IIndustry wires trial lawyers up to
hot seat on terrors, jobs, and health
by Roger Bybee
Name a hot-button issue that triggers an immediate and profound emotional response—like terrorism, the outsourcing of US jobs, and anxiety over health care and you will find trial lawyers being vilified by powerful corporate voices.
Trial lawyers are no longer being attacked simply on the dry-sounding and insular issue of tort “reform” that plays well in corporate suites but leaves the general public uninspired. Now, the attacks link trial lawyers and the absence of tort reform to emotionally-charged issues of national security, jobs, and health care.
On these issues, trial lawyers are repeatedly cast as an arrogant “elite” ruthlessly victimizing ordinary Americans on fundamental concerns, without regard to the damage they cause. While these charges may sound ludicrous to those familiar with the issues, corporate media strategists are apparently counting on the sheer emotional power of their super-charged rhetoric to short-circuit any rational evaluation of these accusations against trial lawyers.
The super-charged rhetoric and carefully-crafted messages against civil justice are being disseminated systematically through the collaboration of pro-corporate foundations, organizations like the American Tort Reform Association, several major business coalitions, and the extensive web of corporate-friendly media, ranging from Fox TV to Rush Limbaugh to the Wall St. Journal editorial page. This massive undertaking can only be described as a classic campaign of “propaganda” which scholar Alex Carey defined as:
“communications where the form and content is selected with the single-minded purpose of bringing some target audience to adopt attitudes and beliefs chosen in advance by the sponsors of the communications.” [1]
The annual expenditures behind the tort “reform” propaganda efforts are estimated to be in the $100 million range.[2]
The Politics Of Tort ‘Reform’
<
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate
I'm teaching in Labor Studies at Penn State and the University of Illinois in on-line classes. I've been continuing with my work as freelance writer, with my immediate aim to complete a book on corporate media coverage of globalization (tentatively titled The Giant Sucking Sound: How Corporate Media Swallowed the Myth of Free Trade.) I write frequently for Z, The Progressive Magazine's on-line site, The Progressive Populist, Madison's Isthmus alternative weekly, and a variety of publications including Yes!, The Progressive, Foreign Policy in Focus, and several websites. I've been writing a blog on labor issues for workinginthesetimes.com, turning out over 300 pieces in the past four years.My work specializes in corporate globalization, labor, and healthcare reform... I've been a progressive activist since the age of about 17, when I became deeply affected by the anti-war and civil rights movements. I entered college at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee just days after watching the Chicago police brutalize anti-war demonstrators at the Democratic Convention of 1968. I was active in a variety of "student power" and anti-war activities, highlighted by the May, 1970 strike after the Nixon's invastion of Cambodia and the massacres at Kent State and Jackson State. My senior year was capped by Nixon's bombing of Haiphong Harbor and the occupation of a university building, all in the same week I needed to finish 5-6 term papers to graduate, which I managed somehow. My wife Carolyn Winter, whom I met in the Wisconsin Alliance, and I have been together since 1975, getting officially married 10/11/81. Carolyn, a native New Yorker, has also been active for social justice since her youth (she attended the famous 1963 Civil Rights march where Dr. King gave his "I have a dream speech"). We have two grown children, Lane (with wife Elaine and 11-year-old grandson Zachary, who introduced poker to his classmates during recess) living in Chicago and Rachel (who with her husband Michael have the amazing Talia Ruth,5, who can define "surreptitious" for you) living in Asbury Park, NJ. My sister Francie lives down the block from me. I'm a native of the once-heavily unionized industrial city of Racine, Wis. (which right-wingers sneeringly labeled "Little Moscow" during the upheavals of the 1930's), and both my grandfathers were industrial workers and Socialists. On my father's side, my grandfather was fired three times for Socialist or union activity. His family lost their home at one point during the Depression. My mom's father was a long-time member of UAW Local 72 at American Motors, where he worked for more than 30 years. Coming from impoverished families, my parents met through a very low-cost form of recreation: Racine's Hiking Club.
