CALIFORNIA PORTFOLIO : We Must Take Back Control of Our Image

Los Angeles’ recent non-riot spared us of Dan Rather reporting in a flak jacket, but it did not stop the relentlessly negative media attacks on California. Worse, the state’s leaders seem inexplicably willing to concede control of the debate about California’s future to outsiders.

In economic terms, this silence in the face of doomsday fusillades from the East Coast media is further eroding California’s business competitiveness. To attract investment and visitors, particularly after a series of setbacks, a region must rediscover its self-confidence, much as New York City did during its “I Love New York” campaign of the 1980s.

Truth be told, the urban and economic problems that challenge California are every bit as severe in most eastern cities. Yet, local writers and television personalities seem all-too willing to take their cues from the eastern media and join the chorus of pessimism about the future of California’s big cities. This is a form of economic suicide, since the business health of California’s media is surely dependent on a vital state economy.

The film capital of the world should instinctively realize that the costs of losing control of California’s image are enormous. Some companies in Japan and Europe do not place orders with competitive California producers because they think every business in the state will soon go bankrupt or be burned down. Large fund managers have shunned investment here because of wildly inaccurate reports about economic and social conditions.

The greatest damage, however, has been to California’s self-confidence and perspective. Programs such as PBS’ recent “Frontline” program on Los Angeles, which aired last week, seemed designed to lock in the image of Los Angeles as a city seething with racial hatred.

Yet the Boston and New York producers of the “Frontline” show must know that Boston remains one of the most ethnically balkanized and hostile-to-minority cities in the country. In places like South Boston or Roxbury, even the pretense of building a multiracial society has been abandoned.

By contrast, Los Angeles during the 1980s was one of the few U.S. cities to become less segregated. Equally revealing, in the city’s mayoral primary, only 13% of the voters thought race an important factor when casting their votes, according to exit polls. Most of the city’s African-Americans voted for Michael Woo, a Chinese banker’s son.

Economically as well, the situation in California’s inner cities are bright compared with those on the East Coast. Although California’s urban unemployment rates are unacceptably high, the lower rates in most eastern cities result from the fact that so much of their disadvantaged population no longer even figures in the economy. Labor-participation rates in New York City, a key measure of whether people are actively seeking employment, are from one-half to one-third of those in the hardest-hit minority neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Also, minority-owned firms in Los Angeles earned nearly three times the income of New York’s comparably sized minority community.

The Easterners’ myopia extends to the whole of California’s economy. But despite its problems, the state has never suffered the scale of job losses, or the business and population migration, that have plagued New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Taken together, the Northeast accounted for a staggering 50% of the net job losses in the first 18 months of the recession.

Last week, Forbes magazine proclaimed that California’s manufacturing base has been “all but driven out of the state.” In reality, the state’s industrial base today is larger than it was a decade ago. By contrast, New York’s industrial economy, burdened with regulatory excess and high taxes, has shrunk by more than 33%. New York’s credit rating is the lowest of all 50 states.

Similarly, the Eastern press seems eager to write obituaries for Silicon Valley and Orange County as high-tech havens, but the regions most severely affected by declining high-tech employment are in the Northeast, along Boston’s Route 128 and the Hudson Valley, home to shrinking corporate leviathans like as IBM. Not surprisingly, office vacancies are skyrocketing in such areas as Westchester County, where IBM and many other East Coast corporations are headquartered, to levels nearly 10% above those in comparable California suburban areas.

Even California’s much ballyhooed net out-migration during the past year pales in comparison with the decades-long flight of population from the Eastern states. New Yorkers apparently find life so so intolerable at home that they continue to move to California even when the state is economically suffering. New York state remains the largest single source of new net American migrants to both California and Los Angeles.

None of this suggests that California does not face daunting problems. But before surrendering to the judgment of those who have no stake in our community, California’s business, media and political leaders should begin to question aggressively both the accuracy and motives of our most determined detractors. The state’s prospects depend heavily not only on improving business conditions, but on fighting back and winning the media war being waged against us.

DR, BARBARA CUMMINGS / For The Times