You’ve seen or heard or read the personal interest story a thousand times: An enterprising seven-year-old collects cans to save for college (ABC7, 2/8/17), a man with unmatched moxie walks 15 miles to his job (Today, 2/20/17), a low-wage worker buys shoes for a kid whose mother can’t afford them (Fox5, 12/14/16), an “inspiring teen” goes right back to work after being injured in a car accident (CBS News, 12/16/16). All heartwarming tales of perseverance in the face of impossible odds—and all ideological agitprop meant to obscure and decontextualize the harsh reality of dog-eat-dog capitalism.
Man walks eight miles in the snow to get to work every day (ABC 27, 3/14/17). Or was it a teen walking 10 miles in freezing weather to a job interview (New York Daily News, 2/26/13)? Or was it 10 miles to work every day (Times Herald Record, 3/17/17)? Or was it 12 (ABC News, 2/22/17) or 15 (Today, 2/20/17) or 18 (Evening Standard, 2/9/09) or 21 (Detroit Free Press, 1/20/15)? Who cares—their humanity is irrelevant. They’re clickbait, stand-in bootstrap archetypes meant to validate the bourgeois morality of click-happy media consumers.
These stories are typically shared for the purposes of poor-shaming, typically under the guise of inspirational life advice. “This man is proof we all just need to keep walking, no matter what life throws at us,” insisted Denver ABC7 anchor Anne Trujillo, after sharing one of those stories of a poor person forced to walk thousands of miles a year to survive.
A healthy press would take these anecdotes of “can do” spirit and ask bigger questions, like why are these people forced into such absurd hardship? Who benefits from skyrocketing college costs? Why does the public transit in this person’s city not have subsidies for the poor? Why aren’t employers forced to offer time off for catastrophic accidents? But time and again, the media mindlessly tells the bootstrap human interest story, never questioning the underlying system at work.
One particularly vulgar example was CBS News (12/16/16) referring to an “inspiring” African-American kid who had to work at his fast food job with an arm sling and a neck brace after a car accident. To compound the perseverance porn, he was, at least in part, doing so to help donate to a local homeless charity. Here we have a story highlighting how society has colossally failed its most vulnerable populations—the poor, ethnic minorities, children and the homeless—and the take-home point is, “Ah gee, look at that scrappy kid.”
Journalism is as much—if not more—about what isn’t reported as what is. Here a local reporter is faced with a cruel example of people falling through the cracks of the richest country on Earth, and their only contribution is to cherry-pick one guy who managed—just barely—to cling on to the edge.
Perseverance porn goes hand in hand with the rise of a GoFundMe economy that relies on personal narrative over collective policy, emotional appeals over baseline human rights. $930 million out of the $2 billion raised on GoFundMe since its inception in 2010 was for healthcare expenses, while an estimated 45,000 people a year die a year due to a lack of medical treatment. Meanwhile, anchors across cable news insist that single-payer healthcare is “unaffordable,” browbeating guests who support it, while populating their broadcasts with these one-off tales of people heroically scraping by.
It’s part of a broader media culture of anecdotes in lieu of the macro, moralizing “success” rather than questioning systemic problems. Perseverance porn may seem harmless, but in highlighting handpicked cases of people overcoming hardship without showing the thousands that didn’t—much less asking broader questions as to what created these conditions—the media traffics in decidedly right-wing tropes. After all, if they can do it, so can you—right?
You are right. That picture should provoke outrage, not admiration. Most people are worn out by trying to maintain a democracy and what used to be called a Christian life. We are falling back down into Herod’s banquet and abandoning the grassy slope where more than 5000 were fed. It’s much easier that way, at least for some.
A very well written indictment of the 4th estate’s continual campaign to maintain the status quo. If I had the power, I’d nominate this for a Pulitzer.
You even managed to make private charity into a vice. The bizarre commitment to violence is astounding.
What?
Somehow, stories of folks walking many miles to highlight the injustice illustrated here don’t merit the same cachet, do they?
And is that really “mindless”?
corporate media GLORIFIED “truck driver” stories also irk me and qualify as corporate media porn to! the corporate media portrays truck driving as a wonderful job, good pay, and so many open positions. in fact truck driving is a mostly a terrible job. the pay is not really good, the corporations treat the workers not better than walmart regarding pay, health insurance, pension… the corporations want “independents so they don’t have to invest in vehicles, maintenance, being responsible for taking care of the employee… this is true for local and long distance drivers. we often (almost daily for years) stopped at 2 federal Rest Stops on a major USA highway to let our dog run around on the way to town. we’d routinely see drivers with back/posture problems. they’d be haunched over, limping… after so many we assumed it must be from being in the same position for too long periods of time. i personally know families of 4 male (father) long distance truck drivers. the worst case the father is home twice per year for 3 days, the best he’s home every 2 months. the children actually know nothing of their fathers. great corporate conservative values! truck drivers are definitely included in corporate media porn!
This is very profound and true. Now what can we do?
Well said at every turn. Of note, this sort of “perseverance porn” seems related to the kind that celebrates heroic disabled people, sometimes ironically denoted “super-crips.” As if losing 90% or more of one’s functional range were a magic pill conferring nobility of spirit or at least Nobel-winning physics insight. And if _they_ can do it, so can _you_—right? (So why haven’t you . . . ?)
Gushing praise for heroic sufferers always implies, or at least opens the door farther for, blame for non-heroic sufferers.
Well done, Adam Johnson. Accurate, and with excellent analysis.
This kind of story (perseverance porn) has been a peeve of mine for thirty years. Never goes out of style. Thanks for documenting it. Where can we go to see how it should be reported?
I clicked on one link to the story, the last one to the CNN, Corporate News Network, All War, All the Time story. I endured about 9 seconds of it. “The Urban Institute has said, we haven’t been able to double check these numbers. Single Payer could cost $32 trillion over ten years.” Who’s the Urban Institute? Let me guess. A Koch Brothers funded think tank. And if it “could” cost $32 trillion, maybe it just as easily could not. Maybe $34.53. I’ve seen numbers where if you eliminate insurers and administrators in a Single Payer Health Care model, it’s a zero sum game. Eliminating the profiteers from the equation means Single Payer pays for itself.
I can’t remember who said this, “unless you ask the right questions, the answers are irrelevant.” We are in the era of irrelevant journalism (and journalist), irrelevant news, pablum for the masses. Nothing demonstrates this more than how the corporate media runs away from asking the right questions let alone “…..asking broader questions……” about the epidemic of Autism in a generation of children. Think about it, there are so many children with autism, that we have Santa Clauses trained in the sensory issues of autism. Powerful interests claim autism has been around forever, and the corporate media spits out that line or its genetic. The epidemic of autism happened too fast and there is no such thing as a genetic epidemic.
Here’s a question for the corporate media, “Where are all the 2% of adults with autism that demonstrate proof that the autism has been around forever. When is the corporate media going to start printing the stories of school budgets being crushed my special education costs for the thousands of public school students with autism IEP’s or the related neurological disorders and learning disabilities? Instead we get Santa Claus feel good stories opposed to asking the right questions.
The greatest power of the mass media is the power to ignore and to perpetuate denial. http://skyhorsepublishing.com/titles/12788-9781510716940-denial
Keep on listening to the Adam Johnson’s of the world, and keep on suffering.
Precisely.
Shadowboxing with straw men is the new counterculture.
Adam doing great work as usual.
http://myfox8.com/2017/08/04/dominos-employee-walks-to-deliver-pizzas-after-his-car-breaks-down/
I’ve read that 6 corporte groups control all the major media——so that why everythiing sounds the same and so unbelievable,. We need brave reporters like Eward R. Murrow. but i suppose in today’s corporate world, that reporter would soon be unemployed and destroyed. i wish i could have been born when America was a more real and functioning idea.
Maybe ancient Greece’s democracy was a better idea. The rich had to donate lots to keep their status, and EVERYBODY went to war……so NO free passes for the rich. although America did that pay not to go to war early on too. So instead of Greece, we are becoming Sparta….yikes, so i guess helots is a better term for 21st century
America than the serf that I thought I was becoming.
Seems like a reference to the Horatio Alger rags-to-riches porn of the last century could fit in here just as well. The idea that anyone can make it from poor to rich if they’re scrappy enough has been pushed in America for a long time.
Thank you Adam for opening my eyes, perseverance porn never occurred to me before. I agree with you. We need more in depth reporting on the real issues and problems and less anecdotes.
Ideological agitprop…decontextualize…afraid while I see your point to a great degree (suspicious and slightly paranoiac as it seems), your nearly 1984speak pushed me away with annoyance. Ideological agitprop…wtf…Chris
Very nice work here. I have long had this sense about these types of stories, but I just didn’t know how to accurately articulate this sense. Now you’ve given me this spot-on name for these stories and have accurately articulated their deeper meaning. Thank you.