When the News Is What’s Not Happening: How the Media Can Help Prevent National and International Crises

We often ask our public officials and political candidates for more details and nuanced reasoning. We expect them to be better at anticipating events. However, it would be relatively easier if it were only our leaders who fed us simple slogans and retreated to all-or-nothing thinking and a crisis orientation.

Unfortunately, the media we often call on to keep our political processes on track also suffers such lapses. Just look at the headlines in any of the major newspapers and see if they reflect subtle, nuanced statements or dramatic, all-or-nothing ones. When there’s a political debate, is the headline about a nuanced difference in judgment about the economy, international relations, or social programs, or is it a dramatic, all-or-nothing type statement about who won or lost or who committed a faux pas. Focusing on the horse race between the candidates sells newspapers and draws in listeners to the national newscasts, but does it create an atmosphere of subtle nuanced, gray-area reasoning.

Even more worrisome is the complicity of the media in letting issues stay off the table outside the nations radar until they reach that all-or-nothing, crisis level. For example, there was enormous coverage of the recent commission’s inquiry of 9/11. It made good press. How much coverage, however, have we had before or after on the Homeland Security plans in terms of medical care when responding to a biological weapon’s assault, exit plans and related contingency operations for any type of nuclear event, and so forth. Similarly, periodically, there are reports about this or that environmental danger, ranging from lead in the water in DC and Boston to estrogenic compounds, such as dioxins, in our rivers and lakes. While there are periodic reports when federal, state, or local governments issue some news releases, there is not sufficient, ongoing reporting of progress in these areas vital for our survival.

Unfortunately, by not sufficiently reacting to the warning signs, the media maintains an all-or-nothing crisis orientation. Clearly there are exceptions to this tendency. For example, the recent media reports about the Iraqi prison led to federal hearings and ongoing coverage. However, even in this example, there were early warning signs that slipped beneath the media’s radar. Shows such as Nightline, 60 Minutes, and The News Hour, and newspapers, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, provide excellent periodic in-depth reports on vital issues. But is there sufficient follow-up? It is the nature of change that it requires persistence.

The media may ask how they can make something continuously newsworthy when there doesn’t appear to be a story. The answer is that for critical national and international concerns, the story is the lack of action or adequate progress. In other words, there are vital areas that relate to national survival and, therefore, are newsworthy on a continuing basis. These vital concerns have to do with potential biological, nuclear, or chemical terrorist acts; challenges to our environment; and the local, national, and international institutions that we have constructed to protect the vulnerable. At a minimum, there should be weekly updates on vital issues that each media group identifies as requiring ongoing coverage. After all, vital survival issues have to be at least as important as the daily monitored stock market and weather.

Ongoing information, however, is not enough. We have too make sure the information is accurate. Perhaps nothing is more important to the continuation of our democracy and our ability to engage in nuanced debate and anticipate events vital to our national security than accurate information. The consent of the governed, which Jefferson so aptly highlighted, must be “informed” consent. Perhaps the media could consider an accuracy index, continuously commenting on the accuracy of public reports, political statements, campaign ads, and the like.
The media is appropriately concerned about appearing partisan, especially in an election year. Monitoring national concerns and public statements, however, can be done in a fair manner. If the media bends over backwards not to appear partisan and, thereby, avoids “saying it like it is,” it has indeed been suckered to collude in providing misleading information.

If the media can keep its eye on the critical national and international issues, perhaps we won’t be reading about so many tragedies after the fact, for example, in the foster care system, where a little child is abused or neglected when the warning signs were obvious, but below our radar for months, if not years.

We won’t be wondering how we could have ignored the clues to 9/11 and the problems that have surfaced in communication between various federal agencies. It’s highly unlikely that our Secretary of Defense would be sitting before Congress and shaking his head, looking puzzled and wondering out loud how the leadership could have missed the clues of what was going on in the Iraqi prison.