Framed! Labor and the Corporate Media

Framed! Labor and the Corporate Media

Most any unionist who’s ever been forced to walk a picket line has first-hand knowledge of how the real issues in their strike are buried -- if ever really discussed at all -- in the media’s coverage. In this thoughtful book, a professor of communication studies documents the media bias against labor in a shocking and compelling way.

The author says that by highlighting the effects of a strike on consumers and the world of commerce, rather than the workplace and citizen issues that caused the strike, the news media -- and the large corporations behind them -- ultimately propagandize for management by focusing on and stressing the inconvenience to consumers. In a highly readable and entertaining fashion. Professor Martin picks apart media coverage and its anti-worker bias in the Ypsilanti, Michigan, GM plant shutdown of 1991-94, a 1993 flight attendant strike at American Airlines, the 1997 UPS strike, the 1994-95 Major League Baseball strike and the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle.

This is the way the booksellers’ magazine Publisher’s Weekly put it in its glowing review of Framed!: Martin "deftly arrays his deliberate argument: the media consistently presents labor insurrection as preventing consumer contentment, thus making workers outside an immediate strike or protest side against their fellows on the picket line." 185 pages paperback