CASH 4 ONENESS

One example of the way this prejudice influences the news is the way that the story of prisons in the United States is ignored in the press and other media. The United States has a huge prisoner population. Twenty-five percent of all prisoners in the world are incarcerated in the United States. The only countries that have ever topped us in this are nations like Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union and South Africa under apartheid. But for our papers and TV, this is a nonstory, because the prisoners and their families are all poor, in the bottom 15-20 percent of the economic hierarchy. They no more exist for the media corporations than the untouchables in India. If the prisoners consisted of half the graduating class of Yale University, it would be the most important in history. This kind of noncoverage undermines the most fundamental tenets of journalism.