Some of the tens of millions of Indian workers whose strike was ignored by US corporate media. (image: Democracy Now!)
When tens of millions of workers go out on strike in the second-largest country in the world—and the third-largest economy in the world—resulting in what may be the biggest labor action in world history (AlterNet, 9/7/16), you’d think that would merit some kind of news coverage, right?
Not if you’re a decision-maker at a US corporate media outlet, apparently.
A coalition of trade unions in India representing some 180 million workers staged a one-day general strike on Friday, September 2, in protest of what they called the “anti-worker and anti-people” policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, an advocate of neoliberal policies and increased foreign investment (Democracy Now!, 9/2/16). Assocham, India’s chamber of commerce, estimated that the economic impact of the strike was $2.4 billion–$2.7 billion (Hindustan Today, 9/3/16).
And yet there was virtually no coverage of the strike in commercial US media, according to searches of the Nexis news database. Not a word on ABC, CBS or NBC. No mention on the main cable news networks—CNN, Fox and MSNBC—either. (The Intercept‘s Zaid Jilani—9/6/16—noted that there was one mention on CNN International, when “the CEO of the human resources consulting firm ManpowerGroup cited the Indian strike as part of global concerns about technology suppressing wages.”) Neither the PBS NewsHour nor NPR touched the story.
Not a single US newspaper found in the Nexis database—which includes most of the major papers, like the New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today—reported an original story on the strike. (Associated Press had a brief, 289-word report, which ran on the New York Times‘ website and was doubtless picked up by other papers.) The Wall Street Journal, whose full text isn’t on Nexis, also skipped the Indian strike story.
That’s an example of the kind of story US corporate media don’t care about. What do they care about? Well, Apple is planning to release a new version of the iPhone next week. That’s already making news: CBS did a segment on its Money Watch program (9/7/16) previewing the phone, as did NPR‘s Morning Edition and All Things Considered (9/7/16); the product was front-page news in USA Today (9/8/16) and the Wall Street Journal (9/8/16), while you had to turn to page A12 in the Washington Post (9/7/16) or the first page of the business section in the New York Times (9/8/16) to get your future cellphone news.
A hundred million or more workers striking for their rights hold no interest for the news managers in US corporate media. But a new gadget from a prominent advertiser? Now, that’s the news that’s fit to print.
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. You can follow him on Twitter at @JNaureckas.
*No Indian (or “Indian”) summer on the corpress calendar
Every body knows what is Apple doing. They have released new iPhone 7 with more features but they don’t care what is happening in the World. New York Times, Washington Post sharing the news about Apple because its US brand
What? Corporate media promotes corporate products? Say it ain’t so!
It’s worse than that. The corporate USAmerican media slightly paused it’s wall to wall Donald coverage to do wall to wall pieces on (horror of horrors!) the missing headphone jack on the new iPhone!
Of course with four more years of neoliberal economics and the Forever War looming in front of us maybe we should be organizing and preparing for some General Strikes of our own…
And still we are surprised that the Corporate Lords and Masters do not wish anyone to know that they are not beloved by all, and everyone wants to name their baby after them. Is it any wonder the Idiot Aristocracy has elected it’s mad King Donald as the leader.
We have not only failed to learn from history, we have whole heatedly insisted on repeating everyone of it’s ginormous failures, with I.A. CLaM’s pushing hard to make sure that “We The People” never find out that we really don’t give a rotten fig for the CLaM’s. The Choir (aka the news media) make sure we only hear ‘Hosannas’ being sung for the upper class.
How better to remind the Proles that “Panem er Circus” is still an effective way to control the rabble, by tossing a crumb in the form of a new ‘I-Phone’ which 90% of us can’t afford, but they make sure that 99.9% of us ‘desire it’. Nothing has changed for 2000 years. and Seriously the Caesars know it. We haven’t had 12 Caesars, we have had 1200.
A simple Google News search shows that you’re entirely wrong. Coverage included ABC News, CNBC, BBC, Reuters, DPA, Yahoo!, Bloomberg, etc…
9 times out of 10 when someone says, “the mainstream media is ignoring this,” the truth is that the person who’s saying it is just too lazy to read the mainstream media.
Wow, I thought you were actually going to inform me about the strike, not cry about U.S. media doing the same thing it has always done. Why on earth would the U.S. cover an enormous labor strike? Capitalists have spent the last 70+ years making the American people believe that Unions are terrible and not in their best interests–why would they risk inspiring people by reminding them of economic inequality? You could have taken that opportunity for yourself, but instead, you chose to spend your breath complaining about it. I’m not impressed at all.