Labor journalist Mike Elk (In These Times, 5/16/11) made an excellent point after watching NBC host David Gregory interview Newt Gingrich on Sunday's Meet the Press (5/15/11). Elk wrote:

Speaking yesterday on Meet the Press, Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said that "the Obama system of the National Labor Relations Board [NLRB] is basically breaking the law to try to punish Boeing and to threaten every right-to-work state."

While Meet the Press host David Gregory vigorously challenged Newt Gingrich on details of his personal life, he failed to challenge Gingrich on his false assertion that the NLRB was breaking the law by finding that Boeing punished workers for striking in Washington state by moving a planned new production line there to nonunion South Carolina. Despite the NLRB complaint against Boeing being one of the most high-profile NLRB cases in decades and entirely consistent with past legal precedent, Gregory failed to say anything.

His decision not to challenge Gingrich on the Boeing case is especially troubling since the main sponsor of Meet the Press is none other than Boeing. The top of Meet the Press' website proudly boasts that the show is "sponsored by Boeing."  No other corporation is listed so prominently as a sponsor on the website. In addition, Boeing is the exclusive sponsor of Meet the Press'  iPhone app.

This reminded me of Gregory's response last year when ABC's This Week started posting factchecks (courtesy of Politifact) of their guests on their website:

An "interesting idea," Gregory allows, but not one the NBC show will be emulating. "People can factcheck Meet the Press every week on their own terms."

I guess that's especially true when the subject is a sponsor.

Admitting "the temptation to join the growing legions of iPhone admirers is strong," independent reporter Megan Tady (In These Times, 7/2/09) is discussing "what's stopping me from signing up." Her own personal decision is based on the fact that "purchasing an iPhone means I have to become an AT&T subscriber. The company has an exclusive deal with Apple to provide wireless service to iPhoners"--which means, among other things, that Tady would be "backed into a corner. If I don't like AT&T, or it's not available in my area, I'm facing a digital impasse: no service, no phone":

This is unfortunate, not because I'm missing out on the iPhone's "bar finder" application, but because smart phones are setting the stage for the future of the mobile Internet. They are revolutionary because they free us from our home or office computers. We can catch breaking news, create and upload content, and navigate online social networks and movements from anywhere.

It's the Internet--some might say "the world"--in our pockets. Or at least, it could be. But companies like AT&T and Verizon are getting in the way by shackling innovative devices like the iPhone and the BlackBerry Storm to closed networks.

These exclusive deals limit consumer choice and stifle innovation. Rural residents who can’t get cellular service from the wireless carriers holding exclusive rights to popular smart phones like the iPhone are left watching the commercials for them. If smaller, more local wireless carriers were allowed to service them, these phones could be available to rural America.

Tady strongly asserts that "consumers should have the freedom to choose any phone on any network, to choose among many carriers in a competitive, low-cost marketplace and to access any Web content, applications or services they want"--and she asks your help in "protesting handset exclusivity" by "urging our lawmakers and the Federal Communications Commission to step in."

Washington Monthly contributing editor Art Levine has a piece for In These Times (5/31/09) reporting on economist Anne Layne-Farrar's recent congressional appearance in which she

warned about the horrendous impact of the Employee Free Choice Act. Its potential to increase union membership from between five and 10 percent, she said, 'would result in an increase in the unemployment of around one and a half to three percentage points.'

Levine tells us how "Fox 'Fair and Balanced' News, naturally, in its TV report neglected to mention that her 'research' was funded by the corporate-friendly, anti-union 'Alliance to Save Main Street Jobs,'" and directly takes on Layne-Farrar's estimate "that 600,000 jobs would be lost in the first year after the EFCA became law":

Layne-Farrar massages the data using a complex "regression analysis" to connect the dots between card check, higher unionization rates and more unemployment, putting the loss at between 600,000 and 2.6 million new American jobs in the first year.

"That's bullshit," says Canadian labor economist Charlotte Yates, now the Dean of Social Sciences at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. "I don’t know of any credible economists who say [now] there is a direct correlation between unionization and the rise in unemployment."

Despite being so flawed as to elicit such strong exclamations from prominent academic economists, "since the report's publication in March, this statistic has circulated through the media, showing up on MSNBC, CBS News, the Wall Street Journal and, in spades, Fox News." For more on corporate media coverage of EFCA, read FAIR's magazine Extra!: "For Media, 'Card Check' Promise Is One to Break: Corporate Outlets Suddenly Discover 'Workers Rights'" (2/09) by Janine Jackson.