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Want the Big Picture on the Nation’s Economic Health? Don’t Look for It in the Media |
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When 3,400 employees at Circuit City lost their jobs last week, the company didn’t even bother to go through the usual corporate charade in which staff are cut now and the announcement about hiring lower-wage employees to replace them is made months later.
Instead, the Richmond, Va.-based company baldfacedly said it was eliminating the employees because their salaries were too high—and the workers could apply for their former jobs at lower pay.
Meanwhile, Circuit City CEO Philip Schoonover and Chairman W. Alan McCollough received nearly $10 million in salary, bonuses, stock options and other perks.
Such is the face of U.S. corporate greed at the beginning of the 21st century.
The announcement caused barely a ripple in the mainstream media. As David Carr wrote this week in The New York Times, most media outlets, if they covered the story at all, did so with a yawn. Carr damningly highlights how the media gave short shrift to a story that, while bad enough as a single incident, points to a deeper, more fundamental chasm in the nation’s economy.
Similarly, even though The Times ran a lengthy article in the Sunday Business section on the human pathos involved in the mass buyouts of autoworkers, many of whom will leave jobs to which they have devoted lifetimes, the story was shockingly devoid of context. Absent was any analysis of the greater forces behind the moves by Ford, General Motors and DaimlerChrysler—and the economic and social ramifications for our nation’s future.
Yet, only days before, The Times also published an analysis of tax data that showed the worsening income inequality in the United States. In 2005, the top 1 percent of Americans—those with incomes that year of more than $348,000—received their largest share of national income since 1928.
The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.
While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.
The public is left with bits and pieces of isolated information, snippets of news reported in splendid isolation from each other. And we are left to wonder, how do these events combine to create a whole picture? Here are just a few recent events about which we are left to wonder about their greater economic impact:
- New Century Financial Corp. files for bankruptcy protection, the biggest mortgage lender to collapse in wake of massive mortgage defaults. The Irvine, Calif.-based company fires 3,200 employees, or 54 percent of its workforce, and plans to sell most of its assets within 45 days through the Chapter 11 process.
- More than two dozen subprime lenders have shut down in recent months, and others are scrambling to stay in business as a spike in defaults caused by borrowers unable to make payments has rocked the mortgage industry.
- Personal debt as a total of the gross domestic product (GDP) is at an astounding 96 percent—that compares with 44 percent in 1975, as Bonddad shows on The Agonist.
- More people now have more debt than disposable income, with debt at 134 percent of disposable income.
- Imports in 24 industries have captured more than half of the U.S. market, up from 21 industries in 2004, including telecommunications hardware and broadcast and wireless communications equipment., according to Alan Tonelson, research fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council (USBIC), who conducted a detailed analysis of the status of the nation’s manufacturing.
- The Economic Policy Institute estimates that 410,000 manufacturing jobs were lost to China between 2002 and 2004, while U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) studies conclude that 70,000 to 100,000 jobs are moved each year from the United States to China, and those numbers accelerated after 2001.
The list goes on. We get the picture. No, wait. We don’t get the full picture because the mainstream media serves us a mosiac of shifting data, unconnected and seemingly random. The only consolidation of economic news we get is from Bush administration pronouncements that the economy is marvy shape—a sunny view dutifully reported by journalists “reporting” the news.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders wonders the same thing (hat tip to Bob Geiger who shares this statement from Sanders):
I wonder how the Bush administration can tell us how great the economy is doing when more than 5 million Americans have slipped into poverty since the President has been in office, including over 1 million children. That is not a booming economy.
How can the economy be doing well when median income for working-age families has declined for 5 years in a row and when the personal savings rate in this country now is below zero, something which has not happened since the Great Depression?
Bush can tell us because no one in the major media tells us differently.
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Alas, looks like Circuit City is off my shopping list. If they believe that they pay their help too much, then Circuit City is on another of my lists, one that polite society might not be pleased to see in print.
I suggest all folks add Circuit City to their respective “unnamed” lists.
Yes, income for working and poor down and will stay down as long as folks do little to change system. Greed and indifference is not a new thing in America, nor will it go away until folks have had enough and enough to ask the hard questions of the fearless elected ones.
The media? Maybe they are too busy to report the news, there might be something new of Michael Jackson or Madonna; some new twist to OJ or of course Anne Nichole. You really do not expect them to cover labor or the poor, uninsured or the like, rating must be up and we all know the public does not like to be upset with little things like real journalism or even valid facts to make informed decisions.
Folks in the government also like to do the thinking for the public as does the corporations whom helpfully have canned media news programs for the broadcasters and newsprint. How much real reporting is done by the average broadcasting firm and how much are the canned news given them is always a question they like to dodge.
By the way, they did report more good economic news; they laid off some more workers and income is up for the top 10 per cent, something that is helpful to Wall street DOW investors.
Our news is a lot like the news reported in the movie or book “1984″ Unfortunately George Orwell was more accurate in his predictions than say Nostradamus. Current forcasts from the helpful media and government: “Trickle down economics” are working and we are winning. So folks, stay home and do not bother to vote or make decisions, we shall take care of that for you and your interests are always taken into account
I have no doubt this is just the tip of the corporate iceberg. The only thing that can save the American workforce is strong and active unions and employee associations.
There’s nothing new about the media downplaying bad news about the economy. Being dependant on ad revenue the media have always promoted the interests of business and when necessary they have fomented reaction against unions and “labor agitators.” It’s good business practice. Besides, the owners of papers and TV stations share the class interests of other businessmen and -women: they want to squeeze value out of their workers so they can get rich. Just look at the way unions representing newspaper workers have been treated over the years. With credit-financed takeovers like that of the Tribune group, it’s going to get even worse.
Bravo for this post — and the comments posted thus far — about a subject that should concern every working American: our story isn’t told, and when it is, only in fragments that rarely connect the economic, regulatory and legal decisions made in Washington D.C. and state capitals by lawyers and lobbyists that have rigged our economy for the benefit of wealthy interests. Meanwhile, working people are told to consume as if there’s no tomorrow, take on huge amounts of debt, and basically revel in these “best of times.”
Do you think it’s time for working people to strike back, to stand up, to demand that this latest Gilded Age come to an end? It’s time to change the American narrative.
The media is not a very good friend to labor, organized or not. Oh sure, they’ll show up for an event, or send a team to a news conference, but the content they eventually air doesn’t always reflect the issue. That is, if they bother to air it at all, unless it’s a slow news day.
The inhumanity of the Circuit City firings, and the incredible outrage that should follow, was absent from the news stories I saw. When Gloria Allred took on the case of the workers, the injustice of Circuit City’s action got more attention—but it was only because of the celebrity status of Ms. Allred, not because it was so egregiously wrong.
I have been, and still am, on the receiving end of the media bias towards labor as a member of the UFCW. No matter how much good we do in our communities, the only time we are a blip on the radar is when there is the threat of labor unrest. Even though there was a great deal of media attention during the strike and lockout of ‘03, the coverage was overwhelmingly skewed towards the corporate view.
We were attacked by a popular drive-time radio show—calling us lazy, uneducated banana scanners. My local newspaper ran a story at Christmas time on how lucky the scabs were to have our jobs. After 30 days, our cause was all but invisible to the media, save for NPR and C-Span. Old news. Still on strike. Move on.
Giant corporations own everything, including most media outlets. There is a definite conflict of interest as to which messages get priority; my employer spends millions of dollars on print and electronic media advertising. Is NBC going to be brutally honest about Safeway’s corporate greed? Not unless there is some sensational development—Steve Burd sits on the Civilian Advisory Board of Homeland Security, and is “only doing what is best for the company’s future.”
And yet, here we are, four years later, on a contract extension, and threatened with a strike/lockout situation. We members are, of course, willing to keep talking, but we are not willing to cave in to the employers’ take-aways. Albertsons employees voted to authorize a strike, and that got everyone’s attention, so a week later Vons and Ralphs decided to form another pact and threatened to lock us out if Albertsons employees did indeed walk out. The media coverage mainly scared and angered the customers, not only the employees. It remains to be seen whether or not negotiations will go forward.
Those of us lucky enough to be part of a union should be trying to find a way to help these people from Circuit City, if only to offer food bank assistance to those who will be on unemployment. We, as members of organized labor, should be beating the drums and getting folks to take a hard look at this example of corporate greed at its finest! But, we can’t count on the media outlets to tell our stories accurately.
The US media as well many US government agencies like the US Labor Department have become the propaganda machine, far more sophisticated than the Nazi propaganda machine run by Dr Joseph Goebbels. Everybody knows that Fox News is a right wing news media; it is no wonder that Bush has appointed a Fox newsman to the post of Press Secretary. This right wing media propaganda machine had been very successful in the past; among its accomplishments were the elections of 2000 and of 2004 in which Republicans seized control of both the White House and Congress allowing to change at will the very foundations of a progressive and democratic society. However, the right wing conservative movement has had its last success. The American people were no longer susceptible its propaganda messages as shown in the midterm elections.