NY 'Daily News' Postpones Sweatshop Expose
The New York Daily News has iced an investigation on local sweatshops -- prompting newsroom fears the newspaper is holding back the highly anticipated report for fear of offending retail department store advertisers.
The sweatshop expose by J. Robert Port examined whether New York City designers who sold their clothing to department stores had their wares manufactured in sweatshops. Port learned that sweatshop owners kept their misdeeds secret by quickly paying off fines levied by the Department of Labor, according to a well placed retail industry source.
The series was scheduled to run in mid-May, but was postponed after many of the city's supermarkets pulled their ads in response to the Daily News' May 3 expose titled, "Dirty Rotten Shame," according to newsroom sources.
Daily News Editor in Chief Edward Kosner dismissed newsroom concerns about whether the paper was caving in to pressure by the paper's advertising and business executives. "The series is running so you can relax," he told E&P. "I can't tell you when for competitive reasons. There is no newsroom buzz about this. We run one big series at a time."
Port declined to discuss what he had written or when it might run, noting that he was in an awkward position.
"My editors asked that I refer all telephone calls to public relations," he said. "But I also think that people running a newspaper deserve to make their decisions independently and privately separate from external forces."
Lori Rose, vice president of media relations for the New York office of Saks Fifth Avenue Enterprises, said Port had contacted her in early May for a comment about where her designers made their clothes.
"It's wasn't an issue that we confronted because we get our clothes made from high-end designers," she said. "Still I wanted him to know that we want our vendors to comply with the law. But when I called him [Port] back with a statement, he said the series had been postponed."
Daily News reporters aware of the series holdup worry that the newspaper is censoring itself to avoid a reprise of the recent supermarket inspection debacle, which first won the paper citywide applause followed by a chorus of media criticism.
The supermarket probe alleged the food stores were so dirty they couldn't pass state health inspections. Then from June 13-15 the Daily News --hoping to win back the grocery store ad revenue -- trivialized the expose with a series of advertorials, that among other things, criticized governmental regulations on supermarkets. The New York Times later reported that the Daily News paid for the advertising supplement itself.
Allan Wolper (alfyjournal at msn.com) is a contributing editor to E&P.
===== Kevin Dean Buffalo, NY ICQ: 8616001 http://www.yaysoft.com
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