August 1, 2004

Convention issues

The Guild and politics

By Michael Ulreich
President, Chicago Newspaper Guild

While the nation debates whether to put John Kerry in the White House or go with a flawed incumbent, later this month, at its annual convention, the Newspaper Guild this August will try to decide whether it should become involved in politics. With a crucial general election hovering on the horizon, politics was the subject of discussion at a Tri-Council meeting held the weekend of May 22 in Washington, D.C.

But the discussion wasn’t about whether Kerry or Bush would be the best candidate in the next election. The answer to that question is obvious. Instead the discussion in D.C. centered on whether and to what extent the Newspaper Guild and its members ought to be involved in endorsing political candidates and supplying them with campaign funds.

The panel included U.S. Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D-Md., Lou Mleczko, director of the Detroit Newspaper Guild, Allan Lengel of Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, Mike Eiger, an aide to U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., and Margarita Crampton, COPE coordinator for the Maryland-D.C.-Virginia AFL-CIO.

Sarbanes is currently the fifth longest serving senator in U.S. history, elected to his fifth term in 2000. Since then his voting record for labor has been pegged at 98 percent.

The Maryland senator described the current situation in America as “the most difficult time in this country in terms of national leadership since 1970…We built the strength of this nation on working people. Really you have to go back in history to the 1920s to duplicate what (this administration) has been done to working people.’’

Sarbanes described a growing disparity between the middle and lower class and the “elite group at the top in what he called this “so-called’’ recovery. Bush’s tax cut, he said, only widened this disparity at the cost of programs meant to alleviate it, like No Child Left Behind.

Bush should call his No Child Left Behind program “No Millionaires Left Behind,’’ Sarbanes said.

“Well, you know we have this big deficit,’’ Sarbanes said of the Republican’s viewpoint. “Well, I tell them, you have this deficit because you made a priority this large tax cut.  This was their choice as far as a priority.’’

Sarbanes said the Bush tax cut was a Republican scheme to fund the country’s financial elite while cutting liberal programs like aid to education or local health centers.

”They’ll get their share, don’t worry about that,’’ he said. “We know that the tax cuts overwhelmingly benefited the top one percent. If you raise this point with them, they say, ah, you’re practicing class warfare. Well I say they’ve already did their class war and won.’’

Sarbanes spoke in the need of the entire American society to get involved in politics, not just the politicians or the professional advocates of a particular cause.

”It really behooves people to get involved in a political issue,’’ Sarbanes said.

“This is as critical an election as I’ve seen in more than 30 years I’ve been in Congress. The first and most basic precinct is your family. They need to get out and vote.’’

All the speakers pointed out that the political opposition to labor is well-organized and has no scruples when it comes to political involvement.

“That’s not to say that getting involved in a specific campaign is the right thing to do for every local,’’ Milecko said. “We keep pushing the boulder up the hill and keep increasing our speed while they keep increasing the angle of the hill and keep putting barriers in our way.’’

Robert Bautista, chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, was the lead attorney for Gannett newspapers in the Detroit Free Press strike, Milecko said.

“He’s a representative of the newspaper industry,’’ Milecko said.

But while there’s a need for every American citizen to be involved politically, there’s an equally stronger need for an impartial objective news media to report back to those citizens on the issues that face the nation.

“Among the strongest and most important values in journalism is the reporter’s independence from the sources and subjects about which he or she writes,’’ said Charles M. Firestone, executive director of the Aspen Institute’s communications and society program in a report called “A Matter of Degree The Role of Journalists as Activists in Journalism Business and Policy.’’ “Under this tenet, the reporter is a proxy for his or her audience, vindicating the “public’s right-to-know’ by providing information by which the audience governs themselves or conduct their lives.’’

The Aspen Institute Forum on Diversity and the Media met in October 2003 and the participants agreed for the most part that the closer the issue is to the practice of journalism, for example, access to sources and records, the more journalists would be allowed, even obligated to be involved. On the other hand, on issues of general concern to the public, such as national defense policy and government regulation of other industries, “reporters virtually have no business being involved.’’

The Aspen Institute panel included Guild President Linda Foley and copies of the report were made available at the Washington Tri-Council meeting.

In the meantime the Minnesota Newspaper Guild/Typographical Union provided its own version of a resolution that could provide a practical answer to the question of how the Guild could become involved politically.

The Minnesota Guild resolution shies away from committing the local to political involvement and merely recommends using the local’s resources as a source of e-mail information.

The Aspen Forum recommended a sliding scale approach to such considerations of journalist involvement in policy-making.

The draft notes that because the local represents many journalists and therefore “it must be vigilant to avoid compromising the ethics of neutrality that are fundamental to the work and reputation’’ of workers in the newspaper business.

For that reason, under the Minnesota resolution, the local would decline to interview or endorse political candidates, participate in any political action committee or take public positions on legislative, national and community issues except for those issues concerning journalism or labor.

However, the draft says, “these standards notwithstanding, such neutrality should not deny any Local member either basic information on matters that affect them as working Americans or the right to participate in political, community and social justice activities.’’

To accomplish this goal of providing timely information to members, the local office would maintain three separate information e-mail lists. With the information contained to be screened by local staff and/or officers. Members could choose to be on or off the lists.

The first list would contain information limited to issues of labor law and the media. All local members would be on this list unless they choose to opt out.

The second list would cover a broad range of public and political interest to workers such as social justice issues, living wage policies or labor-endorsed positions or candidates. The second category would also contain information on upcoming demonstrations or activities to support particular issues, like calls to contact a legislator to support a proposed bill.

The third list would be entirely about commercial services and discounts offered members.

Only members who chose to be on the list would be on the second and third lists.

The executive board would then make all decisions regarding public support by the local for an issue, such as displaying a Guild banner at a rally or the use of a guild office for a phone bank.

Jerry Minkkinen, director of the Chicago Newspaper Guild, doesn’t think the Minnesota resolution goes far enough. While a newspaper has the right to endorse a candidate for public office, the newspaper union should also have the ability to endorse its own candidates.

“Labor and politics are synonymous with each other, they can’t survive without each other,’’ said Margarita Crampton of the AFL-CIO.

Crampton said the AFL-CIO has a strict and democratic process to decide what candidates the organization will endorse.

“We don’t just pick them, we have a process and we protect that process zealously.

”We already have term limits, brothers and sisters,’’ Crampton said. “You vote them in and you vote them out. This is your livelihood. This is what you need to be involved in. We can’t match the big corporations with dollars but we can get them with people power.’’