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]]]]]]]]] MEDIA'S TYPICAL HOMELESS ARE ANYTHING BUT [[[[[[
By S. Robert Lichter (12/15/1989)
(Mr. Lichter co-directs the Center for Media and Public
Affairs, in Washington.)
[From The Wall Street Journal, 14 December 1989, p. A22:3]
[Kindly uploaded by Freeman 10602PANC]
You know it's the holiday season when the media make their
annual rediscovery of homelessness in America. Since
Thanksgiving ABC News has named a Massachusetts homeless advocate
as its ``Person of the Week,'' the New York Times and USA Today
have made the nonurban homeless front-page news, and CBS has
aired the made-for-TV movie ``No Place Like Home.'' NBC's
``Golden Girls'' and CBS's ``Jake and the Fat Man'' are running
their own holiday segments on the homeless.
Unfortunately, this barrage of attention tells us more about
the media than about the homeless. The Center for Media and
Public Affairs found that, from 1986 to 1989, the television
networks ran twice as many stories on the homeless from November
through February as during the other eight months of the year.
And homeless people in New York City appeared five times as often
as those in any other city. Call them the seasonally adjusted,
conveniently located homeless.
The media's portrait of homelessness is skewed by more than
laziness or a short attention span. The coverage reflects the
advocacy approach that journalists adopt when they see a need for
social reform, eschewing balanced coverage of two sides. And
this raises the tension that can arise between journalists' dual
roles as champions of the underdog and disinterested chroniclers
of social change.
In his 1973 book ``News From Nowhere,'' media analyst Edward
J. Epstein noted that institutional controls on journalistic
advocacy are lifted on news reports about subjects like
pollution, hunger, racial discrimination and poverty. On such
topics, a CBS executive told Mr. Epstein, correspondents are
expected ``openly to advocate the eradication of the presumed
evil and even put it in terms of a crusade.''
The Center for Media and Public Affairs study shows that
homelessness can now be added to this list. We analyzed 103
stories on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts and 26 often
lengthy articles in Time, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report
from November 1986 through February 1989. The results provide a
blueprint of advocacy journalism:
o Create empathy. The homeless were presented as ordinary
people who differ from other Americans mainly be being more
victimized by the social and political system. As CBS's Martha
Teichner put it, ``People who once gave to the needy now are the
needy.'' Fewer than one in four of the homeless people featured
in the stories we examined were identified as unemployed, only
one in 14 as a drug or alcohol user, only one in 12 as mentally
ill, and under 1% as having a criminal record.
Yet recent studies by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the
Urban Institute suggest vastly higher rates -- 75% unemployed,
35% substance abusers, 25% mentally ill, 20% to 25% with prison
records.
o Blame the system. In keeping with this portrait of the
deserving poor, only one source in 25 blamed homelessness on the
personal problems of the homeless themselves, such as mental
illness, drug or alcohol abuse, or lack of skills or motivation.
The other 96% blamed social or political conditions for their
plight. The primary culprit cited was the housing market,
including forces like high mortgage interest rates, high rents,
downtown redevelopment, etc. Next in line was government
inaction, especially the government's failure to provide adequate
public housing.
o Issue a call to arms. Every source who evaluated the
government's role in fighting homelessness found it inadequate.
The repeated denunciations of government passivity and calls for
a kind of ``war on homelessness'' provided clear indications of
the crusading mentality. For example, CBS's Susan Spencer
charged that ``government as usual has meant virtual paralysis.''
As a corollary to the call for federal action, the private
sector's role was minimized. When sources discussed who should
be responsible for helping the homeless, nearly three out of four
named the government, and only 4% specified the private sector.
o Engage the emotions. A distinctive feature of advocacy
journalism is the emotional quality of its language. The
coverage is full of apocalyptic imagery, despairing descriptions
and dire predictions. Thus, a sociologist proclaimed in U.S.
News and World Report: ``What we are dealing with is a collapse
of moral leadership in this country. ... It's hard to remember
that this is America, not Calcutta.'' Such overheated rhetoric
transforms the subject from a problem that needs to be solved
into a cause that must be joined.
o Speak for yourself. The homeless story is built mainly on
quotations from the affected group and its advocates, rather than
community leaders or those in officially sanctioned positions of
authority. Thus, homeless individuals were quoted more often
than all federal, state and local officials combined, and the
flamboyant homeless advocate Mitch Snyder was heard from more
often than either George Bush or Ronald Reagan. Indeed,
reporters themselves accounted for over two-thirds of the
comments on the causes of homelessness. Rather than citing
officials or experts, they seemed eager to carry on the
discussion themselves. So it's not too surprising that Newsweek
would conclude, ``The homeless won't get very far unless they can
persuade a Republican to break with Ronald Reagan's policies --
or elect a Democrat.''
Is anything wrong with all this? Surely the homeless are
deserving of our sympathy and our assistance. But a journalist's
first duty is to the facts, not the cause, however worthy.
In playing down any ``skid row'' image and presenting them as
victims of economic dislocation and Republican heartlessness, the
media surely have increased public sympathy for the homeless.
But they may also have increased the difficulty of fully
understanding and effectively addressing their plight. Robert
Hayes, director of the National Coalition for the Homeless,
recently told the New York Times that mental illness and
substance abuse among the homeless are rarely raised in public
because television news programs ``always want white,
middle-class people to interview. They want someone who will be
sympathetic to middle America.''
Thus, the homeless story is becoming the 1980s counterpart of
the 1960s civil-rights story -- a stark moral issue that calls
for journalists to awaken the national conscience and force
public action. The difficulty is that this advocacy approach can
skew the depiction of the actual problem. And misperceptions
born of good intentions are not the most promising basis for
choosing the best ways to help the homeless.
[The following is not part of the original article.]
The commonly quoted figure of three million homeless people comes
from activist Mitch Snyder who admitted before Congress, in 1984,
that this number is ``in fact meaningless. We have tried to
satisfy your gnawing curiosity for a number because we are
Americans with western little minds that have to quantify
everything in sight, whether we can or not.''
Items of Interest
Brill, Stephen. ``Attorney for the Defenseless''. Esquire,
December 1984, pp. 245-248. Profile of Robert Hayes by a
`liberal'.
Center for Media and Public Affairs, 2101 L Street, N.W., Suite
505, Washington, D.C. 20037, 202-223-2942. Founded in 1986.
Epstein, Edward Jay, 1935-. News From Nowhere: Television and
the News. New York: Vintage Books, 1973.
Fingarette, Herbert. ``Alcoholism: The Mythical Disease''. The
Public Interest, 91 (Spring 1988). See The Public Interest 95
(Spring 1989) for criticsm by William Madsen and Fingarette's
reply.
Main, Thomas J. ``The Homeless Families of New York''. The
Public Interest, No. 85 (Fall 1986).
Rossi, Peter H. et al. ``The Urban Homeless: Estimating
Composition and Size''. Science 235:1336-1341 (13 March 1987).
Torrey, E. Fuller. Nowhere To Go: The Tragic Odyssey of the
Homeless Mentally Ill. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.
* * *
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