Posted by Ran across this article today in the Guardian. Recommend giving it a read. As America tries to drag itself out of recession, 15% of people here live under the poverty line. Why isn’t that a news story?
The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that out of 52 mainstream media outlets analysed, coverage of poverty amounted to less than 1% of available news space from 2007 to 2012. It’s even more astonishing considering that period covered a historic recession.
One of the report’s conclusions was that media organizations chose not to cover poverty because it was potentially uncomfortable to advertisers seeking to reach a wealthy consumer audience. As Barbara Ehrenreich, who contributes articles on social issues for Time Magazine, put it:
They don’t want really depressing articles about misery and hardship near their ads.
