[antimedia] antimedia: When the media's "reality" collides....

[Email subscription to blog articles]

Posted by antimedia:
When the media's "reality" collides....
http://www.antimedia.us/posts/1144888766.shtml


   ....with actual reality, then reality is in [1]the eye of the
   beholder, as Victor Davis Hanson so astutely points out.

     War-torn Iraq has about 26 million residents, a peaceful California
     perhaps now 35 million. The former is a violent and impoverished
     landscape, the latter said to be paradise on Earth. But how you
     envision either place to some degree depends on the eye of the
     beholder, and is predicated on what the daily media appear to make
     of each.
     As a fifth-generation Californian, I deeply love this state, but
     still imagine what the reaction would be if the world awoke each
     morning to be told that once again there were six more murders, 27
     rapes, 38 arsons, 180 robberies, and 360 instances of assault in
     Californiaâyesterday, today, tomorrow, and every day. I wonder if
     the headlines would scream about âNearly 200 poor CaliforÂnians
     butchered again this month!â
     How about a monthly media dose of â600 women raped in February
     alone!â Or try, âOver 600 violent robberies and assaults in March,
     with no end in sight!â Those do not even make up all of the stateâs
     yearly 200,000 violent acts that law enforcement knows about.
     Iraqâs judicial system seems a mess. On the eve of the war, Saddam
     let out 100,000 inmates from his vast prison archipelago. He
     himself still sits in the dock months after his trial began. But
     imagine an Iraq with a penal system like Californiaâs with 170,000
     criminalsâan inmate population larger than those of Germany,
     France, the Netherlands, and Singapore combined.
     Just to house such a shadow populaÂtion costs our state nearly $7
     billion a yearâor about the same price of keepÂing 40,000 Army
     personnel per year in Iraq. What would be the image of our Golden
     State if we were reminded each morning, âAnother $20 million spent
     today on housing our criminals!â

   Don't miss Hanson's point. It isn't that everything is right with Iraq
   -- or even wrong with California -- it's that the media's reporting is
   selective and biased -- weighted toward the negative and sensational
   -- which makes the media a poor source for gauging what is really
   going on -- in Iraq or in California.
   This bias, unlike political bias, is endemic in the news media. Watch
   your local TV channel news. It's usually a litany of murders, rapes,
   car crashes, bodies found in empty apartments, etc., etc., etc.
   Where's the positive stories? They're not there.
   Is it any wonder that Iraq seems like a disaster but [2]the statistics
   say otherwise? (Hat tip to [3]the Discerning Texan.)

References

   1. http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleID.19118/article_detail.asp
   2. http://www.antimedia.us/posts/1144379289.shtml
   3. http://discerningtexan.blogspot.com/2006/04/hanson-discusses-iraq-and-media.html