Broken records: Media repeat phony claim of all-time high gas prices
Major medias problem
with adjusting prices based on inflation adds to anxiety about cost.
No gas price records have been smashed
the only broken records are the ones in the media that endlessly
repeat the claim.
Take Good Morning Americas Charles Gibson for
example. On the Aug. 15 broadcast, Gibson misled his viewers: And
here at home, if you were driving this weekend, we dont have to
tell you, gas prices right through the roof, $3 in some places,
breaking more records.
But Gibson wasnt alone. Melissa McDermott of the CBS
Morning News the same morning repeated the claim: The price of gas
you got it hit a new record this week. NBCs Today host Katie
Couric couldnt deliver a levelheaded report. Fill her up and up
and up. Gas prices soar to yet another all-time high. When will the
madness end?
Reporters on every network and in many print outlets
cried records were being broken. Occasionally, reality slipped into
the news, but it wasnt commonplace. The Aug. 16 Washington Post
included an article that led with the 18-cent jump in price in the
previous week. Reporters Justin Blum and Anjali Athavaley got the
economics correct: The soaring prices stir memories of spikes in
the late 1970s and early 1990s. But adjusted for inflation, regular
gasoline remains below the 1981 high of $3.11 a gallon, according to
the Energy Department.
Only four days earlier, Post reporter Mark Chediak had
fallen victim to the same kind of record-breaking attitude. A
gallon of regular in the Washington area hit a record $2.398 on
average yesterday, according to the AAA survey. That's up 27 percent
from a year ago, when a gallon of regular cost $1.89 in the
Washington area.
The media have also focused almost exclusively on
American gasoline prices, even though Drivers in some European
cities, like Amsterdam and Oslo, are paying nearly 3 times more than
those in the U.S., according to a CNN.com article. CNN.com listed
March 2005 prices from around the globe with most of the European
Union prices above $5 per gallon because of taxes. An Aug. 10
article from Norways Aftenposten showed the trend continuing and
cited the current gas price in that nation as $6.68 per gallon.
CBSs Aug. 13 Early Show took the rare stance of
reminding viewers how much higher gas was in Europe. Host Russ
Mitchell put things in perspective. After making the mistake about
record-high oil, Mitchell did say, And people would argue with us
and say, You know, were still better off than they are in Europe,
where theyre paying like five and six bucks a gallon for
gasoline.
Here are a few other important facts about the gas
coverage:
- Greedy capitalists: Several stories have raised the point
about how much money is being made on gasoline. The Post again did
an accurate job on this point: The Alexandria-based National
Association of Convenience Stores, which represents more than
110,000 stores that sell gas, said many of its members are making
about a penny, or less, per gallon.
- Cause, not effect: After Katie Couric complained about
ridiculously high gas prices, NBCs Aug. 16 Today attempted to
answer the question of why the price hike. Andrea Mitchell
explained: What's causing the recent spike in the price of crude?
It's not because the world has too little oil, but production is
stretched thin. She continued with a quote from Energy analyst
Daniel Yergin who added: We don't have a shortage of oil. What we
have is tight capacity to produce oil. While that was useful, it
left out the reasons for the capacity problems limitations on
new energy such as nuclear power, dams, oil or gas power plants,
as well as environmentalists and high building costs strangling
the ability to build new refineries.
