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Moreover, the media fails to analyze the consumer price index (CPI) along with the marginal increase in wages over the same periods. The CPI is a measure of the average change in prices over time of goods and services purchased by households…CPIs are based on prices of food, clothing, shelter, and fuels, transportation fares, charges for doctors' and dentists' services, drugs, and other goods and services that people buy for day-to-day living. Prices are collected in 87 urban areas across the country from about 50,000 housing units and approximately 23,000 retail establishments- department stores, supermarkets, hospitals, filling stations, and other types of stores and service establishments (BLS, WWW). Over the past year, the CPI- or the cost of living- has risen 2.7 percent, according to the web site. An overall 1.7 percent increase occurred in 2001. So as the records show, the overall cost of living is going up- yet wages have only increased .6 percent over the last two years combined. This means that people cannot buy as much with the money they are making. What’s worse, is that service jobs- such as the ones most people in poverty would work- are being terminated through cyclical unemployment. The set price of where poverty occurs has stayed the same for the last five years- yet the figures are incorrect. The true scale of poverty should be set on an income scale of or around $26,000 – almost ten thousand dollars more than what it currently is an encompassing another ten-percent of the nation. Of course these figures do not even include the homeless, who are generally unaccounted for.When trying to research the estimated number of homeless in America, we truly see the media and political biases come into play. The media – as reported by Bernard Goldberg in his book “Bias”, has no real account of how many people are without shelter in the U.S. The number that is chosen is usually arbitrary or found from the source that the report wants to present as the most credible one- the one of their political bias. The number of homeless seems to range anywhere from a quarter million to two million. Yet the corporate media for all they are worth does not analyze these statistics or even try to give an explanation for poverty by showing the links to the public. One might retort to me by saying, “it’s not the job of the media to analyze or report outside the news.” Yet my response would have be their informa analysis of the homeless and poverty that show through their quotations on what ‘the analysts have to say.’ In almost every single CNN, NBC or CBS article on the homeless in the past year, when it comes down to addressing the problem, the reporters are quick to show “what is going to be done about it,” – usually giving recognition to those who they can gain favors from later and scuffing off the rest. None of the near one-hundred articles I searched through contained someone’s remarks as to why the problem has happened, what the causes are- just why it’s not getting better- which are usually responded to with attacks on a social program by a political group on another. Some may call this poor journalism, not exploitation- though it is obvious that the evasive tactics to avoid poverty, combined with the elitist approach is certainly used for exploiting the countries’ poor for those who want their names in the media.
The list of media atrocities on the poor grow- even locally we see some fine examples of media disservice. In a May 23 article in the Sacramento Bee, several statistics- of course not analyzed- were released on a report about women and poverty. The report listed that 37% of women in California are bellow the income poverty level, which we already established is misleading. Furthermore, several legislators and their various legislation bills were announced in the article- 12 legislators in all, as well as some local program directors of homeless organizations. The article seemed to focus and praise on the politicians, and is yet another example of bland exaltment to the technocrats of California- using quotations that again addressed seemingly self-evident passages such as; "No mother in California should have to choose between buying food for her children or paying her rent" (Rojas, SacBee). There were no questions asked of impoverished people. There were no impacts on what the types of legislation would accomplish. The media did a disservice to those reading, those who are going to be enforcing elected representatives to make decisions as well as passing initiatives, with any real news or understanding of what the information meant. Should we blame the media for this? Is it not our responsibility to do the research ourselves? This then should even make us question why media and news organizations exist. If not to give us all the pertinent information, with analysis from differing view points, what is it they are doing we must ask. They are paying homage to their corporate stockholders and political powers that be. Over the last year, the Los Angeles Times has reported on homelessness and poverty 63 times (LA Times, WWW). Out of all of these articles in their archive, none of them address reasons for poverty, viable solutions or give accurate statistics. Instead, every one of these articles focused on local charities- usually by a company or well endowed organization- or a sort of legislative action that was ‘dealing with the problem.’ Take for example an article a few days ago relating to San Francisco’s impoverished. “The former construction worker has lived along the tracks beside mounds of garbage and clutter for two years. Last week, he and other homeless people were forced to pack up their meager belongings after a city crackdown…”(AP Dec. 12 2002), the article begins. Once again, the news service, owned by media conglomerate America Online, introduce that the homeless man depicted has lived along the tracks for two years- as if that is where the story begins. There was no cause for his poverty, the article would have you understand. The news service goes on to quote people calling the homeless people trash-“"We're intolerant of people messing up the city," said Alex Mamak. "Our issue is the beautification or removing trash or litter from San Francisco." These people are equivocal to garbage, because they do not have a domicile as required by the system. Both sides, seemingly are brought into view: the homeless lobby who agree that the areas are a mess, but say that the cities homeless ‘clean-up’ is not the answer… and the city who wants these eye-sore’s to be gone. Yet no solutions are given. No people that are being actually affected by this- namely the poor who live by the tracks- were given a chance to plaster their words in the press. This is highly exploitative. The media treat poverty as an event, when indeed it is more than a camera shot or a sound bite- it is a lengthy, plight filled process in which investors in the media have no time to be bugged with or have their viewers worry about such things. We see examples in this not only in local and national news, but also in the international realm. “Each year half a million Indians die of tuberculosis, and more than 1.5 million Indian infants die of diarrhea. Yet you will not find two columns on these deaths because those who die are the wrong sort of people, not deserving of media attention” (Sainath). Reading this analysis by an independent media source out of India and we see yet one example of the Media’s disservice to the poor. Reading of the piece it is quite a familiar feeling. In fact, the world’s view of poverty is analogous with our own. The media treats disparity, distress and poverty as natural calamities – the rich/poor divide has always been there, in third world countries. The poor in the rich countries – all those guys – they're basically slackers and welfare cheats and single mothers feeding their alcoholism habit on welfare funds. Furthermore, the media denies any facts of free-market exploitation or their own part of the process (Sainath). India, which is ranked as second in the hard number of impoverished people- somewhere around fifty million says the CIA World Fact book. Indeed, with such a problem, people do certainly do their best to help the poor- right? Mistaken thou art. This passage from the same article is the epicenter of the problem:
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Michael Newton-McLaughlin
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Perceptions of waste Scott Zoltok | Jul 31st, 2013
Here's an interesting story on changing perceptions of waste in society:
http://tigurl.org/jfbnn7-of-sustainability-sweden-runs-out-of-garbage
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