Feature Article

Chilean Miners’ Story Is Used to Promote American Values

By Yiqin Deng

When the media coverage for the rescue of the Chilean miners in 2010 was broadcast, the coverage was filled with hugs, cheers and joyful tears. Rescuers used a missile-like escape capsule that pulled 33 men, one-by-one, to fresh air and freedom, 69 days after they were trapped in a collapsed mine a half-mile underground. This news could be seen just as another successful life-saving event; however, through this coverage, the media acts in the role of a nation builder. The media provide the values that shape our shared understanding of our nation and its role in the international community.

How did this come to be? To simplify the answer, sociologist Herbert Gans suggests that American commercial news uses eight enduring values: ethnocentrism, altruistic democracy, responsible capitalism, small-town pastoralism, individualism, moderatism, social order and national leadership. In order to present these values, language is used to create symbols and construct what our media says about us. Consequently, what we take for granted as given features of both our everyday world of experience and of the world beyond.

For example, Daniel Henninger, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, uses the Chilean miners’ story as an opportunity to praise America’s capitalist system. Henninger argues that “without this system [capitalism] running in the background, without the year-over-year progress embedded in these capitalist innovations, those trapped miners would be dead.” By using phrases like “leading developmental edge” and “capitalist innovations,” Henninger pushes readers to recognize the idea that a capitalist economy is necessary for the development of leading technology and progress. It is this system that allows innovation, creates wealth, and generates jobs and well being for the people. Without this system in place, there would be no vast technological advances to save those miners.

Henninger also utilizes another value, called ethnocentrism. He asks what would happen if this incident occurred 25 years ago, when not having America’s advanced technology may have meant sure death for those men. The technique and manner in which he answers it demonstrates an ethnocentric belief that America is better than other countries. “The Center Rock drill bit. This is the miracle bit that drilled down to the trapped miners. Brandon Fisher called the Chileans to offer his drill. Chile accepted. The miners are alive,” Henninger writes. The choppy sentences follow one another, and the minor details given about the drill bit deliver an implication of superiority. Through these short and direct sentences, Henninger conveys the message that America is a country at the top of the hierarchy of nations. We have the ultimate private companies that deliver the best of all technologies. America steps in, Chile accepts, and once again America saves the day.

The media are the people’s primary access to political information, democratic elections, and most importantly, the key to being an informed, participating, and self-governing citizen. When covering international relations of the rescue of the Chilean miners, the media’s role as a nation builder creates an imagined community. Henninger creates an image that constitutes the values of ethnocentrism and responsible capitalism. Henninger’s column is just one example; these images are carried around the world by the products of American media corporations.