> Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 09:53:04 -0600
> From: "David Hill" <spies_ at hotmail.com>
> Subject: Re: lbo-talk-digest V1 #3885
>
>
(many well taken points snipped)
> media stories of failed strikes, "violent" strikes, union
> corruption do hurt the labor movement in the sense that these stories pass
> for "labor journalism" and replace reporting on what little social movement
> unionism exists in america. rarely does a signed and sealed collective
> bargaining agreement that creates jobs and boosts the living wage get as
> much attention in the press as a tense standoff that puts workers out on the
> line.
and
>
> media is able to report on labor as more than just a corrupt animal that
> takes advantage of members, then we should embrace TDU's position and tell
> the media to get off our backs too, while we (the rank and file, not the
> left) clean up our own house.
>
I think we'll be waiting a long time. The real story is why labor continues to entertain the delusion that the corporate media's reporting should be anything other than pro-corporate and anti-labor.
All this is an argument that the unions need to develop their own sources of information, pundits, media outlets etc. just as they did at the beginning of the century.
They have the money to do it, that they have not is an indication that they have internalized the attitude of their class enemies that labor doesn't merit inclusion in the national debate.
Btw, I seem to remember that Hoffa's campaign featured prominently an endorsement by the Wall Street Journal. Depressing but not surprising, and predictable given that labor has nothing of its own to do its own endorsing.
John