Jonathan Rowe – Page 28

Just the Facts?

Excerpt

JONATHAN ROWE:

The problem is not just smart-alecky journalists who grind their axes on the front page. The tendentious numb-brained quality of much American journalism today is largely a product of its forms. Daily journalism is frozen in a set of rituals and conventions that preclude nuance and provide formalistic cover for lazy thinking and reporting.

A few suggestions.

Ditch the Inverted Pyramid. This antiquated form requires that a story be about one thing, called the lead. It pushes the reporter to highlight the egregious–the outrageous charge, the gaffe–and often the irrelevant. The relentless built-in metronome sends the story barreling past the questions that are screaming to be raised. Instead there is ritualistic balance in the form of opposing (and generally imbecilic) quotes.

Bad Company

If a council of wise elders were to recommend a design for the basic business organization of this age, the current form of corporation would not likely be their choice.

Today’s version of the corporation evolved about 150 years ago, at a time when space seemed vast and earth’s resources even vaster. The economic task was simple: cover the continent, exploit its resources, build a muscular industrial machine equal to those of Europe. It was simply to grow. Today the task is more complex. The habitat can no longer absorb all the effluents of our striving—nor, for that matter, can we. The noxious side effects of production often loom larger than the supposed benefits; the factory that employs hundreds may befoul the water that is used by millions.

Disclose donors in political ads

Political candidates are a lot like purveyors of processed meat. Both deal in unsavory ingredients they would prefer to keep to themselves–but are obliged to some extent to disclose. Thanks to Congress, the public has a better chance of knowing about meat “byproducts” than it does about big political donations.

Meatpackers must list hot dog ingredients plainly on the label, where shoppers can see them. True, the euphemism “byproducts” can hide a lot of unappetizing stuff, but at least it hints at what the meatpackers don’t want us to know. Politicians get off easier. They only have to file lists of contributors with the Federal Election Commission. It’s public information, but imagine if you had to call the Food and Drug Administration to find out the chemicals in your shampoo–possible, but unlikely. Politicians must also put tag lines at the end of TV ads, but these are generally meaningless: “Paid for by Citizens for Snodgrass,” for example. A similar hot dog label would say, “This product contains ingredients.”

The Basic Function of Money

The basic function of money is to bring needs and resources together. But the conventional money system is failing miserably in this regard. Vast human resources sit idle, while vast needs go unmet – often in the same neighborhoods, even the same block.

This has large implications for the debate over social services, health care included. Perhaps the question isn’t just the government versus the market, spending more versus spending less. Perhaps we have to start asking questions about the kind of money we use. Lawmakers in Washington are busy trying to construct legislative contraptions to make the market – i.e. greed – result in better care. But just maybe, a new kind of money could give rise to a new kind of market, with care built in.

Major Growing Pains

It’s a conundrum that has vexed politicians and pundits alike. Despite an economic “expansion” that ranks as one of the longest in the nation’s history, Americans remain unsettled about their economic future. Neither Republican challenger Bob Dole, who stresses the need for more growth, nor Bill Clinton, who is trying to take credit for the current expansion, has been able to assuage the public’s deep, brooding concerns.

The usual explanation for the nation’s economic unease includes the layoffs and two-worker families that lurk beneath the rosy growth figures and the way the fruits of prosperity have been falling mainly to those at the top. But there’s another possible explanation, one that has received much less attention: namely, that much of the rapid growth in recent years actually consists of things Americans want less, not more of.

Reinventing the Corporation

Corporations benefit from the public, so it is fitting that the public should expect something in return from business. The current climate of greed, cynicism and corruption is discussed, along with ways of holding business more accountable.

When an act of simple human decency appears heroic, it’s time to ask some basic questions about the culture in which that act takes place. That’s what happened last December in an old mill town in Massachusetts. AT&T had just announced it was laying off 40,000 workers, even though profits and executive pay were soaring. U.S. corporations had inflicted over three million such layoffs since 1989, and there was a depressing new litany on the evening news: jobs down, stock market up. (More recently, it’s been the equally revealing counterpart: jobs up, market down.) The new Republican Congress was giving these corporations the store. Yet the more they got, the less they seemed willing to give back in return.

Replace the GDP

Adam Smith said that the final measure of an economy is the well-being of the people. Yet this is the one question that the policy establishment never asks. The government studies the supposed means to that end in exacting detail. It can tell us how many televisions we buy, how much money the drug or record industry invests, practically down to the last penny.

But nobody bothers to ask whether such means actually bring about the. desired end. Economists simply assume it, and this assumption is the implicit baseline of just about every policy debate in Washington. More consumption or investment will bring about more well-being, regardless of what that consumption and investment consist and the actual impact on people’s lives.

What’s un-Christian about the Christian right

Much of the Christian Coalition’s political agenda conflicts with the true meaning of Christianity: self-sacrifice, helping those in need, and universal love. The group favors a $500 tax credit per child, regardless of income, yet it does not favor the Earned Income Tax Credit.

There is something very strange about the Christian Coalition’s “Contract With the American Family,” released with much fanfare in May. The document says a lot about the usual conservative agenda–tax credits as rewards for doing right, abolishing the Department of Education, policing the Internet, and so on. But there’s little of the thing you’d most expect to find. There’s not one word that Jesus himself actually said.

Green Taxes

There’s a different way to think about tax reform that the Washington opinion establishment seems to have missed. Instead of using taxes simply to raise revenues, the government could raise … More

Corporations and the Public Interest

When people talk about “the market” they usually confuse two totally different things. One is the enterprise economy of small-scale business. The other is the corporate economy of hulking bureaucratic institutions.

Most of us love markets in the former sense. We love farmers’ markets, flea markets, New York-style street fairs, and classified ads. When we go to Washington, DC, we generally don’t eat in government cafeterias. We head over to the neat little restaurants in DuPont Circle or Adams Morgan – a “market” experience. When I was in Warsaw not long after the fall of the communist regime, the new outdoor markets really did feel like seedlings breaking through the concrete.