Book review
Routledge, 504 pp, 6 B/W Illustrations, ISBN 9780429291333.
Hardback £164, eBook £ 34.39.
By Shehina Fazal.
The World Bank states
How poverty is defined and measured varies across the world. The national poverty line for a country is typically a monetary threshold below which a person’s minimum basic needs cannot be met, taking into account the country’s economic and social circumstances. Poverty lines not only vary widely by country but they are also often revised as countries develop: richer countries typically have higher poverty lines than poorer ones.[1]
Vandana Shiva (scholar and activist) clarifies that data emerging from the World Bank on poverty reductions are “manufactured”. Shiva explains, “They stop measuring how people are living and start measuring how much more people are spending. If you had land, you were spending zero on food. Now you don’t have land and you’re working as a daily wage labourer—and you’re spending more on food! But spending more on food is an indicator of poverty.”[ii] Shiva says that the World Bank measures increased expenditure, which is interpreted as reducing poverty.
In this book, many scholars state that since the 1980s, neoliberal economic ideology has influenced the reporting and advocacy role of the media concerning poverty. In other words, it has led to the “near invisibility of people experiencing poverty”. At the same time, those who have higher incomes are regularly covered in the news as celebrities, influencers, entrepreneurs and philanthropists.
The introduction reminds us that the percentage of extremely poor people worldwide is decreasing; 689 million were estimated to be poor in 2017. However, the number of those living in extreme poverty in more affluent countries like the USA and the United Kingdom increased before Covid-19. These countries had wheeled back on reducing poverty by implementing austerity packages over the last decade and a half.
Concerning the media coverage of poverty, the book says
“What do those who have not experienced poverty know about it? What the media tell them. The media do not just reflect social reality — they shape it. Through their representations of social groups and of the economic arrangements that condition their lives, the media legitimise certain ideas about who deserves the breaks in society, who deserves to suffer and who deserves to be ignored.”
The book has five sections. Each section encompasses chapters from contributing authors related to the overall theme of the segment. The topics included in the chapters cover broad and diverse perspectives. In my view, this is what makes the book rich and stimulating. Each Part ends with a case study related to the section’s topic and provides examples of micro-level practices in reporting poverty.
The eight chapters in Part I explore ethical issues in the coverage of poverty. As stated earlier, the volume assumes that journalists should see it as their moral duty “to highlight the plight of those struggling economically and to explain, if not advocate for, possible ways to alleviate their insecurity and exclusion.”
Part II (nine chapters) shows how the coverage of poverty is decreasing in the news. “Poverty coverage is not in demand by readers or advertisers. It is perceived as inherently unpleasant and unwieldy and raises uncomfortable questions about the social contract in societies everywhere.” Part II’s contributions include chapters covering India, the USA, Spain, Canada and the UK. The chapter by Jairo Lugo-Ocando draws attention to inconsistencies of journalists when covering issues of poverty:
“The fundamental paradox in relation to news coverage of poverty and inequality in our society seems to be the gap between the self-proclaimed normative role of being a watchdog to power —which ought to bark against injustice — and the very deficient and flawed manner in which the mainstream news media actually reports issues around poverty and social exclusion.”
In Part III (nine chapters), the media representations of the “poor” are discussed by various scholars. Positive representations of people experiencing poverty are few, while most of the coverage is negative and, in some cases, seen as “deviant”. The key theme to emerge from Part III is that the media coverage of poverty tends to be generally “episodic and focused on human interest rather than on the structural factors that contribute to the near destitution of people working one or more jobs.”
Also, in Part III, Michael Cary provides an analysis of the coverage by the news of the best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance amid the 2016 US presidential election. The book’s main thrust is that “individual agency and determination are the key to overcoming one’s poor lot”. Despite the book receiving criticisms concerning the reinforcement of the “poverty stereotype”, news organisations gave positive presentations of Hillbilly Elegy.
In Part IV (nine chapters), the focus is on the indirect coverage of people who are experiencing poverty. This indirect coverage is achieved when covering government policies concerning educational inequality and health care or housing access. These are essential areas for those living in poverty. However, the media’s attention is predominantly on individual stories that draw attention away from providing the structural context of poverty and reiterating the state of poverty as “natural and inevitable.”
In the first chapter in part IV, Jen Birks examines the anti-austerity narrative in the UK from 2010 to 2020. She concludes, “When it comes to the crunch of election priorities, poverty remains low on the mainstream agenda. The voices of those in poverty, even when amplified, are safely ignored, and their resulting political disengagement from formal politics is reported as immutable fact.”
In another chapter in Part IV, Rajiv Prabhakar discusses the issues surrounding the media coverage of Universal Basic Income (UBI) proposals. Prabhakar states, “..there has often been an ingrained lack of sympathy in the media toward poverty and those living in poverty.”
Ending on the positives, Part V (eight chapters) focuses on how the media could engage with issues of poverty where people experiencing poverty are included in the public sphere rather than excluded as they are now.
The control of the narrative is vital in changing people’s perceptions and attitudes toward people experiencing poverty. This narrative must come directly from communities facing poverty and should not be impacted by the short time cycles of modern journalism.
For example, Erica Hagen discusses the counter-narrative provided by citizen journalism in the well-known slum Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya. They are trying to offer counter-narrative perspectives from the ground with the Kibera News Network. Externally narrated news provides a different perspective from the news provided by those living and experiencing the reality of daily life in the locale.
This book is a comprehensive companion to issues concerning media and poverty. The numerous chapter contributions from various scholars make it stimulating and challenging. Each chapter emphasises how the media coverage of those experiencing poverty could be improved. It seems that the framing of poverty by the journalists is an area to be explored further, as some journalists have mentioned when covering news on those experiencing poverty that they are influenced by the news values of their organisation and their sources. More importantly, whether enhancing coverage of poverty in the media will contribute to reducing poverty is a question to be discussed at another time.
[1] https://datatopics.worldbank.org/world-development-indicators/themes/poverty-and-inequality.html
[ii] An interview with Vandana Shiva, in the Canadian Dimension, 20 August 2014. https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/an-interview-with-vandana-shiva
