More Media Deliberate Misreadings

I love Dean Baker's postings on his blog at The American Prospect. His task is straightforward. He opens the various big newspapers of the day and finds articles where they "report" one thing when the truth is something else. He calls them out of their distortions, for their semantic games, for this under-reporting, and for this purposeful misrepresentations. (He loves to point out again and again how most media report a "Social Security" problem by conflating the problem of entitlement spending with its ballooning medical and drug costs with the actual Social Security program which is well funded and in fact creates a surplus.)

Anyway, here is a recent post where he points up the egregious "ignorance" of the Wall Street Journal (I doubt the WSJ writers are too stupid to know what they say is wrong, I'm more cynical, I think they purposefully re-write facts to create misunderstandings that benefit the right wing in its agenda. In this case, it supports anti-union prejudice.)

Okay, let's see if we can teach the Wall Street Journal something this morning. In an article reporting on the prospects for the Employee Free Choice Act in the Senate the WSJ told readers that: "the bill would allow unions to organize workers without a secret ballot, giving employees the power to organize by simply signing cards agreeing to join."

Wrong! The current law already allows workers to organize by majority sign-up. They can also have a union de-certified by majority sign-up. The difference is that under current law it is the employer's option to accept majority sign-up or to demand an NLRB election. Employers who wish to prevent unionization can demand an election. They can then delay the actual election for several years. They can use time to require workers to attend mandatory anti-union propaganda sessions. They can also fire the key organizers, thereby undermining the organizing drive and intimidating workers.

The main change in the law under the Employee Free Choice Act is that workers, not employers, would decide the method for union certification. The WSJ should be able to get this one right.