Labor Reporting and Its Critics in the CIO Years

Abstract

This monograph examines daily newspaper coverage of organized labor during the burst of union activity that began in the early 1930s. Three factors influenced labor reporting during this period: the dramatic rise of unions as a political, economic, and cultural force in the New Deal; trends in journalism, including the dominance of objectivity as an operating norm and the shift toward interpretive reporting; and journalists, their sources in labor leadership, and the emergence of the American Newspaper Guild. Union leaders were highly critical of the general circulation press and its coverage of labor issues. I argue that labor news was biased against unions, but that bias was not the result of a deliberate attempt to discredit unions. Despite prounion inclinations of some journalists, news values, news gathering routines, and newsroom practices shaped labor reporting in a way that emphasized organized labor’s role in repeatedly challenging and disrupting the status quo.