That article seems to be much more prominent. It's on the front page of Reuters, while the article you linked to isn't even on the main US News page. It seems more like "There's 20,000 dead in Iran! Oh yeah, and an American died too." How is that ethnocentricity?
Posted by Sopwith (Member # 4640) on :
And Reuters is a British organization...
Posted by Frisco (Member # 3765) on :
Your article isn't ethnocentric. Mine was. Simple as that.
Someone obviously looked at the tragedy, cared enough to find out whether one of "us" were in it, then decided that the single death was worth a news article.
Ethnocentricity isn't necessarily a bad thing, it just seemed rather silly in this case. Thousands of Americans die every day, most without things like 25,000 dead Iranians to overshadow the circumstances, yet many don't get their own Reuters article.
Posted by Frisco (Member # 3765) on :
quote:CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters)
I'm not saying that Reuters is ethnocentric, Sopwith. An American obviously wrote this article.
Posted by Argèn†~ (Member # 4528) on :
The first line of the article.
quote:At least one American tourist was killed and another seriously injured in the earthquake that claimed tens of thousands of lives in Iran, the State Department said on Saturday.
So, where is the ethnocentrism? He mentions the other deaths, but he mentions that there was an American there who died as well. Furthermore, it is very vague in general.
quote:But the president offered condolences to the families of the deceased and injured on Friday and pledged U.S. humanitarian aid.
Offering condolences and aid is ethnocentric?
Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
Oh, man. I opened this thread hoping that someone else was having to spend their vacation in a small town in Western Montana.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
It’s not ethnocentricity; it’s good, focused reporting. The article was about the State Department's press release, which was issued the day after the quake. The State Department often issues statistics on Americans injured abroad - it's one of its jobs.
Basically, you misinterpreted the context of the article – its focus was the U.S. government response to the quake, not about all the consequences of the quake. Those have been covered extensively in other articles, available on the same site, and in much greater detail.
It seems the only way a reporter could cover this press release and avoid tripping your ethnocentricity sensitivity meter is to include a full synopsis of all the events related to a story, properly prioritized. This isn’t realistic or desirable.
Dagonee
[ December 27, 2003, 09:16 PM: Message edited by: Dagonee ]
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
Heh. That's a pretty good example of ethnocentricity, but the crowning achievement of white ethnocentricity, to me, is and has been for the past millenia the making of a white Jesus. He's everywhere! The Catholic Church made their first Native American saint in Mexico, and surprise! He turned out to be a white European!
Heh, it's stunning the lengths people go to in order to avoid praying to a black or Arab god...
Posted by Maccabeus (Member # 3051) on :
Lalo, when I walk into a European or EurAmerican church, I'm not surprised to see a white Jesus, for the same reason I'm not surprised to see a black Jesus in African or African-American churches. In Asia, Jesus is depicted as Asian. It's people's way of appropriating Jesus for their own lives instead of having him be "that distant foreigner God". I don't know that I agree with it--I'm a factual type, and it might be better for everyone to depict something closer to the actual reality--but I understand it.
Posted by Nick (Member # 4311) on :
quote: Heh, it's stunning the lengths people go to in order to avoid praying to a black or Arab god...
That's true for a bigoted minority, but most people aren't like that.
Posted by Rudolph (Member # 3236) on :
I'll give you ethnocentric!!!!!
I died yesterday and oh, by the way a million other people in the world died too!!!
and more than half of them were minorities
but you don't hear me telling you about them
NOW DO YOU!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!
SO THERE!!!!!!!!!
ETHNOCENTRICMETRICDETRICCEDRIC!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
They tend to report 'outsider' deaths so that families with people in Iran know what is going on. it's reported on the news because that may be the first time anyone finds out about their friend or relative.
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
Lalo, Jesus was Jewish, not Arabian. Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
Ummm, that was under US News. Top News and World News featured Iranians dead. Maybe you thought US News should be about what happens to foreign nationals...but that wasn't my impression.
Posted by A Rat Named Dog (Member # 699) on :
I'm betting that news sources in every country in the world reported the number of their own citizens that died in the quake. It's interesting and important news, and I'd be kind of disappointed if our own newspeople failed to bring it up. Let's see if we can be a little less trigger happy?
By the way, the depiction of Christ with European features isn't a result of modern ethnocentrism. It's just a relic of ethnocentrism centuries past. The only ancient images we have of Christ (or at least, the vast majority of them) are found in Europe, where he was made to look familiar to ethnocentric Romans and medieval Europeans.
We don't know how Christ looked before he was depicted with European features, and there is no way for us to find out. Changing the images might be a fun and fanciful exercise in multiculturalism, but it would get us no closer to finding Christ's true look.
On top of that, Christ is not a symbol of white people, or of any race. He is a symbol of redemption from sin, and of divinity. Artificially manipulating His racial features would make Him "all about" race, and skirts the true meaning of His message. This is a picky, stupid argument that subverts the whole purpose of Christianity to feed one zealot's hobby-horse.
And then on top of that, the European Christ is far closer to the true image of Jesus than the black Christs and the Asian Christs depicted around the world. The Jews are, in fact, a Caucasian people, far more closely related to Europeans than race-baiters would like to admit. And I fail to see how driving firm wedges between races and ethnic groups promotes harmony in any useful way.
Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :
Actually Jews are Semetic meaning that we're really of the same ancestry of modern day Arabs. Ashkenazi Jews closely resemble Europeans because they have spent more than a thousand years in Europe and so have taken on more European features over the centuries. Sephardic Jews to which Jesus would have resembled much more closely tend to have darker skin and Arab features because instead of migrating to Europe they migrated to or stayed in the Middle East North Africa area. All this means is that an accurate Christ would not be Asian, Black, or Euro-white, but "olive skinned".
Posted by Fitz (Member # 4803) on :
Oh please. Everybody knows that Jesus was actually an extra-terrestrial. The fact that he was not of this earth, therefore, makes this whole discussion about his skin pigment irrelevant.
By the way, my best guess is that he was probably green.
Posted by Frisco (Member # 3765) on :
quote:I'm betting that news sources in every country in the world reported the number of their own citizens that died in the quake...Let's see if we can be a little less trigger happy?
Are you telling me to be less trigger happy, Geoff? Because I merely called it ethnocentric, which is exactly what you just described.
Geez, ethnocentricity isn't a terrible thing. Everybody's ethnocentric to a point. As I read about the earthquake, though, there wasn't even a passing piece of a thought as to whether there were any of "us" in it. I found it a bit disheartening that such a thought would be in anyone's mind, let alone enough people for Reuters to consider pandering to that crowd with a full article. There were no names given in the article, so it obviously wasn't an attempt to comfort people who may have had relatives over there. Besides, they contacted the families of the men, which the U.S. tends to do in just about every type of emergency situation.
I'm sorry I don't sound more ethnocentric(patriotic, whatever), but I really was caught off-guard by that article. Call it "good, focused reporting", but that doesn't mean it's not ethnocentric.
I think I've now typed the word "ethnocentric" more times than I'd done in my entire life before this thread. Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Frisco said: I found it a bit disheartening that such a thought would be in anyone's mind, let alone enough people for Reuters to consider pandering to that crowd with a full article.
You didn’t think it would be in the minds of people who have relatives or friends over there? How compassionate.
It wasn’t pandering; it was an attempt to deliver the news. The news was not that an American died, it was that a State department spokesman announced that an American died. Read the byline: “CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters).”
This wasn’t someone reporting on the scene, ignoring the weeping Iranians while doggedly trying to find out if any of “us” died. It was a member of the presidential press corps reporting on a press release issued by the State Department while the president was home for the holidays. Someone writes up one of these articles for every single such announcement. Reuters publishes them all.
Please explain how the article demonstrated either “Belief in the superiority of one's own ethnic group” or “overriding concern with race” or was “centered on a specific ethnic group, usually one's own.” (See ethnocentricity.)
Your not suggesting that the word should apply to any instance where someone concentrates on the way events effect their own nation, are you? Because if so, you’re technically right but you’ve rendered the word useless, because all the Iranian headlines about the dead Iranians that didn’t mention the Americans would be “ethnocentric.” Even this definition probably doesn’t apply to the article, because it included the reporting of the Iranian deaths as well.
Had there been no other news of the earthquake except “an American died in an earthquake in Iran,” then it would have been ethnocentric. However, this article was designed to be read with other articles. It assumed a reasonable well informed reader.
And please stop pretending you were only trying to say the article was “rather silly.” You said, “Oh, yeah. 25,000 Iranians died, too.” This is a clear, pejorative suggestion that the author of the article thought the single American death was more important than the Iranian deaths.
Dagonee
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
quote:quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frisco said: I found it a bit disheartening that such a thought would be in anyone's mind, let alone enough people for Reuters to consider pandering to that crowd with a full article. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You didn’t think it would be in the minds of people who have relatives or friends over there? How compassionate.
Good point regarding that the article's reporting on a State Department announcement. But Frisco's (and my) misinterpretation of this article as a report on the earthquake rather than a repeating of a State Department announcement is perfectly understandable, given that we pay more attention to the content than the byline -- sloppy, but forgivable in an article that merits little more than a scanning. And given that you interpret this article as a report on the earthquake, wouldn't you agree that opining the tackiness of plastering the single death of a white person as a headline is more than a little tacky, when put in perspective to the much greater disaster?
And Geoff, I'm definitely getting back to you when I'm in any shape to give a coherent response. Be warned, this may not happen until after New Year's -- but your posts merit replies that can reflect some measure of the courtesy and rationality that you offer, and I intend to honor that courtesy as best I can.
Posted by Frisco (Member # 3765) on :
quote:Your not suggesting that the word should apply to any instance where someone concentrates on the way events effect their own nation, are you?
Heavens, why would I?
From your link, Dagonee:
quote:ethnocentric
adj : centered on a specific ethnic group, usually one's own
Certainly the people who know Americans in Iran would like to know how they are. But we notify families of such things. I don't think most people rely on news articles, which mention no names, to find out if a loved one is okay. I'm not sure I'd be comforted knowing that they've only actually found one American dead. They're still pulling thousands of bodies out of the rubble.
And I'm sure there are plenty of Americans dying overseas that aren't reported by the State Dept. Are we going to have another State Dept. report when we find American #2 buried in the ruins? #3? #15?
Most things are ethnocentric, to some degree. This seemed laughably so. Someone thought this was newsworthy, though. Whether it was the State Dept. or Reuters doesn't change the fact that it is ethnocentric.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Lalo said: And given that you interpret this article as a report on the earthquake, wouldn't you agree that opining the tackiness of plastering the single death of a white person as a headline is more than a little tacky, when put in perspective to the much greater disaster?
No. If this had been the only article, it would be beyond tacky, it would be monstrous. I agree with you to that point. But this wasn’t the only article. It presents a single new piece of information developed in an ongoing story.
Further, the headline for the story was about the new information – therefore it mentioned the Americans. If this had been the banner headline on the front page, it would have been inappropriate. But this article was on a web site where each story is given its own page. There is no attempt to prioritize articles based on their importance. The headline accurately reflects the news contained in the story. It appears in isolation because of the particular medium. I bet it wasn’t the top story on the linking page, unless that page was simply arranged chronologically. Then it was the top story for a brief moment in time until another report was filed.
And, of course, the story was in the U.S. News section of the site. That seems appropriate, doesn’t it?
By the way, why do you assume the person who died was white?
quote:Frisco said Most things are ethnocentric, to some degree. This seemed laughably so. Someone thought this was newsworthy, though. Whether it was the State Dept. or Reuters doesn't change the fact that it is ethnocentric.
So you do agree that any Iranian headlines that mentioned only Iranians is ethnocentric? What possible use does the word ethnocentric have, then?
Besides, the article was centered on the U.S. government response to the earthquake. Are you saying any articles that do so are ethnocentric? Are reports on American SAR teams going to Iran ethnocentric? If so, then I’ll stop debating whether it was ethnocentric because at least you’re using the word consistently, if, in my opinion, uselessly.
However, you obviously intended to indicate that the article was inappropriate in some way. I contend it was not because the article cannot be viewed in isolation, either from this event or from normal State Department policies. The Iranian earthquake was covered non-stop by every major news source. Every report I’ve read has included the death toll. The State Department collects information and issues a death report on every death of an American abroad. This information is public record. It’s little wonder that the State Department issued a press release of this death report, given the public interest in the situation.
You’ve continually mischaracterized this article. For example, “Someone obviously looked at the tragedy, cared enough to find out whether one of "us" were in it, then decided that the single death was worth a news article.” The reporter did not “care[] enough to find out” about the death of an American; s/he went to the regularly scheduled press briefing. It was worth a news article because this person’s job is to write up an article about every single State Department press conference. I bet few newspapers ran this as a single story – they probably lifted some graphs and added Reuters to the byline. (This is not plagiarism, by the way – it’s a common way of using wire services.)
The State Department did no extra work to get this information – they get information on American deaths as part of their job. Someone probably issued a standing order to send any information about the earthquake to some special project desk; this death report went there. The only extra work done was adding it to the daily press briefing.
I contend this is appropriate – the State Department monitors and reports on deaths of American citizens abroad. A death related to a hot news story came to there attention. They got the news out. Simple as that.
You obviously disagree. I’d like to know what you think the State Department should have done with the information once they had it.
Basically, I’m looking at the entire context of the reporting for the earthquake. You’re singling out an individual article that is a tiny portion of the coverage and using it to imply inappropriate bias of some kind.
Dagonee
P.S., Lalo, for the sake of us newcomers who don’t know poster’s real names, can you tell me which poster was Geoff? I can’t tell who you’re going to respond to after New Year’s.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Geoff is the rodent. Posted by Javert Hugo (Member # 3980) on :
In Detroit, Jesus is depicted as dark black African. In Asia, he has Asian features.
Ethnically, he was Jewish, not Arab.
Lalo, I'm touched you're concerned about how Jesus looks. I didn't know Jesus meant that much to you. It's nice to know. *grin*
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