Several years ago I was at a meeting where GR Press editor Mike Lloyd was the guest speaker. He said something that has stuck with me for a long time, “the mission of the Press is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” Now I ask you, when does the GR Press take rich people to task? Yeah, sure there are examples when rich people get caught in “scandalous” behavior, but it is pretty rare to see a serious critique of people in power.

Now, I am one of those folks who think that a primary function of journalism is to scrutinize those in power whether that is economic or political power. It doesn’t do the public much good if all the crime coverage focuses on some poor schmuck who engages in petty theft. It just makes for sensationalized news coverage to run pictures of some guy wearing a mask while robbing a party store. But realistically crimes like these won’t have a huge impact on the public. However, if a corporation engages in fraudulent practices, not only will customers lose out, but possibly employees as well. And depending on the crime, it may mean an increased cost to tax payers, insurance costs may go up and other costs to society like public assistance costs because more people don’t have a job.

Unfortunately, the news media rarely covers the corporate crime, the type of crime that does far more damage than street crime. Russell Morkhiber, the founder of Corporate Crime Reporter www.corporatecrimereporter.com, since 1987 has been monitoring and investigating corporate crime and its impact on communities and the country. For example, in 1999 the Swiss pharmaceutical company F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd for “leading a worldwide conspiracy to raise and fix prices and allocate market shares for certain vitamins sold in the United States and elsewhere.” The conspiracy lasted 9 years and ended up costing the company $500 million in fines, but NO jail time.

Currently there is a campaign to challenge the corporate power and corporate crimes of Wal-Mart. Robert Greenwald’s newest documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, is an excellent expose that highlights the impact that Wal-Mart has on communities around the country. Wal-Mart not only forces local businesses to close their doors, but they also undercut wages, and steal tax money in the form of “tax breaks” to set up shop. So what do you call it when a small family business is forced to close because they can’t compete with the Wal-Marts of the world? What do you call it when people’s wages are cut because businesses want to stay “competitive” with the near minimum wage jobs provided by Wal-Mart? What do you call it when people are forced to go on public assistance just to feed their families or pay the heating bills? The news media tends to call it “market adjustments.” But I ask you, why is this not criminal behavior if the end result is no different than stealing from someone or taking away their livelihood? A good source for this issue is walmartwatch.com.

In many ways the bigger issue has to do with coming to terms with the actual function of journalism. There certainly is no consensus on this matter, but historically journalism was seen as a function of holding power accountable, to be a muckraker. In the most recent book by Bob McChesney and John Nichols, Tragedy & Farce: How the American Media Sells Wars, Spins election, and Destroy Democracy, they argue that democracy-sustaining journalism has 3 components: it must be a watchdog to power, present a wide range of perspectives on issues, and expose lies and deception. Taking this formula to heart, I ask you if media in this country actually fulfills this journalistic mandate? Has the media adequately scrutinized the US war/occupation of Iraq? Has the media given voters enough information in order to make an intelligent decision in elections? Does the media bring voices of people who have no economic or political power?

When looking at the local news we have seen endless examples of how journalism avoids scrutinizing power. When was the last time that you read or watched a story that took on the power of the Downtown Development Authority (DDA), the working conditions in the migrant camps of West Michigan, treatment of prisoners in the Kent County jail, inequalities in the area schools, corporate financing of elections, or institutional racism in the Greater Grand Rapids area? Just to give you an example of what the daily news outlets provide, during recent election coverage channel 13 ran a 24 second election story that only gave viewers the names of candidates. Right after this story they ran a 4 minute piece about Spray on tanning products. In this story they had their weather people try these products and then later describe how well they worked. Or how about the example of a story the GR Press ran in mid-November about an Altria (formerly Philip Morris) executive who gave a talk in Grand Rapids entitled “Marlboros, Oreos and Integrity: Global Responsibility in a $100 billion Multinational Corporation.” You can imagine that the Press reporter put all this in a context of years of deception by the tobacco giant, the use of high paid PR campaigns, etc. Wrong. The story just published the comments of this high ranking official in a company that controls a significant amount of household products in the US. This type of reporting is what media analysts refer to as stenography, where reporters just present what people in power said without questioning or verifying the accuracy of what was said. It’s almost as if to say that reporters assume that people in power are not going to deceive us.

Fortunately there are a growing number of individuals and organizations that are taking a more critical view of wealthy and powerful sectors of our society. Some of them, like Charles Lewis are former reporters themselves who became disillusioned with the direction of journalism, so Lewis started the Center for Public Integrity. They do amazing work to expose power and provide good investigative reports on both government and corporate abuse. A recent report looked at the power that telecommunications companies like SBC wield when it comes to new tele-com policies. Then there is Public Citizen, another watchdog group that looks at corporate power and recently exposed how the oil industry, in collusion with the government stuck it to the public at the pump. Locally, we have Media Mouse, an Indy online site that provides numerous daily news postings of national, international and local news. They even do local research on issues like which area companies have profited off of the war in Iraq. Just go to the publications section of the site.

And of course, those of us at GRIID try to stay on top of what local news covers, how they cover it and what they don’t cover. You can stay current with all of our news monitoring work and you can get an interesting taste of what local news monitoring life is like by attending the 5th Annual Newzees. It’s our showcase of the best of the worst in local TV news. The show keeps evolving and this year it will be sort of a cross between The Tonight Show and The Daily Show. The 2005 Newzees is Wednesday, December 7 at 7pm in the luscious Wealthy Theatre. Beat the rush and get your tickets now! Oops, was that just a product placement?