(Photo credit: Flickr user psd)
The media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) has put out a new report that looks at the national media’s coverage of poverty in the United States.
FAIR looked at six months of campaign media coverage — Ai??starting on January 1st and ending on June 23rd — on eight news outlets: CBS Evening News, ABC World News, NBC Nightly News, PBS NewsHour, NPR’s All Things Considered, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Newsweek.
It found that “just 17 of the 10,489 campaign stories studied (0.2 percent) addressed poverty in a substantive way.”
As we covered here recently, a fifth of American children live in poverty. Now we know in even greater detail how the facts about those children and otherAi??impoverishedAi??Americans aren’t getting out in the media and the bloodstream of the political debate of the election.
I calculated this and came up with 0.0016207 which would be rounded to .002 not .2.
Its been addressed indirectly, the republicans, sociopaths that they are, representatives of the haves, don’t believe in government and so will turn a blind eye to the plight of the poor in contrast to the Democrats who do believe in government, the notion that we are all in this together, will continue to support and enhance as necessary the government assistance.
The issue is that Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid are treated as a binary solution to a problem set everyone agrees exists (poverty). In other words if the government does not force the solution of taking from everyone to solve the problem then it won’t be solved. I reject that conclusion. I completely agree with the statement that one of the richest countries in the world should not have citizens that can’t get medical care. However, forcing other citizens to pay for it without choice is not the only way and is not justified. An oversimplified analogy is someone needing blood and the solution being grab and force the nearest person to give blood. The ethical solution is to ask! Supporting the government to have these programs is basically saying that you have no faith in the goodness of people to volunteer themselves to help and insted want to commit theft from citizens to support this welfare state. If you took off social security and instead gave people the option to contribute to a program to help the elderly in need, I think you would be surprised how many would give of their own accord. Your good intentions hide the reality of voting in oppression and sacrificing freedom for security.
Regarding poverty:
Press Release: Sister Simone Campbell and “Nuns on the Bus” Invite Presidential Candidates to Spend Day with Catholic Sisters and Struggling Families
http://www.networklobby.org/news-media/press-release-sister-simone-campbell-and-%E2%80%9Cnuns-bus%E2%80%9D-invite-presidential-candidates-spend-
“Nuns on the Bus” Riding on the Staten Island Ferry
http://www.networklobby.org/NunsOnTheFerry