A Creeping Indifference and a Silent Hollowing
Out
By Norman Solomon
American journalism has
devoted massive attention to reporting on business in recent years. Overall news
outlets are enthralled with efforts in our society to maximize corporate profits
and personal wealth. Top executives and shrewd investors are good bets to emerge
as media heroes, unless or until they appear to be headed for prison. Insatiable
avarice -- always pushing for more, more, more -- is unlikely to cause bad
press. In fact, journalists are apt to cite enthusiasm for boosting "net
worth" as evidence of sturdy character.
Half a century ago, sociologist C. Wright Mills warned
of "a creeping indifference and a silent hollowing out." In the United
States, he observed, "money is the one unambiguous criterion of
success," and behind the obvious fact that people "want money"
lurked the more unsettling reality that "their very standards are
pecuniary." A few years later, author Vance Packard asked a key question:
"By encouraging people constantly to pursue the emblems of success, and by
causing them to equate possessions with status, what are we doing to their
emotions and their sense of values?"
Today that question echoes more ominously than ever.
While advertising and other commercial messages keep extending their reach, news
coverage routinely gives fuel to society's preoccupation with financial assets.
Fixated on money and what it might bring, the media fascination with purchasing
power never stops. Mainstream news organizations have steadily shifted resources
and priorities to the business of business. When PBS launched "Wall Street
Week" with Louis Rukeyser in 1970, the program was conspicuous. By the time
Rukeyser departed earlier this year, it was just one of dozens of national TV
shows -- most of them daily -- devoted to the quest for high returns. After
"Moneyline" premiered on CNN in 1980, cable television news grew while
embracing the world of investment. In 1989, General Electric opted to dedicate
much of its startup news channel CNBC to coverage of and commentary about the
stock market.
A decade later, when host Lou Dobbs left "Moneyline"
in spring 1999 at the start of his two-year absence from CNN, it was the leading
cable network's most profitable show. By then, broadcast networks were fervently
targeting the same lucrative demographics, and not only with expressly financial
programs. Between the mid-1980's and the late 1990's, the main TV networks
doubled the amount of airtime devoted to the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.
Regular news shows got accustomed to lavishing attention on minor business
developments not because of significant economic implications for the general
public, but because of decisions being made by management executives with
oversight of news departments.
Some viewers, the ones with plenty of disposable
income, became far more equal than others. When CNN revamped its daytime
schedule in mid-1999 to make room for three and a half hours of programs about
commerce and investment, the cable giant's president Richard Kaplan explained:
"We look at business and finance as something we have to cover on a general
interest news network. It's like the Cold War in the '50's. You just have to do
it." And the unstated goal was not simply to attract a higher number of
viewers. As The Associated Press reported last year, noting intense competition
between "Moneyline" and CNBC's "Business Center" program:
"The audiences are small, but affluent, so advertisers pay a premium to run
commercials."
Many news stories now amount to little more than human
interest narratives about the glories and tribulations of entrepreneurs,
financiers and CEO's. At networks owned by multibillion-dollar conglomerates
like General Electric, Viacom and Disney, the news divisions solemnly report
every uptick or downturn of the markets. In contrast, when was the last time you
heard Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, or Peter Jennings report the latest rates of
on-the-job injuries or the average wait times at hospital emergency rooms? While
many viewers assume that coverage reflects the considered judgment of
journalistic pros, those journalists are enmeshed in a media industry dominated
by corporate institutions with enough financial sway to redefine the meaning of
functional professionalism.
In theory, noncommercial TV and radio outlets are
insulated from the inordinate power of money. But across the country, each year,
"public broadcasting" relies on hundreds of millions of dollars from
corporations that are pleased to provide underwriting to burnish their images
among upscale viewers and listeners. Whatever other benefits accrue, those firms
buy some valuable PR with their de facto commercials, known euphemistically in
the trade as "enhanced underwriter credits."
Along with the politically appointed board of the
nonprofit Corporation for Public Broadcasting, corporate donors exert hefty
influence on programs by "underwriting" -- and, in some cases,
literally making possible -- specific shows. Private money is a big determinant
of what's on "public" broadcasting. Without corporate funding for
specific programs, many current shows would not exist. Public television airs
the "Nightly Business Report," but viewers can search in vain for a
regular show devoted to assessing the fortunes of working people. At PBS, no
less than at avowedly commercial networks, the operative assumption seems to be
that wealth creates all labor, not the other way around. Back in the 1770's,
Adam Smith articulated a more progressive outlook, writing: "It was not by
gold or by silver, but by labor, that all the wealth of the world was originally
purchased."
Years ago, National Public Radio initiated "NPR
business updates" to supplement newscasts many times each day on stations
nationwide. Listeners will be disappointed if they wait for an "NPR labor
update." Various public radio stations feature "Marketplace," a
national daily program, and the weekly "Sound Money" show, but there
is no broadcast such as "Workplace" or "Sound Labor."
Meanwhile, print outlets are loaded with money-related
obsessions. Time and Newsweek have often done cover stories on the race to amass
wealth which were upbeat or even ecstatic in bullish times, and somber when the
news is hard for investors to bear. In the quarter century since The New York
Times founded its "Business Day" section, daily papers have turned
more and more newsprint over to targeting the affluent readers most coveted by
business advertisers. The Washington Post's daily business section went from two
to 12 pages. Around the country, the pattern has been similar, with dailies
vastly enlarging their financial coverage -- at the expense of other news. The
"general circulation" press has become transfixed with the investor.
Along the way, these trends have transformed basic
concepts of what it really means to be a journalist. "As the 1980's
rocketed along, our 'readers' became 'consumers,'" recalls New York Times
reporter Diana B. Henriques. "As the 1990's unfolded, those 'consumers'
morphed into 'investors.' And today, some of us are speaking only to investors
who also own computer modems." The quality of mainstream journalism has
always suffered due to the power of big money in the form of ownership and
advertising, but flawed bygone eras are apt to evoke fond nostalgia in the
present day. "As our intended audience has gotten narrower, so have
we," Henriques lamented in Columbia Journalism Review's last issue of 2000.
"Business news today rarely sounds the sonorous chords or heart-lifting
themes of great journalism. Most of it simply buzzes and squeaks, a reedy
clarinet against a rhythm section of cash registers and ticker tape."
Back in 1989, business reporter David Cay Johnston,
then at the Philadelphia Inquirer, told me: "The financial pages of the
newspapers of this country see the world through the eyes of bankers as opposed
to through the eyes of bank customers." These days, his words also apply to
many other pages of newspapers -- as well as to other types of media outlets.
With business stories migrating so extensively across the media board, the
accompanying sensibilities and priorities have drastically shifted mindsets
about "news." Idolatry of high-tech magnates, from Bill Gates on down,
harmonizes with a prevalent tone that presents dollar assets as tacit measures
of human value. In sharp contrast, across the mass-media landscape, average
workers hardly qualify as noble. Often, their very human needs come across as
clunky impediments to economic progress.
Contemporary journalists are accustomed to depicting
the "cost" of the work force as a barrier to wealth creation. In the
midst of the last decade's great boom, on April 30, 1997, a cheery article about
the latest economic news appeared under this headline on the front page of The
New York Times: "Markets Surge as Labor Costs Stay in Check." (For
non-affluent readers, the headline might as well have read, "Great News:
Your Wages Aren't Going Up.") "The stock market rocketed yesterday to
its greatest gain in more than five years," the Times reported. Why?
Because important people were happy that wages had barely increased in the
United States, and employers had not shelled out more for "benefits like
health insurance and pensions." The story spotlighted the jubilant comment
of a senior economist at Goldman Sachs: "There is no question this is a
better labor cost report than we had anticipated." Indeed, the conditions
were "better" for employers. How about employees? Well, they didn't
merit any ink. The 18-paragraph article quoted a few current and former
government economists without a word from workers, their representatives or
labor advocates.
Monologues of mass media keep confronting viewers,
listeners and readers with a demand that is frequently implicit: "How much
are you worth?" The usual response provided to us: "Not enough."
At the same time, big money tilts reporting and
punditry. On major networks, we rarely hear a strong voice speaking against the
outsized power of large corporations. Yet there are a few cracks in the media
walls. In recent years, Time magazine has featured several muckraking cover
stories about corporate influence and power that could hardly have pleased their
targets. But the essence of propaganda, as any ad exec knows, is repetition.
When certain stories and themes are repeated endlessly, the odds are stacked
heavily against occasional muckraking journalism reverberating inside the
national media's echo chamber.
Much of journalism now routinely wields monetary
yardsticks. Even the most esteemed daily newspapers often cover cultural
offerings by using dollar figures as overarching benchmarks, highlighting the
financial earnings of various films, plays, books, paintings, CD's and music
videos. The internalization of dollars as markers for human worth and artistic
achievement has insidiously skewed how we view the meaning of culture and
creativity. And the deep concern that Packard voiced many years ago is rendered
silent, in part by the unwillingness of most American journalists to keep his
question in mind. Yet it is a question that, if asked, would surely alter the
steady drumbeat of today's reporting. "By encouraging people constantly to
pursue the emblems of success, and by causing them to equate possessions with
status, what are we doing to their emotions and their sense of values?"
_________________________________________________
This article was originally published in the Summer 2002 Nieman
Reports.
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/contents.html
Norman Solomon's books include "The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media"
and "The Trouble With Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last
Laugh." His syndicated column focuses on media and politics.