I wrote a blogpost at FreePress

Now Big Media can hurt workers better

Hello, my name is Joe, I am a rank and file union member and on staff at the independent labor movement website UnionReview.

While we are primarily a labor news site, we also monitors news items that tie directly to the communication of the modern labor movement, such as Network Neutrality, the squelching of free speech and the spin doctoring of main stream media.

This ruling is a tremendous blow to the American working citizen. Information is power, the gathering of ideas based on different points of view is critical. When so very little can brainwash so many, what hope do we have.

Stand up people. Stand up for places such as Workers Independent News and Brain Labor Report, who continuously report on the airwaves about the struggles of the common working man and social injustices that never make it to the main stream.

Labor hardly got any attention in the main stream media before this was passed, and any if broadcast or published almost always portrays union workers as lazy, greedy and enemies of the public. A good case in point is an article I entitled NY Post spin-doctoring and the IATSE Stagehands, in which I retort the Rupert Murdoch News Corp.owned NY Post's so-called editorial about those greedy stagehands that closed down Broadway Thanksgiving week.

Does News Corp., Viacom, Disney, etc. have a stake in portraying unions as bad to the public? Absolutely, they have to negotiate with them at every step of their business, they are the employer, directly and indirectly of writers, screen writers, engineers, truckers, service employees, construction workers, screen actors, communication workers, stagehands, make-up artists and a host of other labor groups. It suits them well that there is a growing of ignorant people in this country that believe that unions are bad for them personally. They have the power to repeat in every media form their message and use the theory that if you continuously lie over and over the masses will believe it to be truth.

That suits Big Media and their corporations fine, by leveling the public against workers, by speaking generally without a fact basis, they perpetrate half-truths and outright lies that get embeded into the heart and mind of the public. By instilling hopelessness and fear they divide us into more and more fractions of smaller groups, pitting each against one another, dividing and conquering, making working people feel as if they are lucky to have a job, and that they must accept the final offer by employer.

This is not acceptable for my country, I thank the work of all those who contribute here, I regret that I have found this late, after seeing this at the AFL-CIO WebBlog, I couldn't help but get involved, firstly by writing a story on my new site Joe's Union Review the Anti-Union BlogSpot (theres reasons for the name), porting the story to UnionReview and MySpace, and by posting the links to our site and the AFL-CIO's story globally onto Labourstart, the global newfeed which reaches thousands of labor sites worldwide.

If we do not stop consolidation of the corporate main stream media and we give those same corporations complete control of the internet, our sources for free independent and diversified news and information will dry up.

Sites, such as freepress and UnionReview, that exercise our freedom of speech, that communicate important social matters and move people to take action may no longer be viewable or in the worst case scenario, have nothing to write about.

Thank you for putting this together, please contact me if anything I write at the site is erroneous, or if theres any other way I can help.

I leave you with this

"Such a small percentage try to make the world a better place, leaving the work to a scarce few. If those that did next to nothing did just a tiny bit, the world could be a better place for all." - me 7/7/07"