EDITORIAL $30 million can make media shy of truth
Somewhere in the dim haze of history the first newspaper appeared,
except that it was probably written on papyrus or even carved in stone. Some
enterprising soul wanted to get the word out -- a death in the family, a little
local gossip, an enemy at the border or all of the above. The idea grew, and
newspapers became horses of many different colors, including good and bad.
There are many brands of bad. Good journalism, though, has developed certain
constants, including fairness, an honest search for the truth and, yes, at
times, entertainment.
Each of these characteristics is situated on real-life shifting
sand. Truth, goodness and beauty are universal aspirations rather than
anyones personal property. We at NCR wrestle with them every week.
We have just been vindicated in a $30 million lawsuit, but next week again we
will be juggling the real and ideal and trying to make sense out of life.
Our founding mission statement expresses the ideal: a
newsweekly that reports and comments on the church in the modern world ...
pressing for as much information as can be had about events and their meaning
... constantly assessing the overall situation of Catholic life ... the
orientation is toward reporting the news, toward enterprise and relevance,
toward dialogue with practically everybody.
On good days we live up to that standard; the other days we
try.
We live in a privileged time and in an amazing country where
openness and freedom of speech and the uninhibited search for truth are not
only fiercely protected by law but cherished in the hearts of the people. It
wasnt always so, and in some places still isnt. Our history is full
of tales of killing the messenger, and not just metaphorically. Tyrants and
despots, past and present, gained and still gain power or wealth or both by
muzzling the press. Free speech is a powerful agent that, let loose, can play
havoc with injustice and other ills of society.
And even in America the lofty theory is getting dented in
practice. Nobody is cutting off the messengers head. Today, the trend is
toward killing the truth softly. It is done with lawyers and lobbyists and
great gobs of money.
Some would say a $30 million suit isnt doing it softly.
One week in 1994 we heard that the small-engine company Briggs
& Stratton was in dispute with local unions and sent off a reporter to look
at it. There were probably a dozen good stories vying for our attention that
week but the Milwaukee case was the one we chose. Who knows what we would have
done had we known what covering the story would cost us?
Reporter Leslie Wirpsa came back with a complex story of
workers jobs and livelihoods weighed in the balance against corporate
profits. The workers were hurting and seemed to be getting a raw deal. The
articles painted the picture. Briggs & Stratton sued.
For three years now we have been constrained from commenting much
on the case -- a $30 million suit scares the daylights out of the average
citizen, which of course was what Briggs & Stratton had in mind.
But now a federal judge has thrown out the suit -- or what was
left of it after the Briggs and Stratton corporation, its president John Shiely
and company labor attorney Thomas Krukowski dropped out as the day of reckoning
drew near, leaving their mouthpiece, George Thompson, to bear the heat of the
day on his own (though fortified by Briggs & Stratton money). Now,
therefore, it must finally be safe to quote our own original commentary as
presented in Judge C.N. Cleverts dismissal ruling:
This weeks cover story shows with stunning clarity how
corporate decisions hurt ordinary people and what they reveal about
decision-makers who live in either denial or moral blindness.
What makes this weeks story on Briggs & Stratton
particularly painful is that among the decision-makers involved -- among those
seemingly blind to the consequences of their choices -- are Catholics educated
in Catholic institutions.
So that nobody need take NCRs words for it, here are
the judges further words:
In this case, it is indisputable that a public controversy
existed. Beginning in the late 1980s, Briggs & Stratton, once the largest
employer in metropolitan Milwaukee, began transferring jobs from its Milwaukee
area plants to plants in Murray, Ky., Poplar Bluff, Mo., and Juarez, Mexico. On
May 17, 1994, in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the
company announced the transfer of 2,000 Milwaukee area jobs to nonunion
locations in the southern United States while the corporation was earning
record profits.
It is gratifying to see the judge conclude, that the
defendants [thats NCR] thoroughly investigated the facts
underlying the articles, and point out again the lengths to which we
went, in vain, to get the Briggs & Stratton side of the story.
The Briggs & Stratton action has been often referred to as a
SLAPP suit, meaning a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, words
that speak for themselves. Such suits have lately grown common and are designed
to make individuals or seemingly more vulnerable media think twice before
criticizing big corporations or interests. It is, in other words, a bullying
tactic rather than a search for justice, never mind a search for truth.
This same tactic seems to have been used by Briggs & Stratton
against the union -- in that case for $17 million. This takes us back to where
we all came in: the question of justice in Milwaukee. The SLAPP suit against
NCR helped for three years to blur the picture of what the transfer of
union jobs to nonunion areas did to the lives of thousands of people.
It is part of NCRs mission to look into stories like
that -- and we will continue to do so.
National Catholic Reporter, April 24,
1998
|