Lets say you are at home on a Tuesday night and you are watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Maybe you have thought about a Botox injection and maybe you haven't, when all of a sudden during a commercial break you see an ad from the AFL-CIO that says "everyday in America 85,444 workers lose their jobs and 43.6 million people have no health insurance." You think, wow I've never heard that before. You pause and then you think where the hell are the happy people eatin' McDonalds and singing I'm Lovin it?

The show comes back on and you have completely forgotten about all that worker nonsense. Now you are wondering if your have six-pack abs or if you'll be the Pillsbury dough Boy for Halloween. Again, a commercial break and there is an ad from the Immokalee Workers and they are talking about the slave-like conditions they work in in order for Taco Bell to have cheap tomatoes and lettuce. You tuck your shirt back in and start to hear that Taco Bell music in your head and say Think Outside the Bun! Eight minutes later and this time an ad from UNITE and they are talking about sweatshops in Nicaragua. Now your getting pissed because not only are you not enjoying Extreme Makeover with the same mindlessness you usually do, but you don't get to see the twins in the Coors ads.

Later that night you think that this seemed weird that at every commercial break there was some message about workers and labor rights. Then you start to wonder whether or not there was some sort of a conspiracy or maybe an attempt to propagandize you with union ideology. Interesting. Everyday, most of us are exposed to, in one form or another, about 1,000 different ads trying to sell us something; trucks, beer, cell phones, pants, athletic shoes, fast food, computers, and any number of DVDs. That being said, we don't think of these ads as a conspiracy or an attempt to propagandize us. It is what we have always known, it's the norm. That's because most of us have embraced this belief that our primary function is to be consumers. Being workers or citizens have become secondary at best.

This assessment is exactly what author Christopher Martin has provided us in his book Framed!: Labor and the Corporate Media. In my job as a media monitor I have noticed the same sort of representation of people. In a study we conducted 4 years ago called Sins of Omission: Business and Labor Voices on Local TV News, we found that the overwhelming bulk of news stories with an economic focus tended to rely almost exclusively on business voices or economists. Rarely did we here from people who were speaking as workers, except with the occasional story about a labor dispute or at department stores when checkout clerks were interviewed about Holiday sales. More recently we have seen increased representation of workers in the news due to all the job loses and factory closings in this area, but even in these stories workers are relegated to the role of victims, not as people who can provide analysis of why jobs are leaving the state. Remember, there are experts that can enlighten us on these matters.

Everyday in the Grand Rapids Press we can read the Business section, but you will search hard and long for a workers section. It used to be that most newspapers in the US had labor reporters. Not so anymore. Now, it is true that the percentage of the American population that is unionized now (12%) is considerably less than it was in the post-WWII years (35-40%), but does that mean that reporters should make rhetorical questions like "are unions relevant?" (WZZM 13 reporter Peter Ross during a Labor Day story) The GR Press even profiles local business executives in every Monday edition. Imagine if they did the same thing for local workers? Hell, you can't even find good representation of workers on TV shows or movies. How I long for the days of Good Times and All in the Family.....minus the misogyny.

"....private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult and in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions." - Albert Einstein, 1949

Now we come to the point where we ask ourselves why is the news media just plain sucks when it comes to representing the realities of the bulk of the population, that of workers. It would be too easy to just say that the news is big business, so why should they not reflect their own interests. (For who owns the media on a big scale go to http://www.freepress.net/ownership/. For local ownership, go to the GRIID site). While this is true, it is not a sufficient answer. News is driven by advertising. For broadcasters it makes up 100% of their revenues, so it is safe to say that corporations buying airtime will have some influence over the content of news programming. However, if we look at how this how ad thing works it might shed more light on the paltry representation of workers.

When advertisers come to a broadcaster and buy airtime what do TV stations offer in return? It's not the airtime, it's eye balls. Broadcasters rely on ratings and so they are concerned with how many people are watching or listening to them. If they are doing well they can say to advertisers that they can guarantee them that on Wednesdays during West Wing that x amount of eye balls will be watching our station. This determines the amount the charge for ad time. The better ratings the higher price broadcasters can charge. In other words, broadcasters see us as ears and eyeballs to be delivered to advertisers.

By the time you pick up this issue we will be about to celebrate another national holiday, Labor Day. There will most likely be coverage of parades, music and food. This year there will also be a focus on the elections and who the two wings of the business party will be schmoozing with. You are not likely to find much discussion of trade policy, living wage campaigns, uninsured workers, sweatshops, cross-border labor organizing, or the numerous examples of creative and courageous worker led campaigns around the country or the world. I leave you with just a sampling of the power of organized workers and economic justice campaigns.

• Bay Areas Grocery workers fight for the future of America's Healthcare
• Immokalee Workers campaign against Taco Bell
• Utah Mine workers victory
• United Farm Workers Campaign Against Gallo Wines
• Iraqi workers organize amidst the US occupation
• The Burma Campaign
• National Labor Committee's recent campaigns
• Colombian Worker struggle against Coke

Jeff Smith, aka the CAFTA chicken, was recently with the NAFTA bunny at the Grand Rapids Kerry rally to inform his supporters on trade policies.