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A Poverty of Coverage: Why Aren't The Poor on The Media Agenda?
During the 20 years of FAIR's existence, there have been two periods when mainstream journalists made promises about dedicating themselves to greater coverage of poverty, racism and inequality. The first followed the Los Angeles riots of 1992 (Extra!, 7-8/92); the second was after Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of New Orleans (Extra!, 7-8/06).Both promises went largely unfulfilled.
Following Katrina, national news coverage of poverty increased in September 2005 before returning to a normal, almost undetectable baseline. According to the Tyndall Report, a newsletter that tracks what's covered on the nightly network news, poverty reporting increased in the eight months following Katrina from two-and-a-half seconds per night...to four seconds per night. In other words, poverty coverage in the period following the catastrophe increased from 0.2 percent to 0.3 percent of the average 22-minute nightly newscast.
A FAIR study released September 7 found that in just over three years (9/11/03 - 10/30/06) the major TV networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, broadcast only 58 stories dealing with poverty in more than a passing mention.
Why so little coverage of poverty? For one, journalists like a story to have a resolution, preferably a happy one. Often journalists see poverty as a sad, intractable fact of life, a story that never gets better and generates little interest or news.
A contemporary iteration of "the poor will always be with you" (Mark 14:7), this view reinforces reactionary views of poverty by playing into the twin assumptions that government is neither responsible for causing nor capable of alleviating poverty. If this is true, isn't it logical to conclude, as so many on the right have, that the causes for poverty lie in the poor themselves?
And a more important preference than journalist's personal tastes is at work: Advertisers don't much like stories, such as poverty, which they see as downers--or as putting people in a non-shopping mood. (That's why CBS offered to air "upbeat images or messages about the war, like patriotic views from the home front," to buffer advertisements from the reality of the Gulf War--New York Times, 2/7/91.)
In an online chat (8/28/06), Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz explained that "news outlets tend far too often to cover what politicians are talking about," neglecting things "they can't solve." Kurtz added that Katrina "highlighted the extent to which the mainstream press had stopped writing about race and big-city poverty," because "somewhere along the way those subjects were deemed to be unfashionable."
Kurtz didn't say in that chat why such stories are "deemed unfashionable." But he further illuminated why advertisers don't like poverty coverage in a review (2/19/07) of a rare poverty special hosted by Diane Sawyer on ABC's 20/20 (1/26/07). According to Kurtz, the 20/20 special, focusing on poor youth in Camden, N.J., "examined a subject that has largely vanished from the media, deemed depressing and unappealing to the affluent viewers prized by advertisers." Kurtz added that "Sawyer says she and her team had to overcome 'a feeling on the part of a lot of people that no one would watch and there was not a way to give these kids a voice.'"
Kurtz's comments reveal disturbing realities about a television news business that puts such a premium on affluent viewers that their alleged distaste for poverty coverage results in the neglect of the issue.
In the end, it shouldn't be surprising that news that is produced by powerful corporations, closely interconnected with other powerful corporate and governmental institutions, produces news that makes such powerful institutions look good. When the powerful get to tell the stories, with few exceptions, they tend to shift the responsibility for social ills away from the circle of powerful decision-makers. As blame is assigned downward, as it were, the bulk of the responsibility for social ills is laid at the feet of the least powerful--the poor, people of color and immigrants.
Commercial television news will likely continue operating on the assumptions that the poverty narrative is just not interesting and that Americans don't care about inequality. But it's worth noting that these assumptions are not accurate. A 2006 Syracuse University study revealed that more than 80 percent of Americans viewed income inequality as either a "serious problem" or "somewhat of a problem." Which makes media excuses for scant poverty coverage little more than cop-outs for neglecting the most vulnerable and powerless among us.
Steve Rendall is FAIR's Senior Analyst.
25 Comments so far
Show AllWhen the poor burn down the slums, corporate America swoops in builds expensive housing the poor can't afford and then there are more homeless on the streets.
Katrina is an excellent example!
'Commercial television' -- the term tells us what we need to know. Truth is hardly marketable; and it certainly isn't appealing to people whose main skills consist in sitting getting coiffed and clothed to look attractive.
TV itself was part of the great bourgeois myth of postwar America -- it was another member of the nuclear family, the one re-inforcing its structure & the self-image of all its members; and its evolution followed the social evolution, finally becoming the ultimate enabler, telling no truths whatsoever.
Whether we can step forward from netinfo back into real society & engage in real politics, rather than simply mourn the absence of tele-politics, is in question. Poverty poses that question acutely -- tv producers have turned the world into a studio and they won't ever point the cameras at unscripted actors again. If Vietnam hadn't taught them the lesson, katrina finally did.
They don't want us to know that there's a problem that's why. They want us to think that the homeless do not exist. They don't want us to know that the person working behind the counter as McDonald's has two other jobs and still can't make ends meet.
Cartoonist/commentator Ted Rall wrote about this issue in his most recent column here:
http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/
The answer is pretty simple, poor homeless people don't have tv's and they don't shop so the MSM isn't very interested in them nor are their corporate sponsers.
Another dismal possibility: I'm sure you're familiar with the old public domain rhyming couplet:
Two men looked out from prison bars
One saw mud. The other, stars.
In the narcissistic, hedonistic, monadic, unapologetically superficial bread-and-circuses popular culture bubbling over like toxic froth from the corporate media cauldron, why look at mud when you can look at stars?
Actually, to risk taking the thought a step too far, corporate media-manufactured pop culture fuses mud and stars; there are misery and pitfalls and suffering and redemption enough in the international trash-celebrity circuit to pre-empt the dull and quotidian misfortunes of ordinary people-- and the endless sideshow of grotesque and sensational "real-life" scandal and criminal carnage for seasoning and variety.
One seeks escape and refuge in the artifices of the corporate media, after all; it is hardly conducive to enjoyable viewing and the acquisition of advertised goods and services to consider less spectacular suffering.
And of course, there's the traditional dismissive piety of "the poor are always with us".
"And of course, there's the traditional dismissive piety of "the poor are always with us"."
Actually, as one reads the utter hatred heaped on the poor -- they aren't REALLY poor, they're really living in the lap of luxury, they're lazy & deserve it, they're criminals & should be deported, etc. etc. -- I doubt that the MSM could come up with any examination of people submerged in poverty that presented them in any other than the vengeful, scornful, "lousy-pseudo-americans-draining-the-pockets
-of-good-productive-hardworking-consuming AMERICANS" fashion.
The reference to Mark raises an interesting point. The word 'poor'appears about 200 times in the bible, with origins in Hebrew and Greek, with a variety of meanings. As with so many indigenous languages Greek oratory preceded the linear Cartesian model so influential today. For a linguistic treasure hunt try tracking the word, if at first it seems too dense - try exploring the roots of other entries. This is a link to Strongs Concordance online:
http://cf.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?strongs=4434
'Poor' for indigenous people such as the Guarani is one who is unable to practice reciprocity for the well being of everyone.
It isn't just poverty in the US that's an issue in a global economy. We're also responsible for resurrecting slavery:
http://www.china-labour.org.hk/fs/view/research-reports/Child_labour_report_final.pdf
The conditions in the factories described in the above report are the manifestation of the Auschwitz mindset. They would be gassing the workers but for the fact that the factories are only paid to produce goods rather than produce goods + gas the workers as in Auschwitz.
Auschwitz still exists....
Commercial media is just another corporate entity. Commercial media is not obligated to obey any ethical or democratic laws unless stated by government. The power of the corporate/industrial complex has exceeded that of our government. What we are now witnessing is a government in fear. "The only thing necessary for the persistence of evil is for enough good people to do nothing".
The media, or the political establishment, will not be "on the side of the poor" until the poor are rioting in the streets. It has always been this way. Read Piven and Cloward's classic study Regulating the Poor.
Things will not change in this country until we take over the streets, and the factories and the offices of the politicians. When the poor decide to burn down some slums, then we will get the press.
This is how it works. Writing blog articles wondering why the media isn't paying attention is not going to do it.
One place the poor do appear on TV is on forensic shows. Like the show I saw the other night. Human bones are found in a field. A pair of women's pants, shredded by animals, make the cop think it's a female at first. Medical examiner determines from the skull and pelvis that it's actually a man. Later identified as a homeless man, observed by locals to be starving. That's how he came to be thin enough to to fit into women's slacks. Probably found in a dumpster. Cause of death unknown. Could be murder, malnutrition, or lack of health care. Who cares? Women's pants gave case of man seen starving an interesting twist. Next.
Whoops, I forgot.....they build these homes with the cheapest labor they can find too!
The poor in the media? Are you kidding? Most people I know get their news and information from the internet. The media is owned by the richest of the rich and is there to lie to us serfs. The Bilderberg group meets every year to make sure we are under control.
Soon, as David Rockerfellar says, the masses "will be all chipped" as in microchipped.
There actually is a really good news program on T.V.. It is DemocracyNow with Amy Goodman. Of course, it is not carried on mainline stations. However, if you have either cable or dish, it is quite possible you can get it. If you go to their web site www.democracynow.org you can find out what channel it is where your live.
Recently, they have had some really good coverage of what has been happening to the poor and blue collar people in New Orleans. What is happening there is heartbreaking, infuriating and inspirational all at the same time. Instead of interviewing the lying power establishment Amy interviews the grassroots leaders and asks intelligent and thought provoking questions. It is on Mon. thru Fri. and covers all the issues that concern progressives and never wastes time on fluff.
In a country where 10% of the people are allowed to hog the big share of the wealth, and are given large tax relief so they can keep it, is it logical to expect the poor to be worried about? As wealth controls the government and the media nothing will change until the middle class is also poor, then possibly enough people will begin to realize our country is wrecked. We don`t worry about war casualties ruining countless families either, so the poor can just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Besides we have 24-7 sports now, I-phones, new movies, Starbucks, shopping malls, and are busy with that.
How to actually stop HAVING poor people for the media - or anyone - to discuss, or ignore, can be found in comments here:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/05/3634/
according to the american religion it is a sin to be poor, ask creflo dollar.
I think we have come to a time in this country when the media, like the Congress, is a wholly owned tool of corporate America. Congress passes legislation that suits the corporations, and the media writes about news in the same way.
"The poor ye shall always have with thee" is often quoted out of context to make it seem as though Jesus didn't think helping the poor was necessary. Conservatives like to use that one a lot. In reality, the context of the saying is that Jesus was telling a woman, who was upset that expensive oils were being used to anoint his head when the oil could have been sold to help the poor, that, though helping the poor would always be necessary, he himself would not be around much longer.
I'd like to repeat obamj's recommendation of Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman. That show's one of the only reasons I still have satellite television.
When tens of millions die each year while the rich parade their wealth and exhibit such complacency, the answer to our problems of terror and tension between East/West, or North/South, surely lies in addressing this growing rift between have's and have not's.
Sharing the world's abundant resources is the only true answer. Freedom AND Justice, together. Nothing else has worked. Time to call for a more equitable redistribution of the food and basic essentials, so people and nations can live in harmony and trust.
http://www.Justice4Peace.org
What if encouraging "love thy neighbor" as motivation is the exact wrong way to go?
Will the "love thy neighbor" motivation last forever, if your neighbor is, in actuality, a real Jerk?
You don't need to LOVE your neighbor in order to understand that HURTING your neighbor will hurt you.
To finally discover our only INDEFATIGUEABLE, most universally and naturally reliable motivation, we need look no further and SHOULD look no further than perfectly sane self-interest in our OWN preservation and happiness.
Self-ish-ness has been given an undeserved bad name.
People have been convinced that putting their own happiness and safety before that of others is a sin.
If people were convinced instead that to pursue their own happiness with every nerve and every second was the very purpose of life, and they saw simply that every injury done is reciprocated, then the most self-interested person in the world would take great care to never hurt others - never treat others in a way they themselves did not want reciprocated - for the reason that to hurt others is the quickest way to invite injury to oneSELF.
It is, indeed, your own bacon you should be trying to save, and your own noodle you should be using to do it.
Interesting take, Ayn-- whoops, I mean "Xavier"!
The name, my name, is pronounced "Save your own asses", Little Brother