EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first in a two-part series on media bias. Before your webmaster-editor turned to teaching, I was a full-time daily newspaper reporter. While I'm retired from the classroom, I'm still an active journalist and chip in commentary online for Forward Kentucky, People's World and LA Progressive and for newspapers including the Louisville Courier-Journal and Lexington Herald-Leader. l. I'm happy to meet with local unions--in person or via Zoom--to talk about ways to improve union-media relations. Just send me an email at bcraig8960@gmail.com
By BERRY CRAIG
AFT Local 1360
"Why is the media so anti-union?”
I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard a union brother or sister ask that question.
They mostly mean Fox News, the rest of the Right wing media echo chamber, and local newspapers and radio and TV stations.
There’s not much to say about Fox and its far right friends except that they are blatantly biased and function as the Republican Party’s propaganda ministry.
“Fair and balanced” Fox’s famous motto. But I’ll believe that when hogs fly and kids don’t shoot hoops in my native Kentucky any more. Nah – I won’t believe it even then.
On the other hand, the anti-union slant of small-town print and electronic media news reporting is subtler. (Most media in Kentucky and nationwide is small-town, not big city.) Unions are all but ignored, except during strikes – more on that in a minute.
Of course, unions are commonly demonized on the editorial pages of small town papers and in radio and TV commentary. They routinely get trashed by Rush Limbaugh wannabes on boondocks radio stations. Tiny market TV station owners are generally anti-union, too.
Most small-town publishers and TV and radio station owners are among the local powers-that-be. They are usually well-heeled and often active in the local Chamber of Commerce. The fact that the chamber is openly pro-business and anti-union apparently doesn’t trouble local media owners about conflicts of interest. More than a few local papers and TV and radio stations proudly plaster Chamber of Commerce stickers on their front doors.
Almost all small-town media owners believe that what’s best for local businesses – of course, including their media businesses – is best for the community. So local business leaders get a lot of ink and on-camera time. They are depicted as “solid citizens” who are “pillars” in their communities.
On the other hand, union leaders almost never enjoy such positive press. The president of the local bank gets in the paper or on TV or the radio all the time. About the only time a local union president is in the news is during a strike.
Reporters commonly call strikes “labor disputes,” not “labor-management disputes." “Labor dispute” implies, on purpose or not, that unions are solely to blame for work stoppages. Too, strike stories seldom focus on why workers go on strike. Instead, they concentrate on how strikes inconvenience the "innocent" public.
Therefore, newspaper readers, TV viewers and radio station listeners are led to believe that regular folks are the victims in “labor disputes.” Striking workers, no matter how aggrieved, come off as greedy malcontents who just cause trouble, not only for their employers, but for everybody.
Some of the anti-union bias in the media is rooted in a lack of understanding on the part of reporters. Not that many small town print or broadcast newshounds even have a basic idea of how unions and collective bargaining work. Almost no small-town papers or TV or radio stations have unions. Few reporters have ever been in any kind of union.
Of course, well-paid company PR flaks are always glad to “help” the reporter with skillfully spun news releases. Like the company’s hired guns, most reporters are middle-class college grads. Hence, many reporters sympathize with management. These scribes see themselves as "professionals," too, whose station in life is above that of blue collar workers -- even though many union members enjoy better wages and benefits than they do.
Even reporters and editors who consider themselves liberals often stereotype union members as dimwitted, MAGA-hatted bigots. At the same time, the liberalism of many big city newspaper editorial writers doesn’t necessarily translate into consistent support for organized labor and its positions.
Anyway, labor reporting is specialized reporting. Time was, big city daily papers recognized that fact and had full-time labor reporters. Few do any more. (But large or small, almost all papers have business pages or sections.)
“Labor reporters knew how unions functioned and why they existed,” said Bill Londrigan, president of the Kentucky State AFL-CIO. “They tended to be more balanced in their labor reporting.” Londrigan said it’s no accident that labor reporters are all but gone. “It was coincident with the corporatization and concentration of media ownership.”
Next time we'll look at ways you can help your union get better coverage in small-town media.