News-Press is currently on trial for about 20 separate counts of breaking federal labor laws

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.independent.com/news/2007/aug/23/red-dog-rising/

snip

For those preoccupied with other matters, such as the fire now devouring so much of Santa Barbara’s backcountry, the News-Press is currently on trial for about 20 separate counts of breaking federal labor laws. Specifically, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has accused McCaw, the News-Press, and its parent company, Ampersand Publishing, LLC, of retaliating in a host of ways against the paper’s reporters, editors, and photographers who actively campaigned to affiliate with the Teamsters Union. These retaliatory efforts took place, the NLRB charged, after the newsroom workers voted 33-6 to join with the Teamsters in an election held late last September.

In one instance, the News-Press fired six pro-union reporters for unfurling a “Cancel Your Newspaper Today!” banner from the Anapamu Street footbridge early this February. The paper claims they terminated the workers for “disloyalty.” The newspaper managers also claim that somehow they didn’t know at the time that this display was part of a union action. That’s kind of incredible given that the Teamsters had been leading a high-profile cancellation campaign ever since last August.



But the point is important legally because it’s against federal labor laws to fire workers for engaging in legitimate union campaign actions. The News-Press is also accused of firing two reporters — Melinda Burns and Anna Davison — because they were active union supporters. The News-Press claims it was only coincidental that the two fired reporters happened to be union sympathizers. The real reason they were fired, we were told in court, was because they were biased reporters.

The News-Press trial, it should be stated, is not going to be the trial of the century. But to people in the courtroom, it feels like it will take that long. Like all courtroom showdowns, the News-Press trial has been as tedious as it is contentious. Thus far, there’s been no blinding moment of truth, just many flickering flames blowing in many directions simultaneously.

But one of the most interesting issues to emerge has been that of newspaper bias. As a matter of law, I suspect the question, real or imagined, will carry little weight with William Kocol, the no-nonsense judge charged with determining the legality of the News-Press’s actions. But for the community at large, bias — along with fairness and balance — has everything to do with everything.

Like pornography and beauty, bias lies in the eye of the beholder. If you believe News-Press attorney A. Barry Cappello, McCaw saw it everywhere she looked, almost from the first day she bought the paper from the New York Times back in 2000. According to Cappello, McCaw wanted to pump more local news into the paper, just as she wanted to drain the bias out of it. Surveys have shown that readers worried about the creeping bias contaminating their news pages. But McCaw’s efforts, we are told, were thwarted at every turn by uncooperative publishers and recalcitrant editors. It’s a nice story. It’s great spin. But it doesn’t add up. And, in fact, the reality is just the opposite.

FULL story at link.