In olden times, it was considered malpractice for a journalist to structure a piece around a conversation he had with a taxi driver. Not that there was anything wrong with taxi drivers or their opinions. But the setting was too convenient. Journalists were supposed to get outside, walk around, and talk to people. Finding these people was supposed to take work—which was decidedly not the case with the taxi driver, a ready-made interviewee who could be summoned by raising a hand.
2023, however, is a new era. Most journalism today consists of copying and pasting PR releases prewritten by an interested party, or quoting Twitter accounts. So I, too, am going to descend into the morass of devolved standards and roll around in it. Besides, this is a free blog. And if Tom Friedman is doing it—why can’t I?
In any event, I had to take a “ride sharing” service to work this morning. The driver had NPR’s Morning Edition on the radio. I caught the below segments, on the ongoing strike by the United Auto Worker’s union (UAW) against the Big Three—Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (nee Chrysler):
If you can, listen to all 3 segments. Doing so will be educational. NPR, like the New York Times and the Atlantic, has a special place on the American Left, and, by extension, the Democratic Party. The station not only serves as a news source. It also instructs Good Liberals on how they should think about a particular issue. Listeners receive talking points they can recount in conversation, mostly with one another. In this way, NPR reinforces the mores and habits of its listener base, which, according to its own market research, comprises highly educated members of the professional upper middle class. Throughout this post, I refer to this group as the Core NPR Listener, or “CNL.”
With that in mind, let’s discuss each segment, with an eye toward how NPR is attempting to shape the views of its listeners, and keep them in line as members of the Democratic coalition. At the outset, I should tell you that I don’t listen to NPR. I’m also lazy and didn’t do any research beyond finding the links included in this post. So it’s possible that NPR has done a wonderful job covering the UAW strike, and that the below analysis is completely wrong. That said, I still think you’ll find my observations interesting.
Friendly UAW Member and father
In the first segment, a GM employee and UAW member (Friendly UAW Member) recounts her experience working at an assembly plant. She comes across as a sunny and nice person. She voices no politically radical opinions—or, at face value, any political opinions at all. Nor does she discuss the terms that the UAW are seeking for their new contract. Based on her name and voice, it seems as if she is a black woman. (I’m making this observation for reasons I’ll get to in a minute.) She describes her job, support for the strike, and rightly voices her pride in helping to assemble the Silverado and Sierra. Her hope is that corporate management and the UAW can come to an agreement quickly, “[s]o that we can all be on the same page and let’s just keep building cars.”
Later in the segment, Friendly UAW Member’s father says that he worked for GM for 43 years. He notes that, unlike when he was on the job, workers can no longer afford the cars that they make, much less support a family. He also claims that executives at the Big Three receive salaries that are disproportionate to, and exorbitant when compared with, the wages paid to employees.
Note the position of this segment among the three: it comes first. It is being used to introduce listeners to the UAW strike. Yet it does not tell us why the strike is happening. The demands of the UAW are not explained. The father’s emphasis on lower wages and the disparity between employee and executive pay indicates that the strike might have something to do with income inequality. But apart from this vague hint, we’re left in the dark.
This might be because the UAW’s position is extreme. Among other things, the UAW is seeking a 46% raise in member wages, a 32-hour work week, COLA adjustments, additional pension contributions, and the end of a two-tier hiring system that pays one set of workers market wages, and the other inflated salaries based on prior union contracts. The segment also includes no response from management or detail on its positions. This might be because management’s statements on the strike have been dramatic: Ford’s CEO said that, if adopted, the UAW’s asks would bankrupt the company.
It’s debatable whether he’s right about that. But it’s unlikely that most Americans would view the UAW’s demands as reasonable. This negative perception of the strike could very much extend to Core NPR Listeners. The professional upper middle class, whether Republican or Democrat, has traditionally been hostile to unions. If the CNLs were aware of the UAW’s asks, it is possible they would not support the strike. This could cause a problem for Joe Biden, who is ostensibly supporting the UAW. In advance of the 2024 election, the Democratic Party does not want two groups in its coalition—union members and the technocratic elite—to be in conflict.
When viewed in this light, NPR’s decision to make the introduction to the strike a human-interest story, as opposed to a substantive piece about the dispute between the union and management, is telling. By making the focus of the piece a vague left-wing shibboleth—“income inequality is bad”—NPR avoids alienating the CNL from the UAW member.
By the same token, the particular UAW member the producers chose for the story is (presumably) a black woman—and thus also a member of two identity groups that generally garner instant respect from Core NPR Listeners. A white male UAW interviewee, by contrast, would be much less likely to engender such an instant, and positive, emotional response from Core NPR Listeners. He might have even been one of the thousands of UAW members who said they voted for Donald Trump! Making the segment interviewee a member of a group that is venerated by CNLs is another way to keep them on side and avoid a potentially fractious spat between two groups within the Democratic coalition.
Bernie
The next interviewee is Senator Bernie Sanders. Bernie is a self-proclaimed socialist and the leader of the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party. As such, he may be viewed with suspicion by some CNLs, particularly those who identify as “Obama Democrats”—left-wing on matters of culture and taste, but anti-union and economically libertarian. If the purpose of the segments is to get CNLs to support the UAW’s actions, he was a risky pick.
Bernie’s statements, however, aren’t inflammatory. He builds on the sentiments voiced by the Friendly UAW Member’s father, namely that auto executives are overcompensated. He notes that over the past 50 years, executive pay has increased dramatically, and disproportionately to that of the average employee. He also says that many Americans are having trouble paying for childcare, healthcare, and transportation costs. Bernie concludes by voicing support for the strike, saying that “the UAW is fighting back. And I think in a sense, they’re fighting back for all of America.”
While we can quibble with some of Bernie’s statements—the stat he gives on executive pay is an average, not a median, and accordingly less accurate; and he ignores the fact that many executives receive most of their compensation in equity, which may or may not end up being lucrative—they’re mostly anodyne. His argument is a rehash, with statistics, of the one from the first segment: “income inequality is bad.” As noted, this is a position with which most Americans—and almost all CNLs—likely agree. If this is what the CNL understands the UAW strike to be about, he is less likely to oppose it, and accordingly more likely to remain in good standing as a member of the Democratic coalition.
Official Analysis ™ from the Brookings Institution
The final segment is with a fellow of the Brookings Institution (Brookings Fellow). The Brookings Institution has been a pillar of the American Establishment since its founding in the 1910s. The original think tank, it comprises a “shadow government” of technocratic experts, who, through application of supposedly neutral principles, will make public policy more effective. While left-wingers will tell you that Brookings is “center right,” it’s not and never has been. Brookings represents power. And power, since 1932, has been left-wing.
As such, we might expect Brookings Fellow to do two things: first, to offer background on the UAW and management’s dispute; second, to offer background analysis that may serve to tease out or correct some of the claims made by Friendly UAW Member, her father, and/or Bernie. He does neither.
Brookings Fellow provides some statistics that give further substantiation to the father and Bernie’s arguments that income inequality has grown over the past 50 years. He leavens this observation, however, by noting that while executive pay has increased, the raw wages of all income levels have increased during the same time period. In addition, he says, living standards of all income levels have improved dramatically since 1970, through, among other things, advances in computer and medical technology. So while income inequality is a problem, life in America remains good and is improving.
When viewed factually, this analysis is deficient, and should have offered further context to interrogate (or correct) the claims made by Friendly UAW Member, her father, and Bernie in the earlier segments. Salient points include:
Unique historical position of America from 1945 to 1970. World War II occurred from 1939–1945. At its conclusion, the industrial base of every country had been either destroyed entirely or severely disrupted—except, of course, for America. While Western Europe and Japan rebuilt—using American money to do so—the USA churned out consumer products that it sold in both regions. The Big Three’s market share was enormous. And UAW members shared in the profits generated by that market share, by negotiating contracts with generous terms—in both pay and benefits. These were affordable during this time of plenty. They weren’t after Western Europe and Japan recovered in the 1970s. It is unreasonable for UAW members to expect that a contract in 2023 would bear any resemblance to one negotiated in 1953.
Government regulations. In the past 20 years, government regulations—requiring higher fuel economy, and “safety” gimmicks like rear-view cameras and motion sensors—have made new cars much more expensive. The average price of a new car is now $48,681. It is accordingly hard for all people—not just assembly line workers—to afford a new one.
Government promotion of electric vehicles. The Biden administration has been forcing and incentivizing the Big Three to invest heavily in electric vehicles. These cars have extensive engineering and production costs. And despite massive government subsidies, they aren’t selling well. If Democratic administrations stopped pressuring the Big Three to devote resources to electric vehicles, they would have much more money to spend on higher wages and better benefits for workers.
Government promotion of free trade with non-peer countries. Since 1945, the United States has generally promoted free trade and the open exchange of goods across borders. This has held true regardless of whether the country with which the USA is trading is an industrialized, peer country with labor and environmental protections that are similar to her own (actually enforced laws, not just those on the books). After the collapse of the Soviet Union, and opening of the second world to global markets, this trend accelerated. NAFTA, which promoted a relatively open market between Canada, the United States, and Mexico, encouraged the Big Three to move much of their production base to Mexico, where labor costs were cheaper. This transition had a devastating effect on the UAW and its members, who were terminated in large numbers as domestic production and assembly lines were shuttered. In light of Biden’s statement to be the most “pro union president in history,” it is particularly ironic that the Democratic Party—and Biden himself—aggressively promoted NAFTA and opposed President Trump’s efforts to replace it. While negotiated by the HW Bush administration, NAFTA was enacted by the Clinton White House, and celebrated by Barack Obama (and his vice president, Joe Biden).
Government promotion of mass immigration from the third world. In the past 50 years, the population of the United States has increased dramatically. Most of this population growth is from immigration, rates of which went up after the US liberalized its entry laws in 1965. Most of these immigrants have come from the third world, and are low-skilled and poorly educated. The more workers in a country, the larger its labor pool. The larger the labor pool, the lower the wage an employer can offer to attract employees. Immigrants thus lower the pay, and living standards, of the native-born. For this reason, Bernie used to oppose mass immigration, famously calling it a “Koch brothers proposal.” He has never explained why he changed his opinion on this issue.
When viewed politically, however, Brookings Fellow’s analysis is effective. He flatters the intellect of the CNLs, by pointing out that wacky Bernie’s gloom-and-doom description of life in America isn’t quite right. But he ultimately validates the general premise of all of the other interviewees—the UAW strike is about alleviating income inequality—without providing any detail or context that would cause the CNL to question the strike or its aims. It also provides the CNL with an easy out to avoid thinking about any of the factors mentioned above, which might cause him to question the policies of, and his allegiance to, the Democratic Party.
Conclusion
While I’m not sure whether the producers deserve credit for it—they may have drunk their own kool-aid—the NPR segments are brilliant political propaganda.
The UAW strike presents the Democratic Party with a problem. It involves one group within their coalition—union workers—making demands that may alienate another group within their coalition: upper middle class professionals. The NPR segments avoid discussion of the actual issues involved in the strike, which might annoy the CNLs, and cause them to criticize the union workers. Instead, the segments position the strike as a protest against a vague, catch-all problem—“income inequality”—with which CNLs are comfortable. And the person the segments highlight as making that protest—Friendly UAW Member—is from a group that CNLs venerate and give automatic deference.
The CNL thus no longer needs to investigate the UAW strike. NPR has papered over a potential fracture within the Democratic coalition, and enforced ideological discipline among its members.
Thanks for listening so I don’t have to. I’ve tried for analytical purposes but the tone of the speakers and background music are such ham fisted propaganda that I can’t stomach it. “You don’t want to kill babies, do you???”
Cannot stand ANYTHING about NPR! It reminds me of baby food, custard, Jello. And every time I get into one friend's car it's on. The lies purr through the airways syrupy sweetly. I'll just stop there.