Bad News about Media and Democracy

 

Media is going through a serious identity crisis for over a decade now, not only in the US, but all over the world. Journalists turned into a caste and media are becoming important stakeholders and even part of the political decision-making. They are serving audiences and evaluate their competencies based on how many clicks and comments their articles gathered. What about the public they are supposed to serve? Who are their readers they are expecting to pay for their articles.

Journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon analyses in her latest book Bad News. How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy the radical switch to the left of the American media catering for an educated and rich/middle-class audience. 

´We need a journalism that exposes the class divide in America rather than concealing it; whereby it continues to grow, and not because the working class is worthy of your pity or your compassion´. 

Based on interviews, facts, figures and personal observations, Ungar-Sargon outlines the evolution the journalism in America went through, from a lucrative endeavour aimed at informing a wide range of readers to a corporate enterprise whose survival depends on advertising for products affordable for middle to high-classes. Therefore, this kind of audience should be attracted with a content which is expected from this audience. ´Journalists today are an American elite, a caste that has abandoned the working class and the poor as it rose to the status of American elite´. Therefore conservative institutions as FOXNews made the switch serving the working-class and their agenda. ´Today´s meritocratic elites subscribe to the view that not only wealth but also political power should be the province of the highly educated´. 

The book, although offers an unique and documented overview of the historical evolution of journalism and its lack of diversity in terms of coverage and approaches, it does not consider a couple of elements inherent to the American society - at least, among which a general corporatist orientation which touches upon other professions as well, but also a professionalisation of many other domains, among which journalism as well. Being a journalist, as well as a real estate agent or a shop keeper may require a high degree of professional preparedness, which includes a high-education diploma. An important question would have been at what extent journalism schools do prepare the future journalists to deal with a variety of topics of interests, including adherence to certain ethics´ code. Relevant would have been also the positioning of different journalists´ associations on topics regarding professional standards and ethnic diversity. What about alternative publications and initiatives that may maintain - online particularly - a diverse list of approaches and reporting?

Is journalism completely dead? Can it be revived? 

Batya Ungar-Sargon predicts that ´We must begin to listen to each other again´ without delving too much into details.

I personally think that publications like NYT and other classical sources of information in America are, indeed, biased and not necessarily interested in informing the public opinion. However, I am hopeful that besides the algorithms who literally infested the media reception and the simplistic, copy-pasted like approach to race and ethnicity, there are individual voices that may revive the interest in information and would answer the need of the public opinion of being informed. After all, it is how democracy - no matter where - will survive. 

 

World War C by Dr. Sanjay Gupta

 

American surgeon and CNN correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta outlines in World War C the further influence the pandemic may have on our everyday life. Is it too early to make predictions? In fact, the speed the world changed and adapted to the restrictions of the virus is tremendous and based on those observations only it is not too risky to assume at least a low level predictability of future trends and patterns.

When the first details of the virus were revealed, Dr. Gupta was having a glass of wine with Francis Ford Coppola assuming casually that an Apocalypse Now was still far from happening. As a reporter who covered the SARS outburst in Asia, he, as many others - including the humble writer of this book review who survived SARS in Asia in a very easygoing way - thought that the new Corona Virus outbreak is either an isolated or easy to contain phenomenon. But it was far from it.

This virus was and continue to be considered like no other pathogen ´the humanity ever seen´. Particularly its transmission pattern defy any other previous model, with a rather random-basis risk of transmission affecting severely affected immune systems. 

Relevant for the times of online conspiracies and anti-scientific feelings, there are extensive chapters dedicated to scientifically explaining the power of vaccines - any vaccines - and the opportunities open up by it for a medically safer realm.  

What I really appreciated in World War C, besides the relatively easy language appealing - hopefully - to many of those not yet sure about the advantages of vaccination - is the reference to the society impact and references. Thus, the recent Corona crisis is not only a medical crisis, but it displays the signs of a system struggle therefore the need of a comprehensive reconsideration of the state policies in this respect, but also a health crisis of the American public - among others - affected by unhealthy eating habits. It involves as well various economic, cultural, social and psychological aspects that may be taken into consideration for a better understanding of the mentality shift we are experiencing in the last year and a half, as well as its impact on our everyday life.

World War C by Dr. Sanjay Gupta is an useful book for students and readers interested in health policies and particularly the ways in which the Corona Virus crisis is challenging our daily lives. As the situation is further under development, this book is relevant for a specific moment in time and resumes intelligently reactions on both sides of the power spectrum in America and the future implications for the rest of the world. 

About Caste, in America

The first thing I´ve noticed from the first until the last page of Caste by Isabel Wilkerson is the beauty of the writing. It is not common sense to associate the fine choice of words and refined paragraphs with academic writing. Rather the opposite, as the point of nonfiction is, among others, to prove various points of views and analyse specific topics. The search for beautiful words though is the last priority of a nonfiction writer as the choice and use of neutral, simple words and clear sentences may serve the purpose of exposing and explaining a certain reality.

However, in this case, the beautiful writing makes the topic more approachable and easier to understand. Caste is a well documented book which uses the author´s personal observations as well as surveys and other academic articles and books on the topic, with a particular focus on India, Germany and the US.

Caste is not necessarily a comparative book but it uses comparison in order to outline the specificities of the American class and caste system. Although the references to the Indian - Hindu-oriented - caste system may provide useful information about how the caste system really works, particularly in issues regarding the main caste pillars, the frequent mention of Nazi Germany and the ostracization of its Jewish population, as compared to the situation of African-American, during and beyong the slavery is fortuitous. For a very simple reason: Nazi Germany wanted to make the Jews dissapear through systematic killing. The discrimination, the cruelty and terror, the purity laws all were aimed to lead, sooner or later, to the disappearance of Jews. An aim which was not endeavoured by the American political system.

´Just as DNA is the code of instructions for all development, caste is the operating system for economic, political and social interaction in the United States, from the time of its gestation´. The American caste system started in 1619, after the arrival of the first Africans to Virginia colony. One of the first decisions of the representatives of the colony was to decide who could be enslaved for life and who could not. Together with race, the caste system is the very basis of the American society: ´Caste is the bones, race is the skin´. Through caste power, resources, respect, authority and ´assumption of competence´ are reproduced on a daily basis. It creates social and political habits and the set the ground of further social and political stability. It combines elements pertaining to evolution and biological laws, but also to theology - the divine Will who designed the society and its members in certain ways - and professional choices. Its heritability enforces a system over and over again, particularly through a legal system which is race-based oriented.

Members of the lower caste - in this case the African-Americans - may end up behaving as they are expecting to: assuming the role assigned, avoiding conflict and delaying the moment when the system may be challenged. Actually, by keeping the members of this caste at a non-educated, uninformed, weak level. They are powerless because they were meant to be this way and even ended up assuming this status themselves.

Although I agree that the election of an African-American president was ´the greatest departure from the script of the American caste system´, only the election in itself did not change, Isabel Wilkerson fails to explain in detail the lack of a clear plan to empower the African-American community. The election of Trump was probably the counter-reaction of the caste system, but things would have been considerably smoothly with a different set of policies aimed to challenge the caste system. After all, Obama had eight full years to do it.

Caste is a fundamental book for understanding the historical and social basis of the caste system in America and its impact of other (non-white) communities, particularly the African-Americans.