AP staffers hold ‘byline boycott’ to protest proposed cuts

[Newsjock]

Source: Poynter Online

Hundreds of journalists at The Associated Press are taking part in a national “byline boycott” and are signing a petition protesting proposed cuts at the news cooperative.

Guild members and supporters are removing their bylines from news stories and photo credits. They’re also demonstrating unity by wearing red shirts and signing a petition asking AP management to reconsider a pension plan freeze and increases in medical payments by more than 40 percent.

“Guild members have increased productivity, embraced new skills, and have made many financial sacrifices,” said NMG President Tony Winton. “Members are saying AP has to do better if it wants to preserve and protect quality journalism.”

After failing to make payments into the pension plan for years, AP wants to freeze the benefit, which was paid by salary deferrals. The Guild says the proposal would undermine retirement security for almost all workers. AP also wants workers to absorb $1 million in medical plan costs even though workers adopted cost-savings measures two years ago. AP told the union that it can afford to absorb the increase – it “just doesn’t want to.”

Read more: http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/romenesko/110925/ap-staffers-hold-byline-boycott-to-protest-proposed-cuts

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. It is definitely on

again trends... we are starting to see MORE union and worker actions.

GOOD

[Peace Patriot]

2. "They’re also demonstrating unity by wearing red shirts...".

Can't help but think of the red shirted Chavistas, with the Chavez government being one of the bigger boons to workers on the face of the earth.

Unfortunately, AP reporters have been SO BAD on the corpo-fascist media/CIA psyops/disinformation campaign against Chavez, that I've taken to calling them the Associated Pukes.

I certainly support their labor rights and their union's demands, and I know very well that cutbacks in staff, salaries and benefits are one of the ways that editors/reporters are controlled as to how they cover news stories. I just wish that I saw some solidarity between AP workers and the struggles of workers in Latin America, particularly in targeted leftist democracies such as Venezuela. They've spread all kinds of utter crap about Chavez suppressing "freedom of the press," for instance, and they were the original promulgators of the sly "His critics say...," i.e. "His critics say that he is increasingly authoritarian"--slander technique. No quote. No attribution. "His critics say...". AP has published anti-Chavez stories day after day after day after day, with nothing--NOTHING!--reported of the Chavez government's remarkable achievements on poverty reduction, health care and educational opportunities for the poor, economic development and jobs, decent wages and benefits, honest, transparent elections and more. Venezuela was just designated THE MOST EQUAL COUNTRY IN LATIN AMERICA on income distribution, by the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean.

Not one story! NOT ONE!

Venezuela is no paradise. And Chavez is no saint. It is entirely appropriate to report on problems in Venezuela--whether street crime or blackouts or whatever--as well as criticisms of Chavez and his government, even if his rightwing critics are assholes and liars, on the USAID dole. But that is not the whole story in Venezuela. That is ONE SIDE of the story, which has been relentlessly promoted, by AP and others, to the COMPLETE EXCLUSION of the bigger story: what the Chavez government has achieved and why Venezuelans have repeatedly voted for this government, by big margins, in honest elections.

Not one story! NOT ONE! From AP and from the entire corpo-fascist press.

The poor have a choice: unite or be crushed. Never more true than it is today, with global corporate predators having achieved power beyond their wildest dreams, including hijacking of the U.S. military for corporate resource wars, 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines all over the U.S. and a Democratic Party so alienated from its members that it will never again put a Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the White House. FDR was also called a "dictator" by the rightwing press of his era. Now it's all rightwing, all the time, with not even the slightest peep of support for workers and the poor, in an entirely controlled and quite monotonously fascist newsstream.

I don't know what lowly AP employees can do about it. Maybe nothing. But I'd sure like them to think about it. How has their reporting, so obviously a reflection of their bosses' agenda, sabotaged other workers and movements for social justice?

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(Edited for typo.)