Wired News should stick to tech

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Man my job sucks!I have a love-hate relationship with Wired magazine and their independent sister site, Wired News. I love their coverage of bleeding-edge tech issues, which is often imbued with a sense of optimistic “dynamism“. They also usually cover tech’s effects on society pretty fairly. But when they get into politics, they forget that they are, after all, a news organization.

I’m a realist and I don’t expect journalists not to have biases. We all have them and reporters are no exception; they are not robots. Nor do I mind if a media outlet has a certain, obvious editorial line that spills into its news pages. You can recognize it and filter it out. But like lawyers and doctors have codes of ethics, so do journalists. If they’re writing what purports to be an objective news piece, they need to present both sides, even if they favor one.

So that’s a long preamble to point out today’s top story in Wired News, headlined “Outsourcing Hurts Indians, Too“. Where do I even begin?

How about the headline? I know writers almost never come up with their stories’ titles, but give me a break! Who exactly is implied by the “too”? Who is “also” getting “hurt” and how? Presumably it is American workers whose call-center jobs are being moved to English-speaking India. But there’s only a one-sentence mention of this in the article, and nothing to substantiate the claim that Americans are “hurt.”

The article itself is a laundry list of complaints of work-related ailments (familiar to anyone in any country who has worked a graveyard shift) that the poor oppressed masses of India are subjected to by American corporations who greedily offer them jobs and then expect them to work. A sampling:

“I don’t feel fresh even after eight to 10 hours of sleep in the day. It makes you some kind of recluse at times, creating issues in relationships. You are never awake when others are, so no one can talk to you.” [said Nirupama Hukku]

Laxmikant Purohit, a 34-year-old services manager at SoftTel Information Services who works from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m., says he suffers from constipation and acid stomach. In the past eight months he has put on 29 pounds, he said.

And that’s the story. One sentence alluding to how cheap labor overseas is somehow hurting Americans, and then quotes from Indian workers noting that their jobs suck. And it’s the top story of the day. No one pointing out concepts like comparative advantage: outsourcing means savings for companies that are passed on to consumers, and the American labor force is put to work on more productive endeavors. No one to point out that the call-center jobs in India are, after all, well-paying jobs that weren’t there before, and that Indians don’t have to take them if they don’t want to.

I think the article’s last lines are meant to make some sort of sarcastic point, but instead they reveal the story’s fallacious premises:

Not surprisingly, the attrition rate is high in the call center business. Thirty to 40 percent of the workers quit in a year. But they are quickly replaced because there are enough English-speaking youngsters in India available for jobs that pay $160 to $300 per month.

They will learn not to call it easy money.

Not like me. As an American, all the money I’ve ever made has been easy, right?

Jul 11, 2003 | Comments

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2 comments posted

  1. Posted by Robert - 07/12/2003

    I think your outlook on outsourcing is a little niave. The jobless rate in this country has not been higher then it is now for almost a century. Free us up to do more productive things? Like what draw unemployment? The American worker(in all industries)is being victimised by the corporations who are out not only to make a profit but to increase that profit each quarter. When I worked for Compaq Computer Corporation cutting employees was always one of the first things looked at to boost quarter profits. When a company makes a decision to outsource it’s not based on the savings they can pass on to consumers it is based on the fact that they can make more money.They can make more money because they pick Countries that have an economically challenged work force (who will work for pennies on the dollar in poor surroundings) and Countries that (and this is mostly true) have socialized medicine so the cost of benefits is minimal. I would also like to point out that some companies like Ford and GM have moved plants into countries that have low or 0 controls on emissions because we Americans have demanded cleaner air. And the cost of upgrading production facilities is more then retooling a plant elsewhere, I find that unacceptable because it still hurts Americans and the people in the new local as well. A really good example of how corporate thought process works is the way they now package coffee. Remember when you could buy a pound of Folgers? I do! Then some genius somewhere said hey we can save money if we put it a smaller can and reduce the package to 13 oz. But instead of passing that on to us they hoped noone would notice and continued to charge you the pound price. That is how corporations take care of us. A long time ago when I took economics they taught us that a company has a resposibility to the communty I believe they have dropped that from the syllabus. Anyway dream on we are not in trouble in this country, we are not in need of more ethical practices in the day to day operation of our businesses, and we are definitly not hurt by outsourcing, yea right!

  2. Posted by Lance Jonn Romanoff - 08/11/2003

    “The jobless rate in this country has not been higher then it is now for almost a century. Free us up to do more productive things? Like what draw unemployment?”

    This claim, while quite hysterical, is false. Here are several years in the 20th century where unemployment exceeded the July 2003 rate of 6.2%, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

    1993 6.9%
    1992 7.5%
    1991 6.8%
    1986 7.0%
    1985 7.2%
    1984 7.5%
    1983 9.6%
    1982 9.7%
    1981 7.6%
    1980 7.1%
    1977 7.1%
    1976 7.7%
    1975 8.5%
    1961 6.7%
    1941 9.9%
    1940 14.6%
    1939 17.2%
    1938 19.0%
    1937 14.3%
    1936 16.9%
    1935 20.1%
    1934 21.7%
    1933 24.9%
    1932 23.6%
    1931 15.9%
    1930 8.7%
    1922 6.7%
    1921 11.7%
    1915 8.5%
    1914 7.9%
    1911 6.7%

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