May 27, 2004

Also published at http://www.opednews.com

Dennis Kucinich said what the media would not condone: We must not go into Iraq. Dennis said what the media would not stand for: We must get out of Iraq. Dennis said that this position was not just ethical but necessary for the Democrats to win the White House.

Now he says: “It was wrong to go in. It is wrong to stay in.” And more and more people , including even some members of the media, are beginning to give this position a little read more

June 3, 2004

Also published at http://www.blackcommentator.com

Few would dispute that the corporate media do a better job of persuading their consumers to support corporate policies than the labor media do of persuading their readers to support political policies and politicians that benefit workers.

Of course, few have any idea what I even mean by “the labor media.” Unlike what was meant by that phrase 75 years ago in the United States or what is meant by it today in Sweden, I mean read more

June 6, 2004

Also published at http://www.alternet.org and http://www.opednews.com and http://www.democraticunderground.com

Ronald Reagan had the birth of a deity. Within 20 minutes of his inauguration, Iran freed the hostages that wimpy Jimmy Carter had been unable to rescue. I was 11 years old at the time and impressed but baffled. How had he done it?

No one seemed to know or very much care. Apparently the Iranians had wanted to make a statement about how much they disliked Carter, and we didn’t read more

June 9, 2004

It’s official. Cable television has now completely and thoroughly covered presidential politics, fully informing all Americans of all the issues, positions, promises, and disputes. That job completed, one cable channel has moved on to the important public function of making shit up.

No, I don’t mean Fox News. I’m referring to Showtime’s new presidential election reality TV show, in which 12 “candidates” will pretend to run for president. What could read more

June 21, 2004

Delegates to the Texas Democratic Convention on Saturday found a unifying passion that the Democratic Party nationally has lacked. If the national convention in Boston ends up looking anything like this state convention in Houston, the Dems will have developed a powerful answer to the common question “Well, yeah, Bush is lousy but what does Kerry stand for?”

The only catch is that the position that Texas Democrats have united behind is not shared by Senator John Kerry, read more

July 2, 2004

Last Saturday I went knocking on doors in Lancaster, Penn., with the AFL-CIO to talk about the election. We knocked on only union household doors, but a tragic 34 percent of union members who voted in 2000 voted for Bush, and recent polls have shockingly suggested no change in that figure. So I didn’t know what to expect.

Every single person who told me and my door-knocking partner who they were voting for was for Kerry, and all of their household members were for Kerry. No one read more

July 6, 2004

Dear Senator John Kerry,

You may have already chosen your running mate, but I’d like to ask you to reconsider.

Do you remember when the pundits who pass for journalists in this country said that you’d have to vote for an illegal aggressive war if you wanted to run for president? Do you remember that they were wrong, that you had to campaign against your own record during the primaries and tie yourself in knots to explain your vote against more funding for the same illegal read more

Recently the two biggest stories in the U.S. news media have been the war in Iraq and the presidential election campaign. Labor unions have been part of a number of major stories on the presidential campaign, especially stories about Senator Kerry’s selection of John Edwards as a running mate.

But labor has not been part of stories on the war. There was some reason for that up until a few weeks ago. The AFL-CIO has not taken a position on the war, and most of the international unions have read more

July 27, 2004
If Kerry is a “flip-flopper” because he won’t end the war (or the “Patriot Act” or NAFTA or private health insurance) even as he speaks against these horrors, what do we have to call Kucinich, who insists on ending these things even as he endorses Kerry? And what can we expect Dennis to say on Wednesday when he delivers a Kerry-approved speech to the Democratic National Convention? Will he speak against the war, as he told “Democracy Now”‘s read more

By David Swanson, ILCA Media Coordinator
Part of the Media Blackout series on underreported labor stories

While illegal violations of the right to organize a union — such as the firing of employees who express support for a union — are routinely underreported by the corporate media, the past 60 days have witnessed the underreporting of a serious new threat to the right to organize, a threat raised by the National Labor Relations Board. Nexis searching finds no mention of this story read more

By David Swanson
August 3, 2004

In 1935 the National Labor Relations Board was created for the purpose of encouraging collective bargaining – that is, unionization. The NLRB is not some radical left-wing group. It’s the U.S. government body that oversees labor and management relations. But it was created in a different era and no longer serves its intended purpose.

Within the past two months, the NLRB has decided by a 3-2 vote along party lines
1) that graduate students working read more

August 14, 2004
There’s a line of thinking I keep running into that goes something like this: Because John Kerry supports Bush’s illegal and unpopular war, we should stop focusing on the election and concentrate on building a grassroots movement. This argument has a number of variations in which it’s maintained that we should focus on building a third party, or changing the system to allow third parties to be built, or threatening to withhold our votes from Kerry until read more

Underreport Violence by Police Against Union Members, Others
By David Swanson, Media Coordinator, International Labor Communications Association
Part of the Media Blackout series on underreported labor stories
August 16, 2004

In the nearly five years since the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, at which union members and other peaceful protesters were manhandled by police, the U.S. media have established a pattern of underreporting the militarization of police at protests, of portraying read more

By David Swanson, Media Coordinator, International Labor Communications Association
Part of the Media Blackout series on underreported labor stories

In the nearly five years since the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, at which union members and other peaceful protesters were manhandled by police, the U.S. media have established a pattern of underreporting the militarization of police at protests, of portraying police actions as reactions to threats from violent protesters, and of focusing read more

August 24, 2004
On August 18, 2002, the Washington Post’s ombudsman Michael Getler complained about the Post’s war mongering. On August 22, 2004, the Washington Post’s media critic Howard Kurtz complained about readers complaining about the Post’s war mongering. Such is progress in the heart of media darkness in downtown D.C.

In the movie “A Fish Called Wanda” a character struggles to say “I’m sorry,” resorting to meditation in his fruitless read more

Aug. 25, 2004

Excerpt of a Washington Post article from late October, 2004:

Bush Finds New Focus for Country
Tim Cartostraw, Washington Post Staff Writer

The Presidential campaign’s new focus on John Kerry’s performance in Vietnam highlights important aspects of Kerry’s and President Bush’s likely performance in the War on Terror, sources say. This past summer a group of veterans accused Kerry of exaggerating the danger he had faced, in doing so making claims contradicted read more

Aug. 25, 2004
Come November 2nd in Prince George’s County, Md., many people will be highly motivated by the presidential election to go to the polls. Fewer will look down the ballot (or flip through the computer screens) and pay attention to the initiatives called Question A, Question B, and so forth.

But in a state like Maryland that is safely in one presidential candidate’s column, it is on local matters that a vote has the biggest impact. And in the case of Prince George’s read more

Originally published by Guild Forum, the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, ILCA Member
By David Swanson, ILCA Media Coordinator, WBNG Member
Summer 2004

Journalistic ethics have become in many ways corporate ethics. When those ethics penetrate journalists’ unions the result is, therefore, self-destructive.

The central ethic of journalism today is balance. It is more important to include two opposing points of view than to investigate whether either of them is supported by facts or whether read more

By David Swanson, ILCA Media Coordinator
Part of the Media Blackout series on underreported labor stories
August 27, 2004

On August 23, the Bush Administration’s Department of Labor eliminated the right to time-and-a-half pay for overtime work for millions of Americans in what amounted to the biggest pay cut in American history. The facts that should have made that statement a headline in every paper in the country were easily obtainable. Reporters had had months in which to review the changes. read more

Sep. 3, 2004
If you read a newspaper this fantastic Friday morning, be prepared to believe the impossible. The current occupant of the White House last night accepted the Republican Party’s nomination with a string of lies and nonsense that will be reported to you as if worthy of respectful consideration.

Unlikely to be noted will be the fact that while Bush babbled away about keeping America secure, he was unable to keep protesters out of his convention, where they disrupted his speech read more