Editor's Cut

It's About the People

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

When it comes to the media, we hear a lot of talk about a conservative-liberal divide, or the thoroughly discredited idea of a liberal bias. But the divide worth paying attention to is between those who are represented (and listened to) in media coverage, and those who aren't--namely the powerful, and then everyone else.

A revealing new study on media coverage of the economic crisis--released Monday by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ)--shows that little attention has been paid to how the worst collapse since the Great Depression impacted ordinary Americans. PEJ examined 9,950 stories that ran between February 1 and August 31 on television, radio, cable, newspapers and online. It found that a whopping 38 percent were focused on three topics--the banking industry and its bailout (15 percent), the stimulus package (14 percent), and the US auto industry (9 percent). In contrast, housing, including the subprime crisis, mustered only 6 percent of the news coverage, as did unemployment. (The PEJ study points out that "The percentage of Americans who were looking for but unable to find work actually outpaced the attention the subject received in the press.") Reporting on "retail sales, food prices, the impact of the crisis on Social Security and Medicare, its effect on education and the implications for health care combined accounted for just over 2 percent of all the economic coverage."

There was also a significant geographical bias to the coverage. Seventy-six percent of the stories were focused on either New York (44 percent) or DC (32 percent). Even coverage of the auto industry--only one-sixth of those stories came from Detroit, two-thirds from New York or DC! And stories on labor issues and worker layoffs--the people most severely affected--accounted for less than 1 percent of stories on the auto industry.

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October 6, 2009

The Fight for Financial Reform

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

These next few months are a time of reckoning.

Every so often in American political history, a window for change opens, and the combination of crisis, leadership, and political movement makes big, positive reforms possible.

That window is open now--but barely--and if we don't act quickly the protectors of the status quo (aka lobbyists, Republicans, and so-called moderate Democrats) will succeed in slamming it shut again.

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October 3, 2009

Around The Nation

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

A few quick hits before the weekend:

• I'll be on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday morning, as part of the weekly news roundtable. I'll be on with George Will, Bush-Cheney strategist Matthew Dowd and Cokie Roberts discussing the news of the week. Expect some interesting discussion - Will and I agree about the dangers of escalation in Afghanistan but not much else, and likely topics include healthcare reform and the President's overnight Olympic lobbying trip to Copenhagen. Check the This Week website or local listings for airtime in your community. We'll have video at TheNation.com on Monday.

• The Nation's net movement correspondent Ari Melber will be on Joy Behar's new program on CNN/Headline News Monday night at 9PM EST. We're big fans of Joy here and expect her show will be lively.

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October 2, 2009

Around The Nation

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

When an event like the G-20 in Pittsburgh wraps up, there are always two big questions to ask: What decisions inside the convention center will impact policy around the world? And what are the economic and social impacts of the gathering on its host town?

Outside the convention hall, The Nation's Robert S. Eshelman spoke to Pittsburgh locals, elected officials and anti G-20 activists to get their take on how the gathering impacted the city. President Obama called the rallies "generic protests against capitalism," but what statement were protesters trying to make? Here's his video dispatch, "Iron City in the Shadow of the G-20:"

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September 28, 2009

A Compass for Fair Food

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

Over the years, The Nation and I have closely tracked the heroic work of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) as they have fought to protect agriculture workers in the fields of Florida from exploitation. CIW has exposed cases of slavery and worked with the Department of Justice to successfully prosecute them. It has carried out a Campaign for Fair Food to raise wages and improve working conditions. In short, it has led a movement that recognizes the dignity of the people who harvest the food we eat, and rewards and protects their labor.

In recent years, the organization has focused on obtaining "penny per pound" pay raises for tomato workers from major food retailers that purchase the produce. It doesn't sound like much, but it would result in about a 75 percent wage increase--from $10,000 annually to $17,000--significantly improving workers' living and working conditions, and making them less vulnerable to unscrupulous employers and traffickers. CIW struck penny per pound deals with McDonalds, Burger King, and Yum! Brands (whose subsidiaries include Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, Long John Silver's and A&W) after long, hard fought campaigns.

But the community-based farmworker organization has reached a new milestone with its latest victory.

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September 27, 2009

Around The Nation

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

I'm off to Russia for a series of interviews looking at the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (I'll be sure to ask people what they think of our controversies over socialism and czars!) but first, a few quick notes about upcoming features and some changes at TheNation.com:

•Our cover story for our next issue is a good one: Naomi Klein's interview with Michael Moore. We'll have a Q & A and a podcast of the whole interview--check back Thursday for their conversation about Moore's new film (Capitalism: A Love Story) and about the current political landscape. If people are mad as hell, why aren't they mad at Wall Street?

•This video was a great segment from Laura Flanders' GRIT TV last week: Max Blumenthal, Janeane Garafolo and Kai Wright on Laura's weekly media roundtable. It's a fantastic (but scary) look at the last week in media and the news: tea-baggers, Jimmy Carter, crazy right-wingers, threats, hate mail, and most importantly how racism is impacting coverage of the healthcare debate. Watch the whole thing:

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September 21, 2009

A Shifting Debate on Afghanistan

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

Eight years after the war in Afghanistan began, the issue of how to end it is finally getting some traction in Congress.

No longer is Congressman Jim McGovern's bill with over 100 cosponsors demanding an exit strategy from the only game in town. Nor are Senators Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders alone among their colleagues in calling for a flexible timetable for withdrawal or a national conversation on Afghanistan strategy.

In these past few weeks--after a rigged election that will likely leave the corrupt Karzai government in power, and polls showing Americans suffering war fatigue during these economic hard times of jobless recovery--more centrist Democrats have started questioning a strategy of escalation in Afghanistan. Among them, Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, came out against an increase in troop levels. Also, Senator Diane Feinstein, Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, has called on the administration to provide a specific date for withdrawal.

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September 18, 2009

Metropolis Now

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

This article was co-authored by Nation contributing editor Joel Rogers. It originally appeared in the September 17 issue of the New Statesman.

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama promised to champion America's cities and help them help themselves. So how are they faring under his presidency?

America is a metro nation. About 80 per cent of the US population now lives in metropolitan areas, which together cover about 20 per cent of the country's land and create roughly 90 per cent of GDP. The top 100 metros alone, on 12 per cent of American land, account for 65 per cent of the population, 75 per cent of GDP, and comparable or greater shares of critical infrastructure, education and research institutions.

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September 17, 2009

Working Families Party Builds Progressive Power

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

The Working Families Party was started in 1998 by a group of labor and community activists who wanted to reinvigorate the fight for economic and social justice in New York. The Nation played a small but significant role in the party's birth, running an editorial calling on our New York readers, who then numbered over 20,000 (we've grown!) to vote for the WFP candidate on the party's ballot line.

Since then, the WFP has proven itself as having both policy ambition and electoral savvy, winning victories on a higher state minimum wage, reform of the draconian Rockefeller drug laws, ensuring that the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes, county-level living wage rules, public financing of elections, increased aid to education, and more. Its most recent victory was the passage of Green Jobs legislation in the New York Senate last week. The WFP built an unprecedented statewide coalition of businesses, labor unions, community groups and environmentalists to lobby on the Green Jobs bill.

"This bill would put New York on track to become a national leader in energy efficiency," said Dan Cantor, Working Families Party Executive Director. "Millions of homeowners will get the chance to green their homes and see big energy savings while reducing our carbon footprint. And all that construction work means tens of thousands of badly needed high-skill, living-wage jobs. It's a win-win-win."

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September 14, 2009

Around The Nation

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

I mostly avoided coverage of the weekend's 9/12 "teabagger" rally in Washington, DC; we were moving my daughter in to college. But the specter of race--and of conservatives challenging not just President Obama's policies, but his legitimacy as president--is unavoidable. You saw it with the ambush of Van Jones, where a visionary leader for green economic development was brought down by a racially-motivated smear campaign. And you saw it in the "march" on Washington, where signs protesting healthcare reform were mixed with racist and deeply offensive posters.

Our editorial on the Jones resignation is here, and linked here is a great discussion on Laura Flanders' GRIT TV about the relationship between race and the right's attacks on President Obama. But for more perspective on the weekend's tea-bagger protests, you should take a few minutes to watch The Nation's Melissa Harris-Lacewell on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show, where they discuss the racial dimensions of Saturday's rally and the right's exploitation of 9/11 to delegitimize the president:

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September 13, 2009