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Sun, August 26, 2007 11:40:57 PMFrom:
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NEWS DISSECTOR: Why Does The Media Keep Missing The Signs?
NEWS DISSECTOR August 26, 2007
Why Does The Media Keep Missing The Signs?
Sports Vs Politics
Why Did The Media Miss The Signs of the Subpime Scandal
Robert Fisk Speaks to 911
We are moving into what is usually called the dead zone, the last week of the summer leading up to "Labor Day," more like Barbecue day for most families. I have been back in Boston, actually visiting with my father who is gambling that the doctors are wrong and that he will hang on for longer than they think.
I am hoping he is right.
Its hard to be surrounded with the prospect of the death of someone so close to you. First of all, it make so much more real all the stories of the daily bodycount in Iraq, or Afghanistan and countless other theaters of war from the Congo to Somalia. You realize how lucky we are not be living in a war zone until you realize that it is our country that has inflicting war on so many other peoples, directly or indirectly.
The other thing that facing death teaches you is that you too, that all of us, will go someday, that life is not permanent and that it is what we do while we have our opportunity that matters. The NY Times had an op ed piece Saturday saying that doctors don't tell patients the truth about how much time they have left. But in my experience, anecdotal, not scientific, it is usually the patients that outlive their predicted demise.
At least we can hope
SPORTS AND POLITICS
When I am up here with him, I end up watching a lot more TV than I usually do. This past weekend, we watched the Patriots play Carolina and the Red Sox take on, and destroy, the White Sox. Boston is now such a crazed sports town, maybe it always is, but both games were not exciting enough to hold my attention especially with all the commentary plastered over everything.
It is hard to enjoy a game if when you are being drowned with statistics and theories about the knuckle ball. Last year, I figured going to a game would be so much better but all I saw were people toting radios and even TVs someone could tell them what was going on. Maybe they didn't want to miss the commercials and the macho announcers. There seemed to be more hype for the NFL than either of the two teams.
At the same time, you can understand why people may prefer watching sports than watching politics. Both are spectator sports more than participatory opportunities. In sports, you have teams. In politics, individuals. Both operate under the imperative to win but sports has clear rules that most viewers know. Sports takes real skill; politics thrives on BS. Players records are clear; politicians' are not not. We know their backgrounds and batting averages. The voting averages and records of politics are more veiled. You know how much players are paid; politicians live in a world of funny money. In sports, infractions are punished?ask Michael Vick?in politics, they are mostly excused.
Sports brings us together; politics divides us. In Boston any way, the Red Sox walk on water and are religious icons. Politicans don't get that kind of loyalty. You can boo or criticize a jock, and its somehow part of the sport. In Politics, you have to be more careful lest you be accused of being unpatriotic.
And then I watched the news or what passes for news. The local news?mostly a joke except New England Cable News that treats you like you are not a dummy. I like Brian Williams but was startled when he led his broadcast with a report that a prominent Republic Senator was seeking a troop withdrawal. But then the Senator (John Warner) was seen but not named in the report. And then we were treated to two Generals telling us that the bad guys will come back if we don't stay. They were responding to the Senator whose argument was never heard. Talk about war boosterism.
But then, with the anniversary of Katrina approaching, I saw a terribly sad story of homes flooded in Lima, Ohio. You just know those people will never be able to fully restore their houses. What a mess. One man was living on the second floor?the downstairs was a swimming pool. He had to climb out of his window into a friend's boat to row to his job at Walmart.
And then I thought about families about to lose their homes in the Sub Prime Flood:
"The walls are bare, the closets are empty, and Connie and Timothy Pent and their two teenage children are living out of boxes as they wait for a dreaded knock at the door of their three-bedroom house in Ocala, Fla. They've fallen behind in payments on a their home loan, and their lender told them in July that foreclosure was imminent."
And where will they end up?in their cars? Maybe. Maybe the summer heat is dulling the outrage but there seems more compassion for the firms that have lost money in the market meltdown than the people who are losing their homes after being suckered into loans they couldn't afford.
But aren't more people and for that matter politicians screaming about this the way Jim Cramer did when he wanted the Fed to cut its interest rate.
Perhaps it is because our media has dumbed us down or perhaps it is because mortgage companies spend BILLIONS advertising in the media so the media response to their outrages has been so quiet (Note that Mediachannel carries these ads too-povided by an automated service.)
They make my skin crawl. But unless we do something in terms of generating income, we won't be around much longer. What we did raise is almost gone. Hint. Hint.
ARE WE CLULESS, DID WE MISS THE SIGNS?
The writer Julian Delasantellis believes that we are just not being informed. He writes in Asia Times:"Some stories, such as corpse custody battles between sleazy lawyers and semi-literate Texas trailer trash et al, the US news media handle really well. On others, such as goings-on in the world's financial markets, they don't have a clue."
Clueless. Is that us? I found some time to write about the media's role in keeping us that way. I will post it on Mediachannel but since all of our blog readers don't visit the site or get the MediaSavvy news letter, here it is:
HOW DID WE MISS THE SIGNS OF AN IMPENDING CRISIS?
Why did the Markets and the Media Downplay the Subprime menace?
By Danny Schechter
That "why didn't we know" question is back. Again! It was asked about 911 in connection with our government ignoring warning after warning about likely terrorist attacks.
The CIA has just raised it again about their own ostrich like behavior in the run-up to the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Now it's being asked by the New York Times about the failure to anticipate and potentially pre-empt the Sub-prime mortgage crisis which has since escalated into a deeper meltdown in global financial markets leading to lay-offs and predictions of a fall-off in economic growth.
More insidiously, this is an ongoing crisis not just confined to markets. It is expected that, once adjustable rate mortgages are "reset" upwards, two million more families face the foreclosure of their homes. Their economic pain is being recognized, but too late to prevent a vast displacement of people who cannot afford to live in homes they were suckered into purchasing with the promise of practically free money.
Did this "just happen," appearing one morning out of blue skies, like a hurricane moving from category 4 to category 5? Of course not! The signs were there for all who wanted to see them, and warnings were plentiful even as they were ignored.
Many in the markets were too.
It's odd how the front page of its widely-read Sunday edition, the one-time newspaper of record, could splash a story on how the media and the markets looked the other way as massive deals were being financed by securities cobbled together from sub-prime loans backed with no assets. Why were the signs missed, asked the Times?
Unlike the CIA, the Times did not assess its own reporting and its role in all this.
A few days later the newspaper's business columnist showed that, in fact, many did know and tried to raise the alarm. It seems to be an example of the front pages not knowing what the business pages had reported.
He reminded readers that Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank who just pumped billions of dollars in the markets to keep them liquid and then followed up with a cut in the discount rate, was asked about these issues two years earlier:
"It came in November 2005, toward the end of his all-day Senate confirmation hearing, when Senator Paul Sarbanes brought up the mortgage business. Mr. Sarbanes, the ranking Democrat on the Banking Committee then, pointed out that the number of people taking out adjustable-rate mortgages soared in 2004. 'Are you concerned about the potential for a bubble in the housing market?' the senator asked Mr. Bernanke. 'And specifically, does the drastic increase in the use of risky financing schemes, including interest-only and even negative amortization mortgages, concern you?'
Mr. Bernanke replied that the Fed was reviewing its guidelines for these loans and planned to issue new ones soon. The guidelines, he added, 'would have on the margin some beneficial effects in reducing speculative activity in some local markets.' At no point, though, did Mr. Bernanke suggest that he was concerned."
And what about the larger media? Where was their concern? Back in the spring of 2006, I published an article in Nieman Reports, the journalism review published at Harvard and read by top editors. I specifically lambasted the lack of reporting on the issue. It was titled, "Investigating the Nation's Exploding Credit Squeeze."
Its thesis: 'Questions of by whom and for whom need more and better investigation, as well as a look at who are the losers and who are the winners.'
The response: tepid.
I then followed up by organizing a Media For Democracy online-email campaign (Media For Democracy is an advocacy effort tied to Mediachannel.org, the media issues website I edit.)
Media For Democracy members sent tens of thousand of requests to media outlets urging that the issue be given more coverage. This was well before the market meltdown. The appeal read in part:
"We are dismayed by the superficial reporting we have seen on the debt crisis in America. The press has been asleep at the switch in reporting on this story, often showing more compassion for wealthy businessmen than abused consumers.
We believe that our media outlets have a responsibility to offer more context, background and information about how this debt crisis occurred and what we can do about it."
What was the response? Not much. Most responses came in the form of yada-yada-yada form letters as in, "Thank You For Writing to the Today Show." Responding to public concerns and suggestions are not high on the media agenda.
I then made the film IN DEBT WE TRUST: America Before The Bubble Bursts to try to raise the visibility of the issue. The film was well reviewed but ignored by the New York Times. I personally sent copies and letters to leading op-ed writers and reporters. The result: nary a mention. I have been interviewed extensively in the alternative press but largely ignored by the mainstream.
That's not entirely true. CNN and MSNBC did carry positive articles including one which compared my documentary to "Carrie," a horror movie. They suggested mine was scarier. Tavis Smiley had me on; Larry King did not. Oprah has yet to return a call. (And AOL/truestories is now streaming the film.)
The media has still not given us an accounting for burying the story. Eventually, on the Iraq War, some media outlets admitted they practiced poor journalism, even as many of their mea-culpas did not basically change their narratives.
Why not on this issue?
Other media critics have been scathing about the dereliction of duty that is so obvious here. Dean Starkman in the Columbia Journalism Review was contemptuous:
"What's wrong? Why ask us? This kind of after-the-fact financial reporting I equate with a National Transportation Safety Board investigation?kicking through smoldering wreckage after the p*** has already crashed. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with this kind of reporting. It just feels a little late. Also, I always find it disingenuous to talk about napping watchdogs, as in the headline above, when the Journal and the rest of the business press themselves slept on the job and had to scramble to catch up to the corporate scandals earlier in the decade."
Now the story is being covered but it is often the wrong story. The reporting tends to focus far more on panicky markets than victims of predatory lending. It seems like only a few critics like Jim Hightower are telling it like it is:
"At its core, this is a classically simple story of banker greed and outright sleaze. And the astonishing part is that nearly all of the rank injustice perpetrated by today's money changers is considered legal and is practiced by supposedly reputable financial firms."
Some years back, a hamburger chain challenged its competitors with commercials asking, "where's the beef?"
My questions today to media colleagues, including the progressive blogosphere, are where's the pick-up, where's the follow-up, where's the outrage?
Dissector Daily Forum: Robert Fisk Questions 911
JOURNALIST ROBERT FISKS QUESTONS 911
IN MEMORIUM
Poet and Writer Grace Paley
Producer Aaron Russo
And a famous poet Jayne Stahl told me about:
"Poet, descendant of Irish royalty, former nun, Philomene Long, passed away at her home in Venice on Tuesday. There will be a memorial service this afternoon at Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd., Venice.
Beloved wife of poet John Thomas, twin sister of Pegarty, friend of Allen Ginsberg with whom she now shares a rainbow sub. She will live on in the hearts of all for whom freedom is not a hollow word?.. "
Have to keep it short today. Your comments welcome to dissector@mediachannel.org
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