Howell Raines, former editor of the New York Times, says:

As for shallow journalism that helps Big Oil, Steele makes the point that the newsrooms that were once staffed by the redistributionist children of the New Deal and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. are now populated with the children of Reaganomics: “Younger reporters come out of a mind-set that the market rules, taxes are evil, and government ought to let these people in the oil industry go about their business.”

Then there is the remarkable job that the oil companies have done in persuading network-TV anchors and correspondents to depict them as they want to be seen: powerless victims of a supply-and-demand cycle that is as immutable as gravity and as random as lightning. Congress, responding to demands for tougher laws on oil speculation, would prefer to blame environmental regulations. Much of the context-free reporting about what the executives say, in Congress and on television, is marked by breathtaking gullibility.

New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera says:

Anyway, I just read, somewhat dumbfounded, his latest column. It’s about how all of us in business journalism are being sandbagged by those awful people running Exxon Mobil and the other major oil companies, who are busy gouging us while tossing the press their “malarkey” about supply and demand being behind the rise in oil prices. Raines, apparently, is among the legions who believe it’s all a big plot by Big Oil, which could bring down the price with a snap of its powerful finger. Well, yes, malarkey is the right word — but it’s a word that more appropriately describes Raines’s column.

I'm mainly with Nocera on this one. I have no doubt that oil companies are up to some funny business. Lose the outrageous tax breaks and badger Big Oil to increase exploration. Raise taxes on Big Oil. Drilling in ANWR to increase supply is a fantasy. But Raines's portrayal of a vast, Enronesque conspiracy is short on details. In the Raines casebook, huge profits alone are proof of Big Oil's turpitude. Especially chilling is the final paragraph, remarkable in its 10th-grade understanding of how companies work. Apparently according to Raines, any gross margin on a business's books is "price manipulation." This guy once ran the New York Times?

Now, let’s say you’re an oil company selling bulk gasoline, and suppose your inventory contains some gasoline made from $140-a-barrel oil and some that was purchased for $75 a barrel. That leaves a lot of room for price manipulation. But please, whatever you do, don’t think for a minute that’s what Tillerson and Exxon Mobil are up to. Just like you and me, they are powerless slaves in the fields of supply and demand. Now tote that barge, lift that barrel.