instead of going away, they remain to dredge up conflict where there would otherwise be perfect harmony.
8. All unions are the same. All unions are, therefore, accountable for the corruption or excess of any one union or union leader and share the guilt or shame.
Extrapolating on previous research on media’s relationship with workers and labor unions, Martin (2004) suggested that consumer is usually used as the excuse for media to cover its intention of misrepresenting labor. He came up with a
consumer-oriented model: 1) the consumer is king; 2) the process of production is none of the public’s business; 3) the economy is driven by great business leaders and entrepreneurs; 4) the workplace is a meritocracy; 5) collective economic action is bad. He found that these five frames structured the U.S. corporate mass media’s
news stories about labor throughout the 1990s that was often severely critical of labor’s actions and enthusiastically supportive of capital’s action.
All these principles vary from one to another, yet they do share the same concept- workers’ welfare is usually ignored and their needs are magnified, while company’s profits are usually ignored and their offer is overemphasized. These frames and principles dominated labor news coverage from the 1970s to the early 1990s and eventually led to the formation of labor’s negative stereotype.
However, in the late 1990s, media’s unfair coverage of labor showed some changes in the reporting of a series of strikes. Martin (2003) found that in the United Parcel Service (UPS) strike of August 1997, not only the majority of citizens stood in line with the striking workers, but also many mainstream news media dropped their consumer-oriented frames, starting to provide the audience with in-depth analysis on the status of part-time workers in the American economy. He argued that UPS workers successfully turn the traditional consumer-oriented frames to their benefits
“with social activism and a message that reveals the connection between production and consumption (p.191).”
Another example took place in November 1999, when fifty thousand people representing more than seven hundred organizations met on Seattle to protest the World Trade Organization’s Third Ministerial Conference. Despite the fact that some reports on the WTO protest still upheld the typical consumer-driven news frames, Martin (2004) found that the mainstream news media changed their coverage in certain degree to cover something positive about the protesters during the event. With heavy pressure from the great numbers and persistence of the demonstrators, media altered their typical framing of the story and began to include some criticism of the WTO and police. It seems that labor in news appears to gain relatively balanced coverage in the late 1990s and early 2000s than before.
Martin (2004) argued that the widespread public activism by labor and other social groups holds the news media back from framing labor in a complete
consumer-oriented perspective and pushes media to include at least some criticism of the employers to sustain their credibility. Despite the unfavorable frames against corporations, he also found that the mainstream media would either mix some favorable coverage in the criticism or reestablish corporate-friendly framing of news events later on to repair its relationship with the enterprises. The clever manipulation of news reporting strategically brings the news media to a win-win situation either when facing the public or its advertisers.
In general, western media have shifted their attitude when coping with labor issues. From consistent findings of biased coverage against labor since 1970s, the mainstream media in the early 21st century seem to have given up its hostile practice that they used to adopt when covering labor and turn to play tricks by shifting the framing of news event to benefit their advertisers in the wake of a series of pro-worker coverage. Although the “pro-labor” coverage has been too limited to identify it as a trend of the entire media environment, it still can be taken as a “sign”
of the present employer-favored situation is being reversed.
This is the situation in western countries, whose early industrialization has led to more well-developed labor awareness as well as richer literature of related issues.
In contrast, owing to the social, cultural and historical difference, the case in Taiwan seems to be very different.
Research of Labor and Industrial Journalism in Taiwan
Scholars noted that labor movement in Taiwan has risen in 1988 after the lifting of Martial Law (Weng, 1992). Such a short history has made research on labor and
industrial journalism in Taiwan rather scarce compared to that in the English language.
To date, the author can only find four related research articles (Hsieh, 1990; Weng, 1992; Feng, 1999; 2001). Despite the limited number, three can shed light on different dimensions of labor news to provide the thesis with insights into the situation in Taiwan.
In her MA thesis, Hsieh (1990) analyzed labor-related editorials in newspapers published during 1969-1988. As expected, the number of articles was little, less than one piece of editorial for a month. Besides, the researcher found that editorials in the early stage emphasized more on collective values, but turned to be personal values more as time went by. However, Hsieh’s (1990) research did not cover the portrayal of image of workers and employers described in the editorials. Such topic received more concern in later research.
Studying news about labor movements during 1983-1989, Weng (1992) obtained a series of findings that refuted the observations commonly made in the English literature, i.e., workers usually appear to be negatively portrayed. For example, she found that labor as the news subject accounted for a greater percentage than both official sources and employers. In the articles, news favored workers (30%) much more than employers (5.5%). However, Weng (1992) also found that when reporting labor movement, media tended to stereotype the event with the use of
“conflict” frame. Moreover, by comparing the cause of disputes between workers and employers as reported in news and as recorded by Council of Labor Affairs (CLA), she found that the facts that presented by media were different from those by CLA.
Apparently, media had their own autonomy in constructing the reality as they saw it (Weng, 1992).
Continuing the research interest, Feng (2001) conducted a quantitative
research, “An Historical Analysis of Labour News in Four Newspapers, 1953-1998”, and identified four features of labor news in Taiwan: 1) the overall amount of
coverage was meager, but 2) different newspapers differed in the quantity and 3) the percentage of labor subjectivity in the coverage was lower, and 4) the shift of quantity was in accordance with the historical background. In consideration of Taiwan’s economic and political circumstances, the researcher then proposed five factors to explain these features: state policies toward the labor (i.e. when there was any power struggle, labor news increased), media competition, media’s affinity to political parties (i.e. party-run newspapers had the least labor news), and labor-capital conflicts of the newspapers concerned. This is the first study in this field to specify the
difference of news about labor and industrial journalismin Taiwan and in western countries and proposed new perspectives to examine the case in Taiwan.
Aside from using quantitative analysis to observe the rise and fall of labor news in Taiwan, Feng (1999) also drew upon the annual, and most representative labor movements from 1988 to 1998, the Autumn Sruggle or ciou dou (秋鬥), to analyze the news discourse. He found that negative coverage of the movement started to change in the third year, namely 1991, to be represented in a more neutral way with less extreme adjectives. However, Feng (1999) argued that the so-called “neutral”
way of reporting eventually made the coverage of ciou dou a journalistic routine to report. It turned out that journalists only went to the scene, took pictures, did the interview, and finished the story with no attention to the meanings and significance behind those slogans.
In general, the research of labor news in Taiwan is scarce, too little to draw a systematic conclusion. Yet, the previous research has demonstrated that unfair news coverage of labor does exist, but is not as extreme as it does in western countries.
Taking an overview of labor’s presence in news, we found that western research tends to draw upon “strikes” or “industrial actions” to analyze labor in news, instead of other labor issues. Of course, a strike is noteworthy enough to be a research topic, yet the conflicting nature of these activities also verifies labor’s difficult
situation in the media coverage suggested by Cirino (1971) and Parenti (1986) that when labor appears negative in news, the media either tend to make it big or consider it not news at all.
Also, with a common application of discourse analysis, researchers examining coverage of newspapers and TV news observed a consistent pattern in media coverage of labor before the late 1990s- news media held a hostile attitude toward labor. From Cirino’s twelve forms of bias (1971), Morley’s fragments of an ideology (1981), Glasgow University’s findings about the media’s bias coverage of the labor (1978, 1980), Parenti’s seven generalizations (1986) to Puette’s eight lenses (1992), labor has been put in a rather disadvantageous position in the media coverage, usually with direct use of negative languages. Although Martin’s five consumer-oriented labor frames (2004) seem to have avoided the traditional employer-centered reporting style, they actually create another form of conflict that lies between consumers and labor.
Because the audience is usually the consumers themselves, they tend to interpret the issue from their own perspectives. If labor’s rights should contradict consumer’s interest, the pressure on the labor side would become even heavier.
However, after almost three decades’ unfair treatment, Martin’s research (2003) on the 1997 UPS strike and the 1999 Seattle protest suggested that UPS workers
successfully turned the traditional consumer-oriented frames to their benefits. In spite of this change, he argued that it is nothing but a trick played by the media to balance pressure from the public and advertisers by either mixing some favorable coverage in
the criticism or reestablishing corporate-friendly framing of news events later on. In other words, the media environment, generally speaking, is still hostile to labor despite a little improvement.
Some research from Taiwan, though limited, also showed similar features identified in western studies, including the infrequency and negative portrayal of labor.
This thesis is aimed at extending the research of labor and industrial journalism in Taiwan by examining labor’s treatment in the coverage of the Foxconn suicide jumps to see whether the shift of news frames appears in the coverage of the Foxconn jumps in Taiwan, create concrete differences, and have impact on labor news for workers.
Besides, the research can also help to see if news coverage of labor in Taiwan has followed this similar “pro-labor” sign as seen in the American media.
2.3 Research on News Framing about Suicide Issues
Suicide has been one of the top ten leading causes of death in Taiwan during the past two decades (Chen, 2006). Statistics from Taiwan Suicide Prevention Center (自殺防 治中心) show that the reported cases of suicide have reached a new high every year since 2006. Despite a slight drop than previous years, the suicide rate in Taiwan in 2010 was considered as the second highest in the world. The astonishing statistics has urged the local society to pay more attention to the issue. Researchers also suggest that the media plays an important role of informing in the process of communication (Chen, 2006; Weng, 2006; Chang, 2009; Tseng, 2007).
In a research that collected suicide news from the two major newspapers in Taiwan, United Daily and China Times, Chen (2006) found that there were a total of 8,059 pieces of suicide related news from 1995 to 2004. In other words, a reader could on average read two pieces of suicide news in a newspaper per day. The high
frequency demonstrates media’s high interests in such issues. It also notes the crucial role that the media play in influencing how the public understands the issue.
Therefore, a growing number of researchers in Taiwan have started to study what and how the media cover suicide events.
Many studies confirmed that the media use frames when covering suicide events (Chen, 2006; Weng, 2006; Chang, 2009; Tseng, 2007). Chen (2006) suggested that three most frequently used frames were found in press, including using attribution frame to specify the motivation, process frame to describe the process of committing suicide, and the treatment frame to quote doctors or experts’ professional opinions about the suicide (Chen, 2006). Researchers continued to study the phenomenon and some of them went on to focus on the attribution frame. Studying TV news on a Taiwanese performing artist Ni Ming-rang 倪敏然’s suicide, Weng (2006) found that nearly twenty percent of them do not explore possible causes for the suicide; instead, they simplify the motivation that psychological factor dominates the case.
Similar situations also happen in Taiwan’s magazine articles. Chang (2009) found that when dealing with one of its cover story on the suicide of Peach Gramma, Business Weekly《商業週刊》, one of the most prestigious business magazines in Taiwan, puts most its effort on describing the psychological status of the person who committed suicide instead of bringing up her physical and social conditions. French socialist Emile Durkheim (1897) suggested in his Le Suicide that suicide cannot be attributed to personal factors only as human is such a social animal that the structure of the society also plays a part in one’s decision to kill himself/herself. Therefore, simplification of motivation is likely to mislead the audience to form an incomplete understanding of suicide.
A Mainland China study found a similar frame in Chinese media’s coverage of
some suicide cases that are reported to be related to social injustice, referred to as
“social extreme events” in his research (Liu, 2010b). Liu argued that media simplify the attribution of these events and frame such behavior as “fight with death.” News staff forms and presents such bias judgment subjectively by manipulating information to compose news articles based on their understanding and perception of the event, usually with special emphasis on the physical suffering of the minority to highlight validity of the action.
Liu (2010b) noted that the use of “fight with death” is getting popular in current Chinese media. One of the examples mentioned in the research is the
self-immolation in Jiangxi Province (江西省) in the late 2010 (Yi Huang event 宜黃 事件). A Zhong (鐘) family intended to burn themselves to death in objection to the government’s relocation order. While interpreting the self-immolation as fighting against the forced relocation, media use large coverage to cover the government’s violent acts in contrast to Zhong’s tragic experience with special focus on the immolation scene.
If there is no direct link between the suicide and the power, Liu (2010) found that media sometimes “create” one. He gave an example about another protest against forced relocation in China. A 91-year-old man Liu Xian (劉線) in Fujian (福建) committed suicide in May, 2010. Although Liu’s family members considered his deadly action as remonstrance against the government’s strong-hand relocation, there is actually no other action or word from Liu that relates the suicide to the relocation.
Even so, the media still frame the suicide as a silent protest against the government by providing the audience with a great amount of information about how difficult for local senior citizens to get themselves a place to settle. By manipulating the information, media construct the news angle for the audience.
Looking at the bright side, the way of news reporting can focus public’s discussions on certain social issues via media power. However, Liu (2010b) found that the common use of the frame also highlights the extreme emotions generated by different kinds of social contradiction existing in the economically fast-growing country. It motivates the public to reproach the privileged interest groups whenever there is a conflict between the strong and the weak.
Previous research informs that when the suicide is thought to be related to certain social issues, media tend to amplify the scene of suicide in order to highlight the issue behind the incident. In other words, the action, namely the suicide, becomes a medium for news media to approach and reinforce the real issue. In the case of the Foxconn suicide jumps, although the incident appears to be a combination of suicide and labor issue, the media attention tends to fall on workers and employers
specifically and concentrate a large coverage on related discussion. As this thesis focuses on the labor in the news coverage of the incident, suicide is not its concern
2.4 Research on the Foxconn Jumps
As briefly recounted earlier, the Foxconn jumps refer to a series of suicides by the company’s employees in 2010 mostly by leaping from buildings of the company’s plants in Shenzhen. Ever since the Foxconn jumps happened in the beginning of 2010, discussions have mushroomed, approaching the incident from a variety of
perspectives, ranging from labor, national development, organizational culture,
psychological analysis, etc. Soon after the news hit the headlines, a research team was formed to prepare an investigative report into the event, and published, after a
three-month investigation, The Serial Jumps behind Foxconn's Success (富士康輝煌 背後的連環跳). Researchers, including over 60 professors and students in sociology
and journalism on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, traveled to 12 plants in 9 cities in China to collect data by giving questionnaires, or conducting in-depth interviews. To accomplish the task, some of these investigators sneaked into the production lines in disguise as workers. The report bluntly blames the suicides on the company’s poor management system and the unfair treatment in terms of workers’ lives, occupational security and rights. Other publications, such as Why Do They Kill Themselves (他們為 什麼自殺), analyzed the tragedies from sociological, economic and enterprise
management perspectives. Amid all the academic discussions, media’s role in this serial event is also the target for debate.
Examining the news coverage of the Foxconn jumps, researchers in China argued that media’s overemphasis on the jumps may enlarge the event itself and further leads to unexpected and negative effects on readers (Chen, 2010; Liu, 2010a).
For example, the phrase media used to describe the jumps, “lien tiao” or “lien huan tiao” (連跳;連環跳), meaning consecutive jumps or serial jumps, emphasizes on the feature of being a “consecutive” event. The term, which carries negative implications, is likely to enforce public’s expectation for more jumps or may even trigger Werther Effect.
While scholars worry about the misuse of terms in news, how media approach the Foxconn jumps also sparks a spate of controversies. Chen noted that some media covered the event in a rather supernatural way (Chen, 2010). By relating the tragedy to “fengshui (風水 or geomantic) ”, a kind of ancient Chinese law that quotes from astronomy and geography to help one improve life. Others attributed it to supernatural power with the use of sensational words as “spell”, “obsession” and “devils of
dreams”. The atmosphere of “mystery” appeals to readers, yet at the same time it also
dreams”. The atmosphere of “mystery” appeals to readers, yet at the same time it also