| Number 243 | February 13, 2003 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, Welcome to all the new readers this week! I always appreciate feedback, so send along your comments if you have any. And don’t forget to send along Nygaard Notes to your friends – word of mouth is the secret ingredient in the Notes. I think it’s amusing sometimes to add my own title to the “Quote” of the Week. So I’m going to do that sometimes. I hope you find it amusing, as well. This week and next will be a series of short pieces on recent media stories that I think are quite revealing. Sometimes, if they are short enough, I call such collections “A Stroll Through the News With Nygaard.” But these didn’t seem short enough (and next week’s look to be even longer!) So I thought about calling this one “A Trek Through the News With Nygaard,” and follow it with “An Interminable Slog Through the News With Nygaard.” But I think you can see why I decided not to call them anything. As always, we can just call it Nygaard Notes, and I think that’s good enough. ‘Til next week, Nygaard |
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The world is gearing up for massive demonstrations on March 20, the one-year anniversary of the start of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. I’ll be saying more about those actions in coming weeks, but right now I want to encourage people in the Twin Cities area to check out what looks to be a great conference right here in Minneapolis next week. Organizers promise that the all-day conference—called “STORM Against War at Home and Abroad”—will be an attempt to“re-focus our movement, build stronger connections between local activists, artists and organizations working for peace and justice, and explore creative new tactics for these new times.” The conference starts at 10:00 with an opening session on “ Iraq and the Anti-War Movement – Then and Now,” and continues with all kinds of workshops through the day on many different facets of the war and related domestic cutbacks and repression. The day will end with spoken word by local artists and with people creating banners and signs for the anniversary protest on March 20. Unbelievably, the whole thing only costs $10.00! For loads more information, go to the website http://www.antiwarcommittee.org/Conference.htm. Or call ‘em up at 612-379-3899. |
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From the New York Times of November 5 comes this week’s Health Care Outrage of the Week (H-COW), with the headline “Report Cites Danger in Overtime for Nurses.” From the text: “Many hospitals and nursing homes are endangering patients by allowing or requiring nurses to work more than 12 hours a day, the National Academy of Sciences said on Tuesday. “The report, from the academy's Institute of Medicine, said, ‘Long work hours pose one of the most serious threats to patient safety, because fatigue slows reaction time, decreases energy, diminishes attention to detail, and otherwise contributes to errors.’ “Many hospitals and nursing homes have too few nurses to take proper care of patients, the panel said. “The Bush administration said last year that it had no plans to set minimum staffing levels for nursing homes, in part because such requirements would generate billions of dollars in additional costs for Medicaid, Medicare and nursing homes. “But the National Academy of Sciences said the administration should do what it declined to do last year: set ‘minimum standards for registered and licensed nurse staffing in nursing homes.’ “The academy found overwhelming evidence that as levels of nurse staffing rose the quality of care improved, because nurses had more time to monitor patients and can more readily detect changes in their conditions. “Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who has been investigating nursing homes since 1997, said he saw no need for the government to specify the proper number of nurses. ‘If we mandate minimum staffing levels, the nursing home industry will want more money,’ Senator Grassley said. ‘It seems nursing homes already receive plenty of money to do the job’ — more than $58 billion a year from Medicare and Medicaid. Senator Grassley recently secured a promise from the industry to use $4 billion in Medicare money to improve services to patients in the next decade.” The following paragraph concluded the paper version, but did not appear in the online version found in the Lexis/Nexis database: “Representative Lois Capps, Democrat of California, said the report showed that Congress needed to provide more money for the education and recruitment of nurses, a goal endorsed by some Republicans including Rep. Edward Whitfield of Kentucky.” For any of you readers who reside in Iowa and have any experience at all with nursing homes, here is the phone number for Senator Grassley: 202-224-3744. To send an email go to: http://grassley.senate.gov/webform.htm. |
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This week’s “Quote” of the Week has the Senate majority leader telling us that it is “impossible” for the richest nation in the world to provide health care for its citizens. That’s a remarkable statement, and I salute the New York Times for quoting him. But the Times makes a comment elsewhere in the article from which that quotation was drawn that reveals a problem that is all too common in the media’s coverage of this issue. The Times said, “Coverage for the uninsured is emerging as a significant issue in the elections this year. The major Democratic candidates for president say the nation faces a crisis of soaring health costs and declining coverage. They have offered solutions more sweeping and more expensive than those proposed by President Bush.” These statements have a couple of problems, actually. One problem is that the “solutions” offered by the Democratic candidates are quite different from one another, so talking about them as if they are all of a kind confuses the issue. But the big problem, as I pointed out in my recent series on health care, is the word “expensive.” It is highly debatable whether or not any of the Democratic candidates’ “solutions” would be more “expensive” than Bush’s plans to further privatize our system of health care. They would be, I suppose, if one considers only direct government expenditures in calculating the costs of providing health care. However, if one takes into account the costs to businesses and households of our current system of health care—such as soaring insurance premiums, workers’ compensation costs, out-of-pocket expenditures, and so forth—then it is clear that a more “expensive” government program may actually save money for many individuals, making it LESS expensive for most of us. This is almost certainly the case with a universal system of guaranteed care, such as the one supported by Democratic candidates Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton. But I suppose they aren’t “major” candidates. (See Nygaard Notes #241 for much more on this subject, and #240 for some ideas on what to do about it.) |
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When you see a headline or news report about U.S. behavior in another country and it doesn’t sound right to you but you can’t figure out why, here’s a trick to use: Simply reverse the names and see what happens. Take, for example, this headline, which appeared in the local daily paper on January 18: “U.S. Tries to Give Moderates Edge in Iraqi Elections” OK, now try the trick: “Iraq Tries to Give Moderates Edge in U.S. Elections.” Sounds outrageous, doesn’t it? It’s a good trick, and when one adds a little imagination, it becomes a useful analytical tool to use in understanding the world. What do I mean? Well, imagine that the Iraqi government has recently invaded the U.S. and has occupied the country. And imagine that, before any “election” has taken place, the Iraqi occupation force has sold off enormous chunks of the public infrastructure to Iraqi companies, and changed our laws to allow 100 percent of the profits derived from the ownership of those assets to be taken out of the U.S. and shipped back to Iraq. (I know this sounds almost insane, given the power differential, you have to also imagine that Iraq is powerful and the U.S. is not.) Now, go a little further and imagine what would happen if the Iraqis defined “moderate” to mean a United Statesian who generally agrees with the above policies, and who does not care that the U.S. Constitution outlaws the privatization of key state assets, and also bars foreigners from owning U.S. firms. (This is all true in the current case of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, by the way.) Now, imagine that one of these U.S. “moderates” decided to run for the presidency of the first post-occupation government of the United States. What would be your attitude toward such a “moderate” when you found out that the Iraqi government was “trying to give moderates an edge in U.S. elections?” OK, now let’s try to take one final step. If you were a patriotic United Statesian, what would be your best hope for regaining your sovereignty? (Remember: In this fantasy, Iraq is a “democracy.”) Wouldn’t a lot of your hopes rest on the Iraqi people and their refusal to allow their government to run roughshod over international law and U.S. sovereignty? So, that’s a sample of what you can do once you know the “Reversing the Headline Trick.” |
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One of the most common and insidious ways that reporters change a simple fact into a matter of opinion is the practice that is referred to in the journalism business by the sophisticated name “He Said, She Said.” That little phrase refers to the journalistic convention of inserting something called “balance” into a story by quoting two differing opinions on two different sides of the issue. So, if a reporter faithfully records that “He said” the sky is blue, and “She said” the sky is green, the article thus produced is said to be “balanced.” It sounds kind of ridiculous, and it is. A lot of journalists also think it is, by the way. Here’s a great example. The headline read, “Death Penalty Plan Is Attacked; A Coalition Said the Governor's Plan Would Be Costly and Unfairly Target Minorities.” This was above an article in the local paper this past December 5th, talking about the attempt by Minnesota’s governor to reinstate the death penalty in Minnesota (after almost 100 years of civilization in my state). This particular article raised the issue of the racial injustice involved in administering the death penalty in the United States. In that context, Capitol reporter Dane Smith wrote “Black leaders contend that blacks, who make up 13 percent of the U.S. population, make up 42 percent of the nation's Death Row inmates.” That’s the “He said” in this story. Note the use of the word “contend.” By using that little word, the reporter implies that there is a “She said” which would be, I guess, that blacks do not make up that percentage of Death Row inmates. Now, there are appropriate times to use the word “contend” in a news report. For example, there was recently a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the effects of snowmobile use in Yellowstone Park. Reporter Dan Egan stated that “Snowmobile advocates contend that the machines’ impacts on the park and its wildlife are overblown.” That’s a matter of opinion on a subjective assessment: maybe the impacts are “overblown,” maybe they’re not. In such cases, it’s only fair to cite both “sides,” and point out which side “contends” what. It’s not a matter of fact; it’s a matter of opinion, values, perspective, etc. Now, consider the Star Trib’s use of the word “contend.” While it is no doubt true that “Black leaders contend” that black people are incarcerated on Death Row in numbers wildly disproportionate to their numbers in the general population, it is also a matter of easily-documented fact. Just to be sure, I went and looked at statistics from the U.S. Departments of Justice and the Census and, sure enough, black people certainly do make up 13 percent of the U.S. population, and they certainly do make up 42 percent of the population on Death Row. (Actually, the most recently-posted stats from Justice are from the end of 2002, and put the number of blacks on Death Row at almost 44 percent; the “black leaders” were using more recent, and likely more accurate, numbers from the NAACP, which say 42 percent.) So, what is the effect of reporting a fact as if it were no more than a “contention?” Maybe not too much in this individual case, but when simple matters of fact are routinely reported as if they were open to debate, this tends to give readers the idea that there really are no “facts” at all. And if that’s true, then how is one supposed to decide who to believe when the mass media report in the “He Said, She Said” fashion? My theory is that, when there is a vacuum where facts should be, the space will be filled by other kinds of information, such as innuendo, convenient mythology, self-serving fantasy, and deliberate propaganda. If you don’t think so, go turn on your radio—the AM side of the dial, preferably— and listen closely. Activist tip: The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty is on the web at http://www.ncadp.org/. The group Minnesotans Against the Death Penalty can be reached at 529 S. 7th St., Suite 636, Minneapolis, MN 55415 or by phone at 612-373-9174. |