This is the third and final installment in a three-part series on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) published on Global Investment Watch.
Corporate Propaganda in the Information Age
One of the great benefits of the Internet is that it is the ultimate equalizer against corporate misinformation. It allows citizen activists and public interest groups to quickly and cost-effectively counteract right-wing propaganda. While companies shell out gobs of money to glitzy public relations firms to produce misleading TV infomercials and radio ads these days, organizers in the progressive community are reaching millions of citizens every day by tapping away on their keyboards and posting low-cost videos on You Tube – in real time, no delay. With these new, more flexible methods of communication comes the potential to dramatically increase the power of the message and saturate the marketplace of ideas and opinion building.
Corporations and their misinformation peddlers have a real problem right now. Traditional forms of media – daily newspapers, weekly magazines, television and radio – no longer reach audiences once their exclusive domain. Today, a myriad of communication channels have opened up for organizers and policy advocates, making it far easier to interact with a much larger audience on a global scale. Internet-based tools for successful communication have radically changed the playing field for progressive groups, enhancing the effectiveness of campaigns in dramatic ways. The fight over the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) – legislation that would enhance the nation’s middle class at the cost of the corporate elite – is a case in point.
As American jobs evaporate by the tens of thousands each week, companies like Wal-Mart, Best Buy and McDonald’s fund front groups (with shareholder money) to peddle the same old slop; that organized labor is “overstepping” with EFCA, that the act would deny workers the right to “choose” unionization by “taking away the secret ballot” and that it would send the economy into a “tailspin” if enacted (as if it isn’t already in one thanks to decades of unchecked executive excess and uncontrolled risk taking on Wall Street). No matter that none of these claims are true. The public relations executives purport to be experts in “telling the story” and reaching “targeted audiences” and indeed sell themselves as such to anyone with a checkbook. But all too often, the goods these firms sell (so called “crafted messages”) are utter lies and based on fabrication. My colleague at Global Investment Watch, John Richardson, touched upon this point in his post earlier this week: “This is a relatively sophisticated approach developed by the pretty boys and girls in the corporate PR departments who discovered that they could graduate from college with a communications degree by packaging their bullshit for pay.”
But there is a problem for Alice in Wonderland. Companies are finding that their porage of propaganda has become old and stale for the general public. The playing field of communication has leveled and the cost-benefit equation of using high-priced PR firms isn’t nearly as attractive as it once was. Deep pocket businesses and their public relations consultants can no longer exclusively own “the story” they want to tell. Even a multinational company like Wal-Mart, one of the largest in the world, is forced to compete with several thousand “info hounds” aspiring to become the next Drudge Report or Huffington Post via blogs, email alerts, RSS feeds, Facebook pages – you name it – all tools and techniques available and affordable to almost anyone with a laptop. You don’t even need an internet account these days. And you know what? Most people in the blogosphere community are young, liberal, despise bureaucracy and don’t trust corporate elites. This is really bad news for establishment public relations firms. The looking glass has been shattered. So where will their next paycheck come from?
Interestingly, some public relations firms are picking up business from unions and other left-leaning groups. Organized labor has amassed a sizable war chest to combat the corporate-funded misinformation campaign currently underway against EFCA. By some estimates, the AFL-CIO, Change to Win and its affiliates may be positioned to spend dollar-for-dollar against companies fighting the legislation in traditional media outlets. Clearly, this is one fight that labor has far too much at stake to back down from. This raises an unusual situation for liberals – not only is labor attempting to go toe-to-toe with the corporate propaganda machine in the traditional media on a specific issue (something seldom done), union activists should also hold a significant edge in new media outlets as well, if the recent army of Obamamania organizers join the effort by unions to rebuild America’s middle class. As with any sweeping legislation, successful passage of EFCA will depend on building a broad-based coalition. This coalition must include all those bloggerheads out there in cyberspace capable of reaching diverse audiences to influence public opinion, one click at a time.
What does this mean for EFCA? The prospect of passage at this stage is anyone’s guess but depending on who you ask, the environment at the moment is looking as promising as it ever has been since the 70’s for enacting comprehensive labor law reform. If new media outlets can be brought under the progressive tent quickly, then the prospect of real free choice at work will be dramatically strengthened. This much is assured; it will be close, it will be a fight and it will cost political capital to get done. Are the Democrats, led by President Obama, up to the task? Your inbox over the next few months may hold a hint as to how this battle will turn out.
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