mediacrit.com

On March 23, 2005, a woman dining at a San Jose Wendy’s restaurant claimed to find a finger in her chili. You might remember hearing about this. The incident generated immediate and extensive national coverage – at least 170 stories in the LexisNexis major newspaper database through the end of May 2005. Meanwhile, in U.S. workplaces, an estimated two dozen finger amputations happen each day. At least some of those cases, one might assume, are interesting stories. Yet, stories of fingers amputated in workplace accidents hardly registered a blip in major newspapers.

In the first five months of 2005, only one such story appeared in the major newspaper database. That story, in the Los Angeles Times, explained that unionized laundry workers in Southern California were prepared to strike. One of their grievances involved safety violations, including the case of a worker whose finger was amputated in machinery because “a safety device had been deliberately bypassed to boost production.”

Incidents of finger amputation injuries are hardly insignificant. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data – numbers that reflect only a fraction of workplace injuries due to the many exemptions in federal reporting guidelines – there are at least 8,000 finger amputation accidents to U.S. workers each year.

The differences in coverage illustrate a chief problem in the news media’s treatment of worker concerns. Any finger amputation accident has the elements of a tragic, but interesting story. So, its not surprising that a severed finger that ends up in chili becomes a major news story. But, fingers amputated at the workplace that don’t find their way into fast food also don’t find their way into the news.

The sad irony is that the chili case was a fraud based on the idea of workplace accidents. No food service employee lost a finger in a vat of chili, but the finger did come from a real workplace accident in Las Vegas, where a few months earlier an employee of an asphalt repair company got his gloved hand caught in a truck’s mechanical lift gate. Although the injured worker was ultimately identified (he gave his finger to a co-worker to retire a $50 debt; the co-worker and his wife concocted the chili scheme), none of the mainstream news stories that covered this man’s unfortunate injury bothered to explain if he received immediate medical attention, or if the accident was evidence of occupational safety hazards.

The case illustrates the increasing inability of major newspapers to understand and cover labor and workplace issues, including worker injuries, due to the decline in the labor/workplace news beat. Fewer than half of the leading daily newspapers in the United States have at least one reporter assigned full-time to the labor/workplace beat. It is not surprising, then, that while the Wendy’s incident launched at least 170 print stories, the lone story in the first five months of 2005 that covered a workplace finger amputation injury had the byline of a reporter on the labor beat – the Los Angeles Times’ Nancy Cleeland.

What has happened to the labor beat in the United States? In a nation where 88 million people, fully 62% of the nation’s labor force could be defined as “working class,” why are newspapers so woefully inadequate at covering stories like on-the-job amputations (lost fingers are just part of the problem) and other occupational injuries? Big newspapers across the country are losing circulation, and their owners wonder why. Covering the state of working in America might be just the place to reconnect with potential readers.

Update: In my last column, I talked about Wal-Mart’s public relations blitz. Their “blitz” just turned into an all-out offensive. The New York Times recently revealed that Wal-Mart now has a full-time “war room” at the company’s Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters, staffed by former Republican and Democratic image makers, including Michael Deaver, who gave us Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” imagery in the 1980s. One of their most urgent tasks is to respond to Robert Greenwald’s new critical documentary called “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price” (see www.walmartmovie.com).