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Until the recent political shift pushed workers back into the media
spotlight, the mainstream media had largely ignored this
significant part of American society in favor of the moneyed
"upscale" consumer for more than four decades. Christopher R.
Martin now reveals why and how the media lost sight of the American
working class and the effects of it doing so. The damning
indictment of the mainstream media that flows through No Longer
Newsworthy is a wakeup call about the critical role of the media in
telling news stories about labor unions, workers, and working-class
readers. As Martin charts the decline of labor reporting from the
late 1960s onwards, he reveals the shift in news coverage as the
mainstream media abandoned labor in favor of consumer and business
interests. When newspapers, especially, wrote off working-class
readers as useless for their business model, the American worker
became invisible. In No Longer Newsworthy, Martin covers this shift
in focus, the loss of political voice for the working class, and
the emergence of a more conservative media in the form of Christian
television, talk radio, Fox News, and conservative websites. Now,
with our fractured society and news media, Martin offers the
mainstream media recommendations for how to push back against
right-wing media and once again embrace the working class as
critical to its audience and its democratic function.
Christopher R. Martin argues that the mainstream news media (and
the large corporations behind them) put the labor movement in a bad
light even while avoiding the appearance of bias. Martin has found
that the news media construct "common ground" narratives between
labor and management positions by reporting on labor relations from
a consumer perspective. Martin identifies five central storytelling
frames using this consumer orientation that repeatedly emerged in
the news media coverage of major labor stories in the 1990s: the
1991-94 shutdown of the General Motors Willow Run Assembly Plant in
Ypsilanti, Michigan; the 1993 American Airlines flight attendant
strike; the 1994-95 Major League Baseball strike, the 1997 United
Parcel Service strike, and the 1999 protests against the World
Trade Organization's conference in Seattle. In Martin's view, the
news media's consumer "take" on the labor movement has the effect
of submerging issues of citizenship, political activity, and class
relations, and elevating issues of consumption and the myth of a
class-free America. Instead of facilitating a public sphere, the
democratic ideal in which the public can engage in discovery and
rational-critical debate, Martin says, news organizations have
fostered a consumer sphere, in which public discourse and action is
defined in terms of consumer interests-the impact of strikes,
lock-outs, shut-downs, and protests on the general consumer economy
and the price, quality, and availability of things such as
automobiles, airline flights, and baseball tickets.
Christopher R. Martin argues that the mainstream news media (and
the large corporations behind them) put the labour movement in a
bad light even while avoiding the appearance of bias. Martin has
found that the news media construct common ground narratives
between labour and management positions by reporting on labour
relations from a consumer perspective. orientation that repeatedly
emerged in the news media coverage of major labour stories in the
1990s: the 1991-94 shutdown of the General Motors Willow Run
Assembly Plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan; the 1993 American Airlines
flight attendant strike; the 1994-95 Major League Baseball strike,
the 1997 United Parcel Service strike, and the 1999 protests
against the World Trade Organization's conference in Seattle. the
effect of submerging issues of citizenship, political activity and
class relations, and elevating issues of consumption and the myth
of a class-free America. Instead of facilitating a public sphere,
the democratic ideal in which the public can engage in discovery
and rational-critical debate, Martin says, news organizations have
fostered a consumer sphere, in which public discourse and action is
defined in terms of consumer interests - the impact of strikes,
lock-outs, shut-downs and protests on the general consumer economy
and the price, quality and availability of things such as
automobiles, airline flights and baseball tickets.
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