Illustration by Maiya Bodine
By A. Daniel Bodine
desertmountaintimes.com
It was early in 1976, I think, after a news decision had been made, is when I noticed something different was changing my perception of journalism et al—e.g., the way Life works and how the American media reports on it. A very minor, inconsequential decision was made then, it was (to principles involved in making it apparently); to folks with my bent, it was major.
It was in the aftermath of another tragic Central Texas traffic accident, this one involving a farmer on a tractor at a railroad crossing. For no more news coverage it was given, however, it was almost like for someone who was doing his best to make an honest living, being run over and killed by a train was irrelevant to the public.
The New Normal, this thing we're living with now has been called since the stock market crash of '08, and the subsequent loss of billions if not trillions in retirements savings for average Americans. But for an earlier generation, the seeds of '08 began sprouting decades ago. For me, I think of the farmer at the railroad crossing. Or at least that's when I felt my first uncomfortableness with subtle changes in the way people were regarding each other.
The year 1976 was the year of America's big Bicentennial Whoopity-Whoop, what journalists tended to call it at newspapers. I was employed as regional editor at the Temple Daily Telegram in Bell County—a daily paper then of maybe 20k circulation. The Bicentennial Whoopity-Whoop was a commercial boom for Middle America's business sector; maybe it was historical, too, for most of its citizens.
Indeed, historical markers seemed to be handed out then to every old, small-town community like confetti at a county fair. The Telegram's region covered seven counties. And, of course, we in the media had to go take a photo and run a story on the event every time a community got one.
For the publicity from our coverage would bring in shoppers to the town's merchants; and of course the merchants were purchasing advertising, too, in the newspapers. And that advertising would then pay our salaries, us staff members. Duh. Economics 101?
But the year, for me, marked this slow change in priorities in the way we viewed each other, too. In the marketing of news, for instance. And in the values of our individual lives relevant to that marketing process.
I remember the early afternoon—I think it was a Sunday afternoon--in the newsroom when this incident occurred. I had the general assignments beat. A call came in on the police scanner of a train hitting and killing an elderly farmer on a tractor, maybe 15-20 miles outside of Temple somewhere, on some back road. I grabbed a camera and ran lickety-split.
What was he doing on a tractor, away from his farm apparently, and crossing a railroad track in the afternoon? I wondered. And why did he not see or hear the train?
Bill Middlebrooks was our managing editor at the time. A tall, wiry old seasoned veteran, of the old school. From somewhere back East, I think. Being a Sunday (or was it a Saturday?), he was not in, of course. His day off. The boys on “the news desk”—all experienced grads of big J schools like Baylor and UT--were putting out the paper.
Whether or not they tried and were unable to contact Bill about the tractor fatality; whether they got directions from the publisher himself; or whether they were so busy they just failed to think about it, I never knew. When a daily in a high growth area is understaffed, admittedly the clock becomes like a gun pointed to your head. Survival instincts can take over; hurrying the process even more.
But it was the instinctive decision “the news desk” team made prior to deadline, however, that remained with me, like a bad taste in your mouth you can't get rid of.
I quickly got a photo and the basic facts of the story at the scene; then raced back to the paper to meet the deadline. No family members were around yet, as I remember; a follow-up story, if it had been requested, would've included them. Only someone at the scene (a neighbor?), who'd said the farmer had been plowing in a field “down the road” from the location of his farm, was the only thing I had to add to the basic facts of the wreck.
The photo I remember showed the rear of the train, standing in the distance. The mangled tractor was off in a ditch, in the photo's midfield; and, up close, not far from the rails, the body of the farmer, with some kind of covering thrown over him. One of the boys on “the desk” uttered to me offhandedly the photo was too “tasteless;” it wasn't used. The story itself was cut down to maybe 3-4 graf's, and buried in a 1-column space on a back page. Why? I wondered.
Bill asked me the same question the following Monday, as we passed on the stairs inside the Telegram's building. Why wasn't the story played bigger? he wondered. There wasn't a photo?
I told him what I'd been told, and what I'd gotten on it. And then added, I think that's the new journalism the big schools are teaching today. And at that he made a face. I don't like it, it said.
The new journalism, the new economics, the new morality, have all swept over our lives in the last half century, like water dirtied with sludge from a leaking oil freighter that's run aground--in the once peaceful, pristine harbor of our lives. We live with its filth, but aren't expected to see it.
Instead the owners of the ship tell us to think about all the good things money from the oil (from radical, politically loosened capitalism) does to our lives. Money is good, is their constant refrain; let us dedicate our lives to getting more oil.
But for us, falling increasingly below their wealth and ownership grade, in what's become a ruthless, winnowing economy; and being dirtied, too, by what is happening in our soiled environment, this “more oil is good” argument doesn't wash. Maybe what's happening is irrelevant to them, but not us, we want to say.
But then, yes, there are the jobs to consider. Indeed, in strangulation that's first. Or who can talk when his or her lungs are under water, financially insolvent? So more and more, too, we safely keep quiet in our thoughts; snuggle into the labyrinths of both our togetherness and our separateness; and pretend all's OK with the world. In the Sweet Bye and Bye, as the poor from older generations use to say, we'll have more of a say.
The terms radical capitalism (which we've come to associate now with our corpocracy) and its offshoot, social minimalism (the relative values put on our lives when up against cold, economic realities), are not mine, not by a long shot. I've simply embraced them, and borrowed them.
Credit should go, as far as I know, to Canadian Sociologist Rhoda E. Howard-Hassman. Her early work, Human Rights and the Search for Community, describes the two terms at length; and is what stirred my curiosity on this particular subject.
Sheer observations, like the above small incident with the old farmer, can be left to common sense, however. Something has slipped unnoticed into our midst; and has altered the way we see each other. It's a change to our modern times, yes. But in my opinion it's certainly not a change for the better. Nor a good precursor for the future.
Comments are always welcomed and encouraged. Leave comments in the forum or write to me at dan@desertmountaintimes.com.
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