Driving the Issues

By Jonathan Higuera
May 19, 2008 05:37 PM

Much attention has been given to whether the business press is stoking the ambers of our economy’s meltdown.

As a journalist, it’s easy to disregard those critics by citing the “blame the messenger” mentality.

But before we quickly dismiss them, maybe we should take the opportunity to evaluate whether we’re delivering our stories with the proper context.

One recent example of journalism that makes us proud members of the Fourth Estate came from The New York Times columnist David Brooks.

In an April 15 column, Brooks said Barack Obama’s speech to a Pennsylvania audience the previous day failed to capture the true stresses facing U.S. workers. Instead, he said, the speech carried on about free trade agreements as if they are the root cause of our economic troubles.

“Economists differ over how much outsourcing will change the American job market in the future, but there is little evidence that trade has been a major cause of job loss or even wage stagnation so far,” he wrote.

All the political bluster aside, the free trade posturing has not been sitting well with me, either. It seems like outdated rhetoric for an economy that has changed drastically since I first covered the North American Free Trade Agreement congressional negotiations in 1993.

Not to pick on Mr. Obama, but this sounds like oversimplified party message points run amok. Or at least it’s a red herring. The current forces causing us so much economic pain are more likely to be found in the government’s retreat from effective regulatory oversight, overzealous U.S. mortgage lenders eager to make a buck, an overly complex tax system rife with loopholes and tax breaks for those who should be paying more and even the noxious impact of big money lobbyists on the entire political system.

To be sure, the benefits and negative consequences of trade deals such as NAFTA were oversold during the battle to get it passed in Congress. And I’ll say here that both proponents and opponents can rightfully claim that some aspects of the deal have indeed occurred. Jobs have been lost and probably more devastating has been the loss of negotiating leverage for workers as companies simply threaten to move operations south. It’s also true that more commerce between the three signatory countries has occurred, creating jobs in its wake.

But as Brooks points out, our society has undergone “historic economic transformations” in a short period, creating winners and losers, the latter usually characterized by level of education.

He writes: “What I don’t understand is why the political consultants prefer this kind of rhetoric. Aren’t there windows in the vans they use to drive around the state? Don’t they see that most middle-class voters are service workers in suburban office parks, not 1930s-style proletarians in the steel mills?”

Let’s add another responsibility to the media checklist: drive the presidential agenda to the real issues that ail us rather than red herrings based on perceived populist appeal.

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Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism