Today I read and re-read an Associated Press analysis of what to expect in business in the second Bush term and came away thinking about something called "world view."
Consider this paragraph:
"Industry analysts say that with Bush in the White House and Republicans increasing their control of Congress, government price controls for prescription medicines won’t be on the table. The free market system, where demand drives price, will continue, said Barbara Ryan, a pharmaceutical analyst and managing director at Deutsche Bank Securities."
Oh? We have a free market system in pharmaceuticals? Demand drives the price of prescriptions?
I doubt even a right-wing economist would endorse that flight of fancy.
A free market means competition, choices, price differentials. But our drug manufacturers enjoy monopolies.
Fact is, we have price controls, the industry’s rather than government’s.
Okay, was the reporter biased? I doubt it. He or she probably relied on expert sources, industry analysts like Barbara Ryan. This reflect our times. We live in the era of reliance on authority, after all. In the 60s, more Americans and more reporters were skeptical.
Also, today’s reporters swim in a "free market" sea, whereas reporters in the 60s grew up in an economy that gave lip service, at least, to government regulation aimed at protecting the citizenry from laissez-faire capitalism.
Reporters in the 60s also read more than today’s; anybody born after 1955 has grown up in a visual age. If there are advantages that accrue from absorbing pictures, they lie in feeling and sensation, not retained factual information, certainly not traditional logic.
Back to the AP story – in a schematic summarizing the outlook in several industries, the "Pharmaceutical" capsule reads this way:
"Drug makers would benefit from less government price controls on prescription drugs…"
Less price controls? That’s not English. Less price "control" -singular - would work. Or "fewer"price controls.
Do I nit-pick? No. Poor English is another product of visual learning.
In sum, today’s journalism reflects our society – its reliance on faith in authority rather than skepticism thereof, its common assumptions about the way the economy works and its reliance on video rather than reading.
Which adds up to a world view.
Not bias.