cover image FRAMED! Labor and the Corporate Media

FRAMED! Labor and the Corporate Media

Christopher R. Martin, . . Cornell Univ., $45 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-8014-8887-0

The media has conspired to create an us-against-them framework for the most basic TV/newspaper discourse on all things corporate, Martin, a University of Northern Iowa communication professor, fervently asserts. Be it the shutdown of Michigan's General Motors plant made famous by activist filmmaker Michael Moore or worker strikes anywhere in the U.S., consumerism provides the nexus for media interpretation of labor conflicts, he writes. With densely illustrated examples, he deftly arrays his deliberate argument: the media consistently presents labor insurrection as preventing consumer contentment, thus making workers outside an immediate strike or protest side against their fellows on the picket line. By couching all labor disputes in management terms, Martin insists, corporations will turn consumers—even those working in the same arenas as striking workers—against workers and in favor of corporate control. Martin outlines several major strikes to demonstrate his claim. While acknowledging how, as a junior Republican in 1981, he lauded Reagan's firing of all striking airline controllers, he also came to understand the plight of laborers by watching them close up—beginning with his own mother and siblings. Compelling firsthand (and first-rate) accounts of strikes and protests opposing the skewed manner in which they were reported by the media (who can forget the scenes of seemingly anarchistic rioting in Seattle during the 1999 WTO protests?) make for fascinating reportage. With appendixes of specific media reports (and reporters), this thoroughly engaging sociopolitical commentary is worthy of Moore and Al Franken, but devoid of their often glib facility, putting scholarship first. (Jan.)

Forecast: Martin's work should find a tidy collegiate market niche in journalism, communications, political science and economics classes. And general politically aware readers could be interested in the paperback edition.