Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Barack Obama has either been currying favor with Muslims or extending an olive branch in the Middle East depending on which media you consume. We'll talk with Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies about Obama's major speech in Cairo, and the size of the gap between words and actions. Also on the show: The Boston Globe says it will impose a 23 percent wage cut on its employees on June 14. This is needed, says the Globe’s parent New York Times Company, because that paper is losing money. But is there more [...]
Apr
21
2009
NBC's Secret Ballot Falsehood
Today show misrepresents pro-union bill, asks Wal-Mart for explanation
On April 15, NBC's Today show host Matt Lauer mischaracterized the Employee Free Choice Act, then turned to Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke for further explanation of the pro-labor bill. The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would make it easier for workers to form unions by increasing penalties for employers who violate workers' right to organize, and by giving workers the right to form a union if a majority signs cards declaring they want one--the so-called "card check" provision. NBC's Lauer declared that EFCA "would do away with secret ballots." This is inaccurate; under the proposed law, workers would still have [...]
Feb
06
2009
Lou Dobbs Peddles Anti-Union Propaganda
CNN host misinforms on Employee Free Choice Act
CNN host Lou Dobbs falsely suggested that the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would "end a secret ballot" on his February 4 show. At the conclusion of a report by CNN correspondent Bill Tucker about the Service Employees International Union's mobilization in support of the legislation, Dobbs said, "The American people voted for lots of things, but I don't know a lot of people voted to end a secret ballot." Dobbs' claim that EFCA would eliminate the "secret ballot" in union authorization elections, which has been a centerpiece in a U.S. Chamber of Commerce-funded anti-union PR campaign (see Nation, 1/26/09), [...]
Feb
01
2009
For Media, 'Card Check' Promise Is One to Break
Corporate outlets suddenly discover ‘workers rights’
If corporate media really cared about workers rights, there probably would have been more than zero stories on those rights on the nightly broadcast news in the last year. And labor representatives would likely have provided more than the not quite 0.2 percent of nightly news sources found in a recent survey (Extra!, 5-6/02). Yet we are to believe that concern for workers rights drives some elite media to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). EFCA would allow workers to form a union when a majority sign authorization cards, rather than holding an election. Current law already allows this [...]
Dec
12
2008
Bob McChesney on Tribune bankruptcy, Steve Early on card check
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The Tribune Company that owns the Chicago Tribune and the LA Times along with much else declared bankruptcy this week, just a year after new owner Sam Zell took over, with his notable lack of background or interest in newspapers. It sounds like workers will wind up with the short end of the stick but what does it mean in the bigger picture? Are capitalists losing interest in media and if so, what do we think about that? We'll talk with media scholar and author Bob McChesney about that story. Also on the show: [...]
Dec
05
2008
ABC's Overpaid Autoworkers
(Watch clip on YouTube.) In an attempt to explain the plight of the Big Three U.S. automobile manufacturers, ABC's World News used a wildly misleading statistic regarding autoworkers' pay. On the December 3 edition of the ABC newscast, reporter Chris Bury took aim at the supposed inflexibility of the United Auto Workers: But the union did not offer to give back the big stuff, pay and benefits that remain a fundamental problem. Ford, Chrysler and GM pay union workers more than $73 an hour in wages and benefits. Japanese plants here shell out just over $44. For GM, that translates [...]
Nov
28
2008
Mark Brenner on Big 3 bailout, Steve Rendall on the Fairness Doctrine
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Bailing out the Big Three. GM, Ford and Chrysler are on the brink of total failure, we're told. In a season of corporate bailouts of all sorts, this one is meeting more resistance—in part because union autoworkers, we're told, are making too much money. Mark Brenner of Labor Notes will join us to talk about it. Also on CounterSpin today, with Democrats poised to take more power in Washington, is there really a plan in the works to muzzle right-wing talk radio? Steve Rendall of FAIR and CounterSpin will join us to dispel some [...]
Jul
01
2008
Fareed Zakaria, Spokesperson for the Global Elite
Newsweek pundit presents pro-corporate views as the poor’s perspective
By Roger Bybee
Fareed Zakaria, now the highly influential editor of Newsweek International, author of The Post-American World, and host of Fareed Zakaria GPS, constructed a landmark of unintended irony when he regally pronounced that “the downtrodden beg to differ” with protesters of corporate globalization (Foreign Affairs, 12/13/99). Those who demonstrated against the World Trade Organization at the famous “battle of Seattle” in 1999, he asserted, were displaying the hubris of the “rich and privileged,” who were delivering “a familiar plea for the downtrodden of the world” by challenging the WTO’s promotion of sweatshops and environmental degradation in the impoverished Third World. In [...]
