In the 16 months leading up to the congressional vote on a set of trade deals with Korea, Colombia and Panama in mid-October, news reporting on the agreements scarcely mentioned that critics existed; when they were acknowledged, their objections were frequently mischaracterized. With media doing little to evaluate misleading claims made by the trade pacts’ proponents, all three were approved by Congress by considerable margins. There were two major points that opponents of the trio of deals—including labor, environmental, consumer and even Tea Party groups—consistently emphasized in reports, press releases, letters and direct outreach to reporters. First, these trade deals [...]
