We print what people tell us, MV 21

By Jeffrey C. Turbitt

There is an old saying in journalism that notes, "We don't print the truth, we print what people tell us." Nowhere was that on greater display than in the local media over the last few weeks.

Last week a story in the Saipan Tribune offered the headline: "Wage hikes harmful to NMI." The rest of the story followed that line completely, noting that a "U.S. Labor report said that raising the local minimum wage to the federal level would have adverse impacts on employment and lead to additional population declines in the Commonwealth."

Quoting press releases and writing one source stories with cherry picked report quotes from a local administration hell bent on keeping its poorest citizens poor is easy. Taking the time to read the actual report to get the full story and canvassing the community to get a broad range of opinion is harder.

What was completely omitted from the news was this caveat from the actual report about the recently enacted wage hike: "The Department’s research was limited by two significant factors: 1. Short Time Frame. The reporting time-frame specified in the legislation – no later than 8 months from the date of enactment (May 25, 2007) – did not provide sufficient time to observe actual effects of the minimum wage increases. The period following the initial increase was too short for significant observable effects to materialize. Adjustments of employment arrangements and of patterns of living standards typically do not occur instantaneously following a change in a key economic parameter. Immediate changes may be too small in scale to observe, and it may require the passage of many months before cumulative effects become large enough to observe."

Translated into simpler English, this statement above is code from academics to other academics that means the report does not have any reliable data, is speculation, has no merit, but it was requested by their bosses so they have to come up with something -- and please don't slam our lame research in any academic journals because we need to get a professorship somewhere when Bush leaves office next January.

This same story states, "Increasing the CNMI wage to $7.25 an hour, the report said, is comparable to raising the U.S. minimum wage to $16.50 an hour. No further explanation is given, notably this part from the report: "The scheduled increase in the minimum wage to $7.25 (by 2015) will likely affect at least 75 percent of wage and salary workers in the CNMI. By comparison, in order to directly affect 75 percent of U.S. hourly workers, the minimum wage would need to be raised to $16.50, the 75th percentile mark for wage and salary workers who are paid hourly rates."

All that means is most everyone here in the private sector makes meager wages. To affect 75 percent of the the U.S. population, the minimum wage would have to go to $16.50 because people in the mainland make so much more than us now. We're also talking about 2015. That statistic is hardly an argument against the increased minimum wage, but it sure looked like it.

Economics is hardly an exact science, so without data, these Bush Administration folks followed the usual Right Wing party line, which is to support anything that aids big business to the detriment of the working poor. Remember, this is an administration that kept its surgeon general from giving his honest opinion on stem cell research, tried to muzzle its top climatologist from speaking out on global warming and amplified sketchy intelligence in a State of the Union address to create an atmosphere for war. I'm sure the message came across to the economists who wrote this report to follow traditional Right Wing economic dogma about wages. Blogger Ken Phillips provides an excellent, detailed critique of the report at http://www.sosaipan.blogspot.com/.

The lack of the complete story wasn't the only lousy reporting by this reporter, Agnes Donato, who did a much better job than this paper's reporter on the federalization rally a few weeks ago. Continuing the one source, press release format in a separate story, she quoted the governor's public information officer Charles P. Reyes, Jr. as saying: “Just about everybody is in agreement that the Commonwealth cannot sustain additional increases to the minimum wage. We will do everything in our power to communicate this message to the U.S. Congress." Nowhere in the story was another viewpoint presented.

Really. Just about everybody. The local people not in the government bureaucracy making $3.55 are satisfied with those wages and don't want a raise? Where was Taotao Tano Greg Cruz's voice, a voice we hear daily and even discussing things like dentistry and medicine, who I presumed was the person who spoke up for the average working local?

Not once in five years of reading papers and discussing these types of issues with students and their parents did I hear anyone oppose a higher minimum wage. I can't recall hearing anyone not in the government leadership or the business community oppose a higher minimum wage. Some in the business community even acknowledge the shame of our wages. In fact, I would say most everyone not in the government leadership or business ownership community supports the higher minimum wage. Any reporter who walks around Kobler, San Antonio, Dandan or elsewhere would find out pretty quickly that it isn't so unanimous, but those folks don't write many press releases.

Real journalism is hard. It requires research and work. Writing one source stories from a press release from an administration that didn't win the most votes in Saipan while barely getting elected at all and whose party was massacred in the last election is easy and not very good.

Jeffrey C. Turbitt is the language arts department chairman at Saipan Southern High School, as well as an avid scuba diver and traveler. He offers more thoughts in his blog Hypercritical Thoughts at: www.turbittj.blogspot.com/ He welcomes feedback, tips and story ideas at turbittj@yahoo.com. His column appears regularly on Wednesdays.