| Number 41 | August 13, 1999 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, You'll notice that I am a couple of days early this week. That's because I am "going to the lake" for a couple of days. For all of you non-Minnesotans, this is a very common behavior for those of us who live here. And no matter which of the 15,000-plus lakes we go to, we always refer to it as "the lake." As should be obvious to all readers of Nygaard Notes, I am making up the format and most everything else about the Notes process as I go along. With this in mind, I must apologize for something that bugs me and, I presume, also bugs some of you. I have noticed that I have a tendency to promise to write on certain subjects "next week" and then not get around to it for 2, 3, or more weeks. For example, I just noticed that I said on July 16th that I would write about the "raids" on the Social Security Trust Fund "next week." Of course, I actually wrote about it on August 6th, which is quite a bit more than one week, isn't it now? I'm not sure if this is truly annoying, or a charming eccentricity, or if anyone even notices, but I promise to be better about it in the future. I frequently get told about job openings, and often very interesting ones. So, if any of you out there in Nygaard Notes-land are looking for employment, just email me and let me know what you are looking for. Maybe I've heard of something that would fit for you. Welcome to all you new subscribers. Let me know what you think. And I really appreciate all the comments I have gotten from readers. They help me keep my energy going, and keep me on my toes, too! Thank you so much. See ya next week, Nygaard |
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In NN #39 I spoke of the need to get serious about national health care. Sometimes a morale boost can come from the oddest places. This week's Quote of the Week comes from the front page of the Wall Street Journal of August 9:
We can only hope. |
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The CISPES Anti-War Committee is putting on what looks to be an important and fascinating forum called WOMEN ON THE FRONTLINES: THE FIRST CASUALTIES OF WAR. Thursday, August 19th, is the date. 7pm is the time. Todos Los Santos Church, at 610 W. 28th St (at Lyndale) in Minneapolis is the place. Speakers will include women from Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Colombia. For more information, call CISPES at 872-0944. Hope to see ya there. |
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Several readers have sent me copies of an email about a website called "The Hunger Site." According to CNN Radio,
A reader asked me, "Is this too good to be true?" Well, yes and no. It seems that some well-meaning person set up this site for the sole purpose of getting money donated to the United Nations World Food Program. This person sells ads to corporations that are the ads you will see when you click on the "Donate Free Food" button. The corporations pay cash for these ads and then the money is supposedly sent to the UNWFP. I don't really know what to make of this website. Assuming this person is really doing what they say they are - and a lot of corporate publications seem to think that she/he is - it certainly seems like a better use of the Internet than a lot of others I have seen. At the same time, beyond raising money for a good charity program, a site like this is just another way for individuals to take individual action to put band-aids on what is really a systemic problem having to do with how the world economy is organized. As such, I think it is just a distraction from the real work that we need to do. In addition, it strikes me as offensive, this idea that some corporation will give some food to hungry people if, and only if, some affluent consumer looks at their advertising. The irony of this site became a bit too much for me when I saw that the corporate sponsors include a money-management company and - sigh! - a company that sells antacids. On a hunger site. So, donate your ½ cent per day if you like. After all, "no money comes out of your pocket." But don't let it take any time away from the real work of organizing for a more humane economic system. |
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I.F. Stone once said that he loved to read the New York Times because it was fun to look and see on what page the front-page stories would appear. I see his point - I derive loads of entertainment from the same source. It works the same way with the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!), and it can be taken a step further. Besides looking for the front-page articles, I also look for the "leads" in each article. The "lead" in a newspaper article is the opening paragraph and, according to journalistic theory, it should contain all or most of the essential facts of the story. Every article has to have an opening paragraph, of course, and sometimes the essential facts can be found there, but this is far from a sure thing. (Frequently the essential facts of the story are not even in the article at all, but that is a tangent which I shall refrain from pursuing at the moment.) As far as the essential facts of a story, they often can be found somewhere within the article, but you just never know where. I like to read articles in the Star Trib to find out where in the story the lead appears. This exercise can be quite revealing, as the following example will hopefully show. Cargill and the New World Order In the past couple of months, Minnetonka-based agribusiness giant Cargill has received approval from the Justice Department to merge with fellow giant Continental Grain, a merger that probably makes good business sense in the increasingly globalized economy. For farmers and workers in the agriculture-related parts of our economy, this merger has very significant implications for their futures and the futures of their communities. This merger could thus be a useful case study in how globalization will affect our state's economy, which is still based to a large extent on agriculture. In the Star Trib of Sunday, August 1st there was another in a series of major articles about the Cargill-Continental (C-C) merger, this time on the front page of the Business section. Entitled "The Next Battle in the Grain Wars," the article focused on a small river town in Illinois, where there is competition for the rights to store and ship (and profit from) the grain harvested by local farmers. Formerly, there had been three giants competing for this business: Cargill, Continental, and Archer Daniels Midland (MPR listeners know their slogan: "ADM - Supermarket to the World," which recent court judgements might alter to "Price-Fixer to the World." But that's still another tangent!) Now the competition features just two giants. The article talked about how, since the merger, the new Cargill is in a cutthroat competition with ADM, making worse the already-existing phenomenon in which the locally-owned grain elevators are getting squeezed out of business. As the old saying goes, when the elephants are fighting, the grass suffers. The article talks at length about how the merger makes Cargill a more effective competitor by promising "efficiencies for both the company and farmers," and it does acknowledge that Cargill's new strategies "threaten foundations of an agricultural economy that stands as much on tradition and culture as profit." All of this was interesting enough, but the real "lead" was not to be found until paragraphs number 43 and 44 on page 8, which I will reproduce here:
The Race to the Bottom The first thing you notice in the above quote is that the jobs of half the local employees are understood to be no more than "overhead," and that cutting them is "efficient." That's because we do not have any daily labor newspaper in the United States, and the Star Trib, like all for-profit corporate newspapers, is only allowed by the market to have a "Business" section. In the Business world, your job and my job are seen as necessary evils: necessary to make money, evil because they have to pay us to do them. It should surprise no one that corporations are constantly seeking to make more money by employing fewer people and paying as little as possible to those who remain. After all, when they succeed the value of their stock goes up, because that is good business. This is a large part of why job losses are often reported as good news in the Business section. I don't mean to imply that seeing the news through a corporate lens is unique to the "Business" section. It is standard practice throughout the paper, with some important exceptions. The fact that Cargill sees itself - and quite accurately, I think - as competing directly against farmers in the Third World is key to understanding how our agricultural system works. Increasingly, it's key to understanding how our entire economy works. Fundamental to the idea of a "global" economy is the idea that capital must be "free." Corporations must be able to search the world over to find workers and, like Cargill, they are always seeking to "slash costs." They have to, or else the ADMs of the world will slash the ADM costs even more, and then the Japanese will buy their wheat from ADM instead of Cargill because it is cheaper. Then Cargill goes out of business. And if neither one of them can squeeze enough out of American farmers, elevators, and barge workers, there is a veritable profusion of companies willing to buy their grain from Brazil or Argentina if the farmers there will work for less. Then both Cargill and ADM go out of business. This is what is meant by the phrase "a race to the bottom." It's important to remember that it is impossible for the people in these corporations to act any differently, regardless of their personal values. If they do they will lose their jobs. And the corporations cannot act any differently either, or they will lose their profits and the market will desert them. This is what is meant by "the system." When I talk about this, some people think I am talking about conspiracies. It's the furthest thing from a conspiracy one can imagine. The Corporate Angle Another term that journalists use for the "lead" of a story is "the angle." You'll hear journalists ask each other, "What's going to be your lead on that story?" or "What angle are you gonna take on that story?" Another way to ask the question would be "What's your bias on this story?" It would be a rare journalist to state it so indelicately, however. Most people read little beyond headlines, if they read the paper at all. (Television news is basically nothing but headlines with moving pictures.) That's why the "lead" is so important. All people, including writers, have values. These values cause one to attach importance to certain things, and not to others, when writing an article. One's values determine the "angle" a writer will take, and that angle becomes the "lead," and from that lead comes the headline. If you are one of the people who does no more than look at the headlines, it is important to realize that you are limiting yourself to receiving a purified and distilled digest of the values that exist in the newsrooms that produce those headlines. Do they reflect your own values? In a future Nygaard Notes I will take a look at some factors that may help you decide whether or not they do. This, then, is why I often present a Nygaard Notes Alternative Headline. What I am really doing is saying, "The values that form the basis of this article are not my own. My values would be more accurately reflected by pursuing this story from a different angle, which would result in a different headline." In the case of the Cargill article I've been discussing, perhaps the Alternative Headline could be: "Cargill-Continental Merger Pits American Farmers Against Farmers in Latin America." Or maybe, "How the Cargill Merger is Destroying Rural America." Instead of reporting on the suffering of the grass, the angle of the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) is that there is a "grain war" going on among the elephants, and people want the details on the latest battle. Since the Strib is owned by corporate elephants itself, it would be foolish to expect anything different. |