Class, Not Race - Washington Post journalists ignore working class issues

Washington Monthly, Nov, 1995 by Amy Waldman

In April, for example, the Times reported a new study by economist Edward Wolff documenting the growing inequality of wealth between the very rich and the rest of America. That study provoked a volcanic conservative reaction. Much of the vitriol wasn't due to the report's substance, but to the the Times's decision to put it on the front page--which made it impossible to ignore. Though the Post ran op-ed pieces, mostly attacking Wolff's study, the paper's readers would have been hard-pressed to find any mention of the study on the news pages. For Washington's leading daily and arguably the paper of record for policymakers in the nation's capital, the omission was peculiar.

Ignatius acknowledges that the paper is grappling with how to better cover the effects of economic shifts on "ordinary people." But too often, the Post forgets them, as it did in the coverage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). One study by Fairness and Accuracy in Media found that Post news coverage from April to July of 1993, when the debate was reaching its height, didn't quote a single member of the general public. The consensus in the Washington policy establishment was largely that NAFTA was positive, and therefore discontent from the heartland was minimized. "Most journalists don't hobnob with the sort of people who might lose their jobs under a trade agreement," explains Kurtz. "So there wasn't the kind of emotional connection that you see when newspaper people are laid off."

NAFTA was a close call, but the Post, like the rest of the mainstream press, portrayed it as a slam dunk. Now, Ignatius expresses mixed feelings on NAFTA: Though he became convinced of the virtues of free trade while covering what was then a heavily protected steel industry in the seventies, he is troubled by "the plight of the bottom two-fifths who won't thrive because of lower skills." Yet such ambivalence was only minimally reflected in the coverage. The FAIR study found that 71 percent of quoted sources in NAFTA stories in the Post were pro-NAFTA; only 17 percent were opposed. (The Times was only slightly better; their ratio was 66 to 24 percent.) The imbalance in news coverage was exacerbated by the relentless pro-NAFTA drumbeat on the Post's op-ed page, which in 1993 ran approximately 48 pieces in favor of the treaty, and only eight against. Nor has there been much subsequent coverage of whether the gains for workers the treaty's proponents promised have materialized.

The Post has been particularly remiss in examining the effects of major corporate moves on workers and consumers. Take the merger between Citicorp and Chemical Bank, the lead front-page story on August 29 in both the Times and Post. In the headline, the Times reported that 12,000 jobs would be lost, and ran a separate story on how the merger could reduce bank service in poor neighborhoods. The Post only mentioned the job loss in the seventh paragraph; a possible reduction in service was rinsed only to report a bank official's denial that service would be affected. The Times and the Post also ran front-page stories, on September 21, on the breakup of AT&T. Again, the Times indicated in the headline that 8,500 jobs would go; the Post mentioned it in the seventeenth paragraph. Ignatius defends the Post's news judgement on the grounds that these weren't local stories. But if DuPont's malfeasance didn't get covered because it wasn't local, why did these non-local mergers make page one? And since the story did make the front-page, why give such short shrift to the potential losers in the deals?