Christopher R. Martin argues that the mainstream news media (and the large corporations behind them) put the labor movement in a bad light even while avoiding the appearance of bias. Martin has found that the news media construct "common ground" narratives between labor and management positions by reporting on labor relations from a consumer perspective.
Martin identifies five central storytelling frames using this consumer orientation that repeatedly emerged in the news media coverage of major labor stories in the 1990s: the 1991–94 shutdown of the General Motors Willow Run Assembly Plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan; the 1993 American Airlines flight attendant strike; the 1994–95 Major League Baseball strike, the 1997 United Parcel Service strike, and the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization's conference in Seattle.
In Martin's view, the news media's consumer "take" on the labor movement has the effect of submerging issues of citizenship, political activity, and class relations, and elevating issues of consumption and the myth of a class-free America. Instead of facilitating a public sphere, the democratic ideal in which the public can engage in discovery and rational-critical debate, Martin says, news organizations have fostered a consumer sphere, in which public discourse and action is defined in terms of consumer interests—the impact of strikes, lock-outs, shut-downs, and protests on the general consumer economy and the price, quality, and availability of things such as automobiles, airline flights, and baseball tickets.
Christopher R. Martin is Associate Professor of Communications at Miami University. He is coauthor of Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication.
What People are Saying About This
Robert W. McChesney
Coverage of the working class and labor issues may well be the weakest and most appalling aspect of the U.S. news media. It puts the lie to the notion that the United States enjoys an objective press that is politically neutral; in fact it is a press entirely subservient to big business and commercial interests. Christopher R. Martin has written a highly accessible and timely overview that provides historical depth as well as detailed case studies of recent episodes in media coverage of strikes. I recommend Framed! Labor and the Corporate Media to all citizens concerned about the prospects for democracy in this nation.
William S. Solomon
This is a thorough and insightful study of how the mainstream U.S. news media incorporate the premises of globalization into their coverage of labor. Christopher R. Martin analyzes how transnational capital's emerging values have come to underlie the news, from the Reagan administration's antiunion policies to the present. Sensitive to issues of race, gender and social class, Martin develops a powerful critique of the media's increasing marginalization and trivialization of organized labor. Framed! makes a strong contribution to research on political power and popular culture, as well as providing an excellent foundation for further research.
Jefferson Cowie
Christopher R. Martin transcends the tired debate over media 'bias' by asking a more fundamental question: Are we to be a nation of citizens or consumers? His Framed! Labor and the Corporate Media shows how meaningful labor issues are transformed into a peculiar pseudo-plebian democratic consumerism that substitutes for both news and legitimate political opinion. Any real questions about the larger process of production or the working of the economy (let alone justice) seem to magically ricochet off the media's boilerplate understanding of the United States as a consumer's democracy. Martin's analysis is deft, his interpretations are sound, and his message is important.
Edward S. Herman
Christopher Martin's case studies provide compelling evidence of the systematic antilabor bias of the corporate media. His analysis of the media's framing process that focuses on consumer effects, rather than workplace and citizen issues in labor-management strife, is persuasive and enlightening.
