MEDIA BEATHuman Rights Day arrives every Dec. 10 with a burst of events around the world and a patchwork of media exposure. In various countries, "human rights" means different things to different people. Here in the United States, human rights is a treasured principle — even if we can't agree on where they begin and end. Along the way, news coverage suffers from double standards and narrow definitions. Every political system, ranging from the most repressive to the most democratic, is able to amp up public outrage over real or imagined violations of human rights. News media tell stories of extreme privilege, injustice and cruelty. But to the extent that a single standard is not applied, the lofty values stumble over the devaluation of some people's human rights in contrast to others. When U.S.-allied governments torture political prisoners, the likelihood that they will be subjected to the glare of U.S. media scrutiny is much lower than the probability of media diatribes against governments reviled by official Washington. But what are "human rights" anyway? In the USA, we think of them — as we should — in terms of freedom to speak, assemble, protest, worship and give voice to opinions. Yet Americans, including the journalists who report and comment on human rights circumstances around the globe, rarely even mention the broader scope of liberty as spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yes, that document — adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on Dec. 10, 1948 — delineates the vital rights to equal treatment under the law, access to due process, privacy and freedom of expression. In short, the Declaration affirms "human rights" as U.S. media outlets commonly illuminate the meaning of the term. But the Declaration of Human Rights also goes where few American journalists dare to venture — defining the rights of all human beings to include "freedom from fear and want" — and not only as amorphous platitudes. For instance, the first clause of Article 23 states: "Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment." What's more, "Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work," the right "to form and to join trade unions," and, overall, "an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection." Perhaps the farthest afield from the dominant U.S.
Measured with such yardsticks for human rights, the United States falls far short of many countries. If American news media did a better job of reporting on human rights in all their dimensions, we'd be less self-satisfied as a nation — and more outraged about the multitudes of violations of human rights that persist in our midst every day. The human consequences of those violations are incalculable, but they are not on center stage of the real-life dramas that usually fill news pages and newscasts. This downplaying of economic human rights is not mere happenstance. The violations are systemic — within a system that creates enormous profits for corporations and enriches some individuals along the way. How we're apt to think of human rights is closely related to how news media have been reporting on human rights. The spiral is narrow and routine. It severely limits the humanity of our social order. Norman Solomon's latest book, "Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State," was published this fall. For more information, go to: www.MadeLoveGotWar.com. To find out more about Norman Solomon and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2007 DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC. 
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