NBC Today show host Matt Lauer introduced Today‘s exclusive interview with Wal-Mart’s new CEO by saying, ‘If you really want to know how the economy is affecting the average American, he’s the guy to talk to.â┚¬Ã‚ Trust the corporate media to see a wealthy CEO as the most-qualified source to tell the public about ordinary people’s experiences of economic hardship!
It was an inauspicious beginning for a program in which the host himself repeated the business lobby’s false claim that a proposed law that would make it easier for workers to form unions would eliminate the secret ballot in union elections.
As a new FAIR Action Alert points out, Lauer’s claim that the Employee Free Choice Act “would do away with the secret ballot” is false:
Under the proposed law, workers would still have the right to vote in a National Labor Review Board (NLRB) “secret ballot” election if 30 percent of the workforce signs cards, just as they do now. Under current law, employers rather than workers get to decide whether unionization requires a card check or a vote. The false claim that EFCA would eliminate secret ballots has been a major talking point of anti-EFCA campaigners.
Lauer then went on to ask the new CEO of Wal-Mart–an adamantly anti-labor corporation that was recently exposed for forcing workers to attend anti-EFCA meetings–what he thinks of the proposed pro-labor bill.
FAIR’s Action Alert calls for people to
ask the Today show to correct host Matt Lauer’s false claim that Employee Free Choice Act “would do away with secret ballots.” And ask them to interview a supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act–someone who can counter the arguments made against the bill by Wal-Mart CEO Duke.
Please share your letters to the Today show with other readers by posting them in the comments section below.
Something such as this little interview screams for the return of the fairness doctrine. How lowdown of nbc allowing this garbage to go out over the msm waves without a critical analysis of other desenters. The conservative media needs dismantling and the broadband broken up into more diverse groups of differring views.