Can these news media employers be trusted?
When news media outlets cover up or outright lie as they have been doing (see below), society suffers, and so do our members. If such employers lower journalistic standards (including their own corporate credibility), they impact the believability of their own reporters and editors and therefore our members' livelihoods.
As news media continue to consolidate ownership, there are fewer and fewer watchdogs and more chance to conceal and obfuscate; when news outlets are beholden more to quarterly profits, shareholder value and financial bottom lines, they run the risk of protecting themselves at the expense of truth, candor and full disclosure, and thus censor their own reporters and editors.
For these reasons, the SoCal Media Guild has initiated with the Concerned Readers Committee a Credibility Watch. Just as our TNG brothers and sisters at Consumer Report/Consumers Union watch the credibility of businesses that sell to the public, so too is CredibilityWatch.org intended to be a watchdog of local media and other businesses (such as media advertisers) -- particularly with regard to what they SAY vs. what they DO in terms of their own workers' wages, working conditions and in journalistic integrity.
In the case of MediaNews, the record is tragic:
It said it only cut wages 4% across the board when it took over the Press-Telegram in Long Beach. This is highly misleading -- the real cuts were closer to 20%-30% and in some cases as much as 47% or more. Perhaps MN got that 4% figure by averaging in all high-paid honchos they kept on board as a facade to make the public think nothing had changed, but the fact is that the cuts were draconian.
The owner of MediaNews told workers the month before the takeover that they needn't worry about putting aside money and that they should go ahead and buy their holiday gifts; eight days before Christmas, more than 120 workers lost their jobs and most others had their wages slashed.
The leader of L.A. Newspaper Group (which appropriated the union's own initials after discovering that the Suburban L.A. Newspaper Group initials spells SLANG) said there were 107 workers in the newsroom before and after the sale -- in fact, there were less than 80.
The company has been accused elsewhere of falsifying circulation figures, and our own members report they are often sent out to phantom addresses.
The company said at the bargaining table that it wanted the P-T workers to take the same pay as the Daily News workers (who were paid far less than what the P-T workers were paid when Knight-Ridder owned the "assets"). As talks dragged on and the P-T workers moved closer to accepting this coercion, the company decided it now wanted to pay the workers LESS -- even though the workers' own work appears in the Daily News and says "Staff Writer" on the stories.
Perhaps worst of all, MediaNews is in bed with its supposed "competitor" the L.A. Times/Times Mirror. It and the Times/TM failed for nearly two years to disclose to the public and the workers that the Times/TM had "loaned" $50 million to MN to buy the Times' competitor Daily News, and that part of the "collateral" was that the Times could opt to buy the Daily News -- even though MN says the government wouldn't allow such a thing (then what's it doing in the agreement as a $2.3 million option?). Further, TM took a "minority interest" in MN -- but neither side would say how much. Now, why would become part-owner of its competitor? And not reveal the degree to which it owns? And why are the government antitrust folks so quiet about all this after looking into it so closely? Or is something about to break? The bottom line is that these newspapers -- public trusts, even though privately owned -- failed to be forthright and frank with the workers and the public. As the MediaNews papers locally have failed to report labor news of their own, so too must the public ask what else it is covering up (not that our member reporters aren't reporting it, but the management isn't allowing such reports to get in and continue to cover up or fail to provide full disclosure). The Concerned Readers Committee (CRC) is looking into this.
Help us monitor the media
If you wish to help the Local and the CRC monitor MediaNews and other Southland news media outlets and related businesses (such as advertisers and newsmakers), or if you wish to help workers evaluate potential employers and improve their current worksites, contact the Southern California Media Guild and provide us with such information as pay scales, benefit packages, working conditions and recent credibility of the business/media outlet in question.
