Misha, is Redefining Progress the group that developed the Genunine
Progress Indicator, GPI, that counts the costs associated with say cancer
or automobile accidents as a negative number instead of adding them to the
GNP/GDP which defines them as "growth" and therefore "a good thing"
economically speaking for the economy? Mike Miller
>Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 22:52:11 -0800
>From: Misha <mgs23@pacbell.net>
>Subject: 20/20, Stossel, Avery
>
>Howdy, all--
>
>I've been following the SANET discussion about the 20/20 slam of
>organics and John Stossel's journalism with interest.
>
>The current issue of /Brill's/ (March 2000) has a lengthy analysis of
>his methods, "Laissez-Faire TV," written by Ted Rose. You can pick it
>up at your newsstand (look for Martin Sheen playing the president,
>from the TV series "The West Wing," on the cover). Or you can wait a
>month and check the archives at the Brill's Web site:
>http://www.brillscontent.com/
>
>/Brill's Content/, is a magazine dedicated, in the words of its
>publisher, to sorting out truth from lies in the newsmedia. I
>personally consider that a task on the order of Psyche sorting seeds
>in the Greek myth, but admire anyone who tries. (If you recall the
>myth, she enlisted the help of ants.)
>
>What caught my eye about the /Brill's/ piece is its tracing of
>Stossel's career: he started out as a consumer reporter for WCBS in
>New York City, and won notice, acclaim, and airtime championing the
>rights of Just Plain Folks. But it appears that it wasn't from the
>heart or a sense of compassion. As evidenced by the fact that as soon
>as he had the chance--some years after getting hired by the highly
>prestigious corporate medium of ABC News in 1981--he took on a
>corporate viewpoint.
>
>That was about the point in US history where the exploits of Nader's
>Raiders became old hat, journalistically, and the exploits of Wall
>Street cokeheads, Sloane Rangers, assorted preppies and other
>nouveaux riches started getting more media attention. In 1981,
>remember, the jingoistic toadies of the White House Press Corps
>reported with uncritical enthusiasm how $11 million was spent on the
>presidential inauguration in January, Nancy Reagan dropped $206,508
>on new china for the White House in September, and Ronnie gave away
>30 million pounds of moldy surplus cheese to poor Americans around
>Christmas, in the same year he busted the Professional Air Traffic
>Controllers Union (PATCO).
>
>After going to ABC News--do I remember correctly that former ABC
>sports producer Roone Arledge was running the news division
>then?--according to Rose's account, Stossel had "a growing
>realization that he (and all the other reporters) had been asking
>the wrong questions. ...Journalists and politicians tend to focus on
>the benefits of government action, according to Stossel, without
>considering the negative impact of those regulations on the free
>market."
>
>And what, my friends, could be sexier, in the years when Ron handed
>the baton to George Herbert Walker Bush, than busting on the portions
>of the government that still held out for giving a damn about
>citizens? In those intensely mean-spirited years, the news pendulum
>(backed by corporations' ballooning PR budgets) swung to hyping the
>virtues of destroying any program, effort, or viewpoint that kept the
>rich from consolidating their wealth as fast as possible.
>
>So Stossel, with what appears to be a good radar for the zeitgeist,
>and a solid sense of how to cash in on that, built his reporting fame
>on a very limited notion of cost, a pit-bull style (see the /Brill's/
>sidebar on the chainsaw job he did on Philadelphia dentist Owen Rogal
>in 1989), and caring more about ratings than objective analysis.
>
>Rose points out that Stossel thinks, for instance, that it's
>outrageous for Ralph Nader to champion the mandating of seat belts in
>school buses. Stossel reports risk assessment studies--and concurs
>with them--that the risk of an accident is low enough to not justify
>the cost of as much as $1,800 per bus to fit them with seat belts. (I
>personally think that a child's life, health, or safety is worth a
>tad bit more than $1,800. But in the era of Bottom-Line Bottom
>Feeding, accruing profit is Job One. Gambling on risk assessments,
>like gambling on The Market, makes you more imaginary money than
>exercising the precautionary principle or investing in non-wealthy
>people or building the soil. And it's faaaaar less complicated for
>those who prefer an entitlement or lottery based view of society.)
>
>Nader responds that Stossel's concept of cost is limited, when you
>consider the benefits beyond protecting children in accidents. For
>example, children who become accustomed to buckling up are more
>likely to do so as adults. Calculate how much adults' failure to
>buckle themselves--and their children--up costs society. Then compare
>that to the cost of educating children to use seat belts in the
>direct, daily, simple, tactile way of providing them seat belts and
>teaching them to use them.
>
>Ah, but that's way too complicated.
>
>How do we tell that more complex story, when it's easier--and a
>helluva lot more macho--to bust on regulators, slash at "the
>government," and pillory consumer activists? This interests me
>because part of my new work is about communicating this kind of
>information. Accurate pricing, that reflects real costs, is just one
>of our work areas. We at Redefining Progress develop indicators and
>methods that aim to re-internalize the externalized costs of a
>consumerist, growth-based society. It's one of the fabulous
>challenges of my career, to help this group figure out how to tell
>those stories in compelling ways. And to strategize on getting heard
>above the mass media bass drumbeat of economic boom.
>
>Given that embittered cynicism and an addiction to irony seem to
>characterize the American social scene right now, I believe it'll
>take a zeitgeist shift toward more compassion, for us to be able to
>tell those stories in the mass media and be heard. And in the
>meantime, we need all the humor, warmth, feisty satire, and sincerity
>we can manage. Will that win out? I have no idea. But the alternative
>isn't viable, IMO.
>
>As for Stossel and Avery--in this case the medium is very much the
>message. Stossel doesn't do his own research, and Avery's notion of
>research often appears to derive from fantasy (judging from his
>invention of the CDC study of /E. coli/ in organic food).
>
>It's unfortunate, the amount of damage that a story like the 20/20
>one (or any of Avery's much-publicized distortions) can cause organic
>farmers, sustainable farmers, and the honest, soul-searching,
>painstaking work we have all done to build alternatives to Fordist
>Food, Yuppie Chow, and FrankenMunchies. My experience in sustainable
>ag, throughout the 1990s, is that we, like organics, have not been
>nearly assertive enough in our communications. In a mediascape such
>as exists today, and is evolving rapidly, we ignore that at our peril.
>
>One last point. I've been an organic grower since the mid-1970s, and
>I haven't yet put excrement on my food. So these hypnotically
>repeated assertions of poop on food fascinate me. The fact that
>certain people are reaching so far to equate our the products of our
>movement with the products of bowel movements...why that would get
>projected onto organic food in particular would make somebody an
>interesting Ph.D. thesis in psychology. :^)
>
>
>peace
>misha
>
>
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>Michele Gale-Sinex
>
>Home office: 415-504-6474 (504-MISH)
>Home office fax: Same as above, phone first for enabling
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>The man does not know enough to keep the beans out of chili. --Molly Ivins
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