Working in the news: Public journalism, the consumer sphere, and coverage of labor-management conflict.

Abstract

This dissertation argues that mainstream news media coverage of labor-management issues cuts off rational discourse about class and labor issues. The study explores the rise of a consumerist ethos in America in the early twentieth century, when journalism began to address its audience not as full citizens, but as consumers. This consumer address became the "objective" or "neutral" position for the new media, and significantly affected coverage of labor-management conflict in the news. Instead of facilitating a public sphere, Jurgen Habermas' democratic ideal where the public can engage in discovery and rational-critical debate, the news media have fostered a consumer sphere, where public discourse and action is defined in terms of depoliticized consumer behavior. Thus, the news media cover strikes, lock-outs, or shut-downs largely based on the relevance of the conflict to the interests of the consumer (i.e., the effects of the conflict on the price, quality, and availability of consumable goods and services). Alternate treatments of labor conflicts--as human dramas driven by interests with varying degrees of legitimacy and moral weight--seldom, if ever, appear in the mainstream news media. This study critically analyzes mainstream national newspaper (New York Times and USA Today) and television network news (ABC, CBS, NBC) coverage of two contemporary labor-management conflicts, the 1994-1995 Major League Baseball strike and the 1991-1994 shutdown of the General Motors Willow Run Assembly Plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The baseball strike provides a case with massive news media coverage, high consumer impact, and the quasi-public institution of Major League Baseball. In contrast, the Willow Run Plant shutdown is a case with low media coverage, low consumer impact, and the private but high-profile institution of General Motors. Both cases illustrate how the news media work to create, maintain, and reinforce a consumer culture and rationalize a corresponding top-down economic power structure. The research concludes by suggesting how the practice of public journalism can help to transform the American news media from a consumer sphere into a more public sphere as it covers labor-management conflict.