by Kira Neel

Created on: July 01, 2008

Merriam-Webster's online dictionary defines the word important as "marked by or indicative of significant worth or consequence : valuable in content or relationship." Therefore, when asking what it takes to make poverty an important news story, the question is really, how can poverty be reported on in such a way that it leaves a lasting effect on media consumers?

Finding a definition for "poverty" is much more elusive than finding a definition for the word "important." The United States census defines a family as living in poverty when their total income is less than the family's threshold, meaning they make less than they need to live on in a year. The United Nations definition recognizes the systemic persistence of poverty: "a human condition characterized by the sustained or chronic deprivation of the resources, capabilities, choices, security and power necessary for the enjoyment of an adequate standard of living and other civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights."

We are asked to answer a sticky question: how to untangle and elucidate the interconnected exploitative relationships humans and societies have had with each other, worldwide, forever, in a way that media consumers find valuable "in content or relationship." How is it possible to make extraordinarily difficult realities palpable and accessible across radically different lifestyles and experiences?

I think that the answer lies in the most basic human trait: recognition. When we allow ourselves to recognize the humanity in each other, humans will go to great lengths to care for and protect each other. I believe that poverty is an important news story when media consumers identify on a personal, human level with the story. Perhaps it is easier to look at poverty far away because it continues to be possible to "otherize" the situation. Perhaps it is easier to hear about poverty in terms of mass starvation, not because we (humans) (Americans) are callous, but because, there are few people who have any idea what it is to even see tens or hundreds of thousands of people, let alone watch them die in refugee camps. As journalists, I believe it is our job to not only share the information, "this is happening to you or this is happening to them", but, essentially, this is happening to us humans."

While the information or "facts" of a story are valuable because of their informative nature, I believe the global or human connections are the crux of a news story; that is where the story becomes "valuable in . . . relationship", or, important to the media consumer. The media consumer then becomes implicated in global and local poverty, and an opportunity is provided to see how each choice made in this global marketplace affects the lives of millions. Effective media creates the possibility for media consumers to make and recognize those sorts of connections. That then leaves the door open for the possibility that those consumers will take the information from the news into account when making decisions on a daily basis.

As humans, our ability to create consciously, and to consciously create, sets us apart. On a very basic level, we decide when and how to reproduce. We create art to examine, celebrate, reflect upon and/or challenge our species and our societies. We have created ways of preserving our histories, dreaming of the future, and, in journalism, recording our daily lives and events. Poverty is a generational reality for the majority of humans on this resource-rich planet, and yet we have not figured out how to create solutions to the problems only humans could have created for ourselves.

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