1. World Federation of Trade Unions

2. Kathmandu Nepal, 14 July 2012
WFTU SEMINAR:
“Mass media
and the trade union movement”

3. How is information massively
circulated today?
Through:
 International News Agencies
(Reuters, Associated Press, Al
Jazeera etc.)
 National Agencies
 National Mass Media Groups (TV,
Radio, Newspapers, Magazines,
Web-Portals)

4. Which story becomes news?
It is these Mass Media Groups that define:
 what will become news in national and global
level
 how will the news be presented, from which
viewpoint
 what will become the top story
 which will be the hierarchy of the headlines
 how long these “story” will remain in the
headlines
 which aspects of the story will be highlighted

5. Who owns the Media Groups?
The Mass Media Groups are owned
by monopoly groups, by owners of
oil companies, pharmaceutical
companies, construction companies,
etc.
Mass Media are owned by
capitalists.

6. Why do capitalists own Mass
Media?
They do not sick primarily to make profit out of
their use.
Advertisements usually cover the cost of the
programs.
They aim to:
 Improve their individual interests in relation to
the state.
 Improve their position in the competition with
other capitalists and increase the profitability of
the other companies of the monopoly group.
 Serve the collective interests of the capitalist
class in the class struggle against the working
class and the popular strata.

7. Mass Media in Relation to the State
 The state is giving them licenses for the
free use of the public frequencies.
 The competition of the media for the state
advertisement affects the content of the
information.
 Journalists are on “payrolls” of the state,
ministries or political parties.

8. Media in the capitalist crisis
Because:
1) the capitalists usually do not make direct profit
out of their Media Corporations
2) Within the crisis they do not have the percentage
of profit they would like to have though their
other investments
Hence, they might choose:
 to close some Media down
 proceed to mergers
 or/and attack trade union rights, collective
agreements, flexible and long working hours etc.

9. How do Mass Media act under
capitalist ownership?
Marx and Engels wrote:
“the class which is the ruling material force
of society is at the same time its ruling
intellectual force. The class which has the
means of material production at its disposal
has control at the same time over the
means of mental production”

10. How do Mass Media act under
capitalist ownership?
Putting pressure in the governments:
This way the hold their political
personnel captive to serve their
individual or collective interests.

11. How do Mass Media act under
capitalist ownership?
Manipulate the public opinion targeting
mainly the popular factor: the working
class and the popular strata.
They cultivate false consciousness. They
make the workers think as if they were
capitalists, according to the bourgeois
ethics. (racism, anti-communism, drug
culture, sub-culture, corruption etc.)

12. How do Mass Media act under
capitalist ownership?
Promotion of the bourgeois
agenda and strategy though
the hierarchy and the choices
of the news stories.

13. How do Mass Media act under
capitalist ownership?
They terrorize the people and
slander the history of the
people and the trade union
movement

14. How do Mass Media act under
capitalist ownership?
They form a perverse reality by
hiding the exploitative nature
of the capitalist system which
is the true cause of the acute
labour and social problems.

15. How do Mass Media act under
capitalist ownership?
To promote the capitalist
products they have to create a
perverse perception of what are
the actual needs of the people.

16. Two types of people
working in the media:
 A labour aristocracy which plays an
active and conscious part in promoting
the ruling ideology (with huge wages,
party payrolls, direct contact with
governments or even secret agencies)
 A majority of poorly paid, hard working
people who under the pressure of
dismissal, terrorism, directions or false
consciousness, willingly or unwillingly
function as the communicators of the
ruling ideology and morality.

17. What is the role of the trade union
organisations?
 to organize the media staff in order to play
a progressive role beside the limitations: to
expose the capitalist strategy and plots, to
promote the working class interests and the
struggles of the trade union movement.
 To form the criteria to the people in order
to be able to filter the information they
receive and see it through their own class
interests.

18. What is the role of the trade union
organisations?
 to organize the progressive working people
in the media to use their skills and
knowledge for the creation of media of the
working people, media owned by trade
unions, democratic organizations,
progressive parties.
 To use photos, video, analysis, publications
to circulate the information around the
world in order to enhance international
proletarian solidarity.

19. Which are our goals?
 Cultivating class consciousness
 Belief in the power of the people
 Belief in the victorious historic role of the working
class
 Exposing capitalism and the capitalist mode of
production
 Exposing the parasitic role of the capitalists
 Cultivating the main principles of the working
class: solidarity, internationalism, class unity
 Exposing the defeatist role of the corrupt, sold-
out trade unionists
 Building action though feeding information
 Give orientation to the struggle.

20. According to Lenin:
We need media that will be “the
collective propagandist and collective
enlightenment but also the collective
organizer.” Those kind of media that can
be compared to the “scaffolding built
around a building under construction, that
carve the outline of the building, facilitate
the communication between the different
construction workers, they help them to
allocate the work and have the oversight
of the common results achieved by the
organized work”

21. World Federation of Trade Unions