FREE THOUGHTS
OPINIONS WE
COULDN'T KEEP
TO OURSELVES
Free Press Wins National Award
Meanwhile, Seattle's mainstream media continue to bow before Lord Boeing
In mid-April word came from Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) based at the University of Missouri at Columbia that a Washington Free Press expose on chemically injured workers at The Boeing Co. had won as the best investigative magazine article in 1994 (issue 8). Mark Worth and I beat out Time, Newsday, and US News and World Report.
At the risk of smugness and self-congratulation, we take a moment to reflect on the recent award and the future of media.
The Free Press is honored by the award and pleased to receive national recognition. "It's All In Your Head" was a satisfying and important collaborative effort. However, the award also confirms what we already knew: Aggressive, hard-hitting reporting is a dying tradition in this country. Mainstream media outlets have better resources and more experienced reporters. But as long as gutless editors and advertisers control the "news hole," the result is nothing more than bland, uncontroversial product.
In that respect our success was no fluke. Our "do it yourself" journalism is honest and has nothing to lose. We had no offices (and still don't), and no resources other than a small grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
But that didn't prevent us from picking up the phone and talking to injured workers. We read government reports, we filed public disclosure requests. We went down to Labor and Industries and grilled their flacks (and nearly died laughing after we cornered director Mark Brown in the elevator). We talked to doctors and lawyers. Court records revealed that Boeing hygenists knowingly supplied gloves to workers that did not meet industry standards and dissolved in highly-toxic chemicals. When workers got sick, they were labeled malingerers, exposed to degrading examinations, and were literally told, "It's all in your head."
The result was a story about an industrial giant that exposes its workers to toxic chemicals with the complicity of state regulatory agencies and medical institutions.
We are by no means implying that the major media never covered the story. In the 1980's, P-I reporter Larry Werner broke the story of the sick Boeing workers at Auburn. His coverage was gutsy and sympathetic to the workers' plight, but we understand he ran into roadblocks in the editorial office. He left to work for Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who has investigated working conditions at Boeing. Since his departure, the story was unattended until we came along.
Not only is investigative journalism unpopular with editorial management types, it also conflicts with the story-of-the-month served up by Boeing's flacks. For instance, in May it was the 777 delivery and the company's new "corporate culture." On May 8, P-I reporter Karen West served up two full pages of Boeing "learning maps" and cute tales of Boeing execs reciting poetry. President Phil Condit tells a Salish Indian story about what to do if you are lost in the woods: "Stand still. The trees ahead and the bushes behind are not lost. Where you are is called here." Spare us, Phil. Don't you have several thousand workers you need to fire?
On the business page, West treats us to a nauseating profile of Boeing's "boardroom poet" David Whyte, who offers soothing gestalt therapy for the bruised souls of American corporatism. (Free Press reviewer Kent Chadwick panned his book in issue 15)
The point here is not to rail on the namby-pamby hand-holding that passes as journalism in this town. We do plenty of that. The point is to simply accentuate the difference between our brand of truth-seeking and theirs. The dominant brand of journalism is public relations, and "corporate communications." Our journalism is old-fashioned, muckraking in the tradition of Ida B. Wells and Carey McWilliams. We hope to expose the oppression of working people and seek justice. Believe it or not, what you hold in hands right now might be the last of an American original.
-Eric Nelson To e-mail Eric Nelson:
WAfreepress@gmail.com
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Contents on this page were published in the June/July, 1995 edition of the Washington Free
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