As a Friday "funny," one of my Chicago co-workers sent an e-mail to me with the irksome headline: "
BusinessWeek: Milwaukee among nation's unhappiest cities." I can take a joke as well as the next person and shot back a wry comment about how if we work hard, maybe we could be #1 next year... but the headline stuck with me.
My major in college was print journalism and my very first job out of school was as a reporter and columnist for the (then)
Greensburg Tribune-Review. Although it has been many years since I've worn my journalism hat, I still think hard about how our news media channels operate. Thinking back on some of my news ethics classes, I guess that I cannot really say that kicking 50 cities when they are down isn't fair game. After all, the information upon which the story was based was factual. According the the
editor of BusinessWeek, they ranked the cities according to "depression rates, suicide rates, divorce rates, crime, unemployment, population loss, job loss, weather, and green space."
If you sense a "but" on it's way, here it is. Just because it's fair game to publish a lot of different sorts of things, doesn't mean that it's good journalism to do so. Every day in my job, every day, I am faced with job seekers from Milwaukee and Chicago who are struggling to get back on their feet in a difficult economy. I see companies that would love to start hiring again, but have frozen jobs because they are afraid of what's next in the economy. And I see the federal, state, and local governments taking what actions they can to get us back to a better place.
The BusinessWeek web site published the stats on just 20 of the 50 cities they ranked with their survey. I can guarantee that there's one of those little black cartoon clouds over the head of everyone in those cities trying to make things better. So I have to ask BusinessWeek's editor about what he or she thinks was the benefit of running a story like this.
Did you think that most readers who do not live in those cities would say, whew, at least I don't live there? Or maybe you did hide behind the convenient dodge of it being fair game. Did you think at all? I know how disposable news is--today's story is tomorrow's wrapping paper for fish (do fish markets still do that? And, if so, yuck!).
Perhaps it all comes down to headlines. After all, I got stirred up enough to write a little op ed on my blog about it and link to the story. Maybe that is enough to sell papers, if that's all the ideals that they have. Journalism at its best exists to question and tell the truth and expose what's hidden, yes. So I guess technically this story applies. But journalism doesn't get to take a stance of "hey, it's not my fault and I have no responsibiltity for what I've printed." I'm not advocating flag-waving, chirpy optimism. But considering the power of Big Media to influence perception and the damage that it does the reputation of hard-working cities that really do have a lot going for them (yes, like Milwaukee), I have to speak up and say that I'm glad that the Internet has diminished the influence and role Big Media plays.
Journalists, too, have a stake in the economy. They have a responsibility to tell balanced stories, not just sell papers. The 20 cities whose pictures and selective statistics were paraded on the Businessweek site didn't get a balancing coverage. There was no rebuttal from the mayors of these cities giving them a chance to talk about what they are doing to help. BusinessWeek does not get a free pass, does not get to say that they were just reporting the facts. The story only tore down places that are struggling just like any other city in the United States to make it through a tough time. And while there is a difference in magnitude, it's the same thing that war profiteers do: BusinessWeek traded in misery.
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