How the Media "Cover" Labor

...Consider the facts from Hamlet...

...Perhaps "Nightline" and its viewers would be more aware of the dangerous circumstances in today's workplaces if network news shows didn't wait for a disaster in order to investigate workers' conditions...

...In many ways the issues don't fit the conventions of daily news, other than strikes or city labor negotiations," Finder adds...

...I agree that it's not something that's been done much or well by most papers in the last several years," says Finder, discussing his former beat...

...Reflecting on the cancellation of his daily labor beat, Los Angeles Times reporter Bob Baker says, "This is bigger than one paper or one beat...

...In its eleven years, the factory had never been investigated by the North Carolina Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA...

...The Wall Street Journal's news staff is independent of the WINTER • 1992 • 83 The Media and Labor paper's editorial staff, which allows for the Journal's liberal outlook on economic and social policy...

...He also covers, in-depth, the AFL-CIO as an institution...

...Bernstein not only reports on contract disputes and workplace trends, he also writes opinion pieces about subjects ranging from the need for labor-law reform and arguments for increasing the minimum wage...

...Dine established the labor beat at a time when the Post-Dispatch was competing with another paper for readers...

...There is no conspiracy in the media not to cover organized labor...

...Louis Post-Dispatch are two reporters who cover labor fairly and knowledgeably...

...Contrast this with the New York Times, where it is extremely rare to read a labor point of view...

...In a rare ABC "Nightline" show on workplace danger and negligent OSHA enforcement dealing with the aftermath of the Hamlet disaster—almost six weeks after the accident—ABC reporter Chris Wallace asked his panelists, "Are there other Hamlets out there...

...The magazine also has pro-labor Robert Kuttner writing a regular column as one of several contributing writers...

...Most kinds of issues worth exploring are not simple hits...

...bureau chief Barbara Cohen...

...When the Journal reports on the leveraged buy-out disasters of the 1980s, reporters consistently chronicle the devastating effects on thousands of workers who have lost their jobs and their pensions...

...Few blue-collar women read the Wall Street Journal, yet reporters regularly include a blue-collar perspective...

...Louis area coverage with national and international coverage...

...Cohen said CBS would work then with Republicans 'to get their recommendations as to the best spokesman for their side.' " In fact, in the last year, CBS has been particularly good among the networks in pointing out the hardships faced by middleclass and working Americans and union members in today's economy...

...Louis has historically been an important union city...

...Yet, at the time this article is being written, labor coverage is in WINTER • 1992 • 81 The Media and Labor flux at the Los Angeles Times...

...Her experience was in direct contrast to that of the more relatively affluent women interviewed in the article, who had more flexible options...

...The International Brotherhood of Teamsters was founded there and almost one out of every six Teamster members in the country lives in the region covered by Dine's paper...

...Shortly after the piece on the Cannon workers' pension problems, the same CBS 84 • DISSENT The Media and Labor news show, "CBS Sunday Morning," broadcast a segment on the state of unions...

...When Baker's beat was canceled, he was told to continue covering the Teamsters union— which of course represents the worst face of labor...

...They were trying to personalize the paper with more columnists," Dine says...

...The same producer did both segments...

...In the United States, National Public Radio (NPR) is struggling to attain that same status...

...Writing in the Los Angeles Times Book Review recently, former New York Times labor writer Bill Serrin reflected: "Your colleagues are off covering the White House or the State Department, hyping some trend and getting on Page One...

...Bernstein is supplemented by a reporter based in Washington who covers social policy and workplace issues with an emphasis on organized labor...

...Being a labor reporter won't earn you a promotion today...

...WINTER • 1992 • 85...

...FAIR quotes from a Wall Street Journal article that said Cohen assured the elected officials that "her bureau would produce another piece on the legislation when it reaches the House floor...

...Swoboda, a senior reporter at the Post, combines coverage of legislative issues related to workers with reporting from the field...

...This was the largest National Labor Relations Board election in North Carolina in six years, when ACTWU last ran an election at the same facility...

...He invested the workers' retirement money in insurance annuities which then defaulted...

...But the most striking part of the CBS coverage for this viewer was a camera shot from inside one of the mills...

...Unlike the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, most reporters at the Journal and Business Week make it their business to cover the kinds of people who may not read their publications...

...Union-related issues do make it onto the NPR airwaves, but an economic issues the spin on the story often comes from a management point of view...

...Network television on the other hand has never been good at covering labor...

...The union came within two hundred votes of winning, after losing decisively two previous times...

...Bernstein's column, which once appeared on the front page of the business section, has been relegated to the inside of the section...

...Louis," Dine states, pointing out that St...

...There was an acknowledgment at the time that labor was important and that the New York Times had to do a better job in covering New York City area labor...

...Neither the print nor the electronic media are organized systematically enough for a conspiracy...

...There's a lot of interest in the labor movement in St...

...Newsday does have a workplace reporter, too, who assists in covering labor issues, especially health and safety concerns...

...Most other major newspapers followed suit and for several years, unions were a legitimate topic for reporting, although seldom mentioned in the electronic media...

...Yet even NPR, considered a hotbed of radicalism by many of our elites, could do more to cover labor...

...However, the unionized work force in New York City comes to nearly 36 percent, and plays a significant—even pivotal—role in the life of the city...

...The Journal speaks first and foremost to the American business and managerial classes, for whom it is essential to have accurate information about the state of labor...

...North Carolina, with more manufacturing jobs than any state in the nation, is less than 4.5 percent unionized...

...Interestingly, both the Wall Street Journal and Business Week buck the trend...

...Competition for scarce advertising revenue has newspapers framing their coverage for an elite buying public...

...The latter perception is one that labor must take more seriously...

...The Wall Street Journal regularly opens its op-ed pages to union voices in a special "Counterpoint" feature...

...But, even with the decline of union membership, issues remain and may even become more critical...

...Swoboda is able to leverage the seniority he has at the paper for his beat...

...But I just don't know about its future...

...There are two probable reasons organized labor is not getting covered...

...The norm in television news coverage is that labor is an afterthought, if considered at all...

...The real question is, will the investigative work be done to find these disasters before more people are killed...

...You are camping out in some mountain motel or a bare room with three locks on the door above a sleazy bar writing about coal miners or laid-off steelworkers and hoping your piece isn't held or dumped inside...

...From the business desk, labor issues tend to be seen in terms of the bottom line...

...It is easy to forget . . . especially when no reporters are there to remind you...

...When several thousand miners and their supporters occupied a company facility in Virginia, the occupation was virtually blacked out by the electronic media, even though the incident offered a visually dramatic event...

...After Serrin departed, the New York Times changed its labor beat into a national "workplace" beat—which can mean almost anything...

...Labor coverage at the Times seemed to be a luxury, not a necessity...

...There are still some exceptions to the disappearance of the labor beat...

...It is this economy that the New York Times praised in an article about the Southeast on September 10 for "many of the region's historic business advantages—low labor and living costs, a pro-business, anti-union environment and a good quality of life...

...Phil Dine, younger than most labor reporters, agrees that his generation of reporters knows little about labor today or its historic role and might tend not to think of it as an interesting area to cover...

...It's a very fertile area with a lot of good, important subjects to write about...

...Bernstein writes one of the few surviving labor columns in America...

...So the Washington Post informed its readers several days after a September 1991 fire in a chicken-processing plant in Hamlet killed twenty-five workers...

...The mill had been sold between election number two and number three to Fieldcrest...

...The show portrayed workers being disenfranchised in a union organizing campaign and in a strike...

...When editors look for a beat to cut, labor is the one...

...These two factors don't bode well for the labor press beat...

...The Los Angeles Times, which just cut its full-time labor beat, also recently implemented a hiring freeze...

...A labor settlement, for example, is covered with attention paid to the market share effect it will have on the company, rather than benefits or hardships for the workers...

...a lot of papers that a generation ago might have been proud to cover society from the bottom up are today much more cautious...

...When will our national press corps begin to wonder whether it's really good public policy for this nation to abandon unionism...

...The large amount of local stories precludes one reporter from reaching much beyond New York...

...On the eve of the Solidarity Day March on Labor Day 1991, "Nightline" had scheduled a panel to discuss the current state of organized labor with a labor writer, a labor leader, and a business representative...

...The second is the perception that organized labor "doesn't matter" anymore...

...These workers were so poor that they had to be buried in donated clothing...

...The answer is yes, many others, with thousands of workers at risk...

...This complaint, according to FAIR, led to a meeting between the Republican congressmen and CBS Washington, D.C...

...One example of this was illustrated during the United Mineworkers' strike against Pittston two years ago...

...Both reports were sympathetic to the workers and the union...

...in January 1990, the metro section editors of the Times assigned an ambitious reporter, Alan Finder, to cover labor in New York City after several years of a dry spell on the metro desk—but after only ten months, the beat was canceled and Finder reassigned to cover transportation...

...Last April, CBS reported on the effects on unions of scab workers...

...Reflecting on his paper's publisher, he concludes that "the Pulitzer tradition has been for the underdog and the paper's always been sympathetic toward issues like civil rights and improved working conditions...

...The partial reemergence of a metro labor beat at the New York Times came only after the paper found itself unable adequately to cover the Daily News strike...

...The food-processing plant doors were locked to prevent workers from stealing chickens...

...The business . . . is run by people who are more comfortable with the top-down, institutional view of the world . . . more distrustful of instinct, more reliant on public opinion polls...

...And while other newspaper editors are arguing that the AFL-CIO has slipped in importance as an 82 • DISSENT The Media and Labor institution, Washington's hometown paper gives adequate coverage to the labor federation...

...Newsday, owned by the Los Angeles TimesMirror Company, has a solid full-time labor reporter, Ken Crowe, who also combines local and national issues, though by default Crowe mostly covers labor stories in the New York City area...

...The United States doesn't have statesupported media like the British Broadcasting Corporation or the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which embody the idea that the media provide a public service...

...NPR now has a half-hour show called "Marketplace," a sort of a business page of the air produced with corporate backing and regularly featuring economic commentators from the Conference Board...

...Within the past five years or so, there's been another shift: organized labor is being ignored on the invalid ground that it is no longer important enough to devote any considerable space or reporter's time to...

...There's clearly some discomfort at the notion of covering something from the workers' point of view or any individual point of view...

...Yet, a network television crew was allowed access...

...Workers once expecting about $90 a month for their retirement were to end up with nothing...

...Unfortunately, one or two sympathetic television producers and reporters aren't enough .. . though they offer drops of water in a drought...

...The recession has hit the media hard and things will only get worse...

...Ms...

...The first is a class bias on the part of media corporate owners and publishers...

...Frank Swoboda at the Washington Post and Phil Dine at the St...

...Harry Bernstein, veteran Los Angeles Times labor reporter, remembers an earlier time when "reporters like Abe Raskin of the New York Times began to objectively report the activities of organized labor, which by then had become a major political and economic force in America...

...Now, as the paper launches a larger metro section, with expanded bureaus in the outer boroughs and suburbs, the labor beat has been discontinued, even though there will be an increase of fifteen to twenty reporters in the new section...

...CBS News and ABC News both covered Murdock's pension problems, using the Cannon situation as a case study for what is happening elsewhere in America...

...There is pressure for ad revenue and scarce resources for staff...

...But in the great majority of cases, if the labor movement is covered at all, it's from the business page...

...The second segment clearly stated that the presumption of fairness in union elections may be a false presumption...

...Both have full-time labor reporters who cover social policy and workplace issues with great consideration given to the impact of policies on the work force...

...After how many Hamlets...

...Covering labor and workplace issues requires a lot of inventiveness...

...The previous owner, California financier David Murdock, held on to the pension fund when he sold the mill...

...Although the Los Angeles Times has lost its full-time labor reporter, it still has a workplace reporter at the business desk...

...The media's job is to search out those who desperately need to have their story told...

...My own column continues and what I write is not censored in any way," Bernstein reports...

...After Dine proved to be successful by reporting his stories with a human-interest angle, his editors approached him to write a weekly column...

...His column combines St...

...The labor panel was arguably timely, tied as it was to a major demonstration in Washington, but the show was rescheduled for a month later and aired on the East Coast much later than normal show time, after "Monday Night Football...

...The same study found that striking miners in Siberia had a better chance of receiving coverage than striking miners in Virginia...

...You've got to find ways to take individual worker issues and broaden them to a wider theme...

...He was recently on assignment in Eastern Europe, where he was able to focus on labor problems in that part of the world...

...This is what's happened to big city journalism...

...This woman pointed out that most factory workers have two choices: they can either stay home with the child and risk being fired or they can leave a child home without supervision...

...This article was published just seven days after the fire in Hamlet...

...For instance, in a recent piece on the lack of child care, the reporter interviewed women in managerial and top-level white collar positions as well as a woman who was a member of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers...

...I hope the New York Times and other papers will begin to address it...

...In a 1989 study of network news coverage of labor, Fairness and Accuracy in Media (FAIR), a media monitoring group, found that NBC Nightly News devoted a total of forty seconds to workplace safety...

...The only view union staff had of the election notice was on national television...

...The show was bumped for an interview with Jerry Falwell on homosexuality...

...After the report aired, a group of right-wing congressmen fighting proposed federal antiscab legislation denounced the story as "outrageously one-sided" and lodged a complaint with CBS president Lawrence Tisch...

...Whether unions get covered through that beat is an open question...

...The New York Times, in contrast, seems to be run these days by editorial and news editors who are liberal on social policy and conservative on economic policy Business Week has one of the best labor reporters in the country, Aaron Bernstein, whose father is the Los Angeles Times labor columnist...

...Editors, publishers, and even some reporters argue that the organized labor movement is too weak today to warrant the kind of press attention it once received...

...We can only speculate as to why the Wall Street Journal should feel it necessary to cover labor with some thoroughness while the New York Times does not: the Times is increasingly oriented toward upper middle-class suburbanites and upwardly (or these days, downwardly) mobile yuppies who have neither feeling for nor interest in workers and their organizations...

...Tacked up on the wall was a notice of the union election from the NLRB...

...Union representatives are not allowed on the premises of a workplace during a union election, a fact probably not known or even considered by most Americans...

...Reporting news is, after all, a business...

...It was a CBS news crew that chronicled a portion of the recent organizing campaign at Fieldcrest Cannon Mills, where the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers (ACTWU) tried to organize seven thousand textile workers in North Carolina in the summer of 1991...

...Yet, even while the beat was in place, Finder was pulled off to cover stories ranging from racial controversy at City College to the governor's budget...

...One argument used by editors at the New York Times for not covering organized labor is the shrinking percentage of the national work force that is unionized...