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June 20, 2004
Home town indoctrination
The collection of interviews on the Propaganda Model in Understanding Power helped me get into the fears of reporters trapped by the confines the model predicts.
When I think abstractly about professional reporters avoiding stories that upset advertisers, I can easily label them as cowards more concerned with preservation of their advantages than with doing good work. When I think concretely about how I'd report on Jean Vettier here in Barraux spending the money on a new mairie instead of a new school, I start to see what seem like their point of view.
When all that was going still news, I went to get my hair cut at Yvonne's. Our top local hairdresser was worried about her taxes increasing by 25% if the new school went through. She seems quite pro-Vettier, probably voting like many of the local folks who've lived in Barraux or nearby for a long time. I didn't ask her how buying the new mairie would affect her taxes or what she thought of that. But if I don't even ask the hairdresser tough questions, out of a mix of something like politeness and indoctrination, would I ever be willing to cover something like Vettier's failure to keep electoral promises. Especially when he could easily rezone the land between our house and the fort up the hill to put some buildings in, very simply knocking down the value of the house, for which my banker has me over a barrel.
Vettier also owns the strip of land directly south of the house. He could decide to store his garbage there. He may own the strip on the north side as well, though that one has no frontage.
Weird how coercion goes hand in hand with scarcity, n'est-ce pas ?
Posted by Mark at June 20, 2004 08:53 AM