Chris reiterates the point earlier made by Alex here: we should not allow the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh to obscure the fact that economic development in that country, including through sweatshops, has had beneficial effects in mitigating poverty, and that child mortality there has fallen. Chris's particular angle on the issue is the ordinary bias in news reporting; this focuses on abnormal events, like a collapsing building, but not on what is taken to be 'normal', as acute poverty is.
Against that background, Chris writes:
[N]ews reports which draw attention to the evils of sweatshops but not to those of rural poverty understate the benefits which such sweatshops have brought. Yes, they're hellholes which perhaps could and should be improved upon - but they're better than the alternative.
In this sense, news generates a bias amongst its western consumers; it encourages a hostility to globalization and industrialization even though these are - albeit imperfect - routes out of poverty.
There are three comments I have about this. First, Chris's - and Alex's - points are well made against anyone who is indeed hostile to globalization and industrialization or who overlooks the actual trends in a country like Bangladesh in child mortality rates and the statistics on poverty more generally. Second, it is far from clear to me that the majority of Western consumers are hostile to globalization and industrialization. Some number amongst them are sure to be, but it's a matter of the proportions and I'd be very surprised - no, flabbergasted - if there were large majorities amongst Western consumer populations biased in this particular way. Third, I'm puzzled by Chris's 'perhaps' in the phrase 'hellholes which perhaps could and should be improved upon'; because thinking they could be improved upon requires no opposition whatever to globalization and industrialization or their benefits, and my own earlier post on this topic tried to make it clear that I was arguing for reforming safety standards and working conditions without in any way gainsaying the benefits of economic development.
The history of capitalism has never imposed a stark choice of either economic development without any legal or moral restraints or holding back development in favour of the persistence of acute poverty. No more is one forced to make that choice today. One need accept neither bias.