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Media paint flowery picture

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Also by Jason Ebin:

Students must protest military policy (March 6, 2006)
Sensenbrenner wrong on immigration (March 27, 2006)
Remember Reagan as school year comes to close (April 11, 2006)
Media paint flowery picture (April 17, 2006)
Students can help bring change in Darfur (May 1, 2006)

by Jason Ebin

Monday, April 17, 2006

Saturday's front page of The New York Times, a.k.a. "the paper of record," led with the following two stories. First, Lee R. Raymond, former chairman and chief executive of Exxon-Mobile, was paid $144,573 for each day that he spent leading Exxon over 13 years. Next, hundreds of immigrants across the country, including legal immigrants in Wisconsin, lost their jobs because they took the day off last week to protest proposed immigration reform.

The International section of Saturday's Times ran six pages of stories. Some of the stories, not necessarily the more important ones, reported: "Chad broke off relations with Sudan on Friday and threatened to oust 200,000 Sudanese refugees;" an American military officer was handing out $35 in an Afghan market to anyone willing to sell computer flash drives; nine Iraqi officers and two Marines died in an ambush just north of Baghdad "after being denied permission to stay overnight on an American military base;" the Bush administration has asked Congress to approve $85 million for a state department project headed by one of Dick Cheney's daughters designed to shake up Iran's political system; and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted that Israel was on the verge of "being eliminated."

Madison's paper of record, The Wisconsin State Journal, had five stories on Saturday's front page. The lead headline, "Super Foods," was a Knight Ridder Newspapers story discussing foods that can help keep people healthy. Column two, an Associated Press story, reporting that an all-white Milwaukee jury acquitted three white former police officers on four charges but remained hung on a fifth charge, involving a 2004 incident of alleged police brutality against a bi-racial man.

The bottom half of the page had three stories by State Journal employees. The first was a profile of Victor Montero-Diaz, the man killed by Madison police officers last week on Willy Street. Next was a report that Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager and Governor Jim Doyle said that they would return $35,000 in donations from two Illinois business leaders. The last was a "story" that Madison police released an image of the pipe-bomb suspect.

Relying on the Times and The Wisconsin State Journal, the world might not seem to be in such a sour state: A few dead here and there, police officers in Milwaukee and Madison are not abusing their authority, people who take off from work to protest can get fired, politicians do have a conscious, the military is smart enough to try to recover "lost" sensitive military information, and the American dream of making over $140,000 a day is alive and well.

Too bad these reports aren't the complete stories.

Newspapers know that most Americans are like me and get sick to their stomachs after reading story after story of the thousands killed in Iraq and the hundreds of thousands killed in the Darfur region. Americans have a reputation for being soft — and tyrants throughout the world are betting that American newspapers won't print how many people are really dying in Iraq or that the U.S. government is silently watching 500 men, women and children in the Darfur region die each day.

Newspapers know that Americans want to feel good about themselves after reading their paper — so they print stories about police being justified in severely beating up a guy in Milwaukee or how killing a mentally ill man in Madison was the right thing to do. Americans want to read that spending five dollars for blueberries is worth it because "super foods" might make them healthier.

Americans don't want to read how the largest oil company in the world is probably screwing its own people. Or that the world probably intervened in Kosovo because Europeans and not Africans were killing each other.

James Madison's words, not mine, are perhaps more important today than ever.

"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

Most likely, those in charge are just scared that if they educate the masses, their leadership powers will be exposed as nothing more than scare-tactics; the vehicle of tyrants and dictators. Yet coming clean is really the government's best option — if Americans are going to trust their president, the president is going to need to trust Americans. Either way, it is time for the Bush administration to stop spoon-feeding the public only one side of the story.

Jason Saltoun Ebin (jasonebin@aol.com) is a second-year law student.

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Anonymous (April 17, 2006 @ 8:36am):

"world probably intervened in Kosovo because Europeans and not Africans were killing each other."

By the "world" you mean the USA under Clinton? I have always wondered about that. How could the First Black President (tm) stand by while all those hundreds of thousands died in Rwanda yet be so helpful to the Moslems in their stuggle to hang on to their conquests in the Balkans.

Anonymous (April 17, 2006 @ 10:47am):

I didn't realize that the Bush administration controlled the New York Times. As for Americans being soft, were the MEN who stood up on flight UA93 soft? The media is soft and spends most of its time telling Americans they have no business meddling in the affairs of other countries. Who are we, meaning Americans, to tell another nation how they should behave? Their are many of us who beleive that the biggest mistake in Iraq was not that we killed to many but that we killed to few. You do not win wars by displaying weakness and the media you discuss spends most of their efforts trying to weaken the American resolve. A resolve that was demonstrated by what a group of stranges did to prevent a hijacked plane from reaching its target.

The media never managed to maintain any anger about what happened on 9/11. I pity the person who tries the same approach today. Theirs will be an unpleasent end as long as American MEN are on that plane. The Clash said it best, "Anger can be power, did you know that you can use it." Even if Joe Strummer, a socialist, was dead wrong about Thatcher.

Anonymous (April 17, 2006 @ 11:39am):

"Media paint flowery picture"

ROFLMAO, "no news is good news", anything that bashes Bush is news, forget about "loose lips sink ships", BAH HUMBUG!

Anonymous (April 17, 2006 @ 12:39pm):

Hey poster above... you seem really keen on MEN standing up and all that jazz...just a reminder that there were women who stood up on that flight too...men is not gender neutral

as for the article....while your point about reporting in the US is something to be attended to I must say that your article is just as fluffy as the capitol times...if you would like to change something write a well researched news article instead...

Anonymous (April 17, 2006 @ 2:31pm):

I don't recall any women rushing the cockpit, but hey if they did I stand corrected. I recall a group of MEN including a gay SF rugby player retaking the plane that crashed in Penn.

As for changing policy, that is the main problem with Journalists. They no longer report the news, they try to create the news in a manner that will get policy makers to sway. Resolve and sticking to your guns make media types uncomfortable. Because like Ward Churchill they believe in many truths and can sympathize with the postion Hamas takes when a suicide bomber blows up a bunch of Jewish teens at a pizza hut.

Anonymous (April 17, 2006 @ 4:18pm):

my only comment to this column is...huh? please do us all a favor and support your argument next time. and don't blame everything on bush, this coming from a liberal who thinks he is the anti-christ. support!

Anonymous (April 17, 2006 @ 4:50pm):

"I don't recall any women rushing the cockpit, but hey if they did I stand corrected. I recall a group of MEN including a gay SF rugby player retaking the plane that crashed in Penn."

Well I was there, and there were at least two women who stood up for freedom that day. It was a proud moment as we put aside our differences (and perceived differences!) to try to take back the plane.

Anonymous (April 17, 2006 @ 5:41pm):

the first voice of against the hyjackers in the plane on tape was female...

Anonymous (April 18, 2006 @ 10:41am):

How can you be on a plane that crashed with no survivors? "I was there".

Speaking out is not the same as taking action. I was not on the plane and maybe all of the battle was waged by 5'4" 120 pound women. Or just maybe the tackling and attacking of the hijackers was carried out by 200+ pound American Men. This is not about sexism it is about reality. If Bill Romanowski or Mike Tyson were on that plane I would expect them to be leading the charge with Bill Gates and Walter Kronkite perhaps settling back a few steps. You build a wedge with the biggest and meanest at the point not the other way around. When Todd Beamer said, "Lets Roll" I don't think he was hiding behind some ladies skirt.