Some might think I have the ideal job. I get paid to watch TV. Of course, that generally means I get paid to watch and analyze local news. So after years of reading the GR Press and looking at the likes of Tom Van Howe and Juliet Dragos I have this fantasy that Rod Sterling is going to appear and do his intro to The Twilight Zone. Imagine you are sitting in your living room and the voice on the TV screen tells you nothing that is relevant. You have entered the News Zone.
In early September the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled that the Howard Stern Show was actually a news show. What? How could they.....I mean, what were they thinking? Here is a show where a bunch of grown men act like adolescent boys by asking women to take off their clothes and then rate their breasts and butts. Seems crazy that the FCC would make such a rule right? Well, no. I can tell you that after reading thousands of pages and watching countless hours of local news that much of what passes as journalism is in the same league as the Howard Stern Show. Let's go the to highlight reel for some recent examples.
On September 9, there was a primary election in Grand Rapids and the surrounding communities. We did a little 30-day prior to the election day study of local news to see how much coverage of local candidates was provided. The Grand Rapids Press provided a few articles on the GR Mayoral race, covering the candidates position on the public schools, how much money was raised, an endorsement by the current mayor, and a tax dispute with one of the candidates. There was also a 2nd ward city commission race, which received a total of 3 articles, but little information on the candidates. During the same 30-day period there were an equal amount of articles on a Ferris State student who was being kicked out of student housing because she has 2 pet ducks. This story received front page coverage, the 2nd ward race did not. Maybe it was the compelling headlines that read "Ruffled Feather."
Local TV news? Well, they actually did worse. WOODTV 8 had the most election coverage, but still gave us more stories about Jim Dreyer's attempt to swin across lake Superior, than any local race. The "If it Bleeds, It Leads" mentality of news ruled with WZZM 13, which gave us a total of 82 crime stories during our 30-day study. As for election coverage, a wopping 8 stories. And Fox 17 gave us more stories about the
condemning of an apartment complex in Wyoming, than they did about local elections.
Another example of Twilight Zone journalism was the local coverage of the World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings in Cancun, Mexico the second week of September. The local TV didn't even bother to cover this story, despite the fact that the World Trade Organization makes decisions that impact all our lives in a major way. The Grand Rapids Press didn't do much better. They ran 3 articles in a span of 1 week, all just a few column inches long. The first headlined "Anti-globalization protesters disrespectful of Trade meetings." About 50 people laid in the sand nude on the beaches of Cancun, spelling a word in protest. In a strange irony that Orwell could appreciate, the WTO was not referred to as disrespectful. Disrespectful, since they exclude civil society from the meetings, since they cater to corporate interests, and force international trade policies that further marginalizes communities struggling to survive the current global economic depression. Allowing people to starve to death, to deny them basic medicines because it would infringe on pharmaceutical company profits, these actions are not disrespectful.
Another story the Press ran was about the suicide of a Korean farmer during the WTO protests. Farmer/organizer Lee Kyung Hae stuck a knife in his heart, ending his life as a protest against the institutional death the WTO promotes. What is sad about this is not just that Mr. Hae felt so desperate that he had to commit suicide, it is equally sad that the newspaper did not give us any context to his death or the implications of the WTO meetings. They never bother to ask why thousands of people from around the world continue to protest these meetings at great personal risk. The news media in the US has continued to follow the Seattle model - focus on the behavior of demonstrators, whether there was any violence, don't report on who benefits from these trade policies.
Mr. Hae was part of a farmers organization (the Korean Federation of Advanced Farmers Association) that has been organizing against WTO policies. Hae and hundreds of his fellow Korean farmers have been falling into greater debt and losing their lands, in part, due to WTO policies. Thousands of farmers worldwide have been mobilizing against these trade policies that are being driven by corporate profits. From the corporate news we learn nothing of what motivates the people who travel thousands of miles to challenge the WTO and it's corporate lobbyists.
We have not read in the GR Press the powerful words of the campesinos of Mexico who came to say that they have lost their land because of the cheap corn imports from the US, imports that are subsidized by US taxpayers. We have not seen stories on any of the local TV stations about African organization demanding access to affordable, local AIDS medication. Our "free market" media has not provided us with the powerful testimonies of worker organizations globally who came to Cancun to protest labor abuses allowed under the WTO rules. The power of this growing citizen movement is best summarized by the prose of the Zapatista spokesperson Marcos who refers to this movement as the globalization of hope. "The difference between them and all of us is not in the pockets of one or the other, although their pockets overflow with money whiles ours overflow with hope." In November, thousands of people will converge on Miami to denounce the exclusion of civil society from the Free Trade of the Americas (FTAA) meetings. For profit media may or may not even bother to cover it, but you can prepare yourself with independent info by going to http://www.mediamouse.org/static/ftaa.php.
While we may find the FCC decision to give the Howard Stern Show news status contemptible, the real danger is believing that those who call themselves news organizations actually fulfill that function.
Jeff Smith works for a media watchdog organization www.griid.org.
