David Madland

Whenever Dr. David Madland of the Center for American Progress writes, Karl Marx must look up from the fiery torments of Hell and smile. According to Madland, director of the American Worker Project at the Center for American Progress (CAP), American media outlets should revert to the Soviet era, routinely churning out tedious Pravda-style articles about how heroic workers received the Order of Lenin for selflessly boosting the nation’s industrial production. Exaggeration? Perhaps, but CAP is making the extraordinary claim that workers don’t get a fair shake from journalists. CAP, a liberal “action tank” whose stated aim is to “expose the hollowness of conservative governing philosophy, and challenge the media to cover the issues that truly matter,” has decided to bring Marxist class warfare to its media bias research.

In Madland’s recent study, “Journalists Give Workers the Business: How the Mainstream Media Ignores Ordinary People in Economic News Coverage,” he argues that the views of workers are ignored by the capitalism-loving mainstream media. He found that “the perspective of workers is largely missing from media coverage, while the views of business are frequently presented.” The study examined 480 news reports about employment, the minimum wage, trade, and credit card debt. Those economic issues “were chosen because they represent a range of economic issues that impact ordinary citizens and that many citizens have defined opinions about.” The reports appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, and CNBC in 2007. Among the study’s findings were the following: