AMERICA 2022

These are four rail workers. Here are seven more…

And here’s one last one…

These are the people headed toward a major railway strike, yet in all of our major media outlets, there is not a single headline picture of the workers. CNN is still reporting on the queen, the queen, queen. Thank God, William extended an olive branch to Harry. USA Today, like many others, is reporting on the potential effect on Amtrak in their left web column, beside a major story about (wait for it) pro athletes having “eroding rights.” Fox News is reporting on the “woke Department of Defense.” Even MSNBC, from which I would expect more, has four stories related to Meghan and the monarchy on its MSNBC Daily roundup. Two others are about the former president.

The only major outlet that has given the story of the impending rail strike front-page web coverage today is The New York Times. Yet, that story makes the workers out to be the villain — a “threat” — to the supply chain. The strike could “harm the economy.” I couldn’t find a single major piece in our press today that gave voice to the workers. Lots of pictures of trains. Lots of photos of shipping containers and annoyed commuters. Lots of whiny quotes about how we are just getting back to normal, come on! But not a single profile of a rail worker. Not a paragraph about working conditions, unfair and undignified pay, or the record year of profits rail companies had last year.

I finally found why the workers are potentially striking. After too much digging, a piece by the The Guardian today reported the reasons — the only outlet to use any adjectives about worker schedules or conditions.

The major national media does not seem to be willing or able to report from the perspective of actual working people. We only seem to report from the privileged perspective of America’s great corporations. Does the mainstream media ever tire of the corporate puppetry? Story after story about this rail strike is about just how inconvenienced we will all be by rising prices, commuter rail shut-downs, and the cost of new automobiles. And just like that, once again, we are blaming inflation and the disruptions of our “seamless” modern life on those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.

Railway corporations, like BNSF Railway, owned by Berkshire Hathaway, reported record profits last year. BNSF is, according to its website,
“one of the largest freight railroad networks in North America, with 32,500 miles of rail across the western two-thirds of the United States.” In fact, BNSF Railway and Union Pacific — the country’s two largest and most profitable railroads — make up over 50% market share. The Railway is worth $88 billion. In 2020, it took in over $29 billion in revenue.

And yet their workers are working harder, longer hours, and under worsening conditions, including not being granted (unpaid) leave for doctor appointments. Can we please tell that story? This week, 1,300 New York Times journalists have banded together to stay remote. They are refusing to come back into the office until their contract demands are met. Good on them. But, hey, maybe they could write something about the rest of America’s working-class people — the ones who don’t work from a laptop?

Those workers — and their important stories and perspective — are lost in our modern media mess.