This Week:

Quote of the Week

The Media’s PET

Census Report “Upbeat?”

Greetings,

I have just started producing a brief (like, 2 minute) weekly commentary that can be heard on University of Minnesota radio station KUOM (http://radiok.cce.umn.edu/radiok/). Known to locals as “Radio K,” you can hear it in the Twin Cities at 770 AM and 106.5 FM on your radio dial. The commentaries will be heard during the Radio K News Hour, which is Sunday mornings between 9:00 and 10:00.

When exactly the commentaries are on I do not know. To be perfectly honest, I haven’t heard myself on the radio yet. But they tell me that the first one aired last Sunday, and the plan is to do one every week for a while. Most of them will be versions of things you will also see in the pages of this very newsletter. But it might be fun to hear them read by yours truly, might it not? Tune me in on Sunday mornings! (There are other great things on Radio K, as well. Check out the show “Cosmic Slop,” for example. My favorite!)

This week’s article on the media’s PET shows how arbitrary are the choices that shape the news. The choices are arbitrary, and they’re made by a very small group of people, although lots of people are unable to resist the resulting ideology. This issue of the Notes aims to enable you to do so.

Perhaps as a result of being on the radio, a number of new subscribers have signed up for the Notes in recent days. Welcome! I wish I could tell you what to expect, but nobody really knows. Certainly not me. It’s a dialectical process, y’see. One thing I hope to do in the next week or three is to explain what a “dialectical process” is, and why you should care. Stay tuned.

Happy September!

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

A Tale of Two Headlines

Here’s the headline from a story in the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) of August 30, talking about the Republican convention in New York:

“For GOP, Moderation is Key at Convention; Republicans Will Put Centrists Front and Center to Appeal to Undecided Voters.”

Here’s the headline from the front page of the Wall Street Journal, same day, same subject:

“Bush’s Big Priority: Energize Conservative Christian Base; Unusual Strategy Plays Down Importance of Swing Vote As Demographics Shift.”

Well, I guess that settles that.

Bonus “Quote” of the Week

Here is Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, speaking recently to historian, novelist, and essayist Tariq Ali:

“I don't believe in the dogmatic postulates of Marxist revolution. I don't accept that we are living in a period of proletarian revolutions. All that must be revised. Reality is telling us that every day. Are we aiming in Venezuela today for the abolition of private property or a classless society? I don't think so. But if I'm told that because of that reality you can't do anything to help the poor, the people who have made this country rich through their labour – and never forget that some of it was slave labour – then I say ‘We part company.’

"I will never accept that there can be no redistribution of wealth in society. Our upper classes don't even like paying taxes. That's one reason they hate me. We said ‘You must pay your taxes.’ I believe it's better to die in battle, rather than hold aloft a very revolutionary and very pure banner, and do nothing . . . That position often strikes me as very convenient, a good excuse . . . Try and make your revolution, go into combat, advance a little, even if it's only a millimetre, in the right direction, instead of dreaming about utopias.”

The Media’s PET

Very few people – in this country, anyway – form their political opinions based on investigation, thoughtful analysis, and logic. Voting patterns, especially, have a lot more to do with emotions, based on impressions and reactions to images and half-baked news reports.

That’s why, when thinking about the role the media plays in shaping public opinion, it’s important to become familiar with the media’s “PET.” I am talking about the editorial decisions that the media make with each and every story they report, in regard to Placement, Emphasis, and Tone: PET. In other words:

• P = WHERE a story appears;
• E = WHICH PARTS are emphasized or de-emphasized; and
• T = HOW it is reported.

These things all give an IMPRESSION to readers and viewers that, for better or worse (probably worse), boils down in the public mind to something like “This is good! or “This is bad!” It’s oversimplified, it’s dualistic, it’s unsupportable in rational argument but, I’m afraid, it’s quite common.

Let me spell out PET in a bit more detail, since it’s so basic to understanding the news:

PLACEMENT: Where a newspaper’s editors choose to place an article is an indication of the relative importance they place on that article, and who they think needs to see it. An article on the front page is considered to be one of “today’s top stories,” in the minds of the editors, and thus of importance to a “general” audience. Articles that appear in the Business or the Sports sections are considered to be only, or primarily, of interest to the respective sub-sections of the population. This is NOT to say that all the important news is found on the front page. It only tells us that some editor thinks so. And, always remember that the first definition of “important” in a news editor’s dictionary is “that which will sell papers.”

EMPHASIS: Any story has multiple aspects, or points, that could be considered more or less important to the public. In any given story, some editor chooses to emphasize one or more aspects and downplay or ignore others. The choices that editors make in this realm tell us something about the values, priorities, and ideology of those editors. For the passive news “consumer,” it amounts to a set of instructions on what is important and what is not in a given story.

TONE: This is the overall opinion that the writer and editor choose to use in reporting the story. Sometimes called the “frame” or the “angle” of a news report, this basically reflects the attitude of the reporter/editor toward the subject of the story. A reporter can report any story as “good news” or “bad news,” as they like; it’s hardly an objective process. And sources can always be found – in any case, for any story – that will reinforce or belittle a given point of view, as the reporter desires.

Consider further that many people read nothing but the headlines, a certain number only skim the first few sentences (the “lead”), and many people only look at their favorite section (sports, maybe, or the crossword puzzle). You don’t have to be one of these people – I’m always giving out ideas on how to “mine” a newspaper for actual information, after all. But keep in mind that many, many people form their IMPRESSIONS of how the world works by absorbing the PET of a very small number of reporters and editors. These impressions form the bedrock political reality in the larger culture that all of us have to deal with as we try to make change happen.

In short, the PET that a media outlet chooses for a story has a large influence on the impression of the issue that a reader/viewer comes away with.

Census Report “Upbeat?”

Since I’m talking this week about the Media’s PET (Placement, Emphasis, and Tone in news stories), it seems like a good time to talk about one great example from last week’s newspapers to illustrate how it works. The two stories that make up the example ran in the Star Tribune on August 27, and had to do with a major report released the day before by the U.S. Census Bureau. The report, called “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2003,” was newsworthy for several reasons. In addition to the national “report card” aspect in regard to the three issues in the title, the Census also gave information on each individual state’s performance in each area. The PET that the Star Trib chose in regard to this story turned out to be quite interesting, I think. Let’s look.

PLACEMENT: On the front page of the Star Trib was a story about how the home state of Minnesota fared in the Census report. Inside, on page 19, was the story about the nation as a whole. This sort of placement is typical of “provincial” papers, or regional papers. They often consider the “local angle” to be the most important aspect of a national story.

EMPHASIS: Both reports emphasized the competitive aspects of this report on the human condition. Here’s the front-page headline of the Star Trib’s staff-produced story: “Updating of Census Is Upbeat; Minnesota Remains Strong in the Positive Categories.” The headline derives its meaning from looking at the rankings of the states in various performance categories, as if it were a competition among the states. The page 19 Associated Press (AP) article was headlined “Poor, Uninsured in U.S. Rose for Third Straight Year,” and led with the comment that the Census report “delivered a double dose of bad economic news for the Bush administration.” In other words, they emphasized the effects of this report on the competition for the Presidency. (I’m not planning to talk about dialectics until next week, but here’s a sneak preview: Neither the Star Trib nor the AP took a dialectical approach to this story.)

TONE: The tone of the two articles is not what it appears to be at first glance. Clearly, the tone of the local article is positive (or, as the headline says, “upbeat.”) On the front page we are told that “Minnesota's most basic vital signs remain amazingly strong.” This judgement derives from looking at the indicators of all of the states in the United States and comparing them. That’s not invalid, but there are other ways to evaluate this information, as we’ll see in a moment. On the inside pages we read that “The number of Americans living in poverty and without health insurance rose for the third consecutive year in 2003.” There is no particular value judgement placed on these facts, except indirectly, since they are viewed mostly in the context of the presidential campaign. (“John Kerry said...” and “President Bush’s supporters said...”)

What the PET Tells Us

So, superficially, what do we learn about the Star Trib from looking at their PET on this story? Three things, I think.

A. The “local angle” is more important, the national story is many pages less important (Page 1 vs. Page 19);
B. By interpreting the report using the lens of competition, the two news organizations (Star Trib and AP) consciously or unconsciously de-emphasize the human suffering implied by the numbers. I’ll return to this interesting choice in a moment.
C. The fact that Minnesota is better than other states makes the report a “good news” report, while the national report is merely “important,” due to its presumed impact on the presidential race.

All three parts of the PET are subjective decisions. After all, in the current example, who’s to say that it is “right” or “wrong” to emphasize Minnesota news in a Minnesota paper? But this example gives some particularly obvious illustrations of how subjective the entire process can be, which is why I chose it.

Take health insurance. If we compare Minnesota to other states in the U.S., it’s true, we’re the best, with “only” 8.2 percent uninsured. That’s good news – I guess – if we think of human health in terms of competition, and if we want our state to “win.” But what if we were to instead compare our state to any state or province in any other wealthy country in the world – where there are no uninsured people because they all have universal national health care? When we “compete” with these different “opponents,” the “good news” story looks a little less good. Minnesota now comes across as sort of “the best of the worst.” Go a step further, and try to evaluate the information in terms of human needs instead of in a competitive way. 8.2 percent of Minnesota’s population means that roughly 411,617 people are uninsured. This is “upbeat?”

What if we forget about comparing to any other state or province anywhere, and instead look to see whether we’re doing better than we used to be, or going backwards? Let’s use poverty this time. Again, Minnesota is better than any state in the union (except New Hampshire) on this overall indicator, with “only” 7.4 percent of residents living below the poverty line in 2003. But that’s 31,000 more people than in the previous year, when it was “only” 6.5 percent (also better than any state but New Hampshire – I wonder what’s up with New Hampshire). Is this “upbeat?”

The emphasis on “winning” and “losing,” of endlessly comparing ourselves to our neighbors or peers, preempts other ways of assessing our behavior. We could look, as in the example above, at whether we are better or worse than we used to be. We could compare ourselves to how we think we SHOULD be, using agreed-upon values and standards such as compassion and solidarity. When we think in terms of competition, implicit in the idea is that there needs to be “losers.” But why, in the context of the unprecedented wealth that this nation possesses and continues to produce, should that be the case in regard to human needs like health, education, and housing?

The choice to frame both of these articles in terms of competition – between states, between candidates – was most likely not a conscious decision by any of the reporters or editors involved. It’s just how they think. It’s how a lot of people think in this culture, which is why so few people even notice choices like this. When I speak in these pages about the “political climate” or the “dominant ideology” or the “prevailing wisdom” in the United States, this is the sort of thing I’m talking about. It’s the ideas that are like the air we breathe; nobody notices them, they just accept them. I don’t think the majority will always accept them. I’ll say a little bit about why in next week’s Nygaard Notes.