Help Us Eliminate Unsustainable Pro-Growth Media Bias
Please help us eliminate pro-growth bias in the news media. A flurry of news reports this morning reinforce the cultural myth that population growth is a sign things are going well. This keeps our culture hooked on growth. Over a lifetime it programs us to seek and celebrate growth.
The U.S. Census released new state population estimates yesterday, and – as usual – the flurry of news headlines and reports is providing disappointing evidence that most journalists have a pro-growth bias. It’s often fairly subtle, but if your radar for this bias is active as you read some of these headlines or stories, you can’t miss it.
- U.S. population growth flat (USA Today)
- Kansas population growth lags behind national average (Wichita Business Journal)
- Indiana Population Growth “Sluggish” (Inside Indiana Business)
- Florida ranks 3rd in population growth (Bradenton Herald)
This is a real problem in our modern culture, because it reinforces the cultural myth that growth is necessary for prosperity. We must give this myth a decent burial to speed our transition to a sustainable world. This will be a world that does not seek impossible and destructive perpetual growth, but rather seeks good and satisfying lives that leave future generations a world worth inheriting.
The GrowthBusters project is planning to establish a special website to highlight pro-growth bias in the media. Shining a bright spotlight on this phenomenon will activate everyone’s bias radar, taking away the programming power of pro-growth propaganda. It will also make journalists aware of the bias and encourage them to report more accurately on growth issues.
This is just one of several initiatives we’re planning for GrowthBusters Phase II. As you might guess, we can only do this if you help. I’ve been working this year for no pay and with only occasional part-time help. In order for us to be effective I must have a full-time paid staffer, and I must be able to draw a modest salary. We need funds to register website domains, design graphics, and distribute news releases. On top of that, we need funds to produce a TV series featuring in-depth interviews with leading thinkers like Paul Ehrlich, William Rees, Lester Brown, Juliet Schor, William Catton, Stephanie Mills, Bill McKibben, and Eben Fodor (to name but a few). Your contribution today will also help us begin developing the next film in the GrowthBusters series.
We should all be enjoying life even as we put our energy into growthbusting. That’s why we’ve designed a way for you to participate in our work (as much as you care to) and for you to enjoy some special benefits of helping us out (film crew t-shirts, movie posters, and more). Select a level of participation and make a contribution on-line here. Please pitch in, and please share this message with others.
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Thank you for your support,
Dave Gardner
Filmmaker
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Dave Gardner
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Here’s another example.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/12/21/social-issue/census-us-population-growth-rising-again/
Very subtle pro-growth bias except for the very obvious bias in this quote from a university demographer near the end. Demographers get indoctrinated, too!
“These gains remain far smaller than those each state experienced during the economic boom, but reflect considerable improvement over the situation at the depths of the recession,” said Kenneth Johnson, a sociologist and senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire,
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