As Semafor recently reported, there’s been an active debate within The NewsGuild-CWA centered upon the question of a ceasefire in the ongoing war in Gaza.
[Note: I’m a member of TNG-CWA 32035 and spoke to the Executive Council in the meeting covered by Semafor expressing my support for a ceasefire position, and my belief that taking a position is consistent with the Guild’s history and values. For the purposes of this piece, I am focusing on the Guild’s news membership and history in news organizing, rather than the newer groups of union and nonprofit staff within its membership, none of whom are bound by newsroom standards of objectivity.]
Pushback from some segments of Guild membership, as reported by Semafor, has focused on the question of impartiality and public confidence in media objectivity. In Semafor’s report, a letter to The NewsGuild from the Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees, representing Dow Jones employees, argued that “[t]aking public positions on news events we cover damages the confidence our members have earned through decades of impactful reporting,” concluding that “[t]here is nothing for The NewsGuild to add.” Moreover, impressions of the internal and external shape of the debate suggest that some members of the Guild view taking a position as a significant deviation from the Guild’s norms and values, and that it represents a potential existential threat to the Guild’s historical role organizing within the news industry.
The sentiment is, to some extent, an understandable one: newsrooms and J-School programs often drill particular standards of objectivity into journalists and prospective journalists, and deviation from those standards can lead to removal from reporting assignments and potentially discipline and discharge from employment.1 Just last week, media reported that 34 Los Angeles Times journalists had been removed from coverage of Gaza for signing an open letter expressing horror at the targeting of journalists and criticizing western coverage of the conflict. [Note: The letter did not call for a ceasefire and largely echoed calls by news unions and professional organizations globally denouncing violence toward journalists and attempts to block media access.]
Standards of objectivity and their application by media outlets have been malleable and dependent on employer opinion. Historically, such standards have also been weaponized against newsroom organizing by employers, with publishers questioning whether union membership would compromise the impartiality of reporters.2 But those same standards, though often contested by the Guild as mandatory subjects of bargaining and more broadly as topic of reasonable dispute, have often been internalized by journalists as central to their professional identity and credibility, particularly within large, more prestigious legacy newsrooms.
There’s reasonable debate, especially in the modern media and political climate, as to whether such stringent standards of objectivity continue to hold value. The trap of seeking objectivity to a fault can easily lead to giving extreme, fringe viewpoints disproportionate weight in coverage for the sake of “evenhandedness,” and can replicate and reinforce systemic social problems.3 More generally, there is reasonable debate as to whether true objectivity is an achievable goal. The historian Hayden White argued in Metahistory (1973), which became widely influential within the field of history, that the simple act of writing narrative about events is a subjective process by which the author’s biases shape narrative, alongside bias shaping the information included or excluded from narrative. In fact, the very notion of objectivity has always been contested terrain in journalism, and in certain periods (notably the 1930s, during the Guild’s founding) journalists have held more nuanced views of objectivity as a desirable, but unachievable, goal to which journalists should strive.4
In breaking down the framework to the dispute, three facets to the pushback can be readily identified. Two are interrelated: the question of standards of objectivity, and the question of the Guild’s historical norms and values regarding political activity. The final one is ultimately a political question: if the Guild is able to speak, then what should it say?
The Guild’s History
Setting aside the question of what should be said — I have my opinions, but those aren’t productive unless there’s agreement on whether the Guild can and should speak at all — and (mostly) setting aside the thorny question of objectivity in reporting, establishing the Guild’s historical norms and values is a fairly simple exercise.5
“A Radical Trades Union”
The Guild (then the American Newspaper Guild) was founded by Heywood Broun, a popular columnist who championed reporting as a tool to correct social injustice. Although initially founded independently, it found a home in the progressive Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1937 after a brief affiliation to the American Federation of Labor, embracing industrial unionism as an organizing model and extending membership to news employees beyond reporters. An award in Broun’s name is still awarded by the Guild to journalists under the mandate of “encourag[ing] and recogniz[ing] individual journalistic achievement by members of the working media, particularly if it helps right a wrong or correct an injustice[.]”
In fact, the question of social responsibility and journalism was key in the Guild’s founding. During its second convention, Guild delegates adopted a resolution stating:
"Resolved that the American Newspaper Guild strive tirelessly for integrity of news columns and the opportunity for its members to discharge their social responsibility; not stopping until the men and women who write, graphically portray or edit news have achieved freedom of conscience to report faithfully, when they occur— and refuse by distortion and suppression to create—political, economic, industrial and military wars . . .”6
Publisher resistance was stiff, with industry publications blasting the Guild as a “radical trades union,” and condemning closed shop agreements as a “threat to the free press.”7 Embrace of the Guild within the profession was far from universal; some journalists resisted “union,” preferring instead to view journalists as autonomous, individual professionals that succeeded or failed on merit, in echo of employer and trade association positions. Guild opponents highlighted political activism — such as the Guild’s move to use union funds to support Spanish republicans in 1937 — as a point of alienation.8 The Guild’s early years were far from an unbroken history of social advocacy, and political activity remained a point of contention; by the end of the 1940s, a more conservative Guild President, Milton Murray, testified to Congress naming alleged communist members and sympathizers within Guild ranks.
A History of Advocacy
Although contested at points, the Guild has a long history of advocacy beginning with its founding: one which it has recently celebrated.
More recently, the Guild took a stance of aggressive opposition to the Trump administration, with Past President Bernie Lunzer characterizing Trump as a “dictator” and pledging that journalists would continue objective coverage while opposing Trump’s assaults on the free press. In a separate statement, Lunzer, while acknowledging that journalists “typically don’t involve themselves in issues in the public realm,” decried attacks on journalists and argued that they must stand up for themselves and their right to report. Under current President Jon Schleuss, the Guild took a position after the Dobbs leak (but before the opinion was issued) affirming that abortion and reproductive care are healthcare rights: a clear position on a politically charged public matter under intense press scrutiny amidst an unprecedented Supreme Court leak. In the statement, it was observed that the Guild had first adopted a position in favor of abortion access in 1981.
This is in keeping with a long history recently highlighted favorably by the Guild. Then-President Lunzer wrote in 2017 that “the Guild has always been out front advocating for human rights,” further highlighting the Guild’s participation in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the Guild’s early participation in fights for LGBTQ+ rights. The Guild’s 80th Anniversary book, issued in 2013, additionally noted that the Guild’s founding was motivated by the personal encouragement of President Roosevelt (whose wife, Eleanor, was later a Guild member), and highlighted the Guild’s support of the Equal Rights Amendment and other social fights throughout its history.
The Guild’s Cold War era intervention in controversial matters of public concern wasn’t limited to purely domestic matters, and it courted even greater controversy in the Vietnam era. Delegates to the 1970 convention passed a resolution calling on Congress to “take immediate action to bring about a just peace as quickly as possible in Southeast Asia, including the immediate withdrawal of U.S. armed forces.”9 Guild members, such as the late David Eisen, took leading roles in the growing bloc of unions and union members against the Vietnam War, working with union leaders like Tony Mazzocchi to build anti-war opposition within organized labor. By 1971, the Newspaper Guild was one of only a handful of international unions to adopt positions against Vietnam, in stark opposition to the prevailing pro-war sentiment within the AFL-CIO and its affiliates.10
[Editorial Note 11/28/23: Since initial publication, I’ve discovered that the Guild was also a member of the National Labor Committee in Support of Democracy and Human Rights in El Salvador, an influential labor group founded by progressive unions in 1981 to oppose the Central American policies of the Reagan administration, and to oppose the AFL-CIO’s largely supportive stance toward the Reagan administration’s Latin American policy. I am including this information here. For more, see Battista, Andrew, “Unions and Cold War Foreign Policy in the 1980s: The National Labor Committee, the AFL-CIO, and Central America” in Diplomatic History, vol. 26, no. 3 (Summer 2002)]
In fact, the Guild has even weighed in on electoral politics, publicly supporting McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis for President; McGovern was the first Presidential endorsement ever issued by the Guild, and there is no evidence that the Guild has endorsed since 1988. These moves, like opposition to Vietnam, were not without internal and external controversy, with the greatest controversy by far raised by Presidential endorsements: some journalist members raised protest, and hostile columnists appealing to professional objectivity publicly said that some members would “burn their Guild cards.”1112
Though far from exhaustive, the record demonstrates that the outer boundaries of the Guild’s intervention in public matters have always been extensive, though not uncontested; at many critical junctures, the Guild has been ahead of the remainder of organized labor in its willingness to take controversial stances. The Guild’s history is clear: taking positions on matters of public concern and controversy is in keeping with its values and record, rather than a deviation from a stance of apoliticism.
Freedom to Act
There’s a simple, albeit speculative, reason for a history of activism through the union: that although journalists prize objectivity on the job, they are not without private conscience and belief, and their union affords them an opportunity to act that they lack in their professional life — and a vehicle to act outside of the jurisdiction of their employer.
Donna Cartwright, a union activist and member of the New York Times unit of the New York Guild, spoke in 2018 about her decision to sign a public letter in opposition to the Iraq War. Conscious of standards of objectivity and employer policies, she signed the letter through identifying herself through her union affiliation, rather than her employer; she faced no professional repercussions for doing so.
Although acting through the union does not guarantee immunity from professional reprisal, it does offer a level of freedom and protection to act that newsroom employees often lack. Consequently, it’s understandable that not only would news employees turn to their union in moments of public crisis, but that some would do so with increased urgency given their inability to act through other means.
This does not, as noted by the Lehigh Valley Newspaper Guild in 1983, call into question their journalistic objectivity and their professional integrity: journalists can report with the highest standards, while holding and expressing personal viewpoints through their union activity. Almost all claims to the contrary have historically been levied not by Guild members or leaders, but rather by employers, employer associations like the American Newspaper Publishers’ Association, and Guild opponents within the news profession.
Conclusion
In short: the Guild taking a position on the conflict in Gaza would not present a new, unique, unusual, or otherwise novel development, when judged against the Guild’s history, and even those members maintaining a commitment to mainstream standards of professional conduct and objectivity have defended the right to take action through their union.
This is a critical point. Regardless of what position the Guild takes, the Guild must defend its right to act as it sees fit, rather than adopting and internalizing positions historically pushed by employers to limit the Guild’s activity. It should not be controversial to suggest that the Guild take a political stance. If anything, the Guild should aggressively defend that right because of employer standards restricting the rights of Guild members to otherwise act, and to defend that the personal beliefs and values of a journalist have no bearing on their professional commitment or conduct.
Those journalists opposing action based on their understanding of professional ethics and objectivity should not be unfairly criticized for doing so, provided their opposition is offered in good faith. Prevailing employer standards would suggest exactly what they have concluded, and journalists in long-established bargaining units often come to the Guild as journalists first, without formed ideas of what being a union member means, let alone a union journalist. Their viewpoint is exactly what they’ve been taught is only right for journalists, and it’s difficult to expect them to conclude otherwise absent evidence or experience to the contrary.
What position the Guild takes on Gaza — if it takes one beyond the one already issued — should be a political question of what reflects the fullest opinion of the Guild’s membership, and how that opinion is expressed in a manner consistent with the Guild’s mission as a union historically representing news employees. Acting, or failing to act, will never be simple or without internal controversy; the Guild’s history demonstrates that, and the experience of other unions demonstrates that controversy is inherent in taking a position regardless of whether membership works in the media.
How the Guild acts, and whether it does, is a political question, not a question of whether the Guild can act. Should the Guild fail to take a position out of belief that the union has not acted and cannot act politically, it would represent a significant and unfortunate departure from the Guild’s history. The question should not be whether the Guild can speak: it should be what the Guild should say.
During the 2015 campaign to organize graduate employees at the University of Missouri, some professors within its well-respected J-School appealed to standards of objectivity and professionalism to discourage journalism graduate assistants from signing union cards.
See Bird, George L. and Merwin, Frederic E., The Press and Society (1955), p. 584. The question of objectivity and union membership has been historically identified as a major tension within newsrooms and the Guild, with the Guild contesting employer stances. “Another factor concerns the fear on the part of some members of the press that Guild membership tends to destroy a reporter's objectivity in those cases where he is assigned to cover a story dealing with organized labor. Some editors have said that they would not assign a Guild member to report a C.I.O. strike. The Guild's answer has been that the charge doesn't mean anything unless concrete evidence of coloration or bias can be proved against a Guild member covering a strike.”
See Schmidt, Thomas R., “Challenging journalistic objectivity: How journalists of color call for a reckoning” in Journalism (2023), published OnlineFirst through SageJournals ahead of print. Schmidt’s meta-analysis of trade discussion of objectivity and professional standards demonstrates a reckoning over standards of objectivity subsequent to the police murder of George Floyd in 2020.
See Glende, Philip, “Labor Reporting and Its Critics in the CIO Years” in Journalism & Communication Monographs, vol. 22, no. 1 (2020).
It should be stated that this is not intended to be an exhaustive or detailed exploration, but rather a summary intended to capture the general historical orientation of the Guild toward public stances on social and political issues.
Heldt, Henning, “Why The Guild Attracts Members” in The Press and Society (1955), p. 586. Henning identifies the primary non-economic motivations for the Guild’s founding as a desire to secure freedom for reporters to report honestly, without the advertiser, editorial, and publisher pressure arguably endemic in the news industry of the time.
See Glende, Philip M., “Trouble on the Right, Trouble on the Left: The Early History of the American Newspaper Guild” in Journalism History, vol. 38, no. 2 (2012).
Ibid.
“‘Peace’ Vote Set; The Newsman’s Role?” in The York Dispatch, April 16, 1971, p. 10.
See Lannon, Albert Vetere and Rogoff, Martin, “We Shall Not Remain Silent: Building the Anti-Vietnam War Movement in the House of Labor” in Science & Society, vol. 66, no. 44 (Winter, 2002/2003). By 1971, positions against the war had been adopted by the UAW, Amalgamated Clothing Workers, AFSCME, the Teamsters, ILWU, UE, the International Chemical Workers, the National Union of Hospital and Nursing Home Employees (usually known as 1199 after its founding local), the Newspaper Guild, the Textile Workers Union, and the American Federation of Teachers. At the time, few unions taking an anti-war stance were members of the AFL-CIO, placing the Newspaper Guild among a tiny minority within the federation.
At least some attacks on the Guild’s position came from employers and editorial boards. Opposition to Presidential endorsements among membership was far from uniform, and often centered on process — the issuing of endorsements through the Executive Council rather than some form of membership vote — rather than disagreement with the right of the union to endorse. Even those locals distancing themselves from the endorsement decisions aggressively defended the Guild’s right to issue them. In 1983, the Lehigh Valley Newspaper Guild, Local 49, submitted a letter to the Morning Call arguing that “endorsement . . . in no way compromises the objectivity of Guild members or restricts their ability to do their jobs,” further noting that “suggest[ing] otherwise, as the Call-Chronicle did in its Oct. 16 editorial, is to make second-class citizens of TNG and its collective membership.” The letter concluded observing “[T]he Lehigh Valley Newspaper Guild, Local 49, has chosen not to endorse a presidential candidate or to take a position on the endorsement of Mondale by its national leadership. But, if the membership chooses, it has the right to endorse whomever it pleases.”
Opposition to Vietnam appears, at least publicly, to have been less controversial: the only public controversy appears to have centered around a Washington-Baltimore endorsement of anti-war marches in Washington, D.C., which was eventually submitted to a membership vote and voted down. On a national level, however, the Guild maintained a position in favor of U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.