News values

A friend with a healthy interest in news and current affairs said, when he returned from six months or so in the Antipodes, that one of the most interesting things about the experience was the different perspective it gave on news values. In the UK, we perhaps flatter ourselves that we take a fairly international perspective. What was striking down under, apparently, was that what we regard as 'international' news hardly ever featured - walk-outs in France, corruption in Italy, that kind of thing. Instead, there was far more of the day-to-day news from Indonesia, Malaysia, and so forth - places that only ever feature in the UK in the event of a coup or natural disaster or similar. The point being, the news one gets in a given country is filtered by proximity; us first, neighbours second, distant places last.

The US media, of course, are notoriously parochial, and in fact don't quite follow that model. It's more like: USA first; other countries that the US is currently interested in fighting/bullying/making peace with/being sucked up to by second; everyone else, a remote third. You can watch the national networks for a week without Canada or Mexico being mentioned, except perhaps the the latter in an immigration debate. Iran and Iraq figure, in predictable terms; France got a mention recently following Sarkozy's nauseating visit to Congress. Other than that, it's interminable coverage of presidential primaries and forensic analysis of the latest fall from grace of a sportsman, celebrity, or congressman. Same with the newspapers; only the NY Times seems to have anything like an internationalist outlook.

But, as I'm constantly being told in many contexts, Miami is very different from the rest of the States, and looking at the news values here is one way of getting a handle on dissimilarity. The main local papers are the Miami Herald, a daily of vaguely liberal tendencies, and the Miami New Times, a weekly free sheet with slightly more overt pinko sympathies. Both often feature international news prominently. The Herald - which also publishes a Spanish language edition - has had more than one front page article on Venezuela in the last week or so. The New Times, which concentrates more on 'colour' pieces than hard news, last week ran long stories about the new wave of Venezuelan immigrants to Miami, and the plight of Haitian boat people.

This focus is in some sense more international than that of the national media, but viewed through a different lens, it's also just as parochial. One of the things that makes Miami so different is its status as the destination of choice for political refugees from Latin America and the Caribbean; and the international element of the local news is almost exclusively concerned with whichever countries in those areas are tending most towards the Left at the moment, hence the recent interest in Venezuela. Cuba, naturally, is a constant. The New Times piece on the Haitian immigrants was an exception, a provocative article questioning why the 100 or so dirt poor migrants fleeing persecution who washed up on the beaches of South Florida recently are treated so differently from their Cuban counterparts.

The answer is precedent and protocol. So far as Cuba goes, America's antipathy is firmly established, and the route from Havana to here has been well-trodden since the 1959 revolution. The first wave of immigrants mostly consisted in the rich who stood to lose most in Castro's country. Subsequent immigration, which has waxed and waned, has been from all social classes. The most famous influx was the Mariel boatlift in 1980; 125 000 Cubans, mostly economic rather than political refugees, were allowed to leave by Cuba and promised sanctuary by the US. The majority ended up in or near Miami. Still today, a Cuban of whatever status arriving in Miami is almost guaranteed the right to remain, in part for fear of upsetting the vocal community here who regard all Cuban expats as brothers and braves in the struggle against Castro.

Venezuelans are in a similar situation. Although there has been no mass migration on the scale of Mariel, since Chavez took over there Miami has seen a steady stream of mostly political exiles; middle-class journalists, army officers, and of course the rich. Since America is so openly hostile to Chavez, it can't help but offer asylum to all these people if its policy is to seem consistent. This is the difference between the Venezuelans and the Haitians; since the US is officially friendly with Haiti, no such laissez faire attitude to immigration from there exists. It's also been noted that the Haitian refugees tend to be poor and black.

All this highlights two factors in Miami's make-up. The first is the massive and continuing influence of waves of Latin American immigration. Initially through proximity to Cuba, Miami is the place to be for Hispanic exiles. And, because of the peculiar position the US has on Cuba and other countries, these Latins aren't illegal migrants like the Mexicans in the West; they're full members of society.

The second is the gulf between the rich and poor here, which is truly astonishing. The first Cuban exiles, and those from other Latin American countries since, were rich, often enormously so, and contributed to the millionaire's playground element of the city. They also brought a particular political culture in which money can buy influence, and this is now part of the fabric of South Florida life. Subsequent immigrants, though, have often tended towards the poor, dirt-poor; and enormous influxes like the Mariel boatlift have put tremendous strain on public finances and services. A Republican Congressman from Colorado got in trouble a year ago for calling Miami a 'third world country', but many feel he had a point. There's that same ridiculous disparity of wealth, shocking slums rubbing up against glittering high rises, that one associates with such places; and the same sense that the rich run the place in their favour. Joan Didion's book 'Miami', which I read just before coming here, is in some ways outdated; it's a mid-eighties piece of journalism, and some of the contemporary references are now hopelessly obscure. But the picture it paints of of the city, seething with barely submerged undercurrents of shady deals, horrible disparity, and pervasive, murky links to the politics of countries far from here, is as accurate now as it was then.

Christmas travel

A quick note to inform of my travel plans at Christmas:

Dec 19: Arrive at Heathrow at 6:20am and make my weary jetlagged way across London and up to Durham. Hang around there complaining about the cold until:

Dec 28: Fly from Newcastle to Amsterdam and then train to Rotterdam, to spend a few days with some friends there.

Jan 1: Fly back to Newcastle. That is not going to be a fun flight.

Jan 6: Take a train down to London and stay there overnight, in preparation for

Jan 7: Heathrow again, and back to MIA.

I've no plans for the periods Dec 20 -27 (apart from the obvious) and Jan 2-5, so I'm somewhat open to suggestion; but I'm unlikely to want, or be able to afford, to spend much of that time traipsing up and down the country. Summer, I think, is going to be better for seeing people... More light, you see. Anyway, I hope I'll see at least some of you soon.