Putting People Last: Deconstructing Two AP Stories

"General Motors plans to eliminate 25,000 jobs in the United States by 2008" begins the AP story by John Porretto, an attention-getting lead. But it is virtually the last time in the article that indicates this might be bad news.

Do we get quotes about the people who will be losing their jobs, and what this will do to their lives, or even to the economy? What this might portend for America's manufacturing base? Not hardly.

No, this is a report on the announcement by Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner speaking at GM's annual shareholder meeting, where he "said the capacity and employment cuts will generate annual savings of roughly $2.5 billion."

The story reports on the job eliminations as one of four strategies to revive the company. It reports Wagoner's claim that the company's expenses for employee health-care puts GM at a "significant disadvantage versus foreign-based competitors," without questioning that statement, or mentioning that other nation's reduce the burden on their industries by maintaining government health care support.

But it does say that "Investors welcomed the news, sending GM shares up modestly" while nevertheless quoting an "equity strategiest" saying that "U.S. automakers will continue to ship jobs overseas."

The rest of the story emphasizes GM's need to cut health care costs, and dark warnings about what might happen to the company if negotiations to do so with the United Auto Workers aren't successful.

The subject of this story is the health of GM and its stockholders. There is not a word about the health of its workers.

Of course this is just one story. Care to lay odds on another one appearing that takes the worker's point of view?

Here's another AP story from today:

"Global military spending in 2004 broke the $1 trillion barrier for the first time since the Cold War, boosted by the U.S. war against terror and the growing defense budgets of India and China, a European think tank said Tuesday. "

Led by the United States, which accounted for almost half of all military expenditure, the world spent $1.035 trillion on defense, equal to 2.6% of global gross domestic product, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said."

But the title of the institute holds just about the only instance of the word "peace" in the rest of the article, which stresses the economic facts and the geopolitical situation.

Nor does the story reflect on the human cost of all this armament, or the harm to the natural environment, or the moral and cultural costs of economies built on armaments.

Nor does it mention the U.S. reliance on military manufacturing and arms sales as opposed to other manufacturing. Not a word here about health care benefits draining profits.

What is the point of this quick deconstruction? Both consciously and unconsciously, news writers frame new information in ways they believe will highlight significance and interest readers. Judgments of significance and interest rely on assumptions outside the story, on what the society currently deems important. The Zeitgeist.

When editors place a story on a murder on page one, it is because they assumes readers will find the murder horrifying. Further, they will assume it will be of interest because the victim or killer or both, are celebrities. The story will not go into the economic benefits obtained by the killer, except as motive. We are assumed to be more horrified at the killing of a (prominent) human being than in the impact on a company's stocks.

In these two stories, we are not assumed to be horrified by thousands more umemployed, or a world that spends a trillion dollars on devices with the sole purpose of tearing human beings to shreds.

Thirty years ago, the GM story would probably have been about the impact on workers. But that was then, and this is Bushworld, a descendant of Reaganworld. We all know more about the stock market now than any but a handful of people did thirty years ago. We are presumed to identify with corporations more than unions, with stockholders more than workers.

This is the AP, not the Wall Street Journal. This is the wire service that goes to every news outlet in America.

This is where we are, and who we are, and what we have become.