suspicion.
His arrangement of a high-paying State Department gig for his girlfriend was, in many eyes, a significant ethical lapse. Of the ensuing controversy he said: “I think it tells us more about the media than about the bank and I’ll leave it at that.”
Actually, the World Bank board seemed to believe it said more about Wolfowitz than the media. As did World Bank employees who openly called for his ouster.
But more to the point, such missteps as Wolfowitz’s are precisely the sort of stories journalists are duty bound to report. So we do agree with him: problems can’t be solved unless they’re exposed. And that goes for his and the World Bank’s flaws as well as the Third World’s.
