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Labour law
Labour law, the varied body of law applied to such matters as employment, remuneration, conditions of work, trade unions, and industrial relations. In its most comprehensive sense, the term includes social security and disability insurance as well. Unlike the laws of contract, tort, or property, the elements of labour law are somewhat less homogeneous than the rules governing a particular legal relationship. In addition to the individual contractual relationships growing out of the traditional employment situation, labour law deals with the statutory requirements and collective relationships that are increasingly important in mass-production societies, the legal relationships between organized economic interests and the state, and the various rights and obligations related to some types of social services.
Labour law has won recognition as a distinctive branch of the law within the academic legal community, but the extent to which it is recognized as a separate branch of legal practice varies widely depending partly on the extent to which there is a labour code or other distinctive body of labour legislation in the country concerned, partly on the extent to which there are separate labour courts or tribunals, and partly on the extent to which an influential group within the legal profession practice specifically as labour lawyers.
In the early phases of development the scope of labour law is often limited to the most developed and important industries, to undertakings above a certain size, and to wage earners; as a general rule, these limitations are gradually eliminated and the scope of the law extended to include handicrafts, rural industries and agriculture, small undertakings, office workers, and, in some countries, public employees. Thus, a body of law originally intended for the protection of manual workers in industrial enterprises is gradually transformed into a broader body of legal principles and standards, which have basically two functions: the protection of the worker as the weaker party in the employment relationship, and the regulation of the relations between organized interest groups (industrial relations).
Factors in labour law
The general tendency in the modern development of labour law has been the strengthening of statutory requirements and collective contractual relations at the expense of rights and obligations created by individual employment relationships. How important these latter remain depends, of course, on the degree of personal freedom in the given society as well as the autonomy of both employer and worker allowed by the actual operation of the economy. In such matters as hours of work, health and safety conditions, or industrial relations, the statutory or collective elements may define most of the substance of the rights and obligations of the individual worker, while with respect to such things as the duration of his appointment, his level and extent of responsibility, or his place in the scale of remuneration, these elements may provide what is essentially a framework for individual agreement.
Historical development of labour law
The origins of labour law can be traced back to the remote past and the most varied parts of the world. While European writers often attach importance to the guilds and apprenticeship systems of the medieval world, some Asian scholars have identified labour standards as far back as the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (18th century bce) and the rules for labour-management relations in the Hindu Laws of Manu (Manu-smriti; c. 100 ce); Latin American authors point to the Laws of the Indies promulgated by Spain in the 17th century for its New World territories. None of these can be regarded as more than anticipations, with only limited influence on subsequent developments. Labour law as it is known today is essentially the child of successive industrial revolutions from the 18th century onward. It became necessary when customary restraints and the intimacy of employment relationships in small communities ceased to provide adequate protection against the abuses incidental to new forms of mining and manufacture on a rapidly increasing scale at precisely the time when the 18th-century Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the political forces that they set in motion were creating the elements of the modern social conscience. It developed rather slowly, chiefly in the more industrialized countries of western Europe, during the 19th century and attained its present importance, relative maturity, and worldwide acceptance only during the 20th century.
The first landmark of modern labour law was the British Health and Morals of Apprentices Act of 1802, sponsored by the elder Sir Robert Peel. Similar legislation for the protection of the young was adopted in Zürich in 1815 and in France in 1841. By 1848 the first legal limitation of the working hours of adults was adopted by the Landsgemeinde (citizens' assembly) of the Swiss canton of Glarus. Sickness insurance and workers' compensation were pioneered by Germany in 1883 and 1884, and compulsory arbitration in industrial disputes was introduced in New Zealand in the 1890s. The progress of labour legislation outside western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand was slow until after World War I. The more-industrialized states of the United States began to enact such legislation toward the end of the 19th century, but the bulk of the present labour legislation of the United States was not adopted until after the Great Depression of the 1930s. There was virtually no labour legislation in Russia prior to the October Revolution of 1917. In India children between the ages of 7 and 12 were limited to nine hours of work per day in 1881 and adult males in textile mills to 10 hours per day in 1911, but the first major advance was the amendment of the Factory Act in 1922 to give effect to conventions adopted at the first session of the International Labour Conference at Washington, D.C., in 1919. In Japan rudimentary regulations on work in mines were introduced in 1890, but a proposed factory act was controversial for 30 years before it was adopted in 1911, and the decisive step was the revision of this act in 1923 to give effect to the Washington Convention on hours of work in industry. Labour legislation in Latin America began in Argentina in the early years of the century and received a powerful impetus from the Mexican Revolution, which ended in 1917, but, as in North America, the trend became general only with the impact of the Great Depression. In Africa the progress of labour legislation became significant only from the 1940s onward.
The legal recognition of the right of association for trade union purposes has a distinctive history. There is no other aspect of labour law in which successive phases of progress and regression have been more decisively influenced by political changes and considerations. The legal prohibition of such association was repealed in the United Kingdom in 1824 and in France in 1884; there have been many subsequent changes in the law and may well be further changes, but these have related to matters of detail rather than to fundamental principles. In the United States freedom of association for trade union purposes remained precarious and subject to the unpredictable scope of the labour injunction, by means of which the courts helped restrain trade union activity until the 1930s. The breakthrough for trade unionism and collective bargaining was achieved by the National Labor Relations Act (the Wagner Act) of 1935. In many other countries the record of progress and regression with respect to freedom of association falls into clearly distinguished periods separated by decisive political changes. This has certainly been the case with Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, and much of eastern Europe; there have been many illustrations of it, and there may well be more in the developing world.
Labour codes or other forms of comprehensive labour legislation and ministries of labour were not introduced until the 20th century. The first labour code (which, like many of its successors, was a consolidation rather than a codification) was projected in France in 1901 and promulgated in stages from 1910 to 1927. Among the more advanced formulations affecting the general condition of labour were the Mexican Constitution of 1917 and the Weimar Constitution of Germany of 1919, both of which gave constitutional status to certain general principles of social policy regarding economic rights. Provisions of this kind have become increasingly common and are now widespread in all parts of the world.
Departments or ministries of labour responsible for the effective administration of labour legislation and for promoting its future development were established in Canada in 1900, in France in 1906, in the United States in 1913, in the United Kingdom in 1916, and in Germany in 1918. They became general in Europe and were established in India and Japan during the following years and became common in Latin America in the 1930s. A labour office was established in Egypt in 1930, but only in the 1940s and '50s did similar arrangements begin to take root elsewhere in Asia and Africa. Under differing political circumstances there continue, of course, to be wide variations in the authority and effectiveness of such administrative machinery.
Elements of labour law
The basic subject matter of labour law can be considered under nine broad heads: employment; individual employment relationships; wages and remuneration; conditions of work; health, safety, and welfare; social security; trade unions and industrial relations; the administration of labour law; and special provisions for particular occupational or other groups.
Employment considered as a basic concept and category of labour law is a relatively recent development. Prior to the Great Depression and World War II the emphasis was upon the prevention or reduction of excessive unemployment rather than upon long-term employment policy as part of a comprehensive scheme to promote economic stability and growth. The new approach, arising from changes in political outlook and contemporary economic thought, has increasingly found expression in legal provisions that establish the creation of employment opportunities as a general objective of policy. To this end, legislation has established the necessary legal framework for the forecasting of labour needs and availability and the provision of employment services including placement, recruitment, vocational training, and apprenticeship. Freedom from forced labour, equality of treatment in employment and occupation, and unemployment benefits may, in a broad sense, be regarded as part of the same general subject.
Individual employment relations
The making, modification, and termination of individual employment relations and the resulting obligations for the parties form a second branch of labour law. It may also involve certain aspects of promotion, transfer, and dismissal procedures and compensation. Historically speaking, the law on these matters was at one time described as the law of master and servant. It implied a contractual relation in which one party agreed to be under the control of the other in the sense that the servant was bound to obey orders not only as to the work that he would execute but also as to the details of the work and the manner of its execution. In return, the master had to pay a wage and grant certain minimum conditions for the protection of the worker. As the law developed, the implied terms and statutory incidents attached to this relationship concerning such matters as termination of employment, dismissal procedures and compensation, minimum wages, conditions of work, and social security rights began to limit freedom of contract. The individual employment relationship continues, however, to be the subject matter of labour law to which general legal principles, as opposed to statutes and collective agreements, apply. Legally speaking, the individual contract of employment plays a more important role in the civil-law countries than in common-law countries.
Wages and remuneration
The substantive law on wages and remuneration covers such elements as forms and methods of payment, the protection of wages against unlawful deductions and other abuses, minimum wage arrangements, the determination of wages, fringe benefits, and, in highly sophisticated economies, incomes policies. The concept of wage regulation as a restraint upon extreme social evils has gradually been superseded by wage policies as deliberate instruments of positive management designed to promote economic stability and growth.
Legal requirements concerning the forms of wages and methods of wage payment deal with such matters as the proper notification of wage conditions, the payment of wages in legal tender or by check, the limitation and proper valuation of payments in kind, the freedom of the worker to dispose of his wages, regularity in wage payments, the treatment of wages as a privileged, or secured, debt, and restrictions upon the attachment or assignment of wages.
Minimum-wage regulation takes varied forms; it may, following the pattern originally set by the British Trades Boards Acts from 1909 onward, provide for wages councils or similar bodies to fix wages in trades that have no arrangements for collective agreements and where wages are exceptionally low; it may consist, as in Australia and New Zealand, essentially of arbitration arrangements; or it may, as in the United States under the Fair Labor Standards acts, provide a statutory rate or criteria for determining such a rate. Statutory provisions and collective agreements for determining wages may embrace such varied matters as skill differentials, the elimination of race and sex differentials, payment according to results and the relationship of wages to productivity, and wage guarantees for agreed periods of time. Fringe benefits, such as bonuses payable in varying contingencies, are typically a matter for collective agreements. Incomes policies remain the subject of much controversy. Their general purpose, sometimes embodied in legislation and sometimes expressed in collective agreements or statements of government policy, is to restrain inflationary pressures resulting from wage increases unrelated to increased productivity and to do this in a manner that promotes a fairer distribution of income.
Conditions of work
The conditions of work involve hours, rest periods, and vacations; the prohibition of child labour and regulation of the employment of young persons; and special provisions concerning the employment of women. This part of the law originated in legislation for the protection of children, young persons, and women against the worst evils of the Industrial Revolution. It originally dealt particularly with such matters as admission to employment, night work, and excessive hours, but the elements of its content and their relative importance were wholly transformed during the 20th century.
As economic and educational progress and changed social habits limited child labour in the industrialized countries and increasingly in the modernized sectors of developing economies, the special concern of labour law with regard to the young shifted to such areas as vocational guidance and training, career planning and advancement, and medical protection.
As employment opportunities for women became more varied and responsible, there was a similar shift in emphasis from protective legislation—which came to be regarded as discriminatory, since it tended to limit such opportunities—to legal guarantees of equal pay and equal employment, coupled with adequate maternity protection and the provision of facilities to enable women with family responsibilities to continue to be employed. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, similar, though less comprehensive, accommodations to male employees (e.g., the provision of paid or unpaid paternity leave) were increasingly common.
Whereas previously any statutory limitation of the hours of work of adult males was regarded as being highly questionable, except in mines where it had been introduced on safety grounds, in a society of much increased leisure it has now become a general practice to fix maximum hours of work by statute or collective agreement. In many countries the eight-hour day has been superseded by the 40-hour week as the statutory maximum for a wide range of occupations, and collective agreements providing for substantially shorter working hours are not uncommon. The details of hours regulation, whether by statute or collective agreement, include such matters as exceptions and adjustments necessary for continuous shift working. In addition, such regulations cover the extensions permitted for preparatory, complementary, and intermittent work; the special rules for force majeure (work of absolute necessity), accident, maintenance, and repair work; and the limitation, authorization, and remuneration of overtime.
The principle of resting one day of the week, sanctioned as it is by religious practice in many places, was widely incorporated in legislation at an early date; the lengthening of this weekly rest through the creation of the five-day week has been strongly influenced by statutory requirements and collective agreements.
Legislation granting annual holidays with pay and collective agreements providing for such holidays are almost entirely a development of the mid-20th century but are increasingly common; moreover, there is a marked tendency for the minimum annual holiday to be increased.
Complex questions may arise concerning the qualifying period of service required for entitlement, breaks in the continuity of service, the calculation of average or normal remuneration for the purpose of the holidays, the extent to which holidays may be divided, and the liability for holidays where there has been a change of employer.
Health, safety, and welfare
Such general matters as occupational health and accident prevention regulations and services; special regulations for hazardous occupations such as mining, construction, and dock work; and provisions concerning such health and safety risks as poisons, dangerous machinery, dust, noise, vibration, and radiation constitute the health, safety, and welfare category of labour law. The efforts of organized safety movements and the progress of occupational medicine have produced comprehensive occupational health and accident-prevention services and regulations no longer limited to a few specially acute risks but covering the full range of dangers arising from modern industrial processes. Major developments include increased concern with the widespread use of chemicals and increasing provision for welfare facilities related to employment, including feeding, rest, recreation, and transport facilities.
Social security
Social security ranges from basic employers' liability for occupational accidents to comprehensive schemes that include income security in the form of sickness, unemployment, retirement, employment injury, maternity, family, invalidity, and survivors' benefits and medical care. As with other aspects of labour law, a progression from the particular to the general has been characteristic of the development of social security legislation. By the time of World War I, workers' compensation schemes were general in industrialized and industrializing countries, but they were highly restrictive in their provisions for specific cases. Pension insurance was part of Otto von Bismarck's legacy to Germany, but elsewhere there was little more to be found than pension funds for the privileged or noncontributory pensions for the aged. Great Britain had been the pioneer in health and unemployment insurance. But social insurance remained a pragmatic experiment limited to a few countries advanced in both economic development and social policies. The coverage was limited to specific risks for certain categories of protected persons. Its object was to protect the worker against the hazards of life for which preindustrial societies provide by some form of community or family responsibility, but the approach was piecemeal and was limited to the most-manageable cases of acute hardship. Eventually, the impact of the Great Depression and World War II in the industrial countries and the increasingly apparent inadequacy of earlier forms of community responsibility in developing countries transformed the position. The concept of social security, first given statutory expression in the United States in 1935 and in New Zealand in 1938, superseded that of social insurance, and the 1943 Beveridge Report (prepared by the British economist William Beveridge) developed it even further to provide a basic income for all in need of such protection, in addition to providing comprehensive medical care. The concept has continued to broaden since that time, and social security has found increasing acceptance, though necessarily with varying degrees of practical application, in countries in the most varied stages of economic development.
Acute, sometimes highly controversial, problems, particularly in the cost and efficiency of administrative organization of social security programs and of medical care, remain almost everywhere. But many countries have made progress in making higher standards of medical care available as a legal right and in converting the guarantee of a basic income as a protection against want into provision for effective income maintenance in the event of unemployment or loss of the family breadwinner. The idea is still developing. The trend is to broaden it to the point at which it includes all the varied hazards of life, including accidents of any kind, with the idea of facilitating economic growth by reducing the human cost of structural change. The pattern varies widely in different countries, partly as a reflection of different relationships between social security and private life, retirement, and health insurance, and partly because of differences in economic and social conditions.
Trade unions and industrial relations
A number of complex legal relationships fall under the heading of industrial relations, including the legal status, rights, and obligations of trade unions and employers' organizations, collective bargaining and collective agreements, the representation of employees at plant and enterprise level (including joint consultation and, where it exists, codetermination and other forms of workers' participation in management, even to the extent of workers' representation on company boards), and the prevention and settlement of various types of labour disputes in general and of strikes and lockouts in particular. Regarding such matters as the representative character and capacity of trade unions, their legal status, the obligation to recognize and bargain with them, the enforceability of collective agreements, the scope of activities permitted to trade unions, and their obligations in contract and tort, there are wide variations both in the extent to which they are subject to legal rules and in the content of such rules.
In the United States, for instance, there is a considerable body of law on these subjects, the most important enactments being the National Labor Relations Act and the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 (the Taft-Hartley Act). In the United Kingdom the law has hitherto remained marginal to most of these trade union issues, except for legislation of 1871, 1875, and 1906, which had provided certain "immunities" (or "privileges," as they are sometimes called) for trade unions, particularly in connection with trade disputes. Legislation enacted in the early 1980s restricted some of these immunities or privileges, the trend being to expand the role of law in labour-management relations to reduce the increasing disruption caused by industrial conflict in a complex society.
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, industrial associations and libertarian think tanks in the United States promoted legislation and initiated court cases aimed at limiting the political and economic power of unions. So-called right-to-work laws, eventually adopted in several states, prohibited unions from charging agency fees to nonunion workers to defray the cost of collective bargaining on their behalf. Several states also severely restricted or prohibited collective bargaining by public (state) employees. Although the U.S. Supreme Court, in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education (1977), unanimously endorsed mandatory agency fees in the public sector (provided that they were not used to support union political or ideological activities), that precedent was later overturned in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (2018), in which the Court declared that nonunion employees must affirmatively consent to paying agency fees.
The administration of labour law
Another feature of labour law involves the organization and functioning of administrative authorities such as labour departments, labour inspection services, and other organs of enforcement. Administration of the law also encompasses the operation of labour courts and other bodies for the settlement of grievances arising from existing contracts or collective agreements and of industrial disputes arising between labour and management.
The principal problem in many countries is to relate the process of labour administration and its special intimacy with labour and management to overall economic and social planning in a manner that gives proper weight to social considerations in economic policy. This problem falls mostly outside the scope of labour law, but its solution does depend in part on the extent to which labour law provides for and secures effective standards of administration.
Special categories of workers
Labour law includes many provisions for particular occupational or other groups. These sometimes appear as special parts of a general code, special legislation, or provisions that limit specific legislative provisions with regard to particular groups. These special provisions are common and important in mining, transportation (and in particular maritime transport), commercial occupations, and agriculture. Cutting across these broad sectors of economic activity are the traditional legal distinctions made in some countries between blue-collar workers and salaried employees and certain newer distinctions, such as that between employees who earn annual salaries and have rights of tenure and persons with no such rights engaged and remunerated on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis.


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MLK Papers: Words That Changed a Nation
Aired January 19, 2008 - 23:00 ET
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GOV. GEORGE WALLACE, ALABAMA: Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever! (END VIDEO CLIP) SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): When one woman refused to budge, he wrote. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: "There is a new Negro in the South." O'BRIEN: Jailed, standing up to justice, he wrote. KING: "We find it difficult to wait." (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KING: I accept the Nobel... (END VIDEO CLIP) O'BRIEN: When the world took notice, he wrote. KING: "I still believe we shall overcome." O'BRIEN: Faced with constant fear and even death, he wrote. KING: "I am not afraid of the word tension." O'BRIEN: His writings that challenged a people, his words that changed a nation. (on camera): Behind these bars, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote the now famous "Letter From Birmingham Jail" amid the struggle and strife of the Civil Rights movement. King was an accidental leader. He was young and chosen by circumstance, yet already prepared in demeanor and intellect, in conscience and in courage. The King family allowed CNN special access to its collection of Dr. King's private papers, and it's those words that will be our guide over this next hour in his journey from Birmingham and Selma to the final stop in Memphis, a journey that began with one woman on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. KING: "After one has discovered what he is called for, he should set out to do it with all of the power that he has in his system. Do it as if God almighty ordained you at this particular moment in history to do it." O'BRIEN (voice-over): Those were the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., just turned 25, in his first sermon in 1954 in Montgomery, Alabama. (on camera): This is the actual sermon, written on four pages, back and front, of lined notebook paper in Dr. King's on handwriting. It's preserved here at the library for Morehouse College, the start of what is literally a treasure of Dr. King's thinking at the critical moments in Civil Rights history. (voice-over): For King, the pivotal moment came the next year, when Rosa Parks -- on the left -- was arrested on a Montgomery bus. This is her lawyer, Fred Gray, only 25 himself, with the bus seating chart. FRED GRAY, CIVIL RIGHTS LAWYER: There was a sort of unwritten understanding that the first 10 seats, all those seats, were basically reserved for whites. Mrs. Parks, I believe, was sitting -- if I'm not mistaken, she was sitting here. O'BRIEN: The driver asked blacks in that row to give up their seats to a white man. GRAY: Everybody got up but Ms. Parks. And she didn't and was arrested. O'BRIEN: Dr. King was asked to be spokesman for a high-risk protest, a bus boycott. His longtime aide, Andrew Young. ANDREW YOUNG, FORMER KING AIDE: He was new in the community and he had no enemies -- yet -- and so he was sort of a consensus candidate just because he was young and fresh, and it was clear that he was smart. O'BRIEN: The boycott began the day Rosa Parks went on trial. Fred Gray rose early. GRAY: We saw the bus. None of our people were on the buses. O'BRIEN: That night, Martin Luther King addressed the first of many mass meetings. These words come from this outline for the protest, words that would define the Civil Rights movement. O'BRIEN: "This is a movement of passive resistance, emphasis on non-violence in a struggle for justice." GRAY: That really was Dr. King's philosophy. And he was the non-violent person who really injected it into the movement. O'BRIEN: King became a lightning rod for hatred. One night early in '56, his phone rang. In this sermon, King admits fear and a rare moment of weakness. KING: "An angry voice said, Listen, nigger, we've taken all we want from you. Before next week, you'll be sorry you ever came to Montgomery. I got out of bed and began to walk the floor. Finally, I went to the kitchen and heated a pot of coffee. I was ready to give up." O'BRIEN: Then, King said, he felt God's presence. KING: "I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying, Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth, and God will be at your side forever. I was ready to face anything." O'BRIEN: Three nights later, King's house was bombed. Blacks gathered, bristling with anger. GRAY: Once he found out that his family was safe, he simply went out, talked to the crowd and told them to go home. And they went. O'BRIEN: From that night on, Martin Luther King lived under the shadow of death. GRAY: Dr. King made it rather clear that the cause that we were fighting for was not only worth living for but it was worth dying for, if need be. O'BRIEN: Still, the blacks of Montgomery stayed off the buses and walked or shared rides for more than a year. Former journalist Inez Baskin. INEZ BASKIN, FORMER JOURNALIST: How are they going to get to their jobs? They had children to feed. They had rent to pay. But they were not getting on that bus. O'BRIEN: King, a man who found poetry and words of protest, spoke of the power of non-violence in New York that spring. KING: "There is a new Negro in the South with a new sense of dignity and destiny. The story of Montgomery is the story of 50,000 Negroes who are tired of injustice and oppression and who are willing to substitute tired feet for tired souls and walk and walk until the walls of injustice are crushed by the battering rams of historical necessity. This is the new Negro." O'BRIEN: Andrew Young met King that year for the first time and came to Montgomery for a visit. He wanted to learn about the boycott. King wanted to talk about his newborn daughter. YOUNG: I frankly was frustrated by that first meeting, but that's the way he was. He was never -- unless he was on the stage, he wasn't a leader, he was just a good guy. O'BRIEN: Fred Gray carried a desegregation lawsuit all the way to the Supreme Court, and in the winter of 1956, won. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KING: We came to see that, in the long run, it is more honorable to walk in dignity than ride in humiliation. (END VIDEO CLIP) O'BRIEN: People were given a checklist on how to behave on the bus the first day back. KING: "If cursed, do not curse back. If struck, do not strike back. If you feel you cannot take it, walk for another week or two." O'BRIEN: The next morning, King was among the first blacks to get back on a bus. He's sitting here behind fellow minister Ralph David Abernathy. The woman beside Abernathy, reporter Inez Baskin. BASKIN: There's Dr. King. That's me. O'BRIEN: She says she could see in King's face a man looking ahead to what was yet to come. BASKIN: You have to look at his expression, it wasn't over. But we have come this far. O'BRIEN: Next, violence awaited in Birmingham. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CAROLYN MCKINSTRY, 16TH STREET BAPTIST CHURCH: That hose hurt. (END VIDEO CLIP) (COMMERCIAL BREAK) O'BRIEN: Birmingham, Alabama, racism's ground zero. MCKINSTRY: We had earned the nickname "Bombing-ham." Black homes were being bombed. Black life was cheap. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GOV. GEORGE WALLACE, ALABAMA: Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever! KING: I'm sorry, Mr. Wallace. God has placed the responsibility a my shoulders! (END VIDEO CLIP) O'BRIEN: In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King joined the effort to desegregate businesses in Birmingham. Andrew Young went with him. YOUNG: Going to Birmingham was to him the possibility of an imminent death. O'BRIEN (on camera): He was literally afraid for his life. YOUNG: Well, yes, but for good reason. But he kept getting pushed into these things. O'BRIEN (voice-over): Included in Dr. King's prize collection of writings are several pages of the plan he had his staff draw up, Project C for confrontation. Dr. King's chief strategist, Wyatt Walker, wrote Project C. DR. WYATT TEE WALKER, KING'S FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF: We used code words to kind of obscure what we were getting ready to do. O'BRIEN: Dr. King's code name was Jack Kennedy. Birmingham became Johannesberg. Non-violent action was called a baptismal service. WALKER: The racist element in the police department would create a crisis or confrontation, and so we knew that we wouldn't be in Birmingham long before that would happen. O'BRIEN: Dr. King was arrested for marching without a permit. And for his defiance, solitary confinement. A diary he kept while in jail in Georgia a year earlier reveals how his thoughts would turn to his family. KING: "God blessed me with a great and wonderful wife. I have never quite adjusted to bringing my children up under such inexplicable conditions." O'BRIEN: By 1963, Dr. King had been arrested several times. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KING: Nobody with any sense likes to go to jail. But if he puts you in jail, you go in that jail and transform it from a dungeon of shame to a haven of freedom and dignity! (END VIDEO CLIP) O'BRIEN: Despite his own words, the same diary shows King found incarceration draining. KING: "Jail is almost like being dead while one still lives. It is bare existence -- cold, cruel, degenerating." O'BRIEN: In his solitary confinement, Dr. King read a newspaper article in which eight white clergymen called his demonstrations, quote, "unwise and untimely." CLARENCE JONES, FORMER KING ATTORNEY: He was very agitated. He says, We've got to write a response. I've got to write a response. O'BRIEN: Clarence Jones was Dr. King's attorney. JONES: The only paper he had until I got there was, you know, the edges of newspaper. O'BRIEN: Under his shirt, Jones smuggled paper past the guards. JONES: The drill was I that would bring blank paper in and he would write on it, and I would bring it out. O'BRIEN: The sheets of paper were passed on to Wyatt Walker, who helped transcribe them. WALKER: I was the only one on the Birmingham scene who was familiar with Dr. King's chicken-scratch writing. O'BRIEN: Dr. King, the consummate writer, made handwritten revisions to this copy of the famous "Letter From Birmingham Jail." KING: "When you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters"... YOUNG: He loved language. I mean, he was a poet. KING: ... "when you have to concoct an answer for a 5-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean, then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait." O'BRIEN: You can see where he added the words "in agonizing pathos." They convey the deep sorrow racism caused King and his family. JONES: That sort of catches the essence of having your sense of self-worth demeaned and diminished. O'BRIEN: When the efforts to desegregate Birmingham stalled, the movement tried a new strategy. Teenagers were recruited to join the campaign. MCKINSTRY, 16TH STREET BAPTIST CHURCH: Dr. King asked, How many of you are willing to go to jail for freedom? O'BRIEN: Carolyn McKinstry remembers hearing Dr. King's call to action in the sanctuary of the 16th Street Baptist Church. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KING: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere! (END VIDEO CLIP) MCKINSTRY: He touched our spirits, made us want to get involved. O'BRIEN: A major demonstration was planned for May 2. Dr. Dorothy Cotton (ph) helped recruit teenagers. DOROTHY COTTON, ACTIVIST: An aim was to really fill the jails, if we could. You can see them getting on the paddy wagons, going to jail. (SINGING) I go to jail if the spirit says jail. I go to jail if the spirit says jail. If the spirit says jail, I'll go to jail, oh, Lord. I go to jail if -- and that (INAUDIBLE) you can actually see them singing the song. O'BRIEN: The next day, May 3. YOUNG: Every high school closed down, and students from all around the city started marching toward downtown. COTTON: We ended up with thousands of children. The jails were full, so they ended up being in the fairgrounds. MCKINSTRY: We walked out of my local high school, and we were confronted with those water hoses and those dogs and the tanks. O'BRIEN: Carolyn McKinstry was just 14 years old. A fire hose hammered her up against a storefront window. MCKINSTRY: That hose hurt. We were pinned against the building. We couldn't move. Later on, I learned that part of my hair had been sort of wiped out from the pressure of the hose. O'BRIEN: These images of brutality wakened the American conscience. WALKER: I was always aware that we had to do something that would be attractive to the press. YOUNG: There would be no news until there was a major crisis of some sort. O'BRIEN: A week later, businessmen agreed to integrate their stores. But the fight for Birmingham was far from over. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KING: I have a dream. (END VIDEO CLIP) O'BRIEN: Why were these words... (END VIDEO CLIP) KING: I have a dream today! (END VIDEO CLIP) O'BRIEN: Why were these historic words almost left unspoken? (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have a dream... UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have a dream... UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have a dream... UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have a dream... UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... that my four children... UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... will one day live in a nation... UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... where they will not be judged by the color of their skin... (END VIDEO CLIP) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KING: ... but by the content of their character! I have a dream today! (END VIDEO CLIP) O'BRIEN: Dr. Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech at the march on Washington on August 28, 1963, is one of the most important in human history. YOUNG: It has become the defining moment of the human rights movement of our time. They know it in Russia. They know it in South Africa. They know it in China. O'BRIEN: But the words "I have a dream" almost didn't make it into the speech. WALKER: The inner circle of Dr. King felt the "I have a dream" portion was hackneyed and trite because he'd used it so many times in other cities. O'BRIEN: Dr. King had been writing about this dream for decades. His inspiration can be traced back to these books in Dr. King's private library. In his well-worn copy of "The Christ of the American Road," Dr. King underlined... UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "America is a dream unfulfilled, a place where race and birth and color are transcended by the fact of a common brotherhood." O'BRIEN: In this book, "Horns and Halos," he pencils this note. KING: "A dream that did not come true." O'BRIEN: Dr. King makes this message his own in the late '50s. In his speech, "Shattered Dreams," he advises a crowd... KING: "You must honestly confront your shattered dream." O'BRIEN: In the months before the march on Washington, Dr. King starts to focus on a positive dream, a dream that could be realized through the Civil Rights movement. He toys with this idea in an address to the National Press Club. But before the speech, he crosses out the paragraph. The night before the march, Dr. King's inner circle wants a new message. WALKER: I remember very vividly Andy Young and I going up and down the steps of the Bullitt (ph) Hotel, taking drafts of what we thought should be a new climax. O'BRIEN: Staying up into the early morning hours, they write and rewrite the speech Dr. King wanted to be a kind of Gettysburg Address. Then he tells them... JONES: Thank you for your counsel. Thank you for your suggestions and all your help. I'm going upstairs to counsel with the Lord. O'BRIEN: This was a march even the president had opposed at the start. A few months earlier, President Kennedy called leaders to the White House, trying to get them to cancel the march, worried it could become violent and derail his Civil Rights bill. REP. JOHN LEWIS (D), GEORGIA: We had a meeting at my house with President Kennedy. A. Fuller Randolph (ph), one of the black leaders, we called the dean of black leadership, spoke up in his baritone voice. He says something like, Mr. President, the black (INAUDIBLE) are restless and we're going to march on Washington. And you can tell by the very body language of President Kennedy he didn't like what he heard. O'BRIEN: When the march seemed inevitable, the president came around. LEWIS: But just in case things didn't go well, they had some of the military on standby outside of Washington, ordered all the liquor stores to be closed. O'BRIEN: The administration had a secret plan. They put two FBI agents near the PA system, ready to pull the plug if they didn't like what they heard. John Lewis had to tone down his speech, rewriting it that very afternoon. And as Dr. King listened to the others speak, he revised his own speech. No one knows why, but activist Dorothy Cotton shared with me her theory, a story she once told Dr. King. COTTON: And I was telling him, I wish you could have been here last night and that you could have heard this girl talking to this group of folk, so giving, so loving, saying all she wanted was her little girl to be able to play with this white girl, you know, so this very blond, blue-eyed girl standing there saying this to these black folk. That was all she -- she just had a dream. And I have always felt that somehow, that stuck with him. O'BRIEN: The day of the march, Dr. King takes this only known copy of his speech, called "Normalcy -- never again," with him. Nowhere does it mention his dream. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have the pleasure to present to you Dr. Martin Luther King! (END VIDEO CLIP) O'BRIEN: With the Lincoln Memorial behind him and facing a quarter of a million people, Dr. King delivers his speech. JONES: I was standing up and to the side. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KING: Now is the time... (END VIDEO CLIP) JONES: And after he went through all this stuff about what we're here today (INAUDIBLE) and so forth and so forth, he paused. And what I did see him do... (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KING: I still have a dream. (END VIDEO CLIP) JONES: He turned the text over. He grabbed the podium. And he leaned back and looked out. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KING: I have a dream. (END VIDEO CLIP) WALKER: I was out in the crowd somewhere, and when he swung into "I have a dream," I said, Oh, "expletive deleted." After all that work that night before, up and down the steps, and then he went on into the "I have a dream" section. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KING: I have a dream! (END VIDEO CLIP) LEWIS: He transformed those marble steps into a modern-day (ph) pulpit. JONES: And I said to whoever that person sitting next to me was, I said, The people here today, they don't know it, but they're about ready to go to church. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KING: Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last! (END VIDEO CLIP) O'BRIEN: In two weeks, the dream would become a nightmare. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MCKINSTRY: You came to church. You had friends who by the afternoon were dead. (END VIDEO CLIP) (COMMERCIAL BREAK) O'BRIEN (voice-over): Six years before his Birmingham campaign, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote this sermon titled "Loving Your Enemies." UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "Throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children and we will still love you. We will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. We will win our freedom." O'BRIEN: Sunday morning, September 15th, 1963. CAROLYN MCKINSTRY, 16TH STREET BAPTIST CHURCH: The phone was ringing in the church office. There was a male caller on the other end who said three minutes. And as quickly as he said that, he hung up. O'BRIEN: At the 16th Street Baptist Church, a youth volunteer Carolyn McKinstry was preparing for service. MCKINSTRY: I paused at the doorway, spoke to the girls that were there. Addie (ph) and Cynthia and Denise and Carol. And didn't linger there. I think they were just talking and primping, doing what girls do, combing hair. And Addie is about to tie Denise's sash. O'BRIEN: Seconds later, the unimaginable. A bomb planted by the Ku Klux Klan exploded outside the bathroom window. MCKINSTRY: It was just kind of chaos. Police immediately surrounded the building. O'BRIEN: Birmingham had once again become Bombingham. MCKINSTRY: This was the first point at which I really realized that my parents were powerless to protect me. You came to church, you had friends who by the afternoon were dead. O'BRIEN: The lives of four little girls stopped at 10:22 a.m. (on camera): So this bombing suddenly made everybody in the nation wake up. MCKINSTRY: It was the only one that resulted in the death of four people, the death of four little girls here at our church. O'BRIEN (voice-over): Andrew Young recalled his own anguish after hearing the news. YOUNG: I was so despondent and depressed. We knew that church. That church was where we had meetings. O'BRIEN: King used the church's pulpit to recruit participants in the struggle for change in Birmingham. In the initial plan for the campaign known as Project Confrontation, the last line on one page reads, "Pray that we can come out alive." YOUNG: Martin said, you know, when you go to Birmingham, somebody is not going to come out. O'BRIEN: But Dr. King didn't anticipate innocent children becoming the movement's martyrs. YOUNG: Most of those days he was in a deep depression. The heaviest burden of leadership is the death of your followers. DR. WYATT TEE WALKER, KING'S FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF: Martin felt that he had to go to Birmingham after that because people would blame him. MCKINSTRY: There were many people that did not want him to come back. People were angry because they felt that he had come in and created trouble for the people that had to live here. O'BRIEN: Dr. King presided over the funeral of three of the children. YOUNG: He was a very disciplined preacher. KING: God has spoken to me. YOUNG: And so if he was going to talk for 15 or 20 minutes, he spent 15 or 20 hours working on it. But that's when you have a whole week. He had a couple of days between the time of the bombing and the time of the memorial service, the funeral service. O'BRIEN: Before delivering the eulogy for the girls, he wrote down some final thoughts. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "The innocent blood of these precious children of God say to each of us we must substitute courage for caution." CLARENCE JONES, FORMER KING ATTORNEY: It was one of the few vivid times, one of the times where I observed tears and crying as he was speaking. O'BRIEN: When faced with such despair, Dr. King relied heavily on his faith. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "In spite of the darkness of this hour, we must not become bitter. Nor must we harbor the desire to retaliate with violence. No, we must not lose faith in our white brothers." YOUNG: Martin would say death is but a comma that leads us into a new eternal life. And that allows the spirit to escape from the body. JONES: His civil disobedience was predicated on a profound belief that more powerful than the march of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come. Justice is an idea whose time has come. O'BRIEN: Two months after the Birmingham bombing, another funeral. That of John F. Kennedy. And a new president, Lyndon Johnson, who would make civil rights his priority in honor of Kennedy. (on camera): That next summer with Martin Luther King looking over his shoulder, President Johnson signed into law the first major civil rights act in nearly a century. Banning segregation in public places, forbidding bias in job hiring. It would stand as a memorial to the four young girls who died here. And everybody else whose sacrifices helped awaken the conscience of a nation. (voice-over): The road would lead to Selma and bloody Sunday. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) O'BRIEN: While blacks were being reviled in the South, the world was taking notice of Dr. Martin Luther King's peaceful protest movement. "Time Magazine" declared King man of the year in 1963. And in late 1964, the Nobel Peace Prize. (on camera): When he heard he won, what was that reaction like? YOUNG: Coretta got the call. And Coretta woke him up. And he said he thought he was dreaming. DR. DOROTHY COTTON, SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP COUNCIL: The day the announce many came down, we were running up and down the sidewalk there on Auburn Avenue saying we won, we knew he had been nominated. We won the Nobel Prize. O'BRIEN (voice-over): The acceptance speech was considered at the time his most important. (on camera): When kind of pressure to get it right? I mean, you see in the documents, you know, draft after draft ... YOUNG: He usually went off by himself for three or four days to do his writing. He was a poet. And poets work on speeches until every little syllable is right. KING: I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace ... REP. JOHN LEWIS, (D) GA: I think his heart, his soul, his gut came out in his speech. KING: I am mindful that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeking to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered. WALKER: He didn't take it as a personal achievement. He accepted it for the people, many of whose names were never known. O'BRIEN (voice-over): In a speech back in Atlanta, Dr. King acknowledged that winning the Nobel was one of the highest honors of his life. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "I must confess that I have enjoyed being on the mountaintop. But something reminds me that the valley calls me in spite of all of its agonies, dangers and frustrating moments. I must return to the valley." LEWIS: Dr. King spoke with passion. He was so convincing. So when you heard him use a line like that, or some other line, you were prepared to follow him. O'BRIEN: Less than a week after that dinner the fight for the right to vote put Dr. King back on the frontlines. This time in racially torn Selma, Alabama. LEWIS: He believed in the power of the vote. He believed that the vote was precious, almost sacred. O'BRIEN: In just a few days' time more than 3,000 protesters were arrested. Including Dr. King. Jail time for him meant more work. So he wrote a to-do list to keep national attention focused on Selma. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "Item. Make personal call to President Johnson, urging him to intervene in some way. Item. Call Sammy Davis and ask him to do a Sunday benefit in Atlanta. I find that all of these fellows respond better when I am in jail or a crisis." O'BRIEN (on camera): I like the last part of that says "Everyone responds better when I am in jail or I'm in a crisis." Almost like there's leverage. YOUNG: Well, the truth of it is nobody cared about us. The news has to emotional to get to us. And there was nothing more emotional than Martin being in jail and then the fire hoses and the dogs. O'BRIEN (voice-over): There was no letup in the violence. On February 18th, 1965, Alabama state troopers fatally shot 26-year-old Jimmy Lee Jackson in Marion, Alabama. He was trying to protect his mother. Dr. King delivered a passionate and familiar message in Jackson's eulogy to all those who remained on the sidelines. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "He was murdered by the indifference of every minister of the Gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained glass windows. He was murdered by every negro who passively accepts the evil system of segregation." O'BRIEN: Jimmy Lee Jackson's funeral sparked another Selma protest march days later. On the Edmund Pettis Bridge, Alabama police violently pushed the marchers back. It is what became known as bloody Sunday. John Lewis, seen here wearing a trench coat and backpack, was at the head of the march and was badly beaten. LEWIS: The only thing I had in that backpack was two books. I thought we were going to be arrested and we would go to jail. So I wanted to have something to read. O'BRIEN: Martin Luther King issued a call for the nation's ministers to come to Selma. Among those who answered, Unitarian Minister James Reeb from Boston. His first night in town, white men attacked him with a baseball bat. His skull was fractured. Within 24 hours, Reeb was dead. In his eulogy, Dr. King said ... UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "We must work passionately and unrelentingly to make the American dream a reality." O'BRIEN: Through all of the sacrifices in Selma came a landmark victory. An invitation from the White House for Dr. King to attend the signing of the Voters' Rights Act of 1965. Only a week after bloody Sunday, President Johnson appealed to Congress to pass the bill in a nationally televised address. LEWIS: I remember so well sitting with him on the night of March 15th, 1965, as he listened and watched Lyndon Johnson. Before he concluded that speech, he said ... LYNDON JOHNSON, THEN U.S. PRESIDENT: And we shall overcome. LEWIS: I looked back at Dr. King and I saw tears coming down his face. He was just crying. He was so moved. O'BRIEN: Ahead, Memphis. The last speech. And the last stop. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) O'BRIEN: In 1968, black garbage workers went on strike over low wages in Memphis, Tennessee. REV. BILLY KYLES, CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER: Many of them could work the whole month and still qualify for welfare. That's how low their wages were. One of them said to me, Reverend Kyles, I'm so tired of hand-me-downs, I haven't had a coat to fit me since I have been a grown man. O'BRIEN: Garbage piled up. When talks broke down, police maced black workers in the street. By now, Dr. King had come to believe that bigotry imposed black poverty and poverty perpetuated inequality. He was planning another march on Washington, a poor people's campaign. Reverend Billy Kyles asked King to come to Memphis first. King's staff opposed it. KYLES: So Martin got word of it and said wait a minute, no, no, no. The garbage men? These are the folk we are talking about, the working poor. We have got to go to Memphis. O'BRIEN: King came, made a speech, and agreed to lead a protest march. But it all fell apart when black youth began breaking store windows. Police attacked with billy clubs and tear gas. King had failed to prevent what he had always preached against. Violence. KYLES: He said we have got to have a peaceful march in Memphis. O'BRIEN: King returned on April 3rd, 1968, staying at the Lorraine Motel. Ever since his seminary days, Dr. King had been inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, whose nonviolent resistance ended a century of British rule in India. In the travel case King brought with him was this quote on a well-worn scrap of paper. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "Gandhi speaks for us. 'In the midst of death, life persists, in the midst of darkness, light persists.'" O'BRIEN: Then King wrote ... UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "We are today in the midst of death and darkness. We can strengthen life and live by our personal acts by saying no to violence. By saying yes to life. O'BRIEN: That night, Dr. King spoke to an overflow crowd at a black church. KYLES: But he talked about death more than I had ever heard him talk about at any one given. KING: Well, I don't know what will happen now. We have got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now. Because I have been to the mountaintop. O'BRIEN: Andrew Young told me it was a speech Dr. King often made when times were dangerous. YOUNG: Because he had done it before, and we had gone on to the next place, I wasn't really taking it serious. It was just a great speech. But I never thought I was listening to his last speech. KING: So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. KYLES: He was just (inaudible). And we had to actually help him to his seat. He gave it all. And somehow I guess he knew that would be his last hoorah. O'BRIEN: The next day, April 4th, Andrew Young walked into King's room right into a pillow fight. YOUNG: He grabbed the pillow off the bad and threw the pillow at me. He was more silly and goofy and playful than I had ever seen him. O'BRIEN: That evening, King was heading to dinner at the home of Reverend Kyles. KYLES: I said guys, come on. Let's go. O'BRIEN: In a boarding house bathroom across the street, a rifle poked out as Dr. King walked on to the motel balcony. KYLES: Before I could get to the stairs, the shot rang out. Kapow! YOUNG: The shot rang out which I thought was a firecracker. When I looked up there and didn't see him, I thought he was clowning again. You know, and until I ran upstairs and saw, you know, him laying in a pool of blood. KYLES: Blood was everywhere. The police were coming. I hollered to them. Call an ambulance on your police radio. Dr. King has been shot. And they said where did the shot come from? So there is a famous picture pointing to the building across the street. I took a spread from one of the beds and covered him from his neck down. He never spoke a word. O'BRIEN: Martin Luther King Jr., dead at the age of 39. Yet, his legacy and his dream would live on to end centuries of separation, to blur the barriers of color, to offer equal rights to all. YOUNG: His spirit has never left us. O'BRIEN (on camera): Is it something you think about a lot? Or is it something you don't think about at all n. YOUNG: Something I think about all the time. O'BRIEN: Really? In what way? YOUNG: Well, everything I do, I have to put in the context -- into context of what we were committed to do. O'BRIEN (voice-over): Left behind among Dr. King's papers that day, this sermon with a lasting thought. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "The major problem of life is learning how to handle the costly interruptions. The door that slams shut, the plan that got sidetracked, the marriage that failed. Or that lovely poem that didn't get written because someone knocked on the door. O'BRIEN (on camera): It is almost hard to imagine today the risks blacks had to face in the search for simple fairness and equality. This sculpture depicts the actual size of the police dogs that confronted children in this Birmingham Park. Think of the courage of Dr. King and others who fought for basic human rights, many of which we take for granted today. Enduring bombings and beatings, jail and eventually death in the hopes of making the nation better for the rest of us today. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.voxant.com


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Fox Acknowledges Its "Hard Right Turn"
Research ››› ››› HARDEEP DHILLON
In a Newsweek article titled "Roger's Reality Show," Howard Kurtz wrote that Fox executives acknowledge that the news channel "took a hard right turn." This admission confirms what has long been clear: that Fox's news division has been slanted.
Fox Executives Admit Their "Entire Network Took A Hard Right Turn"
Kurtz: "Privately, Fox Executives Say The Entire Network Took A Hard Right Turn After Obama's Election." In a Newsweek article, Howard Kurtz wrote that Fox News president Roger Ailes "is quietly repositioning America's dominant cable-news channel." He continued: "Fox executives say the entire network took a hard right turn after Obama's election, but, as the Tea Party's popularity fades, is edging back toward the mainstream." From Newsweek:
It was part political spectacle, part American Idol, part YouTube extravaganza, a pure Roger Ailes production -- and the latest sign that the Fox News chairman is quietly repositioning America's dominant cable-news channel.
Hours before last week's presidential debate in Orlando, Ailes's anchors sat in a cavernous back room, hunched over laptops, and plotted how to trap the candidates. Chris Wallace said he would aim squarely at Rick Perry's weakness: "How do you feel about being criticized by some of your rivals as being too soft on illegal immigration? Then I go to Rick Santorum: is Perry too soft?"
Ailes has always been a master showman -- he even gave advice on triple-checking the audio -- and Fox's partnership with Google produced striking videos, graphics, and a backstage smoothie bar. But the real eye-opener was the sight of his anchors grilling the Republican contenders, which pleases the White House but cuts sharply against the network's conservative image -- and risks alienating its most rabid right-wing fans.
The left has long branded Fox a propaganda arm for Ailes's pugnacious conservatism, and while his journalists maintain they play it straight, the network has certainly provided ample fodder for liberal detractors. But as President Obama's popularity has plummeted and the country has grown increasingly sick of partisan sniping, something unexpected happened. Roger Ailes pulled back a bit on the throttle.
He calls it a "course correction," quietly adopted at Fox over the last year. Glenn Beck's inflammatory rhetoric -- his ranting about Obama being a racist -- "became a bit of a branding issue for us" before the hot-button host left in July, Ailes says. So too did Sarah Palin's being widely promoted as the GOP's potential savior -- in large measure through her lucrative platform at Fox. Privately, Fox executives say the entire network took a hard right turn after Obama's election, but, as the Tea Party's popularity fades, is edging back toward the mainstream.
While Fox reporters ply their trade under Ailes's much-mocked "fair and balanced" banner, the opinion arm of the operation has been told to lower the temperature. After the Gabrielle Giffords shooting triggered a debate about feverish rhetoric, Ailes ordered his troops to tone things down. It was, in his view, a chance to boost profits by grabbing a more moderate audience.
As he embarks on his last hurrah -- Ailes's contract is up in 2013 -- he is acting not like a political operative but as a corporate chieftain who knows that fostering friction and picking fights make for good television--and good business. Next fall's election could well pivot on whether Ailes is more interested in scoring political points or ramping up ratings and revenue.
Fox, of course, still has its share of Obama bashers. Hannity's show uses a logo that asks, "Can You Afford Four More?" Ailes calls him "predictable," but Hannity says he's not a party man: "I'm a registered conservative; I'm not a registered Republican." O'Reilly, who chatted up Obama during this year's Super Bowl, occasionally defends the president against harsh attacks. Ailes says O'Reilly has "moderated" his views and that "Beck scared him" -- meaning Beck was so popular on the right that O'Reilly had to find a different niche.
For his part, O'Reilly says he supported most of George W. Bush's policies and gave Obama's economic plans a chance for 18 months -- before opposing them as unworkable. "I took flak from the far right all day long. They attacked me viciously," he says. He waves off any talk of moderation and insists he never worried about the now-departed Beck: "He's a performer, I'm a journalist."
(Ailes seems to relish the feuding among his stars, saying, "O'Reilly hates Sean and he hates Rush because they did better in radio than he did.")
Ailes keeps a wary eye on anchor Shepard Smith, who occasionally backs aspects of the Obama record: "Every once in a while Shep Smith gets out there where the buses don't run and we have a friendly talk." And Ailes likes to tease O'Reilly: "You gonna suck up to Obama so you can get another interview at the next football game?" Democrats have noticed the change. Says former Obama aide Anita Dunn: "You have the sense that they're trying to at least appear less of the hyper-partisan political network they had been." [Newsweek, 9/25/11, via Daily Beast]
And While Fox Has Claimed Its "News Hours" Were "Objective"...
New York Times: "Fox Argues That Its News Hours ... Are Objective." From The New York Times:
In an interview, Mr. [senior vice president for news Michael] Clemente suggested that there was an element of "shoot the messenger" in the back and forth. "Sometimes it's actually helpful to have an organization or a person that you can go up against for whatever reason," he said.
Fox argues that its news hours -- 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. on weekdays -- are objective. The channel has taken pains recently to highlight its news programs, including the two hours led by Shepard Smith, its chief news anchor. And its daytime newscasts draw more viewers than CNN or MSNBC's prime-time programs.
"The average consumer certainly knows the difference between the A section of the newspaper and the editorial page," Mr. Clemente said. [The New York Times, 10/11/09]
Fox News SVP Compared Fox News And Opinion Programming To "The A-Section Of The Newspaper And The Editorial Page." From TVNewser:
[A] statement from Fox News SVP Michael Clemente: "An increasing number of viewers are relying on FOX News for both news and opinion. And the average news consumer can certainly distinguish between the A-section of the newspaper and the editorial page, which is what our programming represents. So, with all due respect to anyone who might still be confused about the difference between news reporting and vibrant opinion, my suggestion would be to talk about the stories and the facts, rather than attack the messenger...which over time, has never worked." [TVNewser, 10/11/09]
O'Reilly: Fox News Is "Not On A Crusade To Harm The [Obama] Administration." On the February 7 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly discussed his February 6 interview with Obama and said:
O'REILLY: I think Fox News showed the world that we are not in business to demean the president. We want answers, but are not on a crusade to harm the administration. Since the liberal media lies about FNC all the time, that demonstration was important. Folks who don't ordinarily watch us now have some eyewitness data to go on. [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 2/7/11]
...Fox's "Straight News" Division Has Long Been Rife With Conservative Bias
In 2009, Roger Ailes Reportedly Likened Fox News' Fight Against Obama To "The Alamo." From a March 2009 Los Angeles Times article titled, "Fox News' Glenn Beck strikes ratings gold by challenging Barack Obama":
Before Glenn Beck started his new show on Fox News in January, he sat down with Roger Ailes, the network's chief executive, to make sure they were on the same page.
"I wanted to meet with Roger and tell him, 'You may not want to put me on the air. I believe we are in dire trouble, and I will never shut up,' " said the conservative radio host.
But before Beck could say anything, Ailes shared a message of his own: The country faced tough times, he said, and Fox News was one of the only news outlets willing to challenge the new administration.
"I see this as the Alamo," Ailes said, according to Beck. "If I just had somebody who was willing to sit on the other side of the camera until the last shot is fired, we'd be fine."
That couldn't have suited Beck more. In making the jump to the top-rated cable news channel from HLN, where he had a show for two years, he hoped to alert more people to one of his consuming fears: that the government's handling of the economic crisis is ushering in an era of socialism. [Los Angeles Times, 3/6/09]
Fox Washington Editor Tried To Tie Obama To Marxism During Final Days Of Presidential Campaign. On October 27, 2008, Bill Sammon, now Fox News' Washington managing editor, sent an email to colleagues highlighting "Obama's references to socialism, liberalism, Marxism and Marxists" in his 1995 autobiography. Sammon subsequently appeared on multiple Fox programs -- and penned an article for FoxNews.com -- promoting Obama's ties to "Marxists." [Media Matters, 2/1/11]
Sammon Slanted Fox News' Coverage Of Obama's Cairo Speech, Claiming He Didn't Use "The Words 'Terror,' 'Terrorist' Or 'Terrorism.' " On June 4, 2009, a couple of hours after President Obama delivered his much-anticipated speech in Cairo regarding America's relationship with the Muslim world, Bill Sammon sent an email to Fox staff pointing out that Obama did not use "the words 'terror,' 'terrorist' or 'terrorism.' " In fact, Obama devoted a significant section of his remarks to denouncing and confronting Al Qaeda and other "violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security." Despite this, Sammon's "cursory check" quickly became the editorial focus for Fox News journalists covering Obama's speech, and was repeated (in some instances almost verbatim) by the network's hosts. Sammon himself appeared on Fox shortly after sending the email and claimed that Obama, in not using "terrorism" or any of its variants, showed that "he has taken us off a war footing as a nation." [Media Matters, 2/8/11]
Fox's Hemmer "Ke[pt] Track Of The Stimulus Money" By Lifting Research From GOP Website. On the April 23, 2009, edition of Fox News' supposedly "straight news" program America's Newsroom, co-host Bill Hemmer repeatedly suggested that information about four "interesting" projects reportedly funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was obtained through Fox News' own research, even though nearly all of the information Hemmer mentioned, as well as that included in on-screen text and graphics, first appeared on Rep. Eric Cantor's Republican Whip website. [Media Matters, 4/23/09]
Fox "Straight News" Advanced Discredited GOP Calculation Of Obama's Cap-And-Trade Proposal Cost. In a March 23, 2009, "Talking Points" press release, the House Republican Conference advanced the claim that President Obama's cap-and-trade proposal would cost the average U.S. household more than $3,000 per year. Republicans reportedly purported to back up the claim by pointing to a 2007 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). But MIT professor John Reilly, one of the authors of the study, has disputed the GOP's calculation, stating that his study "has been misrepresented" and that the Republicans' claim of an average household cost of $3,128 is "nearly 10 times the correct estimate" based on his study's cap-and-trade model. PolitiFact.com rated the claim a "pants on fire" falsehood. Nonetheless, on the April 2, 2009, edition of America's Newsroom, Fox's Alisyn Camerota asserted that Obama's cap-and-trade proposal "would be $3,100 per U.S. household." [Media Matters, 4/6/09]
Happening Now Passed Off GOP Press Release As Its Own Research -- Typo And All. During the February 10, 2009, edition of Fox's supposedly "straight news" program Happening Now, co-host Jon Scott purported to "take a look back" at how the economic recovery plan "grew, and grew, and grew." In doing so, Scott referenced seven dates, as on-screen graphics cited various news sources from those time periods -- all of which came directly from a Senate Republican Communications Center press release. A Fox News on-screen graphic even reproduced a typo contained in the Republican press release. The following day, Scott apologized -- for running the typo. Scott's apology was criticized by Howard Kurtz, who said: "We sometimes jab at the pundits for using talking points, but in the case of Fox News anchor Jon Scott, it was literally true this week. ... You should be apologizing for using partisan propaganda from the GOP without telling your viewers where it came from. Talk about missing the point." [Media Matters, 10/13/09]
Happening Now Cropped Clips Of Obama To Promote "Another Apology Tour." On the June 2, 2009, edition of Happening Now, Scott asked if "the president's upcoming trip [to Europe and the Middle East will] be what conservatives might call another apology tour," and both Scott and co-host Jane Skinner aired cropped clips of Obama's remarks from an April 3 speech in France to falsely suggest that Obama only criticized the United States. In doing so, Happening Now joined conservative commentators and Fox News hosts who have cropped or misrepresented Obama's overseas remarks to falsely suggest, in the words of host Sean Hannity, that Obama was "blam[ing] America first" and, more broadly, that Obama's earlier overseas trip constituted an "apology tour." [Media Matters, 10/13/09]
Fox "Straight News" Programming Hyped Phony New Black Panthers Scandal. A Media Matters report found that in more than 100 instances between June 30 and July 17, 2010 Fox News hyped the manufactured scandal that President Obama's Justice Department engaged in racially charged "corruption" in the New Black Panther Party case. The phony allegations, made by GOP activist J. Christian Adams, were largely promoted by America Live anchor Megyn Kelly, who described the false allegations as "explosive." However, her analysis relied on deceptive and misleading editing. [Media Matters, 7/17/10, 7/22/10, 12/21/10]
Fox's Shannon Bream Advanced The False Claim That Obama Gave "Major Strip" Of Land To Mexico. Fox "straight news" anchor Shannon Bream reported on June 15, 2010, that a "massive stretch of Arizona [is] now off limits to Americans. Critics say the administration is, in effect, giving a major strip of the Southwest back to Mexico." The claim was completely false -- the strip of land in question was part of a national wildlife refuge that, according to refuge officials, was closed to the public in 2006 -- two years before Obama was elected -- and was under the control of the U.S. Border Patrol. [Media Matters, 6/18/10, 12/21/10]
Fox "Straight News" "Save[d] The Economy" With Right-Wing Talking Points. In a series of segments called 10 Ways to Save the Economy, Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier promoted conservative talking points on the financial crisis, stimulus package, estate tax, and deregulation. The segments also frequently echoed the viewpoint of Fox News' conservative opinion programming. None of the ten segments advocated measures favored by progressives to help the economy. [Media Matters, 7/8/11]
Fox's "Straight News" Division Parroted GOP Attack On DOJ Investigators Into Fast And Furious. During the September 21 edition of Fox News' Special Report, Baier and Fox News correspondent William La Jeunesse attacked the Department of Justice's inspector general for releasing audio tapes related to the ATF's failed Fast and Furious program. At no point did Baier or La Jeunesse note that the inspector general's office said the tapes were released in order to comply with the constitutional rights of the targets of a criminal investigation. [Media Matters, 9/22/11]
Fox's "Straight News" Correspondent Pushed Falsehood That Social Security "May Run Out Of Money." On the September 19 edition of Fox News' Your World, Fox's chief political correspondent Carl Cameron defended Gov. Rick Perry's attack on Social Security, claiming that Social Security "may run out of money." In fact, Social Security will pay full benefits until 2036, even if no changes are made to the program, and even after 2036, Social Security will be able to pay "three-quarters of scheduled benefits through 2085." [Media Matters, 9/20/11]
Fox's "Straight News" Disappeared Allegation That Boeing Retaliated Against Its Workers. On the September 15 edition of Special Report, Fox "straight news" correspondent Doug McKelway promoted Republican efforts to derail a case brought by the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) general counsel against Boeing. Regarding the specific allegations against Boeing, McKelway reported only that "the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Boeing for moving the production from Washington state, calling the move quote 'discriminatory' against Boeing's unionized workers." However, the complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board states that Boeing illegally retaliated against unionized workers for engaging in lawful strikes. [Media Matters, 9/16/11]
Fox's "Straight News" Campaigned Against Obama's Jobs Plan. During an interview with Rep. Robert Andrews (D-NJ) on the September 9 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom, "straight news" anchor Martha MacCallum attacked Obama's jobs plan as unlikely to succeed claiming that the "original stimulus plan ... didn't work, as evidenced by the employment numbers and every other indication in the economy that we've seen." The claim that the stimulus failed is a myth that economists have debunked. The following hour on America's Newsroom, Chris Wallace, the host of Fox News Sunday, repeated the myth that the stimulus failed, saying that "the part" of the plan calling for increased infrastructure spending "sound[ed] like 'Son of Stimulus,' like we were back to the future in February of 2009, and it just hasn't worked." Shortly after Wallace made his remarks, MacCallum again bashed the plan, this time suggesting that what the economy really needs is renegotiation of union contracts. [Media Matters, 9/9/11]
- Network/Outlet
- Fox News Channel
- Person
- Bill O'Reilly, Carl Cameron, Roger Ailes, Bill Sammon, Jane Skinner, Bret Baier, William La Jeunesse, Jon Scott, Martha MacCallum, Bill Hemmer, Megyn Kelly, Alisyn Camerota, Shannon Bream, Doug McKelway
- Show/Publication
- America's Newsroom, Happening Now, Special Report with Bret Baier, America Live
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Summer Reading for Climate Activists
High summer is here, and many of us are taking a break from our schedules, even if it's just for an afternoon. Whether you escape the the beach, the mountains, or your backyard, you'll probably be looking for something to read. So we asked some of our editors to share their favorite books for clean energy activists (or anyone else who wants to look smart while lounging by the pool).
Check out our list, then share your fave summer reads in the comments.
David recommends:
REBUILD THE DREAM by Van Jones -Think of it as a textbook for political change. Especially valuable to activists is Jones's analysis of the Obama campaign and presidency, the Tea Party, and Occupy. He explains what worked, what didn't, and why, using his deceptively simple "Grid" theory.
MAKING GOOD by Billy Parish and Dev Aujla - Billy and Dev start by acknowledging that people who want to change the world still need to make a living, and that they can, without sacrificing their values. The central concept is that almost all our systems, from media to healthcare, are broken. That means there are endless opportunities to find solutions and profit from them.
THE WORLD IS BLUE by Sylvia A. Earle -All climate advocates should understand something about ocean issues, and Sylvia Earle's book is a great place to start. Earle has a lifetime of experience in marine science, and she explains issues like overfishing and ocean acidification in a brilliantly straightforward style.
Vanessa recommends:
NON-VIOLENT COMMUNICATION: A LANGUAGE OF LIFE by Marshall Rosenberg -This book offers some really empowering tools for communicating effectively. In the intro Arun Gandhi writes about physical violence versus passive violence. Passive violence perpetuates physical violence and conflict, and it's carried in unconscious thought and communication patterns. Non-Violent Communication helps with realizing those destructive patterns in our interactions and communicating and listening more constructively.
Lizzy recommends:
NO LOGO by Naomi Klein -The classic critique of consumerism is still fiercely relevant over a decade after its original publication. From Publishers Weekly,
...Klein methodically builds an angry and funny case against branding in general and several large North American companies in particular…. Looking around her, Klein finds that the breathless promise of the information age—that it would be a time of consumer choice and interactive communication—has not materialized.
THE SHOCK DOCTRINE by Naomi Klein -In this alternative history of Milton Friedman's free-market economics philosophy, Naomi Klein challenges the popular idea of this movement's peaceful global victory. From Chile in 1973 to Iraq today, Klein shows how Friedman and his followers have repeatedly harnessed shocks and violence to implement their policies.
SO MUCH PRETTY by Cara Hoffman -Set in a rural community steeped in silence and denial, So Much Pretty explores all parents' greatest fear, that their child will be hurt. But it also examines a second, equally troubling question: What if my child hurts someone else? The disappearance and murder of nineteen-year-old Wendy White is detailed through the eyes of journalist Stacy Flynn and a host of other richly drawn characters, each with their own secrets and convictions.
Rick recommends:
CLIMATE ETHICS: ESSENTIAL READINGS by Sephen Gardiner, Simon Caney, Dale Jamieson, Henry Shue, and Rajendra Pachauri - This collection of essays includes some classic texts on global ethics mixed with very very recent and innovative policy proposals.
A NEW CLIMATE FOR THEOLOGY: GOD, THE WORLD, AND GLOBAL WARMING by Sallie McFague - For any Christian readers or those interested in religion generally. A New Climate for Theology paints a new idea of what being human means and what a just and sustainable economy might mean. McFague argues for an alternative economic order and for our relational identity as part of an unfolding universe that expresses divine love and human freedom.
OUR CHOICE by Al Gore - A really accessible intro to all the different energy sources and infrastructure that go into building a renewable energy future. User friendly while still quite wonky.
THE CLIMATE WAR by Eric Pooley - The most comprehensive and in-depth account of the rise and fall of comprehensive climate legislation in 2009-2010. Definitely the must-read book on the subject.
Caroline recommends:
BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS by Katherine Boo - From Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo, a landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century's great, unequal cities, Mumbai. In this brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human.
Now it's your turn. Tell us what you're reading this summer in the comments below!