AP, NYT Desperately Downplaying and Ignoring Mass. Move to Limit Union Health Bargaining
Gosh, after Republican Governors Scott Walker and John Kasich succeeded in championing legislation curtailing many collective bargaining rights of unionized state and municipal employees in Ohio and Wisconsin, respectively, the establishment press had the meme all set. The GOP, conservatives, and Tea Partiers are enemies of labor and the middle class, while Democrats, liberals, and progressives are their champions. Then along comes bluer-than-blue Massachusetts. As the Boston Globe reports , the Bay State's House “voted overwhelmingly last night (Tuesday) to strip police officers, teachers, and other municipal employees of most of their rights to bargain over health care, saying the change would save millions of dollars for financially strapped cities and towns.” The Associated Press's beat reporters and editors must be beside themselves. Despite having nationalized Wisconsin-based collective-bargaining stories since February, three searches (” Massachusetts health ,” Massachusetts union ,” and ” Massachusetts unions ,” all not in quotes) indicate that it was still carrying nothing relating to the Bay State's situation at it main national site as of 7:30 this evening . The AP's Massachusetts wire finally carried a six-paragraph unbylined story at 5:05 p.m., which read in part: Mass. Gov.: “Dial down rhetoric” on union fight
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on April 27, 2011. Filed under