Investing Journalistic Resources

It has been hard not to notice, over the past few weeks, the incredible amount of energy—and human resources—that CNN has invested in the disappearance of Malaysia Flight 307.   Their coverage of other tragedies pales by comparison.

This was brought home today when a six-year-old boy brought a 45mm handgun to school in the same district where my grandson goes to kindergarten.  It reminded me of all the school shootings that have made the headlines on CNN and elsewhere over the years, from Columbine to the knifings in the Murrysville, Pa., high school earlier this month.  The Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in December 2012 gained a fair amount of coverage, but that, too, became old news after a few weeks. 

Wouldn’t it be nice if CNN—or MSNBC or CBS or Fox—decided to stay with these stories, keeping them in the public consciousness (and conscience) and exploring the implications.  I am not suggesting a continuing rant on gun control (Piers Morgan tried that, to his detriment), but follow-up investigation about the impact of this and other massacres on the individuals and communities involved.  How have the families of the murdered children fared in the 18 months since Sandy Hook?  What new policies are schools around the nation implementing to avoid a similar disaster?  How has the family of the perpetrator responded?  What new laws, if any, are being considered?  What kinds of counseling services were implemented?  How has the event affected home sales or business start-ups in the community?  In other words, how has the Sandy Hook massacre affected, long-term, life in that community?  What can other communities learn from the experience? 

Since Sandy Hook in December 2012, there have been at least 58 additional school shootings—at both public schools and higher education—in the United States.  This does not include the knifings in Murrysville, just shootings.  Given how common this sort of thing is in the U.S., perhaps it would even be good to compare events and look for commonalities that might help us better predict and, perhaps, avoid future killings.

It seems to me that this would be much more in the community interest than a continuing story line about a lost airplane.   Responsible news agencies, one could argue, should invest their resources in stories that have a true public impact.   The continued violence in our culture is worth at least as much attention.

Voter Rights: The New Civil Rights Movement

It has occurred to me recently that the Tea Party folks missed the point somewhat when they chose their name.  The Boston Tea Party was not a protest about taxes.  It was a protest about being taxed without representation.  The Bostonians were complaining that the British oligarchs had imposed a tea tax on the colonies without colonists having any valid representation in Parliament, so that their needs would be considered in the process of making laws that affected them.

I was reminded of this important distinction as we celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.   These remarkable laws enfranchised millions of Americans to fully participate in our society by allowing them to fully participate in the election process.   Half a century later, I fear we have already taken big steps backward to disenfranchise our citizens.  In the process, we run the risk of creating a new oligarchy at a scale and rate that will destroy American democracy.   Three examples illustrate the problem:

1.            Gerrymandering.   I live in Central Pennsylvania, where my university town has been divided up so that it is part of several conservative, rural state assembly districts, essentially nullifying any liberal tendencies of the university community.   This idea—of re-engineering district borders in order to ensure conservative majorities—has been a national conservative strategy for years. 

2.            Voter  Disenfranchisement.    Throughout the Obama administration, we have seen states attempting to limit access to the poor and racial minorities by requiring visual ID, limiting voting hours, etc.  The impact here is to disenfranchise specific classes of individual voters entirely.  This year, for instance, the Huffington Post reported that Ohio reduced early voting and decided that voting places will close at 5 p.m. on Election Day.  The result is to effectively block access for many working-class citizens, minorities, and seniors.

3.             The Influence of Special Interests.   The Citizens United and, most recently, McCutcheon rulings give corporations and other “associations of individuals” the ability to give huge amounts of money to political candidates.   The impact is to essentially compromise our elected officials, leaving individual citizens with no real power as citizens and no real representation in government.  This is today’s equivalent of the tea tax that led to the Boston tea party.

The result is that, 50 years after the passage of the Voter Rights Act, many American citizens no longer have full access to representation.  Some have been denied the opportunity through redistricting that puts them in a permanent minority position; others have been denied access to the voting booth.  And, regardless of who wins, many candidates are compromised by the huge amounts of money invested in their elections by corporations and other special interests, leaving individual citizens with no practical representation.

What we need is not a Tea Party focused on eliminating government services for citizens, but a new Civil Rights movement that is committed to ensuring that all Citizens have equal and effective access to representation at the State and Federal levels.