Inventing Reality Page 12

  During the Gulf war against Iraq, political bias in weather coverage showed forth unabashedly as evening reports began to feature aerial weather maps of the Gulf region. When the skies were clear over Iraq, announcers would look pleased. When cloudy, they looked concerned; as one of them said: “It’s gonna interfere with our air strikes.”

  Conservatives say that left critics deny “the autonomy of culture.” Not true. Most of us recognize that culture does not operate in perfect harmony with the dominant social and economic order. We understand that dissident cultural forces can arise and have a self-generating impact. But when it comes to the kind of mass culture manufactured by the mass media, I wanted to plead guilty to the charge: There is little autonomy to speak of. Be it entertainment, news, advertising, sports, or weather, it is all subject to various degrees of political bias.

  Giving Labor the Business

  In capitalist society, working people are the ones who get the least of what there is to get, while often working the hardest for what they receive. Their toil is frequently dirty, mindless, hazardous, low paying, and lacking in job security and esteem. As compared to upper-income persons they are more apt to be victimized as employees, taxpayers, and consumers. And they are more apt to be slighted and misrepresented in the corporate-owned media.

  BUSINESS OVER LABOR

  The news media manifest a marked pro-business, anti-labor bias. During the Reagan administration, the rich received massive multibillion-dollar tax cuts, one of the greatest giveaways to wealthy individuals and corporations in US history. Yet the press gave Reagan’s “tax reform” laws little critical comment, treating them pretty much as the White House wanted, as incentives that would stimulate investment and encourage productive enterprise. When those blessed with this enormous tax windfall put the money primarily into speculative investment—of the kind that led to the stock market debacle of October 1987—the press was discreet about it. Not wishing to say anything that might embarrass the rich, media commentators seldom if ever pointed out that the tax cuts failed to create a trickle-down prosperity for all, as promised by the administration.

  In 1990, the news media were equally discreet when downplaying or ignoring the proposal made by some Democrats in Congress to increase taxes for the highest income bracket. Network news shows generally gave unchallenged exposure to President Bush’s claim that the Democrats wanted to raise everybody’s taxes. Thus Bush came across as

  opposing new taxes for average Americans rather than as defending the tax privileges of the wealthy—which in fact he was doing.

  On the infrequent occasions the proposed tax increase on the rich was recognized in news reports, it was likely to be labeled “class warfare.”1 The media never called it “class warfare” when the rich pummeled the poor as happened throughout the Reagan-Bush years. The term is applied (critically) only when the many try to fight back against the privileged few.

  A pro-business, anti-labor bias is revealed in the very terminology the media apply to groups. For years, when the term “special interests” was used by political scientists to designate the powerful lobbyists who influenced government on behalf of the privileged few, the concept was generally ignored by the mainstream media. When Ronald Reagan became president he used “special interests” to designate labor, women, people of color, and others who compose the majority of the working population. In contrast, the corporate rich and the military represented the “national interest.” Now the press quickly followed suit, applying the term “special interests” in the same way Reagan did, to millions of non-elites rather than to the privileged and powerful few.

  In keeping with its protective treatment of corporate America, the press says little about the billions of dollars in giveaways that go to big business in the form of price supports, loan guarantees, grants-in-aid, research and development funds, subsidized insurance rates, export supports, payments-in-kind, promotion and marketing services, land and mineral leases, and the like.2

  A Los Angeles Times survey found that newspaper editors favored business over labor by 54 to 7 percent.3 (One would have to look hard to find the 7 percent and one might wonder about the other 39 percent of editors who admit to no partiality.) When Chrysler laid off thousands of workers in 1988 and 1989, the New York Times and other publications reported the story from the perspective of the company, showing more concern for Chrysler’s financial strategies than for the hardships wreaked upon the unemployed workers and their families.4

  Generally the news media provide labor with few opportunities to present its side of the story. The network evening news regularly reports the Dow Jones average and other stock market news but offers no weekly tabulations on industrial accidents, housing evictions, or environmental violations. The major newspapers and weeklies have no “labor” section to go along with their “business” section. The Gross National Product (GNP) is reported but there is no “quality-of-life index” to tell us what the GNP takes away or fails to give us. The question of why we must increase production, especially of the private market variety, is never raised. Industrial plateau is called “stagnation.” When the stock market has a good day this is presumed to be something beneficial to us all. One never hears the word “capital” or “capital accumulation” to describe the core process of our economy. There is seldom a reference to corporate economic power and its political influences. The economy itself is presented by the media as something government and business attend to, while organized labor tags along at best as a very junior and often troublesome partner, at worst as a threat to the system.

  In 1980 the president of the International Association of Machinists, William Winpisinger, released a survey dealing with television news. This report concluded that network coverage repeatedly slights or ignores the issues of major concern to unions and union members, specifically, inflation, energy, foreign trade, health, unemployment, and tax reform. When these topics are touched upon it is usually from a management viewpoint.5 Other concerns of labor, such as occupational safety, human services, and wage and work conditions receive little coverage. Unions are most likely to be noticed when they go on strike, but the reasons behind the strike are seldom elaborated upon, the impression being that labor is simply insatiable in its demands.6 A special report on CBS (November 21, 1983) thus concluded: “To a lot of Americans the unions have dug their own grave by being greedy... . Now things have caught up with them.”

  When the news media do mention unions (aside from strikes), it is to report on their links to organized crime, corrupt bosses, and the lack of internal democracy. (The media seldom raise the question of internal democracy in regard to corporations or most other institutions.) Few Americans get to hear what unions really are about. As Roberta Lynch puts it:

  Media coverage of trade union activities is restricted to superficial reports of major national strikes. Yet there is in unions of every variety a wealth of experience worthy of wider public attention. Local union members who know more than epidemiologists about cancer patterns. Union stewards who blow the whistle on secret hazardous waste disposal. Women in chemical factories who know first-hand the potential for causing birth defects of many commonly used manufacturing substances. Unions that face unscrupulous and high-paid consulting firms brought in not to negotiate with them but to break them. Unions that have joined in alliances with environmentalists to help clean up the air and the water. The list could go on.

  The fact is that labor unions are on the whole among the most democratic institutions in American life. The local union represents one of the very few arenas in which ordinary people can come together to define their own concerns, to develop new skills and understanding, and to glimpse a sense of their own potential.'

  The withholding of labor by workers is called a strike, but not the withholding of capital by employers. The latter is never treated as a controversial disruption of the production process. Corporations may close plants or refuse to invest because of low profit margins, or decide not to put
money into maintenance and retooling, or they may milk a subsidiary for the highest possible profits and then close it down, or move to Taiwan or South Korea or some other country where labor can be even more ruthlessly exploited than at home—but such things are assumed to be management’s prerogatives and are seldom treated by the press or anyone else as contributing to conflicts between bosses and workers.

  Industrial strife is never characterized in the media as an expression of class struggle, with the capitalist relentlessly accumulating as much of the wealth created by labor as possible and workers fighting back in order to protect or improve their standard of living. Little attention is given to management’s multimillion-dollar union-busting efforts and its tendency to coerce labor into giving back hard-won benefits and protections. The impression of who is giving and who is grabbing is inverted in a business-owned press that portrays management as making “offers” and labor as making “demands.” The struggles between workers and bosses are called “labor problems” and “labor disputes,” never “management disputes”—even when it is management that refuses to negotiate a contract—as is often the case.

  The press fails to enlist labor’s views on national questions. One study of ABC’s “Nightline,” considered one of the best news shows on television, found that over a forty-month period covering 865 programs the guests were overwhelmingly conservative, White, male, government officials, corporate executives, and other professionals. Only 5 percent represented public interest groups. Less than 2 percent were labor leaders or representatives of ethnic minorities. On those “Nightline” programs that dealt specifically with economic issues, business people outnumbered labor representatives seven to one.8 Like so many other news shows, “Nightline” gave vastly more attention to the interests of rich corporate elites who number in the hundreds than to the interests of working people who number in the millions.

  ONE HAPPY FAMILY

  On May 5, 1983, ABC television ran an advertisement sponsored by the National Association of Broadcasters and narrated by Howard K. Smith. “The United States is a large, richly endowed country,” Smith says, “yet Japan, a country the size of Montana and with few resources, is outcompeting us.” (A shot of two Japanese workers in a motorcycle factory talking in a friendly manner to a supervisor.) “Why?” continues Smith, “Because they know how to work as a team. We have got to learn to work as a team. Government, management, and employees must work together for the best performance.” (Cut to a conference room of Americans talking earnestly together.)

  The ad’s message denies there are antagonistic relations between labor and capital; instead, all differences can be reconciled by “teamwork” and better performance in the workplace. Management, it seems, is not compelled to exploit employees in order to maximize profits; workers are not subordinate to capital and do not have to struggle against bosses. To complete this fairy tale, government does not protect the hegemony of the corporate class but is a neutral evenhanded “partner” in a harmonious triad. Those who learn to cooperate and not make troublesome demands will succeed—like the Japanese supposedly have. The ad incorrectly assumes that the Japanese worker is happily sharing in the economics success of the Japanese owning class.

  NICE BOSSES, CRAZY STRIKERS

  In real life, the struggle between labor and capital is constant, not occasional. Along with strikes and union organizing, worker resistance takes such forms as absenteeism, lateness, theft, deliberate inefficiency, sabotage, slow-downs. Management, in turn, will ignore safety regulations and grievances, habitually violate contract agreements, and impose speed-ups. Despite this constant strife, workers are seldom eager to strike. They do not wish to endure the hardships that come with loss of income and the possible loss of employment. Usually the strike is their weapon of last resort.

  The business-owned news media, of course, say nothing about the incessant need of capital to extract as much profit from labor as possible. By ignoring the underlying causes of industrial conflict, the press finds it easy to represent strikes as irrational events, the outcome of some recalcitrant impulse on the part of workers.

  Consider how the press reported the prolonged coal strike of 1977-78. Major publications blamed the collapse of contract negotiations on the United Mine Workers (UMW) union. They described management as making a wage offer that was “hefty” and “whopping.”9 But they said nothing about management’s intent to initiate speed-ups, substitute the union’s health care system for a more expensive private plan, and penalize any miner for encouraging or participating in strike activity.

  Reporters and editors who never worked a day in the mines and rarely bothered talking to people who did treated the wildcat strikes as irresponsible, undisciplined actions. In fact, wildcat strikes are often a matter of life and death, protective measures against the kind of management safety violations that cannot be overlooked for the week or two it takes for a grievance hearing. The press never reported that the mine companies rejected the UMW proposals out of hand and locked out the miners. News media kept describing the lockout as a “strike” throughout the work stoppage, leaving the impression that it was the miners who were picking a fight with the owners when the reverse was true.

  Given the inflation and the threatened cutback in benefits, management’s contract offer actually represented a decrease in real wages rather than a “hefty” increase. But this point never surfaced in the news. Having ignored the issues of the strike, the press had to find some explanation for why the miners behaved so strangely by rejecting such a favorable contract. The miners, explained the New York Times, were “a breed apart” and “clannish.”10 Newsweek suggested that they were “inbred” and “hell-raising and violent, promiscuous and enduring.”11 Time saw them as “traditionally quick to resort to violence,” and “not addicted to regular work.”12 No such conjectures were offered regarding the mine owners, nothing about their “clannish” country clubs, and “inbred” and “promiscuous” social lives; their irregular, leisurely, and often nonexistent work hours; and the tradition of violence expressed in their reliance on goon squads, Pinkertons, gun thugs, state troopers, and national guardsmen. No reporter wrote about management’s “strange ways,” nor would any editor or publisher have allowed such a story to pass. Nor did the press ever mention that the coal companies were reaping after-tax profits that had leaped dramatically during the 19741978 period, while miners’ wages lagged behind.

  Press coverage of the 1982 contract negotiations between the steel industry and the United Steelworkers of America manifested the same pro-business, anti-labor bias. Management demanded substantial wage cuts and a suspension of cost-of-living allowances. But the media presented the companies’ offer as reasonable and the workers’ rejection as greedy. To do so, the press had to lie. Thus, the New York Times blamed the steel industry’s troubles on the workers’ excessively high wages. The Times presented a chart showing that steel workers earned 60 percent more than other blue-collar workers.13 One observer notes acidly that this was a powerful argument, “but it was false,” for the Times had compared the hourly wages of employees in other industries to the steelworkers’ total hourly compensation including wages and benefits.14

  Coverage of major league baseball and football strikes show the same media bias. While the press makes a point of reporting the relatively high salaries of star players, it usually says nothing about the enormous profits accumulated by the team owners. Nothing is said about the hundreds of millions of dollars in TV rights the owners pocket—of which the players see not a penny. The press says nothing about the stresses and injuries sustained by players and the relatively short durations of their careers. News reports leave the public wondering why athletes who are so well paid (compared to many other jobs) would be so greedy as to go on strike and deprive fans of their diversion.

  A detailed study of television news coverage of the 1985 New York hotel strike found that the media presented the workers’ wage demands as the sole cause of the strike. T
he drive by management for higher profits was never treated as a contributing factor. Coverage focused on the disorder caused by angry, heckling strikers on the picket line. In contrast, the interiors of the hotels were described in supportive terms as orderly and running smoothly. “New York’s best hotels are not about to be shut down,” commented one telecaster.15 The newscasters stressed the “millions of dollars in lost business” to the tourism industry, the city, taxpayers, and workers. Nothing was said about what it would cost hotel workers in benefits and real wages were they to accept management’s terms. Management was portrayed as negotiating patiently and earnestly, while labor was seen as unrelenting and “digging in.” One newscaster said union representatives “have been yelling and screaming words throughout the brief negotiations.”16 At no time did the reporters discuss the substantive issues of the strike nor did they ask either side to give details about the content of the dispute.

  In 1989 members of the United Mine Workers took over a coal processing plant owned by Pittston in southwest Virginia. It was the first major plant takeover since the historic Flint, Michigan, sit-down strike by autoworkers in 1937. “The event had every element of a good journalistic story: conflict, drama, colorful characters and, for television, tremendous footage,” writes Jonathan Tasini. “Yet, as far as the national media were concerned the historic action did not occur.”17

  MEDIA FAVOR AN ANTI-UNION MAYOR

  Dissatisfied with the media’s favoritism toward then-mayor of New York City Edward Koch (who had an impressive record of service to big business and disservice to labor and the poor), the city’s largest union, District Council 37, AFSCME, did a four-week monitor study of fifty-five local TV news shows and found that when Koch attacked any policy or person, the chance to respond was denied 78 percent of the time, leaving the mayor free to misrepresent the position of those who opposed his policies. When the union announced its findings at a press conference some reporters took the charges of bias personally and denied any such favoritism, while others, with more insight and candor, pointed out that they would not last long were they repeatedly to challenge the mayor and his powerful friends. “We work for other people,” remarked one major radio station reporter, referring to the anti-union, pro-Koch biases of media owners. Needless to say, the union’s finding about press bias received little coverage in the press.