Telling the gas story

Bias is an accusation frequently hurled at the press, usually combined with some sort of charged political descriptor such as "conservative" or "liberal." While it almost seems cliched by now to lob this kind of criticism at our news media - not least because they sometimes, actually, deserve it - there are still plenty of untapped reserves of media blunders to keep things fresh for news naysayers. Lately, I have been reminded of another kind of bias: lower-48.

The Associated Press ran a story on Sunday (May 20) that trumpets the new gasoline prices that are currently ravaging consumers and that, even when adjusting for inflation, are without precedent in the United States. (Our national-average, regular gas price is now $3.18/gallon, which beats out the second-highest, inflation-adjusted rate of $3.15 from 1981.)

Considering the particularly strong American reliance upon automobiles and thus upon gasoline - and our cripplingly close ties to the Middle East nations that produce this gas - it is certainly understandable that many news organizations would be eager to report this as headline news. Forbes Magazine, for instance, picked up the story. So, too, did ABC News, which not only posted it on their website, but also continued to run it as the lead story in the 2-minute national-news feeds we receive from them at our radio station. (To give this a sense of perspective: high gas prices beat out Israel retaliating against Hamas, the increasing probability of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' resignation, the departure of Paul Wolfowitz from the World Bank, and the acidic press-release battle between former President Carter and current President Bush.)

In other words, this rise in gas prices has implications and importance far beyond the immediate effects to the average daily consumer, and the national news folks (at AP) were on the ball when it came to recognizing this significance. In their eagerness, however, AP displayed a kind of bias that I think would escape the attention of most folks back home. It's not that the facts are wrong, per se; it's just that the story lacks the perspective needed for truly national news.

One of the final paragraphs of yesterday's AP story reads:

Nationwide, the lowest average price for regular fuel was $2.87 in Charleston, S.C., and the highest was in Chicago at $3.59 a gallon.

I live in Nome, Alaska, which, while not the model of urbanity you'd expect from any "city" in most states, is still big enough to have a large population of drivers, and more than one gas station. While on a walk Saturday afternoon, I passed two of the stations, and made a mental note of the gas prices. At the cheaper of the two, unleaded regular attracts customers at $3.93 per gallon.

The situation in many places in Western Alaska (outside of Nome) is even worse. Prices for fuel have reached incredible highs within the past 12 months. This affects not only our driving expenditures but also the overall cost of living - especially for a region that depends upon this pricy fuel for heat during the Arctic winters. Skimping on heat to save money is an option you'd rather not entertain when it's -30 and windy outside.

Ironically, Alaska has received much national attention in recent years because of the ongoing controversy over whether to drill for oil in the state's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The 19 million acres of the refuge are home to the greatest diversity of plant and animal species in the entire Arctic, as well as petroleum reserves.

If Alaska is worth mentioning as a benefactor of oil, but not worth mentioning (alongside, say, Chicago or Charleston) when it receives the blunt end of our oil-addicted culture, does that mean what goes on within the state - as opposed to what flows out of it - is irrelevant on the national stage?

Hardly.

Like in the U.S. as a whole, Alaska's relationship with oil has been a double-edged sword for decades. The drilling and distribution of oil has been a source of economic boom (such as the building of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in the 1970s) but also environmental bust (Exxon Valdez and many similar incidents, not to mention the continued maintenance and leakage issues with the Pipeline itself). Native American subsistence lifestyles have been repeatedly damaged by often-irresponsible drilling practices, and although oil has brought Alaska billions of dollars, our state dependence upon that same oil has also resulted in an often-unstable economy.

The lessons of Alaska's experience with oil - and the state's evolving history with oil corporations, from gas prices to gas spills - has environmental and economic ramifications far beyond our state borders, and far beyond how much money Nome residents need to fill up their tanks. Our American relationship to oil has "spilled over," both literally and figuratively, into many of the problems faced collectively by all 50 states - from climate change to the Iraq war to corporate and government accountability. Alaska's oil narrative mirrors that of its parent country, and it serves as a cautionary tale against exactly the kind of blind subservience to oil that has now come home to roost in America - whether in eroding glaciers or eroding support for the Iraq occupation.

So you'd think that the problems faced in Alaska - objectively worse, when it comes to gas, than almost anywhere else in America - would merit at least a phrase or two in the AP story that keeps getting such fantastic airplay on ABC News. After all, our state is by far the biggest in the nation; we're as wide as the distance from Tallahassee, Florida to San Francisco, and twice the size of Texas. And plus, we provide a substantial proportion of the national oil; just one region in Alaska (Prudhoe Bay) provides 17% of our domestic production alone. Right?

But I guess AP just couldn't fit us in. Either that, or their conception of "national news" is about the same as they held in December 1958, when the "nation" still meant the 48 contiguous states from Maine to California.

If AP and the national news media do, indeed, display a flawed perspective on what "national news" fully entails - because they mentally truncate the non-contiguous states from the nation in the first place - I would assume that this omission is unintentional. But most examples of bias are just that: unintended failures of objectivity. Whether they're political or regional biases, they share the effect that a particular group or point of view is being overlooked. No matter where we live or on what part of the political spectrum we fall, we have a common aversion to bias because we know that it results in a good story not being told.

Unfortunately for those lucky enough to pay only $3.50 for gas, it's a story that shouldn't be ignored.

And if it takes another Exxon-Valdez-like incident - or another Iraq-War-like foreign entanglement - to awaken the lower 48 to the relevance of Alaska's story, such a revelation may be too little, too late.

Until then, I guess Chicago folks paying $3.59 will have to qualify for front-page news. I mean, could you imagine anything more inconvenient than high gas prices on Memorial Day weekend?