Commentary : Missing in Action: Media Images of Real Workers

As the Labor Day weekend approaches, we will see advertisements for back-to-school sales, reports on holiday traffic deaths and recipes for backyard barbecues.

What we won’t see is much reporting on the lives of people who labor in the nation’s offices, factories and service industries. There isn’t much coverage of how jobs are changing in America or of the growing gap in wealth between those who do the work and those who profit from it.

Issues of work and class are largely invisible, not just on Labor Day but year-round. Rarely do we see stories exploring important questions facing working families. For example:

* Why is the average entry-level wage at least one-fifth less than it was 20 years ago, with starting pay declining even for new college graduates?

* What business strategies are leading the shift to “contingent” labor--the part-time, temporary or subcontracted jobs that make up 30% of the work force?

* What has forced the average married couple to work 326 more hours a year than 20 years ago to maintain its buying power?

A study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a liberal media-watchdog group, found that the evening news programs of CBS, ABC and NBC recently devoted only 2% of their total air time to workers’ issues, including child care, the minimum wage, and workplace safety and health.

During a full year, the broadcasts reportedly spent a total of 13 minutes on job safety and health, while an average of more than 16 workers die daily from work-related injuries and more than 650,000 annually suffer back, wrist or other injuries from poorly designed workstations and repetitive motion.

Although local television news shows are full of “how-to” consumer stories--how to find good eyeglasses, how to choose a baby-sitter, how to stay fit--they rarely give advice on problems at work.

Not only are work-related topics missing in the media, but so are workers. Studies of ABC’s “Nightline” and PBS’ “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” found that almost all guests were corporate or government officials, politicians or professors, while fewer than 1% were non-elite workers or their representatives. A general examination of news reports in the New York Times and the Washington Post (or the Los Angeles Times) finds few sources who are workers or union representatives.

ABC reporter Sam Donaldson was candid in a magazine interview about the media’s practice of turning mainly to the corporate and political elite for on-camera comment. “You can’t come to me and say, ‘Sam, I know you’re on deadline, you need a comment on such and such, go out and take a chance on Mr. X.’ No, I’m sorry, folks, I don’t have time to take a chance on Mr. X.”

Working people are also nearly invisible in television entertainment programming. Heads of households were working-class characters in only 11% of prime-time network family series from 1946 to 1990, according to a study by Rider University professor Richard Butsch.

When working-class characters are shown, they often are portrayed as “dumb, immature, irresponsible or lacking in common sense,” Butsch noted, referring to shows such as “The Honeymooners,” “The Flintstones,” “All in the Family” and “The Simpsons.”

Public television doesn’t do much better, according to a study of two years of PBS prime-time programming by City University of New York’s Committee for Cultural Studies. Only about one hour a month dealt with the lives and concerns of workers, while nearly 10 times that much time was spent on the upper classes.

A number of factors contribute to media bias on labor issues.

One is that the news media are owned by big corporations, with strong interests and opinions. NBC, for example, which might be expected to inform working people about international trade agreements that make it easier for U.S. corporations to exploit foreign workers in cheap-labor havens such as Mexico, is owned by General Electric--one of the companies practicing such exploitation.

A second factor is the influence of advertisers, who insist on a “positive environment” for their ads--meaning one free of controversial issues or opinions that clash with their corporate agendas.

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A third is the class background of editors, producers and others who make decisions about media coverage. Many live like corporate officials and have little contact with working people. A Los Angeles Times survey found that 54% of newspaper editors said they generally took business’ side in disputes with workers, while only 7% generally sided with employees--a contrast with polls that show most Americans generally side with workers.

A fourth consideration is that working people usually do not have the time, money or training to compete with corporate media-relations operations. Union workers have greater resources, but many labor organizations have only recently begun to use modern communications practices.

While these factors generally combine to produce media coverage that either ignores or is biased on work and class issues, some reporters have managed to overcome the obstacles. In recent months, the Los Angeles Times has published various articles that explore the causes of problems working people face.

One Times story looked at the shift to temporary work--what it means to workers, why employers are doing it, and how unions and other organizations are responding. Another article discussed the irony that some Catholic hospitals do not follow church teachings requiring respect for workers’ freedom to unionize.

Imagine how public debate could change if such topics were given the same intense media attention given to crime (even as crime rates have dropped) or the Dow Jones stock average (although a broad majority of the population owns little or no stock).

Imagine if the news gave priority to the daily concerns of working Americans--on Labor Day and every day.

Matt Witt is a teacher at the American University School of Communication in Washington, D.C.