More Media Hijinks; It's Not Funny

Have you read this morning's Seattle P.I.?

An excellent example of irresponsible headlines that would be merely irritating or even funny if it weren't for the gravity of the situation, and if it weren't such a quintessential example of poisonous modern media attention-grabbing.

To digress, I believe that a very large part of our economic malaise is due to the perception the majority of people have of how bad things really are...or how they think they are. And most of that thought is the result of media input, which is generally accepted as facts and/or the truth. I guess things are never that simple.

Take a look at the front page of the January 29th Post Intelligencer.

The headline reads "Boeing to lay off 10,000 this year" with a sidebar immediately to the left "STARBUCKS TO ELIMINATE 6,700 JOBS, CLOSE 300 STORES" in a dramatic reddish brown ink. Now, that should drive you to put quarters in the newspaper machine. Ohmigod the sky is falling!!! Can the Seattle area withstand that much job loss???! But wait...reading further into the articles that follow the headlines:

The 10,000 Boeing jobs include the 4500 thay had previously announced and, wait

...the total is from across the country---the Seattle area only represents half of Boeing's workforce anymore...and wait,

...an unnamed number of the cuts will be through attrition... and wait,

...because of meeting management's 2008 goals: next month 48,120 local employees will share in a $96.5 million bonus ($220 million company wide).

...To quote: "Significantly, Boeing should be able to maintain current production rates even if a lot of orders are deferred or even canceled in 2009. ...Keeping assembly lines at current rates means Boeing is less likely to need production-related job cuts."

Do you wonder why the actual story is not being represented in the headline?

Now as to Starbucks, read further and learn that they may close 300 underperforming stores worldwide. The vast majority of the 6,700 jobs are an estimate based on that number. They are going to "reduce" Seattle headquarters employees by "about 10% or 300-350 employees". Look further into the actual article in the C section, and the headline gets softened to "6,700 Starbucks jobs at risk". As you read further, to quote, "In the worst case that would mean 6,000 cafe positions by the end of 2009, globally. Some of those jobs may be cut by not filling positions, and some affected employees could be redeployed to other stores." Hey wait a minute, what happened to the 6,700 jobs that are "eliminated"?!?! Per their website, as of February 2008 there were 8,883 company owned stores plus 6873 that are jointly operated and they still intend to open new stores in 2009. Oh yes, they're selling one of their two corporate jets. The sky is falling!

And then in a column immediately to the left of, and much smaller than the Boy Scout expose' featured in the center of the front page, "Economic stimulus bill passes House on party line", and then in smaller print just a little bigger than the size of the copy: "3 million jobs on way, Obama says".

"3 million jobs are on way Obama says."

A historic new president elected by a landslide majority who already is being compared to Kennedy and Lincoln says that 3 Million jobs Are On The Way and they are planting this negative misleading drivel in the headlines?!?!?

And the headlines are all that many many people will read.

And talk about and spread like a bad feeling over everyone who gets near it.

OBAMA: 3 MILLION JOBS ON THE WAY... that's a headline.

Shame on the P.I and shame on the media and most of all, shame on all of us for putting up with this poison and supporting it.

To quote:

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!

What are we going to do about it?

What can we do about it??

Date: Thursday, January, 29th 2009 @ 06:34:25 PM
Views: 325

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