Top Stories

The Michigan Messenger going forward

By Staff Report | 11.16.11

I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]

Colorado-based abstinence program provided false and misleading information to Michigan students

HIV-AIDS-small
By Todd A. Heywood | 11.16.11

An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.

Class action lawsuit filed against MERS over unpaid taxes

foreclosure
By Todd A. Heywood | 11.15.11

Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.

Schuette fights important mercury regulations

epa_logo
By Eartha Jane Melzer | 11.14.11

Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.

Study: Mainstream news disappears workers

By Eartha Jane Melzer | 06.30.08 | 2:28 pm

Michigan may lead the country with its unemployment rate, but if you are looking to the mainstream media for help understanding what this means for people living here — good luck!

Continued -A media study by the progressive think tank Center for American Progress found that though more people are turning to the web for news — a trend that we here at Michigan Messenger are struggling to hasten — when it comes to economic coverage, most people still go to mainstream news outlets that generally tell economic stories from the business point of view, leaving out the perspectives of ordinary workers.

By analyzing economic coverage from the leading print and television outlets for 2007, the center found that in stories about employment, business was sourced 6.7 times as frequently as workers.

This imbalance threatens democracy by leaving citizens ill-informed and is largely the result of journalists’ “decided preference” for elite sources such as spokespeople for business groups. The imbalance could be overcome, the study says, if editors and journalists would actively seek out the perspectives of workers.

For more see “Journalists Give Workers the Business: How the Mainstream News Ignores Ordinary People in Economics Coverage.”

Comments

  • Eartha Jane Melzer

    Are smaller papers doing a better job? The Traverse City Record Eagle is running a three day series –”Living on the Edge“– on how local people struggle to get by in the failing state and national economy.

  • Eartha Jane Melzer

    Are smaller papers doing a better job? The Traverse City Record Eagle is running a three day series –”Living on the Edge“– on how local people struggle to get by in the failing state and national economy.

  • LoRayne Apo-Joynt

    Excellent question There's an invisible firewall between the BIG papers and the small papers that never seems to be transcended, too…it's unusual to see stories survive that firewall without being distorted and twisted around by the time it makes the BIG paper (as you well know).

    The BIG papers don't seem to notice this, and their product is weak for it, likely hurts their circulation.

  • LoRayne Apo-Joynt

    Excellent question There’s an invisible firewall between the BIG papers and the small papers that never seems to be transcended, too…it’s unusual to see stories survive that firewall without being distorted and twisted around by the time it makes the BIG paper (as you well know).

    The BIG papers don’t seem to notice this, and their product is weak for it, likely hurts their circulation.

Categories & Tags: Economy| Media Monitor|