I arrived in San Antonio’s airport late in the evening. I wheeled my travel bag to the taxi stand. A cab pulled alongside and I told the driver where I wanted to go. Then I began a ritual I engage in when I travel: I started a conversation with the cab driver.
I like talking to cab drivers. I learn where they’re from. I find out what they think of the city and its people. I ask their views of the local news media. And I get their opinion of journalism in general. Sometimes I get their names in case I want to follow up with them.
Such discussions offer me an opportunity to connect with “civilians”: people who don’t work in newsrooms. When you’re surrounded by news colleagues all day, you risk having a mirror image of reality. Everybody reflects your way of thinking.
Even when you’re out on a news story, it’s easy to see the people you cover as a piece of a story puzzle. You care more about how they fit the story than who they are, or what they think. And it’s easy to dismiss people whose views differ from yours if you haven’t taken the opportunity to talk to them.
During my travels, I’ve encountered cab drivers with a wide range of experiences and opinions. I talked to a New York City cab driver from Algeria who felt that the news media unfairly stereotypes Arabs. I spoke to a Portland, Ore., cab driver who said she was bi-polar and thought the news media sometimes stigmatized mental illness. I listened to a New Jersey cab driver from El Salvador who told me she works three jobs, yet sees characterizations of Latinos as people who don’t work hard enough.
In San Antonio, I met Miguel Guevara. We spoke to each other in Spanish and English, going back and forth fluidly.
The 36-year-old cab driver moved to Texas from Chiapas, Mexico, three years ago. He likes San Antonio because he finds the people friendly. He thinks the crime rate is low. He sees business opportunities.
He has an MBA in marketing. Back in Mexico, he had his own business. He drives a cab because he likes being his own boss. It also allows him time to study to become a doctor of naturopathic medicine.
Once I gathered some personal background, I followed up with some questions about journalism.
“Do you read the local newspaper?” I asked him.
He paused. Then he turned his hand down and up, down and up, in a yes-and-no fashion.
“Well, to be honest, not very often,” he said.
“How do you keep up with what’s going on?”
“People tell me what’s going on,” he said.
When you’re surrounded by news colleagues all day, you risk having a mirror image of reality. Everybody reflects your way of thinking.He added that the news has a sameness about it. Want to know what the newspaper headlines will be tomorrow? he asked me. Then he predicted them, one by one: A story about the Middle East. Something on the war on terror. A report on a disaster. A murder. A government official making pronouncements.
He looked at me and smiled. “See, I don’t need to pick up a newspaper,” he said.
“But don’t you think you’ll miss out on some news you need to know?”
“I just don’t find it very interesting. Too much institutional stuff,” he said. “Besides, I think newspapers are full of lies.”
“Why do you think they’re full of lies? Do you think the journalists are lying to you?”
“Maybe not all journalists lie. But the officials they talk to lie. Then the journalists pass on those lies to us,” he said. “And when I read the news online, and they ask me to vote on the value of the news, they don’t really want my opinion. They just want me to click the icon to get my eyes on their ads.”
After I returned home and decided to write about this conversation, I called Guevara to follow up. He offered more insight into why he distrusted the news media. He reminded me about his business background and explained how that influences how he sees things.
“I always put myself in the position of the owner of the business,” he said. “The goal of an owner of a newspaper and a television station is to make money. That business needs to make money. And to make money, they need to find ways to get advertisers. They don’t care what kind of advertisers. They just look for revenue opportunities.”
Those revenue opportunities come from focusing on people and companies with power and money, Guevara believes. They use financing to distribute information they want to get out, he added.
In Guevara’s view, newspapers are about 70 to 80 percent factual. The remaining 20 to 30 percent of the information is incorrect, he thinks, because journalists have been pressured to write in a certain way.
He believes there is exaggeration in newspapers, especially in supermarket tabloids, as well as television. He thinks it’s being done to get the public’s attention.
“We like the crime, violence, gossip, TV and movie stars,” he said. “I think journalists have to do that to get attention.”
My conversation with Guevara reminds me of the difference between how I see journalism and how some other people view our work.
The types of stories we focus on send a message to our news consumers. Do we know what that message is?
