Rough Draft of History: A Century of US Social Movements in the News 9780691232768, 9780691232782, 9780691232775

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rough dr a f t of h istory

p r i nc e ­t on s t u di e s i n a m e r ic a n p ol i t ic s Historical, International, and Comparative Perspectives Suzanne Mettler, Eric Schickler, and Theda Skocpol, Series Editors Ira Katznelson, Martin Shefter, Founding Series Editors (Emeritus) A list of titles in this series appears in the back of the book.

Rough Draft of History A ­C e n t u ry of US Soci a l Mov e m e n ts in the News

E dw i n A m e n ta Neal Car en

pr i nce­t on u n i v e r sit y pr e ss pr i nce­t on & ox for d

Copyright © 2022 by Prince­ton University Press Prince­ton University Press is committed to the protection of copyright and the intellectual property our authors entrust to us. Copyright promotes the pro­gress and integrity of knowledge. Thank you for supporting ­free speech and the global exchange of ideas by purchasing an authorized edition of this book. If you wish to reproduce or distribute any part of it in any form, please obtain permission. Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to permissions@press​.­princeton​.­edu Published by Prince­ton University Press 41 William Street, Prince­ton, New Jersey 08540 99 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6JX press​.­princeton​.­edu All Rights Reserved ISBN: 9780691232782 ISBN (pbk.): 9780691232775 ISBN (e-­book): 9780691232768 British Library Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data is available Editorial: Bridget Flannery-­McCoy and Alena Chekanov Production Editorial: Ellen Foos and Jaden Young Jacket/Cover Design: Karl Spurzem Production: Erin Suydam Publicity: Kate Hensley and Charlotte Coyne Copyeditor: Karen Verde This book has been composed in Classic Arno Printed on acid-­free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca 10 ​9 ​8 ​7 ​6 ​5 ​4 ​3 ​2 ​1

c on t e n t s

Preface (by Edwin Amenta)  vii Introduction: Uncovering a History of US Social Movements

1

1 A Brief History of Contention: 100 Organ­izations in the News

29

2 Good News, Bad News, Hard News, Soft News (with Weijun Yuan)

75

3 Movement Features: A ­Century of News Waves (with Thomas Alan Elliott and Weijun Yuan)

108

4 Fantastic News: The Wild Media Ride of the Townsend Plan

157

5 The Race Beat and Press Beatdown: Black Rights in 1960s News

184

6 Lopsided Politics, Un­balanced Media, and US Movements ­Today

222

Conclusion: The Past and ­Future of Social Movements in the News

249

Acknowl­edgments 275 Appendix 279 Notes 289 Index  ​329 v

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my first connection to social movement organ­izations in the news occurred more than 40 years ago when I was working on my college newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student. It was not long a­ fter the Watergate scandal, and Indiana University journalism students ­were gung ho. The IDS had almost all of the news desks as a metropolitan daily and looked down on its local competitor, the sleepy Bloomington Herald-­Telephone. It was also near the high point of the newspaper business model. In this pre-­internet era, the IDS routinely printed a full page of classifieds and was latticed with ads from local businesses and the university itself. Thousands of students living in the dorms ­were required to take it. A sociology major who had never taken a journalism class, I joined the paper in 1978. My qualifications consisted of a New York Times subscription, a dog-­eared copy of the AP Style Manual, and an attitude. But my new colleagues soon showed me the ropes and cut me down to size, and in fall 1979 I was placed in charge of “OutTakes,” a four-­page Friday pullout focused on arts and features. A ridicu­lous luxury for a newspaper ­today, OutTakes had no specific coverage assignments, and its most popu­lar part was its back-­page listing of upcoming campus entertainment events. To fill it, I relied on entrepreneurial contributions from across the newsroom, plus anything I could write myself—­ hard-­hitting items, like debating ­whether disco was ­really dead. (Headline: “Boogie Oogie No More?”) I ran into minor trou­ble with a feature on a body-­ building contest that was proposed by the photo editor. My snarky companion copy betrayed a lack of familiarity with the competition’s mandatory poses and scoring criteria, eliciting from one of the event’s organizers a pointed letter to the editor. But that was nothing like the turmoil I encountered over an OutTakes story about a wet T-­shirt contest. The site was Motley’s Pub, a new bar that had become a campus phenomenon. It was a kind of everyday frat kegger known for its lax ID-­checking policy, located just two blocks from the university vii

viii p r e fa c e

president’s office.1 The bar’s raucous atmosphere was epitomized by the contest, which was slated for a mid-­February Tuesday eve­ning, when most halfway serious students ­were at the library. I was pitched that story, too, by the IDS photo editor.2 He said it would be a wild scene that would yield power­ful images. Though a journalistic neophyte, I was holding out for a sharper news a­ ngle than “Motley’s—­the year-­ round spring break.” It had already gotten an IDS writeup in the fall, when the newspaper had duly reported on the novelty of a bar being opened by an IU student, a se­nior business major.3 To me, the story idea smacked of f­ ree publicity, and businesses ­were supposed to pay for ads. Then I heard ­there ­were g­ oing to be protests—­which was a subject of relevance to me. More impor­tant, it ticked additional boxes of news value. The event was local, and many of our readers would likely be interested in it, as the photo editor noted. But now t­ here was also g­ oing to be controversy, and possibly physical conflict. The protesters might disrupt the event, hassle participants, or even clash with the police. ­There was a story ­here, maybe. To cover the event, I dispatched my girlfriend—an economics student—on her first reporting assignment. Novice though she was, she took detailed notes about the contest and interviewed a wide assortment of p­ eople: the student bar owner, who was also the master of ceremonies for the event, the contestants, the bouncers who poured w ­ ater on the contestants’ chests, spectators, the protesters outside, and, ­later, a c­ ouple of professors.4 As the story was emerging, it was mainly a feature—­there ­were no fisticuffs or broken win­dows—­but also sought to achieve balance. On the one side, the own­er/MC, the bouncers, and patrons saw no harm and much good in the event, maybe especially for the contestants. They ­were just expressing themselves, in this side’s view, and taking an opportunity to win some easy money. The hundreds of paying customers seemed happy. A water-­bearing bouncer even styled himself as a proto-­feminist: “If w ­ omen want to show off their bodies, it’s OK. ­We’re not male chauvinist.” The bar owner offered his theory that ­women put themselves in consistently subordinate roles, such as the ones in his contest, ­because they have “an inferiority complex.”5 On the other side ­were the protesters outside the bar. Although ­there w ­ ere only about 20 of them, the story identified representatives of the International Socialist Organ­ization and a local feminist organ­ization called Womensource, which published a f­ ree newspaper. They found the spectacle offensive. A vivid protest sign was described, and a few punchy quotes w ­ ere printed. One protester called it a “humiliating display.” Another was paraphrased as saying that

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the bar owner was preying on w ­ omen who needed money. It was seemingly novel that men w ­ ere also protesting, and two of them w ­ ere quoted. The article also pointed out that the protesters’ modest picket circle was escorted without incident from the front of the bar to the sidewalk by Bloomington police officers. Afterwards, the reporter secured comments from a ­couple of faculty members to place the event in wider perspective. An assistant professor of psy­chol­ ogy said that the contest reflected w ­ omen’s low social status. In a pullout quote, an assistant professor of sociology called the contested “degrading” and likened it to judging “a prize animal at the state fair.” 6 For their part, the contestants w ­ ere ambivalent. The winner said she needed the $100 first-­place prize, but also declared the contest “sleazy.” The runner-up, a Bloomington resident, said she had participated “maybe for the excitement.” Some of the contestants had taken advantage of the bar own­er’s offer of half-­ price drinks and had difficulty negotiating the stage. Also, the contestants ­were dancing not just with their wet T-­shirts, but often, significantly, without them. The photographer, also a ­woman, captured two hopefuls on the verge of liftoff—­the IDS being a f­ amily newspaper—­and her caption indicated the rest.7 The cagey third-­place winner, a student who refused to divulge her name, said she would have won if she ­hadn’t ignored the catcalls to raise her shirt. The reporter followed up by phone with the sophomore winner, who was at her dormitory, and secured information that greatly increased the news value of the story. She volunteered her age—­which was 18, though the ­legal drinking age was 21. She said the bar owner had told her that it was OK for the contestants to be underage if they ­didn’t drink. The winner also offered that if she could have a do-­over, she would not participate. She had been harassed afterward. All of that, except for the fact that the reporter had witnessed her drinking, was inserted into the story, which was published ten days a­ fter the event. I was responsible for its contents. It was standard procedure for the editor to command the keyboard of the futuristic “video display terminal”—­a primitive word processor—­with the reporter sitting adjacent, check e­ very word of the story draft, and amend or rewrite it as needed or desired. For a news story, which this had become, the copy desk, also a newsroom luxury nowadays, would run the article through the fact-checking wringer. It verified names and affiliations.8 ­After the story ran, the editor in chief called me into the office—on a Saturday, when the newsroom was always empty. This was a first for me. It was ominous, too, that he had invited to the meeting the IDS publisher, a retired

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reporter with whom I had never spoken.9 When I arrived, I saw standing ­there with balled-up fists the student owner of Motley’s Pub. His business had been severely damaged, he said angrily. He seemed older than the average se­nior and was muscular and intimidating. But I was far more concerned about the response of the editor in chief. Only the best and brightest journalism students even thought about applying to run the IDS.10 I did not know him well, and my section was at best peripheral to the operation, minimizing our day-­to-­day contact. Now I had his full attention, and I worried that I might have to answer for reporting or editing errors. I feared my budding journalistic ­career might be ending. As he paced the room, the bar owner claimed that the story was unfair to him. I began thinking that I might have to concede that the article was more balanced than the situation. The protesters w ­ ere far fewer than the attendees—­ possibly they w ­ ere outnumbered even by the contestants. Also, the quote with his psychological theorizing made him look silly, especially when juxtaposed with the psy­chol­ogy professor’s mea­sured response. Still, by saying on the rec­ord something that provocative and ignorant, he had almost forced us to print it. But ­were ­there errors? I went through the possibilities in my mind. Had he been misquoted? Did we misspell his name? I had made that m ­ istake once, and the fallout was not pleasant. My colleagues reacted with a mixture of pity and revulsion, as if they had learned that I had inadvertently backed my car over my dog.11 But we had double-­checked, and the bar own­er’s name was spelled the same as the sandwich and the missile crisis. It turned out that I did not have to admit to anything. As the bar owner continued to vent, he expressed that he may have been libeled. The editor’s mood darkened. He turned to me and asked me w ­ hether I stood b­ ehind the facts in the article. The reporter and I had gone over the story for more than a week, as did the photo editor and the copy desk. I affirmed that ­every detail was true. When the owner could not identify anything specific as potentially false, the editor stood up and, much to my relief, declared the meeting over. The bar owner stomped off. He was not wrong about the damage to his business. In April, Indiana excise police lodged a formal complaint with the Alcoholic Beverages Commission, charging that the winner was underage, as she had been identified in the IDS. But so apparently was the second-­place contestant, the Bloomington resident who had been named in the story and photographed, too.12 According to a ­later account by the bar owner, she had been spotted by her Monroe County

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juvenile probation officer, who identified her as a 16-­year-­old.13 The complaint cited both the bar’s selling of alcohol to minors and its “failing to maintain a high reputation.” Before the board, the owner repeated what he had told the contestants. In his view, they ­were “performers” and did not need to be 21 to enter the bar, so long as they ­didn’t drink. He also offered that he ­wasn’t planning to hold any more wet T-­shirt contests.14 The commission agreed with him, but only in part. He was done with contests—­also with serving drinks. It pulled the bar’s liquor license. A ­gaggle of protesters and OutTakes had taken out Motley’s Pub. It turned out that my news days ­were also numbered. I decamped to Chicago for gradu­ate school. Upon their graduations, the editor in chief, the photo editor, the photographer, and the reporter fanned out across the country and had major c­ areers in journalism, garnering several Pulitzer Prizes. The business student soon moved to Dallas, but also landed on his feet. ­Later, he said that the bar’s closing was the best ­thing that had ever happened to him. A c­ ouple of innovative business ventures and well-­timed sales of them made him a billionaire. His name was Mark Cuban.15 This episode helps to illustrate some issues Neal Caren and I address in our analyses of more than a ­century of social movement organ­izations in the news. To gain coverage, movement actors w ­ ill almost always have to do something to fit the news values of journalists. News organ­izations ­will sometimes focus on these actors b­ ecause they may portend conflict, or vio­lence. And they have more currency if they feed into an issue of the times—in this case, feminism. The protesters at the wet T-­shirt contest did not break win­dows or start shoving matches. But had vandalism or vio­lence happened, that would have been highlighted, and their views likely would have been crowded out. If a protest is considered worthy of coverage, it w ­ ill often be by lower-­profile reporters with no specific assignments or news beats. Even when movement actors appear as noncombatants in the news, they ­will be often treated as sideshows. They may not succeed in getting across their organ­ization’s talking points, and instead may be quoted in ways that journalists find in­ter­est­ing or “colorful,” as we did with the male protesters and the sign. Often journalists w ­ ill rely on experts to do much of the interpreting, as we did with the professors. Moreover, protest demonstrations and marches rarely lead to sustained coverage. ­After the contest, the organ­izations fell out of the news. What is more, only sometimes are movement actors treated as a rightful side of the story, as they ­were in this one. That often depends on aspects of the situation they cannot control. One is the relative legitimacy of their targets. If

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the target is a local business engaged in questionable practices, as this one was, movement organ­izations have a good chance to be treated as a player in the news. If the targets are duly elected officials, social movement actors may have to do something e­ lse to gain equal footing. That might include attempting to take over officials’ prerogatives by challenging their reelection or pressing for a referendum. It is also very rare for movement actors to gain the kind of favorable results they did h­ ere. Their treatment w ­ ill often depend a ­great deal on the context in which they are contending. In what follows, we examine ­these issues and more across all the national social movement organ­izations that appeared in key national newspapers in more than a ­century’s worth of news. We address which movements and organ­izations received the most news attention when they received it and why. We also address the quality of their coverage, including why sometimes they ­were able to get across their demands and discussions of their issues and sometimes not. We follow this history from when journalism was first becoming professionalized, through its heyday near the end of the twentieth ­century, to ­today, ­after most newspapers have folded from forces unleashed by the internet, or have been transformed into online news organ­izations. Edwin Amenta, October 22, 2021, Irvine, California

rough dr a f t of h istory

Introduction Uncovering a History of  US Social Movements

journalists like to say that newspapers provide the first rough draft of history. And much of what we know about US social movements stems from their reporting on subjects ranging from environmental and peace campaigns to veterans’ and old-­age benefits, from rights for l­abor, African Americans, ­women, and the homeless to restrictions on alcohol, immigration, abortion, and taxation. In the twentieth ­century, newspapers commanded the production of po­liti­cally relevant information, setting the agenda for tele­vi­sion news and other media outlets. But the same digital revolution that knocked the major news organ­izations back on their heels now makes it pos­si­ble to replay this rec­ord in full. And this history turns out to diverge considerably from conventional wisdom, scholarship on social movements, and popu­lar historical accounts.1 Scholarship on US social movements tends to focus on five big ones, four of which flourished in the 1960s and 1970s: the Black rights, ­women’s rights, environmental, and anti-­war movements. Each is an impor­tant movement to be sure and received extensive attention in the press in its heyday. However, the fifth movement, or­ga­nized ­labor, received the most journalistic attention of any movement of the twentieth c­ entury and is greatly understudied in comparison to how much it dominated the public sphere. More generally, older and more conservative movements and organ­izations had a far higher profile in the public debates of the day than they do in academic publications or current memory. ­These include the veterans’, anti-­alcohol, nativist, el­derly rights, and anti-­government movements. ­Little academic ink has been spilled, for instance, over the National Security League, American Legion, American Liberty League, Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, Ham and Eggs, 1

2  I n t r o du c t i on

Committee to Defend Amer­i­ca by Aiding the Allies, International Typographical Union, and John Birch Society. But each of t­ hese organ­izations had their days in the Suns, Times, and Posts.2 Some of t­ hese movement actors had moments that w ­ ere quite influential. The first Red Scare surrounding US entry into the First World War brought nativist organ­izations into the news, for instance, including the National Security League and American Defense Society. They hastened the demise of the German-­American Alliance, which also became newsworthy. The latter was a bulwark against Prohibition and one of the few membership organ­ izations in US history to enroll more than 1 ­percent of the population. Anti-­ immigrant and white supremacist movements have been a recurrent theme in US history and are well documented in the news rec­ord. While the campaign to pass Prohibition is well known, moreover, the organ­izations that led to Prohibition’s repeal and the news debates surrounding them are not. But the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment and the W ­ omen’s Organ­ization for National Prohibition Reform had big years in the news and made arguments that are echoed in debates over the legalization of marijuana. Movement organ­izations seeking to keep the country out of the Second World War provoked public controversy that ensured that US support to the Allies would be tentative, and that the nation would be poorly prepared for war once it came. The relative lack of emphasis on l­ abor also leads to the neglect of impor­tant debates. The strug­gles of US ­labor to or­ga­nize industrial ­unions through dramatic strikes in the 1930s are well known, but less well addressed are controversies surrounding u­ nions in the postwar period. The news treatment of l­ abor strikes immediately ­after the war was integral to the passage of the 1947 Taft-­ Hartley Act, a piece of anti-­union legislation that brought the Orwellian phrase “right to work” into common parlance and helped start the United States down a path leading to a time where u­ nionized workers now constitute only about 10 ­percent of the ­labor force. The extensive and often consequential news coverage ­labor was afforded in the postwar period was greatly reduced by the end of the ­century. As the Taft-­Hartley Act example shows, however, the news coverage of movement actors often can be negative, forcing ideas po­liti­cally out of bounds and distorting our memory of how debates played out. Perhaps no large po­ liti­cal organ­ization was ridiculed in the news so roundly as the Townsend Plan, which promised large sums to the el­derly to keep them out of poverty and to end the G ­ reat Depression. Elected officials made headlines disparaging this

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group, helping to discredit the idea that pensions could be a right for all el­derly citizens. The news treatment also condemned the idea that radically extensive government spending could aid the economy—­even though the country exited the Depression only by way of massive war expenditures. And without this organ­ization ­there would likely be no Social Security as we know it ­today. More sympathetic news treatment might have amplified its influence on that program’s generosity or helped to end the Depression sooner. The Black civil rights movement has been heavi­ly and rightly studied in the run-up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. Scholars and history textbooks recount the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the dogs and w ­ ater cannons unleashed on school ­children in Birmingham, and the beatdown of marchers in Selma—­all of which w ­ ere integral to the passage of t­ hese laws. But Black rights organ­izations actually received more news coverage in the less remembered second half of the de­cade, and their treatment was not nearly as useful to the movement. Key issues, including police shootings, ­were dismissed in public discourse by their association with the Black Panther Party, which was tried in the press as well as in the courts. Other movement actors have enjoyed g­ reat scholarly attention despite having received less than extensive press attention, including the anti-­war, anti-­ abortion, and LGBTQ rights movements. Moreover, some movements received greater newspaper attention than o­ thers despite differences in size. The anti-­abortion movement has more organ­izations and adherents than the abortion rights movement, but the latter has received far more coverage in high-­ profile news. Nativist and white supremacist movements have only rarely drawn extensive popu­lar support—­w ith the “second” Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s standing out as an exception. But ­these organ­izations have been in the news regularly. ­There is a straight line between the discussion of nativists more than a ­century ago and former President Donald Trump’s encouragement of the so-­called alt-­right, with paramilitary groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers making headlines. Often movement-­related events that are now considered influential and impor­tant received ­little play at the time they occurred or ­were greatly overshadowed by other events of the day. The account of the famous w ­ omen’s rights protest against the Miss Amer­i­ca pageant in Atlantic City in September 1968 was buried deep inside the New York Times and was illustrated not by protesters, but with a headshot of the winning contestant. Also consigned to inside news was the following summer’s legendary Stonewall Inn uprising, which helped to spark the LGBTQ rights movement. The minor coverage of

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figure 0.1. The iconic ­women’s rights protest in Atlantic City was far from front-­page news. Charlotte Curtis, “Miss Amer­i­ca Pageant Is Picketed by 100 ­Women,” New York Times, September 8, 1968, p. 81.

this event focused on the protesters’ ill treatment of the police, and although the protest raged over several eve­nings, it never made page one. The same sort of marginal treatment was accorded the veteran Bonus Army in the early 1930s and student lunch-­counter sit-­ins in the early 1960s. The iconic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom of 1963 did command a three-­tier headline on the front page of the Times, as might be expected, with sidebars that included excerpts from speeches. For all its news play, however, this event found itself in partial eclipse by an account of the resolution of a railroad strike. The march received some coverage in the buildup to its transcendent moment on the National Mall. But the railroad strike had been in the news for weeks. The vote to end it prevented many members of Congress from meeting with civil rights leaders. More generally, although large protest marches often made the news, more sustained attention was trained on long-­ running events like strikes. And, more impor­tant, organ­izations, like the five striking rail u­ nions, w ­ ere covered more extensively than protests and their organizers typically ­were.

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figure 0.2. The account in the New York Times of the famous uprising at the Stonewall Inn ran without a byline and focused on harm to policemen. “4 Policemen Hurt in ‘Village’ Raid.” June 25, 1969, p. 33.

To take another example, compare the NAACP and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The NAACP has been extensively analyzed for its central role in the Black civil rights movement, especially its law-­and culture-­ changing litigation in the 1950s, its collective action in the 1960s, and its movement leadership beyond. It should come as no surprise that the NAACP appears 12,740 times in articles in sociology, po­liti­cal science, and history journals. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters provides a stark contrast. That checkered organ­ization is often treated as an archetype of corruption, with many a joke centered on its former leader, Jimmy Hoffa, and his vari­ous potential final resting places. Sociologists, po­liti­cal scientists, and historians have studied the Teamsters, too, but it receives less than a sixth of the academic attention of the NAACP, with only 1,881 articles mentioning it across journals in ­these disciplines.3 Yet in terms of attention in the New York Times, the two are quite

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figure 0.3. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom received extensive play on the front page of the New York Times, but t­ here was longer-­running coverage of legislation seeking to avert a national railroad strike.

similar, as figure 0.4 shows. But the Teamsters’ news coverage was often quite negative and harmful to the organ­ization as well as to the l­ abor movement as a whole—an issue that points to the importance of the quality of coverage received by organ­izations. All this is in no way intended to fault scholars for focusing on movements that w ­ ere more influential, more recent, more amenable to research, or simply

U n c o v e r i n g a H i s t or y o f S o c i a l M o v e m e n t s  7

Number of articles, New York Times

800

NAACP

Teamsters

600

400

200

0 1900

1925

1950

1975

2000

Year figure 0.4. The News Coverage of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and NAACP, 1900–1999.

more in­ter­est­ing to them. Logistical difficulties are ­great in studying any social movement, much less ones in distant memory, and almost every­thing we know about movements has come as a result of ­these studies. But at a minimum, taking stock of a c­ entury’s worth of news coverage of movement organ­ izations suggests that scholars have neglected prominent ones that w ­ ere influential in public discourse and policy. A comprehensive approach to analyzing movements in the news can unearth anomalies or examples of novel lines of action worth exploring, as well as new routes to influence for movements. In some instances, t­ hese neglected challengers provide examples of consequences that are worse than simply failing to achieve goals—­such as in the cases of the German-­American Alliance and the Teamsters—­which are also worth addressing. More generally, analyzing news coverage of movements over time, across issues, organ­izations, periods, and news outlets, can help to appraise key arguments about the influence of movements, given the wider net and greater variation in movement actors, the actions they took and the contexts in which they acted. Understanding the news coverage of movements is impor­tant b­ ecause of its influence on cultural and po­liti­cal change. News media coverage m ­ atters to

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movements’ bids to alter public debates over social prob­lems and their solutions. In a classic account, Michael Lipsky argues that protest cannot be influential or draw the general public into po­liti­cal ­battles over new issues without gaining close attention from the news media. Todd Gitlin’s landmark study of the news coverage of Students for a Demo­cratic Society showed that movement actors usually try to submit to the rules of journalism to become po­liti­cal players and advance their ­causes, and this still holds true t­ oday. Despite the upheavals in the media ecol­ogy, which we address near the end of the book, professional news organ­izations and the so-­called legacy media still m ­ atter. The national news organ­izations remain the central institutions of newsgathering. The prestige press, including the New York Times and Washington Post, still sets the agenda for other news outlets, and mainstream news organ­izations constitute the top digital news entities. Th ­ ere remains no better way to reach large numbers of p­ eople, gain support and legitimacy, and influence elite actors than through the professional news media. That they aspire to fairness, objectivity, and truthfulness also affords them greater credibility among third parties than partisan and amateur news outlets. Not only is news coverage a means to advancing a movement’s ­causes and organ­izations. Movements also often seek to transform how their constituents are perceived or referred to by the public. Groups wish to be called the el­derly or se­nior citizens rather than being labeled “oldsters” or worse, or to be called gay or lesbians rather than “sexual inverts” or worse. How they are covered in the news is accordingly an impor­tant outcome, especially as the terms in the news often diffuse into everyday discourse.4 A lot is at stake in the news treatment of social movements. Social movements’ bids to effect major social change are the reason ­people join them, and the reason scholars study them. For most of US history, however, as we ­will see, movements have been represented in the national news mostly by only small groups of organ­izations, with o­ thers mainly sidelined. B ­ ecause of their media exposure, the higher-­profile organ­izations are often viewed by the public and elites as representing the interests of po­liti­cally underserved groups. Yet t­ hese organ­izations w ­ ere not necessarily representative and often w ­ ere quite idiosyncratic in their views—­and w ­ ere frequently treated poorly during their news closeups. Identifying when movements and the organ­izations that represented them ­were covered—­and how they w ­ ere covered—­can say a ­great deal about how the public has understood underrepresented groups and their possibilities for influence.

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As we w ­ ill see, too, often the news rec­ord defies expectations. Sometimes waves of movement coverage align with general and scholarly understandings of their prevalence, such as t­ hose that occurred in the 1930s and 1960s—­ decades well known for their activism. However, at less noted times, news attention to movements was also high, including during some parts of the 1920s, 1940s, and 1980s—­decades not considered to be movement eras. An account based on newspapers also provides a far more accurate view of the historical debates in which movements engaged and their influence over the public sphere. Newspaper coverage is an impor­tant potential cultural consequence of movements, leading to many questions about the amount and quality of coverage. Despite the focus on protest by scholars, moreover, movement organ­ izations have been covered far more frequently outside the context of marches and rallies than inside them. Marches on Washington or around the country have only rarely brought sustained news attention. Also, movement organ­ izations land in the news for any number of reasons, ranging from strikes to referendums, from reacting to po­liti­cal proposals to community events, from third party runs to occupations. Movement organ­izations frequently appeared in national po­liti­cal coverage and in city sections, but they might show up anywhere in the newspaper. Their most extensive treatment centered on action that could more easily be converted into long-­running stories, such as legislative and litigation campaigns, initiatives, strikes, occupations, boycotts, civic action, investigations, and ­trials. And not only do movement organ­ izations get covered far more outside of marches and demonstrations. Movement organ­izations usually receive their best press when the story is not about protest. It is usually covered in the news in an episodic and logistical way—­ with the so-­called protest paradigm that treats movement action mainly as a prob­lem of social order and not as po­liti­cal action. Analyzing coverage that goes beyond protest is key ­because movement actors ­doing other ­things often have a better chance of making major news and gaining standing with the news media—­conveying the messages that may activate s­ upporters and influence po­liti­cal debates.5 In our analyses, we focus on two dimensions of news: substance and sentiment. Movements attempt to insert into the public sphere new po­liti­cal and social issues and innovative diagnoses of prob­lems and solutions to them. Movements tend to be low on power, and, according to the dictum of Frederick Douglass, power concedes nothing without a demand. One key ele­ment

10  I n t r o du c t i on

of substantive coverage involves framing, and a central ele­ment of frames is a demand, also sometimes called a “prescription” or a “claim.” 6 Movements typically aim demands at targets that can grant concessions and are crucial to contests over meaning. A second aspect of substance for movement actors in the news is being connected to discussions of issues they seek to promote. If an article includes the organ­ization or other movement actors in discussions of key issues, it portrays that organ­ization as a player with standing and a stake in the debates. The tone of the news discussion also m ­ atters. Scholars have noted that movement actors are frequently treated as criminal or deviant, and references to them often carry a negative tone. Although inserting issues and demands into the public sphere through the news is the most impor­tant mission for movement actors, ­these demands ­will resonate more if t­ hese actors are portrayed in a positive, or at least neutral, way.7 In the best types of news for movement actors, they receive long-­running, substantive treatments that reflect positively on them and their missions. However, that sort of “good news” was rarely the case across the twentieth ­century. ­There w ­ ere also many long strings of coverage that ­were even worse for movement organ­izations than logistical discussions or simply being ignored. In this variety of “bad news,” movement actors ­were disparaged and portrayed as criminal or deviant in coverage that ranged sometimes over weeks and months. ­There w ­ ere also major moments of coverage where substance and sentiment ­were not in sync. Sometimes the news addressed movement actors’ issues and claims but treated them unfavorably—­which we call “hard news.” At other times journalists treated movement actors respectfully, but failed to discuss their claims or treat them as significant players with stakes in impor­ tant issues by way of what we refer to as “soft news.” ­Here we show the who, what, when, and where of movements in the news. But we also address a series of critical “why” questions: Why do some movements receive extensive newspaper coverage when they do so? Why do some organ­izations receive far more coverage than o­ thers and make a major splash in the news? As for the quality of coverage, why do some movements and organ­izations receive more favorable coverage than ­others, especially at the times when they are most in the news? Why do movements sometimes get treated in ways that are discrediting—­worse than no coverage at all? Scholars studying social movements rely heavi­ly on case studies, as the difficulties in tracing even a few movements over time have warded off broader analyses. Notable exceptions include William Gamson’s landmark study in 1975 of the impact of the strategies of a random sample of all US movement

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organ­izations from the mid-­nineteenth c­ entury through 1945, and Theda Skocpol’s analy­sis in 2003 of the 58 largest voluntary membership organ­ izations in US history.8 Like Gamson and Skocpol, we seek to break through the limits of case studies and to provide a big picture of movement news coverage. We do so not by sampling movement organ­izations or identifying the largest ones, but through a comprehensive approach: tracking all mentions of national social movement organ­izations, including l­ abor ­unions and po­liti­cal advocacy organ­izations, in four nationally oriented newspapers over the twentieth c­ entury, with some follow-­ups for the current c­ entury. We identified more than 1,500 qualifying organ­izations through vari­ous means, including scholarly monographs, expert-­generated lists of organ­izations, and encyclopedias. Using information about the organ­izations, and by trial and error, we located all the articles mentioning ­these organ­izations in four national newspapers—­the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal.9 Like t­ hese scholars, moreover, we examine a wide variety of organ­izations, not just ­those that engaged in protest. Gamson notably included in his sampling frame l­ abor u­ nions and public-­interest advocacy organ­izations, which is a lead we follow. Like Skocpol, we analyze large, midcentury, civically engaged organ­izations that addressed po­liti­cal issues, such as the American Association of University ­Women and the PTA. Like Gamson, we include low-­and high-­ profile organ­izations alike, ones that rarely or never made it into print as well as big newsmakers. Like Skocpol, however, we focus on the most prominent—­ the organ­izations and movements that commanded the most headlines and newsprint during the c­ entury. As we w ­ ill show, to the extent that the news provides a history of movements, it is largely an account of ­these most covered organ­izations. We highlight especially the 100 organ­izations that experienced at least one year of major attention in the news in the ­century.10 Our approach also allows us to pose and address impor­tant questions that w ­ ere previously off limits for scholars and can go well beyond addressing protest events.

Institutional Mediation and the Determinants of Movements’ News Coverage To explain ­these developments, we develop an institutional mediation model of news coverage for movements. The model is based on the recognition that movements are not routinely power­ful, and gaining favorable outcomes for

12  I n t r o du c t i on

them almost always depends on a convergence of favorable circumstances. The impact of movements on how they are treated in the news is mediated by both po­liti­cal and news contexts. The news coverage of movements is a potential cultural consequence of them but is not ­under their control. In that way, movements’ newspaper coverage is unlike mobilizing constituents, creating collective identities, increasing individual and orga­nizational capacities, altering the ­career trajectories of participants, or publishing their own newsletters, press releases, and websites. For newspaper coverage, the key determinations about who, what, when, where, and how to cover are made by journalists. Newspapers in turn are concerned mainly with politics and the institutions in which po­liti­cal decisions are made. Journalists are also keenly interested in issues of social order, as well as the state institutions designated to uphold it. In contrast, movement actors are infrequently a major focus of news attention.11 Building from the historical institutionalism of Paul Pierson and Theda Skocpol, the social organ­ization of the news approach of Michael Schudson and ­others, and the po­liti­cal mediation model of movement consequences, we argue that the social organ­ization, operating procedures, and institutions of the news media help to account for the media’s treatment of movements. When and how movement organ­izations are covered depends on how the news media are or­ga­nized, the po­liti­cal circumstances that influence issues over which movements contend, and the form and nature of movement organ­ izations and their activity. The influence of movements is mediated in multiple ways, through the organ­ization and pro­cesses of news institutions and the po­liti­cal contexts in which movement organ­izations act. What is more, po­liti­ cal shifts influence both media institutions and movement actors.12 ­Because the social organ­ization of the news strongly mediates the impact of movements over their treatment, we first discuss the evolution of US news organ­izations.

Meet the US Press For most of the twentieth c­ entury, US news as an institution was dominated by a commercial press that grew up alongside po­liti­cal institutions. Initially almost all newspapers w ­ ere political party operations, supported by favorable government postal policy and priced for elites. At the turn of the twentieth ­century, US newspapers took advantage of mass literacy and won in­de­pen­ dence from parties and elites through low prices, mass subscriptions, and extensive advertising revenues, and ­were shielded from state interference

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through judicial decisions. They became more professionalized and nationalized in the twentieth c­ entury in tandem with the professionalization and nationalization of the government and other institutions.13 In comparative terms, US news organ­izations have conformed to a “liberal” model—­dominated by for-­profit, increasingly professionalized enterprises, with only minor contributions from publicly supported ventures and party organs. Although they retained editorial pages with partisan slants, the organ­izations’ main goal was to provide objective and balanced news. At midcentury, professionalization in newsrooms took another leap forward. Journalists provided greater context for news events and took a more questioning and oppositional stance t­ oward po­liti­cal officials. This model reached its zenith near the end of the twentieth ­century, with mono­poly revenues from subscriptions and advertising subsidizing the public good that was the po­liti­cal scrutiny supplied by journalists.14 Politics has been central to news organ­izations’ missions, identities, operating procedures, and business models. Professional journalism seems necessary to the existence of modern liberal democracies, and the news media view themselves as po­liti­cal watchdogs in the public interest. Government officials have long used the news media to transmit their messages to the wider public. Since Theodore Roo­se­velt at the turn of the twentieth ­century, presidents and other institutional po­liti­cal actors have engaged in elaborate efforts to stage news, expecting it ­will be covered and hoping it ­will be reported as they pre­ sent it. Journalists’ news routines rely on access to the actors, outputs, and pro­cesses of po­liti­cal institutions. News beats assign reporters to probe ­these sources for news daily. The news values of professional journalists also ensure the coverage of po­liti­cal officials. Decisions about what is news and how to cover it are based on events’ qualities, including timeliness, currency, impact, actors’ prominence, proximity, novelty, and conflict, and po­liti­cal decisions and events score high on all of t­ hese qualities. Often po­liti­cal stories involve conflict, such as ­those between po­liti­cal parties, the president and Congress, and factions on the Supreme Court, as they contest elections, debate policy, and hand down law-­like decisions.15 Professional news organ­izations see themselves as seeking accuracy, balance, and fairness, but routinely interpret ­these qualities to mean being fair and balanced to representatives of the two major parties regarding issues over which they disagree.16 Daniel Hallin has referred to this constrained discursive field as the “sphere of legitimate controversy.” In the first wave of the professionalization of journalism, that meant providing “objective” treatment, with the two main po­liti­cal views being balanced. In the wake of the egregious lies

14  I n t r o du c t i on

of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s and the Watergate cover-up of President Richard Nixon in the 1970s, journalists increasingly assumed a more adversarial relationship t­ oward po­liti­cal officials and o­ thers in authority. They sought to check the validity of official accounts, asking hard questions about them, and sought to place news in larger po­liti­cal contexts. For all ­these reasons, the amount and quality of coverage gained by movement organ­izations depends importantly on how they and their actions intersect with how journalists cover politics.17 The poorer treatment of movement organ­izations and actors by the news media is due to their compounded legitimacy and newsworthiness deficits. Gaining legitimacy has long been viewed as a central goal for organ­izations, as prominent new institutionalists such as Paul DiMaggio and Woody Powell have argued. This issue, which involves aligning organ­izations with cultural rules, norms, and expectations, poses many challenges for organ­izations seeking po­liti­cal influence on behalf of groups with l­ittle power. Though often chartered and formal, movement organ­izations frequently have l­ittle official standing regarding the ­people they seek to represent; their claimed constituency is typically far more extensive than their participating membership. Unlike institutional po­liti­cal officials, movement organ­izations are not elected or certified through po­liti­cal pro­cesses, and thus do not exercise any legitimate po­liti­cal authority in the Weberian sense. Moreover, movement actors usually express views that are at odds with the mainstream of current po­liti­cal discourse, which is often defined by the claims of the legitimately elected authorities. Movement actors engage in be­hav­ior outside the bounds of institutional politics and often represent marginalized groups. For ­those reasons, they constantly seek to display their worthiness, as Charles Tilly noted. Fi­nally, movement actors are usually not po­liti­cally influential, compounding their news-­ making deficits with journalists.18 Rarely do news organ­izations compete over information movements may have, and rarer still is it any journalist’s beat to follow movements. Even when movement leaders and participants follow what they perceive as the rules of news-­making, as Gitlin has called them, usually the media are uninterested. Movement actors are forced to play by dif­fer­ent and more stringent rules that tend to keep them and the issues they seek to advance out of the news.19 The US news media are sometimes called the fourth branch of government or, more grandly, the Fourth Estate, and their existence seems necessary for the flourishing of demo­cratic po­liti­cal institutions. Also, newspaper ­owners, publishers, and editors, ranging from William Randolph Hearst to Harrison

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Gray Otis, from a series of Sulzbergers to Philip Graham, from Jeff Bezos to Patrick Soon-­Shiong, have been influential in politics to be sure. But news media are far from being a coequal part of the state. A ­ fter all, they lack binding rule-­making authority, implementation capacities, or recourse to legitimate vio­lence. They do not supply candidates for election to run state institutions.20 And foremost, US news institutions are not po­liti­cally secured through taxation revenues and the state organ­izations that collect them. News organ­ izations are mainly businesses subject to both po­liti­cal and market forces—as the upheavals of the twenty-first century have amply demonstrated.

Po­liti­cal Development, News Media, and Social Movements The news media are certainly po­liti­cal institutions in that, like social movement organ­izations, they are and have been strongly influenced by major po­ liti­cal developments and transformations. Both news and movement organ­ izations have been ­shaped by state-­building and “durable shifts of governing authority,” to use the terms of Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek. ­These pro­cesses include the centralization and democ­ratization of po­liti­cal institutions, their modernization, the appearance of reform-­oriented, partisan regimes, and major policy innovations that promote professional state bureaucracies. The barriers to nationalized politics, modern po­liti­cal organ­izations, and policy reform have been exceptional in the United States, however. Th ­ ese barriers include the g­ reat authority exerted by states, localities, and courts; strongly rooted patronage-­oriented po­liti­cal parties, mainly in the Northeast and Midwest; an under-­democratized polity, characterized most notably by a denial of civil and voting rights to African Americans in the South for most of the ­century; and a winner-­take-­all and presidential electoral system. ­These structural po­liti­cal features also inhibited national social movements. Activists ­were often mired in ­battles in individual states and localities, fended off by party bosses, or unable to or­ga­nize in states where basic demo­cratic rights went unprotected.21 The rise to prominence of national US movements in a national public sphere depended on certain po­liti­cal prerequisites, we argue. National movements require a more nationalized polity that is open to their participation. A national public sphere depends on news organ­izations seeing the national government as a central source of po­liti­cal decision making. For ­these reasons, one prerequisite for the flourishing of movement and advocacy groups was the attack during the first de­cades of the twentieth ­century on the patronage

16  I n t r o du c t i on

party system. ­After ­these ­battles, the major parties became weaker catchall entities, more open to the influence of po­liti­cal organ­izations such as movement, advocacy, and interest groups. At this time, too, the US central or “federal” government began to emerge out of the fiscal and functional shadows. It increased its expenditures and revenues dramatically during the First World War, without their ever returning to their previous levels. The same ratcheting-up pro­cess of national government growth occurred during the New Deal of the 1930s and the Second World War that followed it. Just as news organ­izations ­were professionalizing, so, too, w ­ ere governmental ones. The federal government eclipsed local governments in the 1930s and never looked back. As the ­century progressed, both news institutions and movement actors had greater reason to focus on the national government. Still, unlike many of their Eu­ro­ pean counter­parts, US activists have been unable to create ­viable national parties of their own ­because of structural barriers to entry based on electoral rules. Though it was not for lack of trying—­Populists and Progressive parties attempted to do so at the beginning of the c­ entury and Reform and Green parties at the end of it.22 Historical institutionalists hold that policy alters politics, and we similarly argue that movement trajectories and their news coverage are s­ haped by policy innovations and changes. B ­ ecause of po­liti­cal institutional barriers, including much of the country being under-­democratized, policymaking has been slanted in the US setting, and modern social policy slow to develop. Yet policymaking pro­cesses influence movement organ­izations and their coverage in impor­tant ways. When movements’ constituents gain in policy, we argue, that ­will bolster movements and their attention in the news long ­after their initial victories. In the late nineteenth c­ entury, for instance, Civil War veterans’ pensions ­were greatly augmented, boosting both veterans’ organ­izations and their public presence. At the end of the 1910s, both ­women’s and anti-­alcohol movements won major policy victories. In the 1930s, the ­labor movement benefited greatly from policies, and in the 1960s the African American rights movement did likewise. We expect t­ hese policy changes to boost movements and their public profile. In part this is b­ ecause policy changes can make movement organ­izations more legitimate. They represent groups now supported by official policy and ­will be more likely to be sought out by journalists when the implementation or amendment of policies is at issue. ­Because policies themselves are sticky, that is, highly likely to remain in place, they can increase attention to movements for the long run.23 We see one key asymmetry in the influence of po­liti­cal change on the news treatment of left and right movements. Scholars have recently returned their

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attention to movements of the right—­returning to what was a key subject of scholars in ­earlier periods. ­These authors argue that right movement actors are more apt to respond to grievances and often focus on blocking social change and state action demanded by other groups. For instance, rights for minorities and immigrants have been opposed by the Ku Klux Klan and other nativist groups, income taxes by conservative movements, reproductive rights by the anti-­abortion movement, LGBTQ rights by the Christian right, and expansions of domestic spending and health care by Tea Party activists. Right movement actors are also often distrustful of the professional news media, considering them biased against their views.24 ­Because of their negative agendas, rightist movements are unlikely to gain the same sort of long-­term benefits in news coverage from policy in the manner of movements that seek new policy advances, including increased government regulations and protections. We expect both right and left po­liti­cal regimes—­such as the Republican-­ dominated 1920s or the liberal Democratic-­dominated m ­ iddle 1930s—­w ill spur the mobilization and news coverage of both right and left movements. We expect the public presence of movements to be driven especially by ­those rare moments when power is taken by left-­wing “reform-­oriented regimes.” By this we mean when the presidency was held by a Demo­crat and Congress was dominated by Demo­crats from demo­cratized polities, which for most of the ­century meant Demo­crats from outside the South. This unusual formation happened only twice in the twentieth ­century: from 1935 through 1938, and from 1965 through 1966—­and briefly again in 2009–2010, a­ fter most southern elected officials turned Republican and the remaining southern Demo­crats became closer to the mainstream of the party.25 During ­these periods, new policies appeared in what Skocpol calls “big bangs” of legislation, or in what Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones call “punctuated equilibrium.” Although we focus on ­those moments in US history when power is taken by progressive, reform-­oriented regimes, we also expect the rise of right-­wing, conservative, or “retrenchment” regimes to spur movements, if not as greatly, for two reasons. The right seeks programmatic retrenchment, cutting back individual programs, and systemic retrenchment, cutting taxes to starve the government of the revenue needed to create new domestic programs or augment existing ones, as Pierson argues. ­These threats tend to incite the defensive mobilization, and news coverage, of movements and advocacy organ­izations. Retrenchment, however, hinders the building of a right-­wing state and accordingly does not provide policy or bureaucratic support for movements of the right. We expect only progressive or left regimes to produce the sorts of policy changes that provide a more enduring presence for movements.26

18  I n t r o du c t i on

Po­liti­cal contexts also mediate the influence of challengers’ collective action on the quality of their coverage. Having a favorable policy being considered by Congress or a favorable regime in power, which might pass such legislation, ­will make substantive news coverage more likely for movement actors. They ­w ill be seen as influential po­liti­cal players and gain better chances to transmit their views of ­these issues in the news. Some po­liti­cal and news contexts are so unfavorable, however, that they ­will deflect substantive newspaper coverage for movement actors. It is almost impossible for them to gain a meaningful airing of grievances or proposed solutions to prob­lems when movement organ­izations and leaders are being subjected to state-­authorized investigations or t­ rials. When u­ nions are investigated for corruption, movement organ­ izations are called on the carpet for allegedly un-­American activities, or when movement leaders are on trial for criminal acts, ­little of substance ­w ill emerge.27

Movements Making News Although po­liti­cal and news contexts shape the possibilities of news treatments for movement actors, t­ hese actors have many options to increase their chances of making news, including the sorts of news that w ­ ill aid their c­ auses. ­These options center on reducing movements’ legitimacy and news-­making deficits. The best ways to do that is by choosing orga­nizational forms and collective action that ­will play to journalists’ news values and routines. Journalists’ focus on politics, novelty, and conflict, and their concern for balance, also provide opportunities for movement organ­izations and actors to influence the substance of the news. For movement organ­izations to receive substantive treatment in the news media, we argue, often depends on mimicking institutional po­liti­cal actors or seeking to preempt their functions, or both. Devising collective action profiles that involve close engagement with institutional politics helps reduce legitimacy deficits. Engaging po­liti­cal processes—­whether through contesting school board elections, promoting initiatives, ­r unning candidates for office, or litigating laws—­signal to journalists the po­liti­cal seriousness of movements, and ­these actions are more likely to work their way into the po­liti­cal coverage of beat reporters.28 Three orga­nizational characteristics ­matter most in making movement actors newsworthy. One is having resources, and first among t­ hese resources is extensive membership. Membership shows that organ­izations have a real basis to represent the groups they claim to represent. Large membership

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organ­izations are often seen as synonymous with the interests and po­liti­cal views of groups: for instance, veterans and the American Legion, gun ­owners and the National ­Rifle Association, se­nior citizens and the former American Association of Retired Persons (now, AARP). Moreover, orga­nizational resources such as large bud­gets, a formal organ­ization, a national office, and media departments often ­will promote news coverage. At the movement level, having more organ­izations devoted to an issue has a similar stimulant effect.29 In addition, ideologies, frames, and strategic profiles that resonate with social norms are more appealing to the news media, whereas espousing goals outside of mainstream values or embracing violent tactics ­will marginalize an organ­ ization.30 We argue similarly that movement organ­izations with commitments to the po­liti­cal pro­cess, moderate ideologies, and non-­violence w ­ ill have better chances at substantive coverage. Less resourced and more radical organ­ izations have opportunities for coverage, but more work w ­ ill need to be done and more favorable contexts may be necessary. Second, organ­izations with greater po­liti­cal capabilities have better chances to gain extensive coverage. News about policy change sometimes plays out over months or years, and when movement organ­izations can insert themselves into po­liti­cal pro­cesses, they ­will have a better shot at landing a part in this storied treatment. Additionally, t­ hose organ­izations focusing on a specific line of policy w ­ ill benefit if that policy has been advanced po­liti­cally. Among the many issues addressed by the second wave of the ­women’s rights movement, for instance, by far the most covered in the New York Times has been gender equity.31 Not coincidentally, this issue also has been the subject of much legislation and policy effort. When policies for the movement’s constituents are gaining traction, t­ hese organ­izations often ­will come to represent the movement in the news media.32 Third, to gain extensive news attention, it is valuable for organ­izations to have disruptive capacities. The standard large protest event does not usually remain long in the news, but t­ here are many routes to coverage involving disruptive action. The strike has been first among them. It applies sanctions and often leads to continuing stories in the news. Similar effects may come through boycotts or direct-­action campaigns to induce the enforcement of laws that are being ignored in practice. In addition, many activists, ranging from veterans to anti-­war protesters and from workers to civil rights workers, have been able to occupy public or private spaces for decent intervals and make news with long legs. However, some types of action w ­ ill reduce news-­making deficits but increase legitimacy deficits. Violent action ­will often be covered but

20  I n t r o du c t i on

may leave movement actors, their ­causes, and constituents worse off in discursive contests.33 Historical institutionalists argue that many policies have positive feedback loops that ­w ill promote their continuation, and similar pro­cesses can keep movement organ­izations newsworthy once they start making news. The media critic and journalism professor Jay Rosen has called journalists “a herd of in­ de­pen­dent minds.” Professionally trained journalists ­will often act similarly in reporting an event due to common internalized judgments of its newsworthiness. They are not engaged in social action, as Max Weber would define it; rather, they are like his celebrated pedestrians, who open their umbrellas, without regard to one another, when rain begins to fall. However, journalists also ­will follow the lead of their peers when they are late to an impor­tant story or are “beaten” to it—­like ­people standing in doorways who open their umbrellas when they see p­ eople on the street with theirs open. Journalists w ­ ill have developed contacts with orga­nizational leaders and may even view some of them as quasi-­celebrities or as spokespersons for a group, especially if their issue is being addressed in politics.34 We also expect a secondary policy legacy effect. A policy has a life ­after its passage, and an organ­ization that has advocated for it ­will typically gain further coverage opportunities, such as during the implementation of the policy or when changes are proposed to it. In the best case, individual journalists may be assigned specifically to cover especially prominent movements or movement organ­izations as a news beat, such as occurred for or­ga­nized ­labor in the 1930s and beyond, and shorter periods for the Black rights movement in the 1960s, and even shorter for the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street in the first part of the twenty-­first c­ entury. Sometimes violent movement organ­izations or ones mismanaged by their leaders w ­ ill end their own stories.35 Dif­fer­ent sorts of action can induce sustained news for movement organ­ izations, but the type most likely to lead to sustained and substantive coverage is what we call assertive po­liti­cal action. Assertive action includes the introduction and the fight for passage of movement-­sponsored legislation and initiatives, litigation that seeks to change laws, electioneering activity, such as ­r unning candidates for office and seeking to defeat enemies and support friends in elections, and mass po­liti­cal meetings that challenge the main parties’ nominating conventions. Although it works through institutionalized channels to promote po­liti­cal change, po­liti­cal assertive action challenges the power and prerogatives of institutional actors, usually seeking to sanction them, and often is po­liti­cally influential. The fact that movement actors are not institutional players may add to the novelty and newsworthiness of ­these

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campaigns. Assertive po­liti­cal action can be contrasted with s­ imple lobbying or letter-­writing, which is po­liti­cally oriented but not assertive. Direct action ­will work best when it is done peacefully and when challenging po­liti­cal officials who are failing to enforce legislated rights. When peaceful direct action is confronted by illegal vio­lence, movements w ­ ill be more likely to receive favorable coverage, as in the case of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but this has happened only rarely.36 Of the other routes to extensive coverage, the most prominent way involves ­labor strikes. Strikes exploit the institutional bargaining leverage of workers as they withdraw l­abor power, or threaten to do so, often over long periods of time. Strikes that employ institutional leverage, involve large numbers of ­people, and are protracted w ­ ill draw keen attention. Such action also plays on the norm to craft what journalists view as “balanced” articles. The grievances and demands of strikers are almost always g­ oing to constitute a relevant side of the story during strikes, and their targets are less likely to have the high legitimacy of elected officials. Boycotts work similarly, though are attempted less frequently and often do not have the same long news legs. Like po­liti­cally assertive action, strikes and boycotts involve applying sanctions directly to institutional actors, in contrast to protest, which works symbolically and indirectly. However, b­ ecause strikes and boycotts typically cause disruption and may mean incon­ve­nience for news consumers—­the “readers” that journalists often seek to represent—­these actions are not likely to result in favorable accounts of the actors.37 P. T. Barnum, who co-­founded the Barnum and Bailey Circus in the late 1800s, is reported to have said that ­there is no such ­thing as bad press, but that is not at all true for social movement actors. They are not seeking paying customers at a carnival, but to establish po­liti­cal and social legitimacy. They want the public and power­ful third parties to see the good in their ­causes and claims, or to gain a more favorable image of the groups they represent. Bad press along ­these lines is certainly a collective bad for ­these groups and is doubtless far more routine for movement actors in demo­cratic po­liti­cal systems than negative po­liti­cal consequences. And ­there is not much movement actors can do about it, as news organ­izations are not accountable in the ways that po­liti­cal institutions are.38 We argue that some key events—­trials and investigations—­ will often trap movement actors in a cycle of bad news in the mainstream media that provide few chances for substantive treatment. Scholars have found that when protest strays into petty vandalism, traffic disruption, counter-­ movement clashes, and police confrontations, it usually ­w ill be covered as crime. T ­ rials and investigations can be worse. Publicized scandals can be

22  I n t r o du c t i on

debilitating to a cause and an organ­ization and are typically more devastating for movements than for po­liti­cal parties. Across the c­ entury, many organ­ izations w ­ ere weakened or failed entirely in the wake of a long string of bad news. ­These included the German-­American Alliance, Townsend Plan, Communist party, Teamsters, Ku Klux Klan, and Black Panther Party. We also argue that movement actors can be covered extensively and not unfavorably, but not seriously ­either, making what we are calling soft news.39 ­There are many dif­fer­ent and impor­tant patterns in the news coverage of movements and a variety of implications to the model, and we employ diverse methods to identify empirical puzzles and solve them. At the center are historical analyses identifying which movement organ­izations and broader movements ­were newsworthy when they ­were. From there we compare the most widely covered organ­izations to see what they have in common when they w ­ ere most covered. We compare the news treatment of movement organ­izations that varied greatly in terms of ideology and era but engaged in similar sorts of action. We zoom out to track the historical trajectories of coverage for 30 broader movements to ask why some periods and some movements received extensive coverage when other periods and movements did not. Then we zero in on two case studies. To uncover the determinants of the news coverage of movements and organ­izations, we employ comparative historical analyses supplemented with negative binomial regressions. To ascertain the quality of coverage, we employ valence analyses and machine learning techniques, and we also inspect headlines and hand-­code articles. But we rely especially on qualitative comparative analy­sis (QCA), which is designed to address theoretical accounts that rely on interactions. It can appraise the sorts of configurational arguments Ira Katznelson argues are central to the historical and comparative study of politics—­and to our model.40

Seven Patterns in Our Analyses of Highly Newsworthy Movement Organ­izations ­These are the seven key patterns in findings that recur throughout the book.

Rediscovering Amer­i­ca Many movement and advocacy organ­izations that dominated the public sphere in their day have been lost to history, and the news treatment of many

U n c o v e r i n g a H i s t or y o f S o c i a l M o v e m e n t s  23

better-­known organ­izations when they ­were most newsworthy has often also been underappreciated. By recovering t­ hese accounts, we construct a po­liti­cal history of US contention, as the public understood it at the time.

Big Newsmakers To identify ­these accounts and place them in perspective, we examine the news coverage of more than 1,500 national movement and advocacy organ­ izations but focus on the treatment of ­those that made the greatest impacts in US public discourse: 100 movement organ­izations and 30 movements. We want to explain why organ­izations and movements became prominent in public discourse when they did. That said, we analyze hundreds of organ­izations, large and small, to see what separated the prominent from the also-­rans.

No Magic Bullets High news profiles and favorable coverage for movement actors never depended on one f­ actor or on specific movement characteristics. Although actions and orga­nizational characteristics influence the treatment of movement organ­izations in the news, t­ here is no magic bullet or secret sauce that ensures favorable attention. ­There are no seven habits of highly newsworthy social movements. Gaining extensive and favorable coverage in a routine way depended on combinations of favorable circumstances, some internal to organ­izations and movements—­including orga­nizational characteristics and lines of action—­and some external to them—­including po­liti­cal and newspaper contexts.

Protest Too Much? Our investigations show that t­ here are many ways for movement and advocacy organ­izations to get into the news—­not just or even mainly by way of street protests, marches, and rallies, actions on which scholars and the public often focus. Movement organ­izations often made front-­page news through the sorts of standard po­liti­cal treatment accorded institutional po­liti­cal actors, as well as a series of civic actions. They also appeared on sports, business, science, lifestyle, and arts pages. Protest events rarely led to long-­r unning coverage and did not usually provide the types of news that movement actors sought.

24  I n t r o du c t i on

Not All News Is Good News Movement actors often made big news and frequently in ways that they wanted, but sometimes media attention hurt their chances to transmit demands, raise new issues, and advance their preferred ways of referring to their groups. Scholars have known that the news treatment of protest often ignores the claims of movement actors. Worse than that, though, we find that other types of long-­ running coverage, notably through t­ rials, vio­lence, and investigations, can disparage and discredit movement actors, and hasten their declines.

Policy Supports Major gains in legislation programs are often thought to signal the impending demise of movements. We find instead that policy gains often spurred attention to movement actors, making them more legitimate newsmakers. Many movement actors made more news a­ fter policy victories than during them. Policy setbacks, moreover, ­often harmed movement organ­izations and reduced their standing in public discourse. Also, assertive po­liti­cal action in legislative campaigns often provided the best news for movement organ­izations.

Sticky Situations News coverage is sticky, a pro­cess that builds on itself, and so organ­izations and movements that make big news ­will often remain in the news. Journalists work from similar news values, often have pack mentalities, and w ­ ill return to previous sources, and news coverage also spurs organ­izations, making them more prominent and increasing their followings. Policy gains can cement the pro­cess by keeping the best-­known organ­izations newsworthy. For t­ hese reasons, too, usually only a handful of organ­izations w ­ ill gain the bulk of the news coverage that their movements ­will receive at any given time.

News Teasers: The Inside Story The first chapter identifies the movement organ­izations that w ­ ere the most newsworthy in their days, offering a contentious history from the journalistic point of view. We zero in on the 100 organ­izations that received extensive news coverage in a given year. Some ­were often highly newsworthy and are well known. Think of the AFL-­CIO, NAACP, and ACLU. Yet several o­ thers are

U n c o v e r i n g a H i s t or y o f S o c i a l M o v e m e n t s  25

obscure ­today, including many from the first half of the ­century, including the In­de­pen­dence League, German-­American Alliance, National Security League, Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, and Ham and Eggs. But some from the second half of the ­century also do not appear much in scholarship or current memory, including the Peace and Freedom Party, Jewish Defense League, and Major League Baseball Players Association. On the other hand, no organ­ization from movements that ­today are well-­known, such as the anti-­smoking or animal rights movements, ever made this kind of major news. ­There w ­ ere no big years in the news for the American Cancer Society or ­People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. We show that the most covered organ­izations almost all had high membership, disruptive capacities, and an orientation ­toward politics. We conclude by addressing debates about ­whether movement organ­izations have become less membership-­oriented, less material, and less protest-­oriented over time. Chapter 2 focuses on the quality of coverage of the 100 organ­izations when they ­were their most newsworthy. Th ­ ese organ­izations made news for a range of reasons, which included assertive po­liti­cal action, such as electioneering, legislative and litigation campaigns, and third-­party challenges. Some organ­ izations had big coverage years based on ­labor strikes and ­others had big years based on civic action. Yet o­ thers w ­ ere in the news for the sorts of collective action often associated with social movements, such as protests and occupations. Fi­nally, some organ­izations w ­ ere thrust into the news for congressional investigations and criminal ­trials. ­These major moments of attention provided dif­fer­ent kinds of news, too. Some years brought relatively good news: respectful treatments that influenced the framing and discussion of key issues. In some years of big attention, the news addressed movement actors’ issues and claims, but treated them unfavorably. We are calling that “hard news.” In other years, articles treated them respectfully, but ignored their views—­“soft news.” In yet o­ thers, the press brought the kind of bad news that helped to send organ­izations into a tailspin. Th ­ ese dif­fer­ent types of news w ­ ere closely linked to the reasons for coverage. However, as we w ­ ill l­ ater show, gaining substantive coverage in a reliable way depended not just on the type of action, but on action combined with favorable orga­nizational characteristics and po­liti­cal contexts. The third chapter pulls back for a more macro view, examining the coverage of 30 broader movements across the ­century and addressing key questions about their trajectories. Th ­ ere ­were waves of attention to movements, but they ­were irregular ones that diverge from historical accounts and common

26  I n t r o du c t i on

understandings. ­These waves ­were ­shaped by large-­scale po­liti­cal changes—­ the modernization of the polity, the rise to power of left and right po­liti­cal regimes, and, for specific movements, major changes in policy. The chapter also identifies which of the 30 movements received extensive coverage and when they received it—­including the l­ abor movement for the entire ­century, long runs for the veterans’, ­women’s rights, African American civil rights, and environmental movements, and a smattering of ­others at dif­fer­ent times. Qualitative comparative analyses show that what set apart the movements that received extensive coverage when they did was a confluence of ­factors; conditions at the movement orga­nizational level, individual movement actions, and macro po­liti­cal conditions had to happen si­mul­ta­neously for movements to make big news. Benefiting from a major policy breakthrough notably helped to buoy movements in the news, rather than being a signpost of movement decline. And ­there is one partial exception to the no-­magic-­bullet rule for extensive coverage, though it is more like the kind that perforates your foot. Having an organ­ization that was being investigated by Congress routinely made big news for movements, if not in ways they would want. Fi­nally, extensive news coverage often just continued for movements in the news, especially for ­those with policy gains and orga­nizational capacities. In the fourth chapter, we home in on the Townsend Plan, an old-­age pension organ­ization that commanded headlines and po­liti­cal interest in the 1930s and 1940s. Although not much remembered, the Townsend Plan captured the nation’s attention in the mid-1930s, when Townsend clubs ­were springing up all across the country. The organ­ization was often treated substantively in the news, with its $200 per month pension highlighted, but the proposal, the organ­ization, and its leaders, notably Dr. Francis Townsend himself, ­were usually treated dismissively and often derisively. Townsend’s pension program was labeled unrealistic, dangerous, and “fantastic,” back when that term meant something hopelessly unrealistic. During the group’s investigation by Congress, the doctor and other orga­nizational leaders ­were often portrayed as mercenaries, criminals, and deviants. Often news attention focused on its leaders as squabbling quasi-­celebrities, highlighting the organ­ization’s irascible frontman. We conclude by examining all the front-­page news of the Townsend Plan and identify through QCA the characteristics that led reliably to substantive coverage when the organ­ization was able to gain it. Assertive action was key to the main pathways, but also had to happen in a favorable po­liti­cal context or in stories initiated by the action of the organ­ization.

U n c o v e r i n g a H i s t or y o f S o c i a l M o v e m e n t s  27

The fifth chapter focuses on a movement that has received the most scholarly attention: the Black rights movement of the 1960s. This period is often seen as a time when journalism did what protesters always want it to do—­ highlight the justified demands of powerless groups and transmit them to more influential third parties, culminating in real change, including civil and voting rights acts. And it is true that national reporters descended on the South, covering the “race beat.” But that leaves out much of the story. Like the old-­age pension movement, the Black rights movement often received dismissive and trivializing coverage. Moreover, the main organ­izations ­were covered more frequently not in the triumphant first half of the de­cade, but in the less celebrated second half of the de­cade. G ­ reat attention was lavished on controversies among and within organ­izations, the meaning of “Black Power,” failed initiatives in the North, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Vietnam War, and the ­trials of Black Panther leaders. As the de­cade closed, Black rights organ­izations ­were less likely to be covered in the context of impor­tant issues. The leaders often received celebrity treatment, with non-­movement actors often portrayed as leaders, disputes among leaders foregrounded, and notoriety cast on them regarding run-­ins with the law. This chapter also drills down to analyze the articles that brought ­these organ­izations into the news and identifies why some of t­ hese articles provided substantive treatments. ­Here we identify the more numerous routes to this sort of useful coverage for organ­izations with more moderate goals and tactics, such as the NAACP and Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, than the more radical ones, such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Black Panther Party. Chapter 6 moves into the twenty-­first ­century. Politics has become increasingly nationalized, while po­liti­cal parties have become asymmetrically polarized and, more impor­tant, dif­fer­ent in kind. At the same time, the old news media regime was overthrown, with the rise of the internet and social media, the emergence of a power­ful right-­wing media system, 24-­hour news, and the demise of many local newspapers. Th ­ ese transformations have boosted right-­ wing movement actors’ bids for attention and policy change at the expense of ­those on the left. But t­ here remain many continuities with the past. National news organ­izations still do the bulk of newsgathering, have become even more impor­tant relative to their regional and local counter­parts, and retain ­great influence over po­liti­cal debates. Movement coverage remains dominated by larger organ­izations, with changes in the standing of movements influenced

28  I n t r o du c t i on

by the decline of or­ga­nized l­ abor and the ascendance of movements that took off in the second half of the twentieth c­ entury. The news coverage of movements still responds to partisan regimes and policy change, though for left movements such change has been harder to come by. We show how some of ­these transformations played out in the news coverage of the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements, each with historical forerunners. We address the degree to which they have been able to influence public debates. For all the changes in the media environment, much of their news coverage follows long-­ standing patterns from the twentieth ­century. The conclusion summarizes the main findings and addresses the current state of movement news attention. We end with thoughts about the f­ uture of news and the prospects of social movements.

1 A Brief  History of Contention: 100 Organ­izations in the News

when movement actors are most prominent in the news, they can make a permanent impression, good or bad, on public consciousness and po­liti­cal issues. Movement and advocacy organ­izations define interests and construct identities for groups. Gaining standing in the news media can legitimate ­these interests and identities.1 It m ­ atters ­whether the public face of a movement is the NAACP or the Black Panther Party, the League of ­Women Voters or the National Organ­ization for W ­ omen, the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, the H ­ uman Rights Campaign or Queer Nation. Media attention can also help to mobilize ­people ­behind them. It also ­matters if a movement is not prominently represented in the news. Discussing which organ­izations mattered when they did can provide a contemporaneous history of US social movements. That account can also help to identify recurrent patterns and themes in the coverage of movements as well as historical shifts in attention. ­Here we discuss a c­ entury’s worth of the most newsworthy movement organ­izations, as they appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal. We identify ­every organ­ization—100 in all—­that gained an extremely high profile in the news in any year of the ­century. We note when t­ hese organ­izations first came into high relief and when or if they dropped off journalism’s radar. Across the ­century, waves of organ­ izations emerged in the news, injecting new issues into the public sphere. Many of ­these movement organ­izations remained highly newsworthy for long stretches. O ­ thers ­rose up and flamed out quickly. Many are well known t­ oday. ­Others are almost completely forgotten. Movement actors are frequently considered sideshows in standard accounts of US history, which focuses on po­liti­cal and professional leaders. The 29

30  c h a p t e r 1

Progressive Era is often treated as an elite movement to bust trusts, regulate food and drugs, enact the income tax, and fight po­liti­cal machines. The Roaring Twenties are considered a period in which Republicans cut taxes and reduced immigration, while turning a blind eye to citizens dodging Prohibition, but whose extravagances and raised tariffs brought on a stock market crash and the ­Great Depression. The story of the age of Franklin Roo­se­velt tends to begin in 1933, during the depths of the crisis. Although that period is often associated with social movements, most accounts focus on New Deal policies, including new l­abor laws, social security, and unemployment insurance, as well as the growth of the state and military during the Second World War. The postwar period up u­ ntil the early 1960s is thought to be another period of economic growth and normalcy, plus a Cold War featuring nuclear-­arms and space races. The long 1960s, stretching through the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974, is the one that is most closely associated with social movements, such as the Black civil rights, anti–­Vietnam War, w ­ omen’s rights, and environmental movements, but also including a war on poverty and a raft of social legislation, notably Medicare and Medicaid. The last part of the c­ entury is often viewed as a period of conservative retrenchment, notable for the rise of the Ronald Reagan administration in 1981 and its attempts to undo the New Deal. The c­ entury ended with the presidency of Bill Clinton, a relatively conservative Demo­crat who declared that the era of big government was over and ended welfare as we had known it. We use similar periods in our account but focus on the movement and advocacy actors that made the biggest waves in the news during ­these times. Our accounts often diverge from conventional wisdom. Although our Progressive Era story includes many elite activists, it is mainly about craft and radical ­labor u­ nions, pro-­and anti-­suffrage organ­izations, and war­time nativists and their targets. Our account of movement actors in the 1920s centers on veterans’ and anti-­alcohol organ­izations, the Ku Klux Klan, and then anti-­Prohibition organ­izations. The Franklin Roo­se­velt era was about a slew of new organ­ izations in the news, not just ­labor strikes and unemployed worker protests. It included old-­age activists, populist and right-­wing anti–­New Dealers, advocates for and against the war, and, most of all, industrial u­ nions. Following a war­time hiatus on movement news, attention returned mainly to u­ nions, veterans, and the beleaguered Communist party. The long 1960s brought another profusion of new organ­izations into the news, including Black rights and anti-­war organ­izations, certainly. But o­ thers also made marks, including

10 0 Or g a n i z a t i o n s i n t h e N e w s  31

another version of the Klan and the Jewish Defense League. The end of the ­century featured right-­wing organ­izations like the Moral Majority, Christian Co­ali­tion, and the National ­Rifle Association, as might be expected. But it was also an era of environmental, w ­ omen’s rights, and ­human rights organ­izations. And as new organ­izations came into public view, many of the organ­izations that emerged in previous eras remained highly newsworthy. We also address a series of questions about that repre­sen­ta­tion. Which organ­izations dominated the news during dif­fer­ent points in the ­century? Which movement organ­izations received the most national news coverage in the twentieth c­ entury and when did they receive it? Did specific organ­izations dominate the coverage of individual movements, and if so, which ones? ­Were ­there key shifts in the types of organ­izations that ­were most in the news over time? We also seek to answer a series of higher-­order questions: Why did some organ­izations appear so frequently in the news? ­Were certain orga­nizational characteristics associated with high news presence? Scholars also debate ­w hether movement organ­izations have changed in character across the ­century, and we join the debate from the news ­angle. By ­century’s end, ­were the most newsworthy organ­izations less membership-­driven, less disruptive and more institutional in approach, and more focused on post-­material issues? To anticipate, we find several key patterns. The organ­izations that ­were most newsworthy had a combination of characteristics that ­either increased their legitimacy or standing with news organ­izations or made them more newsworthy in other ways. Organ­izations that gained distinct news profiles often ­were well or­ga­nized with extensive membership, disruptive abilities, and wide po­liti­cal capacities. Intervening seriously in elections, policy ­battles, or court cases could elevate an organ­ization’s news profile. What is more, big years of news attention ­were often prompted by macro-­political changes, such as the modernization of the polity, major changes in public policy, and dif­fer­ent patterns of partisan po­liti­cal dominance. Attention was altered by war, which often led to orga­nizational backlashes. Opposing movement organ­izations often found themselves paired up and squared off by journalists. Movement organ­izations frequently had coverage forced on them during investigations. Once in the news, moreover, the best situated organ­izations often ­were able to extend their stays. Indeed, when new issues arose in the news, older organ­ izations often received much of the news attention regarding them. But let’s first turn to the 100.

32  c h a p t e r 1

100 Movement Organ­izations and US History Piecing together a US po­liti­cal history through the movement organ­izations with the highest news profiles requires setting some standards to identify them. For most of the c­ entury, we count as gaining high attention any such organ­ization with 200 or more mentions in articles in a given year across the four newspapers and ranking among the top 15 most newsworthy movement organ­izations in that year. ­There was less frequent coverage of ­these sorts of organ­izations early in the ­century, given the lack of centralization and modernization in the polity and newspapers. And so, we use a slightly more forgiving standard. Through 1918, we lower the bar to 100 mentions and being among the top ten among movement organ­izations in news attention. Although ­these criteria leave out a few organ­izations that made major impressions, any organ­ ization that received this sort of high news profile certainly made a significant mark in public discourse.2 We also identify how frequently each of ­these 100 organ­izations ­were big news in this way, when they first became prominent, when they w ­ ere most prominent, and their last year of big news. As we w ­ ill see, they ranged from one-­year won­ders to being major news for the bulk of the ­century. Tracing the coverage of ­these organ­izations tells a tale of US history from below, but as it was refracted through journalistic lenses.3

The Progressive Era and the First World War: Veterans, ­Labor, Progressives, Prohibition, ­Women’s Suffrage, Nativism, and the First Red Scare Movement organ­izations only rarely drew extensive attention in the first years of the c­ entury, in part ­because of po­liti­cal circumstances and in part b­ ecause of how newspapers then covered movements and politics. The Progressive Era is usually considered to include the first two de­cades of the c­ entury u­ ntil the US entry into the First World War and saw bids to reform parties and nationalize politics. But central government authority was not greatly augmented u­ ntil the mobilization for the war. Even big-­city newspapers had l­ittle reason to focus on events in the nation’s capital or on campaigns in other states and localities. For similar reasons, few movement organ­izations w ­ ere national in scope, and the large federal organ­izations that ­were in existence mainly targeted states and localities. And so few movement actors gained this sort of national significance, and as a group they had a difficult time entering a national public sphere, to the extent that one existed. Some organ­izations that

10 0 Or g a n i z a t i o n s i n t h e N e w s  33 ­Table 1.1. Twenty-­Two Organ­izations with Their First Extensive Year of News Coverage, 1900–1918 Organ­ization

First Year

Last Year

Years on List

­Grand Army of the Republic*

1900

1939

19

American Federation of Labor*

1900

1956

19

­Women’s Christian Temperance Union*

1900

1935

18

United Mine Workers*

1900

1989

13

International Typographical Union*

1900

1974

10

League of American Wheelmen*

1900

1900

1

Populist Party*

1900

1900

1

Anti-­Saloon League

1901

1932

8

Citizens Union*

1901

1905

3

International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers

1901

1966

1

General Federation of ­Women’s Clubs

1902

1964

9

National Civic Federation

1902

1914

5

International Brotherhood of Teamsters

1905

1998

1

In­de­pen­dence League

1906

1913

8

Industrial Workers of the World

1912

1918

5

Progressive Party (Roo­se­velt)

1912

1916

5

National American ­Woman Suffrage Association

1913

1917

5

National Association Opposed to ­Woman Suffrage

1913

1914

2

Congressional Union

1914

1920

3

National Security League

1915

1918

4

American Defense Society

1918

1918

1

German-­American Alliance

1918

1918

1

Note: An asterisk indicates organ­izations that also received 100 or more mentions in at least one year in the 1890s.

managed to gain high coverage, by way of the lower standards we employ for the period, had been previously newsworthy late in the nineteenth ­century.4 Among the organ­izations gaining significant coverage in the early 1900s ­were l­abor, anti-­alcohol, and veterans’ organ­izations founded in the 1800s. ­These organ­izations had national ambitions, their membership was often high and cut across many states, and they captured much of the print afforded to movement actors. The organ­izations that ­were extensively newsworthy for at least one year during this period are listed according to the first year in which they became so newsworthy (see ­table  1.1). The ­labor movement was

34  c h a p t e r 1

represented through the American Federation of ­Labor (AFL), which had or­ga­nized u­ nions mainly on a craft basis across the country. The AFL started a string in which it was in the news, in one orga­nizational form or another, in a big way ­every year of the ­century. Some individual ­unions also received extensive news play in the era, mainly for major strikes. In 1902, the United Mine Workers’ strike, and then a federal intervention to end it, drew national attention, and another strike in 1906 by the International Typographical Union won an eight-­hour day. In this period, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (Teamsters) also gained its first of many years of extensive attention. News coverage was also bestowed upon the G ­ rand Army of the Republic, a large membership organ­ization that was the driving force ­behind the conversion of late nineteenth-­century Civil War veterans’ benefits into early twentieth-­ century de facto old-­age pensions. It held a well-­attended Washington “encampment,” which was more convention than occupation, and was involved in the debate over the appointment of a new Commissioner of Pensions, an official with significant control over the distribution of pension benefits. The early anti-­alcohol organ­izations—­the ­Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Anti-­Saloon League—­were also gaining high attention across the newspapers, with the high-­membership WCTU initially in the news for Carrie Nation’s saloon-­vandalizing “hachetations.” The second de­cade of the ­century kept the ­labor, veterans, and temperance organ­izations in the news—­which provides another common pattern, as organ­ izations that gained journalistic attention tended to keep it at least for a while. Altogether nine of the 20 organ­izations with the greatest number of big years of coverage in the ­century received their first major news attention during the Progressive Era. This group includes organ­izations that did not have much public influence in the second half of the c­ entury, including the main anti-­ alcohol organ­izations, the WCTU and the Anti-­Saloon League, as well as the General Federation of W ­ omen’s Clubs. But among t­ hese notables w ­ ere also ­labor organ­izations that remained newsworthy throughout the ­century—­the United Mine Workers, the Teamsters, and the AFL. A certain type of organ­ization with national aspirations also gained high news attention in a way that would recur. Winning headlines w ­ ere insurgent po­liti­cal parties, mainly ones with progressive ideologies and challenging the dominance of the Republicans and Demo­crats. At the very beginning of the ­century, ­there was the fading Populist Party, which split into competing factions, one of which ran a candidate for president in 1900. Th ­ ere was also the

10 0 Or g a n i z a t i o n s i n t h e N e w s  35

Citizens Union, which ran reform candidates for office in New York City against Tammany Hall before becoming a good-­government advocacy organ­ ization. William Randolph Hearst’s In­de­pen­dence League sought to elevate the rights of workers while combatting patronage parties across the Northeast. In 1912, former president Theodore Roo­se­velt’s Progressive Party bid to return to the White House won considerable attention in capturing more votes than incumbent Republican President William H. Taft on a platform of social and po­liti­cal reforms, and the party ran candidates in many states. Yet t­ here was also ­great attention to the Progressive Party’s largely forgotten and entirely failed attempt to upend the two-­party system in the 1914 congressional elections. Roo­se­velt abandoned the presidential cause in 1916, and most Progressives that won House seats eventually rejoined the Republicans. Throughout the c­ entury, new parties gained ­great public attention, if not much long-­term po­liti­cal traction, almost always during presidential years. The second de­cade of the c­ entury also saw new organ­izations and issues break into the public sphere, as well as the beginning of the extensive treatment of opposing movement organ­izations in the news. ­Women’s suffrage organ­izations, including the National American W ­ oman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and the initially allied Congressional Union, picketed the White House in 1913 and gained coverage. Both w ­ ere newsworthy in 1915 partly ­because of conflicts over strategy—­a recurrent theme in movement coverage. Carrie Chapman Catt, the leader of NAWSA, focused on po­liti­cal pressure in the states, while the Alice Paul-­led Congressional Union sought to discipline the Demo­cratic party’s presidential and congressional candidates a­ fter President Woodrow Wilson’s failure to support a constitutional amendment. Their mass or­ga­nized opponents in the National Organ­ization Opposed to ­Woman Suffrage worked their way into the news as well, in another recurrent pattern. Often an organ­ization would insert a new issue into the public sphere, but then it would become marginalized by being juxtaposed to less legitimate movement opposition rather than institutional po­liti­cal actors. Throughout the ­century, wars changed the dynamic of attention to movement actors—­and did so dramatically in the run-up to and aftermath of the First World War. That conflict brought nativist, pro-­war movement organ­ izations to the fore, along with ­those they ­were attacking, in the country’s first Red Scare. The National Security League opposed German-­language instruction and “Bolshevism,” promoted patriotic displays, military training and ser­ vice, and English-­only schooling, and intervened in the 1918 congressional

36  c h a p t e r 1

elections by supporting like-­minded candidates. The American Defense Society, a radical splinter group of the Security League, made big news also by opposing the League of Nations. Not coincidentally, the news also focused on the German-­American Alliance, a mass organ­ization that opposed temperance and the war and supported German-­language instruction. It was subjected to a congressional investigation, as a prelude to being forced to disband in 1918. A few years previously, the ­labor movement was marked by the rise of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and its challenge to the AFL in bidding to or­ga­nize workers along the lines of class rather than occupation. The IWW returned to the front pages for its opposition to the war, as well as for being raided by the Department of Justice and targeted by vigilantes.

The Post–­First World War Period and the Long Republican 1920s: ­Labor, Prohibition, Veterans’, and ­Women’s Rights Organ­izations Go National Immediately a­ fter the First World War through the 1920s, a period of conservative Republican domination that lasted ­until the early 1930s, increased attention was trained on national movement and advocacy organ­izations. This happened in tandem with the modernization of the US polity, along with the professionalization of news organ­izations. The national government had increased its authority during the war and greatly expanded its revenue collection. The attacks of progressives on the main po­liti­cal parties had opened them to the influence of pressure organ­izations. And some of the previous contention led to influential policy gains, notably the adoption of Prohibition in 1919 through the Eigh­teenth Amendment and ­women’s suffrage in 1920 through the Nineteenth Amendment. The war also spurred new cohorts of veterans to seek governmental support, as had happened ­after the Civil War and Spanish American War. Organ­izations focused more on the national government, ­those that had won in policy ­battles sought further influence, and most ­were aided by the Republican dominance, as the party generally supported both Prohibition and veterans and sought to win the votes of ­women. ­After the passage of policies central to their programs and constituents, some movement organ­izations grew in news salience. They would often be incorporated in news discussions over the pro­gress and implementation of mea­sures, or what their next moves might be. The main anti-­alcohol organ­ izations ­were all over the news regarding how to put in practice nationwide the Eigh­teenth Amendment’s call to ban the manufacture, sale, and transportation

10 0 Or g a n i z a t i o n s i n t h e N e w s  37 ­Table 1.2. Eleven Organ­izations with Their First Extensive Year of News Coverage, 1919–1932 Organ­ization

First Year

Last Year

Years on List

American Legion

1919

1999

14

Actors Equity Association

1919

1919

1

Ku Klux Klan

1921

1999

8

League of ­Women Voters

1924

1998

9

Parent Teacher Association (PTA)

1924

1938

9

Veterans of Foreign Wars

1926

1999

7

Association Against the Prohibition Amendment

1930

1930

1

National Education Association

1931

1984

1

American Farm Bureau Federation

1932

1932

1

Bonus Army

1932

1932

1

­Women’s Organ­ization for National Prohibition Reform

1932

1932

1

Note: Seven organ­izations from the previous list also had at least one big year of coverage in this period: American Federation of ­Labor (14 years); Anti-­Saloon League (13 years); General Federation of ­Women’s Clubs (10 years); ­Women’s Christian Temperance Union (9 years); ­Grand Army of the Republic (8 years); United Mine Workers (8 years); and International Typographical Union (1 year).

of “intoxicating liquors.” ­These organ­izations peaked in news attention in this de­cade ­after passage of the amendment. The Anti-­Saloon League, only briefly big in the news during the b­ attle for Prohibition, gained its most extensive coverage during this period. It called for an extreme interpretation of the law and sought its strict implementation. ­Women’s rights organ­izations also won greater attention a­ fter winning the vote with the passage of the suffrage amendment. First among them was the League of ­Women Voters, a NAWSA offshoot, which was often covered extensively from this point forward and supported the passage of the 1921 Sheppard-­Towner Act to promote maternal health. (­Table 1.2 arrays the organ­izations that first made extensive news in the postwar period through 1932 and lists ­those from the previous period that had big years in this period.) W ­ omen’s rights organ­izations that made extensive news in this period, including notably the General Federation of W ­ omen’s Clubs, w ­ ere also covered in the context of other civic issues, including peace, good government, and public safety, deemed by them to be in the public interest. In another development that would recur throughout the c­ entury, nativists emerged forcefully, if briefly, into the news. The “second” Ku Klux Klan,

38  c h a p t e r 1

founded in 1915 and bearing the name of an antebellum terrorist organ­ization, succeeded in organ­izing millions of Americans, South and North, in its sometimes-­v iolent bids to halt immigration, constrain the rights of African Americans, and enforce Prohibition by way of its peculiar and strict views of morality. It also sought to intervene in elections, and by the m ­ iddle of the de­ cade the Klan became the most covered movement organ­ization. The moment did not last long, however, as the organ­ization was decimated l­ater in the de­ cade, following a ­Grand Dragon’s murder trial, public backlash against its terror tactics, and malfeasance by greedy leaders—­all accounts that had prominent play in the national news. The pattern of nativists and white supremacists emerging in the news for vio­lence and then dropping off the radar would also become a common one, with many such organ­izations taking on the Klan name and being referred to as such in the news, though with only a symbolic connection to ­earlier organ­izations. Meanwhile, as they did a­ fter the Civil War and would do following the Second World War, veterans or­ga­nized and mobilized over benefits. The American Legion was inaugurated ­after the war and immediately won members and news attention in pressing Congress for ser­vice compensation benefits for First World War veterans. It was not ­until 1924 that such legislation passed, authorizing what ­were commonly called “bonuses,” though they ­were not scheduled to be paid out for 20 years. The legislation spurred further attention; the American Legion was the most newsworthy movement organ­ ization each year in the second half of the de­cade. Yet more third parties attempted presidential bids in 1920, including one by the Socialist Party, featuring the imprisoned Eugene Debs’s candidacy, another by Farmer-­Labor candidate Parley Christensen, and another Progressive party bid by Robert LaFollette in 1924. As the ­Great Depression deepened, in 1932 the Bonus Expeditionary Force, commonly called the “Bonus Army,” demanded the early payment of the promised stipends and made long-­running news by encamping in the capital. It captured its greatest headlines, however, for being routed by troops led by General Douglas MacArthur. For all the attention paid to the Bonus Army, the American Legion still received most of the press coverage veterans’ organ­izations gained that year, mainly for inducing its allies to press for the bill in Congress. Unlike the Bonus Army, the Legion remained in the news, ultimately winning its b­ attle for bonuses, as its congressional supporters overrode a presidential veto in 1935. Set off by the stock market crash in October 1929, the G ­ reat Depression augured the end of Republican rule—­and Prohibition. In this period before

10 0 Or g a n i z a t i o n s i n t h e N e w s  39

the rise of Franklin Roo­se­velt, counter-­organizations to the anti-­alcohol movement had major moments in the news. Considerable newsprint was devoted to the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, led by the industrialists Pierre and Irénée du Pont, serving as a public face of the repeal effort and as a kind of male-­led ­counter to the Anti-­Saloon League. Its claims that taxes from alcohol sales would boost empty government coffers w ­ ere not dissimilar to ­those of some proponents of the legalization of marijuana in the following ­century. Joining them in print was a counterweight to the WCTU, the ­Women’s Organ­ization for National Prohibition Reform. It did not ­favor alcohol, but held that Prohibition was counterproductive, and in 1932 its leader Pauline Sabin graced the cover of Time magazine. Another pattern showed that major policy defeats usually augured a loss of news attention. ­After the repeal of Prohibition succeeded in 1933, the anti-­alcohol organ­izations no longer commanded g­ reat news space, even though the WCTU retained high membership.

The New Deal and Second World War: New Deal Alternatives, Anti-­Government Crusades, War Debates, and Industrial Unions A new dynamic in movement activity and the news treatment of movement organ­izations began during the administration of the Demo­cratic Roo­se­velt, who benefited from large majorities in Congress, especially a­ fter 1934, and sought to transform the way government related to business, ­labor, other or­ ga­nized groups, and citizens. The New Deal ushered in a transformation in the US po­liti­cal economy as the national state took over impor­tant social welfare functions previously a­ dopted in other countries, and in some ways went beyond them. The New Deal passed legislation protecting l­abor organ­ization, benefits for the el­derly, families with dependent c­ hildren, and the temporarily unemployed, as well as extensive and innovative work programs. ­These major policy changes ­were spurred in part by movements but also gave movements orga­nizational boosts and increased their standing in the news in a snowballing way. The initiatives also spurred groups that opposed ­these advances in government authority and responsibility, including conservative activists and some from the populist left. The opposition organ­izations ­were intensely, if often only briefly, in public view. Founded in 1934, the Townsend Plan demanded generous old-­age pensions to fight poverty and the Depression—­advancing old-­age security in

40  c h a p t e r 1 ­Table 1.3. Twenty-­Two Organ­izations with Their First Extensive Year of News Coverage, 1933–1945 Organ­ization

First Year

Last Year

Years on List

American Association of University ­Women

1934

1963

3

End Poverty in California

1934

1934

1

Townsend Plan

1935

1939

4

American Liberty League

1935

1936

2

National Federation of Business and Professional ­Women’s Clubs

1935

1935

1

Congress of Industrial Organ­izations

1936

1955

10

International Ladies Garment Workers Union

1936

1950

4

Black Legion

1936

1936

1

Farmer-­Labor Party

1936

1936

1

National Union for Social Justice

1936

1936

1

Union Party

1936

1936

1

American ­Labor Party

1937

1950

9

United Auto Workers

1937

1999

9

United Steelworkers

1937

1987

6

American Newspaper Guild

1937

1937

1

Communist Party

1938

1957

4

American Civil Liberties Union

1938

1999

1

German American Bund

1939

1940

2

Ham and Eggs

1939

1939

1

Committee to Defend Amer­i­ca By Aiding the Allies

1940

1941

2

American Youth Congress

1940

1940

1

Amer­i­ca First Committee

1941

1941

1

Note: Eleven organ­izations from previous lists also had at least one big year of coverage during this period: American Federation of ­Labor (13 years); United Mine Workers (13 years); American Legion (13 years); General Federation of ­Women’s Clubs (12 years); League of ­Women Voters (12 years); Veterans of Foreign Wars (12 years); Teamsters (7 years); PTA (6 years); ­Grand Army of the Republic (4 years); ­Women’s Christian Temperance Union (3 years); and Ku Klux Klan (1 year).

public discourse (see ­table 1.3). The Townsend Plan did not reach its peak of membership or saturate the news, however, ­until ­after the passage of the 1935 Social Security Act, which it criticized as being too stingy and restrictive. The organ­ization gained two million members and was referenced more than 1,000 times in the four papers in 1936, in part ­because the two major parties agreed

10 0 Or g a n i z a t i o n s i n t h e N e w s  41

to investigate it in the House of Representatives. That year F ­ ather Charles Coughlin’s National Union for Social Justice, seeking to represent working men and proposing monetary solutions to the Depression, also won g­ reat attention as the Radio Priest gained affiliates to his organ­ization through his weekly national broadcasts, at first in support of Roo­se­velt and then in opposition. The Union Party of 1936, headed by the Midwest populist William Lemke, received extensive news play in large part b­ ecause of the support he received from Dr. Townsend and ­Father Coughlin. That party was gone for good, though, ­after failing badly in a bid to unseat Roo­se­velt, who was reelected in an epic landslide. The Townsend Plan returned to the news and was joined ­later in the de­cade by the California old-­age pension organ­ization commonly known as “Ham and Eggs,” which sought a similar program for California, but fell short in its two high-­profile referendums. Parties from the left also made the news in the 1930s. One was a campaign and organ­ization known as End Poverty in California, begun by the novelist and Socialist reformer Upton Sinclair. The radical plan of this group centered on seizing idle land and factories and using them to put ­people to work. Buoyed by End Poverty Leagues arising across California, Sinclair ran for governor on the Demo­cratic party line in 1934. A Hollywood-­led disinformation campaign, strong opposition from the Los Angeles Times and the Hearst newspapers, plus a lack of endorsement from Roo­se­velt, doomed Sinclair to defeat at the hands of Republican Frank Merriam, though many candidates ­running on the EPIC ticket won election to the state legislature. In a kind of rematch in 1938, one of ­these EPIC legislators, Culbert Olson, beat Merriam. Other progressive parties w ­ ere friendlier to the president and also successfully backed candidates for Congress. ­These included Minnesota’s Farmer L ­ abor Party and the New York’s American L ­ abor Party, both of which supported Roo­se­velt in 1936, and each gained considerable news attention. Organ­izations of the right, also not much remembered t­ oday, similarly gained ­great if episodic play, as liberal Demo­crats’ rise to po­liti­cal power also mobilized opposition that was extensively covered. The right-­wing American Liberty League, led by the du Pont ­brothers, could not repeat the success of their anti-­Prohibition organ­ization and instead created a sort of ineffectual ideological forerunner of the Koch b­ rothers’ Americans for Prosperity. The league was the first high-­profile organ­ization devoted to anti–­big-­government agitation, a direct reaction to New Deal programs for work, relief, ­labor rights, social security, and higher taxes, initiating a cause that would be pursued by many ­others through the end of the ­century. As in ­every period across the

42  c h a p t e r 1

c­ entury, nativists w ­ ere intermittently newsworthy. The Black Legion, a Midwestern offshoot of the Klan, commanded much newsprint for a murder and a subsequent trial. It was followed in news notoriety by the German American Bund, which was modeled on the Nazi Party and held training camps and or­ ga­nized a massive 1939 rally at Madison Square Garden. It found itself embroiled in the news mainly for the plundering of its funds by its Bundführer. Most of all, however, during the Roo­se­velt era l­abor organ­izations commanded headlines, as u­ nions across the country sought to or­ga­nize in the wake of government protections for collective bargaining, first through the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and then through the National L ­ abor Relations (Wagner) Act of 1935. Again, policy change spurred attention. The Congress of Industrial Organ­izations (CIO, initially the Committee for Industrial Organ­ization) burst into public consciousness in 1936, dominating the news in an unpre­ce­dented way in seeking to or­ga­nize ­labor along industrial lines. It appeared in the four national newspapers more than four thousand times in 1937. This attention included storied coverage of its affiliates’ bids to ­unionize unskilled and semi-­skilled workers in many industries. Near the end of the de­cade, journalists tracked sit-­down strikes by CIO u­ nions, notably by autoworkers, as well as other organ­izing strikes. When the CIO formally split from the AFL in 1938, this internecine b­ attle also received full news play, prompting attention to the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, which was deciding which suitor to choose. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) first reached high news attention for aiding the CIO in suing Frank Hague, the mayor of Jersey City, for leveling restrictions on the organ­ization, which he denounced as “communist.” The AFL was also prominent in the news, as it redoubled its organ­izing efforts and sought to prevent member u­ nions from defecting. The workers pouring into ­unions in this orga­nizational revolution ensured that the l­abor movement would dominate this wave of movement news coverage and maintain its leadership in public discourse surrounding movement actors throughout the rest of the ­century. As the 1930s ­were ending and war in Eu­rope was beginning, congressional investigations and issues of war participation dominated po­liti­cal discussions, again with ­great influence over movement organ­izations’ inclusion in the public sphere. The Communist party and the American Youth Congress landed in the sights of the newly formed House Un-­American Activities Committee and received severe press scrutiny, especially once Germany’s Adolf Hitler and the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin allied in 1939, and then both invaded Poland. The 1940 Smith Act made it a criminal offense to be a member of an organ­ization

10 0 Or g a n i z a t i o n s i n t h e N e w s  43

that advocated overthrowing the government. Headlines ­were captured also by organ­izations with opposing views on how to address the Second World War—­the isolationist Amer­i­ca First Committee, led by Charles Lindbergh, and the Committee to Defend Amer­i­ca by Aiding the Allies, which supported President Roo­se­velt’s internationalist impulses and moves to aid Britain. Both, however, quickly became irrelevant and disbanded, as well as falling down a kind of historical memory hole, once Pearl Harbor was bombed in December 1941. The US entry into and focus on the war dampened the coverage of all movement organ­izations. Organ­izations pressing for social policy changes ­were far less active as Congress pushed aside domestic concerns, and in any case war news dominated headlines. Movement coverage, as far as it went, was mainly about l­abor, which was continuing to or­ga­nize while attempting, sometimes unsuccessfully, to enforce no-­strike pledges to keep war industries humming.5 As the war neared its conclusion, attention also turned to veterans’ organ­izations pressing for what soon became the G.I. Bill of Rights.

The Postwar Period and the 1950s: ­Labor Dominance, Veterans’ Return, a Second Red Scare, and Black Civil Rights In the de­cade and a half following the Second World War, the attention to social movement actors in some ways resembled the attention they received ­after the First World War. Organ­izations in movements that had made gains before the war returned to the news. Regaining prominence ­were veterans’ organ­izations in the wake of the passage of the 1944 G.I. Bill of Rights, which provided education, mortgage, and business loan support for veterans, who could take advantage immediately. The American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars ­were briefly joined by the more liberal and short-­lived American Veterans Committee. ­There was a second Red Scare, a series of investigations that kept movement organ­izations in the news and led to dissension within and the breakup of many left organ­izations, including the American Veterans Committee. Another nativist insurgency made big news. And the ­labor movement received its greatest attention. ­Labor news more than picked up where it left off in the late 1930s. As the war wound down and ended in 1945, ­unions commanded headlines through a series of strikes, notably by auto workers, coal miners, and steelworkers. In the aftermath of controversies surrounding ­these actions, however, the

44  c h a p t e r 1 ­Table 1.4. Eleven Organ­izations with Their First Extensive Year of News Coverage, 1946–1961 Organ­ization

First Year

Last Year

Years on List

United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of Amer­i­ca

1946

1950

5

American Veterans Committee

1946

1947

2

Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen

1946

1960

2

States’ Rights Demo­cratic Party

1948

1952

2

Progressive Party (Wallace)

1948

1948

1

International Longshoremen’s and Ware­house­men’s Union

1949

1949

1

NAACP

1952

1999

9

Americans for Demo­cratic Action

1952

1952

1

AFL-­CIO

1956

1999

6

Screen Actors Guild

1960

1980

1

John Birch Society

1961

1966

1

Note: Nineteen organ­izations from previous lists also had at least one big year of coverage in this period: American Legion (16 years); League of ­Women Voters (16 years); Teamsters (16 years); United Auto Workers (16 years); United Steelworkers (16 years); Veterans of Foreign Wars (15 years); General Federation of ­Women’s Clubs (13 years); American Federation of ­Labor (11 years); Communist Party (11 years); Congress of Industrial Organ­izations (10 years); United Mine Workers (9 years); American ­Labor Party (5 years); International Typographical Union (2 years); Ku Klux Klan (2 years); National Education Association (2 years); International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (1 year); and International Ladies Garment Workers Union (1 year).

anti-­labor Taft-­Hartley Act passed in 1947, over the strong objections of the AFL and CIO and the veto of President Truman. This law restricted the organ­ izing rights of ­unions, by ending the closed shop and making it pos­si­ble for states to adopt so-­called right-­to-­work laws that eliminated u­ nion shop agreements ensuring that every­one benefiting from a ­labor agreement in a bargaining unit pays dues. This law helped to reverse the advance of u­ nionization in the ­labor force. The AFL-­CIO merger at the end of 1955 ushered in a new period of news attention for l­ abor, which was reaching a peak in u­ nionization. In 1957, however, the Teamsters ­were subjected to a select Senate committee investigating corruption in an inquiry that lasted more than two years and culminated in yet more anti-­labor legislation. In 1948, two third parties seeking to wrest the White House from incumbent Demo­crat Harry Truman ­were in the news. From the right, the nativist States’ Rights Democratic, or Dixiecrat, Party headed by Strom Thurmond broke with the Demo­crats over their more liberal civil rights plank and captured the

10 0 Or g a n i z a t i o n s i n t h e N e w s  45

electoral votes of several southern states. From the left, the Progressive Party nominated Henry Wallace, Roo­se­velt’s former vice president, on an anti-­ military platform. This organ­ization was also in the news for being investigated by Congress over its friendly orientation ­toward the Soviet Union. New party organ­izations contesting congressional elections also had periods of high attention at midcentury, the most newsworthy being New York’s American ­Labor party. This Socialist party remnant tied to New York City–­based needle trade ­unions gained a ballot line due to idiosyncratic New York state laws that make it pos­si­ble for third parties not to undermine the parties closest to them in ideology. It supported both Roo­se­velt and New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, and its most prominent member was Congressman Vito Marcantonio. It was a forerunner to the state’s Liberal party and a kind of ideological forebear to ­today’s Working Families party. The Communist party was thrust back into the news ­after a war­time hiatus, as the United States found itself in geopo­liti­cal conflict with the Soviet Union and embroiled in a second major Red Scare. A shell of its former orga­nizational self, the Communist party was spun through news cycles for several years, through ­trials of its party leaders, the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, examinations of Communists’ role in the l­abor movement and other organ­ izations, and ramped-up congressional investigations, ending at long last with the 1954 Army-­McCarthy hearings. This Red Scare also swept up the International Longshoremen and Ware­house­men’s Union, which was investigated by Congress and found itself newsworthy for that and for a strike in Hawaii. It also led to turmoil within the American Veterans Committee and the American ­Labor Party, both of which purged members and soon declined. Harbingers of the coming de­cade also appeared. In the 1950s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored ­People (­later the NAACP) first broke into high public relief with its court challenge to unequal schooling, culminating in the Brown v. Board decisions in 1954 and 1955. This large membership organ­ization focused on litigation, but it was also frequently referenced in discussions surrounding the proposal and passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960. The NAACP would become central to civil and voting rights issues in the 1960s and remain among the most covered movement organ­izations through the end of the c­ entury and beyond. At the end of the period, the far-­right John Birch Society was founded in 1958 by retired candy manufacturer Robert W. Welch Jr. and railed against Republican and Demo­ cratic leaders alike, charging them as being witting or unwitting agents of Communists and promoters of one-­world government. It burst into the news

46  c h a p t e r 1

with conspiracy theories, controversies over military officers seeking to indoctrinate troops, an essay contest for entrants to prove that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was a communist, and, l­ ater, the question of w ­ hether the 1964 Republican nominee Barry Goldwater would renounce the organ­ization’s support.

The Long 1960s: Black Rights, Right-­Wing, Anti-­War, and New Social Movement Actors In the 1960s, a de­cade that stretched into the mid-1970s for movement politics, journalistic attention turned to new and often disruptive organ­izations posing dif­fer­ent issues, setting off a new wave of news attention. Although this era is the focus of much social movement research, especially regarding new or post-­ material movements, themes and patterns from throughout the c­ entury also played out in this period. Organ­izations whose constituents benefited from policies ­were lifted into to prominence. Another partisan regime, this time a liberal Demo­cratic one u­ nder President Lyndon Johnson, drew movement organ­izations from the right and left into the news. Nativists and white supremacists ­were again making headlines, this time in opposition not to immigrants, but to African American rights. New po­liti­cal parties won attention. Investigations lent movement organ­izations extensive, if unsolicited and unwanted, attention in the public sphere. Again, when newer issues came up, the news media often turned to long-­standing organ­izations in their articles. Some of t­ hese patterns played out in the Black rights movement. Despite the many key early events, such as the 1956 Montgomery bus boycott, the 1960 lunch ­counter sit-­ins in North Carolina and elsewhere, and the 1961 freedom rides, organ­izations in this movement did not gain extensive news coverage ­until somewhat ­later in the de­cade. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) became prominent for collective action, fighting discrimination in both the North and South. Dr. Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) initiated a series of direct actions in the South and gained ­great notice. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) became known for sit-­ins or voter registration drives in the early 1960s. But each gained its first big year in the news in 1963. Moreover, both the leadership conference and the student committee peaked in the second half of the decade—­after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Acts of 1965. SNCC was most extensively covered in 1966, in debates over Black Power and orga­nizational

10 0 Or g a n i z a t i o n s i n t h e N e w s  47 ­Table 1.5. Sixteen Organ­izations with Their First Extensive Year of News Coverage, 1962–1976 Organ­ization

First Year

Last Year

Years on List

National Urban League

1963

1982

9

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

1963

1979

6

Congress of Racial Equality

1963

1967

5

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

1963

1967

5

­Free Speech Movement

1965

1965

1

Sierra Club

1967

1999

9

Nation of Islam

1967

1996

1

Black Panther Party

1968

1972

5

Students for a Demo­cratic Society

1968

1970

3

American In­de­pen­dent Party

1968

1968

1

Peace and Freedom Party

1968

1968

1

Jewish Defense League

1971

1971

1

United Farm Workers

1973

1979

4

American Indian Movement

1973

1973

1

National Football League Players Association

1974

1987

1

National Organ­ization for W ­ omen

1975

1993

1

Note: Seventeen organ­izations from previous lists also had at least one big year of coverage in this period: the AFL-­CIO (15 years); League of ­Women Voters (15 years); NAACP (15 years); Teamsters (15 years); United Auto Workers (15 years); American Civil Liberties Union (12 years); American Legion (12 years); United Steelworkers (12 years); Ku Klux Klan (8 years); United Mine Workers (8 years); John Birch Society (5 years); General Federation of ­Women’s Clubs (3 years); International Typographical Union (2 years); Veterans of Foreign Wars (2 years); American Association of University  ­Women (1 year); International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (1 year); and National Education Association (1 year).

controversies. The SCLC had its biggest year a­ fter King’s assassination in 1968 and the organ­ization’s bid to carry out his planned Poor P ­ eople’s Campaign. And in 1970, no movement, ­labor, or advocacy organ­ization received more coverage than the Black Panther Party, which received more than 1,000 mentions across the four newspapers. Its run of high news prominence stretched from 1968 through 1972—­although often by way of the criminal ­trials of its leaders. The National Urban League, a moderate organ­ization often downplayed in accounts of the movement, was also highly newsworthy for most of the de­cade. Still, the overall leader in Black rights orga­nizational coverage remained the NAACP, which added direct action to its repertoire of contention and briefly displaced the AFL-­CIO as the most-­covered movement organ­ization.

48  c h a p t e r 1

Conservative, nativist, and anti–­civil rights organ­izations returned to prominence in the 1960s. The third iteration of the Ku Klux Klan surged in both membership and attention in the mid-1960s. A grouping of like-­minded organ­izations, the Klan was covered in the national press frequently for its adherents’ murders of rights activists, including the NAACP’s Medgar Evers, three CORE workers in Mississippi, and the volunteers James Reed and Viola Liuzzo. The death of the latter was quickly linked to Klan members ­because an FBI in­for­mant was riding with the killers. This organ­ization’s most sustained news treatment came in 1965, through an investigation by the House Un-­American Activities Committee. Nativism also resurfaced in a big way during George Wallace’s bid for the presidency in 1968 u­ nder the banner of the American In­de­pen­dent Party—­which repeated the feat of the Dixiecrats 20 years e­ arlier in winning the electoral votes of several Deep South states. The far-­right Jewish Defense League also briefly gained headlines for its violent action opposing the harsh treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union. With the United States escalating its war in Vietnam and instituting a draft, anti-­war organ­izations soon emerged—in a big way—in the news. The run of attention to SNCC in 1966 was in part due to its early anti–­Vietnam War stance. Julian Bond was briefly denied a seat in the Georgia state­house due to his support of his organ­ization’s position on the war, a story that received national play. And Students for a Demo­cratic Society, a new left organ­ization joining the anti-­war effort, was all the rage among journalists at the end of the de­cade, notably during campus occupations in 1969. Some of its leaders ­were also hauled before a congressional investigating committee. That year SDS gained more prominence in the national news than any movement-­related organ­ization aside from the AFL-­CIO. In 1968, in another recurrent theme, the Peace and Freedom Party, backing Eldridge Cleaver for president, and Dick Gregory in states where Cleaver was ineligible, gained news attention well out of proportion to the few votes it generated. Although it just missed the list, the Youth International Party was much in the news surrounding the Chicago Seven trial of the attention-­seeking Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, as well as their antics a­ fter being called before the House Un-­American Activities Committee. The American Civil Liberties Union also regained news prominence, significantly for providing ­legal support to individual protesters connected to the civil rights and anti-­war movements—­and would remain prominent in the news through the end of the ­century and beyond. In the early 1970s, new organ­izations representing new social movements and post-­material issues joined the public discussion. Although many environmental

10 0 Or g a n i z a t i o n s i n t h e N e w s  49

organ­izations formed, the movement was most frequently represented in the news by the long-­standing Sierra Club; despite being founded in 1892, it first gained widespread notice in 1970. The ­women’s rights movement was represented in the news by the National Organ­ization for ­Women, which became a mainstay in the news ­after 1975, as well as the long-­standing League of W ­ omen Voters, which now campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment. Other social movement organ­izations became prominent only briefly and for types of disruptive action with long news legs. Native Americans’ rights ­were injected into public discourse through the American Indian Movement, an organ­ization formed in 1968 to fight poverty and police brutality, by way of its occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1972 and Wounded Knee in 1973. The rights of Mexican Americans joined the news cycle in 1975 with the table-­grape boycotts and strikes of the United Farm Workers, which sought recognition from and contracts with growers. For all the attention being paid to first-­time movement newsmakers, the most prominent movement remained or­ga­nized l­abor. The AFL-­CIO, United Auto Workers (UAW), United Mine Workers, Teamsters, and United Steelworkers remained major news items, often by way of strikes.

New Movement Voices Join Older Ones at ­Century’s End: Christian Right, Gun Rights, Se­nior Rights, AIDS Activism, and ­Human Rights The last two de­cades of the c­ entury ­were characterized by a conservative resurgence that was reflected in the coverage of movement organ­izations. With the election of the right-­wing Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980, several new conservative movement organ­izations made big news, often countering left movement actors. The conservative reaction featured another assault on or­ga­ nized l­abor, which was being represented in the news more frequently by organ­izations of professionals than of blue-­collar workers. Other new issues entered the public sphere, including ­those surrounding AIDS and LGBTQ rights, as well as ­human rights internationally. During the 1990s ­under President Bill Clinton, which was mainly a period of divided government following the rise to power of a conservative House of Representatives in 1995, new organ­izations and issues found their way into the news often in reaction to policy proposals and changes. Although many new organ­izations entered the public sphere, many of the old ones did not leave. The Christian right, emerging in the 1970s in opposition to racial integration, abortion, and change in school textbooks, was represented in the news

50  c h a p t e r 1

through the Moral Majority. Co-­founded by Baptist minister Jerry Falwell and conservative activist Paul Weyrich, this organ­ization injected itself into the 1980 presidential campaign as well as debates over the Reagan administration’s policies. Organ­izations from the abortion rights and anti-­abortion movements also became prominent in the news, with Planned Parenthood opposing gag rules by the administration regarding f­ amily planning and fighting off violent assaults on clinics. It remained the main representative of reproductive rights in the news through the end of the c­ entury. Operation Rescue gained attention for clinic blockades and a trial of t­ hose arrested regarding them, while much of the anti-­abortion movement soon shunned news coverage in the professional news media. The Christian Co­ali­tion, launched by way of Pat Robertson’s failed presidential nomination bid in 1988, replaced the Moral Majority as the central representative of the Christian right in the public sphere with its stance against LGBTQ rights and disputes over its tax-­exempt status. The National ­Rifle Association became newsworthy for the first time in a sustained way mainly for its losing ­battle over a ban on assault weapons, which passed in 1993. It won the war, though, as the ban expired 10 years ­later and was not renewed. New issues and organ­izations representing them from the left also gained extensive attention in this period. ­Human rights organ­izations joined public debates and gained visibility, mainly through Amnesty International, while ­Human Rights Watch gained similar prominence in the news at the end of the ­century. Although the gay liberation organ­izations ­were only minimally covered in the 1970s, the LGBTQ-­led, AIDS-­advocacy organ­ization ACT UP verged on top-10 news status in 1991. It gained attention not only through its disruptive protests, but also by contesting how (and how very slowly) the government conducted drug ­trials to combat this scourge. AARP, representing the el­derly, forcefully entered public discourse over debates regarding health care and Social Security, as well as through a Senate investigation of its interventions in congressional elections. In 1995, the Million Man March, one protest that received attention in its run-up, also propelled into storied coverage the Nation of Islam, as the planning of the march was closely associated with its controversial leader Louis Farrakhan. New organ­izations in the ­labor movement joined the news, mainly for more professional and higher-­paying occupations, slanting ­labor coverage in a new direction. The Reagan administration fought a strike by and broke the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organ­ization, which played out through the news in 1981 (see t­ able 1.6). L ­ abor became especially publicly prominent by way of attention to actions by workers in entertainment industries. Both

10 0 Or g a n i z a t i o n s i n t h e N e w s  51 ­Table 1.6. Seventeen Organ­izations with Their First Extensive Year of News Coverage, 1977–1999 Organ­ization

First Year

Last Year

Years on List

Amnesty International

1977

1999

15

Moral Majority

1980

1985

6

Major League Baseball Players Association

1981

1994

2

Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organ­ization

1981

1981

1

Planned Parenthood

1982

1999

18

Greenpeace

1985

1993

5

American Association of Retired Persons

1987

1999

13

Writers Guild of Amer­i­ca

1988

1988

1

National ­Rifle Association

1989

1999

5

Natu­ral Resources Defense Council

1989

1993

4

Operation Rescue

1989

1993

3

Anti-­Defamation League

1990

1995

5

AIDS Co­ali­tion to Unleash Power

1991

1991

1

National Audubon Society

1991

1991

1

Christian Co­ali­tion

1994

1999

6

Reform Party

1996

1999

2

­Human Rights Watch

1998

1999

2

Note: Twenty-­one organ­izations from previous lists also had at least one big year of coverage in this period: AFL-­CIO (23 years); American Civil Liberties Union (23 years); NAACP (23 years); Sierra  Club (23 years); United Auto Workers (23 years); Ku Klux Klan (22 years); League of ­Women Voters (18 years); American Legion (17 years); Teamsters (17 years); National Organ­ization for ­Women (11 years); United Steelworkers (11 years); National Urban League (6 years); Anti-­Defamation League (5 years); Nation of Islam (5 years); United Mine Workers (5 years); Veterans of Foreign Wars (5 years); National Education Association (2 years); National Football League Players Association (2 years); Screen Actors Guild (1 year); Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1 year); and United Farm Workers (1 year).

the Major League Baseball Players Association and the National Football League Players Association ­were heavi­ly covered in the news ­because of strikes during their 1981 and 1982 seasons, with accounts of them often appearing on the sports pages. Both also commanded headlines l­ ater for strikes or lockouts, with the World Series being canceled in 1994. Similarly, the Writers Guild of Amer­i­ca won a series of headlines, mainly in entertainment sections, for a strike that slowed the production of tele­vi­sion series and movies in 1988, leading to a delay in a season of the popu­lar series Thirtysomething, while possibly dooming another one, Moonlighting.

52  c h a p t e r 1

In some ways, the more ­things changed the more they stayed the same in the news coverage of movement organ­izations. New organ­izations did not entirely displace older ones in the news—­their coverage was just added to the mix. Even at the ­century’s end many organ­izations originating in the first half of the c­ entury with long histories of news attention remained prominent. ­Table 1.6 lists only the 17 organ­izations that had their first big year in the news during the period. If e­ very organ­ization that gained this sort of attention during the period w ­ ere listed, 21 additional organ­izations would need to be included. Although l­abor organ­izations had dropped in news priority along with the decline of u­ nionization generally, the AFL-­CIO was still third in coverage in 1999 and the UAW was seventh. The NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union w ­ ere numbers one and two. Also among the top ten w ­ ere the American Legion, the Sierra Club, and yet another version of the Ku Klux Klan. Six of ­these organ­izations had been among the most-­covered 20 years ­earlier. This news stickiness led to a cacophony of movement voices in the news at ­century’s end.

Movement Organ­izations, Celebrities, and Major Protests in the News To provide a better sense of how much news ­these movement actors made, we briefly compare their coverage in the four newspapers with that of prominent figures from the worlds of sports and entertainment. The boldest faced names in the news w ­ ere mainly New York baseball standouts, heavyweight boxing champions, movie stars, and popu­lar musicians (see t­ able 1.7). Did ­these celebrities make more news than the most prominent movement organ­izations? In the first de­cade of the ­century, ­there was not much in the way of a national public sphere and the celebrities gaining the biggest press w ­ ere the boxing champion Jim Jeffries, band leader John Philip Sousa, and the hitmaker George M. Cohan. In the 1910s, boxing champions Jack Johnson—­the first of several Black athletes to earn this distinction—­and Jess Willard ­were top celebrity newsmakers along with baseball’s Ty Cobb.6 Even in this period of attenuated national attention to social movement actors, however, the celebrities ­were outpointed in news mentions by movement organ­izations. In the first de­cade, the American Federation of L ­ abor (AFL), G ­ rand Army of the Republic (GAR), W ­ omen’s Christian Temperance Union (WTCU), and United Mine Workers (UMW) all received more attention. In the second de­cade, the

­Table 1.7. News Coverage of Celebrities and Movement Organ­izations, 1900s–1990s De­cade

Celebrity

1900s

Jim Jeffries John Philip Sousa George M. Cohan

1910s

Jack Johnson Ty Cobb Jess Willard

1920s

1930s

Articles

Articles

American Federation of ­Labor ­Grand Army of the Republic ­Women’s Christian Temperance Union

3,077 2,931 2,531

2,806 1,770 1,088

American Federation of ­Labor ­Grand Army of the Republic Progressive Party (Roo­se­velt)

4,110 1,996 1,725

Jack Dempsey Babe Ruth Douglas Fairbanks Charlie Chaplin

9,262 6,602 3,011 2,761

American Legion Ku Klux Klan American Federation of ­Labor Anti-­Saloon League

10,186 6,677 5,708 3,539

Clark Gable Joan Crawford Lou Gehrig

4,167 3,486 3,082

13,814 12,571 11,345

Shirley ­Temple

2,626

American Federation of ­Labor American Legion Congress of Industrial Organ­izations General Federation of ­Women’s Clubs

Joe Louis

6,402

27,381

Bing Crosby Joe DiMaggio Ted Williams

4,731 3,164 3,158

Congress of Industrial Organ­izations American Federation of ­Labor American Legion United Mine Workers

Bob Hope

4,151

10,151

Mickey Mantle Jackie Robinson Willie Mays

4,091 3,138 2,875

Congress of Industrial Organ­izations American Federation of ­Labor AFL-­CIO American Legion

Arnold Palmer The Beatles/John Lennon Wilt Chamberlain Jim Brown

6,245 3,434

AFL-­CIO NAACP

12,283 10,501

2,472 1,850

UAW Teamsters

5,947 5,516

1970s

Muhammad Ali Reggie Jackson Tom Seaver O. J. Simpson

6,056 3,959 3,173 2,052

AFL-­CIO UAW NAACP Teamsters

10,776 6,667 6,580 5,387

1980s

Magic Johnson Michael Jackson Wayne Gretzky Madonna

7,022 5,630 4,457 4,422

AFL-­CIO NAACP UAW American Civil Liberties Union

7,758 7,179 6,904 6,738

1990s

Michael Jordan Roger Clemens Tom Cruise Emmitt Smith

16,317 3,899 3,003 2,803

NAACP American Civil Liberties Union AFL-­CIO Sierra Club

8,055 5,839 4,910 4,676

1940s

1950s

1960s

611 152 128

Organ­ization

5,633

15,881 9,437 6,206

9,205 6,441 6,372

54  c h a p t e r 1

AFL received more mentions than Johnson, the GAR more than Cobb, and Theodore Roo­se­velt’s Progressive Party, the General Federation of ­Women’s Clubs, the WTCU and UMW more than Willard. The national public sphere expanded in the 1920s, bringing greater news attention to both movements and celebrities, but more to movement organ­ izations. Boxer Jack Dempsey and home run king Babe Ruth became national heroes in the 1920s, sharing the news limelight with film stars Douglas Fairbanks and Charles Chaplin. Although Dempsey was mentioned almost 10,000 times, that was still slightly less than the American Legion’s tally. Ruth appeared in the news a ­little less frequently than the Ku Klux Klan, and Fairbanks and Chaplin less than the AFL and the Anti-­Saloon League. In the 1930s, film stars Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, and Shirley ­Temple got only half as much ink as the AFL, American Legion, and Congress of Industrial Organ­izations. In the 1940s, boxing g­ reat Joe Louis, crooner/film star Bing Crosby, and ­future Hall of Famer outfielders Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams ­were no match for the same three. The nation turned its eyes more ­toward the UMW than Jolting Joe, and the United Auto Workers (UAW) appeared almost as frequently as Louis. In the 1950s, comic actor Bob Hope and baseball stars Mickey Mantle and Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s racial barrier, ­were outscored in news appearances by the AFL, CIO, AFL-­CIO, American Legion, UAW, Teamsters, United Steelworkers, and Communist party, with the NAACP coming close. In the 1960s, the news hailed a new set of celebrities, but they still trailed movement organ­izations in news coverage. The Beatles may have been more popu­lar than Jesus, according to a famous quote by John Lennon in 1966. But in the four US newspapers, he and his British bandmates did not appear as frequently as the AFL-­CIO, NAACP, UAW, Teamsters, United Steelworkers, John Birch Society, or the Ku Klux Klan, some of whose organ­izations made news by burning Beatles’ rec­ords in response to Lennon’s statement. Indeed, among celebrities that de­cade, golfer Arnold Palmer stood atop the leaderboard, though he still fell below the AFL-­CIO and NAACP. In the 1970s, the boxer and conscientious objector Muhammad Ali and New York Mets and Yankees baseball stars Tom Seaver and Reggie Jackson w ­ ere bested in the news by the AFL-­CIO, UAW, and NAACP. Ali, however, helped to drive the coverage of the Nation of Islam as its most famous member. It was not ­until the 1980s that celebrities pulled even with movement actors in the news, and not ­until the 1990s that any one of them moved ahead in mentions. In the 1980s, Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Magic Johnson

10 0 Or g a n i z a t i o n s i n t h e N e w s  55

appeared almost as frequently as the AFL-­CIO and NAACP, and slightly more than the UAW. ­Those organ­izations plus the ACLU ­were all in the news more than pop stars Michael Jackson and Madonna, and the National Hockey League’s Wayne Gretzky. But ­these celebrities garnered more attention than any other movement organ­ization in the news, including the Sierra Club, Teamsters, and Klan. In the 1990s, t­ here was a changing of the guard. No movement organ­ization achieved anything approximating the attention devoted to basketball megastar Michael Jordan, who led the Chicago Bulls to six championships and received more than twice the mentions of the top movement organ­ization, the NAACP. That said, the NAACP and four other organ­ izations had more coverage than the next celebrity on the list, Yankee pitcher Roger Clemens, and eight organ­izations movement organ­izations appeared more often than the notable in third place, movie star Tom Cruise. Another way to situate the coverage of movement organ­izations is to compare it to the news attention paid to large protest events—­which are closely associated with social movements. However, the newspaper coverage of t­ hese events usually represented only a small fraction of the coverage that movement organ­izations received. To make this comparison, we used the same pro­cesses to search for articles from the four newspapers that made specific references to the twentieth c­ entury’s largest and most noteworthy single-­day protest events. They often received significant news coverage in the buildup to them and in their aftermath. However, only two, the 1963 March on Washington and the 1995 Million Man March, ­were covered in more than 1,000 articles. While the news covered some other events, such as the 1913 ­Woman Suffrage Pro­ cession, in some detail, we estimate that the median coverage for protests with 100,000 ­people or more in the twentieth ­century was only 48 articles.

Which Organ­izations Made the Most News and Why? The historical account raises the question of which organ­izations received the greatest number of big years in the news, and which received the most news attention overall. ­Labor movement organ­izations ­were at the top, with the AFL, the CIO, and the AFL-­CIO making ­these most-­covered lists each year of the c­ entury in which ­these organ­izations existed (see t­ able 1.8). Many large ­unions had multiple big years of coverage, most impressively the United Auto Workers, which made the cut first in 1937 and was highly newsworthy in almost ­every year for the rest of the ­century. Although we ­w ill introduce broader movements in chapter  3, it is easy to see that many ­others came from

­Table 1.8. Organ­izations by Years of Extensive News Coverage, 1900–1999 Years on List

First Year

Last Year

Top Year (amount)

American Legion

72

1919

1999

1932 (1736)

League of ­Women Voters

70

1924

1998

1980  (792)

3

United Auto Workers

63

1937

1999

1958 (1364)

4

American Federation of ­Labor

57

1900

1956

1941 (2226)

5

United Mine Workers

56

1900

1989

1943 (1016)

6

Teamsters

56

1905

1998

1957 (2021)

7

General Federation of ­Women’s Clubs

47

1902

1964

1935  (711)

8

NAACP

47

1952

1999

1963 (1855)

9

United Steelworkers

45

1937

1987

1959 (1089)

10

AFL-­CIO

44

1956

1999

1957 (1978)

11

Veterans of Foreign Wars

41

1926

1999

1935  (506)

12

Ku Klux Klan

41

1921

1999

1924 (1611)

13

American Civil Liberties Union

36

1938

1999

1988  (789)

14

Sierra Club

32

1967

1999

1990  (705)

15

­Grand Army of the Republic

31

1900

1939

1902  (592)

16

­Women’s Christian Temperance Union

30

1900

1935

1931  (540)

17

Anti-­Saloon League

21

1901

1932

1926  (587)

18

Congress of Industrial Organ­izations

20

1936

1955

1937 (4441)

19

Planned Parenthood

18

1982

1999

1992  (424)

20

Parent Teacher Association

15

1924

1938

1934  (525)

20

International Typographical Union

15

1900

1974

1948  (599)

20

Communist Party

15

1938

1957

1950  (760)

20

National Urban League

15

1963

1982

1968  (461)

20

Amnesty International

15

1977

1999

1988  (339)

25

American ­Labor Party

14

1937

1950

1938  (639)

Rank

Organ­ization

1 2

10 0 Or g a n i z a t i o n s i n t h e N e w s  57

well-­known movements, including the Black rights, ­women’s rights, and environmental movements, as well as movements of veterans and nativists. Some of ­these organ­izations made permanent marks on the American psyche, including the NAACP, League of W ­ omen Voters, Sierra Club, American Legion, and Ku Klux Klan.7 As we have seen, many organ­izations w ­ ere front-­page news for a brief period, but then receded in prominence and often in historical memory. A total of 32 of the 100 organ­izations had only one big year in the news in the c­ entury, and another dozen had only two. Many of ­these shooting stars ­were soon defunct or marginalized, with some of the early ones not well remembered. Included among the sidelined are the League of American Wheelmen, National Security League, American Defense Society, German-­American Alliance, Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, American Liberty League, National Union for Social Justice, Black Legion, Ham and Eggs, German American Bund, Committee to Defend Amer­i­ca by Aiding the Allies, Amer­i­ca First Committee, American Youth Congress, and American Veterans Committee. Still, the second half of the ­century also included organ­izations whose headline days are not frequently recalled or discussed in scholarship, among them the Peace and Freedom Party, United Transportation Union, Jewish Defense League, and Major League Baseball Players Association. At the top of the list of the most covered are the umbrella ­labor organ­ izations (see t­ able 1.9). When combined, they received more than three times as many mentions as the next organ­ization, the American Legion. Individual ­unions also permeate the list of the most covered, with the United Auto Workers, the Teamsters, and the United Mine Workers all among the top six most covered movement-­related organ­izations. The most-­covered list also includes several organ­izations from the African American rights, the ­women’s rights, and environmental movements, as well as nativist and veterans’ movements. The most covered Black rights organ­ization is the NAACP, but also in the top 25 is the National Urban League. The ­women’s rights movement has three organ­izations on the list, similarly ones with origins from early in the ­century, including the League of ­Women Voters, the General Federation of ­Women’s Clubs, and the American Association of University W ­ omen. Likewise, the environmental movement is represented not by any 1970s organ­ization, such as Greenpeace or the National Resources Defense Council, but by the long-­ standing Sierra Club, which added environmental advocacy to its original conservationist concerns. The veterans’ movement is well represented, mainly by way of organ­izations with high membership founded early in the twentieth

Organ­ization

AFL-­CIO

American Legion

NAACP

United Auto Workers

Teamsters

United Mine Workers

League of ­Women Voters

Ku Klux Klan

American Civil Liberties Union

Veterans of Foreign Wars

General Federation of ­Women’s Clubs

United Steelworkers

Rank

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

­Labor

­Women’s Rights

Veterans’ Rights

Progressive

Nativist/White Supremacist

­Women’s Rights

­Labor

­Labor

­Labor

Black Rights

Veterans’ Rights

­Labor

Movement

17,850

20,005

20,414

23,582

24,179

24,786

26,085

29,074

37,769

39,064

48,925

143,855

Overall Coverage

3,504

1,315

2,458

5,529

4,848

3,397

5,930

5,808

9,056

8,928

6,692

31,166

Front Page

­Table 1.9. The Most Covered Movement Organ­izations and Three Orga­nizational Features, 1900–1999

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Membership

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Po­liti­cal Engagement

Yes

No

Yes

No

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Disruptive Tactics

Sierra Club

National Education Association

­Grand Army of the Republic

­Women’s Christian Temperance Union

Communist Party

Planned Parenthood

Parent Teacher Association

Int’l Typographical Union

National Urban League

American Assn. of University ­Women

Int’l Ladies Garment Workers Union

Int’l Assn. of Machinists

Anti-­Saloon League

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

Anti-­Alcohol

­Labor

­Labor

­Women’s Rights

Black Rights

­Labor

­Children’s Protection and Rights

Abortion and Reproductive Rights

Communist

Anti-­Alcohol

Veterans’ Rights

­Labor

Environmental and Conservation

7,340

7,377

8,275

9,735

9,785

9,853

10,051

10,349

11,604

11,676

11,745

12,095

14,284

1,262

1,391

1,074

517

2336

949

931

1,787

2,663

1,202

1,371

1,777

3,184

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

60  c h a p t e r 1

c­ entury, or even ­earlier, including the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the nineteenth-­century G ­ rand Army of the Republic. The white supremacist and nativist movement is represented at number eight by the Ku Klux Klan, a name ­adopted by many like-­minded organ­izations, including the “second” Klan that came to prominence in the 1920s and the vari­ous organ­ izations of the “third” Klan of the 1960s.8 ­These six movements comprise almost all of the most covered organ­ izations, but three other movements are represented on the list. The anti-­ alcohol movement is represented by two membership organ­izations, the sometimes disruptive and high-­membership ­Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the more po­liti­cally and institutionally focused Anti-­Saloon League. The Communist movement is represented by the Communist party. The Progressive movement, a residual category, is represented by an organ­ ization that is difficult to categorize: the American Civil Liberties Union. It has engaged in litigation across many issues of relevance to dif­fer­ent movements, ranging from African American rights to LGBTQ rights, and was targeted in its most prominent year by George H.W. Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign for its liberal tilt. But the ACLU was also once highly newsworthy for defending the rights of neo-­Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, a Chicago suburb that was home to many Holocaust survivors. Why w ­ ere some organ­izations so newsworthy? We have argued that dif­fer­ ent aspects of organ­izations w ­ ill increase their legitimacy or their newsworthiness with news organ­izations. An organ­ization may be promoted in news for having extensive membership, as this w ­ ill legitimate its claims to represent the group that it claims to represent. Long-­standing membership organ­izations may benefit from their previous attention in the news, as they become known to reporters and the public. Organ­izations also may be selected for news coverage b­ ecause of their disruptive capacities—­these sorts of actions routinely capture the attention of newsrooms. In addition, we focus on the news-­ boosting influence of po­liti­cal capacities for movement organ­izations, given that news organ­izations are centrally concerned with politics. The lists provide some support for t­ hese claims. Membership is at a premium. Many of the vast membership movement and advocacy organ­izations in US history identified by Theda Skocpol are on the most-­covered lists.9 From the ­labor movement, ­there are the AFL, CIO, and AFL-­CIO; from the veterans’ movement, the G ­ rand Army of the Republic, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and American Legion; and from the w ­ omen’s rights movement, the General Federation of ­Women’s Clubs and the National American ­Woman Suffrage

10 0 Or g a n i z a t i o n s i n t h e N e w s  61

Association. From the old-­age rights movement, the 1930s Townsend Plan and the current AARP are on both lists. Recent rightist organ­izations with extensive membership and high media profiles include the National R ­ ifle Association, National Right to Life Committee, and Christian Co­ali­tion.10 Other organ­izations on the most-­covered list also include members, if not quite at the same historic level. Many organ­izations with disruptive rec­ords also made major news, including the W ­ omen’s Christian Temperance Union and its attacks on alcohol sources and purveyors, the National ­Woman’s Party and its White House protests, the second Ku Klux Klan’s vigilante actions, the Bonus Expeditionary Force’s Washington encampment, the United Auto Workers’ sit-­down strikes, the “Big Four” civil rights organ­izations’ protest campaigns, the vio­lence of the third Klan, Students for a Demo­cratic Society’s campus occupations, the Black Panther Party’s police confrontations, and the direct actions of Greenpeace, ACT UP, and Operation Rescue. In addition, po­liti­cal capacities are ubiquitous on the list. Some organ­izations ­were well known for their po­liti­cal or l­ egal engagement, including the umbrella l­ abor organ­izations and top ­unions, the NAACP, National Organ­ization for ­Women, ACLU, and Sierra Club.11 All in all, the organ­izations with the greatest coverage score high on each of the three dimensions—­membership, disruptive capacities, and po­liti­cal engagement. The top ­labor organ­izations combine all three news-­making advantages. So, too, does the American Legion, which was not known for disruption, but employed it on occasion. Other organ­izations scoring very high on all three characteristics include the Ku Klux Klan, G ­ rand Army of the Republic, and ­Women’s Christian Temperance Union. All in all, each of the organ­ izations had some po­liti­cal engagement, and all but one was membership-­ based. All but eight of the organ­izations engaged in disruptive tactics. Longevity also plays a role. Each of the top 25 was founded in the first half of the c­ entury or ­earlier. Did t­ hese rankings change in the second half of the ­century, along with the many changes in politics, news organ­izations, and new entrants to the social movement field? In some ways they did, but ­there remains considerable continuity, as a ranking since 1950 shows. Altogether 18 organ­izations appear on both lists, including each of the top 10 from the first group (see t­ able 1.10). A few ­unions drop off in the second half of the ­century, as do some organ­izations that had their heydays early in the first half of it or ­earlier: the two main Prohibition organ­izations—­the WCTU and Anti-­Saloon League—­the Parent Teacher Association (PTA), and ­Grand Army of the Republic. Some of their

Organ­ization

AFL-­CIO

NAACP

United Auto Workers

International Brotherhood of  Teamsters

American Civil Liberties Union

League of ­Women Voters

American Legion

United Steelworkers

Ku Klux Klan

Sierra Club

Veterans of Foreign Wars

United Mine Workers

Rank

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

­Labor

Veterans’ Rights

Environment

Nativist

­Labor

Veterans’ Rights

­Women’s Rights

Progressive

­Labor

­Labor

Black Rights

­Labor

Movement

9,841

10,285

13,600

14,291

14,832

16,101

16,267

21,092

23,138

29,495

36,357

61,936

Overall Coverage

­Table 1.10. The Most Covered Movement Organ­izations and Three Orga­nizational Features, 1950–1999

1,861

1,338

3,119

2,889

2,829

2,099

2,750

5,213

4,563

6,747

8,483

14,025

Front Page

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Membership

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Po­liti­cal Engagement

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Disruptive Tactics

Planned Parenthood

National Urban League

National Education Association

Communist Party

Anti-­Defamation League

National Organ­ization for ­Women

General Federation of ­Women’s Clubs

Amnesty International

American Assn. of University ­Women

John Birch Society

American Assn. of Retired Persons

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Nation of Islam

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

Rights, Other Groups

Black Rights

Old Age and Elder Rights

Conservative

­Women’s Rights

­Human Rights

­Women’s Rights

­Women’s Rights

Jewish American Rights

Communist

­Labor

Black Rights

Abortion and Reproductive Rights

5,199

5,487

5,614

5,721

5,774

5,776

5,840

5,923

6,156

6,868

8,094

9,049

9,484

1,401

1,382

1,020

1,122

384

859

480

1,375

1,046

1,437

1,447

2,305

1,691

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

No

No

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

No

No

64  c h a p t e r 1

replacements include organ­izations focusing on civil rights, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Anti-­Defamation League. A few other new entrants include the National Organ­ization for W ­ omen, John Birch Society, AARP, and Amnesty International. But the newcomers appear only on the bottom half of the ­table.

Shifts in the Nature of Newsworthy Organ­izations? The continuity in ­these lists may mask major shifts in attention, however. Scholars have debated about ­whether three historical transformations have taken place among US movement and advocacy groups. Robert Putnam and ­others see US civic engagement as having declined since the ­middle of the ­century. Skocpol argues along ­these lines that US voluntary membership organ­izations with local chapters taking grassroots action ­were increasingly displaced by professionalized organ­izations with large staffs and paper memberships centered in the nation’s capital. However, Edward Walker, John McCarthy, and Frank Baumgartner find that non-­membership organ­izations addressing issues of peace, ­women’s rights, and ­human rights have not increased since the 1960s. A second issue is ­whether organ­izations reliant on non-­institutional action have declined in prominence over time; some scholars argue that US movement organ­izations have become increasingly focused on institutional tactics rather than disruptive ones. A third point of contention concerns ­whether movement actors focusing on post-­material issues, such as the quality of life, identity, and morality, have overtaken their counter­parts focused on material, po­liti­cal, or military issues.12 We engage ­these debates by focusing on the most newsworthy organ­ izations in three key de­cades: the 1930s, 1960s, and 1990s. In each period, many new organ­izations gained high news attention for the first time. It is pos­si­ble that ­these newer organ­izations dominated attention over time, shifting the character of the organ­izations that represented groups in public discourse. Was ­there a changing of the guard in terms of orga­nizational characteristics during ­these de­cades of major attention to movement organ­izations? Did the organ­ izations most in the news become less membership focused, less disruptive, and less materialistic? Or ­were ­there mainly continuities? One striking result from the first wave of movement attention in the 1930s—­our baseline for analy­sis—is that the most newsworthy movement and advocacy organ­izations had very extensive membership. Nine of the top 11 most publicized w ­ ere on Skocpol’s list of the largest membership

10 0 Or g a n i z a t i o n s i n t h e N e w s  65

organ­izations in US history. (­These large membership organ­izations appear in gray in figure 1.1.) A tenth was the League of ­Women Voters, which was an offshoot of another of the largest membership organ­izations, the National American ­Woman Suffrage Association. Four ­o thers from the large-­ membership group filled out the top 25, as they accounted for more than half of the list. Some other newsworthy organ­izations ­were ­labor ­unions, which also verged on capturing 1 ­percent of the population despite the inherent limits of their potential membership. All in all, most of the organ­izations that ­were the most newsworthy in the 1930s ­were massive membership ones, typically with state and local chapters. A second prominent feature of the most newsworthy movement and advocacy organ­izations in the 1930s is their material focus. More than half of the organ­izations could be labeled this way. The ­labor movement had the greatest purchase in the public sphere, comprising nine of the 25 most covered organ­ izations, with new industrial ­unions, such as the United Auto Workers, in the news with long-­standing ones such as the United Mine Workers. Also well represented w ­ ere large membership organ­izations of veterans, including the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the ­Grand Army of the Republic, as well as the short-­term Bonus Army. The po­liti­cal action of t­ hese organ­izations typically centered on seeking benefits for former soldiers. Farmers ­were represented by the National Grange and the American Farm Bureau Federation. The Townsend Plan called for generous pensions for the el­derly. That said, many highly newsworthy organ­izations even this early in the ­century ­were connected to issues that strayed from materialism. Many ­women’s rights organ­izations, including the General Federation of ­Women’s Clubs, the American Association of University ­Women, and National Federation of Business and Professional W ­ omen’s Clubs, along with the PTA, w ­ ere concerned with peace, good government, and ­children’s welfare. The Anti-­ Saloon League and W ­ omen’s Christian Temperance Union w ­ ere connected to quality-­of-­life issues and engaged in moral campaigns. The Klan opposed alcohol and immigration with moralistic rationalizations for its actions. In short, many of the most prominent movement organ­izations in the 1930s, if not exactly post-­material or “new,” did not center on material issues. The actions engaged in by the most prominent organ­izations varied greatly but included two main types. Many w ­ ere often newsworthy for disruptive action. (­These organ­izations appear in bold in figure 1.1.) The most prominent ­labor ­unions ­were often in the news for strikes. The Bonus Army also commanded headlines for its encampments in the capital and clash with the US

Rank

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

1940s

Decade

1950s

1960s

28. Natl. Fed. of Bus. and Prof. Women’s Clubs 29. Communist Party 31. International Ladies Garment Workers 39. American Farm Bureau Federation 53. PTA 69. Grand Army of the Republic 70. National Grange 73. Women’s Christian Temperance Union 139. American Labor Party 193. Townsend Plan

AFL-CIO NAACP United Auto Workers Teamsters Ku Klux Klan United Steelworkers John Birch Society League of Women Voters Congress of Racial Equality National Urban League American Legion American Civil Liberties Union Southern Christian Leadership Conference Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Students for a Democratic Society General Federation of Women’s Clubs National Education Association Veterans of Foreign Wars American Association of University Women Planned Parenthood Americans for Democratic Action International Association of Machinists International Typographical Unior Nation of Islam United Mine Workers

figure 1.1. The 25 Most Newsworthy Movement and Advocacy Organ­izations, 1930s–1960s. Note: Organ­izations in grey are large membership organ­izations. Organ­izations in bold are disruptive organ­izations. Organ­izations in italics are new social movement organ­izations.

1930s

American Federation of Labor American Legion Congress of Industrial Organizations General Federation of Women’s Clubs Veterans of Foreign Wars United Mine Workers PTA Women’s Christian Temperance Union League of Women Voters Townsend Plan Grand Army of the Republic United Auto Workers American Association of University Women Natl. Fed. of Bus. and Prof. Women’s Clubs Anti-Saloon League American Labor Party National Education Association Ku Klux Klan International Ladies Garment Workers Teamsters American Farm Bureau Federation Communist Party Bonus Army International Typographical Union National Grange

10 0 Or g a n i z a t i o n s i n t h e N e w s  67

Army. However, the plurality of organ­izations on the list was newsworthy predominantly for reasons veering far from disruption: civic-­minded action. That was the case for w ­ omen’s rights organ­izations, as well as some veterans’ organ­ izations, which often appeared in the news for public meetings and civic events. Other organ­izations, such as the Townsend Plan and the Anti-­Saloon League, ­were in the news mainly for po­liti­cal pressure campaigns over legislation. Notoriety drove the news for yet other organ­izations, notably the Communist party. How did t­ hings change in the next wave of attention to movement actors in the 1960s? Although more than half of the organ­izations featured on the 1930s list remained on the 1960s one, ­there ­were some key changes, most notably the decline of the largest membership organ­izations (see figure 1.1). Seven large membership organ­izations receded from extensive public view, including the WCTU, PTA, Grange, Farm Bureau Federation, ­Grand Army of the Republic, Townsend Plan, and second KKK. The third version of the Klan was among the most covered organ­izations in the 1960s but claimed far fewer members than its pre­de­ces­sor. What is more, the large membership organ­ izations that remained highly newsworthy commanded much less attention than previously. Only the AFL-­CIO remained in the top 10. In short, although many large membership organ­izations and major ­unions ­were central to the public sphere in the 1960s, the pro­cess of their displacement from it was well underway by then. Moreover, the rec­ord of the 1960s provides mixed results for the expectation that organ­izations focused on material issues would decline. On the one hand, seven organ­izations based mainly on material concerns fell off the list, including three l­ abor organ­izations, two veterans’ organ­izations, both farmers’ organ­izations, and the organ­ization demanding old-­age benefits. On the other hand, their most prominent replacements ­were mainly not focused on post-­ material issues. Most notable ­were Black rights organ­izations; though partly identity based, they sought basic social and po­liti­cal rights and material rights such as employment and housing. They w ­ ere led by the NAACP, but also prominent w ­ ere the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Urban League. Many organ­izations that appeared for the first time on the 1960s list included in their strategic repertoire disruption and non-­institutional action, and this marked an increase from the 1930s. The profiles of the most-­covered organ­izations ­were more consistent with common understandings of social

Rank

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

1970s

Decade

1980s

1990s

257. General Federation of Women’s Clubs

159. International Typographical Union

146. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

129. Students for a Democratic Society

124. Americans for Democratic Action

115. Congress of Racial Equality

112. John Birch Society

56. International Association of Machinists 61. United Mine Workers

44. Southern Christian Leadership Conference

41. American Association of University Women

38. United Steelworkers

29. National Education Association

NAACP American Civil Liberties Union AFL-CIO Sierra Club United Auto Workers Planned Parenthood Ku Klux Klan American Association of Retired Persons Christian Coalition American Legion League of Women Voters Nation of Islam Amnesty International National Rifle Association Teamsters Anti-Defamation League Veterans of Foreign Wars Natural Resources Defense Council National Organization For Women Greenpeace Human Rights Watch National Urban League National Audubon Society Reform Party Consumers Union

figure 1.2. The 25 Most Newsworthy Movement and Advocacy Organ­izations, 1960s–1990s. Note: Organ­izations in grey are large membership organ­izations. Organ­izations in bold are disruptive organ­izations. Organ­izations in italics are new social movement organ­izations.

1960s

AFL-CIO NAACP United Auto Workers Teamsters Ku Klux Klan United Steelworkers John Birch Society League of Women Voters Congress of Racial Equality National Urban League American Legion American Civil Liberties Union Southern Christian Leadership Conference Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Students for a Democratic Society General Ferderation of Women’s Clubs National Education Association Veterans of Foreign Wars American Association of University Women Planned Parenthood Americans for Democratic Action International Association of Machinists International Typographical Union Nation of Islam United Mine Workers

10 0 Or g a n i z a t i o n s i n t h e N e w s  69

movement actors being oriented t­ oward non-­institutional action. In addition to CORE, SCLC, and SNCC, Students for a Demo­cratic Society gained high attention during the de­cade. (­These appear in bold, with other disruptive organ­izations.) The third Ku Klux Klan was newsworthy for vio­lence and intimidation. ­These organ­izations more than compensated for the loss of prominence for the Bonus Army, which was in the news for occupations, and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, mainly in the news for strikes. Meanwhile, organ­izations engaged in civic action declined in the news, including the General Federation of W ­ omen’s Clubs and American Association of University ­Women. Did membership, material, and disruptive organ­izations decline in prominence by the end of the ­century? An analy­sis of the most covered organ­izations in the 1990s provides some evidence in ­favor. As would be expected by scholars highlighting the rise of post-­material social movements in the last part of the ­century, the news dominance of l­abor and Black rights organ­izations declined in the 1990s (see figure 1.2). Unions of steelworkers, educators, machinists, mine workers, and typographers fell from prominence, as they also lost significant membership and clout. Taking their places ­were four organ­izations from the environmental movement and two from the h­ uman rights movement. (­These and other “new” social movement organ­izations appear in italics.) Two new environmental organ­izations, Greenpeace and the National Resources Defense Council, became prominent, as did two older ones taking up newer environmental missions, the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society. The list also includes organ­izations promoting consumer rights, gun rights, and the Christian right. The 1990s group shows some continuity, however, with ­earlier ones. The AFL-­CIO, UAW, Teamsters, League of ­Women Voters, KKK, and both veterans’ organ­izations remained newsworthy. Th ­ ere was also a rise to prominence of an organ­ization protecting the rights and benefits of the elderly—­the American Association of Retired Persons (­later, AARP). In short, a series of organ­izations addressing new and often post-­material issues leapt into public attention, but they did not completely displace the older ones based on material concerns or nativist impulses. As would be expected by scholars focusing on the institutionalization of social movements, moreover, many organ­izations reliant on disruptive action and strikes exited the list by the 1990s. The Black rights movement saw the fall of CORE and the SCLC from newsworthiness, and the demise of SNCC and SDS. The Black Panther Party, which was close to the top 25, also disbanded before 1990. The National Organ­ization for W ­ omen became prominent by

70  c h a p t e r 1

c­ entury’s end but was far removed from its early days of disruption. Perhaps more impor­tant, campaigns against ­unions and their decline, deindustrialization, and a decreased willingness to strike due to weakness reduced attention to u­ nions. It was more a ­matter of their being undermined—­weakened rather than institutionalized. Some organ­izations that became newly prominent ­were disruptive. Direct action was central to the repertoire of Greenpeace, which came into high public relief, and the Nation of Islam vaulted into greater prominence partly on the basis of the 1995 Million Man March. But owing to the decline of both the 1960s direct action organ­izations and u­ nions, t­ here w ­ ere far fewer newsworthy organ­izations relying on disruptive action. As for the argument about the decline in civic engagement, the most prominent organ­izations of the 1990s provide evidence in ­favor, with some qualifications. Most of the largest membership organ­izations in US history had already lost their dominant news positions by the 1960s, and by the end of the c­ entury the General Federation of W ­ omen’s Clubs and the National Education Association had also dropped off the most-­covered list. So that is in f­ avor. However, several new large membership organ­izations r­ ose to the top of news attention in the 1990s. Th ­ ese organ­izations included the National R ­ ifle Association, Christian Co­ali­tion, AARP, and Greenpeace. However, t­ hese new entrants diverged in impor­tant ways from their high-­profile pre­de­ces­sors from ­earlier in the ­century. They did not typically include local affiliates or demand the kind of extensive participation characteristic of their early-­century counter­ parts. Moreover, the newer organ­izations had relatively large staffs and bud­ gets. For instance, AARP with its paper memberships is a far cry from the Townsend Plan of the 1930s, which relied extensively on local club meetings. The NRA, Greenpeace, and AARP also set up headquarters in Washington, DC. In short, the largest membership organ­izations with extensive participation had already been routed in the news by the 1960s. Although a new group of large membership organ­izations made major news in the 1990s, they w ­ ere dif­ fer­ent in kind from ­those that dominated the news ­earlier in the ­century, with less membership participation and more staff.

Conclusion: A Refracted History of Contention In our analyses across the four newspapers, 100 organ­izations received extensive news coverage over the course of a year in the twentieth ­century. Some of ­these organ­izations made big news many times, including the major l­abor umbrella organ­izations and ­unions and well-­known organ­izations like the

10 0 Or g a n i z a t i o n s i n t h e N e w s  71

American Legion, NAACP, League of ­Women Voters, ACLU, and KKK. Most organ­izations that had big years in the news had one or only a few of them, however. Some have been well studied, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Students for a Demo­cratic Society, the United Farm Workers, and Greenpeace. ­Others, mainly from the beginning of the c­ entury or right-­w ing, or both, have been analyzed less often. Among t­ hese are the National Security League, the American Liberty League, the National Union for Social Justice, the German American Bund, the States’ Rights Democratic Party, and the Christian Co­ali­tion. The earliest part of the c­ entury saw organ­izations that w ­ ere rooted in the previous ­century make major news, with veterans’, ­labor, early ­women’s rights, nativist, and anti-­alcohol organ­izations prominent. ­These included the American Federation of L ­ abor and labor u­ nions like the United Mine Workers and the Teamsters, as well as the broader but short-­lived Industrial Workers of the World. Veterans ­were represented by the G ­ rand Army of the Republic and ­were joined in the news in the 1920s by the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars and then, briefly, the Bonus Army. W ­ omen’s organ­izations, including the Congressional Union and NAWSA, made the news campaigning for ­women’s suffrage, with a counter-­organization also gaining ­great attention. ­After suffrage was won, the League of ­Women Voters became a mainstay in the press. Both the W ­ omen’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-­ Saloon League made big news before and ­after Prohibition, and by the early 1930s ­were joined in news attention by their opponents—­the ­Women’s Organ­ ization for National Prohibition Reform and Association Against the Prohibition Amendment. Nativists made marks in the news in a pattern that would recur, as the National Security League and the American Defense Society promoted the war effort and anti-­German sentiment, and the second Ku Klux Klan ­rose to prominence. The mid-1930s brought many new organ­izations and issues into public view, especially t­ hose in the Congress of Industrial Organ­izations and affiliated ­unions. Other organ­izations with new issues became prominent, including old-­age pensions, pressed by the Townsend Plan and Ham and Eggs, and economic pop­u­lism, pressed by the National Union for Social Justice. Also making headlines ­were conservative organ­izations opposing the New Deal, including the American Liberty League, opening b­ attles in a po­liti­cal war that continued throughout the ­century. For a brief but intense moment, two organ­ izations disagreeing about the Second World War commanded public discourse. The newly empowered ­labor movement returned in a big way ­after the

72  c h a p t e r 1

war. The NAACP broke into the news fighting school desegregation in the 1950s, while the Communist party as well as the Teamsters w ­ ere subjected to congressional inquiries and press scrutiny. The 1960s wave of news coverage brought still more issues to public attention, including t­ hose pressed by the movement organ­izations often studied by scholars. African American rights ­were front and center, with the “Big Four” organ­izations becoming highly prominent, plus the Urban League and the Black Panther Party. Also breaking into the news ­were organ­izations that pressed for rights for Native Americans and Hispanic farmworkers. The anti–­ Vietnam War movement was represented in the news as well, notably by Students for a Demo­cratic Society. The ­women’s rights movement took on a modern cast with the National Organ­ization for ­Women breaking into public view and becoming a news mainstay. The last quarter of the ­century saw old and new environmental organ­izations making big news, along with h­ uman rights, LGBTQ rights, abortion rights, anti-­abortion and Christian right, and gun rights organ­izations. New entries in the l­abor movement also appeared, including professional ballplayers and writers. This brief history also shows dif­fer­ent ways that movement actors, their constituencies, and issues entered the public sphere and some recurrent influences. Macro po­liti­cal changes w ­ ere impor­tant. It was difficult for movement actors to gain extensive national coverage ­until politics became more nationalized, and at first only ­those movement actors with a broad reach across many states and localities made extensive national news. War and its aftermath also frequently transformed the treatment of movement actors. Veterans, nativist, and left movement actors ­were elevated, but in vastly dif­fer­ent ways, as both Red Scares showed. Official investigations often brought movement organ­ izations into the news in a sustained, if usually unwelcome, fashion. Other historical patterns concern the action taken by movement organ­izations. Big news was pos­si­ble through interventions into politics, not just through creating new parties, but by pressing for state-­level initiatives or engaging in national-­level legislative and litigation campaigns. Disruptive events also brought sustained strings of news attention, notably strikes, which lifted ­labor organ­izations in the news. Although protest marches rarely propelled movement actors into long-­running stories, occupations often did. Movement actors w ­ ere sometimes lifted in the news by opposing movement actors, as w ­ ere campaigns by ­women’s rights and anti-­alcohol movements. Organ­izations often ­rose to high levels of newsworthiness, as one might expect, during strug­gles for legislative change. The examples are many:

10 0 Or g a n i z a t i o n s i n t h e N e w s  73

­ omen’s rights organ­izations and the vote, anti-alcohol organizations and Prow hibition, veterans’ organ­izations and First World War bonuses and the G.I. Bill of Rights, old-­age pension organ­izations and Social Security, the Big Four organ­izations demanding civil and voting rights, organ­izations calling for environmental change and ­women’s rights in the 1970s, abortion rights, anti-­ abortion, the Christian right organ­izations in the 1980s, and LBGTQ and ­human rights in the 1990s. More frequently, however, movement organ­izations became highly newsworthy in the wake of successful policy change. The Anti-­Saloon League and the WTCU ­were covered more frequently a­ fter the passage of Prohibition in the 1920s than before. The League of ­Women Voters received more coverage ­after suffrage was won in the 1920s than the NAWSA and the Congressional Union did before it was. The Townsend Plan and Ham and Eggs peaked in attention a­ fter the passage of the Social Security Act. The l­abor movement mobilized and made more news in the wake of the 1935 Wagner Act than before, with the CIO and its affiliates peaking in coverage in the late 1930s and 1940s. The American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars w ­ ere more newsworthy in the aftermath of the passage of the bonus bill and G.I. Bill than before. Black civil rights organ­izations, including the NAACP, SCLC, and SNCC, ­were covered more in the second half of the 1960s than in the first half. In the wake of policy changes, journalists increasingly viewed t­ hese organ­ izations as more legitimate news sources, sometimes regarding contention over the implementation of programs or bids to amend them. As new organ­ izations entered the public discussion, the previously newsworthy ones often did not leave it. By the end of the ­century, membership, materialistic, and disruptive organ­ izations w ­ ere being overtaken in the news by t­ hose with fewer participating members, post-­material concerns, and institutional orientations, but with some key qualifications. The largest membership organ­izations w ­ ere dominant in news attention in the early part of the c­ entury and did indeed lose that position, even before the 1970s. However, by the 1990s, new large membership organ­izations had partially taken their place, though ­these replacements ­were based in Washington with large professional staffs. Organ­izations associated with disruptive action peaked in attention in the 1960s, though ­there was a transformation from organ­izations mainly employing strikes to organ­izations engaging in other sorts of disruptive action. By the 1990s, both types had declined in newsworthiness, and organ­izations that employed protest e­ arlier, such as the NAACP and NOW, had mainly softened their strategic repertoire

74  c h a p t e r 1

by c­ entury’s end. Fi­nally, post-­material movement organ­izations ­rose to prominence by the end of the ­century, with environmental and ­human rights organ­ izations notably gaining prominence. However, movement actors with largely moral concerns ­were also newsworthy early in the c­ entury, and organ­izations from older and more material movements, including the l­abor and veterans’ movements, remained prominent as the new ­century began. Often the key to understanding why some organ­izations w ­ ere newsworthy depended on what they w ­ ere in the news for. We turn next to addressing the many reasons ­behind this storied coverage—­which varied from ­running candidates for the White House to seeking to avoid prison. We also focus on how the organ­izations ­were treated when they gained the news media spotlight. In most instances, being extensively newsworthy was helpful to movement organ­izations and their ­causes, but sometimes the news treatments w ­ ere not only unhelpful. They ­were positively harmful.

2 Good News, Bad News, Hard News, Soft News w i t h W e i j u n Y ua n —­New York . . . ​was the first city in which the suffragists or­ga­nized along po­liti­cal lines. Its ­woman suffrage organ­ization [affiliated with the National American ­Woman Suffrage Association] is the finest and most complete in the country . . . ​It expects to be ready with excellently or­ga­nized forces next Autumn, when the question [of votes for ­women] again goes to the ­people of New York State. “su f f r agists’ m ach i n e pe r f ect e d i n a l l stat e s ­u n de r m r s. c at t ’s ru l e ,” n e w yor k t i m e s, a pr i l 2 9, 1917, p. 58.

—­The justices w ­ ill consider a Pennsylvania law that requires a ­woman to notify her doctor and her husband, then 24 hours, before ­going ahead with an abortion. Abortion rights groups [led by Planned Parenthood] contend that the law violates the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, which established that ­women have a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. “j ust ice s agr e e to r e v i e w a bort ion r e st r ict ions,” dav i d g. savage , l os a nge l e s t i m e s, ja n ua ry 22 , 19 92 , p. a 1.

—­After 116 days of idleness [in] the nation’s steel mills . . . ​it appeared ­there would be a long wait before steel users would get a meaningful supply of their basic metal. . . . ​The principal stumbling block is the issue of plant working rules, which the companies want to be able to change unilaterally to promote “efficiency.” The [United Steelworkers] ­union has refused on the ground that management ­really wants to impose “dictatorship.” “w h at for st e e l?” n e w yor k t i m e s, nov e m be r 15, 1959, p. E 1.

75

76  c h a p t e r 2

p. t. barnum supposedly said ­there is no such ­thing as bad publicity, and an Oscar Wilde character claimed that the only t­ hing worse than being talked about was not being talked about. Movement activists crave attention in the news to amplify their issues and demands, and they are sometimes successful in achieving that. Michael Lipsky noted long ago that when relatively powerless groups use protest to seek po­liti­cal influence through the news, however, several ­things must go right for it to work. Journalists would need first to cover protesters’ events and discuss their issues and transmit their demands—to alert more power­ful groups who might aid in the strug­gle. And this valuable coverage sometimes happens—as in the accounts above regarding the National American W ­ oman Suffrage Association’s campaign or Planned Parenthood’s suit designed to protect reproductive rights. Although the tone was less favorable and their opponents spoke first, the United Steelworkers also got their demands across and amplified through the news.1 But even when news organ­izations cover movement actors and their events, the articles often ignore the actors’ issues and demands. They might be covered as local color, as with the Veterans of Foreign Wars, in this 1931 item from the Washington Post: “A dozen World War veterans’ organ­izations are to march in the ‘Trail of the Pink Petals,’ the feature parade of the second day of the annual Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival ­here May 5 and 6.”2 Worse for movement actors, the news w ­ ill sometimes portray them as deviant or criminal and publicly humiliate them. That happened when the German American Bund’s leader was on trial in this 1939 article in the Los Angeles Times: “Fritz Kuhn’s trial for misappropriation of $1217 from the German-­American Bund entered a last, long forensic stage ­today . . . ​[Defense attorney Peter] Sabbatino accused the State of having had motives of publicity in offering evidence that Kuhn had written extravagant protestations of love to Mrs. Florence Camp, although he was and is a married man.”3 The press pilloried Students for a Demo­cratic Society activists in an article regarding its protest of Richard Nixon’s 1969 inauguration: “A small, hard core of the country’s disaffected youth hurled sticks, stones, ­bottles, cans, obscenities and a ball of tinfoil at President Nixon and other leaders of the new Administration . . . ​The demonstrators repeatedly burned the small American flags distributed along the parade route by Boy Scouts.” 4 Indeed, scholars in communications studies advancing the “protest paradigm” expect insubstantial and often negative coverage for movement actors engaged in non-­institutional action.5 For activists, Barnum’s and Wilde’s edicts are almost certainly wrong. Not all news is good news—­some news may set back organ­izations and ­causes.

G o o d N e w s , B a d N e w s , H a r d N e w s , S of t N e w s  77

Many movement organ­izations had big years of news coverage, but they negotiated them differently. Some cut through journalistic conventions, transmitting messages and inserting new issues and ways of thinking about them into public debates, and emerged with their reputations intact or improved. ­Others got tossed around and wrecked. That leads to general questions: When social movement organ­izations receive extensive newspaper coverage, why is it sometimes substantive, promoting movement actors’ views and voices and without a negative tone? That was the case for the National American ­Woman Suffrage Association and Planned Parenthood above. Why is the coverage sometimes without substance, while also reflecting poorly on movement actors—­bearing the kind of bad news that can set back ­causes? That happened to the German American Bund and SDS. Why is news sometimes substantive while casting an unfavorable light on actors? That was the situation faced by the United Steelworkers, which seemed to be opposing efficiency and harming companies that needed steel to make consumer products. Why is news sometimes favorable in tone but lacking in substance? That was the result for the Veterans of Foreign Wars in the account of the blossom festival. To address ­these questions, we return to the 100 organ­izations that made big news in at least one year and identify what they w ­ ere in the news for in the year they ­were most newsworthy. The sample is purposive rather than random, focusing on organ­izations that w ­ ere very highly covered and only in their most covered year and thus is not meant to apply to all other cases. However, examining ­these influential organ­izations’ treatment when they ­were most prominent has several benefits. It illuminates the historically impor­tant actors identified in chapter 1, reveals the wide range of reasons that animated extensive coverage, and provides the largest number of observations for each organ­ ization. Also, t­ hese strings of extensive coverage often come in “critical discourse moments,” when movement actors have a chance to transform thinking about issues and groups. We identify the main reasons for their coverage through a combination of high-­and low-­tech methods—­topic modeling procedures and reading headlines. Most of the time, the attention to the organ­ izations was animated by actions, such as a po­liti­cal campaign, strike, or civic action. Sometimes, though, movement organ­izations ­were thrust into the news against their ­w ill. That is what happened to the hapless Bundführer, whose philandering was recounted at length by his defense attorney and amplified in the news in an unsuccessful bid to prevent his conviction for embezzlement. Then we identify the quality of coverage through a similar combination of high-­and low-­tech means: ascertaining the tone of articles

78  c h a p t e r 2

through natu­ral language pro­cessing analyses and the substance in articles by reading and hand-­coding a sample of them.6 Although we argue that orga­nizational characteristics and action and social and po­liti­cal contexts combine to influence the treatment of movement actors in the news, ­here we focus on the impact of collective action. The most prominent reasons for an organ­ization’s coverage in a long year of news w ­ ill shape its treatment, in both substance and sentiment. Dif­fer­ent types of action ­will generate dif­fer­ent types of news. Promoting a po­liti­cal campaign or fighting for an initiative ­will typically provide helpful news, whereas when movement actors are forced into the news, the results are usually not good for them. Other reasons for attention w ­ ill produce something that falls in between. We start by discussing the dif­fer­ent reasons ­behind the coverage of movement actors when they made their biggest news.

Ways of Being Highly Newsworthy One hundred organ­izations had at least one big year in the news, but they varied greatly in what they did and how they w ­ ere covered. Using topic modeling procedures and examining headlines, we find that t­ here are four main reasons that stood ­behind such long-­running coverage, and they are not mainly protest and other non-­institutional action.7 Three of the reasons are types of action. They include po­liti­cally assertive action, as exemplified in the articles about NAWSA and Planned Parenthood; ­labor strikes, as seen in the coverage of the United Steelworkers; and civic action, the mode in which the VFW was written about. The fourth reason for extensive attention involves movement organ­izations being subjects rather than actors. They w ­ ere being acted on, as through investigations and ­trials, such as what occurred for the leader of the Bund. Protest and other non-­institutional action, however, was the main reason for the storied coverage of some of the 100 organ­izations, and we address that as well.

Po­liti­cally Assertive Action —­The raising of Hoosier state to full division status [in the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment] has come as a result of an insistent demand that Indiana take its place with other progressive states in working in an or­ga­nized way for repeal of the eigh­teenth amendment, “this source of intolerable wrongs . . . ​fostered excessive drinking of strong intoxicants, bred

G o o d N e w s , B a d N e w s , H a r d N e w s , S of t N e w s  79

corruption and hy­poc­risy, caused ruthless killing of men, ­women, and ­children, and shown general disrespect for law and order.” “l e a di ng i n di a na m e n e n l ist to e n d proh i bit ion,” ch ic ago t r i bu n e , nov e m be r 2 6, 1930, p. 6.

A central reason animating the news of the 100 organ­izations at their peak of attention was assertive po­liti­cal action. This sort of collective action directly engages politics by contesting the prerogatives of institutional po­liti­cal actors, typically employing sanctions on them, or seeking to override their authority.8 In this mode, movement organ­izations seek to change laws directly or to influence the seating of t­ hose who are authorized to make them. We identify three subtypes. The first includes law-­related campaigns. Th ­ ese campaigns might be for or against legislation, including initiatives and referendums, and law-­ challenging litigation. Law-­related campaigns involve agitation for specific laws and often involve proposing them, demanding that po­liti­cal officials pass them, or testifying about them. In the most direct bids for change, they involve initiatives and referendums advanced by movement actors. Litigation that seeks to change laws has the same object but works through the courts. The second subtype includes the third-­party electoral runs and efforts. ­Those starting and backing a new party typically seek to bring specific issues to bear in politics. A third includes electioneering interventions, which usually involve attempts to influence elections or party platforms. Organ­izations target po­liti­ cal enemies and support friends over a specific set of key issues or votes, often using a kind of report card with electoral mobilization. One thinks ­today of the grades given out to members of Congress by the NRA or the Americans for Tax Reform, and their support for friends and bids to unseat po­liti­cal opponents across party lines, but this sort of action to influence elections made organ­izations newsworthy throughout the c­ entury. Campaigns w ­ ere a modal reason for 27 of the years of high news attention, and third parties and electioneering, a dozen apiece. Combined, the three types of po­liti­cally assertive action constitute a main reason for almost half of the years of news coverage we analyze. They ranged across the twentieth ­century.9 (See t­ able 2.1.) At the turn of the c­ entury, the Populist Party was covered in one failed last attempt to revive its late nineteenth-­century challenge. The League of American Wheelmen campaigned to improve roads. The ­Grand Army of the Republic demanded the conversion of Civil War benefits into old-­age benefits for former Union soldiers and their w ­ idows, contesting the se­lection of a new commissioner of pensions. The third-­party bid by Theodore Roo­se­velt failed

­Table 2.1. Four Types of Assertive Action and 51 Organ­izations in the News Action Type

Organ­ization

Year

Years on List

Campaign

League of American Wheelmen

1900

1

­Grand Army of the Republic

1902

31

National Association Opposed to ­Woman Suffrage

1914

2

National American ­Woman Suffrage Association

1917

5

American Defense Society

1918

1

League of W ­ omen Voters

1924

70

Anti-­Saloon League

1926

21

Association Against the Prohibition Amendment

1930

1

American Farm Bureau Federation

1932

1

American Legion

1932

72

­Women’s Organ­ization for National Prohibition Reform

1932

1

American Liberty League

1936

2

Ham and Eggs

1939

1

American Youth Congress

1940

1

Amer­i­ca First Committee

1941

1

Committee to Defend Amer­i­ca by Aiding the Allies

1941

2

American Veterans Committee

1946

2

NAACP

1963

47

National Urban League

1968

15

Moral Majority

1981

6

National Education Association

1983

6

Amnesty International

1988

15

American Civil Liberties Union

1988

36

Natu­ral Resources Defense Council

1990

4

Planned Parenthood

1992

18

American Association of Retired Persons

1995

13

National ­Rifle Association

1999

5

Populist Party

1900

1

In­de­pen­dence League

1906

8

Progressive Party (Roosevelt)

1912

5

End Poverty in California

1934

1

Union Party

1936

1

Farmer-­Labor Party

1936

1

American ­Labor Party

1938

14

Third Party

G o o d N e w s , B a d N e w s , H a r d N e w s , S of t N e w s  81 ­Table 2.1. (continued) Action Type

Organ­ization

Year

Years on List

Third Party

Progressive Party (Wallace)

1948

1

States’ Rights Demo­cratic Party-­Dixiecrats

1948

2

American In­de­pen­dent Party

1968

1

Peace and Freedom Party

1968

1

Reform Party

1996

2

Citizens Union

1901

3

Congressional Union

1916

3

National Security League

1918

4

Ku Klux Klan (Second)

1924

11

Association Against the Prohibition Amendment

1930

1

Townsend Plan

1936

4

National Union for Social Justice

1936

1

Americans for Demo­cratic Action

1952

1

John Birch Society

1964

6

National Organ­ization for ­Women

1984

12

Sierra Club

1990

32

Christian Co­ali­tion

1996

6

Electioneering

Note: Organ­izations in bold ­were in the news for two modal reasons.

to create a lasting Progressive Party, but brought the election of the Demo­crat Woodrow Wilson and was a keystone of the period of history known as the Progressive Era. In the 1910s, the National American ­Woman Suffrage Organ­ ization and the National Association Opposed to W ­ oman Suffrage won headlines during contention over the proposed adoption of ­women’s suffrage. The Congressional Union did the same, attempting to defeat Demo­crats in the 1918 midterms for Wilson’s failure to support the ­women’s suffrage amendment. The American Defense Society made its biggest news during the First World War anti-­German campaign, leading to an investigation and the defensive news coverage of the German-­American Alliance. The period of Republican dominance beginning in 1921 witnessed more po­liti­cally assertive action among organ­izations in their biggest years of attention. The League of ­Women Voters was most in the news for a peace campaign in 1924. It was a period of heightened attention b­ ecause it was the first year all

82  c h a p t e r 2

US ­women could first vote in presidential elections. That same year, the second Ku Klux Klan had its biggest news play significantly through bids to influence elections, including a controversy over ­whether the Demo­cratic party would denounce the organ­ization at its presidential convention. The Anti-­Saloon League, known for its electioneering “pressure politics” of supporting legislative allies and opposing enemies, was most in the news in the ­middle of the de­cade during controversies over the flailing enforcement of Prohibition, as it sought tighter restrictions on alcohol. At the very beginning of the next de­cade, in the wake of the stock market crash and Depression that augured the end of Republican dominance, anti-­alcohol organ­izations w ­ ere joined in the news by the electioneering campaigns of their movement opponents, the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment and ­Women’s Organ­ization for National Prohibition Reform. The American Legion peaked in the news in 1932, demanding the early payment of previously passed ser­vice compensation benefits. Starting in 1933, the New Deal brought all manner of opponents of it to the fore, as well as groups pushing beyond what the Franklin Roo­se­velt administration proposed. The year 1936 was the big one for movement organ­izations engaged in assertive po­liti­cal action. The American Liberty League’s well-­ publicized campaign was directly anti–­New Deal and anti–­government. The National Union for Social Justice and the Union party hit their heights in the news in a populist challenge to Roo­se­velt’s reelection. The Townsend Plan joined them partly in the hope that they would press for its generous old-­age pension proposal. E ­ arlier in the year, the organ­ization was in the news for demanding the congressional representatives commit to passing its legislation or risk being targeted for electoral defeat. It was followed by attention to the California referendum drives of Ham and Eggs for similarly generous pensions, one of several drives that took place in many states. The Minnesota Farmer ­Labor party won congressional elections, supporting and pushing the president from the left, as did New York’s American L ­ abor Party. At the beginning of the next de­cade, as Roo­se­velt was transforming himself from Dr. New Deal into Dr. Win the War, the Committee to Defend Amer­i­ca by Aiding the Allies and the isolationist Amer­i­ca First Committee had their biggest years in contention over how the United States should respond to Nazi and fascist war-­making, with the aviator Charles Lindbergh barnstorming across the country and fighting proposals to aid Britain in a series of well-­publicized speeches and meetings. The bombing of Pearl Harbor grounded him and his committee, and no organ­ization had its biggest year in the news for assertive action ­until ­after the war ended. In the immediate postwar period, a high-­profile housing campaign for Second World War soldiers was launched by the American Veterans Committee,

G o o d N e w s , B a d N e w s , H a r d N e w s , S of t N e w s  83

a liberal organ­ization that unsuccessfully contested the dominance of the American Legion and the VFW. In the 1948 election campaign, President Truman was challenged, also unsuccessfully, from both ends of the po­liti­cal spectrum, by Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party and Strom Thurmond’s States’ Rights “Dixiecrats.” The liberal pressure group Americans for Demo­cratic Action had its biggest moment in the news pressing for civil rights planks in the 1952 Demo­cratic platform and for the nomination of Adlai Stevenson II. The 1960s had few organ­izations with their greatest news years concerning assertive po­liti­cal action, but 1964 saw the John Birch Society make news regarding ­whether Barry Goldwater would renounce its support. The 1968 election featured George Wallace’s American In­de­pen­dent Party and the less well remembered Peace and Freedom Party. High-­profile litigation campaigns brought organ­izations into the news mainly in the second half of the ­century and included big years of attention for the NAACP and ACLU. In the last two de­cades of the ­century, organ­izations ­were in the news for issues that remain contested t­ oday. The Christian Co­ali­tion attempted to influence the Republican presidential nomination to ensure its agenda would be front and center in the party’s campaign. AARP joined the debate over health care, by opposing the Medicare cuts envisioned in Newt Gingrich’s Plan for Amer­i­ca and proposed in Congress. The Sierra Club sought influence over elections in California regarding a range of environmental issues. Planned Parenthood fought a court ­battle over the restrictions on abortion rights, and the 1992 landmark decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey focused national attention on the reproductive rights strug­gle, as in the opening epigraph. In the last year of the c­ entury, the National R ­ ifle Association opposed gun control mea­sures that w ­ ere proposed in the wake of the Columbine school shooting. Th ­ ese ­battles are ongoing.

­Labor Strikes in the News at Mid-­Century —­For the third time in 10 years, and the first time during the ­middle of a season, major league baseball players have laid down their bats and balls and gone on strike . . . ​[The Major League Baseball Players Association] also proposed that . . . ​[a team losing] a ­free agent could select ­either a player [from a four-­player pool] or an amateur draft choice. “ba se ba l l pl ay e r s begi n st r i k e ­a ft e r l a st-­m i n u t e ta l k s fa i l ,” ja n e l e av y, wa s h i ngton post, j u n e 13, 1981, p. a 1.

Another major action animating the news for movement organ­izations was the ­labor strike. Although 19 of ­these years of peak attention are centered on strikes,

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even that high number severely undercounts the number of big news years owing to strikes, the collective action that prob­ably most frequently led to lengthy coverage. Most l­abor organ­izations with one newsworthy year typically had many of them, and they mainly centered on strikes. The United Mine Workers, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, United Auto Workers, and United Steelworkers all ­were among the top 10 in big years of news attention. All the same, tracking the ­labor organ­izations most prominently in the news for strikes when they ­were most prominent can also provide a brief history of ­labor contention. The organ­izations in the news most for strikes evolved across the ­century. (See table 2.2.) The Industrial Workers of the World reached their peak of attention in 1912 for a textile strike in Lawrence, Mas­sa­chu­setts, that brought together less-­skilled workers of dif­fer­ent ethnicities and showed the promise of industrial u­ nionism. In 1919, another big year of news attention, the IWW helped to kick off ­labor actions that resounded across industries, notably in steel, leading to the most workdays lost to strikes in the ­century, as well as to the repression of the organ­ization. The strike of the Actors Equity Association that year is perhaps best known ­today for setting off a series of events that resulted in Babe Ruth becoming a New York Yankee. The heyday of strikes and strike coverage occurred in the ­middle of the ­century, beginning with the industrial u­ nion drive of the Congress of Industrial Organ­izations in the mid-1930s. That organ­ization as well as its rival, American Federation of ­Labor, had their largest news years in that period. The United Mine Workers was notable for its leader John L. Lewis’s breaking ­labor’s no-­strike pledge during the Second World War, launching a massive job action that accounted for more than seven million lost workdays, led to government control over the mines, and eventually a victory for the UMW. A larger strike wave hit at the war’s end, leading to the top years in the news for trainmen, electrical workers, typographers, and longshoremen. This was also the period when Taft-­Hartley legislation was enacted, a­ fter a Republican wave election gave that party control over Congress for the first time since 1930, restricting workers’ rights. The end of the 1950s saw strikes by machinists and the second major steel strike in 40 years, this time by the United Steelworkers. Although many of t­ hese ­unions ­later made big news for strikes, t­ here ­were no new entries among their ranks u­ ntil the 1980s, when dif­fer­ent sorts of ­unions appeared in headlines. ­These included higher-­paying and more professionalized occupations, including the Major League Baseball Players Association, the National Football League Players Association, and the Writers Guild of Amer­i­ca. The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organ­ization was all over the news in 1981, when its strike was broken by the Ronald Reagan administration,

­Table 2.2. Civic Action, Strikes, and Being Acted On and 42 Organ­izations in the News Action Type Civic Action

Strikes

Acted On

Years on List

Organ­ization

Year

National Civic Federation

1902

5

Veterans of Foreign Wars

1931

42

­Women’s Christian Temperance Union

1931

30

General Federation of W ­ omen’s Clubs

1935

47

National Federation of Business and Professional ­Women’s Clubs

1935

1

Parent Teacher Association

1935

15

International Ladies Garment Workers Union

1938

5

American Association of University ­Women

1939

4

National Audubon Society

1991

1

­Human Rights Watch

1998

2

Industrial Workers of the World

1912

5

Actors Equity Association

1919

1

Congress of Industrial Organ­izations

1937

20

American Newspaper Guild

1937

1

United Auto Workers

1937

63

American Federation of ­Labor

1941

57

United Mine Workers

1943

56

Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen

1946

2

International Typographical Union

1948

15

United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of Amer­i­ca

1949

5

International Longshoremen’s and Ware­house­men’s Union

1949

1

AFL-­CIO

1957

44

United Steelworkers

1959

45

Screen Actors Guild

1960

2

International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers

1966

3

Major League Baseball Players Association

1981

2

Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organ­ization

1981

1

National Football League Players Association

1982

3

Writers Guild of Amer­i­ca

1988

1

Investigation German-­American Alliance

1918

1

Anti-­Saloon League

1926

21

Townsend Plan

1936

4

German American Bund

1939

2

Progressive Party 1948

1948

1

Communist Party

1950

15

1957

56

International Brotherhood of Teamsters

Continued on next page

86  c h a p t e r 2 ­Table 2.2. (continued) Action Type Acted On

Year

Years on List

1965

30

Students for a Demo­cratic Society

1969

3

Black Legion

1936

1

German American Bund

1939

2

Black Panther Party

1970

5

Operation Rescue

1989

3

Organ­ization Investigation Ku Klux Klan (Third) Trial

Note: Organ­izations in bold ­were in the news for two modal reasons.

whose actions ­there, and packing of the National ­Labor Relations Board, sent or­ga­nized l­ abor into a tailspin.

Civic Action in the First Half of the ­Century —­Issues of public policy ranging from economic security to crime control w ­ ill be discussed by government officials at the midwinter meeting this week of the board of directors of the General Federation of ­Women’s Clubs . . . ​ Mrs. Harvey W. Wiley, president of the District of Columbia Federation, ­will lead the Friday after­noon discussion of developments in the proposed food and drug legislation. “­w om e n ’s clu bs to de bat e issu e s,” n e w yor k t i m e s, ja n ua ry 1 4 , 1935, p. 2 .

A far less unruly approach, civic action and engagement, drove some organ­ izations’ big-­news moments, mainly in the first half of the ­century. This sort of civic action is notable for engaging a wide range of issues, with the expectation that their discussion would promote the common good, while avoiding sanctions or disruption. Organ­izations addressed a variety of social and po­liti­cal concerns that ­were covered in the context of holding meetings, hearing speakers, and sponsoring other events designed to inform its membership and the public. If ­there ­were legislative drives connected to this action, typically they ­were not centered on any one issue. This can be seen in the story above about the General Federation of ­Women’s Clubs. It was portrayed as being passively connected to a variety of issues framed mainly by ­others, without the organ­ization’s pressing for specific legislative proposals.

G o o d N e w s , B a d N e w s , H a r d N e w s , S of t N e w s  87

Civic action by organ­izations was most prevalent in the news during the ­middle of the c­ entury. As with strikes, a few organ­izations w ­ ere covered extensively many times by this type of action—­especially large-­membership and federally or­ga­nized ­women’s organ­izations. (See table 2.2.) The General Federation of ­Women’s Clubs, PTA, National Federation of Business and Professional ­Women’s Clubs, and American Association of University ­Women all had their biggest years of news for civic action in the 1930s. No doubt many other of their long spells in the news ­were motivated by such action, as ­these organ­izations ­were often highly publicized. But it was not just w ­ omen’s organ­ izations or organ­izations without a central issue that made major news in this mode. Civic action was also mainly b­ ehind the biggest news years of the Veterans for Foreign Wars and the ­Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Early in the c­ entury, the National Civic Federation was covered in this manner, too, and late in the ­century so was ­Human Rights Watch.

On the Defensive, Being Acted On —[Imperial Wizard Robert] Shelton sat ­silent when accused of taking a $4,000 “po­liti­cal influence” payment from an “unwilling victim.” “New Klan Charge: 2 Accused of Misusing Funds, Officials Also ­Under Scrutiny by IRS for Income Tax Evasion, Wizard, Dragon Dipped into Funds, Inquiry Told.” dav i d k r a sl ow, l os a nge l e s t i m e s, octobe r 2 1, 1965, p. 1.

A fourth main way movement actors made big news was through being acted on by state officials, through legislative investigations or criminal t­ rials. Congress frequently investigated movement organ­izations, notably through the House Un-­American Activities Committee (HUAC) in the m ­ iddle of the ­century, but also though a series of special committees in dif­fer­ent de­cades. Movement actors and officials have frequently been on trial as well, made newsworthy for criminal changes having l­ittle to do with being arrested on purpose for civil disobedience. Th ­ ese events often yielded long-­running news stories, but throughout them movement actors were on the defensive, more objects in coverage than subjects. Movement organ­izations made big news in both ways frequently, especially during the heyday of HUAC, which began operations in 1938 and was disbanded in 1969. (See table 2.2.) The German-­American Alliance came ­under

88  c h a p t e r 2

congressional fire during the First World War. Organ­izations that engaged in extensive electioneering sometimes saw Congress turn the t­ ables on them. The Anti-­Saloon League fell ­under congressional scrutiny in 1926, in large part for its attempts to influence elections. A de­cade l­ater the Townsend Plan landed in the glare of a special committee soon ­after it had sent out letters to all members of Congress asking where they stood on its generous pension proposal. In the 1930s, the nativist organ­ization the Black Legion had leaders on trial for kidnapping. As we have seen, the German American Bund’s leader was tried and convicted for embezzlement in 1939, a year that organ­ization was also in the news for a dramatic rally at Madison Square Garden, during which Nazi supporters clashed with protesters. Investigations escalated ­after the Second World War. The Progressive Party was thrust into this spotlight during a year in which its standard b­ earer made a presidential run. The Communist party was in the crosshairs of House and Senate committees for several years, peaking in attention in 1950, soon ­after a successful test of an atomic bomb by the Soviet Union, and making reputations for Congressman Richard Nixon and Senator Joseph McCarthy. The latter’s penchant for lying by way of sensational charges caused a rethinking of news operating procedures. A select Senate committee took on the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, pressing racketeering charges on u­ nion leaders. In the 1960s, the Ku Klux Klan was newsworthy for members charged with the murder of civil rights activists, notably Viola Liuzzo, but mainly by way of a HUAC investigation. At the end of the de­cade, SDS was spotlighted by the House Internal Security Committee, which had replaced the Un-­American Activities Committee. The Youth International Party, or Yippies, almost made the list ­because of its publicity through its congressional investigation that year. The largest year of news attention to the Black Panther Party was headlined by criminal ­trials.

Movement Organ­izations and Four Types of Non-­Institutional Actions in Storied News —­Activists [from ACT UP] demanding the President Bush adopt a national plan to end the AIDS crisis chained themselves to the White House fence yesterday and scrawled “Bush and Death” on a White House gatepost. “a i ds act i v ists m a rch on t h e w h it e h ­ ouse ,” m a rci a sl acu m gr e e n e , wa s h i ngton post, octobe r 1, 19 91, b2 .

—­R abbi Meir Kahane, the head of the militant Jewish Defense League, said yesterday at a news conference that he and his followers would not be deterred

G o o d N e w s , B a d N e w s , H a r d N e w s , S of t N e w s  89

from using explosives or other forms of vio­lence against Soviet installations in this country if they considered it necessary. “k a h a n e , faci ng ja i l t e r m, vow s mor e at tack s on rus­s i a ns,” e m a n u e l pe r l m u t t e r , n e w yor k t i m e s, j u ly 13, 19 7 1, p. 1 1.

Organ­izations did not often have big years in the news based on non-­ institutional action, but in several instances they did. We identify four main types of non-­institutional action that are roughly parallel to the previous four reasons that made organ­izations newsworthy. The first type is direct action designed mainly to enforce or test existing laws. In t­ hese cases, activists seek to preempt the roles of the executive or dramatize failures where laws are not being implemented or enforced. We see this action as most similar to assertive po­liti­cal action given its po­liti­cal focus and attempt to influence ­legal pro­cesses through sanctions. A second type of non-­institutional action—the boycott—­is usually directed against economic targets, sanctioning them by the or­ga­nized withholding of purchases or other patronage. In their typical targets and sanctions, boycotts resemble strikes, though the longest boycotts rarely last as long as major strikes, and so are less likely to provide storied coverage. Two other types of action are more indirect in their bids for influence. A g­ reat deal of social movement research focuses on protests—­non-­violent, symbolic actions designed to call attention to issues and alert third parties to act on them. We do not expect protest marches, even the largest ones, to bring long-­running news, given that protests are usually one-­day events. Sometimes, however, the planning and aftermath of a protest lifted organ­izations in the news. Occupations of public spaces had better chances to provide longer runs of coverage, ­because of their more extensive time frame. However, any sort of non-­ institutional action might veer into a fourth type: violent protest. H ­ ere we do not mean the often-­backfiring vio­lence of authorities, but the instances when protesters initiate the vio­lence. We see this situation as somewhat analogous to being covered through t­ rials, as violent actors are often similarly tried in the press. Violent action is also sometimes followed by t­ rials, as in the case of Rabbi Kahane in the epigraph above. ­There w ­ ere examples of news years that featured each of the four main subtypes of non-­institutional action, often appearing in conjunction with a second main driver of coverage, and they are centered on the 1960s wave of attention to movements. (See table 2.3.) Direct action animated the coverage of Greenpeace in 1989 and ACT UP in 1991. Long-­running coverage of boycotts was less frequent. The Congress of Racial Equality also engaged in school

90  c h a p t e r 2 ­Table 2.3. Five Types of Non-­Institutional Action and 17 Organ­izations in the News Action Type

Organ­ization

Year

Years on List

Direct Action

Greenpeace Operation Rescue AIDS Co­ali­tion to Unleash Power

1989 1989 1991

5 3 1

Protests

­ ree Speech Movement F Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Anti-­Defamation League Nation of Islam

1965 1966 1995 1995

1 5 5 6

Occupations

Bonus Army Southern Christian Leadership Conference Students for a Demo­cratic Society American Indian Movement

1932 1968 1969 1973

1 7 3 1

Boycotts

Congress of Racial Equality United Farm Workers

1964 1973

5 5

Vio­lence

Ku Klux Klan (Second) Black Panther Party Jewish Defense League American Indian Movement

1924 1970 1971 1973

11 5 1 1

Note: Organ­izations in bold ­were in the news for two modal reasons.

boycotts and pickets at the New York World’s Fair in 1964, and the United Farm Workers was in the news for a national boycott of ­table grapes in 1973. Protests sometimes drew storied coverage to organ­izations, including for the ­Free Speech Movement in 1965, to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1966, and to the Nation of Islam for the 1995 Million Man March. In addition, occupations sometimes brought open-­ended news treatment, notably for the 1930s encampment of the Bonus Army, the SCLC’s Poor ­People’s Campaign and Resurrection City, SDS campus occupations, and the American Indian Movement’s occupation of Wounded Knee. Fi­nally, violent protest also sometimes drove years in the news, including the Ku Klux Klan’s vigilante action aimed at enforcing Prohibition in 1924, the Black Panther Party’s clashes with police in 1970, and the Jewish Defense League’s bombings, harassment, and violation of gun regulations in 1971.

Four Types of Relationships to the News Before discussing how ­these organ­izations w ­ ere covered in the news, we address the main types of news they might receive. We see two essential dimensions of the news about movement actors: substance and sentiment. Movements

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attempt to insert into the public sphere new po­liti­cal and social issues and innovative diagnoses of prob­lems and solutions to them, as well as to proj­ect images of their constituents as deserving. A key ele­ment in frames is a demand, which is also referred to by David Snow and Robert Benford as a “prescription” and by Charles Tilly as a “claim.”10 Movements typically aim demands at targets that can grant concessions, and they are crucial to contests over meaning. A second aspect of substance for movement actors in the news is being connected to discussions of issues they seek to promote. If an article discusses an issue of importance to a movement organ­ization and includes the organ­ization or other movement actors in that discussion, it portrays that organ­ization as a player with a stake in the debates. This type of attention is similar to the “thematic” coverage identified by Shanto Iyengar. The tone of the news discussion also m ­ atters. Scholars have noted that movement actors are frequently treated as criminal or deviant, and references to them often carry a negative tone. Although getting issues and demands in the public sphere through the news is the most impor­tant mission for movement actors, ­these demands ­will resonate more if ­these actors are portrayed in a positive, or at least neutral, way.11 The two dimensions make it pos­si­ble to divide movement actors’ coverage into four main types of treatment. The first and best type for movement actors is what we are calling “good news” (see figure 2.1). ­These accounts treat movement actors seriously as po­liti­cal players. Their news coverage engages with their issues and views, repeats their demands and claims, and quotes movement leaders about them—­aiding them in their bids for po­liti­cal and social change. Good news of this sort also portrays the organ­ization and its participants positively, or at least avoids taking a negative tone. Although we see the discussions of issues and demands as being the more impor­tant dimension, news organ­izations can help to legitimate movement actors and their views by couching their discussions of them in a favorable tone. In short, good news, substantive and positive, helps best to transmit movements’ messages through the public sphere, and when good news is extensive it should influence public discourse and po­liti­cal debates in directions that ­favor movement actors.12 Less valuable than good news are two types of coverage with dif­fer­ent mixes of substance and sentiment. What we call “hard news” pre­sents the issues and demands of organ­izations and treats them seriously, but it typically portrays the actors in a negative light. Our definition diverges from standard journalistic lingo which uses the term to refer to factual coverage of breaking news. We, too, focus on factual treatments regarding the movement actors’ claims, but add the connotation that the coverage may be hard in its tone. Hard news is not an entirely unfortunate situation for movement actors. Even if their

92  c h a p t e r 2 Sentiment Not unfavorable

High

Hard news: Critical treatment

Good news: Campaign coverage

Low

Bad news: Crime beat

Soft news: Features

Substance

Unfavorable

figure 2.1. Four Types of News Coverage for Movement Actors, by Substance and Sentiment.

demands and views are couched in unfriendly terms, publishing them still amplifies them, and they w ­ ill still resonate in the public sphere, as Ruud Koopmans argues. Substantive news treatments ­will help movement organ­izations in their bids to influence public discourse, even when negative in tone, as they ­will raise some awareness of the organ­ization’s issues and views. As Lee Ann Banaszak and Heather Ondercin point out, news coverage of movement events that transmits their frames can help to change public opinion, even when their movement messengers are not covered favorably. Substantive coverage means treating movement actors seriously, if not always fairly.13 Another sort of extensive coverage works in the opposite directions and is less likely to influence the public sphere. In what we are calling “soft news,” movement organ­izations and participants are treated positively, but not seriously. In newsrooms, soft news refers to h­ uman interest or entertainment coverage that runs skin deep at best. In our usage, soft news for movement actors treats them civilly but downplays their demands and issues. They may be treated as local color stories, in which individuals may be quoted about why they participate, as they might at a parade or a fair. This sort of news—­not negative but not substantive—­also includes articles that mainly report logistics, such as w ­ hether collective action w ­ ill be allowed by government officials to take place or who might be planning to participate in it. A similar result can

G o o d N e w s , B a d N e w s , H a r d N e w s , S of t N e w s  93

emerge when sustained coverage of movement organ­izations appears through a series of public meetings on varied topics, unconnected to any par­tic­u­lar issue and failing to proj­ect any central messages. This type of news treatment is analogous to the “failed” action often identified by scholars of the po­liti­cal consequences of movements. That occurs when challengers fail to gain po­liti­ cal influence, but remain at square one, ready to try something ­else.14 However, just as movements’ bids for po­liti­cal influence can result in repression, or collective losses, the news can also provide results that are worse than simply failing. That is what happens with “bad news,” a fourth type that leaves challengers’ constituencies and ­causes worse off than they ­were beforehand. News can ignore movement actors’ substance and treat them not trivially, but injuriously, portraying them as criminals or deviants, with collateral damage to their ­causes and constituencies. Any publicity may be good for circuses or real­ity stars. Customers may want to see for themselves Barnum’s disgusting “mermaid skeleton” or supposed “dog-­faced” boy, and fist fights and sex tapes may enhance real­ity stars’ brands. In politics, though, bad press can be career-­ending, as it was for Senator Al Franken’s sexual misconduct or Representative Chris Collins’s insider trading. Similarly, corporations and businesses can suffer major losses from negative news, as BP did during its epic oil spill, or fold, as did the restaurants the Spotted Pig and La Sirena ­after sexual harassment issues ­were aired. More generally, the effect of such bad press depends on the nature of the actor’s targets, goals, and constituencies. When movement actors seek simply to gain an improved public image of their constituencies, negative coverage is directly damaging. If an organ­ization is portrayed in the press as standing in for an underrepresented group, bad press can cast harsh light on it. When movement actors attempt to use the news to seek po­liti­cal change, moreover, they typically need help from bystanders and po­ liti­cal officials, and negative news can frighten them away or turn them off. Bad news increases movement actors’ legitimacy deficits.15 Bad news for activists is likely also more routine and severe in its consequences than direct repression in demo­cratic polities. Movement actors are sometimes repressed in democracies, setting back their organ­izations and ­causes, but democracies also include protections. Repression usually has to be justified and may work to a movement’s advantage when it is misguided or too heavy-­handed. Sometimes protesters choose to be jailed to gain news attention, if they believe their cause is just, and ­there may be a backlash against authorities. Even taking a beating may be risked, as in the famous 1965 Selma to Montgomery march. However, bad news for movement actors is far more

94  c h a p t e r 2

routine than direct repression in democracies, and movement organ­izations have ­little recourse in news organ­izations, which they might have through the law and courts. In addition, covert operations, like the infamous 1960s FBI counter-­intelligence program, often rely on the production of such bad news to disrupt movement organ­izations. Moreover, ­these organ­izations are far less stable than po­liti­cal parties, making them more vulnerable to bad press, what­ ever the source. When a member of the Senate or House receives negative coverage, the party can replace scandal-­weakened officials with electorally stronger candidates, as it did when the Demo­crats replaced Franken and a less damaged Republican won Collins’s seat. However, when movement leaders are investigated or placed on trial, often their organ­izations and missions are also being tried in the press. ­Because ­these organ­izations are often closely associated with leaders and prominent members, bad news can cut short challenges.16

Legitimacy Deficits in Movement Actors, Collective Action, and the Quality of News Movement actors, right and left, often criticize their treatment in the news. Progressive movement actors claim that journalists downplay critiques of businesses, for fear of upsetting potential advertisers, and power­ful po­liti­cal officials, for fear of losing access to them. Conservative movement actors claim that the news media has biases due to the liberal outlook and partisanship of journalists, who are said to give conservative views unfair treatment. If activists usually do not get the coverage they want, however, it is not mainly ­because of journalists’ fear of offending the power­ful or their personal or po­liti­cal biases. Instead, movements and their organ­izations routinely suffer from compounded legitimacy and news-­making deficits. Movement organ­izations do not officially represent groups, as do elected po­liti­cal representatives. Moreover, the new issues or new ways of thinking about old ones promoted by movement actors usually fall outside the discursive par­ameters of currently legitimate po­liti­cal debate set by the major po­liti­cal parties. In addition, challengers often seek attention with non-­institutional action—­which is often viewed as illegitimate in democracies, where citizens have formal po­liti­cal recourse. Such action may make them more newsworthy, if only briefly, but often less legitimate. Fi­nally, news values turn journalists’ attention to the po­ liti­cally influential, which typically does not include movement actors. Although resembling institutional po­liti­cal actors in form may help movement

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actors to be treated more seriously, even the best or­ga­nized challengers suffer legitimacy deficits both in politics and with news organ­izations.17 Challengers’ actions can reduce or increase t­ hese deficits and thus are critical strategic decisions. News routines and values provide many openings for movement organ­izations to gain coverage and influence public debates. To exploit ­these openings and gain more substantive treatment, we argue that movement organ­izations often should mimic the actions of institutional po­ liti­cal actors. This strategy means mainly engaging po­liti­cal pro­cesses directly or employing sanctions that go beyond symbolic protest, or both. For farmers, ­women, and ­labor, creating lobbying organ­izations was an influential transposition that helped ­these groups gain po­liti­cal influence. When movement actors make pro­gress in challenging the prerogatives of elected and appointed officials, the news takes it more seriously in part b­ ecause ­there are already reporters assigned to ­these beats. It may be newsworthy also ­because of the unusual contrast and novelty of a movement group acting like a mainstream po­liti­cal organ­ization.18 We expect that the actions ­behind or reasons for news coverage ­w ill be closely associated with the treatment of movement organ­izations when they are big news. Some reasons for coverage w ­ ill yield good news, o­ thers w ­ ill bring bad news, and so on. When extended treatment in the news centers on po­liti­ cally assertive actions, the coverage is likely to be substantive and non-­ negative—­good news that ­will advance the ­causes and constituents of movement organ­izations in the public sphere. Movement organ­izations ­w ill be treated as po­liti­cal players in discursive contexts and their views engaged in the news. Initiatives and referendums led by movement actors, for instance, almost always make them one of the journalistically relevant sides in a po­liti­cal debate. Sustained campaigns for or against high-­profile legislation w ­ ill do the same. Movement actors can also pursue court cases that inject them into policy debates, again as one of the legitimate sides. Journalists can hardly avoid discussing a movement organ­ization’s views and demands when writing about legislation or litigation initiated by it. News of sustained bids to punish or to support elected officials—­electioneering—­can be expected also to treat movement actors and their issues seriously and promote why they are intervening. US third parties typically fail, but many of them have formed over a single issue or a small group of related issues; when they gain coverage, we expect they w ­ ill draw attention to t­ hose issues. Although this action is assertive and often threatening to institutional actors, we expect it to be covered with a tone that is neutral or better, b­ ecause movement actors are closely

96  c h a p t e r 2 Sentiment Unfavorable

Not unfavorable

Strikes

Assertive Action: Campaigns, Third parties, Electioneering

Boycotts

Direct action

Acted on: Trials, Investigations

Civic Action

Violence

Occupations

Substance

High

Low

figure 2.2. Movement Action and Expectations for Substance and Sentiment in News Coverage.

following the rules of institutional politics, seeking to beat established po­liti­cal actors at their own game.19 In coverage animated by ­labor strikes, in contrast, we expect hard news. Strikes play on the balancing norms of journalism, as the grievances and demands are almost always ­going to constitute a side of the story in such action, and so the coverage w ­ ill typically include the substance of their claims. It is difficult to cover work actions of any length without ­frequently saying what they are about. In such disputes, moreover, the movement organ­ization’s opponents are unlikely to be as legitimate as top state officials, which reduces the deficits between movement actors and their targets and raises the strikers’ side of the story. However, strikes cause disruption, threaten disorder, and may often augur incon­ve­niences for third parties such as consumers, who may lose access to goods or ser­vices, and whom journalists may see as their readership. Although some strikers may be portrayed as deserving or justified, we expect organ­izations engaged in most l­ abor actions would not be treated favorably or sympathetically in the news. The baseball players’ association was portrayed in this way in the quote above. Th ­ ere was g­ reat detail about what they wanted, but with a tone indicating that fans ­were likely to be unhappy.20 The third type of coverage, civic action, when organ­izations are newsworthy regarding a range of public-­spirited initiatives, is expected to yield soft news,

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neither substantive nor negative. Civic action prob­ably is most newsworthy when it includes a lot of p­ eople. Many large membership organ­izations, which ­were especially prominent in the first half of the twentieth ­century, would frequently meet to hear speakers and address a wide variety of broadly civic issues and prob­lems. The topics of t­ hese meetings might range well beyond ­those central to their missions or constituencies and would draw attention if many p­ eople attended them. We expect this sort of coverage to be sympathetic to the movement actors, but to produce diffuse and unclear messages, if any, given the variety of subjects being entertained and the organ­izations’ often passive role in the pro­cess. They w ­ ill be unlikely to gain the sort of focused attention to issues and frames more likely to appear in the coverage of legislative campaigns, electioneering, or strikes. Verta Taylor has shown this as being standard treatment for prominent ­women’s organ­izations ­after the winning of suffrage, and Myra Marx Ferree more generally has identified the “soft” repression of ­women challengers.21 Still, this sort of coverage might happen with men, such as war veterans, who assem­ble for some civic action such as a parade or reunion meeting. When movement organ­izations are being acted on by state officials, as through official investigations and criminal ­trials, they ­will typically be subjected to extensive bad news. An organ­ization and its vision for social change are also on trial when its leader is on trial, ­whether it is the mild-­mannered Dr. Townsend or the fiery H. Rap Brown, and the results w ­ ill disadvantage the actors’ ­causes. Though an investigation is not as dire a situation as a criminal trial and can sometimes provide chances to speak to issues, it is also expected mainly to produce bad news, with charges crowding out substance. Th ­ ese stories w ­ ill usually also portray movement actors in a disparaging way that harms their ­causes and constituencies in the public sphere. The objects of this sort of coverage tend to expect bad news and ­will act accordingly. The Klan Wizard remained ­silent during his organ­ization’s investigation, as did Teamster officials during theirs. Dr. Townsend walked out on the hearings.22 On the ­whole, campaigns of non-­institutional action are expected to be covered less favorably and with less substance, as the action is at least somewhat threatening and usually undertaken by groups with few po­liti­cal resources. But we expect some distinctions among the types of action. Perhaps the best news scenario, if not personally for activists, is for them to meet illegal vio­lence from authorities or vigilantes. In that case, it is likely that they w ­ ill be treated more sympathetically and gain an airing of their issues and their views about them. This scenario seems likely, too, for civil disobedience, but that sort

98  c h a p t e r 2

of action is not likely to account for any long strings of coverage. Other types of non-­institutional action may be treated substantively. Direct-­action campaigns designed to show that laws on the books or administrative protections are not being implemented, such as to make officials re­spect voting rights, ­will be treated with some substance. Like some assertive po­liti­cal actions, t­ hese campaigns seek to sanction or shame elected officials. They seem more likely to garner more sympathy than actions that simply attempt to shut down ­legal pro­cesses or operations that activists object to. The coverage of boycotts, moreover, ­will usually discuss the issues b­ ehind them, and the targets of boycotts are likely not to be as legitimate as national po­liti­cal actors. But like strikes, boycotts are disruptive, and their news coverage is expected to portray activists as making life difficult for innocent consumers, and not in a favorable light. In contrast, protests and occupations are expected to produce relatively soft coverage. Protest stories w ­ ill often focus on logistics in seeking permits, disputes among organizers, or colorful accounts of seemingly au­then­tic protesters. The articles w ­ ill not necessarily be negative, but w ­ ill usually be trivial, ignoring protesters’ issues and claims. We anticipate similar treatment of occupations, which have better chances of drawing long-­running attention given their less episodic nature. But their treatment in the news ­will depend in part on their legality and how authorities reacted to them. In contrast, we expect protest in which the activists initiate vio­lence to produce bad news, devoid of substance and with movement actors being treated as deviant and threats to public order. Violent action often w ­ ill also lead to arrests and t­ rials that ­will extend activists’ poor treatment in the news and reflect adversely on their ­causes and constituencies.23

Movement Action and Journalistic Reaction in the Largest News Years of 100 Organ­izations What was the quality of news coverage in ­these biggest years of news for organ­izations? Which strings of attention treated the organ­izations positively, or at least not negatively? Which addressed movement actors in a substantive way? ­Were the modal reasons for coverage linked to how the organ­izations ­were treated in the news? To estimate the tone or sentiment in articles about the organ­izations during their coverage years, we analyze the texts of the articles by way of an algorithm. It uses a manually created sentiment lexicon to estimate the valence of words, with negatively coded words, such as

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“abhorrent” or “tragedy,” having negative values, and positively coded words, such as “greatest” or “perfectly,” having positive values. We average article scores within each year of coverage to generate a composite score for each organ­ ization. We identified substance in the coverage by sampling articles and coding them by hand. We sampled eight articles each from about half of the years of coverage, using searches that included words connected to the modal reason for the news, oversampling reasons that had few instances. We coded each of the two years of orga­nizational news centered on boycotts, for example, and three of the four centered on protest, ­because ­there ­were few instances of ­those reasons for coverage. In contrast, we coded only six of the 24 years based on campaigns and five of the 19 based on strikes. A ­ fter ascertaining w ­ hether the article was mainly connected to the modal reason for coverage, we coded for ­whether an organ­ization or its representatives ­were able to transmit a demand aimed at a target, and how much of the article was devoted to demands. For six organ­izations we coded all their front-­page coverage for the year in question.24 The analyses show that the orga­nizational coverage animated mainly by po­liti­cally assertive and civic action was indeed couched in more positive terms, whereas more negative valence appeared in news years focused on an organ­ization’s being acted on (see figure 2.3). Organ­izations in the news mainly for civic action and assertive po­liti­cal action had the greatest positive valence. Included among the top ten in positive tone are the American Association of University W ­ omen, the General Federation of W ­ omen’s Clubs, and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Just ­behind them are the years of orga­nizational coverage based on assertive po­liti­cal action. Among the top organ­izations in terms of valence from this group are the Peace and Freedom Party, League of American Wheelmen, Congressional Union, and AARP. When assertive action is broken down into its component types, news of organ­izations connected to third parties and electioneering show the most positive valence. The bottom of the figure, in contrast, includes years of coverage characterized by organ­izations being acted upon by state pro­cesses. Near the very bottom is news animated by t­ rials. The coverage involving the Black Legion in 1936 and the Black Panther Party in 1970 scores as the least favorable of all the years and topics analyzed. Moreover, well below average in sentiment are coverage years characterized by congressional investigations. Standouts in negative framing included the Communist party in 1950, German-­American Alliance in 1918, and the Ku Klux Klan in 1965.25 Some other reasons for attention led to sentiment levels that fell somewhere closer to the ­middle of the group. Coverage characterized by strikes

100  c h a p t e r 2 Civic action

Modal action or reasons for coverage

Electioneering Third party Campaign Strikes Occupations/Protests Boycotts Investigation Direct action Trial Violence −0.6

−0.4

−0.2

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

Valence score figure 2.3. Modal Reasons for and Sentiment in News Coverage. Note: The valence scores for each modal reason are weighted by the percentages of articles that are associated with the topics about the reason normalized by subtracting the overall weighted mean. The error bars represent the range of the weighted mean ± one standard deviation for each modal type.

scored below average in sentiment, as expected, though only slightly so, and ­there ­were significant differences in news across the organ­izations. Some received the sort of negative sentiment typical of news about t­ rials or investigations, including coverage involving strikes by the Industrial Workers of the World in 1919, American Newspaper Guild in 1937, and the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organ­ization in 1982. Yet many strike-­related runs of attention to organ­izations scored above average in sentiment. ­These more favorable framings included ­those strikes for entertainment professionals, including the Actors Equity Association (1919), Screen Actors Guild (1960), and the Writers Guild of Amer­i­ca (1988) at each part of the c­ entury, as well as for the baseball and football players’ ­unions. The umbrella ­labor organ­izations also received relatively sympathetic treatment in their biggest news years, possibly ­because they ­were one step removed from strikes undertaken by affiliated ­unions.

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­ ere w Th ­ ere not as many news runs animated by non-­institutional collective action, but the sentiment in them was more negative overall. Unsurprisingly, at the very bottom in valence w ­ ere runs of news attention marked by violent collective action, including the coverage of the Ku Klux Klan in 1924 and the Jewish Defense League in 1971. Boycotts ­were a modal reason for two runs, by the United Farm Workers and Congress of Racial Equality, and both topics scored negatively in sentiment for them. The five runs animated by occupations scored lower than average in sentiment, though not at the very bottom. But ­there ­were some impor­tant differences regarding the types of action. The occupations of the Bonus Army in 1932 and the protests of the 1965 F ­ ree Speech Movement received higher than average sentiment in their coverage, whereas t­ hose of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and SDS scored negatively. Coverage based mainly on direct action from Greenpeace, ACT UP, and Operation Rescue also scored lower than average in valence. When organ­izations ­were in the news for two main reasons, moreover, the news related to topics connected to assertive po­liti­cal action w ­ ere treated more favorably than t­ hose connected to other reasons for news, mainly investigations.26 The Townsend Plan, Anti-­Saloon League, and Progressive Party of 1948 w ­ ere each in the news for assertive po­liti­cal action and an investigation in their biggest year of attention. Each scored well above average in sentiment in the articles connected to assertive action. However, each scored around average or below in sentiment in articles connected to their investigation. For the second Ku Klux Klan, the divergence between the sentiment in articles about its assertive po­liti­cal action (.11) and articles about its vio­lence (−.36) was even more dramatic. Our expectations for substance, which we consider a more impor­tant quality, are similar but differ in two key ways. We expect assertive po­liti­cal action to lead to substantive treatment as well as positive sentiment, and ­trials and investigations to aggravate negative sentiment with negligible substance. So ­those expectations line up. But we anticipate news based on civic action and strikes to be treated differently in substance from their treatment in sentiment. While often the coverage of articles about organ­izations involved in strikes was couched in negative language, we expect ­these articles to indicate the main lines of dispute—as was the case in the stories about the steelworkers and the baseball players. By contrast, although civic action by organ­izations was described mainly in favorable terms, we expect that organ­ization in the news for that reason ­will be treated more trivially, as ­were the veterans marching in the apple blossom festival and the w ­ omen’s club meeting airing speeches from

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Campaign

Modal action or reasons for coverage

Strikes Direct action Boycotts Electioneering Occupations/protests Third party Civic action Investigation Trial Violence −0.6

−0.4

−0.2

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

Substance Score figure 2.4. Modal Reasons for and Substance in News Coverage. Note: Substance scores for each modal action are normalized by subtracting the overall mean. The error bars represent the range of the mean ± one standard deviation for each modal type.

public officials. As for non-­institutional action, organ­izations in the news for direct action are expected to be treated most like assertive po­liti­cal action, and boycotts most like strikes, each yielding substantive coverage. We expect organ­izations in the news for occupations and protest marches to be treated less seriously, and violent protest to be covered without demands. The coverage of assertive action did score high in demands, with about two-­thirds of the articles coded for it including that frame ele­ment (see figure 2.4). However, ­there was variation across the types of assertive action. On the high end, organ­izations in the news for campaigns came in at 82 ­percent. In contrast, the two types of action involving elections scored lower, with electioneering producing a rate of 51 ­percent and third parties scoring only 42 ­percent on demands, which was slightly below the average rate for all actions. The electioneering score was pulled down by the Ku Klux Klan in 1924, as articles referred to candidates supported by or opposing the Klan, but they failed to specify what that meant. Other­w ise electioneering produces a rate of demands at 64 ­percent. In addition, only one sampled article included specific details about the American In­de­pen­dent Party’s presidential run in

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1968—­reporting on its platform’s adoption. Almost all of the articles quoted speeches from George Wallace, but they rarely included any discussion of platform planks. We did not count it as a demand, for instance, when Wallace’s stump speech was quoted saying he would teach hippie protesters the meaning of the words “w-­o-­r-­k” and “s-­o-­a-­p.” Other articles about third parties more frequently discussed how they might influence the race between the two main parties rather than their issues. In contrast, the years of news coverage featuring organ­izations being acted on exhibited a very low rate of demands, significantly lower than that of assertive po­liti­cal action. Overall, coded articles about organ­izations in news for being acted on got across demands only about 13 ­percent of the time. In the case of investigations, the average per organ­ization was 17 ­percent, and for ­trials it was only 6 ­percent—­despite the fact that almost half of the articles allowed someone from the organ­ization to be quoted (see figure 2.4). During an investigation by a select Senate committee in 1957, Teamster officials generally kept quiet, but the news was full of testimony of po­liti­cal officials and unaffiliated truck ­drivers complaining about illegal pressure tactics. The House Internal Security Committee, which replaced the Un-­American Activities Committee in 1969, often heard from in­for­mants infiltrating Students for a Demo­cratic Society, though not much from SDS leaders about their social change objectives. News of the Detroit murder trial of members of the Black Legion, a Klan offshoot of the 1930s, aired extensive testimony from the defendant Dayton Dean, who confessed to killing a Works Pro­gress Administration worker, but did not indicate what the Black Legion was trying to achieve by ­doing so. The coverage of the trial of Randall Terry and other members of Operation Rescue in 1989 published their claims that they w ­ ere defending themselves against what they saw as excessive police force, but the articles provided few opportunities for anti-­abortion advocates to state their po­liti­cal case. Coverage based on strikes and coverage based on civic action scored opposite in substance to how they scored in sentiment. Strike coverage mainly got across what the organ­izations w ­ ere striking about. On average, almost three-­fourths of the coded articles about strikes for organ­izations that ­were in the news mainly b­ ecause of strikes included demands (see figure 2.4). ­These ranged from specific wage increases demanded by textile workers to an alternative compensation plan for teams losing players to f­ ree agency. In contrast, articles based on civic action included demands at a rate of less than a third. For instance, the American Association of University ­Women often hosted lectures about issues of the day but did not have any coded articles that included how the organ­ization thought they should be handled.

104  c h a p t e r 2

As with civic action, the average organ­ization in the news for any type of non-­institutional action had its demands published at a lower-­than-­average rate (see figure 2.4). However, we expected some non-­institutional actions to be treated more seriously than ­others, and they ­were. Direct action, which we view as most similar to assertive po­liti­cal action, and boycotts, viewed as similar to strikes, w ­ ere expected to produce better-­than-­average substantive treatments, and years of coverage based on them included demands at an average of about two-­thirds. The organizations Greenpeace, ACT UP, and Operation Rescue each did well in communicating messages in articles about direct action. In addition, both the United Farm Workers and Congress of Racial Equality w ­ ere treated with substance in boycotts, averaging about 65 ­percent. In contrast, articles about violent action only rarely w ­ ere treated substantively. The news for violent collective action scored only at about 4 ­percent. Neither the Jewish Defense League, nor the Black Panther Party, nor the second KKK could get across much in the way of substance when engaged in vio­lence. Protests and occupations fell as expected in between, at about 44 ­percent.27 How w ­ ere organ­izations treated when they w ­ ere newsworthy for two modal reasons with varying expectations for treatment? The KKK was in the news in 1924 for electioneering, which is expected to produce substance, and violent collective action, which is not. The Townsend Plan was in the news in 1936 for electioneering too, but was also investigated by a special House committee, which was expected to dampen demands. Similarly, the Progressive Party ran a campaign for president in 1948, but had its leaders investigated by the House Un-­American Activities Committee. Operation Rescue was in the news for direct action, which was expected to produce substance, and a trial, which was not.28 ­Were ­these organ­izations covered differently during the same year? In each case, except one, they transmitted demands more frequently in the action expected to yield substance, and usually by a substantial margin. Overall, the average percentage of demands for the organ­izations in the news for not being acted on or engaging in violent action was about 57 ­percent, compared with a 12 ­percent average for ­those in the news for ­those reasons. The contrast was especially stark for the Progressive Party and Operation Rescue. The one anomaly was the Ku Klux Klan in 1924. Unsurprisingly, it did not receive any substantive coverage for vio­lence, but did not gain it ­either for its efforts at electioneering. How well did the coverage of the dif­fer­ent types of action match up with the four categories of news? When we display the types of action or reasons for coverage in terms of sentiment and substance, in relation to the average

G o o d N e w s , B a d N e w s , H a r d N e w s , S of t N e w s  105 0.5

Hard news

Good news

0.4 Campaign

0.3

Strikes

Substance

0.2

Assertive action

0.1 Electioneering

0.0

Third party

Non-institutional action

−0.1

Civic action

−0.2 −0.3 −0.4 −0.5

Investigation Acted-on Trial

Bad news −0.6

−0.4

Soft news −0.2

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

Sentiment figure 2.5. Modal Reasons for News Coverage and Its Substance and Sentiment. Note: Substance and sentiment scores are normalized by subtracting the overall means.

scores on ­these dimensions, each of the main types of action clearly corresponds to the four dif­fer­ent types of news (see figure 2.5). Organ­izations in the news for assertive action w ­ ere mainly covered in the good news mode, whereas being acted on through investigations and t­ rials brought bad news for organ­ izations covered for ­those reasons. Strikes brought hard news, as organ­izations’ demands came across, but in stories couched in unfavorable terms. And civic action was presented mainly as soft news, favorable in tone, but lacking in substance. Overall, organ­izations in the news mainly for non-­institutional action fell into the bad news category, as might be expected from the protest paradigm, though bordering on hard news. That said, the dif­fer­ent types of action within the main categories varied, sometimes in impor­tant ways. For assertive action, the treatment of campaigns was on the hard side, with lower sentiment and more substance, whereas the coverage of electioneering was on the soft side, with higher sentiment and less substance. Third party coverage fell entirely into the soft category, suggesting that electoral coverage even for movement actors may be relatively lacking in substance (see figure 2.5).

106  c h a p t e r 2

Although both investigations and ­trials fell into the bad news category, ­trials provided worse news in both substance and sentiment. The coverage of organ­izations in the news for dif­fer­ent types of non-­ institutional action also produced dif­fer­ent types of news, though to a lesser degree. That is evident when comparing their treatment in the news with re­ spect to the coverage of other organ­izations in the news for non-­institutional action. The news coverage of organ­izations that centered on direct action already scored above average in substance relative to the coverage of all organ­ izations in the news. But relative to the coverage of organ­izations in the news for other non-­institutional action, the treatment of organ­izations in direct action also scored somewhat higher in sentiment. Among the coverage of organ­izations in the news for non-­institutional action, it provided the best news. The opposite is true for violent action, which fell well below average on both dimensions—it generated bad news even relative to other non-­ institutional actions. The coverage of boycotts scored relatively high in substance but low in sentiment, placing it in the hard news category—­analogous to the coverage of strikes. Fi­nally, occupations and protest yielded news that was soft, relative to that of other non-­institutional actions.

Conclusion: Most Movement News Is Not Good News When social movement organ­izations make big news, that can define not only the organ­ization, but the constituents they seek to represent and the issues they hope to advance. The 100 organ­izations that made big news in at least one year in the c­ entury ­were covered for a wide variety of reasons. They made big news sometimes for mimicking the moves of institutional po­liti­cal actors. ­These actions included r­ unning legislative or litigation campaigns that demanded suffrage, prohibition, old-­age pensions, soldiers’ bonuses, civil rights, or medical insurance, or seeking to influence the electoral prospects of candidates regarding their issues. O ­ thers found themselves thrust into the press spotlight for ­trials and investigations, with the House Un-­American Activities Committee often an unwanted source of headlines. Strikes w ­ ere a frequent source of news for ­unions, ranging from the Industrial Workers of the World radicals early in the c­ entury, to the coal miners, steelworkers, and auto workers in the m ­ iddle of the c­ entury, to writers and baseball and football players at the end of it. Organ­izations also sometimes made big news in the manner often analyzed by social movement scholars, including through direct actions, boycotts, occupations and protest marches, and violent protest. This type of news

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cycle mainly occurred in the 1960s and through the end of the c­ entury—­the period most studied by movement scholars. How ­these organ­izations ­were treated in their moments in the spotlight, however, greatly varied. In some instances, t­ hese organ­izations w ­ ere covered in a way that brought “good news,” which transmitted their views of issues with respectful wording that helped to alter public discourse. Sometimes, however, the coverage contradicted Barnum’s dictum. All news was far from good news, and often it was better not to be talked about. For many organ­izations, the press meted out “bad news,” coverage lacking substance with a negative tone that discredited the organ­izations and their ­causes. Other possibilities also included “hard news” that provided substantive discussions but couched them in negative sentiment, and “soft news,” which did the opposite. The main reasons for organ­izations’ appearing in extensive news coverage greatly influenced their treatment in the spotlight. In the years that movement actors ­were in the news for assertive po­liti­cal action, such as contesting elections, initiating referendums, and pressing for legislation, they ­were covered substantively and not unfairly, in the good news mode. Substantive coverage also occurred for analyses of strikes, though the treatment of actors was not as favorable and typically fell into the hard news category. Civic action produced respectful coverage of organ­izations covered in that context but did not produce much of substance—­soft news. Bad news was the norm when challengers or their leaders ­were ­under investigation and especially when they ­were on trial. Th ­ ese runs of news attention not only lacked substance in coverage. They often reflected negatively on the movement actors and led to setbacks for them and their ­causes. Non-­institutional action on average produced bad news. But among the types of non-­institutional action, direct action brought the best news, while vio­lence brought the worst. However, we do not expect the modal type of action to be the sole influence on how challengers are treated in the news. They engage in many types of actions, have dif­fer­ent orga­nizational features, and act in a variety of contexts. With case studies in ­later chapters, we analyze coverage at the level of individual articles and provide more evidence regarding movement actors’ framing. We can examine a wider variety of action, dif­fer­ent types of organ­izations, and the contextual conditions surrounding them when they commanded the news. Before zeroing in on cases, however, we first take a step back to analyze the major trends in the news coverage of wider social movements across the ­century.

3 Movement Features: A ­Century of News Waves w i t h T hom a s A l a n E l l io t t a n d W e i j u n Y ua n

we have been focusing on the social movement organ­izations that made the biggest news, recovering histories of now-­forgotten organ­izations and reprising accounts of the better-­known ones. But when most ­people think about social movements, they are usually imagining something larger. ­People are less interested in the ups and downs of the Anti-­Saloon League than learning about the rise and fall of the anti-­alcohol movement. Scholars can devote ­careers to studying the Congress of Racial Equality or the Black Panther Party, and rightly so, but ­people are often more interested in the movement for Black rights. Scholars, too, may focus on the National American W ­ oman Suffrage Association or the National Organ­ization for ­Women, given their centrality to equality strug­gles old and new, but more want to learn about the larger ­women’s rights movement. ­There is also ­great interest in cycles of attention to movements, as dif­fer­ent ones rise up and capture public interest and then fall from view. In this chapter, we widen the focus to examine the coverage gained by larger social movements. From this vantage point, we can identify the historical trajectories of the news attention to movements as a group, as well as to each major movement, identifying the ones that ­were most in the news and the times when they ­were the most newsworthy. The newspaper rec­ord of movement actors constitutes the first movement outcome, and the only one so far as we know, susceptible to analy­sis across all US movements over a long period of time. With this rec­ord we address questions about the history of US 108

A C e n t u r y o f N e w s Wav e s  109

movements that have not been previously pos­si­ble even to pose, much less answer. Th ­ ese questions involve both what happened and why it happened: What is the overall historical pattern of news attention to social movements, which movements received the most attention, and when did they receive it? What accounts for the historical patterns of coverage of movements overall and for individual movements? Why ­were individual movements sometimes extensively newsworthy and at other times not? We also reflect on the scholarship regarding social movements. A ­ fter a series of progressive social movements took off in the 1960s and 1970s, including ones focused on Black rights, peace, ­women’s rights, and the environment, scholars in the 1980s and beyond trained their attention on movements, producing hundreds of scholarly articles and monographs in sociology, po­liti­cal science, and history. We address the degree of overlap between some of the most prominent scholarship and the news rec­ord and what it might mean for understanding movements more broadly. In explaining news coverage, one issue is ­whether the characteristics of individual movements actors that are associated with extensive news coverage also drive attention to movements as a w ­ hole. Scholars often focus on movements’ resources and the disruptive actions to explain their mobilization and influence. As we have seen, membership was a crucial resource for the most publicized organ­izations, which typically also exhibited orga­nizational stability. But often movement actors with relatively few resources, such as t­ hose in the Black rights movement, gained ­great attention, as did short-­lived groups such as the Bonus Army and the Townsend Plan. Having disruptive capacities often mattered as well, as many u­ nions made big news during strikes and other organ­izations won attention for non-­institutional action. Yet, as we have also seen, organ­izations with l­ittle taste or propensity for disruptive action often made considerable news, including ­those pressing for the rights of ­women or the el­derly. Do characteristics like orga­nizational and disruptive capacities ­matter at the level of movements as a ­whole? Scholars have also focused on po­liti­cal circumstances to explain the rise of movements and their influence. They usually argue that when left-­leaning po­ liti­cal parties take power, they w ­ ill aid progressive movements, and po­liti­cal regimes of the right ­will aid conservative ones. Our brief analyses showed that Republican regimes in the 1920s corresponded to the heyday of the Ku Klux Klan, Franklin Roo­se­velt’s New Deal was a period of extensive l­abor organ­ ization and news, and Lyndon Johnson’s administration played the same role for the Black rights movement. Also, however, ­these contexts saw ­great attention to movements from the opposite end of the po­liti­c al spectrum.

110  c h a p t e r 3

Conservatives ­rose up and gained attention during Roo­se­velt’s New Deal, nativists did so during Johnson’s G ­ reat Society, and the Tea Party u­ nder Barack Obama. Sometimes, moreover, movement actors became highly newsworthy when they w ­ ere ­under po­liti­cal attack. Organ­izations ranging from the Anti-­ Saloon League to Students for a Demo­cratic Society made big news while being investigated by Congress. We think it is also key to examine the influence of broader transformations in po­liti­cal institutions on the treatment of movements in the news. As t­ hese po­liti­cal institutions became increasingly centralized, professionalized, and modernized, they spurred all manner of interest, advocacy, and movement organ­izations. In turn, an increasingly professional and nationally focused media covered them more frequently, as we saw with the upsurge in attention to national movement organ­izations a­ fter the First World War. Policy innovations, moreover, strongly influenced some movements’ prospects for making news. Anti-­alcohol organ­izations w ­ ere more in the news a­ fter the passage of Prohibition in 1919, large organ­izations in the l­abor movement w ­ ere more in the news ­after the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935, and the Big Four organ­izations in the Black rights movement w ­ ere more in the news a­ fter the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in the mid-1960s than they ­were before. To explain why movements received extensive attention when they did, we are arguing that neither internal aspects of movements nor po­liti­cal developments ­will be enough. Instead, it ­will take combinations of them, ones that fit with journalistic practices, to produce consistent, extensive news for movements. Moreover, movements that gain news attention ­w ill tend to keep it. News coverage is sticky—it often builds on itself through po­liti­cal and news institutional pro­cesses. Movements that make the news w ­ ill remain in the news, especially when they benefit from policy or retain orga­nizational power, which are themselves subject to positive feedback loops. But before addressing that, we begin by describing 33 movements, indicating which ones made the most news, and comparing their news attention to how frequently scholars have studied them.

Movements in the News and Movements in History (and Sociology and Po­liti­cal Science) To generate the big pictures of social movements in the news, we start by assigning each of more than 1,500 national organ­izations to one of 30 specific movements, plus three residual ones. That is easier said than done, as ­there is

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no scholarly consensus regarding what constitutes the population of US movements, possibly ­because few have tried to compare them all. ­Here we include frequently used, if broad and expansive, categories that focus on a movement’s issues rather its demographic makeup, often referring to “rights” generally. We also highlight continuity, viewing movements as ranging across the twentieth ­century and beyond. Among ­these movements so defined are progressive ones such as the w ­ omen’s rights, African American rights, l­ abor, environmental, anti-­war, and LGBTQ rights movements, and conservative ones such as the anti-­abortion, nativist/white supremacist, gun rights, and Christian right movements. From our wide view, the w ­ omen’s rights movement includes organ­izations pressing suffrage drives in the first wave of the movement and ­those campaigning for the Equal Rights Amendment in the second wave. But it also includes w ­ omen’s rights organ­izations before and ­after, ­whether they ­were fighting for maternal aid or jury repre­sen­ta­tion a ­century ago or against sexual harassment and assault in the #MeToo campaign t­ oday. The Black rights movement includes not only organ­izations demanding civil and voting rights in the 1960s, but also t­ hose seeking anti-­lynching legislation, calling for Black Power, or demanding police reform t­ oday. Three categories are largely residual. The “progressive” and “conservative” groupings include movement organ­izations that w ­ ere po­liti­cally left or right in orientation, but which do not fit neatly into one of the other movements or did not receive enough coverage to count as their own movement. A third includes organ­izations seeking rights for a variety of groups, but with not one gaining enough coverage to make the cutoff. ­These movement categories are mutually exclusive and exhaustive and make it pos­si­ble to track the historical news attention gained by movements overall, by dif­fer­ent types of movements, and by individual movements.1 Although identifying movements and assigning organ­izations to them is tricky, detecting which was the most newsworthy is ­simple. The ­labor movement received the most extensive news coverage, and no other movement even came close (see ­table 3.1). It accounted for more than one-­third of all articles mentioning movement organ­izations and almost 400,000 articles overall. Its main umbrella organ­izations—­the AFL, CIO, and AFL-­CIO—­ accounted for more than one-­sixth of the total coverage of movement organ­ izations. L ­ abor, however, would also remain on top if only the individual ­unions w ­ ere counted. This movement was covered more than four times as much as its closest competitor. This dominance is underlined in figures 3.1 and 3.2. The first shows a scatterplot of movement coverage in the New York Times against coverage in the three other newspapers, without l­abor in the picture.

­Labor

­Women’s Rights

Veterans’ Rights

Black Rights

Progressive

Environmental and Conservation

Nativist/White Supremacist

Conservative

Anti-­Alcohol

Communist

Jewish American Rights

Anti-­War

Farmer Advocacy

­Children’s Protection and Rights

Old Age and Elder Rights

Abortion Rights

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

Movement

13,899

14,286

14,605

17,416

18,038

20,414

21,049

24,628

26,048

39,404

46,900

64,084

79,402

84,969

85,984

389,189

Total

2,605

2,466

1,658

2,882

3,023

2,616

4,211

3,527

5,309

7,697

9,871

13,147

18,066

11,251

9,758

79,440

Front Page

12,969

12,169

14,413

15,242

10,249

19,900

17,664

23,842

12,892

31,091

27,759

35,354

62,831

84,193

67,212

254,633

Top 5 Coverage

93.3

85.2

98.7

87.5

56.8

97.5

83.9

96.8

49.5

78.9

59.2

55.2

79.1

99.1

78.2

65.4

Top 5 ­Percent

Planned Parenthood

American Association of Retired Persons

Parent Teacher Association

American Farm Bureau Federation

American Friends Ser­vice Committee

Anti-­Defamation League

Communist Party

­Women’s Christian Temperance Union

John Birch Society

Ku Klux Klan

Sierra Club

American Civil Liberties Union

NAACP

American Legion

League of ­Women Voters

AFL-­CIO

Top Organ­ization

­Table 3.1. The Newspaper Coverage of Movements, the Concentration of Coverage, and Most Covered Organ­ization, 1900–1999

Civil Rights, Other Groups

Christian Right

­Human Rights

Animal Protection and Rights

Civic

Mexican American Rights

Consumer

Anti-­Smoking

Demo­cratic Party-­Left

LGBTQ Rights

Gun Rights

Anti-­Abortion

AIDS Advocacy

Disability Rights

Native American Rights

Welfare and Homeless Rights

Gun Control and Safety

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

1,269

1,735

1,760

2,702

2,903

4,357

4,434

4,784

5,744

5,788

8,684

8,935

9,228

9,341

10,648

11,546

12,754

335

451

303

324

765

1,075

1,101

1,281

1,156

1,055

2,082

2,221

2,026

801

1,553

3,049

2,939

1,236

1,444

1,759

2,079

2,718

3,812

4,363

2,889

5,729

5,271

8,631

7,613

8,497

7,303

10,648

7,708

7,854

97.4

83.2

99.9

76.9

93.6

87.5

98.4

60.4

99.7

91.1

99.4

85.2

92.1

78.2

100.0

66.8

61.6

Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Vio­lence

National Welfare Rights Organ­ization

American Indian Movement

American Foundation for the Blind

AIDS Co­ali­tion to Unleash Power

Operation Rescue

National ­Rifle Association

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

Americans for Demo­cratic Action

American Cancer Society

Consumers Union

United Farm Workers

Common Cause

American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

Amnesty International

Moral Majority

Nation of Islam

% Movement Coverage in the Other Newspapers

Women’s rights 9

Veterans’ rights Black rights

6

Progressive Environment Nativist

3

0 0

3

6

9

% Movement Coverage in the New York Times

% Movement Coverage in the Other Newspapers

figure 3.1. The News Coverage of Movements in the New York Times and Three Newspapers.

40 Labor 30

20

10

Women’s rights Veterans’ rights Progressive Black rights Environment Nativist

0 0

10

20

30

40

% Movement Coverage in the New York Times figure 3.2. The News Coverage of Movements in the New York Times and Three Newspapers, 1900–1999.

A C e n t u r y o f N e w s Wav e s  115

We array the news organ­izations on dif­fer­ent axes, ­because it is pos­si­ble that the New York Times, which provides the plurality of all movement articles, may skew the results. The second figure adds ­labor. As the comparison shows, ­labor news dwarfed that of other movements, no ­matter which sources are examined.2 Two of the next spots on the most newsworthy list are occupied by familiar subjects of social movement scholars. The ­women’s rights movement comes in second place, with its organ­izations being mentioned in approximately 87,000 articles across the ­century. Movement scholars have most frequently focused on the second wave of feminist contention beginning in the 1960s, led in academic studies by Jo Freeman’s (1973) “The Origins of the ­Women’s Liberation Movement,” with a significant number addressing the first wave w ­ omen’s suffrage movement.3 The Black rights movement appears in fourth place, not far ­behind. It is represented in about 79,000 articles mentioning a movement organ­ization and was led in coverage by the NAACP. This movement has been at the center of social movement studies since the publication of Aldon Morris’s (1981) “Black Southern Student Sit-in Movement: An Analy­sis of Internal Organ­ization” and Doug McAdam’s (1982) Po­liti­cal Pro­cess and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970.4 Between ­these two movements, in third place in news attention, is one that has been less studied by scholars: the veterans’ movement, which garnered about 85,000 newspaper mentions. Although sometimes the Bonus Expeditionary Force, or “Bonus Army,” of the 1930s appears in historical treatments of US protest, including accounts by Frances Fox Piven and by David S. Meyer, veterans’ po­liti­cal involvement appears more prominently in po­liti­cal science analyses of American po­liti­cal development. Theda Skocpol shows that veterans’ organ­izations, including the G ­ rand Army of the Republic (GAR), Veterans of Foreign Wars, and American Legion, ­were among the country’s largest membership organ­izations, and other work by her documents the influence of the GAR over the expansion of Civil War pensions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Suzanne Mettler has argued that Second World War-­era veterans’ organ­izations, especially the American Legion, ­were influential in promoting the 1945 G.I. Bill of Rights.5 In fifth place in news attention is the environmental movement, with conservation organ­izations gaining prominence early in the c­ entury and the modern environmental movement taking off in the 1970s. Standing as

116  c h a p t e r 3

perhaps the most central “new” social movement, in the sense of being connected to post-­industrial values and quality-­of-­life issues, the environmental movement has captured the attention of many scholars as well.6 Just ­behind the environmental movement in sixth place is the nativist and white supremacist movement, with almost 40,000 articles across the newspapers. Although it was a focus of scholarship before the surge in social movement studies over the last several de­cades, this movement has only recently regained attention from scholars.7 It is pos­si­ble that the news prominence of some of t­ hese movements, especially the e­ arlier ones, was simply due to extensive low-­profile coverage, such as by notices of meetings or local events. Organ­izations with such minor press would certainly not make as strong an impression in the public sphere as t­ hose appearing more prominently in the news. However, movement coverage on page one is similar to movement coverage in the rest of the newspaper. The rankings are mainly the same, though with the African American rights movement trading places with the ­women’s rights movement, which had many organ­izations covered by way of civic action in the first half of the ­century (see ­table 3.1). The dominance of the ­labor movement in the news remains, and the other movements hold their positions. We have mentioned anecdotally tendencies in scholarship regarding dif­fer­ ent movements, but now confront that issue more directly. To ascertain the academic attention to social movements, we examine all articles focusing on movements that w ­ ere published from 1980 through 2020 in three top US general sociology journals, three main po­liti­cal science journals, and two central historical journals, plus the two main US specialty journals addressing movements.8 ­Because this scholarship relies heavi­ly on case studies, examining individual movements or organ­izations within a given movement, taking stock of their treatment in ­these prominent journals provides a more direct reading of scholarly attention. We can also identify any potential disciplinary differences in attention. Some distinctions begin with how they tend to treat movement actors. Sociology journals usually focus on social movements as such and have produced the most articles about them. Po­liti­cal science journals tend to home in on the influence of movements and advocacy organ­izations in politics and policymaking. History journals tend to focus on individual movement organ­izations and impor­tant movement actors as they illuminate specific issues in historiography. In each discipline, however, ­there has been ­great interest in movements over the last de­cades of the twentieth ­century and first de­cades of the twenty-­f irst. Across the 10 journals, movements are

A C e n t u r y o f N e w s Wav e s  117

impor­tant subjects in 558 articles, including 373 in sociology, 93 in po­liti­cal science, and 92 in history. As with news attention, in scholarship ­there is also a clear winner among the movements, though it is not the same one. Across each of the disciplines, the most studied movement is the Black rights movement—by a significant margin and from any ­angle. By way of ­simple counts of the number of articles that focus on movements or movement actors in specific movements, the Black rights movement has dominated scholarly attention. It has been a main subject of 66 articles in sociology journals, 29 in po­liti­cal science, and 43 in history, for a total of 138 (see ­table 3.2). By percentage of movement-­related articles, the Black rights movement is best represented in the history journals, which have devoted 38 ­percent of articles featuring movement actors to it. Although ­there are more articles about the Black rights movement in sociology than in the other disciplines, the movement accounts for a smaller share, 18 ­percent, of movement articles in sociology.9 Somewhat distantly ­behind the Black rights movement in scholarly treatment are the w ­ omen’s rights and l­ abor movements. The w ­ omen’s rights movement appears in 88 articles overall. The ­labor movement appears in 77 articles. ­There is a significant divergence in disciplinary attention between them, however. Although the ­women’s rights movement is best represented in sociology in terms of the sheer number of articles devoted to it, in percentage terms it is best represented in history journals, with a quarter of articles devoted to movements addressing w ­ omen’s rights subjects, and 14 ­percent each for po­liti­cal science and sociology. The ­labor movement is similarly represented by each of the disciplines, ranging from 18 ­percent in the history journals to 12 ­percent in the sociology ones. The rest of the rankings are driven by sociology and sociology specialty journals, which account for most of the production of movement-­centered scholarship. Among the non-­residual categories, the environmental and anti-­war movements are next. The environmental movement is the focus of 40 articles in the sociology journals (which accounts for 11 ­percent of the total in that discipline) and eight in po­liti­cal science (9 ­percent), though only three in the history journals (3 ­percent). The anti-­war movement has frequently been a subject in sociology journals, appearing in 40 articles, and three each in po­liti­cal science and history. The LGBTQ rights movement follows in attention with 25 articles in sociology journals, six in po­liti­cal science, and two in the history journals.10 ­There is considerable attention in each discipline for the residual movements we label progressive and conservative, with progressive movements and

Movement

Black Rights

­Women’s Rights

­Labor

Environment

Anti-­War

Progressive

LGBTQ Rights

Conservative

Nativist/White Supremacist

Civil Rights Other Groups

Mexican American Rights

Anti-­Abortion

Abortion Rights

Rank

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

9

9

12

13

10

11

13

13

13

17

25

33

40

40

44

52

66

Articles

SOCIOLOGY

3

3

3

3

3

5

7

9

11

11

12

14

18

Percentage

12

8

8

8

8

7

6

5

4

4

3

2

1

Rank

Mexican American Rights

Civic

Anti-­War

Consumer Rights

­Human Rights

Christian Right

Conservative

LGBTQ Rights

Environment

Progressive

­Women’s Rights

­Labor

Black Rights

Movement

2

3

3

3

3

4

5

6

8

8

13

16

25

Articles

POLITICAL SCIENCE

2

3

3

3

3

4

5

6

9

9

14

17

27

Percentage

9

9

9

9

9

6

6

6

5

4

3

2

1

Rank

Consumer Rights

Civil Rights Other Groups

Disability Rights

Mexican American Rights

LGBTQ Rights

Anti-­War

Native American Rights

Environment

Conservative

Progressive

­Labor

­Women’s Rights

Black Rights

Movement

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

6

13

17

23

35

Articles

HISTORY

­Table 3.2. Social Movements Examined in 10 Selected Sociology, Po­liti­cal Science, and History Journals, 1980–2020, by Number and Percentage of Articles

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

7

14

18

25

38

Percentage

Christian Right

Native American Rights

Anti-­Alcohol

Old Age and Elder Rights

Welfare/Homeless Rights

AIDS Advocacy

Consumer Rights

Animals

Gun Rights

Demo­cratic Party-­Left

Communist

Civic

Anti-­Smoking

Total

14

15

16

17

18

18

20

20

22

22

22

22

22

 

373

1

1

1

1

1

3

3

4

4

5

6

8

9

17