Another con job on the price of gasoline

It was almost as though Associated Press set out to answer "Big Media and Big Oil - are they one and the same?" which was my question here 5/20/08.

AP wrote, and the Advocate reproduced 5/25/08, an article under the headline "What makes up the price of gas?"

The most interesting thing about this piece are the sources used by AP: There was Jim Ritterbusch, whose firm does consulting for oil companies; there was "the federal government;" and there was the American Petroleum Institute and that's all.

The article took up most of a full page and all it said was, in effect, prices are a function of the open market. What else might one expect from AP?

As though the "open market" can operate freely when a few gigantic, multinational corporations own the Bush Administration and its rule-making machinery, just as farmers own the agriculture regulators, and the drug companies own the FDA.

Instead of settling any question about whether Big Oil and Big Media are one and the same, AP wrote yet another con job on oil prices, and it served only to make my question more relevant.