OCR Text |
Show THE SEARCHLIGHT Propaganda Drive Under Way (Continued from page 1) Big-business profiteers and their tory political stooges are promoting the uproar to “do a job” on labor and the administration. .At the same time anti-labor isolationists and defeatists, with their tongues in their cheeks, are against the General’s attack fish the muddied waters. in posing as defenders of and labor hoping to accept and publish day after day a mass of wire reports known to be a one-sided—and therefore false—presentation of news? Why does it play up the side of management while it plays down and distorts the side of the people who do the Nation’s work? Why does it contribute necessary disunity that may some day fascism, communism The answer is plays its despicable * It is hardly a coincidence that anti-labor propaganda campaigns of this type have been launched by the big-business press in Similarly concerted fashion at the beginning of every year lately—on whatever pretext is handiest at the time. money. revenue; ary and istent well-financed “40-hour starts in on the non-ex- week”. It so happens gress drive that a new January session of each year. of ConEach of these campaigns therefore has been de< signed to create public hysteria against labor and the administration, under cover of which Congress may pass reactionary and union-busting legislation. This year’s campaign is particularly dangerous, however, since it comes on the eve of the invasion of Europe, when our country urgently needs the highest degree of national unity of effort and purpose. The subject should have local elaboration. Utah’s propaganda mills are right up in the collar day after day pulling the load for gigantic business interests that have an axe to grind. Daily newspapers in Logan, Ogden, Salt Lake City and Provo lend themselves readily, and with apparent gusto, to the propaganda drive. Of course, the rural press follows the lead of its city brothers with unerring devotion, and with the same discernment as Mary’s little lamb. Why does substitute the daily propaganda press in the for news? State Why of Utah does it civil war? MONEY. Utah’s daily press role for personal and corpor- ate profits. Newspapers ness enterprises. They are privately owned busiare in business to make They make money through indirect through subsidies advertising from con- cerns able to pay; through sale—disclosed or otherwise—of their columns for feature articles and propaganda In 1943 it was Rickenbacker who fired the opening shot for the huge press campaign against labor on “absenteeism”; and 1942 started with an equally phony, reaction- or to unend in drives; and in other ways. For instance—and the instances are innumerable—one of the payoffs to Salt Lake dailies for their propaganda services to powerful business interests is the page “advertising” by enterprises that have no need at any time of that type of ad- vertising, and, aside from current announcements affecting public convenience, have no present need for advertising at all. For several months past the Union Pacific railroad has been running page “advertisements” at intervals in Salt Lake dailies—not to attract new or continued railroad business—but to pay the Salt Lake dailies for past, present, and future coloring of news affecting the Union Pacific; including news relating to its dealings with its employees. The Union Pacific has a difficult time handling the legitimate railroad business presented. It needs less business—not more business— for the duration of the war. But its employees threatened to strike and the Union Pacific felt the need of controlling public opinion. The Rio Grande has performed similarly, though on a smaller scale, as befits an outfit chroncalke in the hands of a receiver. The United States Steel Corporation sits in the same game. It, too, with its subsidiaries has current need of favorable “treatment” of news in its employee relationships. And, like the other “advertising” corporations, it has political objectives it wants (Continued on following page) |