Atomic Playboy
Lifer
- Feb 6, 2007
- 16,432
- 1
- 81
OK. The first thing you see when you click on the site is an animated banner that says "Only 3 papers support the card check, more than 100 support it, don't be fooled by the unions' lies..." That immediately sets up the frame that all unions are lying. That's a fine opinion to hold, but when it's displayed so brazenly, one gets the immediate sense that the website is specifically going to present facts that portray unions in a bad light and ignore facts that present unions in a good light. It's an overwhelming bias presented straight from the get-go, and one must consider that when considering any of the information presented.
Now we look at the menu options. "Hijacking elections." Well that seems fair. "Facts" brings up a submenu that includes "Crime and Corruption", "Undemocratic Leaders", and "Unfair Labor Practices." For a site that bills itself as unionfacts, surely they must have come across some positive facts about unions in their research. But looking through the various pages on the site produces not one single positive fact. Perhaps that means that unions are universally bad, which is possible, but somewhat unlikely given just how long they've been around. If unions were actually as portrayed by the "facts" on this site, they would have been made illegal decades ago. Or maybe this is simply a website designed to highlight every negative aspect of unions without producing a single positive fact to make unions look considerably worse than they are.
Moving on down the page, we see a headline that states that 82% of workers don't want to join a union. Clicking the link takes us to a new site, laborpains.org, a blog-style site that is referenced by the Center for Union Facts even though it contains the disclaimer that the opinions presented are not those of the Center. The first three paragraphs display a very high level of anti-union slant, as quoted below (bold emphasis mine):
Reading this, we learn that unions are simply filled with Democrats who are deceiving the workers of America, and any polls that contradict this information are merely conducted by labor elites and their shady front groups. Even though the disclaimer exists that laborpains.org is a blog and the opinions are only those of the author, that disclaimer does not appear anywhere in this article nor on the page that linked to it. Readers would have to open the homepage of laborpains.org to get that information. That's disingenous at best.
Clearly this site is simply anti-union. It makes no attempt to appear objective in its presentation of facts. It tells one side of the story and conveniently ignores any facts that don't support it's presented view. By so blatantly portraying only one side of the story, any reader must be skeptical of the facts used; were these facts cherrypicked? What was omitted? Propaganda may be supported with facts, but it's generally not the best source of them.
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