Andrew Tyndall noticed something about the nightly newscasts’ (ABC, CBS, NBC) coverage of the recent disaster at Upper Big Branch mine:
All that coverage—the tick-tock rescue, the stoic families, the Dickensian boss—was just as expected except for a single missing element. Not once, in all five days of coverage, did a single reporter mention the organization that has worked hardest over the decades to make sure that mining management does not cut safety corners and that miners can monitor their own working conditions with impunity. The union went unmentioned, as did the fact that the Upper Big Branch workforce went unorganized.
ABC’s [David] Kerley hinted at what was missing, describing how “many here were afraid to speak on camera, fearful they would jeopardize a loved one’s job.” NBC’s [Tom] Costello called the area “a company county…a lot of people here are reluctant to speak out against the employer.” I assume that such intimidation derives from the fact that Massey Energy workers have no union to protect them. Yet that is something I am obliged to assume, since neither Kerley nor Costello offered it as an explanation.
Tynndall continues:
So I mention the union-free coverage of the West Virginia disaster for only one reason….
Because it’s a (not inconsequential) fact of the Upper Big Branch story that the networks oddly left out or danced around?
…It is absolutely inconceivable that a news organization with a liberal ax to grind—a left-leaning bias—would have treated that fact that this mine was a non-union shop as unworthy of mention, if only in passing.
So the next time you hear conservative culture warriors dismissing the network nightly newscasts as just another tired example of the same old liberal media send them this link to disabuse them of that stereotype.
Maybe also “send the link” to anyone who still relies on the nightly news for all their information.
To Liz Cox Barrett,
Tyndall's point would have more weight if there was a correlation between union and non-union shops at sites where such work-related accidents/disasters occur. I suspect there is no such correlation. The last 'newsworthy' mining disaster, Sago in 2006, occurred at a union shop. I wonder if the networks mentioned that fact at that time.
You don't investigate whether the coverage, been very heavy on the safety citations against Massey, has connected those citations with the accident. The press has sketched a predictable narrative of the bad management skimping on safety and playing with its employees' lives, which is emphatically a leftist narrative. A villain must be found; everything bad that happens is someone's fault, in black-and-white terms; and so forth. Journalists now tend to assert that the only people to blame for safety violations, aside from the the owners, are lax regulators. The deeper story in this case may be that government industry regulators have displaced unions and the functions they used to serve, including implementation and enforcement of safety rules.
Sorry, but that's not a 'conservative' framing device for journalists, and doesn't make a dent in the case that most journalists choose, frame, and narrate 'the news' according to the vocabulary of the liberal urban middle-class to which they aspire, or of which they are members. Insofar as miners and their unions are culturally very far from that class, there might be a case to be made that Appalachian and other working-class people are generally invisible to present-day urban liberals. But that's not the same as acquitting American journalism of ideological bias. The bias, as noted by writers with more sensitive ears for the is more of a class/cultural one than anything else. Since when has the stereotypical 'liberal' been closely identified with old-industry labor unions? We're living in 2010, not 1960.
#1 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Thu 15 Apr 2010 at 05:22 PM
Mark Richard --
1.I thought about your question concerning a correlation between unionization and safety but I was confounded in trying to answer it. For example, what if older -- and therefore, perhaps, more dangerous mines-- are the ones that tend to be unionized? The question is whether mines that are unionized are less dangerous than they would have been otherwise; not less dangerous than different mines that happen not to have been unionized.
As a consequence I limited myself to the narrow argument that the union “has worked hardest over the decades to make sure that mining management does not cut safety corners and that miners can monitor their own working conditions with impunity” rather than making a broader claim that those efforts had actually been successful.
2.You may be right that regulators have displaced unions in many sectors of the workplace -- again, successfully or not, is another question. My point was that this displacement was not even mentioned, even in passing, even once, in 79 minutes of coverage on three nightly newscasts, reaching a combined audience in excess of 20m viewers.
3.Let’s make a deal. If from now on you can assure me that the word “liberal” in the journalism bias wars is only used to describe a reporter’s class background (middle class or not) or his residence (urban or not) or his region (Appalachian or not) and never his political ideology…
…then I will not use “liberal” as a descriptor for someone on the other end of the political spectrum from the conservative as “left” is to “right.” Until that day, I will conform to standard practice as understanding “liberal” as referring to a point of view on the left of center in political debate and I will assume that those towards the “left” assume that labor unions have an important role in the workforce and those on the “right” believe they should be inoperative.
4.In covering this story, the networks saw no role for a miner’s union and did not find its absence to be remarkable or worthy of comment. Journalism with a liberal-left bias would not have had such a worldview. I nowhere said that the networks were subscribing to a “conservative” framing device, as you suggest. I merely said that this was not a “liberal” framing device. And emphatically, it was not.
Regards -- Andrew Tyndall
#2 Posted by Andrew Tyndall, CJR on Thu 15 Apr 2010 at 07:44 PM
Andrew, that was a good response, but I would argue that you are simply playing your part in the worst aspects of the culture wars in general: the grenade throwing partisan.
You made a passing comment on how conservatives are wrong to label the media as liberal because they neglected to mention if Massey was a union or non union shop.
You could have made a more substantial argument, and really added something usefull to the discussion, had you done some digging (I know, hard work) into some of the numbers.
For example, are union mines safer places to work than non-union mines. Are there discrepancies between surface mining operations and sub terrain operations? What about differences in safety from state to state? What about the difference in liability laws and local regulatory oversight from state to state? Does the fact that UMW operations tend to have an older workforce than non union mines play any part and if so, how significant is this. And dozens of other factors. And I don’t mean parroting what mouthpiece at the UMW or some know nothing know it all at The Nation magazine thinks, but finding legitimate peer reviewed studies on the subject and barring that, looking into the raw data (all available through MSHA) and drawing some fact based conclusion. The problem with so much commentary I am seeing on the Massey accident, is that nearly everyone furiously writing polemics on the danger of non-union mines don’t know their asses from a hole in the ground.
If you do swallow the hook that union workshop = safe workshop, then how do you square away the fact that all industries have seen steadily decreasing loss time injuries and near misses over the past 50 years while union membership has plummeted during this time frame?
That CJR blindly regurgitated your argument doesn’t surprise me much.
#3 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Thu 15 Apr 2010 at 08:30 PM
I will agree that the media did miss an opportunity here to take a hard look a worker safety and what contributes to a safe workplace and an unsafe one.
#4 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Thu 15 Apr 2010 at 08:33 PM
SFGate did post that Massey is a non union mining co. It was picked up all over the web. You should have seen the responses.
#5 Posted by TruthSeeker, CJR on Thu 15 Apr 2010 at 09:02 PM
Andrew Tyndall, thanks for your thought-through response . . . in fact, for responding at all. You are correct in identifying my contention . . . that a word such as 'liberal' now describes a social type more than an ideology, and I think this is a key to understanding our politics. 'Conservative' is a little more slippery; the most politically 'conservative' places in America are exurbs, inhabited by people who are eager consumers of new places to live (causing 'suburban sprawl'), new religious forms (mega-churches vs. old-line denominations), new consumer technologies (disdained by older money as grasping materialism). Politics, in spite of fine words from all sides, is about interests, not principles, and we would get better, more accurately predictive political journalism if writers and editors kept that thought uppermost in their minds, I believe.
As for elaborating on how that plays out in the culture - and journalism - well, Tom Wolfe does this sort of thing better than I do. He once suggested that our conventional political labels be augmented with 'the freaks' vs. 'the jocks', on the ground that a lot of political identity was formed by the social caste system of high school. Suffice to say that the one constant I've found in 'liberalism', with all its twists and turns on particular political issues is that it is an ideology strongest among the urban middle-class (for a printed history of this class, you could do no better than acquire the complete back issues of The New Yorker on CD's), as I've said, and its self-interest is a desire to administer American life. The form of administration may be formal (manager of a public program or office) or informal (the legal profession, journalists, academics, clergy). After all, what are the latter in the business of, if it is not telling people what they should be thinking?
Which is the crux of my argument . . . that the interests of the 'liberal' side of the political divide are more consistent with the interests of the 'chattering classes' (as Britain calls them), or 'the clerics' (French), 'Mandarins' (China), the Church (before the Enlightenment), the 'Nomenclatura' (the old USSR) . . . the shared value that politics in the broad sense, social movements, are the best instrument for improving peoples' lives. Politics, political control, is primary. (The Tea Party movement incurs great disdain because it is 'anti-political . . . Revealingly, it has no one charismatic leader or primary spokesman, not even Sarah Palin, who remains a pro-Tea Party Republican.) Journalists share the idea of the centrality of politics with liberals. They also share the urban orientation. Individualist-obsessives from places like Idaho are frequently portrayed as scary, while the kooky artist who lives upstairs in some NY apartment building, decorates her flat with New Age symbols, and jokes about killing Dick Cheney is presented as an example of colorful urban eccentricity. You get this constantly from establishment organs such as, say, NPR - which actually did have Scott Simon chuckling along with a lady novelist as she fantasized about murdering Karl Rove. Simon, a decent guy, apologized quite sincerely - but his failure to have a reflex action along the lines of 'this woman is a nut', and to note that this sort of thing is what the mainstream media highlights among Tea Party types, when the target of the venom is a liberal politician, says a lot about the air urban journalists breathe, and the outlook they bring to journalism. The union movement long ago was displaced in importance among liberals by movements based on racial or gender identity, as I expect you might concede, and that explains why even 'liberal' editors and journalists don't even think about unions in a story like the coal-mining tragedy. They don't know those people. Those people don't live in the city, and have unfashionable cultural values. And accents. for this reason, most liberals
#6 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Thu 15 Apr 2010 at 10:24 PM
There's an article here which mentions the union non-union contrast, but it also makes the point that you need to have independent, not industry, people staffing the regulatory agencies of the government in order for them to work.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/549998/there_s_no_question_that_union_mines_are_safer
Under the Bush administration the republican party was bribed from looking into mine safety and put coal company men (and the wife of Mitch McConnell the guy leading the charge against Wall Street reform) in charge of labor and mine regulation. Essential watching and link following:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsSUCeRUXqA
Union mines have more say, and therefore more worker safety, but it's not enough to have the support of law, unions need the support (or something less than outright hostility) of the enforcers of law. Conservatives don't like to put people like that into those positions.
#7 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 15 Apr 2010 at 11:21 PM
"If you do swallow the hook that union workshop = safe workshop, then how do you square away the fact that all industries have seen steadily decreasing loss time injuries and near misses over the past 50 years while union membership has plummeted during this time frame?"
One, there has been increased regulation of workplaces and equipment since the 1930's in response to union efforts. Furthermore, the threat of civil suits by workers who have been harmed by unsafe work conditions has improved conditions. None of this stuff happens by magic. Are you calling for more civil suits and regulation?
Two, there has been increased offshoreing off manufacturing as union membership has decreased, in fact union membership has decreased a lot because global trade has made union American labor uncompetitive. Are you going to argue that conditions in Chinese mines and factories are more safe than American ones? Do Chinese workers benefit from the reduced power of labor within their totalitarian, pro-business utopia?
Come on Mark. There are times when the narrative is compelling because the narrative is true. The evil mine corporation who poisons the environment while killing workers in unsafe conditions because they need money since those government officials don't bribe themselves, isn't just some journalist make believe in this case.
There are some people who are like that. Don Blankenship is one of them.
#8 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 15 Apr 2010 at 11:46 PM
Thimbles, first, you quote Mike H. while addressing me.
Second, there has been more safety in the mines since the 1930s . . . also fewer mining jobs. The strikes and uncertainty of supplies starting in the John L. Lewis era caused most consumers to switch from coal burners to oil burners. This didn't start when 'out-sourcing' became a catch-phrase of left-wing phrase-makers; it started in the 1920s.
Third, I expect Chinese miners are better off under their pro-business utopia than they were under their anti-business utopia.
Press coverage of the recent disaster has charged Massey with a lot, but not underpaying its workers. I know that culture fairly well, and the workers don't want to cripple the industry. Unskilled labor cannot possibly make as much money anywhere else.
I sincerely doubt that you have any personal knowledge or acquaintance with the environment of coal mining, or with Don Blankenship. I work in a construction field. Blankenship could put your cherished regulators, or you yourself, on site at all times, and still be cited for safety violations, in the same way that you probably broke four or five traffic laws, strictly interpreted, the last time you drove to work. Not a few of these safety violations are by the workers themselves, not the evil capitalist, as anyone who is familiar with actual heavy-industry work sites knows.
I'm amazed that when it comes to politics, so many otherwise intelligent people cling to simple-minded, good-guy/bad-guy views of the world. I hope the perception that the world exists, as with certain religious sects, as a simple struggle between good and evil, works for you - it's just not the world I live in. Which is why there is only the most tenuous correlation between left-wing politics and actual improved outcomes - the factors you cite are chump change compared to improvements in technology and wealth-creation. As this grandchild of a miner can testify.
#9 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Fri 16 Apr 2010 at 08:59 AM
Mark Richard --
There is no evidence that the coverage of the West Virginia mining disaster was dominated by a technocratic-elite sensibility -- your non-political definition of the word “liberal.”
As I noted, the dominant storyline was the tick-tock minutiae of a futile rescue effort for four miners who happened to be already dead. That journalistic tradition of the mine head stakeout has nothing to do with technocratic elitism. It derives from tabloid populism and sentimental human interest. It has nothing to do with “a desire to Administer American life.” It has everything to do with emotional manipulation and a mawkish desire for a happy ending.
#10 Posted by Andrew Tyndall, CJR on Fri 16 Apr 2010 at 09:26 AM
"Thimbles, first, you quote Mike H. while addressing me."
Doh! Mistakes. They happen.
"The strikes and uncertainty of supplies starting in the John L. Lewis era caused most consumers to switch from coal burners to oil burners."
No, oil technology advancements and the cheaper price oil extraction (back when it was abundant) caused the decrease in coal consumption relative to it's share of the energy economy:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/overview.html
and according to this graph:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_historical_energy_consumption.PNG
coal took a slight dip from about 1925 to the 1930's (that was when car technology and gas stations were supplanting coal depots, not to mention the Great Depression) and then took off again as the demand for steel increased (WW2). After that coal took a peace time dip equal to the predepression and has been on the rise ever since, since coal can be used for cheap electricity generation. Today, coal consumption is at it's highest levels. The only reason there is less coal jobs is because there are machines and methods that get more productivity per miner.
#11 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 16 Apr 2010 at 11:35 AM
"This didn't start when 'out-sourcing' became a catch-phrase of left-wing phrase-makers; it started in the 1920s."
First, Mike H claimed "all industries have seen steadily decreasing loss time injuries and near misses over the past 50 years while union membership has plummeted"
Offshoring is a viable explanation for that.
(By the by, what is with you defining every term you happen to encounter as "left wing blah blah". Outsourcing comes from the business management world as a way of cutting costs by shifting the source of production outside the company. It's not a term Chomsky invented.)
You can also say that the increased safety since the 1930's was a response to union action and, later, to civil liability and government regulatory authority.
It's not out of the goodness of Blankenship's soul, obviously.
But let's test the contention. During the industry intimate Bush Administration regulatory authority was reduced to practically nothing. How good was the safety record?
A list of mine accidents in the US
http://www.usmra.com/accidents.htm
From about 1940 to 2001, the major accidents happen about every 10 years. From 2001 to 2009 they happen about every 2. It would be instructive to do a comparison of accident reports and safety violations during this time and other times when the industry wasn't so entangled.
Regulation is important when lives are at stake. You cannot let maximized profit be a higher priority than the avoidence of preventable death.
"Third, I expect Chinese miners are better off under their pro-business utopia than they were under their anti-business utopia."
First that isn't the question. The question was whether Chinese miner is safer for being under a non-union, non-regulated, workplace?
Second, what would you know of the Chinese miner pre-Deng and post-Deng? There have been a lot of changes in China as it has embraced the market, but most of those changes have benefited the top 250 million and not all of the 750 million has seen improvement. If you're a miner, I don't imagine much has improved in the unskilled, unregulated labor market.
"Press coverage of the recent disaster has charged Massey with a lot, but not underpaying its workers. I know that culture fairly well, and the workers don't want to cripple the industry. Unskilled labor cannot possibly make as much money anywhere else."
Who cares. I don't think people wanted to risk preventable death on the job for a slightly bigger paycheck. Hell, that's why a lot of guys have paid union dues over the years, to get someone to demand safety standards in the workplace.
#12 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 16 Apr 2010 at 12:47 PM
"I sincerely doubt that you have any personal knowledge or acquaintance with the environment of coal mining, or with Don Blankenship."
You're going to defend Don Blankenship. *Shakes head* The guy has a history.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09072007/watch3.html
And so do his mines.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125864847
"Four Massey mines had injury rates more than twice the national rate last year. The national rate is 4.03 injuries per 200,000 worker hours. Massey's Tiller No. 1 mine in Tazewell, Va., had the company's highest injury rate at 9.78. The other high-injury mines are Slip Ridge Cedar Grove (9.18) in Raleigh, W.Va., M 3 Energy Mining's No. 1 (8.86) in Pike County, Ky., and Solid Energy Mining's Mine No. 1 (8.49), which is also in Pike County.
Together last year, the 10 Massey mines with above-average injury rates received 2,400 safety citations.
Massey's long list of citations has some wondering whether the federal mine safety inspection system works.
"Part of the strategy by the mine operators [is], 'Well, we're going to contest everything,' " says Bruce Dial, a mine safety consultant who spent 24 years as a federal mine inspector and inspection trainer.
Dial is referring to the citations and fines leveled by federal inspectors. In the past four years, he says, in the wake of the Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia, inspections, citations and fines increased. Challenging the citations delays the payment of fines.
"It takes so long to get [citations] through the review commissions, they don't end up paying fines until it's three, four, five years down the road," he says.
In fact, 16,000 citation appeals are pending right now, and they're worth millions in fines. Massey Energy alone, according to NPR's analysis, has had more than $7.6 million in fines. That's over five years at those 10 high-injury mines. The company has paid just $2.3 million of that amount so far. "
It has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with record. Blankenship is bad man in a bad industry who's efforts have made his mines twice as accident prone than average.
He'd rather spend money on Shawn Hannity and his American flag wardrobe for tea party events (where he can yell about unions, government, and environmentalists as being unamerican) than spend it on minimum standard ventilation for his death trap mines.
That is the world we live in, but I'll try and understand if you don't want to face it.
#13 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 16 Apr 2010 at 01:06 PM
To Andrew Tyndall, I wasn't arguing that the elements of drama you cite did not dominate coverage of the coal-mining disaster overall. I was disputing your suggestion, endorsed by Liz, that the failure of the coverage to emphasize that this was a non-union mine proved that most journalism is free of a 'liberal' framing and vocabulary.
To Thimbles, Bill Moyers is not exactly a persuasive advocate to anyone who is not on his ideological wavelength, and the piece you linked is clearly opposed to all mining, which liberals think is just icky. Your problem is with capitalist coal mining, not Don Blankenship. That takes us far afield,as usual, from the original comment I made. Your other link, to NPR, supports my contention vs. Andrew that the reflex of urban-liberal journalism is to stuff reality into the box of good, forebearing underdogs vs. bad, cruel, rapacious bosses, when it is an emphatically non-urban, old-school industry like mining. In fact, the Moyers link does the same thing - makes clear that this completely orthodox spokesman for contemporary urban liberalism just plain hates the fact that mining exists at all. The rest of the framing flows from that.
I'll reiterate that reporters jumped on the number of safety violations by Massey without showing a connection between those violations and the accident itself. This is what I mean by the framing. Close investigation of the sort CJR has afforded to Herb and Marion Sandler will undoubtedly paint a more complicated picture. It almost always does, after the initial story goes away.
#14 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Fri 16 Apr 2010 at 03:46 PM
To Mark Richard --
So, the network nightly newscasts subscribe to a “liberal framing and vocabulary”…
…except when they fail to show evidence of such by altogether ignoring a fact that any left-leaning journalist would not fail to mention…
…but they are still liberal because liberal is not meant in any political sense but in the cultural sense of being elitist and technocratic…
…except when they fail to show evidence of such by embracing journalistic traditions which are populist and tabloid and relying on human interest instead…
…but they are still liberal because such a worldview can be observed somewhere else, just not in the story that happened to dominate the news last week.
At some point if it fails to walk like a duck and it fails to quack like a duck, perhaps it is not a duck after all.
#15 Posted by Andrew Tyndall, CJR on Fri 16 Apr 2010 at 04:29 PM
You're only saying that Andrew, because you're a liberal and liberals hate capitalist ducks.
If you were only more broad and open minded and objective, like a conservative, then maybe you understand how these things which look and act unduck like are still very much ducks.
It's in the blood. If you were a conservative, you'd know that.
#16 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 16 Apr 2010 at 09:55 PM
To Andrew Tyndall, I identified the word 'liberal' as really boiling down to a matter of social category - urban and bourgeois. You use the term 'technocratic' a lot, which I didn't, and avoided using the terms 'urban' and middle-class', which I did. I've attempted to explain why old-style liberalism, centered on bread-and-butter issues and popular with the white working class, is not important to urban bourgeois culture, apparently without success in this case.
The only people who deny a generally urban-liberal outlook in the NY/DC/Los Angeles media are themselves politically sympathetic to the left side of the American spectrum. And even some liberals in the news media - Evan Thomas, Dan Okrent come recently to mind - acknowledge that there is an institutional culture, which deifies a figure such as, say, Edward R. Murrow, who was a straight-forward Democratic partisan, which skews reflexively to the Left in its general approach to politics and culture. Thomas Edsall recently called for the establishment press to embrace the left-leaning orientation of those who go into journalism as a career, instead of denying it. The press approach to the mass Tea Party movement, as opposed to the non-judgmental approach to more urban/elite-based left-wing social movements (gay rights activists, anti-globalization demonstrators, Code Pink protestors, etc.) is a recent example of the double standard in framing and vocabulary.
'Conservative' hostility to the mainstream press has been part of the furniture of American politics at least since Eisenhower denounced MSM journalism (to great applause) at the 1964 Republican convention. It is the reason for the rise of Fox News and talk radio. But a lot of writers are still unable to bring themselves to investigate, let alone acknowledge, the reasons for this situation.
Thimbles, thanks for the usual vigorous, but not particularly brilliant, abuse. You can do better than ride in on the back of someone else's messages!
#17 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Sat 17 Apr 2010 at 08:45 AM
To Mark Richard
You characterized liberals as those with “a desire to administer American life. The form of administration may be formal (manager of a public program or office) or informal (the legal profession, journalists, academics, clergy).” You equate them with the chattering classes, the mandarinate and the nomenklatura.
I paraphrased such generalizations as describing a technocratic elite. If I misconstrued, I apologize.
You make a general point that those who tend to contradict your generalization about the “urban-liberal outlook” of those news media that are based in New York, Los Angeles and Washington DC. You assert that they are all “politically sympathetic to the left-side of the American spectrum.” To which I say, So what? If they happen to be correct -- as I was in the case of the coverage of the West Virginia mining disaster -- what difference does their personal political ideology make?
By the way, this is how the network nightly newscasts have covered the Tea Party. It is hard to denigrate this coverage as “judgmental” to use your term of criticism. Curiosity rather than judgmentalism appears to be more on the mark.
#18 Posted by Andrew Tyndall, CJR on Sat 17 Apr 2010 at 10:12 AM
That Tea Party link does not appear to be active. Here is is:
http://tyndallreport.com/tyndallsearch/?m=1&guid=4560&listall=true
#19 Posted by Andrew Tyndall, CJR on Sat 17 Apr 2010 at 10:35 AM
To Andew Tyndall, thanks for the link, which I couldn't download. Unless I misread you, you have now fallen back on the defense of the media which identifies being liberal with being 'correct'.Your original point was that the failure to mention that the mine was non-union absolves broadcast reporting of the charge of skewing 'left', and I think this is a highly debatable point, not at all 'correct' on the face of it.
Per the Tea Partiers, Kelly O'Donnell went around sniffing for racism for NBC in a broadcast on the April 15 Tea Party rally the other day, asking a black man if he felt 'comfortable' with all those white people. It probably wouldn't occur to O'Donnell in a hundred years to ask participants at 'progressivel' events like Springsteen concerts, eco-rallies, etc., why there were so few people present - it doesn't fit the reflexive, pre-cooked liberal scenario in which any conservative idea or grouping is automatically suspect of being 'racist'. This is a strictly 'liberal' framing obsession. Lame-stream media pundits who provide the framing background for reporters, such as Joe Klein and Chris Matthews, have explicitly charged that the Tea Partiers' real issue is 'race', not taxes or government. Charles Blow in today's NY Times does a similarly smirky and sniveling job on the Tea Partiers - it's all about race, you see. I could go on, but I expect in truth you do know what I'm talking about.
Some producers, aware of the strong backlash against this liberal race-baiting, have indeed tried to moderate the obvious liberal-framed approach to the Tea Partiers - one of the cleverer of whom hit the nail on the head with a placard reading "Whatever I put on this sign, the media will call it racist" at one of the first Tea Party rallies - and speaker after speaker at the April 15 rally denounced the obsession of the media with attacking the Tea Partiers as racist.
I'm glad CNN did not renew the contract of Susan Roesgen, the reporter who descended to actually arguing with the Tea Partiers on a personal level about her being offended at an anti-Obama placard. (No orthodox journalist, I feel safe in saying, has ever argued with a protestor with a sign portraying Bush as Hitler.) But the key point is that Susan Roesgen was hired by CNN in the first place, given her political passions. The big newspapers routinely hire reporters from places like The Washington Monthly, The New Republic, The American Prospect, etc., while conservative organs can only find job prospects at Fox. These reporters are not always bad - Jake Tapper came from Salon, but has been surprisingly tough on the Obama administration's representatives. But he's the exception that proves the rule.
As for 'curiosity' as the MSM motive, I think this again supports my contention. Urban media people do not 'know' Tea Party types of people. They approach them like a Cambridge anthropologist approaching Trobriand Islanders circa 1925. On the other hand, they do 'know', and do not feel threatened by or 'curious' about, students who throw rocks through windows at G-7 protests, or anti-Bush protestors who raise 'Kill Bush' placards, or, for that matter, Hollywood figures or media talking heads on the left who express wishes for the deaths of Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Jesse Helms, or other hate-objects of the Left. That's routine politics to them. Those people live in their buildings in NY or DC. Some are even their friends. It's not unusual to characterize a lot of American politics now in terms of 'culture wars', but journalists still shy away from tough questions about the role of mainstream journalists in those wars as participants themselves.
Ask yourself - does the NY Times, to take the most obvious example, devote more space to (a) specific gay issues, or (b) specific labor union issues? If the answer by an honest consumer is (b), the question is - why?
#20 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Sat 17 Apr 2010 at 10:51 AM
Per above, I should have said 'so few black people present' at liberal events like eco-rallies and Springsteen concerts, etc.
#21 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Sat 17 Apr 2010 at 10:56 AM
Yes, you did misread me.
When I said "If they happen to be correct..." the "they" did not refer to New York/Los Angeles/Washington DC media outlets, as you assumed. The word referred to those people who contradict your generalization about those outlets. So I was not falling back on "the defense of the media which identifies being liberal with being correct" as you put it.
That Tea Party link now works (see above). As for "curiosity," I disagree with you. Curiosity is an appropriate reportorial response to the Tea Party. The party is less than a year old. It has only had one convention. It is an uneasy coalition of various groups and tendencies. Is it aligned with the Republican Party or not? Can it be a viable Third Party in the tradition of Ross Perot? Its membership -- "types" as you call them -- may not be novel but the political formation certainly is.
#22 Posted by Andrew Tyndall, CJR on Sat 17 Apr 2010 at 11:15 AM
"And even some liberals in the news media... Dan Okrent come recently to mind - acknowledge that there is an institutional culture... Thomas Edsall recently called for the establishment press to embrace the left-leaning orientation of those who go into journalism as a career, instead of denying it."
Dan Okrent was the guy who got into the embarrassing tiff with Paul Krugman and Thomas Edsall wrote this embarrassing article about the MSM not being proactive enough about the ACORN, Van Jones scandals.
http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/journalism_should_own_its_libe.php
These guys are like Bernie Goldberg "OMG, we the media are so liberal and I hate it. We should be more balanced because we are way too liberal. And I'm a journalist, so I know liberals."
Gee. I wonder what their game is.
#23 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sat 17 Apr 2010 at 12:07 PM
To Andrew, time to do my Saturday chores after reading newspapers, doing their crosswords, listening to NPR, having breakfast, meeting an independent contractor about new sliding doors for my bathroom shower, bathing, and (in between) checking my e-mails and posts. Your defense of the approach to the Tea Party movement is a good one . . . curiosity is always appropriate.
We'll have to agree to disagree, I suppose, about whether the same brand of 'curiosity' is extended to social/political movements popular among the urban upper classes - you know, the kind of curiosity that is expressed as "Who are these (implicitly) strange people, and what are their motives? Do they possibly have hidden motives? Where does their financing come from? Are their placards contradictory to how they actually live?"
I won't rehearse my examples cited above. If we had a truly unbiased press, then not a single liberal-issue rally or cultural event would pass without a comment on the racial makeup of the crowd. Or questions about who finances anti-globalism rallies. Or the highlighting of far-out placards and speeches as metaphors for the entire left side of the spectrum. Only 'conservative' ones get this type of treatment, because of the pre-existing, frozen narrative that was obvious even in the college courses I took lo these years ago.
I mean, I'd be interested in knowing why any male would support reproductive rights for women, but not himself; why a white person would support discrimination in hiring and admissions against white peope; why rich aspiring politicians yodel blood about 'the rich'; why so many environmental activists themselves have large carbon footprints. Investigation of these strange political phenomena on the political left would inevitably lead to the narrow self-interest of such people, but most journalists I read are utterly blind to the contradictions. (Fox is blasted because Fox does enjoy highlighting such contradictions.) There is a form of class warfare going on over such issues, which is frequently disguised as being about race, or gender. (Concentrating on identity politics as the source of oppression by 'the Right' means that even a Rockefeller daughter can be a 'victim'.) Tea Party people have, by contrast, been pressed hard on how they reconcile their acceptance of Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, etc. I don't mind that. What I don't hear are tough questions for the advocates of left-wing positions that seem like cognitive dissonance, too, and I think I know why.
#24 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Sat 17 Apr 2010 at 12:34 PM
"The press approach to the mass Tea Party movement, as opposed to the non-judgmental approach to more urban/elite-based left-wing social movements (gay rights activists, anti-globalization demonstrators, Code Pink protestors, etc.) is a recent example of the double standard in framing and vocabulary."
The tea party is an amorphous group. You will find coverage of the Ron Paul tea party movement very sympathetic (while fox news and Glen Beck attacked him as unpatriotic and kooky back in 2008). That coverage would have remained sympathetic had the 2009 spring summer tea party phase not kicked in with the crazy. This group was made up of old patriot groups and adrift republicans.
That group made a spectacle inside town halls with screaming and misinformed signs which equated the holocaust with health care and depicted Obama as a witch doctor, if not Hitler.
Your party and their leaders encouraged madness in front of the cameras in hopes that the hysteria would intimidate the political process away from healthcare reform.
It didn't work.
Now you get mad whenever someone makes mention of a racial dimension to the protests. Or makes mention of violence language. Or makes mention of the wackadoodle conspiracy beliefs. "Journalists. They're just hostile to poor conservatives."
Yeah, they are when the conseratives are dressed in Hitler outfits while packing guns to protests while talking about the tree of liberty being dry in regards to taxes and spending. This is after getting a tax cut under Obama and being silent under 8 years of unfunded spending under Bush.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-08-12/the-gops-misplaced-rage/full/
If you don't want to be framed as crazies, don't act like crazies.
But hey, if you feel like the tea party people should be treated as legitimate in spite of the behavior of their crazy wings, I guess you feel the same about the coverage of the left by Fox News in spite of the behavior of Code Pink.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-F-zmTNuk4
Oh, I do love fair and balanced. Do you?
"I'm glad CNN did not renew the contract of Susan Roesgen, the reporter who descended to actually arguing with the Tea Partiers on a personal level about her being offended at an anti-Obama placard. (No orthodox journalist, I feel safe in saying, has ever argued with a protestor with a sign portraying Bush as Hitler.) But the key point is that Susan Roesgen was hired by CNN in the first place, given her political passions."
Oh, I guess you don't. I guess it's okay that the conservative media can slant and frame and attack any way that they like while the rest of the media better be neutral, because liberals should keep their biases in their pants.
Who cares about bias, framing, excetra? As I've said before, reporters should report the story any way they and their editors like, as long as the content is true.
"As for 'curiosity' as the MSM motive, I think this again supports my contention. Urban media people do not 'know' Tea Party types of people. They approach them like a Cambridge anthropologist approaching Trobriand Islanders circa 1925. On the other hand, they do 'know', and do not feel threatened by or 'curious' about, students who throw rocks through windows at G-7 protests, or anti-Bush protestors who raise 'Kill Bush' placards, or, for that matter, Hollywood figures or media talking heads on the left who express wishes for the deaths of Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Jesse Helms, or other hate-objects of the Left. That's routine politics to them."
How many fricken journalists do you know, Mr. construction guy? Who the hell are you to assign what is routine politics to journalists?
#25 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sat 17 Apr 2010 at 12:40 PM
And believe me, as a guy who's been part of these lefty protests, nine times out of ten they are not treated as news at all. You guys are on the radar because you guys have been caught carrying racist signs and acting like crazy people.
Nine times out of ten, we were below the radar and locked out of the public debate. None of the protests we did, none of the factual information we presented to the media, none of the outrageous actions Bush did to suppress protests cost Bush a percentage point.
Two things hurt Bush a little.
One) he couldn't win the Iraq war and, by 2004, the bad news about the conduct of the war and how it was started and how much it was costing leaked out.
Two) Katrina.
All of our protests and messaging on the corruption of government and the abuse of powers did not get much attention from the media outside an occasional Boston Legal rant. Moveon got vilified throughout Washington and the news media for a contest submission that alluded to Bush and Hitler.
And Glen Beck can stand on a Fox stage and do the same thing soon after Obama's inauguration, and the rest of the media defends Fox News when Obama starts to call them on it? The liberal media?
The same liberal media who did this error filled "fact check" on Michael Moore's Sicko?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpKoN40K7mA
The media in general is pro-social liberty. People don't like to condemn each other for people's tastes, cultures, backgrounds, or race.
The media has some pro-economic equality feelings but those feelings are more like a Sunday Christian's piety in church. In the television media and in the Thomas Friedman levels of journalism the people who make up the media are paid well
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/01/cnns-kiran-chetry-spars-w_n_444600.html
and derive their employment from corporations. Journalism counter to the corporate message gets axed or tampered with. Liberalism to do with tghe environment or equality is covered positively so long as it doesn't affect the journalists' big pay checks or their corporate sponsors.
The media is pro-government authority. The civil liberty, national security questions that plagued the Bush administration, based on government actions which the media half defended, have not come under attack under Obama. There is no accountability for government crimes, no demands for changes in behavior nor transparency, no respect for rule of law. As long as the media feels safe, they mostly look the other way.
You accuse me of oversimplifying poor Don Blankenship and his poor industry as being bad.
I'm amazed that when it comes to the media, so many otherwise intelligent people cling to simple-minded, liberal-guy/conservative-guy views of the world.
The media has loads of faults that both sides can celebrate. What we should both be demanding is an adherence to the truth.
And from what I've seen of you, you're tendency is to excuse and ignore the failures to do so on your conservative side.
And the problem with bias is that it can blind us to the loss of our integrity, in excessive doses.
#26 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sat 17 Apr 2010 at 01:13 PM
Thimbles, (sigh) you're off your meds again. Without going into a detailed autobiography, I expect I'm at least as familiar with urban/media people and their backgrounds as you are with people who work in fields like mining, construction, manufacturing, and other 'old', heavy technology. (One of them is a sister, who lives in NY and works in publishing. She has a number of friends, too, who work in middle-level positions in things like magazines and cable channels.) I get around some.
Coverage of the Ron Paul people tended to follow the narrative I described above, contrary to your assertion. Paul was somewhat gently treated in the debates as a foil to more establishment GOP types, because of his strong opposition to Bush's war, but the media always plays up Republicans who oppose their party's establishment. (The Democratic tent is not as wide, and 'maverick' Democrats either get expelled from the party, like Lieberman, or end up caving to the leadership, like Kucinich and Stupak.) There was in fact an effort to paint Paul as (you guessed it, if you didn't you don't know much about politics) a 'racist' in The New Republic in 2008, and the New Republic is a major feeder of talent to the mainstream media. Nothing gives away the bias of the mainstream media more clearly than the promiscuity with which they peddle charges of 'racism'. And nothing you cite in terms of hyperbole or bad behavior is unknown in left-wing demonstrations, as anyone who lives in an urban area or near a large campus (I live in both) can attest. Tell me, is calling a female Republican a 'Barbie doll' and making disparaging comments about her physical appearance 'sexist'? Were Clarence Thomas or Alberto Gonzalez the objects of ethnically-motivated hostility because they didn't follow a left-wing political stereotype? Having absolved itself of the charge of 'bigotry', it seems to me the Left feels therefore free to indulge heavily in its own variety of hate speech, ad hominem attacks, wildly exaggerated comparisons of their enemies to the Nazis, racial and sexual stereotyping, and so forth. The mainstream media, basically subscribing to the liberal narrative of politics, seldom calls liberal activists out for this and uses such speech to tar liberal movements in general. (You are free, of course, to send me examples of where I'm mistaken on this score.)
I'd request that you tell us all if there is any left-wing group that you would concede is the equivalent of the Tea Party movement in behavior, exaggeration, general nastiness. It would be a good idea if we could get some idea on this thread of what you regard as beyond the pale, not just beyond the pale for the Right. The Khmer Rouge? Shining Path? Try to keep it in the context of U.S. politics, please. We need some sort of uniform standard here. All I read is a left-winger pretending to get his knickers in a twist when his political opponents do exactly the same sorts of things as his side does . . . Like, how dare they use Saul Alinsky methods 'we' patented.
Have a good evening. I appreciate your passion, and you do make strong arguments when you lay off the ad hominem stuff and the hyperventilating language.
#27 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Sat 17 Apr 2010 at 08:08 PM
"Thimbles, (sigh) you're off your meds again. Without going into a detailed autobiography, I expect I'm at least as familiar with urban/media people and their backgrounds as you are with people who work in fields like mining, construction, manufacturing, and other 'old', heavy technology."
Good, then I won't have to submit a detailed biography either, but to establish my bona fides too I'll mention that my father came out of the manufacturing sector, where he worked as both a automotive mechanic and as a bench and table builder for public parks, until his body quit on him due to a chemical sensitivity that developed over the years he worked with paints. In the towns that I've lived in there are heavy resource extraction industries and I am attuned to the conflicts between the environment, worker empowerment, and business economics. I am intimately familiar with the concerns and pains of the blue collar worker.
"Coverage of the Ron Paul people tended to follow the narrative I described above, contrary to your assertion. Paul was somewhat gently treated in the debates as a foil to more establishment GOP types, because of his strong opposition to Bush's war, but the media always plays up Republicans who oppose their party's establishment.... There was in fact an effort to paint Paul as (you guessed it, if you didn't you don't know much about politics) a 'racist' in The New Republic in 2008, and the New Republic is a major feeder of talent to the mainstream media."
The coverage of Ron Paul framed him as a novelty, the kind of republican which hasn't been publicly seen in a few decades, one that is sincere and believes in reducing government power and government liabilities. He was a new voice in that he criticized the patriotic militarism of Reagan and Bush from the conservative frame of non-intervention and small government and without fear of talk radio disciplinarians.
The problem being was that Paul's message was fringe for many years and so it circulated amongst the patriot fringe of the right, on which you'll find a racist segment. Is Paul racist? No. Did he get published and interviewed by pro-racists? Yes. Did the media seize upon it? Yes, but it's not something they've covered day in and day out, bringing it up whenever he makes a public appearance, like they do to figures they don't like. (for instance. Al Gore until 2005ish http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/020100a.html )
And tell me sometime about the New Republic. They were the ones that came out in support of the Iraq War, helped justify Bush torture and surveillance, and painted left critics as idealistic losers who were traitorous in their naivety. I hate those liberals.
"(The Democratic tent is not as wide, and 'maverick' Democrats either get expelled from the party, like Lieberman, or end up caving to the leadership, like Kucinich and Stupak.)"
Lieberman did not get expelled. He lost a primary. He still caucuses with the democrats and chairs several committees despite being incompetent (he let the Michael Brown FEMA confirmation sail through), speaking and campaigning for the republican candidate in the 2008 election, and nearly sinking Health Care Reform legislation because he hates liberals.
Stupak left politics because he has no constituency. His theatrics lost him the women's vote, his nearly sinking Health Care Reform legislation lost him the democrats and, the republicans call him a baby killer because they are insane. That said, he got what he wanted. No one strong armed him. No one kicked him out. He got what he wanted and voted for the bill afterwards. Conservatives, dems or otherwise, get what they want.
Kucinich got nothing. No public option, no medicare buy in since that's what Lieberman wanted and he's a conservative so it matters. Kucinich wanted a public option and cost controls. The left and the unions held prot
#28 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 20 Apr 2010 at 01:36 AM
Thanks - this is an interesting article.
After this most recent mining tragedy, I was also reflecting on gaps in the media coverage. I think that the most important gap has to do with understanding the economics of resource wealth. I'm disappointed with the over emphasis on regulation and Blankenship himself. I was disappointed with the Huffington Post commentary comparing this disaster to the most recent economic crisis in the US.
I wish that there would be a closer examination of the dynamics of resource-rich states. Whether coal, oil, diamonds, or timber - certain economic principals are at play in all regions 'cursed' with natural resources. Among the characteristics of resource-rich regions are:
1. Dutch Disease, or the crowding out of other industries due to boom & bust cycles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease)
2. Increased likelihood of incumbent re-election during boom cycles
3. Political bribes & Corruption
4. over-investing tax dollars in infrastructure projects that feed the industry, such as roads, rather than in long-term development, such as education
5. Regulatory failures, worker deaths, mass environmental degradation
I think there is really limited understanding of the best way to manage resource wealth. Although unions and regulations may be part of the solution, a union is just one kind of structure. What governmental and organizational structures that best prevent the these kinds of disasters, as well the other, quieter implications of a local coal economy?
The coverage ignored these questions. Beyond that, there is no significant research dealing with these questions in the U.S. context.
#29 Posted by Alexa Mills, CJR on Tue 20 Apr 2010 at 04:05 PM
I posted a big ol response to mark, but it's locked in the comment spider hole.
I'm sure it will turn out any day now. (Shouldn't have mentioned hair straighteners! DOH!)
(Ed: It's been released from the spider hole now. Sorry, we've been slammed by spam lately.)
#30 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 20 Apr 2010 at 11:26 PM
Thimbles, your reply was very good, whether I agree with it or not, but you have a weakness for dismissing the violence incited by leftist groups as not really of 'the Left'. At the same time, reflecting the outlook of the liberal Big Media that you end up defending. The pro-Democratic press has been peddling Bill Clinton's implications that Oklahoma City was a result of talk radio and militias, when in fact even these gutless reporters know that it was McVeigh's reaction to Waco - carried out by Clinton's own administration. No Republican could get away with that, but the Eddie Haskell of politics can, without being called out by orthodox reporters. Disgusting.
As for the violence incited by 'the Left' - Al Sharpton and Freddy's Fashion Mart? Sharpton is still treated respectfully by reporters, and that congflagration which he inspired is not mentioned. Earth First and other eco-nut groups?
Clarence Thomas was in fact the target of the peculiar racism of the liberal establishment - one magazine for African-American professionals ran a cover picturing Thomas as a lawn jockey. Condaleeza Rice was pictured in editorial cartoons with exaggerated African-American features. As the insensate hatred of members of groups 'the Left' feels to be their constituency - most obviously, the sex-drenched establishment reaction to realatively young and physically attractive women like Palin (just urged to pose for Playboy by the fragrant Larry King) and Bachman (and Katharine Harris, and Paula Jones, and . . . ) suggests, charges of racism and sexism have nothing, zero, nada to do with any anti-bigotry principle. They have everything to do with tiny-minded politics. Don't accuse me or anyone amused/irritated by claims of moral superiority on the part of the insufferably vain posers of the middle-class Left as long as you don't have the courage to acknowledge that you accuse the Right of things the Left has long been guilty of. If you had that in you, I'd respect your judgment more.
#31 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Fri 23 Apr 2010 at 12:29 PM
Okay, I missed this when it came up, I've been staring at it for ten minutes now, and I think I got to diagnose a problem here.
Mark, you're a rhetorical shotgun. This topic was supposed to be about dead exploited miners and the unions they aren't members of and how a liberal media would ignore that obvious angle in their reporting.
Especially when Blankenship's company recently denied miners time off from their death trap shifts to attend their co-workers' funerals.
Now it's about Dan Okrent's repudiation of liberal bias. Now it's about Bart Stupak being cast to the political wilderness by judgmental libs. Now it's about a CNN reporter giving some ridiculous people a couple of aggressive questions you don't approve of. Now it's about the imagined racism of liberals who dared think Clarence Thomas and Alberto Gonzales had too radical politics and a few too many character flaws to do the jobs they're charged with well. Now it's about Earth First terrorism and Bill Clinton's provoking of the Oklahoma disaster.
Jesus.
So I'm starting to get the pattern. I counter your rhetoric on one issue and you fire a pellet gun loaded with unrelated issues in response. Bullet points, if you will. I counter each of those pellets and you use that time to reload your rifle with a new batch of points. I counter those and *shick shick* you're ready to fire again.
It's a time consuming process having to respond to each pellet of misinformation, so I hope that it's not in vain and you are actually getting some value out of it before reloading your gun. Misinformation is like the fast food wrappers on your floor boards. If you don't clear it out, it gradually takes over the car.
So, pellet one.
"The pro-Democratic press has been peddling Bill Clinton's implications that Oklahoma City was a result of talk radio and militias, when in fact even these gutless reporters know that it was McVeigh's reaction to Waco - carried out by Clinton's own administration. No Republican could get away with that, but the Eddie Haskell of politics can, without being called out by orthodox reporters. Disgusting."
What's disgusting is the idea that we can excuse terrorist acts based on the thing they are supposedly in response to.
Therefore, perhaps some similar to you might excuse Mohamed Atta for his actions on 9-11, which were based on the US support of Israel during their attacks on Lebanon. Some people might attempt to to point the responsibility for the many dead away from the actual perpetrators and the culture which nourished their insanity and point it to a convenient target. "These people, who had families and had nothing to do with the weapons shipped to Israel which were used in Lebanon, were killed because they were a part of the US. They were a legitimate target. The US ought to be ashamed of itself, not Islamic Fundamentalism. The fundamentalists are merely responding to other's actions, they are not responsible for their own."
That's pretty disgusting reasoning. And it's moreso when you transfer it to to Oklahoma where the victims were pulled out of a charred daycare. Tim McVeigh did the deed. He did it with the help, encouragement ,and self reinforcement that comes from a radical community. None of the kids he murdered were responsible for Waco. His was not a valid response to anything but insanity. It is repugnant to try and claim because "the Eddie Haskel of politics" made mistakes during a difficult operation that it some how validates the actions of Timothy McVeigh and his group to the extent that McVeigh is not responsible for his murders. If you're willing to turn that into a "blame the left" pellet, what won't you turn?
Pellet 2)
"As for the violence incited by 'the Left' - Al Sharpton and Freddy's Fashion Mart? Sharpton is still treated respectfully by reporters, and that congflagration which he inspired is not mentioned."
So is
#32 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 26 Apr 2010 at 01:37 PM