Pet Peeve: An America that Sees Only Itself
by Peter Dorman (from Econospeak)
Pet Peeve: An America that Sees Only Itself
This is a small but typical example: the New York Times today ran a story about frictions in the switch to embedded-chip credit cards. The process has been bumpy, and retailers think the banks and payment processors have been exploiting them, while the processors blame the retails for dragging their feet. I don’t know anything at all about this, but one thing I do know is that the same transition occurred years ago in Europe. You’d think a reporter delving into this topic would contact sources in Chipland, so our experience could be compared to theirs. Maybe we could learn something that would help us sort out the tangle of charges and countercharges (so to speak).
But no. Not a single word about the world beyond our borders.
I see this all the time. People fulminate about the role of money in politics and the sins of Citizens United but pay no attention to the various forms business influence takes in other developed countries with a variety of campaign finance laws. We can have a big debate about the economics of Bernie Sanders’ proposal to make public higher education tuition-free without so much as a glance at the many countries where that has been a reality for decades—one of which is right over the border to the north.
The problem isn’t American exceptionalism, it’s American self-absorption.
Not much to disagree with here, so this post won’t get many comments, but it’s a good observation. That it’s the Times is a particular disgrace. American journalism is weak. You would think the journalism schools would be embarrassed, but I have seen no indication they are. I guess they’re just as self-absorbed as their students.
When we have a few corporations owning all forms of commutation why would we expect their employees to criticize or imply American exceptionalism is a joke at this point in history?
Two of the biggest critics of American exceptionalism that I know of are PaulCraigRoberts.org and GlobalResearch.com ..They will tell it like it really is not through the rose tinted lenses of the main street news media outlets that pander to political correctness and distortion. Most people do not realize that Fox News is registered with the FCC as a new entertainment organization so they are allowed to distort truth as entertainment. Forget the fair and balanced claims are often distortions for higher ratings profits. One must make it his own business to be informed as the “truth”, perspective and integrity should matter to us all…
This x100, it is infuriating.
It’s hard to believe that a news organization as cosmopolitan as the Times has no reporters with international life experience or outlook who can analyze issues in terms of the experiences of other countries, so it must be a deliberate editorial policy to be so parochial and blinkered.
Do you think Citizen’s United was wrongly decided? Why?