Consider Articles “A” and “B” that both ran on the Columbus Dispatch front page on November 29. Article “A” ushers in the new “era” of Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer. Article “B” contains phrases like “crisis could endanger the global economy”, “a key risk to the world economy”, “situation is more than difficult, even dangerous”, “could cause more financial damage to the shaky U.S. economy”, and “could damage a U.S. economy saddled with slow growth and 9% unemployment”. Whereas article “A” covers 48% of page A1 plus 64% of page A4, article “B” gets only 6% on A1 and 19% on A4. The coverage given to Meyer is over 4 times (56% of these prominent pages) that given to the European financial crisis (13%).
We all know that life will not really be substantially different because of a new football coach. Conversely, another global recession could saddle us with several more years of the kind of anemic economic growth and high unemployment that has so many families struggling today. One wonders if our citizens would better comprehend the gravity of the decisions made by our own elected officials if we reversed the coverage ratio. A case can be made that a better understanding of Europe’s tribulations might spur public demand for better performance from our own Congress instead of the political bickering that has paralyzed their ability to deal with a similar debt crisis here.
Our newspaper may claim that they are simply catering to the desires of readers and feeding their appetites for Buckeye news. But are they really adhering to the basic Utilitarian ethics principle of “the Greatest Good for the greatest number of people” that justifies so many of their other daily decisions about things like which pictures to print or demands for open access to public records? I, for one, would prefer to see a much greater emphasis on the critical issues that can truly affect our daily lives in a very real and substantial manner.
