Third World America - Arianna Huffington [73]
America needs to engage in a similar soul-stirring questioning of many unquestioned assumptions. We need to move from a bottom-line-obsessed corporate culture to a “triple bottom line” approach that calls for corporations to pay attention to both their stockholders and their stakeholders—those who may not have invested money in the company but clearly have a de facto investment in the air they breathe, the food they eat, and the communities they live in.
We can’t afford to just remodel the Wall Street casino. We need to collectively decide that we want to return to being a country where middle-class Americans are put first, and where trickle up—not trickle down—is the economic order of the day.
THIRD WORLD AMERICA WILL NOT BE TELEVISED … IT WILL BE BLOGGED, TWEETED, AND UPLOADED TO YOUTUBE
There is a reason our founding fathers made sure that freedom of the press was guaranteed in the very first amendment. As we’ve seen time and time again, governments—as well as giant corporations and Wall Street banks—are prone to corruption. And when that corruption has metastasized and actually overtaken the political and financial systems, a dogged and independent press becomes more essential than ever.
As Justice Potter Stewart wrote of the Pentagon Papers, “Without an informed and free press there cannot be an enlightened people.” He might have specified a free press not in bed with the government it is supposed to keep an eye on.76 Far too often over the past twenty years, members of the media have traded their independence for an all-access pass to the halls of power.
Don’t forget: With a few honorable exceptions, the media failed to serve the public interest by missing the two biggest stories of our time—the run-up to the war in Iraq and the financial meltdown. In both instances, there were plenty of people who got it right—who saw what was coming and warned about it—but they were drowned out by the thumping sound of journalists walking in lockstep. As a result, we’ve had far too many autopsies of what went wrong and not enough biopsies of what was about to go wrong.
The media is also addicted to covering what Bill Maher describes as the “bright, shiny objects” over here, distracting attention from the real story over there—trivial stories that draw our attention away from harder-to-understand stories, such as what caused the financial meltdown or why Congress isn’t reforming Wall Street.
We saw this last year with the media’s breathless, wall-to-wall coverage of the Balloon Boy nonstory—coverage that continued on for days even after we learned the balloon was empty, with TV anchor after TV anchor expressing deep concern for Attic Boy (a more fitting name since he never was in the balloon).77
Who knew the media was so worried about the welfare of children? Well, as it turns out, their concern extends only to children in certain circumstances—such as when they are thought to be trapped in a runaway balloon. Why do we feel so much for Balloon Boy and so little for the hundreds of thousands of children affected by the financial meltdown and the downward spiral their families’ lives are in?
What if we could repurpose some of that concern for the more than 1.5 million children who are homeless or the 51 percent of homeless children who are under the age of six?78, 79 How about some attention to the 75 to 100 percent increase in the number of children who are newly homeless because of the foreclosure crisis?80 Or the 14 million American children living in poverty?81
If we are going to halt our transformation into Third World America, we need the media to step up to its role as watchdog and storyteller, holding our leaders’ feet to the fire and speaking truth to power. Stories that put flesh and blood on the data connect us with one another and put the spotlight on the effects that lobbyist-driven laws have on the day-to-day lives of middle-class families.
“People work for justice when their hearts are stirred by specific lives and situations that develop our capacity to feel empathy, to imagine ourselves as someone else,