Just calling for press freedom is not enough. We need the WHY

In this month’s issue of the Quill – the official publication of the Society of Professional Journalists — is a brief piece on International Press Freedom day. (Take action for world press freedom)

While author Bruce C. Swaffield makes an important point that U.S. journalists should be more aware of threats to press freedom and do more to defend our colleagues under threat, he does not explain WHY.

Swaffield says journalists could write a story for your paper, broadcast station, website or blog, post a comment on Facebook or Twitter; hold a special discussion during lunch in the newsroom or in the  college newspaper office; send an email or letter to an ambassador in a country where the press is being suppressed or censored; place a small sign in the window of your car proclaiming, “Today is World Press Freedom Day.”

Those are all very good ideas. They cover the WHO, WHAT and WHERE. But what is missing is the WHY! And as all good journalists know, the WHY is an important part of putting the story into context.

• WHY should a local newspaper or television station care about press freedom issues in other countries? (Other than for  general humanitarian reasons.)
• WHY should local readers/viewers/listeners in the United States care?

For some of us, it is second nature to see how events in other countries affect Americans. That is because some of us have had the opportunity and privilege to either live overseas or visit other countries for more than just guided tourism. But for most Americans — included educated and intellectually curious people — making the link between foreign affairs and domestic affairs does not come as rapidly.

Answering the question of WHY people should be aware of international events puts these events into a context that all can understand. So let’s discuss some WHY-related issues.

Business/Trade

Americans can buy inexpensive goods from around the world because of foreign trade. Think of the Toyota or Honda you drive or the Chilean Granny Smith apples available in the winter or the toys made in China.

How does doing business at the local Honda dealer or Wal-Mart tie into press freedom?

Before any business signs a contract with a supplier or distributor it needs to know that the contract will be honored. Likewise, the business needs to have an accurate understanding of the economics of the deal. They need information about inflation, currency fluctuations, work force levels and infrastructure are vital to any business. And woe be it to the businessman who does not find a way to get that information before signing a contract.

This information is especially necessary if a company wants to sell to another country.

In North America and most of Europe that data are readily available either directly from the government or via enterprising reporting by journalists.

In China, Argentina, Venezuela, Cuba, etc that information is not available so easily because the governments hide the data and interfere with any attempts by the media to get it.

So for local companies looking to expand their markets, they should be concerned about how free the media are in their targeted market.

Foreign Investment in the United States

Just as American companies open factories and facilities around the world, foreign companies return the favor in the United States.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, direct foreign investment in the United States was valued at $2.34 trillion in 2009.

A look at employment from these direct investments is also telling. The Census Bureau shows that in 2008 direct investment in the United States by foreign companies accounted for 5.6 million jobs, or about 4.7 percent of the workforce.

And the nice thing about a lot of these tables is that you can get a state-by-state breakdown of investments. For example, about 140,000 jobs in Indiana are directly related to foreign investment in that state.

One of the reasons companies from other countries invest in the United States is because of the ready access to information that makes for good business decisions. A key element of that access is free and independent journalism.

For local news organizations, it might behoove local readers/viewers/listeners to know more about the countries that invest in the US.

How much you want to bet that the financial well-being of Germany, Japan, Brazil and others will affect their investments in the United States? Therefore, it makes sense for local media outlets to pay attention to what is going on in the investor countries, even if it only by using wire services or relationships with media outlets in those countries.

The link between free press and economic well-being and growth is not hard to make. It just takes some imagination and reporters and editors who can see the connections.

Immigration

One of the hot hot hot topics in the U.S. right now is immigration. It dominates the U.S. news as senators and congressmen try to come up with a plan that will accommodate the millions of aliens now in the United States without the proper paperwork.

No one seems to be looking at WHY there are so many immigrants working in the US without the proper documents. And, for Swaffield’s purposes, WHY there might be a connection between immigration and global press freedom.

To start with, the reason most immigrants come to the United States is for the same reason my family came: To have a better life.

But first, let’s admit there are people who are xenophobic and do not want more immigrants. They don’t want people who don’t “look or think like them” entering the United States. Oddly enough, many of these people are also those who argue for budget cuts that encourage more illegal immigration to the United States.

One way to reduce immigration to the US is to promote better economic opportunities in the source countries. That means supporting US development programs. And that means more money and support for USAID.

I have met a number of farmers here in Honduras who were ready to leave their families and risk the dangerous trip to the United States so they could send money back home. All they wanted to do is make sure their families did not starve and make sure their children got educated.

The reason the farmers did not leave was because of programs sponsored by USAID that taught the farmers how to shift from subsistence farming of just corn and beans to growing cash crops such as carrots and broccoli.

Once the USAID Feed the Future Program showed these farmers how to properly grow new cash crops, the USAID teams then helped the farm families learn how to properly handle their new-found wealth.

Thanks to the Feed the Future Program, more families are living in healthier situations, fewer children are malnourished and more children are getting an education.

For less than a penny on the dollar, USAID is building a growing group of people who will soon have enough income to buy more goods and services, including items from the United States. At the same time, it encourages people to make their fortunes in their own countries.

Now multiply this result around the world.

But all of this works only if accurate information about crops and markets are available. And this can only occur in countries that have free media. Free media keep governments honest and prevent unscrupulous business interests from manipulating the markets to the detriment of the farmers.

If there were more stories that point out how development programs prevent illegal immigration and promote more U.S. trade, soon readers/listeners/viewers in the United States will see why it is important to know more about what is going on in the world and why we should be concerned about press freedom issues elsewhere.

Immigrants also change the local markets.

McCormick Spice company tracks the growth of spice sales and finds that the changes in sales figures matched changes in the ethnic changes in the sales area.

How hard would it be to do stories about shifts in food sales – grocery stores and restaurants – that are linked to changes in the local immigrant population?

From there, a reporter could easily look at why the immigrants left their home countries and why they settled where they did in the US.

As with so much of reporting, getting to the WHY leads to so many more connections.

And so I repeat:

• WHY should a local newspaper or television station care about press freedom issues in other countries? (Other than for  general humanitarian reasons.)
• WHY should local readers/viewers/listeners in the United States care?

The answer is simple: Because what happens around the world DIRECTLY affects every American. It is up to journalists in America to explain to the American people WHY knowledge of global events is important.

Press freedom is an important issue. But it has to be explained. And explaining demands a WHY.

Linkage: Exports a vital part of economic growth

Recently the U.S. Census Bureau merged the Profile of U.S. Exporting Companies and the Survey of Business Owners from 2007. (Unfortunately that is the most recent date of the two surveys.) And the information gleaned from it for anyone looking for a Local-Global connection is interesting.

The survey focused on ‘classifiable” companies — those identified by race, gender or veteran status. Of the companies reviewed, employment was highest among exporting firms.

• The average number of employees for minority-owned exporting employer firms was 21; the comparable number for minority-owned nonexporting employer firms was 7.
• The average number of employees for Hispanic-owned exporting employer firms was 19; the comparable number for Hispanic-owned nonexporting employer firms was 7.
• The average number of employees for women-owned exporting employer firms was 42; the comparable number for women-owned nonexporting employer firms was 8.
• The average number of employees at veteran-owned exporting employer firms was 68; the comparable number for veteran nonexporting employer firms was 10

Average receipt reports also showed that exporting companies were bigger money makers than those focused on just the domestic market.

• Minority-owned exporting firms: $7.4 million; nonexporting firms: $141,776.
• Hispanic-owned exporting firms: $7.2 million; nonexporting firms: $124,418.
• Women-owned exporting firms: $14.5 million; nonexporting firms: $117,036.
• Veteran-owned exporting firms: $19.5 million, nonexporting firms: $371,143. 

And, according to the report, the number of exporting companies make up a smaller percentage of each group. (See Figure 2 on the right.)

So, a smaller percentage of each group does exporting. But the exporters bring in more money and hire more people.

Hmmmm.

Sounds like exports are an important part of any effort to growing the economy. And many small and medium-sized businesses are part of that growth.

Wouldn’t it be nice to see more stories connecting domestic (LOCAL) growth with the exports (GLOBAL) handled by these LOCAL companies. Maybe even a few feature stories about how and why the businesses started and why the owners decided to go with exports instead of exclusively working the domestic market.

Stories that make these connections will help the American reader/viewer better understand trade issues and why non-military international affairs are important to local success.

China’s missing rivers: Nothing to it!

To start off, at least the Chinese government actually released the study. At least they didn’t hide it as a “state secret.”

Only 22,909 rivers covering an area of 100sq km were located by surveyors, compared with the more than 50,000 in the 1990s, a three-year study by the Ministry of Water Resources and the National Bureau of Statistics found.

But when the government tried to explain WHY the country is missing about half of its rivers, the response was more typical Beijing:

• Global warming and
• Mistakes from past surveys

In other words: It’s not our fault!

Unfortunately, too many experts in the field say it is very much the fault of Beijing and its desire to industrialize everywhere.

The projects include massive damming programs to provide power as well as large-scale industrial development that sucked the rivers almost dry and then spit out highly toxic waste, leaving most of the existing rivers so polluted that people cannot eat the fish from the rivers nor swim in the rivers.

The social media in China has started commenting:

“The rivers I used to play around have disappeared; the only ones left are polluted, we can’t eat the fish in them, they are all bitter,” a person using the name Pippi Shuanger wrote on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter.

Full story: 28,000 rivers wiped off the map of China

Now, the water pollution news out if China is important to Americans and Europeans. A major country cannot just misplace half of its rivers (and allow the other half to become highly toxic) without the rest of the world feeling the impact.

That impact could be as simple as the possible starvation of hundreds of millions of Chinese because they have no water for farming or the water used is so infused with heavy metals or other toxins that the food produced is poisonous. It is bad enough if the toxin-laden food is only eaten in China, but China also exports food products for humans and animals around the world.

The impact could also include the problem of global warming. If the Chinese government wants to blame climate change on the disappearance of the rivers, then they need to look at their own policies that add more CO2 and toxins to the air, ground and water than any other single country. They need to look at implementing serious pollution control measures. (And if they do, then maybe the climate change deniers in the USA might finally be willing to catch up with reality and accept improvements in the US pollution-control efforts.)

 

A local-global connection that tastes good

Let’s hear it for WEMU and Arbor Brewing. The Michigan-based micro-brew set up a collaboration with a Belgium brewing outfit to share beer recipes.

WEMU (89.1 FM) picked up the story when others did not. (Maybe all those jazz and blues fans also like some good beers.)

Ypsi and Belgium Team Up for New Brews

Once again, if you just look beyond the surface, there are plenty of great connections between Main Street and the rest of the world.

If help comes and no one reports it, did it happen?

Loads of news organizations are following the disastrous club fire in Santa Maria in Southern Brazil. How can there not be a lot of attention when more than 230 people are killed in one incident?

Notes of sympathy and offers of help flooded the national, state and local governments.

Brazil is doing a pretty good job taking care of the survivors. The medical care in Brazil is good and the doctors and nurses well-trained. But they were short of a drug needed to treat some of the survivors.

A medication, called Cyanokit is needed to treat victims who inhaled cyanide poison as a result of the fire. The Brazilian health ministry put out a request for the drug and got it.

From the U.S. military, specifically the Southern Command.

Southcom Speeds Medications to Brazil for Nightclub Victims

The above link comes from the Department of Defense Public Affairs Office. And who reported this bit of altruism form the U.S. military? Damn few!

Reuters and AFP picked it up but a quick Google search shows NO U.S. news organizations carried the story. (The AFP story was seen in a Malaysia newspaper.)

• AFP/The Malay Mail: US medication for fire victims lands in Brazil
• Reuters: U.S. rushing treatment for Brazil fire victims

Usually the U.S. military does a much better job publicizing its humanitarian work. The best example is the way SouthCom and the U.S. Navy 4th Fleet responded to the Haiti earthquake. (Military official: U.S. hospital ship in Haiti near capacity)

And then there are the numerous medical teams that go into remote areas of Central America to provide basic and intensive medical care to people who otherwise would not get ANY medical care. (I am going off to see one such operation this week.)

This is not a publicity space for the U.S. military, even though I think they often get a raw deal for their work in the Americas. (And yes, sometimes they deserve it for being tone-deaf in some issues. But by and large, the Pentagon understands the news media a lot better than the news media understand the military and they do a lot of really good work that helps a lot of people.a lot is because they are SOOO bad at doing publicity.)

The issue here is that no one in the United States is learning about the U.S. connection to help the fire victims. The medicine is made by a U.S. company (Pfizer) and it is being donated by the U.S. military.

There are so many local U.S. connections it is sad that not one U.S. news outlet picked up the connection.

• Maybe the newspaper where the medicine was made could have done a story about how a local company helped survivors of a fire more than 3,000 miles away.
• Or maybe some of the business journals could have picked up on the rare action of U.S. medicine coming into Brazil without having a 150 percent duty charged.
• Maybe a story could have been done on the unusual step taken by the Brazilian government to admit that it needed outside help, especially help from the U.S. military. (This is a BIG deal.) 

But what else can you expect from an industry that more and more has been withdrawing from the world, with the exception of war or natural disaster.

Hell, one major network can’t even read a map. Notice how it misplaced Sao Paulo  by about 2,000 miles! About the same distance between San Francisco and Washington, DC. (If you don’t see the error, look it up yourself. You can start with: Sao Paulo is a coastal city and the industrial capital of Brazil.)