Re: Media¢s Grim Addiction to Perseverance Porn (fwd)

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

Agree.

You could just as easily substitute "grit" for "perseverance".

 > From: Noelle <noelle>
 > Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 09:07:09 -0700 (PDT)
 >
 >  > From: FAIR<http://www.fair.org/~fair>
 >  > Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 12:51:14 +0000
 >  > 
 >  > Youâ??ve seen or heard or read the personal interest story a thousand times: 
 >  > An enterprising seven-year-old collects cans to save for college (ABC7, 
 >  > 2/8/17), a man with unmatched moxie walks 15 miles to his job (Todayâ??s 
 >  > Show, 2/20/17), a low-wage worker buys shoes for a kid whose mother canâ??t 
 >  > afford them (Fox5, 12/14/16), an â??inspiring teenâ?? goes right back to 
 >  > work after being injured in a car accident (CBS News, 12/16/16). All 
 >  > heartwarming tales of perseverance in the face of impossible oddsâ??and all 
 >  > ideological agitprop meant to obscure and decontextualize the harsh reality 
 >  > of dog-eat-dog capitalism.
 >  > Man walks eight miles in the snow to get to work every day (ABC 27, 3/14/17)
 >  > . Or was it a teen walking 10 miles in freezing weather to a job interview (
 >  > New York Daily News, 2/26/13)? Or was it 10 miles to work every day (Times 
 >  > Herald Record, 3/17/17)? Or was it 12 (ABC News, 2/22/17) or 15 (Today, 
 >  > 2/20/17) or 18 (Evening Standard, 2/9/09) or 21 (Detroit Free Press, 1/20/15)
 >  > ? Who caresâ??their humanity is irrelevant. Theyâ??re clickbait, stand-in 
 >  > bootstrap archetypes meant to validate the bourgeois morality of click-happy 
 >  > media consumers.
 >  > These stories are typically shared for the purposes of poor-shaming, 
 >  > typically under the guise of inspirational life advice. â??This man is proof 
 >  > we all just need to keep walking, no matter what life throws at us,â?? 
 >  > insisted Denver ABC7 anchor Anne Trujillo, after sharing one of those 
 >  > stories of a poor person forced to walk thousands of miles a year to 
 >  > survive.
 >  > A healthy press would take these anecdotes of â??can doâ?? spirit and ask 
 >  > bigger questions, like why are these people forced into such absurd hardship?
 >  >  Who benefits from skyrocketing college costs? Why does the public transit 
 >  > in this personâ??s city not have subsidies for the poor? Why arenâ??t 
 >  > employers forced to offer time off for catastrophic accidents? But time and 
 >  > again, the media mindlessly tells the bootstrap human interest story, never 
 >  > questioning the underlying system at work.
 >  > One particularly vulgar example was CBS News (12/16/16) referring to an &#
 >  > 8220;inspiring&#8221; African-American kid who had to work at his fast food 
 >  > job with an arm sling and a neck brace after a car accident. To compound the 
 >  > perseverance porn, he was, at least in part, doing so to help donate to a 
 >  > local homeless charity. Here we have a story highlighting how society has 
 >  > colossally failed its most vulnerable populationsâ??the poor, ethnic 
 >  > minorities, children and the homelessâ??and the take-home point is, â??Ah 
 >  > gee, look at that scrappy kid.â??
 >  > Journalism is as muchâ??if not moreâ??about what isnâ??t reported as what 
 >  > is. Here a local reporter is faced with a cruel example of people falling 
 >  > through the cracks of the richest country on Earth, and their only 
 >  > contribution is to cherry-pick one guy who managedâ??just barelyâ??to cling 
 >  > on to the edge.
 >  > Perseverance porn goes hand in hand with the rise of a GoFundMe economy that 
 >  > relies on personal narrative over collective policy, emotional appeals over 
 >  > baseline human rights. $930 million out of the $2 billion raised on GoFundMe 
 >  > since its inception in 2010 was for healthcare expenses, while an estimated 
 >  > 45,000 people a year die a year due to a lack of medical treatment. 
 >  > Meanwhile, anchors across cable news insist that single-payer healthcare is â
 >  > ??unaffordable,â?? browbeating guests who support it, while populating their 
 >  > broadcasts with these one-off tales of people heroically scraping by.
 >  > It&#8217;s part of a broader media culture of anecdotes in lieu of the macro,
 >  >  moralizing â??successâ?? rather than questioning systemic problems. 
 >  > Perseverance porn may seem harmless, but in highlighting handpicked cases of 
 >  > people overcoming hardship without showing the thousands that didnâ??tâ??
 >  > much less asking broader questions as to what created these conditionsâ??the 
 >  > media traffics in decidedly right-wing tropes. After all, if they can do it, 
 >  > so can youâ??right?
 >  > ==============================================