This Week: Various Illusions in the Media

Quote of the Week

Rich Countries Renege, Millions Die, Media Ignores

Looking Bad?  Or Being Bad?

We're OK, They're Not OK

Greetings,

This week's Notes is a series of three, seemingly unrelated, articles.  One is about the world's wealthiest countries failing to deliver on their own promise of aid to the world's poorest countries.  The second article is about the World's Only Superpower deciding to ignore international law, and how that decision is portrayed in this country as an "image problem."  The third article describes an example from recent news reports of how the "liberal media" toes the Bush administration's line on the "good guys" and "bad guys."

Taken together, I think these three stories give a hint of the disconnect between how the rest of the world sees the United States and how most United Statesians see ourselves.  And how the Mainstream Corporate For-Profit Agenda-Setting Bound Media make it so hard to connect the dots.  See what you think.

Welcome to all the new readers!  I love getting mail, so please send a note if you feel moved to do so.  I respond to all of my mail.  Promise.

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

This week's "Quote" is drawn directly from the "liberal media," in this case the Washington Post of January 22nd, 2006.

"The program highlights the central challenge facing the Bush administration as it promotes democracy in the Middle East.  Free elections in the Arab world ... often result in strong showings by radical Islamic movements opposed to the policies of the United States and to its chief regional ally, Israel.  But in attempting to manage the results, the administration risks undermining the democratic goals it is promoting."

Translation: If people have free elections, they may elect someone that the U.S. government doesn't like.  Since that cannot be allowed, the U.S. government reserves for itself the right to intervene--secretly, of course--to subvert those democratic elections.  This is known as "managing the results" of another country's elections.

And this is all a part of how the U.S. "promotes democracy in the Middle East!"

Rich Countries Renege, Millions Die, Media Ignores

The international anti-poverty and social justice confederation Oxfam International put out a major report on June 9th called "The View from the Summit--Gleneagles G8 One Year On."  This Report-with-the-Mysterious-Title revealed a rather large-sized international scandal.  Too bad it went almost unreported in the nation's press.

What this report was talking about was the progress, or lack of progress, that has been seen in regard to the promises made by the so-called "G8 Countries" at a meeting they had last year in Gleneagles, Scotland.  The G8 Countries are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the USA.  These are the wealthiest countries in the world, and together they represent perhaps one-half or more of the total world economy. (There are roughly 190 countries in the world.)

What were the promises made by these rich countries? Well, Oxfam says that they agreed "to cancel the debts owed by 40 of the world's poorest countries to the World Bank, IMF, and African Development Fund.  They also promised to increase aid to poor countries by $50 billion by 2010, with half of this going to Africa.  They promised increases in humanitarian aid and support to peacekeeping and arms control, and they called for a world trade deal that favors poor nations.  Finally, they agreed to tackle climate change.  Although these promises fell far short of what was demanded and needed to end poverty, they nevertheless represented substantial commitments that, if delivered, would make a difference to the lives of millions."

The key phrase here is "if delivered."  And there's your scandal: those modest "commitments"  have not been delivered.  Not only have they not been delivered, but the rich countries are using accounting gimmicks to make it look as if they / are / being delivered.  How?  Like this: When the rich countries "cancel" poor country debts, they record the cancellation as "aid."  But, in fact, they use "aid" money to pay for the debt cancellation.  So, it's not really an increase, it's a shift, and it's even got a name: It's called "double counting."  The net result, as Oxfam says, is that "no new money is available for poor countries to spend on fighting poverty."

The rich countries seem pretty determined to report that they are dramatically increasing their aid levels. "On the face of it," Oxfam reports, "OECD figures show that 2005 aid from the G8 has increased massively, by $21 billion or 37 per cent over its 2004 levels.  However... the overwhelming majority of the increase (80 percent) is made up of [one-time] debt cancellation deals for Iraq and Nigeria--it is not actually new money in the fight against poverty.  Together these two deals add up to $17 billion of the $21 billion increase."

When you subtract out the double counting and the one-time deals, overall G8 aid increased only 9 percent.  Three countries actually gave less in 2005 than they gave in 2004.  The only news story I could find in the US press, in the June 9th NY Times, reported that "after increased aid to Iraq and Afghanistan was subtracted from the total, American giving fell by 4 percent."

It's an amazing report.  Here's Oxfam's one-sentence summary:

"The overall message on aid is clear: the G8 are failing to deliver the aid increases they have promised; the inflation of figures by debt cancellation masks the paucity of resources on the ground, and this translates into children out of school, people dying needlessly, classes of 100 students per teacher, or 8,000 people to each health worker."

I've always thought that, in terms of moral accounting, the performance of one's own country is deserving of the closest scrutiny.  Using that guideline, here's one fact that should have caused the nation's news editors to make this a big story:  "Italy and the US ... remain the least generous in the G8 compared to the size of their economy."

This is a report worth looking at, and can be found on the 'Net at: http://www.oxfam.org/en/policy/briefingnotes/bn060609_g8_oneyr

Looking Bad? Or Being Bad?

On June 10 three people who have been held in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba committed suicide.  The immediate response of the U.S. government was to send out a public relations official (namely, Colleen P. Graffy, deputy assistant Secretary of State for public diplomacy, one of the official PR wings of the U.S. government) to make the following statement to the world:

"It does sound like [these suicides are] part of a strategy--in that they don't value their own lives, and they certainly don't value ours; and they use suicide bombings as a tactic.  Taking their own lives was not necessary, but it certainly is a good PR move."

While this unbelievable remark (made to the BBC by a public relations professional!) went  virtually unreported in the U.S. media, it made headlines overseas.  Headlines like this: "Guantanamo Triple Suicide Is Good PR for Terrorists, Says America" and "American Image Gurus Stuck with Suicide Fallout."

In the U.S. media, it was the "image problem" that was the story.  In fact, Graffy's comment was not even reported when she said it.  It was only reported when the "image gurus" realized they had a problem.  The first time the NY Times mentioned it, for instance, was the day after Graffy's comment, when their headline read: "State Dept. Disavows Statement On Suicides."

Although "Bush administration officials rejected suggestions that the three had killed themselves in despair over their indefinite confinement," as the London Guardian reported, this event has increased the volume of calls to close the Guantanamo camp.  That's all to the good, but the problem with the media becomes clearer when we look at the treatment of a story that broke a week earlier, on June 5th, and was relegated to the inside pages when it was reported at all.

Here's the lead from that story, which was broken by the LA Times: "The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans 'humiliating and degrading treatment,' according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards."

How polite of the Times!  A "shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards," they say!    The headline of their story (front page!) read "Army Manual to Skip Geneva Detainee Rule."  They are talking about the part of Article 3 of the Geneva conventions that prohibits "outrages on personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment," which "are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever."  That language is from the accords, which the United States has signed and ratified.  That's what the Pentagon wants to "skip."

The New York Times didn't even cover the story in its news pages, but it did have an editorial a couple of days after the LA Times' report, and it reflected the same attitude on public relations that was revealed by the suicide story coverage mentioned above: the editorial was headlined  "Degrading America's Image."  Somebody call the "image gurus!"

There are so many illegal activities being undertaken by the Bush administration--certainly in their treatment of prisoners, but hardly limited to that--that the responsibility of an independent media seems quite clear.  Each instance of flagrant law-breaking should be reported, not as a public relations problem, but as an affront to values that are widely shared, in this country and around the world.

It's the pattern of intentional law-breaking that should move these stories to the front pages.  When the leadership of the most powerful nation on the planet is repeatedly shown to not only break the law, but to attempt to codify their intentions to do so, the fundamental nature of the story changes.  At some point it stops being a matter of "mistakes" or "a few bad apples" or "rogue Marines"--as each incident tends to be reported--and becomes a story of a government out of control.  And that belongs on the top of the front page.

We're OK, They're Not OK

An article appeared in the Business Section of the New York Times (All The News That's Fit To Print!) of June 8th that would be funny if it were not a contribution (an unconscious one, I'm guessing) to the demonizing of a country in which the U.S. is heavily and ominously involved.  The country is Venezuela, and the article was about how Venezuelans have more money to spend than they ever have had before.  And how that's a bad thing.

The neutral-sounding headline was "With Oil's Cash, Venezuelans Consume," and here's the fourth paragraph:

"With oil revenue flowing into its coffers, the government is spending like never before on social development programs that free up cash for the poor by providing free education and health care and cheap food.  Wage increases and infrastructure projects also fill the economy with money that filters down to Venezuelans' pockets.  As a result, consumers are buying more each year, helping Venezuela post growth that exceeded 9 percent last year and in the first quarter of 2006."

Now, to the average reader that might sound like some pretty good news.  But that's not how it sounds to the Business writer at the Times.  The paragraph that immediately follows the above words gives a hint of what's to come:

"But economists here and abroad say that such rosy indicators are part of an artificial economic boom that could later hurt the country; the spending spree, they say, is masking the fundamental limitations of an economy propped up by spending, but failing to generate enough new private investment to sustain longer-term growth and job creation."

It gets funny a little bit later, when the reporter writes, " An influx of foreign goods holds back industries from expanding and creating jobs."  What's funny, you ask?  Well, one could--and many do--say the same thing about the United States!  But, to the Times, it's "We're OK, They're Not OK."

All in all, the article struggles to make any sense at all, with conflicting messages careening around all over the place.  Here are just a couple of the mixed messages, followed by the questions that occur to me:

1.  Experts expect the economy "to grow as much as 7 percent this year, as the demand for goods has renewed investment in areas like telecommunications and commerce."  AND, three paragraphs later: "Businessmen are all very happy... But they don't want to invest at all."  So, they don't "want to invest," but they're doing it anyway?

2.  A bank president "noted that he could see no construction cranes as he gazed at a wide view of downtown Caracas from his high-rise office."  AND, six paragraphs later:  "poverty has fallen 7 percent since Mr. Chavez came to power."  Maybe one doesn't need cranes to reduce poverty?  Is it possible that the absence of cranes is related to the reduction in poverty?

The article notes that "Venezuela's private-sector performance is weak compared with that in other growing Latin American economies."  That may be true, but the overall economy of Venezuela appears quite strong, with a growth rate of 7-8 percent.  In contrast, Mexico's rate comes in at 3 percent, Colombia at 4 percent, Peru at 4.5 percent, etc.  So, one could write an article about why a nation with a strong "public sector" outperforms other nations with strong "private sectors."  Don't hold your breath waiting for that one.

The situation in Venezuela is one in which poverty is down, economic growth is the best in the region, and millions of poor Venezuelans now have access to food and health care.  As economist Mark Weisbrot argues in an issue brief released a year ago ("A Note on Venezuela's Economic Performance" June 2005) "It is . . . very difficult to construct an economic argument that the majority of Venezuelans are worse off as a result of the present government."  A follow-up report from last month adds that "there is no ambiguity as to the decline in poverty in Venezuela over the last seven years..."  Official statistics showed that 60 percent of Venezuelans were poor when Chavez was elected President in 1998.  That's the "majority" of which Weisbrot speaks.

In the three decades before 1998, Venezuela experienced "the worst economic decline in the region and one of the worst in the world--much worse even than what happened to Africa during this period."  The success of the Venezuelan economy since then has been achieved, in part, by following through on conscious decisions to limit the power of the private sector, which had resulted in such a poor performance, in favor of a more publicly-controlled economy.

Such a success--call it "anti-privatization"--is seen as a real threat by the Bush administration, whose "Washington Consensus" for the region has focused on "unleashing the power of private capital."  For this reason, one would expect the Bush people to see evidence of increased consumption by Venezuelans as "bad news," since it validates an alternative approach to managing an economy.  Why does the New York Times insist on telling the Bush story on Venezuela, when that story conflicts so obviously with the facts?  I guess that's the "liberal media" at work!