AP quotes "labor lawyer" who is really an anti-labor lawyer
March 22, 2009 11:41 am ET by Jamison Foser
Earlier, I noted that the Washington Post failed to quote a single labor representative in its Employee Free Choice article today, though it quoted three CEOs. Turns out the AP is even worse. This article doesn't quote any labor sources, though it does quote a Starbucks spokesperson, the vice president of the anti-labor National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a Whole Foods spokesperson, a Chamber of Commerce official, a representative of the anti-labor Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, and "Washington labor lawyer Jay Krupin."
Wait, "Washington labor lawyer Jay Krupin" sounds promising. Surely, given the fact that the AP quoted two representatives of major corporations and three representatives of anti-labor interest groups, "labor lawyer" Jay Krupin must represent unions, right?
Probably not. Here's a 2000 restaurant industry newsletter that says Krupin "represents a range of restaurant and other foodservice companies dealing with unions" and quotes him calling unions a "cancer":
Indeed, Jay Krupin, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who represents a range of restaurant and other foodservice companies dealing with unions, contends the foodservice industry has seen more organizing activity in the last year than in recent memory.
That activity is evident "across the board" in the industry, though most likely seen with national restaurant and hotel chains, he says. And while foodservice industry "conferences aren't focusing on the issue of organizing. . . they very well should be," Krupin suggests.
"I think [the expanding organizing efforts are] a hidden cancer, [that] employers are more concerned with profitability and the ability to succeed, to survive in a very competitive market," Krupin says.
And here's a Fortune article from last December that says Krupin has "negotiated more than 300 labor agreements on behalf of employers."
And here's Krupin claiming "instead of having secret ballot election by employees on whether or not they wish to join a union, the labor movement wants to move to a card-check process, which is potentially fraught with issues such as coercion, intimidation and interference."
It's bad enough that the AP quotes several anti-labor activists and not a single labor representative. But it's even worse that the AP identifies a corporate lawyer who has described worker organization efforts as a "cancer" simply as a "labor lawyer," which most readers will probably assume means he is a pro-labor lawyer.
WaPo should have clarified this guy's background as a basic matter of providing context, but focusing on the term "labor lawyer" isn't the real issue here.
It's true that most "labor lawyers" work for corporations and most "environmental lawyers" work for polluters, and if you think about who's got the money it's retrospectively obvious. But no one makes that assumption if they've never thought about it, and most people haven't.
It's incumbent on journalists to call them at least "corporate labor lawyers" or "chemical industry environmental lawyers." Although I prefer "anti-labor" or "anti-environment" lawyers. Or "pollution lawyer" or "strikebreaking lawyer."
MMFA is correct in that most of the readers would assume he was a pro-labor lawyer, because we all know that most readers, followers of the media and adherents of talk radio are mind numbed robots.
A trial lawyer is usually identified as such, whether he/she is the prosecutor or the defender. I don't think is is incumbent on anyone to be more specific than that, for even though, MMFA seems to think the majority of the citizens can't tell the difference, 52% apparently "chose the right" in the last presidental election.
I beg your pardon?
Wouldn't you think that a "journalist" in the process of doing yanno journalism would do some fact checking? Because it seems to me that if they do not then we call that propaganda, not journalism.