Are You Mad about Rapidly Expanding Wealth Gaps?
Here’s Another Social Institution You Can Blame
(Hint: It Embraces the Ethic of Objectivity)
1,046 words
By David Demers
National polls from the Pew Center and other groups show that a majority of Americans are angry about rapidly expanding wealth and income gaps and believe the wealthy aren’t paying enough in taxes.
Some analysts, including me, even argue that financial insecurity was the main reason Donald Trump won a second term. Many of his working-class supporters believe he can solve their financial problems, even though he never talks about economic inequality and has an affinity for billionaires.
Although journalists often sympathize with the working and middle classes, they have written or broadcast few news stories and commentaries about the growing gaps in wealth and income over the last couple years. This includes those who work at the Washington Post and New York Times. Proquest archives also show that during the last year only 11 newspapers ran stories or commentaries that included headlines with the terms “economic inequality,” “wealth gaps,” or “income inequality.” Other articles mentioned these terms, but none focused extensively on the problem of skyrocketing wealth gaps. Massive tax cuts over the last four decades created these gaps, which in turn are the driving force behind the $36 trillion national debt.
So why aren’t journalists covering one of the biggest social problems of our time?
Because of the ethic of objectivity.
That ethic prohibits journalists from injecting their personal opinions into news stories. Instead, they gather most of the news from local, state and national political and economic elites (e.g., politicians, government bureaucrats, corporate executives, wealthy people). So, if these elites don’t talk about certain topics, the news fails to cover them. Economic inequality is one of those topics because it poses a threat to elites’ rapidly growing wealth. Once tasted, wealth is difficult to regurgitate.
The gap in wealth is growing at a 5 percentage-point inflation-adjusted annualized rate. This means the top 10th percentile in terms of wealth will have an average of nearly $6.4 million in 10 years (6% annualized growth), compared with $14,000 (about 0.4%) for the bottom 50th percentile and $160,000 (1.3%) for the remaining 40 percent of the population (the middle class).
The irony is that the ethic of objectivity isn’t objective at all: It produces a bias that gives more voice to the powerful than to the working and middle classes. Journalists often justify the bias by pointing out that the actions and opinions of elites have more effect on events and people than their less powerful counterparts. True. But it’s a bias nonetheless, and one that benefits the powerful.
This state of affairs has led some mass communication scholars to argue that news media are lap dogs for the powerful — a theory that bristles journalists, of course. They prefer to think of themselves as watchdogs of the powerful and as agents for those who have little or no power. The roots of this normative theory are embedded in the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment, which conceptualizes journalism as a “fourth estate” that keeps watch over the other three estates (executive, legislature, and judiciary).
The watchdog model strongly implies that the news media should be giving a lot of coverage to economic inequality, because that would be in the best interest of the bottom 90th percentile of Americans. But that’s not happening, because news beats are heavily anchored in the centers of power (e.g., Congress, city halls, state houses, Wall Street) rather than in organizations representing the interests of ordinary Americans.
A good example is news coverage of unions that represent school teachers. “The shallow, stereotyped and overwhelmingly negative coverage of teachers’ unions places them in a defensive position in the national news media and forces them to fight an uphill battle for deeper public appreciation of their connection to meaningful reform,” the social science research company FrameWorks Institute concluded in after decades of research.
The watchdog role also implies that the news media can be a source of radical or significant social change. The reality, though, is that even hard-hitting investigative stories that draw attention to illegal and unethical behavior perform a system-maintenance function that benefits those in power. These stories contain moral narratives that support dominant values and the law as well as elite-controlled institutions.
A more valid canine analogy than either watchdog or lap dog is guard dog — a term coined in the 1980s by my Ph.D. advisor, Phillip J. Tichenor, and his colleagues. News content generally supports dominant political and economic institutions and elites. Still, it can and does contain stories critical of them, especially when elites criticize each other or when they break the law. Trump may have escaped judicial accountability for many of his actions, but the mainstream news media continue to publish a lot of stories about his voluminous violations of widely accepted values and norms.
The bottom line is that news media are partly to blame for increasing economic inequality. Without sustained coverage, a social problem cannot be solved. One story here and there is not enough. A good example was a three-part series published in the Washington Post about three years ago. It was insightful but had no meaningful effect on public policy because political elites ignored its call for action.
Of course, news organizations across the country could ignore elites and band together to provide a comprehensive series of stories about the problem of economic inequality. That would draw attention to the issue but, at the same time, would anger many of the elite sources they rely upon to collect the news. Journalism is not just a public good — it’s a business, too.
Consequently, the problem of economic inequality likely will continue to grow, at least into the foreseeable future under a Trump administration. Nothing will change until elites and the media start talking about it — or, alternatively, when inequality gaps create major social problems that threaten the stability of society (such as defaulting on the national debt).
In my view, an economic crisis is a far more likely outcome than proactive policy changes. And when that crisis arrives, the news media will perform its guard dog role, framing the carnage from the perspective of those in power, who will blame everyone except the massive tax cuts that are responsible for gaps in wealth as well as the rising national debt.
Here’s Another Social Institution You Can Blame
(Hint: It Embraces the Ethic of Objectivity)
1,046 words
By David Demers
National polls from the Pew Center and other groups show that a majority of Americans are angry about rapidly expanding wealth and income gaps and believe the wealthy aren’t paying enough in taxes.
Some analysts, including me, even argue that financial insecurity was the main reason Donald Trump won a second term. Many of his working-class supporters believe he can solve their financial problems, even though he never talks about economic inequality and has an affinity for billionaires.
Although journalists often sympathize with the working and middle classes, they have written or broadcast few news stories and commentaries about the growing gaps in wealth and income over the last couple years. This includes those who work at the Washington Post and New York Times. Proquest archives also show that during the last year only 11 newspapers ran stories or commentaries that included headlines with the terms “economic inequality,” “wealth gaps,” or “income inequality.” Other articles mentioned these terms, but none focused extensively on the problem of skyrocketing wealth gaps. Massive tax cuts over the last four decades created these gaps, which in turn are the driving force behind the $36 trillion national debt.
So why aren’t journalists covering one of the biggest social problems of our time?
Because of the ethic of objectivity.
That ethic prohibits journalists from injecting their personal opinions into news stories. Instead, they gather most of the news from local, state and national political and economic elites (e.g., politicians, government bureaucrats, corporate executives, wealthy people). So, if these elites don’t talk about certain topics, the news fails to cover them. Economic inequality is one of those topics because it poses a threat to elites’ rapidly growing wealth. Once tasted, wealth is difficult to regurgitate.
The gap in wealth is growing at a 5 percentage-point inflation-adjusted annualized rate. This means the top 10th percentile in terms of wealth will have an average of nearly $6.4 million in 10 years (6% annualized growth), compared with $14,000 (about 0.4%) for the bottom 50th percentile and $160,000 (1.3%) for the remaining 40 percent of the population (the middle class).
The irony is that the ethic of objectivity isn’t objective at all: It produces a bias that gives more voice to the powerful than to the working and middle classes. Journalists often justify the bias by pointing out that the actions and opinions of elites have more effect on events and people than their less powerful counterparts. True. But it’s a bias nonetheless, and one that benefits the powerful.
This state of affairs has led some mass communication scholars to argue that news media are lap dogs for the powerful — a theory that bristles journalists, of course. They prefer to think of themselves as watchdogs of the powerful and as agents for those who have little or no power. The roots of this normative theory are embedded in the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment, which conceptualizes journalism as a “fourth estate” that keeps watch over the other three estates (executive, legislature, and judiciary).
The watchdog model strongly implies that the news media should be giving a lot of coverage to economic inequality, because that would be in the best interest of the bottom 90th percentile of Americans. But that’s not happening, because news beats are heavily anchored in the centers of power (e.g., Congress, city halls, state houses, Wall Street) rather than in organizations representing the interests of ordinary Americans.
A good example is news coverage of unions that represent school teachers. “The shallow, stereotyped and overwhelmingly negative coverage of teachers’ unions places them in a defensive position in the national news media and forces them to fight an uphill battle for deeper public appreciation of their connection to meaningful reform,” the social science research company FrameWorks Institute concluded in after decades of research.
The watchdog role also implies that the news media can be a source of radical or significant social change. The reality, though, is that even hard-hitting investigative stories that draw attention to illegal and unethical behavior perform a system-maintenance function that benefits those in power. These stories contain moral narratives that support dominant values and the law as well as elite-controlled institutions.
A more valid canine analogy than either watchdog or lap dog is guard dog — a term coined in the 1980s by my Ph.D. advisor, Phillip J. Tichenor, and his colleagues. News content generally supports dominant political and economic institutions and elites. Still, it can and does contain stories critical of them, especially when elites criticize each other or when they break the law. Trump may have escaped judicial accountability for many of his actions, but the mainstream news media continue to publish a lot of stories about his voluminous violations of widely accepted values and norms.
The bottom line is that news media are partly to blame for increasing economic inequality. Without sustained coverage, a social problem cannot be solved. One story here and there is not enough. A good example was a three-part series published in the Washington Post about three years ago. It was insightful but had no meaningful effect on public policy because political elites ignored its call for action.
Of course, news organizations across the country could ignore elites and band together to provide a comprehensive series of stories about the problem of economic inequality. That would draw attention to the issue but, at the same time, would anger many of the elite sources they rely upon to collect the news. Journalism is not just a public good — it’s a business, too.
Consequently, the problem of economic inequality likely will continue to grow, at least into the foreseeable future under a Trump administration. Nothing will change until elites and the media start talking about it — or, alternatively, when inequality gaps create major social problems that threaten the stability of society (such as defaulting on the national debt).
In my view, an economic crisis is a far more likely outcome than proactive policy changes. And when that crisis arrives, the news media will perform its guard dog role, framing the carnage from the perspective of those in power, who will blame everyone except the massive tax cuts that are responsible for gaps in wealth as well as the rising national debt.