Typecasting the blue-collar lobby

ABOUT a month before the end of the legislative session the Illinois AFL-CIO saw a need for a show of force in Springfield. So the labor unions put together what was, by all accounts, one of the biggest mass rallies ever held on the lawn of the Statehouse.

Labor's display of strength through numbers turned into a media event in the hands of an impresario par excellence. Gov. James R. Thompson, one of the invited speakers, donned a hardhat for the cameras, then delivered what the Associated Press described as "some down home talking," including a promise to veto any anti-labor bills. Then he asked the folks over to the mansion for a beer.

"Governor Lubricates Protesters," said the Decatur Herald and Review. "'Thanksh Big Jim' — Labor Rally Becomes Executive Mansion Beer Blast," declared the Danville Commercial News at the top of page one. "At Labor Rally it was Jeers, Cheers, then Beer — and Thompson Wins," reported the Kankakee Daily Journal.

Quoting state police as the source for his 20,000 crowd estimate, Dennis McMurray waited until far down in the story before reporting in the Alton Telegraph that "the reception remained chilly" after "several hundred" took up the governor's invitation and consumed several kegs of beer. Jim Broadway in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat put the estimate at a lower 8,000. For the Belleville News-Democrat, Barbara Hipsman played down the beer angle. She said Thompson invited the union members to the mansion for a beer and let it go at that.

The Chicago Tribune printed a relatively straight story on page three (along with the mandatory gov-in-hardhat picture on the front page). The Sun-Times had space only for two page one photos (one of a protester putting a hardhat not on Big Jim but the Little Giant — the statue of Stephen A. Douglas).

The Arlington Heights Daily Herald didn't even mention the beer in its first story. But Jim Bray recovered the next day with a column crediting Thompson with a "public relations bonanza." By day's end, he said, the protesters were "swilling beer and soaking up the sun with the governor in his front yard."

AP filed two stories — one a report of the rally itself, estimating the turnout at 15,000; the other a feature using the "first they booed him, then they cheered him, then they drank his beer" angle. Many Illinois papers "twinned" the stories, giving both equal prominence. But the Rockford Register-Star ran only the beer story — "Thompson Exchanges Free Beer for Boos."

The Journal-Register in Springfield came up with the most imaginative treatment of all: a straight story plus a touch of New Journalism by Steve Slack.

"How could he?" gasped one of the city's most prominent socialites. "Everybody who was nobody was there. "Slack told me later he invented this quote in what he agreed might have been a mistaken attempt at "a tongue-in-cheek parody of the old social column." Slack described men in "Sears knit shirts" who "brought their own chili dogs." One unnamed

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invitee was said to have complained: "Where's the chow?" And another: "It's a helluva nice thing. He don't invite people up here all the time you know."

This typecasting of trade unionists as beer guzzling slobs who can't talk right is typical of news media that are generally indifferent to routine news of labor relations. "The press made light of it," remarked state AFL-CIO president Robert Gibson. "They made it look like the only reason we came down here was to drink the governor's beer."

If there is an anti-union bias in some Illinois newspapers, it should come as no surprise. This year for the first time the board of the Illinois Press Association, representing Illinois newspapers, ordered its lobbyist to work against unemployment and workers' compensation benefits "that are sapping the economic vitality of our state and undermining the confidence of business people." IPA President William Schroeder, publisher of the Grayslake Times and other Lakeland Newspapers, blamed the "union dominated General Assembly" for the benefit abuses. He urged fellow editors and publishers to use "both your support and 'press power' in the legislative battle." Heretofore the IPA confined its legislative interests to matters directly affecting newspaper operations.

Not many of the bigger papers can afford to be blatantly anti-labor in their news columns, though. The problem is more subtle than that. All reporters approach their assignments with certain pictures in their heads. They know their editors have pictures in their heads, too, and that the story is more likely to land on page one if it doesn't jar these preconceived images too severely. Besides, not many of today's college-educated journalists know very many blue-collar workers anymore. The opportunities for misunderstanding are everywhere.

For the Statehouse reporters, the ultimate frustration — the one they talk about over beer — is how to prevent Big Jim, the working man's friend, from stage-managing the news as thoroughly as he does now.

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