MediaWatch: October 1994

Janet Cooke Award: ABC Environmental Reporter Loads Cairo Story with White House-Favored Spokesmen

Potter's Pessimistic Population Portrait

For many years, the media have presented one view of population growth: the panicked one. In the September/October American Enterprise, demographer John Wilmoth described his review of 544 articles on population in popular magazines from 1946-1990. Not one of the stories presented population growth as advantageous from 1966-80, while the share of stories portraying population as a grave threat peaked at 80 percent. From 1986-90, the percentage of negative stories was higher than 60 percent, while five percent were positive.

A review of TV population stories from January 1, 1991 to April 15, 1994 by the MRC's Free Enterprise and Media Institute showed the trend intensified on television: Of 36 stories, "only two looked into the positive effects of population growth; 34 focused on negative consequences, often with reporters using vitriolic language typically reserved for partisans." The networks returned to form in September, when the United Nations convened in Cairo. For presenting yet another story reserved for the partisans of doom, ABC's Ned Potter won the Janet Cooke Award.

Potter's September 6 "American Agenda" story on World News Tonight began by lamenting a cancer of people: "Carl Sandburg wrote the words. He called us the little family of man clutching the tiny ball of earth. And it's a pity he was wrong. For the little family is now approaching 6 billion people, and more and more they struggle for a place at the table. Somalia, Ethiopia, China, Rwanda."

Potter theorized that overpopulation leads to war: "Many scholars and, increasingly, American leaders believe the real threat from increasing population is not that people will starve, but that they will fight for farmland, clean water, and other essentials. Governments will collapse or crack down on their citizens when they can't keep control. People will flee their homelands. And the U.S., the world's one superpower, will be called constantly to the rescue."

ABC's decision to de-emphasize famine prevented the damage good news might do to their reporting. As columnist Tony Snow explained in the September 9 Washington Times: "Worldwide food prices dropped 20 percent between 1990 and 1992 and now stand at less than half their 1970 levels. The average resident of sub-Saharan Africa consumes more than 2,100 calories a day, far beyond subsistence requirements." But Potter overlooked food statistics, claiming that Africa was "where the poorest countries happen to have the highest fertility rates and some of the most wrenching crises."

ABC couldn't even find good news from the U.N. itself, as Newsday noted on August 18: "James G. Speth, head of the U.N. Development Program, said, even as he introduced the pessimistic 1994 report, that in the developing world average life expectancy had in-creased by a third, that more than 70 percent have access to health services and primary schooling, and that, where drugs are available, mass killers like malaria have been brought under control."

Potter's story only aired Thomas Homer-Dixon, whom Clinton has praised in two speeches, and State Department Counselor Tim Wirth, who explained: "You have too many people chasing too little land, too little food, too little forest cover, too little water, and you're inevitably going to have conflicts."

"Just look around the planet, says the White House," Potter relayed. "Pick a trouble spot and you will see how population has magnified its problems. Pick Haiti, for instance, where Homer-Dixon says horrendous political problems are made all the worse by crowding, where dense jungle cleared for farmland is now badly overused."

What Potter did not explain is how ancient his argument is. Wilmoth noted that in 1948, Newsweek columnist Joseph Phillips explained how British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin thought "lack of an outlet for surplus population was one of the fundamental causes of the second world war." In 1969, Paul Ehrlich's book The Population Bomb foresaw massive food riots and wars that never occurred.

How do theorists prove that population growth is a factor in war, as important as the rise of Hitler or the overthrow of Aristide? Homer-Dixon noted the lack of data in the February 1993 Scientific American: "For several decades, some economists and environmental experts like Robert Heilbroner, Paul Ehrlich, and Jessica Tuchman Matthews have warned that such scarcities could spark violent civil or international conflict. But debate has been limited by lack of carefully compiled evidence." Homer-Dixon claimed new evidence, but none of it appeared in detail in Potter's report, or in Scientific American. Even Alexander Cockburn of The Nation called Homer-Dixon's work "data-free."

Homer-Dixon told Potter: "I think that if we don't take very strong action in many of these areas within the next ten or fifteen years, then it's quite possible the game will be lost."

In the September/October American Enterprise, Harvard scholar Nicholas Eberstadt noted some heavily populated nations that aren't war-torn: "The United Kingdom as of 1981 would have been slightly more overpopulated than India; Japan today would be more overpopulated than Indonesia; the continental United States would be considerably more overpopulated than Africa."

Potter explained his viewpoint with a metaphor: "One political scientist says it's a little like a stretch limousine on the pot-holed streets of New York. Inside are the wealthy countries with their air conditioning and their computers. Outside is the rest of the world begging for food." The source? Homer-Dixon, in Scientific American.

Potter's purloined metaphor sounds a lot like U.N. rhetoric (rich nations are unjustly rich and should redistribute their wealth to poor nations), but like the rest of Potter's story it left out the Western view: that wealth is created, not just stolen, and that the poor nations of the world, like Haiti, are often the unfree nations, while the developed nations are free. Poor nations don't require cash, but democracy and free enterprise.

When MediaWatch called Potter, he declined comment by passing the call to ABC spokesman Arnot Walker, who said Potter was "out and about," adding: "You have a copy of the transcript, right? Well, that's it then."

Potter's story concluded: "But even the darkest-sounding theorist says it does not have to be that way, as long as ways can be found to help the world support its growing numbers and keep the number from exploding. Then, every future child will be able to make the same claim. I am, I have come through, I belong, I am a member of the family." Potter only used the darkest-sounding theorists. Optimists don't belong, aren't a member of the Ned Potter news family.

Featured Posts

Bozell Slams Hillary’s Shills in Media: ‘They Are Covering for’ Her

Get the Latest News From CNSNews

Get the Latest Media Analysis on NewsBusters