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1. Matthews: Labor Doesn't Want to Debate (FAIR Action Alert)

June 27, 2005

It's a fact that labor unions are seldom heard from in the mainstream media.
But when MSNBC host Chris Matthews brought up the issue on June 10, he blamed
the problem on the labor movement.

"I watch Sunday television," Matthews explained during an interview with Bill
Moyers. "I never see a really good articulate labor leader on television. What
happened to the George Meanys and the Walter Reuthers we grew up with? Where are
the strong, articulate voices of the working person, the working family out
there? That voice that you're talking about, who worries about trade policy, who
worries about tax policy, who worries about being trained for the job, where are
those voices on Sunday?"

Matthews is right that labor spokespeople are rarely heard on the Sunday shows.
A FAIR study found that in 19 months of coverage (June 1995-May 1996,
June-December 1999), only two representatives of organized labor appeared on the
networks' Sunday morning talk shows.

Of course, Matthews doesn't just "watch" Sunday television--he hosts a show of
his own: The Chris Matthews Show on NBC. And a search of the Nexis database
turned up no labor guests on the show since its debut in late 2002.

His daily MSNBC show Hardball hardly does any better. A search of the last 15
months of the show turns up only a handful of appearances by union
representatives: AFSCME's Gerald McEntee was briefly interviewed once (7/27/04),
Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO made two appearances (7/29/04, 2/20/04) and
Teamsters president James Hoffa was on three times (2/17/04, 3/2/04, 10/28/04).
(Oddly enough, Matthews asked Hoffa during his latest appearance: "I haven't
seen a lot of union leader presence on television the last couple of months.
What's that about?")

But Matthews wasn't actually critiquing a problem with the media-- he was
blaming labor for not wanting to be on television, or not being good enough to
appear:


"They don't have speakers. I'm telling you, I can't think right now of a labor
leader that could match wits with a Dick Cheney on television. They don't want
to get out there and debate like they used to.... Who are the great spokesmen
against this administration's trade policies or this administration's tax
policies? Who are they?"


Matthews' invocation of Cheney's debating prowess is peculiar, given Cheney's
propensity for exaggerations and misstatements--not to mention the fact that
Cheney rarely "debates" anyone at all.

Matthews has criticized labor for its lack of media exposure before (Chris
Matthews Show, 8/31/03):


"Where is the voice of labor arguing loud and clear for a better shake?
Organized labor needs to crack through its encrusted seniority system and pick a
leader it can put on the evening news and Sunday television and wake this
country up to what it's doing to the most basic, the most vital of all American
institutions: the working family."


When Moyers explained to Matthews during their June 10 interview that there are
many articulate grassroots labor activists, and that they deserve a place in the
media debate, Matthews quipped: "Well, they should get elected to Congress. Then
we will put them on." Matthews' joke provided a more sensible answer to his
question than his suggestion that labor leaders lacked the "wits" to debate with
the likes of Cheney: There aren't more labor leaders on Sunday shows because the
Sunday shows are reserved for powerful politicians--and it's powerful
journalists like Matthews that have decided that this should be the case.


ACTION:
Contact Chris Matthews and tell him he's right that labor spokespeople rarely
make it into the corporate media--but that's a decision made by the media, not
the labor movement. Ask him what he plans to do to address the absence of labor
guests on his shows.

CONTACT:
Chris Matthews
MSNBC
[e-mail]