| Reviews / Comptes Rendus | Labour/Le Travail, 58

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Christopher R. Martin, Framed!: Labor and the Corporate Media (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2004)

ONE WOULD be hard-pressed to dispute the argument that organized labour has been given a rough ride in the mainstream American media in recent decades. The sources and effects of this mixture of corporate sympathies and selective omission are the focus of Christopher Martin's valuable book, Framed!: Labor and the Corporate Media. Along with providing background to the current media-labour environment, Martin gives thoughtful analysis to five key recent events for organized labour in America: the closing of a GM plant in Willow Run, Michigan, in 1991; the American Airlines flight attendant strike of 1993; the 1994–1995 strike in Major League Baseball; the United Parcel Service [UPS] strike of 1997; and the World Trade Organization [WTO] protests in Seattle. Each case presents unique circumstances and varying degrees of setbacks and success for labour. In surveying the greater picture, Martin sees a consistent thread running through the coverage of each case: the mainstream media approach their audience not as citizens but as consumers, framing the stories in such a way as to appeal to the purchasing power of the general public. The empirical and theoretical evidence brought forth in Martin's book is a strong addition to the study of contemporary organized labour, as well as an argument for how the greater structural forces involved have powerful implications for media content.

While the author surveys the usual media suspects (Big Three networks + New York Times + USA Today and others) and draws some convincing conclusions from his selective content analysis, the weakness of this study lies in the omission (save for a few paragraphs) of a study of the greater structural imbalance inherent in the American media system. Those outside America might find themselves asking, "What does one expect when you allow a communications system to develop as the sole domain of the business sector?" In that sense it is hardly shocking that a media environment long ago deemed best left to the free market should promote values associated with free enterprise.

Not only do the collective aspirations of working people suffer under this current media regime, but also the concept of the press as an essential component of a healthy democracy. Martin writes, "Instead of facilitating a public sphere ... the news media have fostered a consumer sphere, in which public discourse and action is defined in terms of appropriate consumer behavior." (5) This book ably demonstrates that such a paradigm is not necessarily always to the detriment of the aims of labour, provided workers frame their struggle in a language and style more suited to consumerist values than the more traditionally expressed goals of workers' rights and social justice. Martin shows how the UPS workers used this consumptionist frame to their advantage because so much of the public were users of UPS services and had a personal connection with many in the UPS workforce. In this instance, the public could recognize "the connection between production and consumption." (163) This UPS workers' victory did little to dispel consumer- oriented news as a fact of American life; it just showed that it could on occasion work to the union's advantage.

Conspicuously and ominously absent from the current media coverage of organized labour are any sense of a greater collective good for working people and the role media should aspire to play in a democracy in maintaining an informed citizenry. Martin plainly states: "By addressing all of us as consumers, the news media diminish citizenship to mere purchasing behavior." (52)

The "frames" referenced in the title are, according to Martin, inescapable when contemporary American media offer stories involving organized labour. They are: the consumer is king; the process of production is none of the public's business; the economy is driven by great business leaders and entrepreneurs; the workplace is a meritocracy; collective economic action is bad. (8)

While there is a conspiracy-like element to such sweeping generalizations which some, in particular those generally adverse to union causes, may resist, the examples Martin has selected are sufficiently varied and strongly supported as to lend credence to his thesis. His assertion that "class-based debate [is] missing from the public forum of the mainstream national news" (17) is admittedly hardly a new observation and Martin traces the comment back to sociologist Warren Breed in 1958. (45) When workers' causes are now discussed in American media, it is often with regard to how personal purchasing habits are affected.

The greatest tangible impact of this class-free approach, and Martin's strongest chapter, is his analysis of the coverage of the GM plant closing in Willow Run in the early 1990s. With so many lives directly at stake (4,000 workers lost their jobs), Martin demonstrates how the media framing of the story, whether intentionally complicit or not, effectively advanced the cause of the corporate ownership. Martin convincingly argues that journalists covering the story showed a clear acceptance of the "lean and mean mythology" (79) touted as necessary by business interests. The most obvious and inflammatory case of this disposition reveals itself when Martin clearly demonstrates how the journalists were de facto accomplices in the corporate managerial practice of 'whipsawing' by playing the GM communities of Arlington, Texas, and Willow Run against each other. Of the 68 national television and newspaper reports surveyed by Martin, none asked why a competitive atmosphere between Willow Run and Arlington was necessary. What followed was a series of concessions by the two communities in a desperate attempt to save jobs, eventually lost by the Willow Run workers.

All of Martin's recommendations in his conclusion are concerned with potential union strategies to combat how they are 'framed' by media (198) and, aside from a mention of ownership plurality, do not deal with the structural difficulties inherent in the American media system. But it would serve Martin well to look beyond American borders to get a sense of a larger media picture. While this book clearly demonstrates the growth of consumer-based media and how the odds are against any pro-union coverage in America, not nearly enough time is spent examining how this situation is the result of American media policy. Among developed nations, the United States stands virtually alone in its insistence that private market forces drive the media. There are alternatives. While private broadcasting in European countries has expanded in recent years, the European Union [EU] actively promotes the use of national public service broadcasters by member states (see EU Amsterdam protocol). Canada and Australia have also developed mixed public/private systems. By contrast, public service broadcasting remains a weak afterthought in the American system. It is this idea of "public service" that is so lacking in the American context — a point which seems relatively obvious to the outside observer. Even given the plurality of ownership that Martin sees as a necessary step, the goal of all privately owned media is to promote products, not to maintain an informed citizenry.


Gregory Taylor McGill University

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