I read the Wall Street Journal every day. In the past year, I've noticed gradual slippage of objectivity where a left-of-center viewpoint breaks through more and more. The best arguments from the left are included, while the worst arguments are excluded and not scrutinized and only weak arguments from the right-of-center are included. Because I read a lot of news, I know a lot of the right-of-center arguments and the left-of-center arguments and can tell when good and bad arguments are being used or omitted, but an article from today's Wall Street Journal is a great example.
The article is about the Protect the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. Democrats passed this in Congress with the support of 5 Republicans, but its future in the Senate looks rocky. By this fact alone, the reader (and the writers) should assume a certain strength of arguments from both sides.
The first two sentences are innocuous, "most significant change to labor law in decades", unions pressuring Biden, and the vote count. Then this:
"Backers say the legislation would be a major advancement in employer rights..." followed by "[Opponents] assailed the bill, saying it would trample on state laws and endanger the flexibility that ride-share and delivery and drivers enjoy."
Ask yourself, right now, with the little information you have, whom do you support at this point in the article? I'm obviously right of center, but the "assailers"' argument seems much narrower and weaker than the supporters--"major advancement in rights" vs. "trample on state laws" and "less flexibility" for an extremely narrow set of employers. Do these summaries of the two sides seem relatively balanced? Perhaps the writers did use the best summary for the opponents, though, let's continue.
The next paragraphs are inside baseball paragraphs and are fine. Then in the sixth paragraph, the article provides the first concrete piece from the bill: $50,000 penalties for employers who violate the National Labor Relations Act and a 10 day timeline for union-employer negotiations to commence. Since there's no context for the fine (what is the current fine, what would be the actual practical implications) and no implications of the second, my first reaction was that these actually sound reasonable and fairly innocuous.
Then the harmful impacts: makes it easier for gig workers and franchised workers to unionize. No specifics, unlike above, and no context. Plus, these are painted as positives: "easier to unionize." This would be a great time to talk about how California's legislators passed legislation that had unforeseen consequences, leading to many layoffs and then the voters overturned. Instead of saying this though, they spin it as Uber and Lyft spent $200M "allowing them to bypass a state law intended to provide...protections for drivers."
Is this objective and informative? The reader has no idea, from the story, that the California law was problematic, and the fact that a majority of Californians, after seeing some of the effects decided to undo it was minimized by describing this as corporations winning "a victory" by spending money on a ballot measure. Can we describe the PRO Act itself as "Unions win victory after spending X million dollars electing Democrats"?
This is the most obvious example of shading news coverage according to political bias. No one should consider this description as objective and high quality journalism. I don't know how newspapers work behind the scenes, but I don't understand how editors allow this.
Next there's more inside baseball, mentioning the effect on filibuster, criticism of Biden from progressives, multiple paragraphs on unions effect on elections, and finally mention of the Reconciliation process.
There is no further discussion of the elements of the bill, and I am left thinking that either Republicans' opposition to this bill is disproportionate to the strength of their arguments or that this article is omitting a lot of details. Well, doing a search shows that it's the latter, which isn't surprising. While at this point, I don't have much trust that most news outlets will present the best right-of-center arguments, in this case NPR does describe the bill more than Wall Street Journal.
It describes five primary effects of the legislation: 1) Eradication of State Right to Work Laws 2) Outlawing company-sponsored meetings of employees to discuss unionization 3) Arbitration and mediation for first contracts 4) Outlawing the use of immigration status 5) monetary penalties.
#5 was the detail provided by Wall Street Journal's article. #1 and #2 primarily, and #3 to some degree explain why Republicans' opposition will be strong. Republicans obviously support states' rights and Right to Work laws, and the federal government coming in and nullifying laws passed in individual states would be a non-starter for Republicans. Outlawing company sponsored meetings would also be hugely problematic and calls for context in the story. Firstly, it seems like it may be a 1st amendment issue. Secondly, practically, banning employer-sponsored meetings and discussion of unionization seems a pretty radical and unnecessary way to prevent undue influence (which should be banned).
Neither of these were mentioned by the Wall Street Journal's article but are absolutely integral in understanding the opposition and the issue. They are also easily discoverable. Their absence from this story borders on negligence, but is clearly a sign of poor journalism, not just under-informing readers but attempting to bias them.
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