USA: Union-busting States of America (8/31/95) By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon If you doubt that the freedom to voluntarily join a labor union is a basic human right, think back about a dozen years. That's when President Ronald Reagan waxed eloquent about the right of workers in Poland to form unions. American pundits and editorial writers loudly hailed the right of Polish workers to join the Solidarity union. But that was then. Today, most U.S. media are quiet about another country where the right to organize unions has virtually disappeared. It's a country in which workers are often spied on, threatened or fired when they try to launch unions. It's a country known as the United States of America -- or perhaps that should be the Union-busting States of America. On Labor Day weekend, media outlets tend to serve up parades and platitudes about the value of labor. You don't hear much outrage about American workers losing the right to form unions. It's a nationwide story easy to document through firsthand accounts -- the kind of people-oriented news that media, especially TV, seem to love. Yet, you've probably never heard of: Connie McMillan, a psychiatric nurse in Alabama. Last January, she hosted a private meeting in her living room, where 13 nurses signed union cards. Two days later, the hospital fired 10 of them. ''It's our right to belong to a union,'' said McMillan. ''I can't believe this is happening.'' Lew Hubble, a Kmart warehouseman in Illinois. He and some colleagues convinced a majority of their co-workers to vote to form a union. But at great cost: Spies hired by Kmart spent months reporting not only their union activities but also intimate details of their personal and family lives. ''The first union meeting I ever went to, I went with the undercover investigator, the spy, and I didn't know what he was,'' said Hubble, a 30-year Kmart employee. ''It's the kind of thing you'd expect in a Communist country.'' Betty Dumas, a pipe fitter at Louisiana's Avondale shipyards. Uniting across racial lines in 1993, shipyard workers voted to form a union by a 500-vote margin. Years later, they have no union -- because Avondale is contesting the election and simply refuses to recognize the union. Workers say they've been threatened, harassed and fired for supporting the union. ''Why is it taking so long for the union to come in?'' asks Dumas, who once saw a co-worker crushed to death by a 2-ton piece of steel. Seven Avondale workers have died in shipyard accidents in the last three years. Avondale paycheck stubs once conveyed a chilling message: ''The squeaking wheel doesn't always get the grease. Sometimes it gets replaced.'' Florence Hill, a 60-year-old textile worker in Georgia. She testified at a federal hearing last year that Highland Yarn Mills repeatedly harassed her and her husband during a union election campaign. ''When I'd go to the bathroom, the supervisor would follow me,'' Hill stated under oath. ''And then pornographic pictures, things I had never dreamed of before, were placed in my drawers -- and notes were placed all over the mill insinuating that I was having an affair with another man.'' Recalled Hill, nearly in tears: ''The stress got so bad that I had a heart attack.'' These personal stories of union-busting are so vivid that it's remarkable how rarely they're explored in national media. Thankfully, all these accounts and more are presented in an exceptional TV documentary, ''Ties That Bind,'' which began airing this Labor Day weekend on 130 public television stations. It is illegal -- in theory at least -- for companies to harass or fire workers for union activity or to refuse to recognize a union supported by a majority of the workers. But law-breaking is common in American workplaces, and corporations that engage in union-busting are often just slapped on the wrist by the National Labor Relations Board or the courts. In ''Ties That Bind'' -- a documentary from the producers of the public TV series ''We Do the Work'' -- representatives for employers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce insist that ''labor law'' works just fine and that no reform is needed. It's revealing that the same corporate interests lobbying successfully in Washington to undo decades of consumer, environmental and safety regulations don't want any changes at all in labor law or enforcement. During the 1980s, when Lech Walesa led Poland's Solidarity union against a corrupt Communist regime that outlawed independent unions, he was canonized by the biggest U.S. news media. Today, many American workers are fighting for the democratic right to organize unions. Yet there's little enthusiasm in mainstream media for these American heroes. EDITOR-NOTE: Jeff Cohen is executive director of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Norman Solomon is co-author of ''Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in the News Media.'' Cig Smoke Made ABC/Disney Flinch (8/23/95) By Jeff Cohen & Norman Solomon Only a few weeks have passed since the Walt Disney Co. announced its takeover of ABC -- but already the TV network is living up to the Mickey Mouse image. In a cowardly capitulation, ABC has settled a defamation suit brought by cigarette giants Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds. ABC used its national airwaves to apologize to the tobacco companies not once, not twice, but three times -- including on ''Monday Night Football.'' The network also agreed to pay millions of dollars to cover the legal bills of the tobacco lawyers. (The settlement apparently didn't include a pledge to dangle cigarettes from the mouths of Disney's cartoon characters.) For journalists, ABC's surrender was a white flag seen 'round the world -- dramatizing the awesome power that big-money firms can wield with lawsuits and other threats against investigative reporting. Let's face it: To most owners of national media, serious journalism is a nuisance. It costs money, takes time and doesn't always deliver top ratings. And when your staff engages in tough reporting about corporate interests, they can retaliate. Sometimes those interests are major sponsors. Philip Morris can't advertise cigarettes on the air, but it does hawk dozens of products from its Kraft General Foods and Miller Brewing subsidiaries. Along with filing suit against ABC, Philip Morris also threatened to withdraw advertising on that network -- an annual tab of $ 100 million. The $ 10 billion defamation suit stemmed from an in-depth and overwhelminglyaccurate Feb. 28, 1994, report on ABC's ''Day One'' program, documenting how cigarette companies ''control levels of nicotine'' -- the ingredient that keeps smokers addicted. Documentation in the 13-minute segment came from internal tobacco-industry memos, a former R.J. Reynolds manager (interviewed in silhouette), current Reynolds scientists, tobacco processors and an independent research lab hired by ABC. Reporter John Martin began by pointing out that cigarettes are not simply ''leaves rolled in white paper'' -- but rather ''a scientifically engineered product.'' Martin proceeded to detail how cigarettes are made from tobacco leaves and a filler known as ''reconstituted tobacco,'' produced by grinding tobacco stalks and stems. In the process, nicotine is removed -- which would be good news for smokers trying to kick their addiction. The bad news, as ABC showed, is that nicotine from tobacco extract is then added back into the cigarette. According to the former R.J. Reynolds manager, it can be added in virtually any strength. The ABC segment quoted from a once-secret 1972 memo in which a Philip Morris official wrote: ''Think of the cigarette pack as a storage container for a day's supply of nicotine. Think of the cigarette as a dispenser for a dose unit of nicotine.'' To win this defamation case at trial, the tobacco firms would have had the difficult task of proving recklessness or dishonesty by ABC journalists. On the subject of honesty, remember that the chief executives of seven cigarette companies testified before Congress last year that nicotine is not addictive. The trial, which might have shed needed light on the secretive cigarette-manufacturing process, was likely to focus on one disputed word: reporter Martin's statement that cigarettes are ''spiked'' with nicotine. But that word was factually explained in full context by ABC's report. We haven't found a single ABC journalist who supports the network's apologetic settlement of the suit. Why settle, even in a tobacco-friendly court in Richmond, when the broadcast was fair and accurate? Journalists had reason to see a sell-out in a management apology -- ''we should not have reported that Philip Morris and Reynolds add significant amounts of nicotine from outside sources'' -- repenting for claims never even made in ABC's news story. Reporter Martin and producer Walt Bogdanich refused to sign the settlement. Given that the well-documented ''Day One'' report helped prod the Food and Drug Administration to consider action against the tobacco industry for dispensing a drug, it made some sense for cigarette makers to file suit as a PR counterattack. The ABC apology now gives them a huge propaganda victory. But why did ABC settle? It's clear that one goal was to smooth the way for the Disney merger. ABC's capitulation will probably invite more lawsuits by powerful interests with the money to intimidate. It could also make mainstream journalists a bit more shy about investigating deadly enterprises like the tobacco industry. And that's not Mickey Mouse. -- Jeff Cohen is executive director of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Norman Solomon is co-author of ''Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in the News Media.'' It's Not Always White Hats vs. Black Hats By Jeff Cohen & Norman Solomon In westerns and countless other on-screen dramas, ''bad guys'' get away with evil deeds until ''good guys'' give them what they deserve -- usually in the form of violent retribution. Such Hollywood formulas offer us clear plot lines and some satisfaction. The news business, of course, is supposed to be different from show business. Good reporters have no intention of pinning black hats and white hats on cardboard cutouts. Journalism, when it works well, provides a window on the world that allows us to glimpse real complexities. But too often, when conflicts escalate, news coverage resembles the scripting of classic Hollywood flicks. The plots become familiar: Bad guys clash with foes, who must be the good guys. In early 1993, as federal agents squared off with David Koresh and his followers in Waco, news accounts depicted Koresh as a dangerous lunatic manipulating true believers. Those depictions were generally accurate. But somehow, with Koresh wearing the media's black hat, much of the press failed to scrutinize his enemies -- the feds who ordered a pair of reckless raids that left 91 people dead. Later, a simplistic backlash reversed the demonology, as though the government's wrongdoing somehow justified Koresh's actions. News media and the public seem to have a hard time observing violent confrontations without choosing up sides -- even when all sides merit condemnation. In the former Yugoslavia, Bosnian Serb forces have engaged in horrific brutality. During the past few years, most of the atrocious human rights violations in the Balkans have been perpetrated by Serbs. Yet other combatants are also guilty of organized cruelties. This month, Croatian government forces attacked the Krajina region. As Croat soldiers took control and expelled many thousands of Serb civilians, the White House winked. With the U.S. media's black hats firmly affixed on Serbian heads, the Clinton administration and numerous American news outlets conveyed a tacit message: Only one bad guy at a time. The Serbs are the bad guys; the Croats aren't. Perhaps the most slippery word in present-day news reports from the Balkans is ''the.'' It may be convenient to refer to murderous Serbian troops as ''the Serbs'' -- but other Serbs, including the civilians recently exiled from the Krajina, are victims of this war. With ''the Serbs'' so extensively demonized, it's as though the U.S. media had run out of black hats for anyone else in the Balkan war. Yet, the Croatian army's blitz into the Krajina -- propelled by aircraft, tanks and artillery -- killed uncounted Serbian residents. ''The Croatian army has gone in shooting people like rabbits,'' said former BBC reporter Misha Glenny, who was interviewed Aug. 11 on National Public Radio. The NPR interviewer, Noah Adams, seemed eager to hold the U.S. government blameless for the Croatian army assault. ''It isn't clear that the U.S. encouraged it,'' Adams asserted. ''In fact, it probably just did not discourage the action.'' ''No, I'm sorry, it is extremely clear that the United States encouraged this action,'' replied Glenny, the author of ''The Fall of Yugoslavia.'' Glenny noted that the United States has denounced ''ethnic cleansing'' and other vicious policies implemented by Bosnian Serb troops. This month, however, ''the U.S. government has condoned and encouraged the cleansing of the Serbs from the Krajina.'' And Glenny blasted the notion that because Bosnian Serbs have engaged in atrocities, ''we can then condone the committing of those same atrocities to another set of people just because they happen to be the same nationality as the Bosnian Serbs.'' Although U.S. news coverage tended to portray the Croatian offensive as driving Serb occupiers out of the Krajina region, Glenny stressed that the Croat army was expelling Serbians who ''had been, until five days ago, living and farming this territory for over 300 years.'' In wartime, when truth is apt to be among the first casualties, journalists often emphasize some sufferers and virtually ignore others. In the process, as the grisly war in the Balkans continues, the equivalent humanity of Muslim, Croat and Serb victims can be obscured. With so many horrors being inflicted en masse, the yearning for a violent solution is sometimes evident in news reports and commentary. The desire to see justice done -- to end the anguish of innocents by sending in good guys on white horses -- is understandable. Yet, in Waco, the impulse to intervene with unanswerable firepower led to further loss of life. In coverage of the Balkans war, simplistic media scripts could fuel similar impulses -- and end up widening the bloody arc of tragedy. -- Jeff Cohen is executive director of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Norman Solomon is co-author of ''Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in the News Media.''