Behind the media onslaught on the transit workers

This may have been predictable, but it was no less significant. Both print and broadcast media, in every case the organs of billion-dollar corporate empires, did their best to ignore the public support for the workers, while manufacturing their own version of public opinion.

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post was perhaps the crudest along these lines, with an overline, “A message from New York commuters to striking workers,” followed by the screaming two-word headline, “You Rats.”

On television, ABC News found someone unable to get to his brother’s wake, which was blamed on the strikers. Television reporters cornered an emergency medical technician and attempted to get him to say that the workers had endangered the life of a patient whose trip to the hospital was slowed by traffic. Several individuals were featured in 20-second sound bites with one-word punch lines like “outrageous” and “unconscionable,” referring to the strike. No transit workers or supporters were interviewed on camera.

The Daily News, owned by multimillionaire Mortimer Zuckerman, took the prize for rabid labor-baiting verging on incitement to violence, with an editorial entitled, “Throw Roger from the train!” referring to TWU Local 100 President Roger Toussaint.

“Roger Toussaint, we dare you to take to the Brooklyn Bridge this morning to tell the cold, walking throngs why you chose to disrupt the lives of millions, jacked up the expenses of tens of thousands, shuttered and crimped business, opposed the subway system to terrorism and generally threatened the public health and welfare,” the News editors shrieked.

“It would be delicious watching you try to justify the reckless, lawless transit strike that you have inflicted on the city—assuming your fellow New Yorkers didn’t hurl you over the railing into the icy waters before you got a word out ...”

In fact, although those crossing the Brooklyn Bridge no doubt include some disgruntled middle class and wealthy commuters, it’s a safe bet that transit workers would also be met with warm support there, as evidenced by drivers honking in support of transit pickets, and even in numerous letters to the same papers whose editors denounced the workers.

What passes for the “liberal” press joined in the attacks on the union. The New York Times headlined its nervous editorial, “An Unnecessary Transit Strike,” while Newsday denounced this “outrageous and illegal action.”

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/medi-d23.shtml