Since the run up to the strike I've been hoping that one of the writers from the WGA would do a thorough analysis of the coverage of the strike by the major newspapers and the industry press. The corporate media has done a good job of propagating the cause of their sister corporations. But in the last few weeks the articles in The New York Times have become more and more pro-management and, frankly, quite weird.
I quote the latest bit of strike "analysis" from The New York Times :
Dennis Palumbo, a screenwriter-turned-psychologist whose practice includes a number of Hollywood writers, said guild members - many of whom have come to regard the companies as negative parental figures - appear to see Mr. Verrone and Mr. Young as friendlier alternatives. "Which parent do you go with, the big, bad parent that you know, or someone who's presenting himself as an Alan Alda parent?" Mr. Palumbo said.
All of this in an article entitled Writers' Strike Tests the Mettle of 2 Outsiders by MICHAEL CIEPLY (published: January 19, 2008.)
I am sure that Patric Verrone and David Young will gladly accept the compliment that they are in the image of nice Alan Alda... Instead of... what? Which character actors can be cast in the part of evil corporate daddy... Crazy Joe Pesci in Good Fellas? Dennis Hopper in Land of the Dead?
But in truth this is another anti-union cliche. What can't be imagined by the august New York Times is that it is possible for people to fight for themselves and for the future of their industry. What can't be imagined by The New York Times is that strikers are not children, but people who have thought seriously about what they are doing and why they are doing it.
Michael Cieply is The New York Times reporter who wrote the above words. I doubt he ever reported on a labor dispute from the union side. Cieply is a business reporter and he knows Hollywood business practices well. He should since he worked as a producer for Sony Corp. The fact that Michael Cipley was once a producer for Sony is the first piece of information that any reader of Cieply's coverage of the writers' strike should be aware of. This fact should be presented as a caveat before every story he writes about the WGA, Hollywood union leaders, Patric Verrone, or David Young, etc.
Cipley started his career as a business journalist for Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, and The Los Angeles Times . Hollywood was his beat. The moguls were his meat. He has always been adept at articulating the thoughts of the deal-makers to themselves. He has practiced this expertise throughout the writers' strike. The NYT poached Cieply from the LAT in 2004 and moved him to the Big Apple. Apparently he could not adjust to the Byzantine bureaucracy of the Big Ship, nor could he comfort himself with the less sunny pleasures of the Big Apple, so he moved out of the New York Times' editors' desk and back to reporting in Los Angeles. This occurred in January 2007, and was probably part of The New York Times' long range preparation for the possibility of a writers' strike. Since he moved back to L.A. Cieply has specialized in profile pieces on studio execs and the usual fair of insider analysis-lite of Hollywood business trends. He knows the strange business customs of the Hollywood deal-makers, that is for sure. But he has never shown any knowledge of the long and sometimes tangled history of the Hollywood labor movement. He has also never displayed any knowledge of the history of unions or the labor movement in general.
I have a question for the Times. Why don't they assign ex-union organizers or ex-union leaders to cover unions and strikes? The answer to this question is simple: If they did the bosses would complain of bias and threaten to withdraw advertising dollars. Assigning an ex-producer from Sony as point man for the coverage of a labor dispute where producers from Sony are among the main contestants on the bosses side treads the line of good ethical practice.
I am working on a much longer analysis of The New York Times' dreadful and condescending coverage of the WGA and the writers' strike and will post the rest soon. The above is just a taste of what is to come.
Jerry Monaco