Analysis:

This is an interesting story where from the very beginning channel 8 tries to pit perspectives or create tension that isn't necessary. In the opening comments the news reader asks the reporter if this "debate was going to get heated?" The reporter responds by saying "it will get quite heated." Interesting how a reporter can determine something before it happens.

The reporter then mentions two factories that have outsourced jobs for reasons of "cheaper labor," then leaves it at that without pursuing the reason. Next viewers hear from an expert with the Cato Institute without providing any explanation of this think tank. The Cato spokesperson then gives viewers numbers and percentages of job loss, but never verifies the number with a study or source. This would be important to viewers, since everything else attributed to the Cato spokesperson in the story is just opinion.

Next viewers hear from a representative of the AFL-CIO about trade and job loss. Again, no context or sourcing was provided for the AFL-CIO perspective. When the Cato spokesperson was interviewed the video b-roll was of US factory workers, but when the AFL-CIO representative talked they used video b-roll of workers in China and then a public square shot with a large picture of Mao. Viewers should ask themselves what the producers intent was with the video b-roll.

While this story provides two different perspectives on trade and jobs it offers viewers little content or context in which to base a decision. Comments provided by both experts were never verified by the reporter, not was there any mention of where the organization hosting the event, the World Affairs Council, stood on this issue.

Story:

WOOD TV 8 News reader - Thousands of West Michigan jobs have been outsourced to other countries. Tonight the World Affairs Council will be presented to nationally recognized experts in a debate at Aquinas College. That is where 24-hour news 8's Ann Schieber is who tells us that the discussion could get quite heated.

Reporter: Well Sue it will get quite heated because these individuals have debated before and that is what we've been told. And they also represent 2 very compelling cases, some 2 totally different points of view . One represents the viewpoint of labor, the other the viewpoint from the corporation.

You don't need to look very far in West Michigan to see the consequences of outsourcing. Electrolux in Greenville and Bosch in Kentwood are at least two companies who left town for cheaper labor elsewhere.

"Two hundred thousand people in Michigan work for foreign owned companies…half of them in manufacturing. These are opportunities being created by dollars flowing back into the United States," Daniel Griswold of The Cato Institute told 24 Hour News 8.

Griswold says only two to three percent of Americans lost their jobs to cheaper labor elsewhere.

Many times, it's the result of improved productivity and better technology. The jobs don't go away, they just change, according to Griswold, and they're often better jobs.

"So we can't freeze time and say the jobs we have today are gonna be the jobs we have ten years or 20 years from now. It doesn't work that way," Griswold adds.

Better jobs are not the way Thea Lee, a trade economist for the AFL-CIO, sees it. "Globalization is being used to undermine the right of workers in the United States," she says.

It's not so much the loss of United States jobs that bothers Lee, she says, but rather the hiring of workers in other countries who have few rights. She adds that needs to be considered in U.S. trade law.

"You can't compete by subsidizing your exports of products. But why is it okay to compete by, let's say, using child slave labor?" asks Lee.

Lee believes the United States should restrict the use of labor in other countries that do not offer the same protections in the U.S., then American workers can compete more freely.

Griswold and Lee spoke Monday night about "Outsourcing: Opportunity or Threat?" at the Performing Arts Center at Aquinas College, which was organized by the World Affairs Council of Western Michigan.

Total Time: 2 minutes and 30 seconds