New Must-Read Media Analysis: Understanding Low Wage Work
The folks who brought us the incredibly important research on communication strategies to build support for policies that improve low-wage work—Doug Gould & Co., Inc. with funding from the Ford Foundation—have just completed an update of the media scan that started it all in 2001. The new report is a must-read for journalists, editors, advocates, policy makers and others.
The author reminds us all that “…that the term ‘low wage work’ is generally perceived as more positive than ‘working poor’….’Working poor’ has negative connotations for many people and is widely misunderstood. The overriding belief among Americans is that if a person works hard s/he will succeed. Thus, the label ‘working poor’ seems contradictory to some. In addition, the word ‘poor’ carries negative associations with subjects such as welfare and for some implies that the person in question has moral failings.”
Also, “[a] core finding of the formative research done in 2001 indicated that news stories framed ‘systemically’ are more likely to dispose people toward policy-oriented solutions than are stories framed ‘personally’, which are more likely to dispose people toward charitable, ‘fix the person’ solutions….news stories that approach issues systemically are more supportive of our [policy] goals and our overall world view than are stories that are framed personally.”
Happily, the new media analysis finds that that “the vast majority of stories reviewed for this analysis were, in fact, framed systemically.” Also, “low-wage work and issues related to it are receiving more attention in the nation’s press than they did five years ago.”
Students of the low-wage labor market will not be surprised to learn that family leave and paid leave stories increased over this time period. Unfortunately, the author notes “an unusually high number [of these stories] were framed from a personal perspective” and "undifferentiated coverage of paid and unpaid leave, and the fact that a majority of family leave stories are framed from a personal perspective that tend not to advance policy change, it appears that efforts should be strengthened to clarify paid leave issues with journalists.” (The report does not indicate whether the researchers used the search term “paid sick days”, a newly hot topic in the past few months.)
A disappointing finding noted by the author: “Reporters are still using the label ‘working poor’ to identify low-wage workers.” Over forty percent of the stories in the sample used that language.
If you are interested in thinking about how to talk to reporters/write about these issues in ways that build support for systemic policy change (and why else would you be reading this posting to the end?), go read the whole report.
For more on the research project and earlier findings, see the website www.economythatworks.org or review our presentation How to (Not) Talk About Poverty.