What Labor Day? Labor Representatives Excluded from TV Talk Shows
From Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting: Labor Almost Invisible on TV Talk:
As the Labor Day holiday approaches, ask yourself how often you see unions represented on corporate-owned television. On the highest-profile public affairs shows, the answer is basically never.
According to a search of the Sunday morning talkshows for this year (January-August), not a single representative of a labor union appeared on any of the four network programs (NBC's Meet the Press, ABC's This Week, Fox News Sunday and CBS's Face the Nation).
............//snip
And it's not that the shows couldn't have used a voice for working people. While normally preoccupied with Beltway politics, these shows touched on issues like poverty, jobs and workers' rights. There were even discussions of efforts to organize college athletes (
Meet the Press,
3/23/14;
Face the Nation,
3/30/14).
............//snip
The Sunday shows did, however, find time to hear the views of corporate America. Guests that were identified as current or former corporate CEOs made 12 appearances, including former
AOL head Steve Case (
Meet the Press,
4/6/14),
Apple CEO Tim Cook (
This Week,
3/30/14) and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz (
Fox News Sunday,
6/22/14). Former Hewlett Packard CEO and Republican political candidate Carly Fiorina made four appearances.
Nothing new here!!!!!