Debating Alternate Realities

It is rare when a non-media columnist for The New York Times devotesprecious ink to taking on the media. When economist Paul Krugman didjust that recently, I was startled because it is so uncommon forissue-oriented commentators even to acknowledge that most people understand theworld through what they see and read, or that the media might be missing keynews. How stories are played, or ignored, is usually not a subject thatopinion-makers think about even though it is their stock in trade.

Now we have a pundit admitting in print, first, that "most Americans gettheir news from TV," and then adding that the images on TV don't show thewhole picture. "If you pay attention to the whole picture, you start tofeel that you are living in a different reality than the one on TV," hewrites. By focusing on political ideology, says Krugman, reporters are missingthe economic stories that are hidden in plain sight.

How is possible for journalists to miss what is in front of their faces? Inhis forthcoming book "Media Unlimited," media analyst Todd Gitlintells the story of a customs official who keeps stopping the same suspiciousdriver about to cross the border. The official knows a conveyor of contrabandwhen he sees one and so has the truck searched thoroughly, even torn apart. Hefinds nothing. This ritual is repeated every time the driver pulls a loadthrough his post. Finally, years later, the customs officer confronts the driverand tells him he knows that he is a smuggler, but he can't figure out what he'sbeen smuggling. It is driving him crazy.

The driver smiles, and confesses what he is illegally transporting:"Trucks," he says.

The trucks were right in front of the official's face, but he couldn't seethem. The late Edward R. Murrow translated this insight into media-ese:"The obscure we see eventually," he said. "The completelyapparent takes a little longer."

And so it is with TV news, an environment Marshall McLuhan called"pervasively invisible."

Whose Reality?
Krugman makes this same point. "The alternate reality isn't deeply hidden.It's available to anyone with a modem, and some of it makes it into qualitynewspapers." There's a surprising admission in that sentence, anacknowledgment that his own newspaper only reports "some" of the newshe considers important. He also has the guts to add that much news has alreadybecome a casualty of the current climate in which "selfishness comestightly wrapped in a flag" and that "the normal instincts of a countryat war — to rally round the flag and place trust in our leaders — are alltoo easily exploited."

So at least some truth is seeping out, a truth that is as old as thechildren's story about the emperor without clothes in a land where no one wouldadmit he was naked. The truth is that most of our media are not even gettingclose to the truth — that is, if there even is such a thing as "thetruth."

Krugman evidently believes that there is an alternate reality that is beingforgotten. What if what's in many media outlets is the genuinely alternatereality, a well-sanitized and manufactured one? The REAL "alternatereality" is the surreality of people in power or those who want to be, whofeel that their interests, prescribed by class and consciousness, are always thede facto national interest.

And the media just go along, or at least many of them do. If government is tobe held accountable for its decisions and corporations for their practices,media companies need to be accountable for their many failings:

1. Where are the exposés of the giveaways to big corporations in the name ofeconomic stimulus? True, the facts are reported but the full significance isnot. It would help if people with alternate views outside the bipartisanconsensus within the Washington, D.C. Beltway were given regular media exposure.Where are the voices of labor and the advocates of economic justice?

The government has just announced that there is a recession but for manyAmericans, it already feels like a depression, in part because the social safetynet has been cut back. Don't media outlets have a responsibility to more thanecho the official prognosis?

While Paul Krugman is right when he says that business reporters often offerthe best reporting because they "are not expected to view the world thoughrose-colored glasses," they also often wear parochial ones that fail to puteconomic news in a global perspective. While we have endless reporting on theups and downs of the stock market, there is little analysis of the larger forcesin play in day-to-day developments. As Michael Mandel argues in BusinessWeek Online, we need to recognize how globalization factors into what may atfirst appear to be just a domestic problem. "With U.S. news just a clickaway on the Internet and TV sets around the world endlessly tuned to CNN andCNBC, pessimism in one country can crop up elsewhere in a way that was neverpossible before. The New Economy is built on global trade, global capitalmarkets and global communications. Unfortunately, the door swings both ways:Links which propelled growth in the boom may help spread the slump today."

2. We need journalists willing to question their bosses. Where are theinvestigations of the backroom maneuvering by media companies to get federalregulations they don't like lifted? Is there a covert deal in place, some quidpro quo, as in "you scratch our backs and we will continue to sanitize thenews and give it a spin of good feelings and patriotic devotion"? Who willfind out?

3. Krugman condemns the tilt towards blind patriotism, but what are theinterests behind the beating of the war drums? More important, is there a moresensible way to fight terrorism than get into bed with the thugs of the NorthernAlliance? Do we have other choices than to ally with other scumbuckets who havebeen armed to the teeth by the United States to fight a war against oneoppressive regime only to seek to replace it with another? Does there have to besuch a stunning lack of background on most TV news outlets about the bloodytrack records of many of the Afghan leaders engaged in ousting the Taliban?

It will take more than one column to list all the undercovered stories andignored issues or to get media mavens to focus on the trucks as well as thedrivers.

The fact that discussion on this has begun inside big media is encouraging.It is now up to the rest of us to jump into the debate and push it deeper. Weneed to find solutions not restate the obvious. But it was refreshing for theTimes to recognize the importance of trucking with us media critics. I agreewith you Mr. Krugman: "It's time to give the American people the wholepicture."
 

(Danny Schechter is executive editor of MediaChannel.org.His latest book is NewsDissector: Passions, Pieces and Polemics 1960-2000, from Akashic Books)