Announcer A:
Today and every day, the American people must make decisions on which their whole survival may depend. To make sound decisions the people must be informed. For this they depend on the nation's free press. How well is the nation's press doing its essential job? The people have a right to know the truth. They have a responsibility to ask. The right to question. The Press and the People.
As moderator, from Harvard University, the winner of the Peabody Award for television and radio journalism and the Lauterbach Award for outstanding contribution in the field of civil liberties, Mr. Louis Lyons.
Lyons:
Is our day-to-day newspaper reporting giving us the essential facts about organized labor in the United States? To answer this question, we have the labor editor of a leading newspaper and an official of one of our big international unions.
Announcer A:
Our first guest is the veteran labor reporter of the Minneapolis Tribune and a specialist on the activities of the Teamsters Union. A union member himself, he served in
1948 as Chief of Labor Relations for the Supreme Command, Allied Powers in
Tokyo: Mr. Sam Romer. Mr. Romer says, and I quote: "The quality of labor reporting has steadily improved for thirty years. But we still need greater depth, more perspective, and more white space." Our other guest is public relations director of a powerful labor union, the International Association of Machinists. He edits the
one-million-circulation IAM paper, The Machinist, and has had twenty-four years' journalistic experience, some of it as a reporter with such publications as the Wall Street Journal, US News and World Report, and the Labor Relations Reporter. Mr. Gordon Cole.
Announcer B:
Mr. Cole has said, quote: "If labor unions depended on daily newspaper support for their growth and survival, there would be no labor movement in the United States today."
Lyons:
Labor unions have become a significant element in our society. They represent the economic and social interests of millions of Americans. The use they make of their power affects all of us. The issues that arise out of union activity are often complex and controversial. So reporting in this important area calls for high competence and for fairness, if our information on labor is to be sound. So the question is whether we're getting the kind of labor reporting we need. Well, Mr. Romer, we've heard you quoted as saying that labor reporting has improved in the last thirty years. Won't you tell us how it's improved?
Romer:
Well, I, I don't think there is any question that it has come a long way since strikes were either reported solely in terms of picket-line arrests or perhaps not even reported at all, because it was bad for the community to advertise the strike. We, now, I think the reporting may be uneven, but, generally speaking, I think labor news is reported fairly adequately in terms of its negotiations and in terms of its settlements. I think we have a long ways to go yet in reporting labor as an institution in the community, as we, for instance, report the church or report other elements of the community. But it seems to me, looking back, we've come a long ways.
Lyons:
Well, we'll want to go into that, Mr. Romer. But Mr. Cole, we've heard you quoted as saying that if it depended on the newspapers we wouldn't have any labor movement. Won't you explain that?
Cole:
I think we can say that no group in the United States has suffered more than American labor from inadequate and inaccurate reporting in our daily press. We uh, used to be covered as a criminal conspiracy, and we're still covered off the police beat. Our activities are reported by and large in the, in a background of conflict, when the truth is that collective bargaining is quite successful in this country, to the point where last year 97 percent of all collective bargaining negotiations ended with peaceful settlements and only three percent of these negotiations resulted in any loss of work from strikes or lockouts. Yet I venture to say that in terms of the attention the newspapers gave our activities, 97 percent of the attention paid to us by the newspapers went to strikes and lockouts, and probably less than three percent to our peaceful activities. And yet, despite this, our unions
continue to grow in strength and in numbers, because I think the American people need trade unions to preserve their freedom.
Lyons:
Yes, Mr. Cole, I see that in your own paper, The Machinist, I think in the last issue, you speak of Secretary Mitchell's saying that we have just had one of the most peaceful labor years in our history, and then you complain that you haven't seen a single newspaper editorial picking that up yet.
Cole:
We had not at that time. I have seen only two or three since our editorial. No newspaper in the country, so far as I know, commented favorably uh, on the fact that fewer strikes began last year than in any other year since the end of World War II. Uh, this was true as of almost three weeks after Mitchell's announcement came out of the United States Labor Department.
Lyons:
Mr. Romer, in the light of what Mr. Cole has said, what would you say as to how competent our labor reporting in the press generally, as you point it? As to how many papers have really developed qualified reporters in this field?
Romer:
Well, in the first place, we want to draw a distinction between the news reporting in the papers and their editorial-page opinion. What Mr. Cole is discussing here in terms of Secretary Mitchell's statement on labor peace was editorial opinion. I, I don't think, I think we have to face the fact that, whether we like it or not – and this is true in fields other than labor - conflict is generally considered more newsworthy than lack of it. And as a matter of fact, this is even true in, among the unions. The union members will call me on a conflict situation and complain they are not getting coverage, and I rarely get a call in a situation where there's been a settlement, complaining that they're not getting coverage.
Cole:
But Sam, don't you concede that this can lead to some misunderstanding and wrong impressions?
Romer:
Well, I think that this is one of the problems, and one of the functions of the labor reporter is to recognize this and try to avoid it. But uh, but this is what I think Mr. Cole is criticizing, is the press generally, rather than just labor reporting. And I think what you need are newspapers and I think you're getting them. I can probably name for you twenty papers now – which isn't very much, but is far more than we once had – which have developed, which have reporters on their staffs who are specialists, who understand that the reporting of labor is a complex, is an intricate, is a controversial problem. And on a great many stories, especially where conflict is involved, the best job of reporting is the reporting which neither side likes it.
Lyons:
Yes, let's ask Mr. Cole now. He has suggested a bias in the press, and we spoke of editorials. Mr. Romer suggests news is something else, and he's also described news of labor as involving controversy and conflict. Now Mr. Cole, you don't suggest that a strike or other conflict isn't legitimate news and isn't important?
Cole:
Not at all. No, no, I think it should be reported.
Lyons:
You were complaining that the other side of the uh...
Cole:
But what about the 97 percent of our activities that rarely get reported? I would like to point out in connection with Mr. Romer's report, which I agree with it, that there are about twenty newspapers in the United States that now have full-time labor reporters, who by and large are pretty well trained, who understand the uh intricacies, who attempt to be fair, especially in strike situations. They don't always succeed, but I think that they have made, we have made some improvement. But this is twenty newspapers out of more than 1200 daily newspapers in the United States.
Lyons:
You have spoken between you of news and editorials. You haven't mentioned cartoons. In trying to follow the labor score in about forty papers that we clip, we really have got a collection of horrors in cartoons. I wouldn't say these are typical of all papers, but quite a number of papers. "Hood Row" is a title of one. And one shows Walter Reuther ready to dictate to the new Democrats in the Congress. In another one, union bosses are looking over the shoulder of Senator Kennedy as he writes his labor bill. And one entitled "Shall We Surrender?", with a union monopoly and Hoffa as the twin guns against them. A great deal of that kind of cartooning. Which isn't all
of it, but it is a good deal of it, and that kind of cartoon has a good deal of impact. Mr. Romer, how important do you think this aspect of journalism is?
Romer:
Well, I will be frank to say I haven't considered it. I've always considered the cartoon as part of the editorial page in representing...
Romer:
...the personal view of the publisher. Cartoons by their nature are caricatures and exaggerate. I think they may add to the impression that Mr. Cole has, that all newspapers are basically anti-labor, except that I'm not uh, I just don't think, where you have responsible publishers – and you have them in a great many instances – that this is carried over into the news pages.
Cole:
But do you have, do you have one single cartoon there, Mr. Lyons, that uh, is, reflects any credit at all on the trade union?
Cole:
I don't think I've seen any.
Lyons:
But I would agree that the generality of them is that the union boss, the thug, the racketeer, is the type that is being cartooned. Now, as Mr. Romer says, a cartoonist needs a target and, to have a punch, he picks out the weak spots, if that's what he's after.
Cole:
But he needs a target that is acceptable to his employer, who is the owner of the newspaper.
Lyons:
Let's take up some of the points of news, of labor news, one at a time. And there are many points of labor news. I was going to ask you, Mr. Romer, suppose we, suppose we just started with the first and perhaps the most familiar one, labor relations, collective bargaining disputes, and sometimes strikes. Well, as to how adequately do you feel this is reported and then we'll ask Mr. Cole's judgment about it.
Romer:
Well, I think at this level you have problems. You have the problem of getting information. One of the things that's happened – and this is true from both the company and the union side – is that there is a great deal of reluctance to let information go on contracts. This is, some people consider this a private business of the corporation and of the union. I...I can remember one instance – and I'm thinking of the first big long-term General Motors settlement – in which they worked out a concept about the cost-of-living increase, plus your annual increment - in which the negotiators – and there were about sixty of them, I think – met behind closed doors, came out with a settlement, and then announced it in a package.
And there was some resentment among the newspapermen, that they hadn't been able to carry the fact that this was coming. And the union attitude was very simple. The union attitude said: "well, if you had published that this was coming, we would have had demonstrations among our people, and this would have torpedoed the settlement, which we think is a healthy one, and which our people eventually ratified." And I think this is...
Cole:
But Sam, if I may interrupt, when you have a difficult situation, why should the announcement be filtered through a newspaper or a reporter's judgment, rather than through the judgment of the officers of the union? This can do a great deal of damage, and this is why frequently negotiations are not conducted in a goldfish bowl.
Lyons:
Mr. Cole, you don't believe that the reporter has a legitimate sense of feeling that unions are secretive, that they are suspicious, that they don't like to have reporters in to meetings? I think that reporters do have that feeling about labor unions, perhaps more than about some other institutions they have to report.
Cole:
And I would say that in many instances it is well-founded. Of course, we started out, even in the Machinists Union, as a secret order. We uh, in a great many unions feel that they are almost always at war with somebody, with big corporations, that they have a certain amount of security to preserve.
Romer:
Well, but I don't know that unions should feel that they are at war with the public and the reporter who we know represents them.
Cole:
I didn't say they were at war with the public.
Lyons:
When I was a young reporter, unions were the underdog; they needed public support for the right to organize and so on. Of course, unions have grown up, they've become very much larger. They now are thought of as an element – their wage increases – in our cost of living. We hear a great deal about that. Big strikes are very inconvenient to the public. You don't feel that unions are hypersensitive to criticism? Would you feel that the press doesn't have any right to demand that unions be responsible in disciplining their organizations, in considering the public convenience?
Lyons:
You get a lot of that type of editorial.
Cole:
I think that the growth of unions has made it more and more necessary for all organizations, labor organizations, to take the public into their confidence, to explain their goals and their program in a great deal more detail than we have in the past.
Romer:
Why don't they do it?
Cole:
Uh, because, in my case, if I try to put out a story which explains the point of view of our union, this is considered by reporters as union propaganda.
Lyons:
Well Mr. Romer, let me ask you something else about the business of being a labor reporter. We all have certain images in our heads, and some of these are prejudices, and labor unions may be with some people. As a labor reporter, do you feel at any time that you are writing uphill against a handicap of a feeling that a part of the public has about labor?
Romer:
Well as a labor reporter, I feel very acutely that the unions often feel that I'm prejudiced on the side of the employers, and the employers feel that I'm prejudiced on the side of the unions. Uh, I try to stay in the middle. I think the real problem that Mr. Cole has broached here is the problem of the people's right to know. And I share a union statement is union propaganda, but there is nothing wrong with that. We get handouts continually from everybody. And I think it has to be judged on its merits. So what happens...
Cole:
You don't always print it, I might say.
Romer:
Well I think that's true. We don't print everything that comes in. For instance, you take a labor negotiations. And I can understand a union leader saying, "I want to sell this to my people in my own way." But it may not be necessarily the best thing for the public to have this union leader sell it in his own way to the people. There may be areas in the negotiations that are legitimate questions, that raise legitimate questions – and I, I think this has been true of almost every major negotiation, that they aren't settled on a pure dollars-and-cents basis.
Cole:
Who is to decide? The labor reporter is to decide what the public needs to know? Is he the sole judge?
Romer:
I, I, he may not be the sole judge, but I think he's certainly one of the judges.
Lyons:
You wouldn't suggest, Mr. Cole, that a labor union official is the sole judge, any more than the Republican National Committee is the sole judge politically.
Cole:
Well obviously we don't control the keys to communications. But I think even the newspaper publishers, you know, are as secretive about their own business activities as any industry in the country.
Romer:
Oh, I agree with that completely.
Lyons:
Well, let me ask Mr. Coles something else, to take up another aspect of labor news. Recently the most sensational labor news has come out of the
McClellan committee hearings, which the newspapers call the racket hearings. These are supposed to deal with abuses in labor-management relations, on both sides. And we have had some abuses on both sides dealt with. How even-handedly, Mr. Cole, do you feel the press deals with labor abuses, as compared with business abuses?
Cole:
I think that the enthusiasm of our daily newspapers and our wire services for the labor abuses is boundless. The abuses of business are covered, but they're one-day sensations, and they are quickly forgotten. The columnists don't pick them up and keep replaying them day after day.
Lyons:
I'd just like to know what Mr. Romer feels about it.
Romer:
I think generally I would have to agree with it. It is regrettable. And I, I don't think the answer is to do less covering of the abuses within labor, but perhaps to do more covering of the abuses within other elements in our society.
Cole:
They've been reported out of...They've gotten into an exaggerated, given the people an exaggerated perspective of, of the kind of people who are officers of American unions and the policies and the laws that govern our unions.
Lyons:
Well now let me ask both of you, perhaps Mr. Cole first. Uh, television carries news of labor and it's carried, particularly, news of the
McClellan hearings and that kind of news. As to what you'd say about television reporting. We've spoken of press reporting.
Cole:
In
Washington, where I am, the
McClellan hearings at one time were televised. Most recently, during the hearings into the Kohler strike, all the time uh that the company was testifying the television program went on all afternoon. Mr. Reuther appeared one day and there was no television program that day. I don't know why.
Romer:
Well, I think the explanation is that time for the, in effect, was bought by the NAM, because I know the NAM sponsored the Kohler hearings out on our way, and this is certainly a propaganda source and must be judged as such.
Cole:
Well, I think it's the responsibility of television to present a balanced picture, not to just present the picture that its sponsor happens to want.
Romer:
I'm not going to defend television.
Lyons:
Mr. Romer, as to the scope the labor reporter is given in his paper: Will the paper be interested in labor news if it doesn't involve a strike or a dispute or charges about rackets? And would the labor reporter feel he has the same scope as though he were reporting some other institution, some other area?
Romer:
Well, I think this depends almost directly on the publisher and his policy. And the first problem is that in the field of labor we are dealing with very complex subjects. Even many lawyers don't understand what a secondary boycott is, for example. And I think if you're going to explain this, I don't think you can explain uh a lot of labor subjects within four paragraphs, five paragraphs on the bare bones of the subject. I think you need space, you need as much space as a science reporter does and this is an area where many publishers are willing to give space. I think to the degree that a labor reporter can't get sufficient elbow room to write clearly and simply, to that degree he's failing to cover labor.
Lyons:
Let me ask you something else. There's an old suspicion in the minds of part of the public, which every newspaperman has run into, about advertiser influence and pressure on newspapers. Labor is a very sensitive area. As to what extent does the labor reporter find evidences of advertiser influence on reports of strikes or other labor news?
Romer:
Well let me say this, I don't uh, certainly on our paper – and I would dare say on an overwhelming majority of papers – I don't think there are instances, of successful instances of advertising pressure. I think the problem involved is the public relations problem for the newspaper, in that not only labor union people believe that advertisers can bring pressures, but advertisers often believe it too. And they can't bring pressure, certainly, but this is a public relations problem on the part of the newspapers to convince these people that a wrong way to approach a reporter is to say, "I'm a big advertiser on your paper."
Lyons:
Well let me ask Mr. Cole about two or three things about unions that I'm sure are in the public mind, we often read of the question of democracy in unions – as to the rights of the rank and file. And we often hear people say, "Why won't the unions put the issue to arbitration and avoid the great public inconvenience of a strike?" Of course, I'm concerned here primarily with the way the press handles these problems, but it's necessary to get a little bit into the union question itself. What do you say about these problems and the public attitude toward them, as you see it reflected in the press?
Cole:
Well, in the case of arbitration, arbitration is widely used. The problem is the daily newspapers rarely, if ever, report it. There...
Lyons:
Well Mr. Cole, many people would have been delighted if arbitration had been used to keep us in the great metropolitan area of
New York from going three weeks without any newspapers, or if it had been used to keep us from having no airplanes over the recent holidays.
Cole:
Arbitration is not useful in every type of dispute. There are times when uh there are basic disagreements and, until someone changes his mind, in a free country there is no other way to resolve it than have a, everybody stops work and waits until somebody changes his mind. Maybe there's a better way to settle this kind of a dispute. But they've got a different way in Russia. I don't know that it's as good as ours.
Cole:
In fact, I'm sure it isn't.
Lyons:
But when you speak of this as a free country, and there may be better ways, do you feel you have any reasonable ground for objecting if some parts of the press editorially urge uh arbitration and other ways to avoid public inconvenience in strikes?
Cole:
No, we have no objection, but the editorials are always on the critical side. I don't remember more than half-a-dozen editorials in my experience which have ever taken the side of the union, either against unjust criticism or in a labor dispute. I have never seen an editorial which urged the readers of a newspaper to join the appropriate union of the industry or the trade.
Lyons:
Well while we are on this problem within the unions, as you well know, a whole flock of federal legislation is now being proposed, labor reform bills, so-called. And uh, question of how much reform is needed? How much the abuses are? What do you say of the reporting on this?
Cole:
You mean on the hearings on the Kennedy bill?
Lyons:
The Kennedy bill, the Administration bill, the–
Cole:
I attended the hearing yesterday. The New York Times has a story this morning. They covered the morning session of the hearing. The story ignored completely the afternoon session of the hearing. I don't think that's very adequate coverage of such an important piece of legislation.
Lyons:
Let me ask you about the wire services. A great many papers outside the metropolitan area depend almost wholly for news from
Washington or from other great centers outside their own area on the Associated Press orthe United Press. Mr. Romer, do you have a judgment as to how adequately the wire services handle labor news?
Romer:
Oh I think generally speaking, the wire services are confined to the bare bones of the problem. I certainly don't think that they give us what newspapers need, and that is, ah labor reporting in perspective. This is not the fault of the wire services' reporters, who are harried enough as it is.
Lyons:
For one uh last question, it's too complicated to get much on it, but right now, we're hearing a great deal about inflation. The President in his press conference is suggesting that wages shouldn't rise beyond the increase in productivity. I see The New York Times has an article by Mr. Raskin saying: Labor's productivity proves hard to gauge. Well what about this area of reporting? It clearly is a complicated one. How well do we do in that, Mr. Romer?
Romer:
Well I think that for better or for worse, this area of reporting, as in the Times, has been left to the labor reporters, and a great many of reporters have become almost self-made economists in an attempt to cope with it. I, I don't think they are doing too good a job.
Lyons:
How do you feel about it, Mr. Cole?
Cole:
Well, I hope I will live long enough to see our newspapers support a movement for a wage increase. I haven't seen it yet.
Lyons:
Well, thank you, gentlemen. Labor has always been a sensitive and difficult news assignment; and we see it illustrated here in this discussion - controversial and complicated. People take sides, and those who are on neither side are hit just the same by strikes and feel affected by wage increases. The press has never really caught up with the labor story in this country. Some papers now have labor reporters, and they no longer report labor only in terms of strikes and violence. Many have not got even that far. The problem is partly one of having qualified people to report labor competently, as any other specialty, and it's partly one of fair treatment.
Now this is a hard problem, for the publisher is a big employer himself, and his paper is bound to reflect chiefly the attitude of the business community, the basis of its support. This imposes on the publisher an obligation beyond that of any other employer – to see that labor gets fair news treatment, even though he may feel his own ox is gored, or the ox of a friend. A newspaper publisher then needs a lot of balance and civic courage and a thick skin against his privileged and sometimes prejudiced friends.
As the public, we can deal with the abuses of labor and the abuses of capital if we get the facts straight. The problem of course is to get them straight and keep them in proportion. For this we depend on our press. It's perhaps the most difficult of problem to judge in newspaper handling of the news today. Well until next week, on The Press and the People, this is Louis Lyons.