Friday, August 13, 2010

News You Haven't Heard

Something like 60,000 people in New Orleans were stranded due to Hurricane Katrina. A huge disaster. The whole world united in support to bring relief.

But then they were Americans. If you are in Pakistan you can sit and watch as 14 million experience a similar tragedy. It's barely noticed. And by the way, global warming would appear to be the major culprit.

This is exactly what we should expect of course based on an institutional analysis of the media. The media in the US produces a product for a customer. The product is audiences. In the case of major media, like the New York Times, it's privileged audiences. The customer is advertisers. So the view of the world we should expect to see is one that serves the interests of the audiences and customers. The suffering of Americans matters. Suffering of weak, poor people in Pakistan does not.

The same is true with regards to the catastrophe in the Gulf. That spill affected powerful people, so it was big news. Much worse spills occur in Nigeria and the amazon. The effects in the amazon have been so devastating brain development of people from the region was severely retarded due to malnutrition. The people were so severely deprived for so long that experts considered classifying them as a separate species.

The people of these regions have been called "unpeople". People that don't matter. Of course they don't matter to institutions intent on maximizing profit. These institutions are considered "people" by US law. They don't matter to those people, but real people would care if they knew.

6 comments:

Darf Ferrara said...

So, is your thesis that if newspapers didn't turn a profit then people in other countries wouldn't suffer due to floods and Hurricanes?

Jon said...

The comment does not merit the dignity of a response.

HispanicPundit said...

This is exactly what we should expect of course based on an institutional analysis of the media. The media in the US produces a product for a customer. The product is audiences. In the case of major media, like the New York Times, it's privileged audiences. The customer is advertisers. So the view of the world we should expect to see is one that serves the interests of the audiences and customers. The suffering of Americans matters. Suffering of weak, poor people in Pakistan does not.

Thats one way to see it. Another more simpler, and I would argue far more intuitive, is simply that we are tribal creatures. Evolution made us that way. So by human nature we care more about what directly happens to us, and people like us, then "others", poor or wealthy.

Jon said...

Then why is it that the whole world was very interested in Katrina and the BP oil spill?

Paul said...

More often than not I disagree w/ HP. But on this I think he is on the right track.

"Then why is it that the whole world was very interested in Katrina and the BP oil spill?"

Is this really true? Assuming it is - perhaps it is that for better or worse if the planet had a "capitol" country the USA would be it. Perhaps the rest of the world cares more about the USA than we care about them?

In other words, I think the issue is cultural not systematic (if you get my gist).

Jon said...

There's some truth to HP's point. I just don't think it explains the tremendous disparity. 14 million vs 60,000. Perhaps a blurb on the former and weeks of coverage on the later. This is what we should expect base on an institutional analysis of the agenda setting media. Change their incentives and things change.

For instance La Jornada, which is a Mexican paper and perhaps the only major independent paper in our hemisphere, does cover the Pakistani story, but if you google it it's mostly foreign press. British, Australian, etc.

It's a subjective assessment though.