A lot of people think that the financial crisis America faces today started before Bush, that the seeds of it were sown years ago. There is some truth to that. But really, it took on life after 9/11 when Bush told Americans to go shopping and spend, and make happy, because otherwise "the terrorists will have won". Allen Greenspan obliged by making credit as cheap as possible, enabling the subprime and the financial derivatives that are sinking America today.
The terrorists of 9/11 were hoping to disrupt and upend the American way of life, as America, in the terrorist's view, had disrupted and upended the Islamic world. Well, in a way the terrorist have won because of the financial turmoil the US is in today. With Americans heeding Bush's words after 9/11 they went out on a spending spree, jeopardizing the country with a massive debt and the worst economic crisis since the Depression. (That spending spree created unsustainable 'supply-side' economics, with too much capacity.) The terrorist couldn't have hoped for a better calamity to strike the US.
Also, the terrorists managed to draw Bush&Co. into two wars that have caused a financial burden that has put the US at further risk of loosing its status as the mainstay of the world. And it didn't helped that Bush didn't ask American's to sacrifice anything for the war effort.
But on reflection, Bush did get Americans to sacrifice for the war on terror, more than he could have imagined, by putting them and the country into hawk for years to come.
Perhaps Bush already has dementia, thinking that history will be kind to him by giving him a decent legacy.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Media bias?
I just read an article entitled "The Year of living Gloomily". It was about the media’s economic reporting over the past year. Its author thinks that in reporting on the economy the media has taken a bias, gloomy outlook. He thinks that the media’s gloomy reporting has made the economy worse and that its bias has led to a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, if the media had been more upbeat in it’s reporting the economy wouldn’t be as bad as it is.
The argument is that bad, gloomy news sells. In general that is the case. Ironically, though, the media’s so-called bias and gloomy economic reporting may have also hurt it. The bad economic conditions that are going around have also affected the profitability of the news media, with news services cutting staff dramatically to stay in business or going bankrupt. So one would wonder, why would the news media deliberately sound gloomy on the economy if they were also the ones to be affected by such gloom? It sounds like the media is ‘cutting off its nose to spite its face’.
It seems the media can't win. The author is not saying that in it’s reporting the media helped create the economic panic or turmoil we face today. But by sounding negative about it he suggested that the media has compounded the problem. However, a similar argument about the media can be made at the other end: it helped drive up economy activity, to such dizzying heights that it helped created the economic bubble of investment that now has burst, spraying us with the toxic financial fallout we face today. As the economy was going up the media fed us stories that made us feel like losers if we didn't participate in it. Media hype drove speculation in the stock market, housing and other commodities. Wasn't the media equally bias when it failed to report more thoroughly on the abuses that were being perpetrated in the name of free enterprise?
Why would the media want to make the economy worse? The media and the press are supposed to report facts. If companies are having business problems and going bankrupt it is the duty of the media to tell us about it, not hide it from us or gloss it over. Likewise, if people are loosing their jobs or having problems paying their bills it should be reported. Under those circumstances, if the media choose instead to report that the economy was doing fine it would be negligent in its duty and be postponing the inevitable, and make things worse. That kind of gloss-over reporting was done in the Soviet Union, where the press was intimidated and manipulated by autocrats. That media manipulation and cover-up of a bad economy is what eventually led to the Soviet Empire’s collapse.
As I read this article I thought of Marshall McLuhan, the famous Canadian sociologist that studied the media. His most famous pronouncement and subsequent book title was "The Media is the Message". As the dictionary describes him, "He holds that the chief technology of communications in a society has a determining effect on everything important in that society, even the thought process of individuals".
I wonder how McLuhan would have reacted to this article about media bias? If the media is the message as he said it is, then, isn’t the bias of the media as much a part of it? Often the media is accused of having a liberal bias. So that should mean that being liberal is the media. In a free society the media is liberal, inherently so because if it wasn't it wouldn’t lead to a ‘free press’. If the media were anything else but liberal it would then be a suppressed and hamstrung one like it was in the Soviet Union. An open, democratic society must think liberal to be so. In its liberal bias the media, in the way of McLean’s thinking, works to reinforce that in the thought process of individuals.
Whether the media is considered leaning in one direction or another is not the point. Whichever way the media leans it is still getting out a message. In its recent ‘bias’ the media has been working to get the message out that the economy is in terrible shape. If it didn’t take that so-called bias stance, in a comprehensive way, people would not pay the necessary attention and alter their ways. People all across the board have been consuming far more than they have been producing. It’s time to pay the piper. Now, if the press didn’t take issue with that and exaggerate the point, in a bias way, people would not pay attention.
In other words, the press must act in a bias manner so as to get the message out, a message that would otherwise go unheeded, allowing for worse things to happen in the future. The media's job in bad times is to whip up a frenzy so as to get people to act before it's to late and alter their course. If people were more rational and acted more prudently from the beginning then the media would not have to act in such a bias, perverse manner, so as to motivate people to change their destructive ways, before it's to late.
The argument is that bad, gloomy news sells. In general that is the case. Ironically, though, the media’s so-called bias and gloomy economic reporting may have also hurt it. The bad economic conditions that are going around have also affected the profitability of the news media, with news services cutting staff dramatically to stay in business or going bankrupt. So one would wonder, why would the news media deliberately sound gloomy on the economy if they were also the ones to be affected by such gloom? It sounds like the media is ‘cutting off its nose to spite its face’.
It seems the media can't win. The author is not saying that in it’s reporting the media helped create the economic panic or turmoil we face today. But by sounding negative about it he suggested that the media has compounded the problem. However, a similar argument about the media can be made at the other end: it helped drive up economy activity, to such dizzying heights that it helped created the economic bubble of investment that now has burst, spraying us with the toxic financial fallout we face today. As the economy was going up the media fed us stories that made us feel like losers if we didn't participate in it. Media hype drove speculation in the stock market, housing and other commodities. Wasn't the media equally bias when it failed to report more thoroughly on the abuses that were being perpetrated in the name of free enterprise?
Why would the media want to make the economy worse? The media and the press are supposed to report facts. If companies are having business problems and going bankrupt it is the duty of the media to tell us about it, not hide it from us or gloss it over. Likewise, if people are loosing their jobs or having problems paying their bills it should be reported. Under those circumstances, if the media choose instead to report that the economy was doing fine it would be negligent in its duty and be postponing the inevitable, and make things worse. That kind of gloss-over reporting was done in the Soviet Union, where the press was intimidated and manipulated by autocrats. That media manipulation and cover-up of a bad economy is what eventually led to the Soviet Empire’s collapse.
As I read this article I thought of Marshall McLuhan, the famous Canadian sociologist that studied the media. His most famous pronouncement and subsequent book title was "The Media is the Message". As the dictionary describes him, "He holds that the chief technology of communications in a society has a determining effect on everything important in that society, even the thought process of individuals".
I wonder how McLuhan would have reacted to this article about media bias? If the media is the message as he said it is, then, isn’t the bias of the media as much a part of it? Often the media is accused of having a liberal bias. So that should mean that being liberal is the media. In a free society the media is liberal, inherently so because if it wasn't it wouldn’t lead to a ‘free press’. If the media were anything else but liberal it would then be a suppressed and hamstrung one like it was in the Soviet Union. An open, democratic society must think liberal to be so. In its liberal bias the media, in the way of McLean’s thinking, works to reinforce that in the thought process of individuals.
Whether the media is considered leaning in one direction or another is not the point. Whichever way the media leans it is still getting out a message. In its recent ‘bias’ the media has been working to get the message out that the economy is in terrible shape. If it didn’t take that so-called bias stance, in a comprehensive way, people would not pay the necessary attention and alter their ways. People all across the board have been consuming far more than they have been producing. It’s time to pay the piper. Now, if the press didn’t take issue with that and exaggerate the point, in a bias way, people would not pay attention.
In other words, the press must act in a bias manner so as to get the message out, a message that would otherwise go unheeded, allowing for worse things to happen in the future. The media's job in bad times is to whip up a frenzy so as to get people to act before it's to late and alter their course. If people were more rational and acted more prudently from the beginning then the media would not have to act in such a bias, perverse manner, so as to motivate people to change their destructive ways, before it's to late.
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