![\"Covering](\"http:\/\/www.upress.state.ms.us\/images\/book-covers\/9781934110805.jpg\" "\\"Covering")
OXFORD, Miss. – Two hundred pro-union strikers once stood outside a\nMemphis factory, waving signs and protesting. Hoping for a large media
\nturnout, the strikers were dismayed when only one journalist showed up.<\/p>\n
\nOXFORD, Miss. – Two hundred pro-union strikers once stood outside a
\nMemphis factory, waving signs and protesting. Hoping for a large media
\nturnout, the strikers were dismayed when only one journalist showed up.<\/p>\n
That journalist was Joseph B. Atkins, a University of Mississippi
\njournalism professor who has worked as a reporter covering the
\nstruggles of Southern working people for 30 years. His new book,
\n“Covering for the Bosses: Labor and the Southern Press” (University
\nPress of Mississippi, 2008), tells the story of the strained
\nrelationship between the media and labor unions.\n<\/p>\n
\n“There is by and large a failure in the Southern press to really tell
\nthe story of Southern working people on a consistent basis,” Atkins
\nsaid. “This has contributed to the fact that Southern workers are the
\nlowest paid workers in the nation still even today, and the least
\nunionized.”<\/p>\n
The book focuses on post-World War II labor movement in the South. It
\ntraces the “fall of the textile industry” to the recent introduction of
\nforeign automobile industries to the region, all the while commenting
\non “biased or missing media coverage.”\n<\/p>\n
“The media press has worked with political leaders and other institutions in Southern society to keep unions out and to keep workers unorganized,” Atkins said. “There’s a power structure in the South that wants to maintain itself and doesn’t want to be challenged by a bunch of protesting workers.”<\/p>\n
In more recent years, the vocal attack has changed to a conspiracy of silence, Atkins said. There is a sense that the movement doesn’t exist anymore.<\/p>\n
“It’s not that reporters are anti-labor or anti-union, they just don’t know anything about them. Unions are just so absent from the normal business story in the South that they just don’t think about it,” he said.<\/p>\n
Atkins traveled all over the South while gathering information for the book. He interviewed workers, journalists, professors, immigrants and managers, and researched documentation at the Southern Labor Archive in Atlanta.<\/p>\n
Atkins worked in the textile industry himself, therefore the story this book has to tell is a personal one.<\/p>\n
“There is a certain autobiographical element to this book,” Atkins said. “My father worked in a textile plant, my mother was a seamstress in a garment plant. I come out of a blue-collar, working class background.”<\/p>\n
Atkins explains that the book brings his 30-year career full circle. One of his first stories as a reporter was to interview textile workers dying from brown lung disease. The workers had virtually no pension.<\/p>\n
“I reflect on that story in the book and how those people are probably dead now,” he said. “The plant has been shut down and sold because the whole textile industry is shut down.”<\/p>\n
Atkins is editor of the book “The Mission: Journalism, Ethics, and the World” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2002). Providing a foreword to his new book is Stanley Aronowitz, whose books include “Against Schooling: For an Education That Matters,” “Left Turn: Forging a New Political Future” and “The Knowledge Factory.”<\/p>\n
For more information about “Covering for the Bosses,” visit http:\/\/www.upress.state.ms.us<\/a> \/. For more information about the journalism program at UM, go to http:\/\/www.olemiss.edu\/depts\/journalism\/<\/a> .<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"