Media Coverage of Social Issues

I've posted a new 5-minute video on YouTube, which takes a really quick look at the way our mainstream news media covers poverty and homelessness, and the low priority these issues are given compared to such crucial matters as Tom Cruise's honeymoon and the latest styles of luxury sedans.

You may view the video here.

The key point is this: local news media defines our local priorities, and national news media coverage defines out priorities as a nation. If the mass media only discusses celebrity couples and television shows like Survivor or American Idol, then America's only priority as a nation will be voyuerism. Why? Because even if 300 million Americans do have other personal priorities, like unemployment, health care, poverty, drug abuse, crime, and education, nothing productive can actually happen on a national scale if the media doesn't maintain Americans' focus on those issues.

Sure, communities will always have their own local activists devoted to important social issues. But without our mainstream media focusing on it, that is ALL we will have--random, isolated activists with limited resources and virtually no publicity or support, each desperately trying to tackle monumental problems by working independently or within small, relatively powerless organizations.

I can't count how many of these people I've met who consider it a "success" when they are able to assist one out a dozen people who come to them for help, or when they finally get one city ordinance passed after a year-long campaign. You have to be pretty desperate to settle for that low standard of "success". Contrast these well-intentioned, but weak efforts with real national goals, like going from the age of black & white television and Studabakers to landing men on the Moon and returning them safely to earth in less than seven years. Without the national media making the Moon landing a national priority, it could never have happened at that time in our nation's history.

Of course, there will always be large or national organizations devoted to important social issues. However, by definition, these large organizations suffer from the same inherent flaws that plague any large bureaucracy or institution. They are bound by 501(c)3 status restrictions in order to obtain tax-deductible donations. They have limited budgets, and are forced to waste much of their time on grant writing and fund raising just to stay in existence at all. They need publicity. They are forced to prostitute themselves by wining & dining those politicians and corporate executives whose own flawed character and intelligence created and maintain the problems these organizations seek to solve.

And then there are the international organizations, like Bono's ONE campaign ("the campaign to make poverty history"). Bono and other certainly mean well, but look at what they are doing--appealing to the G8 and the World Bank to end poverty? That's like trying to pressure Pablo Escabar to end the drug problem.

If we look at those organizations and movements that have been successful at creating truly monumental changes--whether for good or evil purposes--they all have one thing in common: constant, focused attention from the mass media. Think about it, the Moon Landing, the Cold War, the Iraq War, AIDS, Gay rights, the anti-smoking movement, and of course the German Nazi movement--the mass media was fundamental to making real action on each of those issues possible, and the amoral news media never gave a damn whether it was serving good or evil purposes.

Notice that in contrast to these heavily-promoted issues, the mass media hasn't bothered to say much about the methamphetime epidemic, so this epidemic is devastating communities all across the United States at an increasing rate. Meanwhile, few Americans have any idea that the American pharmaceutical industry's control over Congress is what prevented the DEA from stopping the meth epidemic dead in its tracks back in the early 1990's. The mainstream news media never told the American People about this. You see, pharmaceutical companies provide huge advertising revenues to the mainstream news media, and an amoral news media cares more about revenues and ratings, than about right and wrong.

Also notice that those televangelists who have built mass media empires have continued to get richer and richer, despite their demonstrated hypocrisy and poor characters. The mass media defines our priorities. Or am I the only person who remembers that Christianity used to be characterized by charity, compassion, and humility, rather than self-serving slogans like "God wants you to be rich"? A 2000 year-old religion has been hijacked by profiteers, using a media weapon that is so powerful, that no one even remembers the values that religion represented just a quarter century ago.

It may appear that I pick on Yahoo News a lot, and I do. There's a good reason for that. I was in graduate school studying computer science when Yahoo first became popular as the most useful web directory. At that time, Yahoo offered real hope for the future--hope that the internet was finally going to equalize the mass media's monopoly on setting our local, state, regional, national, and international priorities. Hope that individuals and small groups who give a damn might finally be able to reach the masses with their message, before they also grew into large, bureacratic, ineffective organizations. Yahoo offered us real hope when we needed it most--during the media consolidation of the 1990's that left nearly all of America's national news media under the control of a small number of individuals and corporations.

Today, just ten years later, Yahoo pulls its news from the Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg, and other mainstream sources. Yahoo is a mainstream source. Yahoo uses the exact same policies, procedures, terms & conditions as any other national news media source to ensure that ordinary citizens with meaningful messages and noble goals will never be heard from in any way that actually matters. Somebody at Yahoo sold out in the last decade, and because they did, all that hope we witnessed in the late 1990's is gone. All that hope is nothing but a memory today. Or was it all just a dream to begin with? Yahoo should go down in history as one of the greatest potentials that ever failed, one of our nation's greatest betrayals of the American People.

Today, what does Yahoo set as our national priorities? Try keeping track of their headlines for a week, or a month, and you'll see. Or I can save you time, since I've already done that research. Yahoo's national priorities are celebrites, overpaid athletes, war, crime, and national spelling bees, with human interest stories about the salt of the earth thrown in every once in a while, just for flavor. In other words, it is indistinguishable from any other of the major news sources that are consolidated in the hands of just a few individuals and corporations.

It's like Henry Kissinger once said, "I don't read the newspaper. I only read the headlines, so I will know what the American People are being told is important" (paraphrased). The media defines our priorities. And a few token stories about poverty and homelessness from time to time--especially during the holidays, when such stories are expected--is not going to change anything.

At the risk of sounding like John Lennon, imagine what this nation would be like if our national newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and internet news organizations focused their attention--and remained focused--on issues that actually matter--unemployment (downsizing/outsourcing), poverty, homelessness, debtors imprisonment, the power of corporate lobbyists in Congress, bureacracy, incompetence, corruption, police brutality, etc.

Does anyone honestly believe those issues would continue to be ignored and remain unaddressed, if the media replaced Britney Spears' love life with THOSE issues, as our national priorities?

All the best,
Paul