Our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth."

[Quicksilver]

A long read but the interview with Former President Jimmy Carter sheds some light on a serious issue.

Special NOW Broadcast on Global Health, November 4, 2005

With a continuing and present terrorist threat to the United States, health issues facing other countries have taken a back seat to national defense and security. But experts argue that the health of people around the world has real and immediate consequences for America's citizens, economy and security. Those global health experts say shared solutions-research, medicine, technology and medical expertise-to common problems may be the only way to stem the spread of infectious diseases and that there are mutually beneficial economic advantages to cooperation. Critics say America's public policy has been slow to react. What does America's global health policy tell us about how it will deal with the crises that lay ahead?

http://tinyurl.com/93q3w.
The Now transcrip, a PBS special which will be aired again in the future, begins with "PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: It's very difficult for the American people to believe that our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth."

[Juanted]

Barry,

I think that after our infamous "Katrina" thread, everyone is avoiding political topics... lol

I won't make any other comments other than to say that I do admire Carter. He's a decent human being who has done some wonderful work to help the poor and those less fortunate.

Juan

[Mr. D]

Yep... again it's all our fault....

[Quicksilver]

Originally Posted by Kaefer

Barry,

I think that after our infamous "Katrina" thread, everyone is avoiding political topics... lol

I won't make any other comments other than to say that I do admire Carter. He's a decent human being who has done some wonderful work to help the poor and those less fortunate.

Juan

You know something. I am proud that you got the point. It wasn't about politics at all. After watching the program I gained a great deal of respect for the man. He is as you say doing some wonderful work and has encouraged others to get involved as well. No soapbox on my part I just found the interview educational and motivating.

[drex]

i saw this interview already.

i must disagree. carter was a horrible president, and a poor leader. his track record speaks to it. yes, he has become a great humanitarian, but his statements still prove his ignorance about the world, and about other countries. he was NOT FIT TO LEAD then, and he verifies that now.

moreso, his facts are wrong. this PBS thing is a self-promotion scam for his center.


i thought the PBS/NPR agenda of socialism and extreme left wing idealism was pretty well known. i think there exists plenty of private 3rd party studies that will suggest otherwise.

check out:





American Generosity is Underappreciated
by Brett D. Schaefer
WebMemo #630

December 30, 2004 | |

The tragic loss of life from the earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean now exceeds 100,000 and may eventually double that, due to disease, civil unrest, and other factors. In response, the United States and other nations have pledged millions of dollars in humanitarian assistance to aid the survivors and assist affected nations in recovering from the disaster. Unfortunately, some in the international aid business cannot seem to shake their reflexive criticism of America despite ample evidence of its generosity.



The U.S. government initially announced that it would provide $15 million in humanitarian aid and send experts to help affected nations recover. Jan Egeland, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, criticized the U.S. commitment as “stingy” despite the fact that the U.S. pledge far exceeded those of all European nations. He quickly apologized and said that he did not mean to single out the United States, but the transcript of his comments clearly identifies the U.S. as the primary target.



Rhetoric vs. Reality

Mr. Egelund’s criticism was based on his belief that America is not providing enough development assistance—specifically, aid as a percentage of its gross national income (GNI). According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the U.S. is dead last in aid as a percent of GNI at 0.15 percent.[1] Mr. Egelund’s native country of Norway has a ratio of 0.92 percent. There are several problems with this approach:

• Actual dollar contributions reveal that the U.S. is the world’s largest donor. The OECD calculates U.S. development assistance (based on bilateral assistance, humanitarian assistance, and contributions to multilateral institutions like the International Development Association of the World Bank) in 2003 at $16.2 billion—more than double the amount given by France, Germany, or any other European nation.[2] Japan is second at $8.9 billion.
  
• Private aid is ignored. These numbers do not include private assistance. This is not a major factor for most other nations because private charity is not large in most countries. It is a gigantic oversight when calculating America’s aid ratio, however, because the U.S. Agency for International Development estimated that private assistance was $33.6 billion in 2000.[3] Therefore, the calculations upon which Egelund based his criticism severely shortchange the generosity of the United States.
  
• It demonstrates an inappropriate focus on inputs rather than outputs. Development assistance should help recipients develop, but the evidence demonstrates that many recipient nations are actually becoming poorer. This is particularly true for sub-Saharan Africa, which is the region of the world most desperately in need of development. Despite hundreds of billions in development assistance, sub-Saharan Africa has performed dismally. Of the 45 sub-Saharan African countries for which per capita GDP data are available from 1980 to 2002, most experienced zero or negative compound annual growth in real per capita GDP (constant 1995 U.S. dollars).[4] Sub-Saharan Africa as a region saw a decline in per capita GDP from $660 in 1980 to $577 in 2002 (in constant terms).[5] Instead of focusing on the amount of assistance, donors should focus on maximizing results through economic freedom, bolstering the rule of law, and adopting strong institutions. Foreign aid cannot replace domestic will to adopt good policies, without which long-term development is impossible.
  
• America’s central role in humanitarian efforts is ignored. Egeland’s criticism becomes patently ridiculous after an examination of U.S. assistance for disaster and humanitarian relief—the type of aid needed in the Indian Ocean. Data from the OECD reveal that the U.S. gave nearly $2.5 billion in emergency and distress relief in 2003.[6] All other countries combined gave $3.4 billion, including $475 million from France and $350 million from Norway. Moreover, the U.S. contributed nearly 70 percent of all food assistance.
  
• America is a key donor to U.N. relief organizations. The United States is a major donor to international relief organizations, including the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which Egelund oversees, to which the U.S. is second largest donor (nearly 14 percent in 2003).[7] America is the largest contributor to the U.N. budget at 22 percent, or $317 million, in 2004. It gives over 56 percent of the World Food Program budget and $72 million and $94 million to the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization, respectively.[8]

Conclusion

The United States is the world’s largest source of humanitarian aid. By nature, humanitarian aid must be tailored to individual crises: Every single famine, earthquake, flood, or other disaster is unique and requires different types of aid and different strategies. As death tolls climbed in the wake of the disaster in Southeast Asia and the needs of the survivors became clearer, the United States upped its humanitarian aid commitments to the region to $35 million, and expectations are that total U.S. contributions will continue to increase.



Criticisms of America’s generosity, such as those made by Egeland, fly in the face of reality. International aid experts do their organizations no credit to criticize American largess—especially since following through on their good intentions would be impossible without it.



Brett D. Schaefer is the Jay Kingham Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs in the Center for International Trade and Economics at The Heritage Foundation.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Tra...nAid/wm630.cfm

[drex]

The Financial Immorality of American Generosity

By Lucinda Marshall

01/12/05 "ICH" -- The remarkable generosity of Americans in offering help to the victims of the recent Tsunami is truly heartwarming. All across our country, individuals, corporations and countless organizations, religious groups and charities have not only opened their hearts, but their wallets as well, this on top of the $350 million pledged by our government. Drug giant Pfizer promptly offered $10 million in cash and $35 million in drugs, although it is unclear if this was the retail price of the drugs or the discounted price paid by insurance companies. Regardless, it is a clear indication of the health of our pharmaceutical companies.

Individuals have also been extraordinarily generous. Perhaps most stunning was the $1 million given by actress Sandra Bullock. While not meaning to disparage Ms. Bullock's incredible example in any way, it is truly amazing that one individual can pony up 1/350th of what her government is giving and 20 times the amount being offered by tiny East Timor.

But before we pat ourselves on the back as Colin Powell did when he suggested that our largesse might well bolster our battered image in the Muslim world, we would be well advised to view our giving in the larger context of our overall spending habits. For instance, we will spend upwards of $45 million for President Bush's Inaugural festivities. And this last Christmas, Wall Streeters received $15.9 billion in bonuses (albeit this was somewhat overshadowed by the $102 million in fines levied against them).

At the same time we were so generously helping Tsunami victims, we are being less generous in other ways, cutting $300 million in Pell education grants and $100 million in international food aid (despite a rising number of hungry people in the world). However, we are still being most generous in our military funding. The budget for the U.S. military in 2004 was $450 billion and we have spent $200 billion on the war in Iraq (with Congress anticipating a request for another $100 billion in the near future).

And of course there is also the $18 billion Iraqi reconstruction funds (most of which has yet to be spent) and the $877 million being spent on more Anthrax vaccine, this at a time when we can't even competently provide flu vaccines to protect against a known annual cause of death for tens of thousands of people. Completing our spending profile, it's important to mention our national debt of $7.5 trillion and our $422 billion dollar budget deficit.

The reality is that as a nation, we are in fact quite stingy. While the U.S. gives the most foreign aid in terms of dollars, we rank the lowest compared to other developed nations in giving as a percentage of income. Currently the U.S. gives .15% of GNP (compared with highest ranked Norway which gives .92% of their GNP).

But adding up the dollars only tells part of the story. Unfortunately, we also need to count the bodies. Unquestionably, 2004 was a very deadly year. Current estimates are that 150,000 people have died in the Tsunami with hundreds of thousands at risk of starvation and disease. As many as 100,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the $200 billion that we spent invading that country and many more as a result of conflicts all over the globe. Ten million children have starved to death and there were more than 500,000 maternal deaths (95% of which were preventable). And finally, several million people throughout the world have died of AIDs and several million more from malaria.

It is a reflection of our values that these deaths are primarily footnotes and sidebars in the daily media barrage, not meriting the attention that has been lavished on the victims of the Tsunami. In the case of disease, they are deaths that happen one by one throughout the year, not in the blink of a dramatic soundbite. And in the case of war, civilian deaths are routinely discounted as collateral damage, not worthy of our attention.

But the problem is that when it comes time to balance the books, the bottom line is that we are willing to spend much more to kill people than to save people, and that our giving is minuscule compared to our hedonistic quest for power. In other words, far from being the generous nation that we portray ourselves to be, we Americans are morally bankrupt.

Lucinda Marshall is a feminist artist, writer and activist. She is the Founder of the Feminist Peace Network, www.feministpeacenetwork.org which publishes Atrocities, a bulletin documenting violence against women throughout the world.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

http://blog.zmag.org/bloggers/?blogger=marshall

I think you can read right through her.

I must remind Ms. Marshall one thing and one thing only--

it is ONLY because you live here in the United States that you can pump out your agenda and not be persecuted for being a woman and being vocal. Please remember that.

Socialism has failed. Wake up.

I'm sorry, we are not the caretakers of the world. That is what the UN was created for. Let's not get started on how much $$$$ we give the UN compared to every other nation...

[drex]

Fact Sheet
Bureau of Public Affairs
Washington, DC
September 9, 2004

U.S. Participation in the United Nations: Financial Contributions


[pdf - 567KB]

U.S. Engagement in the United Nations
The United Nations provides the United States with an international forum where we can enhance national security, advance foreign policy objectives, and promote American values. The United States seeks to uphold the UN’s founding principles. We share a commitment to foster international peace and security; to fight poverty through development; to eradicate pandemic diseases; and to advance freedom, human rights, and democracy.

U.S. leadership in the UN is critical to making the world more secure, more democratic, and more
prosperous. At the same time, the United States is committed to ensuring good stewardship of UN resources so these universal goals are met effectively and efficiently.

U.S. Financial Contributions to the United Nations
The United States is the largest financial contributor to the UN, and has been every year since its creation in 1945. U.S. contributions to the UN system in 2003 were well over $3 billion. In-kind contributions include items such as food donations for the World Food Program.

The U.S.-assessed contribution to the UN regular budget in 2003 was $341 million, and to UN specialized agencies was over $400 million. The United States also contributed $686 million in assessments to the peacekeeping budget; $57 million for the support of the international war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia; and $6 million for preparatory work relating to the Capital Master Plan to renovate the UN Headquarters in New York. Moreover, each year the United States provides a significant amount in voluntary contributions to the UN and its affiliated agencies and activities, largely for humanitarian and development programs.

Benefits to Americans
The United States benefits from membership in the UN and other international organizations by being part of a multilateral approach to address a wide range of serious global issues. Through
the UN, the United States can build coalitions and pursue multilateral programs that advance
U.S. and international interests. U.S. priorities include: countering global terrorism; preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; encouraging nuclear safeguards, arms control, and disarmament; promoting peace in the Middle East and an end to anguish in other regions such as Africa; promoting economic growth; treating those with HIV/AIDS and preventing new HIV infections; and bringing an end to trafficking in persons. The United Nations provides the forum for the U.S. to address these and other key objectives.

The United States is a generous supporter -- in many cases the largest supporter -- of key UN programs. In 2003, the U.S. contributed:

• 57% to the budget of the World Food Program to help feed 104 million people in 81 countries;
• 17% to the budget of the United Nations Children's Fund to feed, vaccinate, educate, and protect children in 158 countries;
• 14% to the core budget of the United Nations Development Program to eradicate poverty and encourage democratic governance;
• 33% to the budget of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

http://www.state.gov/p/io/fs/2004/36416.htm

[drex]

http://www.genevabriefingbook.com/chapters/budget.pdf


Page 1 178
179
T
he United States is today and has always been the largest financial contributor to
the United Nations system. The U.S. contributed over $3.0 billion to the United
Nations programs and budget in 2002 and will do so again in 2003. This includes as-
sessed and voluntary contributions to the UN regular budget, the regular budgets of
the specialized agencies, peacekeeping efforts, and a wide variety of special programs
and emergency relief operations.
Member states contribute to the United Nations in two basic ways: through assessed
contributions to the UN regular budget and to the regular budgets of the United Na-
tions specialized agencies, and through voluntary contributions, both cash and in-
kind, to special United Nations programs.
Contributions to the Regular
United Nations Budget
The contributions of member states to
the regular United Nations budget are
set under the United Nations scales of
assessments. The scale is based broadly
on “capacity to pay” as measured by
member states’ shares of the combined world national income and other factors. It
includes discounts for countries with low per capita income. For the period 2001
through 2003, the United States has been assessed 22 percent of the regular UN bud-
get (which totals $2.891 billion for 2002-2003). This covers the overall Secretariat and
Headquarters costs as well as programs established by the UN General Assembly. For
many years, the United States has been advocating comprehensive reforms to bring
the scale of assessment up to date and create a broader and more equitable distribu-
tion of the responsibility for UN financing. Any change to the scale of assessments
needs to be approved by the United Nations General Assembly.
Contributions to Peacekeeping Operations
In 2003 the United Nations was funding 14 peacekeeping operations around the
world with over 3800 military and civilian police in the field. With major peacekeep-
ing operations around the world, from Kosovo and Timor Leste to the Democratic
Republic of the Congo and Liberia, the United States expects that the UN peacekeep-
ing budget will be near $3 billion in 2004. Member states are assessed separately for
each peacekeeping operation.
For Calendar Year 2003, peacekeeping is funded by an ad hoc system of apportion-
ment that is based on the regular budget rates, but provides substantial discounts to
most countries. The assessment rates of the Permanent Members of the UN Security
Council are increased to accommodate these discounts. Today 95 percent of costs are
assessed to just 33 UN member states. The top five contributors pay more than 70
percent of expenses.
The United States is today and has always
been the largest financial contributor to
the United Nations system.
United States Contributions to the United Nations
Page 2
180
The Geneva Brief ing Book
The U.S. is currently assessed at 27 percent of the total, and as of October 2003 the
U.S. was paid in full. In 2003, the U.S. contributed over two-thirds of a billion dollars
for United Nations peacekeeping operations around the world.
Budgets of Other Agencies
The United States is assessed at the same rate as the regular UN budget for the bud-
gets of many UN specialized agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labor Organiza-
tion (ILO).
U.S. contribution rates are lower in percentage terms for the International Telecom-
munication Union (ITU) and Universal Postal Union (UPU), since contributions to
those agencies are based on a system known as “contributory units.” Each country
chooses the number of units of the budget that it wants to contribute. The U.S. usu-
ally chooses to pay at the highest allowable category of contributory units, or chooses
to match the highest category chosen by any other country.
Percentage contributions by governments to the budget of the World Intellectual
Property Organization (WIPO) are smaller than for other international organiza-
tions, as more than half of WIPO’s funding is generated by user fees paid by the
private sector.
The U.S. is also the largest contributor to the World Trade Organization, whose scale
of assessment is based on national shares of average world trade.
In addition to assessed contributions to the regular budgets of the Geneva-based
agencies, the U.S. also makes substantial voluntary contributions to international or-
ganizations. This is especially the case for humanitarian agencies such as the Office of
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), International Com-
mittee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and International Organization for Migration (IOM).

[pepatrick]

Drex,

I totally agree with you. Carter has done some great humanitarian things for the less fortunate people. Good for him. Most of the under privleged people he supposedly helps choose to be underprivleged. His international dont rock the boat line of thought is completely gutless. It may appease the government of socialists and communists countries, but its like throwing egg in the face at our own leadership. Carter was one of the worst presidents in history and had absolutely no leadership capability.

One thing I do respect about him is his honesty. I do not believe he has the capacity to lie, however his ingnorance in international affairs and blindness to dictator rule is pathetic for someone who is as smart as he is.

[drex]

Another viewpoint.

So what? We give less per capita yet we give the most?

Lets think about business 101.

The more complex and larger your economic system is, the more it costs to run.

Duhhh. Beavis -- get your hand outta yer pants.. Ooops, I meant Ben...

Email to a friend | Printer friendly

Extra! September/October 2005

The World’s Most Generous Misers
Tsunami reporting misrepresented U.S. giving

By Ben Somberg

In March 1997, a joint poll by the Washington Post, Harvard University and the Kaiser Family Foundation asked Americans which area of federal expenditure they thought was the largest. Was it Social Security (which actually constituted about a quarter of the budget)? Medicare? Military spending? Sixty-four percent of respondents said it was foreign aid—when in reality foreign aid made up only about 1 percent of total outlays (Washington Post, 3/29/97).

Today, Americans think about 20 percent of the federal budget goes toward foreign aid. When told the actual figure for U.S. foreign aid giving (about 1.6 percent of the discretionary budget), most respondents said they did not believe the number was the full amount (Program on International Policy Attitudes, 3/7/05).

It’s no wonder that most Americans think they live in an extremely generous nation: Media reports often quote government officials pointing out that their country is the largest overall aid donor, and the biggest donor of humanitarian aid. But what reporters too often fail to explain is how big the U.S. economy is—more than twice the size of Japan’s, the second largest, and about as big as economies number 3–10 combined. Considered as a portion of the nation’s economy, or of its federal expenditures, the U.S. is actually among the smallest donors of international aid among the world’s developed countries.

The Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development compiles statistics on how much Official Development Assistance the world’s 22 wealthiest countries give each year. The organization’s numbers show that as a portion of Gross National Income (roughly equivalent to GDP), the U.S. now ranks second-to-last in giving, at 0.16 percent. (In 2004, Italy dropped into last place below the U.S.)

The U.S. also gives much less than what the industrialized countries pledged to give at the 1992 Rio Conference, which was 0.7 percent of their GDP. U.S. development aid, at 0.16 percent of GDP, represents less than one-quarter of this promise.

While foreign aid giving is hardly the only issue, domestic or international, on which Americans hold distinctly incorrect beliefs—misperceptions around the circumstances of the Iraq War are another good recent example—the disparity between the public’s perception and the truth in this case is abnormally large. A look at media coverage of U.S. foreign aid giving in the days after the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster of December 26, 2004 helps reveal why Americans might think they’re more generous than they are.

“Known for generosity”

Coverage of the Bush administration’s pledges of aid to Asian nations battered by the tsunami failed to give context to the amounts mentioned, painting the U.S. in a charitable light. The day after the tsunami, the U.S. pledged $15 million in aid; a day later, the total was $35 million. After widespread criticism, the administration upped its pledge three days later to $350 million. The media almost always compared these numbers to the total aid pledges of other countries, not looking at how they ranked as a fraction of the nations’ economies. The $350 million pledge, therefore, was the “largest contribution” at the time (CNN.com, 1/1/05).

The administration’s line regarding aid giving was exemplified by Colin Powell’s words in the days after the tsunami (ABC’s Nightline, 12/30/04): “We are the most generous nation on the face of the Earth. Now, if you measure it as a percentage of GDP, you can make the case that we’re not as high as others. But if you measure it as actual money going out the door to help people, we are the most generous nation on the face of the Earth.”

Andrew Natsios, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, similarly said that “we’ve never accepted the notion” that aid comparisons by national wealth are relevant (Fox News Channel, 12/29/04):

Our GNP dwarves all other countries. Our economy grows much faster. Japan’s economy has basically been not growing much over the last decade. And the Europeans have not grown that much, certainly in comparison to the United States. So what some people have done is to use the one indicator that makes us look bad to argue this. And I have to say it is ridiculous.


Fox host Chris Wallace at the end of his interview thanked Natsios for “giving us a perspective, a little bit of a reality check on all of this.”

Establishing foreign aid giving standards based on the size of a nation’s economy is no newfangled idea, though; it was in 1970, after all, that the U.N. General Assembly first supported the standard of developed nations giving 0.7 percent of their GDP towards non-military foreign aid (a percentage that the United States has never come close to reaching). Generosity that isn’t measured based on ability to give would inevitably paint smaller countries as stingy—unless they gave an astronomical percentage of their incomes.

NPR correspondent (and Fox in-house “liberal”) Juan Williams, appearing just minutes after Natsios (12/29/04), also disputed criticisms that U.S. humanitarian efforts are only a tiny portion of GDP: “That notion, I think, is misplaced, because I think our Gross Domestic Product is just so much larger and continues to grow.” In other words, it somehow isn’t fair to expect the U.S. to contribute the same percentage as other countries—because the U.S. is so much wealthier.

“Private giving is tremendous”

Williams continued with another standard defense of American generosity: “And so it doesn’t properly represent the degree of largess and philanthropy that takes place. Either if you consider just government, or if you consider, in addition, an even larger sector, the private sector. Private giving is tremendous in this country.”

American private giving during the tsunami crisis was significant, indeed; one month after the tsunami, it was over $400 million, outpacing the U.S. government pledge of $350 million. But just as with government donations, the private giving of Americans was smaller in proportional terms than that of most Western European and Scandinavian countries. That fact didn’t slow down NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams (1/7/05), who said that Americans were “proving all over again why they are known worldwide for their generosity.” Williams made no comment about the generosity of, say, the British or Germans, each of whom sent far more money, per capita, in both private and government donations.

When George W. Bush spoke of individual donations and the “good heart of the American people,” ABC’s Peter Jennings (1/3/05) agreed that Bush was “saying what almost all Americans will surely believe, that Americans are innately generous at times of crisis.” Whether or not such beliefs reflect reality was not addressed.

While exact figures are impossible to come by, the highest estimates from recent years put individual U.S. donations to overseas aid at 0.16 percent of national income, according to the Center for Global Development’s Steven Radelet. (More conservative estimates suggest that this number may actually be as low as 0.03 percent; an OECD estimate put the number at 0.06 percent.) Add the optimistic 0.16 percent estimate to the 0.16 percent of national income in government donations and you reach a combined 0.32 percent of national income—which is still less than the governmental aid alone of roughly half of the world’s wealthiest nations.

When it came to comparing the tsunami relief to aid in other humanitarian disasters, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos (1/2/05) briefly stood out from the field. After Kofi Annan noted in an interview that international donations in just one week had eclipsed those for all other humanitarian appeals in 2004, Stephanopoulos replied, “That would suggest that the world had not done enough for these other disasters.”

“We call them the orphaned disasters,” Annan replied. “They are not in the headlines. They are not on TV. And they are ignored and overlooked, whether it’s northern Uganda or elsewhere. You take the Congo, eastern Congo, thousands of people die every month.” With that said, Stephanopoulos returned to talk of the tsunami.

Contrasts in print

Perhaps the best discussion of tsunami aid was provided by the Boston Globe’s Charles Sennott (12/31/04), who wrote in his second sentence that “both on a per capita basis and as a percentage of the nation’s wealth, America’s emergency relief in Asia and development aid to poor countries actually ranks at the bottom of the list of developed nations, some of the world’s top economists and analysts of international development aid said yesterday.”

The Globe’s honest analysis helped highlight the lack of context common in tsunami coverage elsewhere in the print media. A USA Today report on American giving (1/7/05) noted that “per capita, citizens in some other countries are giving more than Americans are”—but not until the last paragraph of the article. Meanwhile the paper editorialized (1/4/05) that Bush’s pledge of $350 million—a little more than a dollar per citizen—“should silence critics who said the world’s wealthiest nation was being stingy.”

The Washington Post (1/2/05) was similarly impressed in its news pages with the $350 million pledge, concluding that “the president has assumed a leadership role in the global relief, rescue and rebuilding effort and quieted his critics.” The Post had nothing to say about the “leadership role” of the leaders of European nations that were giving sums that represented far larger portions of their nations’ economies.

In the New York Times, the administration’s logic sometimes went unchallenged as well. “We are by far the largest donor’’ of disaster relief, the paper quoted Natsios (12/30/04). “No one even comes close to us.’’ His statement was technically true at the time, but the article provided no information about how this ranked the U.S. giving as a portion of GDP.

When the Bush administration increased its aid pledge to $350 million, the Times (1/1/05) wrote: “With the newly announced commitment, the United States moves from the middle of the pack of countries that have announced aid to the region to the top. The $350 million is more than three times the amount committed by Britain.” The article didn’t mention that the U.S. has five times Britain’s population and six times its GDP.

On the op-ed page, the Times (1/4/05) gave space to Carol Adelman of the Hudson Institute to defend American aid giving. She claimed that looking only at public giving made Europeans “appear generous”: “Norway ranks first in allocating 0.92 percent of its gross national income to foreign aid. But Norway’s $2 billion of yearly aid is less than what American companies alone give.”

Given that Norway’s economy is less than 2 percent that of the U.S., it’s not surprising that its total foreign aid budget is not large in absolute terms. But it’s not true that Americans are privately more generous than Norwegians: Norway’s per capita private aid contributions are almost five times the U.S.’s, according to the Center for Global Development (12/29/04).

The Times’ editorial page (12/30/04) did give a context to U.S. aid giving, both for the tsunami disaster and for development in general, leading the page to call the U.S. “stingy.” Observing the difference between how Americans view their aid-giving and the reality, it said that “Bush administration officials help create that perception gap.” Selective reporting contributes as well.

SIDEBAR:
Aid Omissions

Coverage of foreign aid is as notable for what it doesn't say as for what is does. Areas the media usually don't examine include:

• Debt Payments. Many aid recipients in the developing world are burdened by debt payments to the wealthy nations and institutions, often for loans taken out decades earlier by dictatorial regimes that squandered the money. While the developing world receives about $80 billion in aid each year, it pays the developed world about $200 billion; it is still uncertain how much of that will be relieved.
• Pledges are just pledges. George W. Bush's Millennium Challenge Account—announced in March 2002 with great fanfare—hasn't disbursed a dollar yet. After the 2003 Iran earthquake, many nations only delivered a fraction of the aid they had initially pledged. The media should treat pledges as what they are: promises that may or may not be kept.
• Adjusting for inflation. When the New York Times and Washington Post reported on George W. Bush's announcement of the Millennium Challenge Account (3/15/02), the articles said the pledge represented a 14 percent increase in U.S. aid flows, but with inflation factored in, it was only a 7 percent increase (Economic Reporting Review, 3/18/02).

Was this article helpful to you? It was made possible by the subscribers to Extra!. Please subscribe and support our work.

Extra! Homepage




Home | Contact Us | Support Us | RSS | Privacy Policy | Copyright Policy


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Site designed by the May First Technology Collective