The death of American journalism

March 4, 2016 a world of progress, letters, progressive living, progressive media center No comments

Corporate-Media-control

So, here’s what we’ve come to: Donald Drumpf’s penis size is all over the news this morning, but Bernie Sanders, who’s talking about real issues, real problems and real solutions, can barely get the time of day.

I get it; penises sell. Everyone’s interested in the discussion about penises.

A responsible Fourth Estate, however, would walk away from the circus and talk about income inequality, systemic racism, the lack of access to health care, the ravaging of our public education system, endless wars, the rampant destruction of the natural world, climate change, poisons in our food and water, voter suppression …

You get the gist.

What we get instead is the distraction, what my late son used to call “sparkly issues.”

“Ooooh, look over here. The leading Republican candidate is talking about the size of his penis. Sparkly!”

I worked in newspapers for 30 years before I volunteered to be laid off so I could pursue a life of activism after the death of my son. I’m deeply grateful I left when I did.

I was fortunate to be a reporter at a time when news stories might shame state and local officials to do the right thing. Stories my colleagues and I wrote helped to change state policies.

But those stories took time to research and write, and they weren’t sexy. It was my job to explain complex government policies and how they affected real people. My colleagues and I were given the time it took to do the research and write the stories.

Today, my former colleagues work harder than ever, but they aren’t often given the time for investigative journalism. Corporate overlords have cut newsroom staffs to the bone and then some. Older reporters who remember what it was like to write about corruption or bad policy are overloaded with work. They can be disciplined for not having enough bylines. Story count means more than content.

Too often, today’s journalists aren’t encouraged to tackle the issues; they’re asked to contribute to the drivel that distracts people from the real issues. I have some very frustrated friends in the business, and none of this is their fault.

When I criticize the corporate media, I am in no way blaming the front-line people for what has happened.

The decisions about what will be at the top of the news don’t rest with reporters, or even most of the editors who work with them. Much of it comes from the corner offices in the form of kudos for the number of page views online and demands for more of the same.

My former company, Gannett, is in no small part responsible for this mess. Newspapers aren’t dying; they are being suffocated. Gannett demands obscene profit margins, and when the profits aren’t big enough, the company boots a few more reporters and copy editors to the curb. Employees may be loyal, but the company most certainly is not.

News became a product, not a mission, and that’s what is killing newspapers.

So, my former colleagues work in a pressure cooker, where they face increasing demands, minuscule raises that don’t keep up with inflation and the constant threat of unemployment, no matter how good they are.

Most reporters are still trying to do good work, and some have left corporate media to pursue good journalism.

Here in Asheville, we have Carolina Public Press, a nonprofit headed by a former Gannett reporter, and The Asheville Blade, a one-person operation covering local government and issues. We have some great bloggers who are as likely to break stories as the local paper or TV or radio stations.

This well may be the future of journalism, but it has a lot of noise trying to drown it out, and the rise of Donald Trump and the coverage of his penis size is sad proof that we may not return to civilized, responsible journalism any time soon.

 

 

 

Numbers don’t lie

September 15, 2011 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

One of the things Republicans like to say when they argue that we can’t afford health care for everyone is, “Numbers don’t lie.”

Well, here’s a number for you: Official estimates by the US Census Bureau say that 49.9 million Americans now are uninsured, an incerase of about a million people from a year ago.

Statistics say that translates to about 5,000 more premature deaths every year, bringing the likely total to about 50,000 Americans.

“That’s one plane crash every day,” says Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Plan. “It’s the equivelent of another 9/11 every month.”

Most people are unaware of these numbers because they rely on the corporate media for information, Flowers says, and I agree with her. Instead of getting the truth, we get distractions and misrepresentations leading most Americans to believe we can’t afford health care for everyone.

For example, in Monday’s debate, Wolf Blitzer’s “hypothetical” man chose not to pay $200 a month for insurance. I don’t know anyone whose insurance costs are that low unless they have huge deductibles — $10,000 and more — and co-pays. Almost two-thirds of Americans don’t even have $1,000 to lay out for an emergency at any given time, so I don’t imagine our “hypothetical” man is being cavalier in making his decision.

“The number of young people who can afford insurance and choose not to get it is very, very small,” Flowers said. “If you have these huge deductibles and co-pays, you’re going to go bankrupt if you get sick. So of you’re going to go bankrupt anyway, why shell out hundreds of dollars every month to a big corporation?”

So, Wolf Blitzer’s example is misleading to begin with, although you won’t get that information on CNN.

The money we’re spending on wars and the money we’re not taking in from the wealthiest Americans and corporations would more than pay for Medicare for every American. Instead, we tell people we can’t afford it and 50,000 people die every year — one every 11 minutes.

“It seems to me that’s morally reprehensible,” Flowers said.

So, here are a few of the true numbers you probably don’t know:

  • TheCensus Bureau says 55.3 percent of Americans were covered by employment-based plans in 2010, down from 56.1 percent in 2009. It was the eleventh consecutive year of decline, from 64.2 percent in 2000.
  • In Massachusetts, whose 2006 health reform is supposed to be the model for the Affordable Care Act, 370,000 people were uninsured in 2010, representing 5.6 percent of the population, a jump from 4.3 percent who were uninsured in 2009.
  • Some states saw more than a 3-percentage-point to 5-percentage-point increase in their uninsured rate (Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and South Carolina). In terms of absolute numbers, Louisiana had the largest increase in the number of uninsured, 240,700, followed by New York (177,700) and South Carolina (173,300).
  • Among various population groups, the greatest loss of coverage was among working-age adults ages 35 to 64, people with incomes below $49,999, and people with disabilities.
  • Latinos continue to  face uninsurance disproportionately (30.7 percent), compared with blacks (20.8 percent), Asians (18.1 percent) and non-Latino whites (11.7 percent).
  • About 7.3 million children remain uninsured. Young people ages 19 to 25 had a drop of 1.6 percentage points in their uninsurance rate, a figure likely linked to the federal health law’s provision that allows dependent children to be covered under a parent’s health plan up to age 26.

I suggest you print this out and show it around. It’s what corporate America doesn’t want people to know.

Thank you Bev Perdue

June 14, 2011 a world of progress, progressive living Comments Off on Thank you Bev Perdue

For the first time in North Carolina history, a governor has vetoed a budget. That’s good news for the people of this state.

Republicans are screaming that this was her budget to begin with, but then she backed down.

The governor’s budget did have some deep cuts, but nothing as severe as what the Republican majority — along with five conservative Democrats — plan to put into place this week.

Those five Dems, all from the eastern part of the state, traded favors for deep cuts to education and a further shredding of the social safety net that civilized people recognize as humane and necessary.

The legislature has refused to maintain a one-cent sales tax that could prevent such deep cuts to education, and the majority of people in the state want the penny tax kept so children here can have a decent education. The legislature is refusing to listen, and I believe it’s at their own peril.

The fallacy they’re perpetuating is that we’re broke. We are not broke. Tax rates in this country are lower than they’ve been in decades; corporate tax loopholes are letting huge corporations like GE escape paying any taxes at all.

Republicans say if we tax corporations, they’ll move offshore.

I say, fine. Let them move and then tax the hell out of any business they do here. It’s time we stood up the the extortion of the corporations in America.  They’re not creating the jobs they could be creating — they’re sitting on nearly $2 trillion in revenues that they’re not re-investing in American jobs.

Meanwhile, our nation’s infrastructure is crumbling, while people who could be working to fix it sit idle, their unemployment benefits dwindling. They’re accused by the wealthy of being lazy because they’re not looking hard enough for work. People who lost $20-an-hour jobs with benefits are being forced to take $8-an-hour jobs with no benefits. This has been happening for 30 years as the right has attacked working people.

The wealthy have done fine through this recession — in fact, they have prospered beyond their wildest dreams — and they want more at the expense of the rest of us.

Wealthy individuals aren’t creating jobs with their tax breaks either; they’re spending all of it on their own selfish desires.

We are not broke. We do not need to deny children, people in poverty, who are ill or who have disabilities their very right to life so that some wealthy jerk can have another yacht or diamond-studded dog collar.

There’s plenty to go around; we just have to make the selfish bastards share a little more.