AMERICA 2022

Workers are lost in the story of the rail strike

Media bias this week is gross and glaring

Julio Vincent Gambuto
3 min readSep 14, 2022

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These are four rail workers. Here are seven more…

And here’s one last one…

These are the people headed toward a major railway strike, yet in all of our major media outlets, there is not a single headline picture of the workers. CNN is still reporting on the queen, the queen, queen. Thank God, William extended an olive branch to Harry. USA Today, like many others, is reporting on the potential effect on Amtrak in their left web column, beside a major story about (wait for it) pro athletes having “eroding rights.” Fox News is reporting on the “woke Department of Defense.” Even MSNBC, from which I would expect more, has four stories related to Meghan and the monarchy on its MSNBC Daily roundup. Two others are about the former president.

The only major outlet that has given the story of the impending rail strike front-page web coverage today is The New York Times. Yet, that story makes the workers out to be the villain — a “threat” — to the supply chain. The strike could “harm the economy.” I couldn’t find a single major piece in our press today that gave voice to the workers. Lots of pictures of trains. Lots of photos of shipping containers and annoyed commuters. Lots of whiny quotes about how we are just getting back to normal, come on! But not a single profile of a rail worker. Not a paragraph about working conditions, unfair and undignified pay, or the record year of profits rail companies had last year.

I finally found why the workers are potentially striking. After too much digging, a piece by the The Guardian today reported the reasons — the only outlet to use any adjectives about worker schedules or conditions.

The major national media does not seem to be willing or able to report from the perspective of actual working people. We only seem to report from the…

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Julio Vincent Gambuto

Author of “Please Unsubscribe, Thanks!” // Now available in US and UK // juliovincent.com