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How Bloomberg Got It Wrong on the March to End Fossil Fuels
Failing to clearly spell out the connection between protesters’ actions and the existential threats behind them leads to the framing of their demonstrations as merely symbolic at best and hysterical at worst. This blindspot, makes quality reporting impossible.
Oct 03, 2023
Tens of thousands of climate protesters gathered in Midtown Manhattan on September 17, kicking off Climate Week as President Joe Biden arrived in New York to speak at the United Nations General Assembly. These protests—some of the biggest since before Covid—had a pointed message, largely directed at Biden himself: End fossil fuels.
The Biden administration has passed historic climate legislation through the Inflation Reduction Act, which seeks to create clean energy jobs, increase investments in renewables and build infrastructure to support resilience in communities most vulnerable to the climate crisis.
At the same time, however, oil and gas production are still expanding. This year, the US exported a record amount of petroleum, and was also the biggest liquefied natural gas exporter in the world. The Biden administration also greenlit the ConocoPhillips Willow Project, a new oil drilling venture in Alaska (Vox, 9/8/23).
Meanwhile, the scientific consensus is straightforward—and bleak. We are at imminent risk of surpassing the internationally agreed-upon threshold of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2023 report warned that global emissions need to be cut by almost half by 2030 if we are to meet this goal. The planet’s current 1.1°C increase has already led to more frequent and deadly severe weather across the globe.
The urgency with which we need to bring down emissions is clear. Still, news media muddy the waters, encouraging public apathy by focusing on protesters’ tactics at the expense of their demands.
Bloomberg missing the point
Previewing the demonstrations, Bloomberg’s “The Big Climate March Returns in an Era of Soup-Throwing Protests” (9/16/23) spent more time analyzing the psychology behind different forms of demonstration than the dire consequences if protesters’ demands are not met.The piece compared traditional climate marches to more disruptive, but still nonviolent direct action tactics utilized by groups like Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil and Blockade Australia in recent years. Across the world, demonstrators have taken to blocking roads and airport runways, overrunning billionaire-frequented Hamptons destinations, deflating SUV tires, gluing themselves to various surfaces—including the US Open tennis court—and, yes, throwing tomato soup on (glass-protected) Van Gogh paintings.
The piece outlines why many activists feel they need to engage in more extreme demonstrations to gain more attention—by citing a problem it is complicit in:
The rise of disruptive protests is, in part, a reaction to the feeling among some activists that traditional mass actions aren’t effective. Marches—even quite large ones—don’t always get widespread media coverage, limiting their usefulness in garnering attention.
The piece demonstrates just how to perpetuate that problem, offering only one paragraph on protesters’ demands, in the form of a quote from local youth activist Bree Campbell:
“We’re marching to make clear to President Biden that we expect him to uphold his campaign promise for him to be the climate president that we elected,” says Campbell. Those taking part want him “to stop approving fossil fuel projects and leases, phase out fossil fuel production on public lands and waters, and to declare a climate emergency so that he could halt crude oil exports and investments in fossil fuel projects abroad.”
Beyond this statement, there is no acknowledgement of the reality that these demands are not only urgent, but in line with scientific consensus and the UN’s Paris Agreement. Instead, Bloomberg moves on to questioning mass protest marches’ ability to change policy, relying on the expertise of cognitive psychologist Colin Davis, a protest researcher at Britain’s University of Bristol.
“We had 2 million people on the streets [in the UK in 2003], protesting against the invasion of Iraq,” he said. “Obviously, it happened anyway, despite the people coming out against it.”
Davis cited a similar dilemma with Brexit.
The piece would have benefited from some introspection: News media played a crucial role both in disseminating government lies about nonexistent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that ratcheted up support of the war, and in framing Brexit as a popular anti-establishment rebellion (FAIR.org, 3/22/23, 10/15/21).
Bloomberg spent considerable time analyzing and pathologizing climate activists’ strategies by comparing their movement to the ostensible efficacy of others—including Black militant movements of the 1960s. Yet it spent almost no time explaining the life-threatening conditions that caused activists to develop these strategies in the first place.
Crucial connections
After this pre-event article lamented that large-scale marches often don’t receive enough media coverage, a follow-up piece offered only a short recap, which also did not elaborate on why and how quickly we need to tamp down our fossil fuel use (Bloomberg, 9/17/23).
Despite its point that traditional marches usually garner less media attention, Bloomberg also failed to spell out this crucial connection during a more “disruptive” protest. When the Just Stop Oil protesters threw soup at Van Gogh’s famous Sunflowers painting in 2022, the outlet (10/14/22) covered the demonstration in detail, being sure to specify the brand of tomato soup thrown at the painting, and where and when Van Gogh painted it. Yet it did not acknowledge the existence of a climate crisis, or fossil fuels’ central role in it.
Failing to clearly spell out the connection between protesters’ actions and the existential threats behind them leads to the framing of their demonstrations as merely symbolic at best and hysterical at worst. In reality, these protesters’ demand to end fossil fuels is concrete and in line with scientific consensus.
If the media avoid making these clear connections, it won’t matter what tactics protesters use.
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'Oxygen for the Fire': White-Collar Starbucks Workers Blast Union-Busting
"This is the kind of pressure that could force the company to the bargaining table," said one reporter.
Mar 01, 2023
Dozens of white-collar Starbucks employees have endorsed a petition calling out the Seattle-based coffee chain for requiring them to return to the office and interfering with a national unionization push by baristas, Bloomberg revealed Wednesday.
"Starbucks is making headlines and attracting Senate attention for tampering with the federal right of store partners to have fair elections, free from fear, coercion, and intimidation," says the letter, reportedly sent to senior executives and board members.
As the push to organize continues—407 U.S. stores have voted for elections and 292 have voted to unionize—so does the company's forceful response, Starbucks Workers United said in an email Wednesday. While Starbucks has continuously denied any law-breaking, the National Labor Relations Board has issued over 70 complaints against the company, which faces more than 1,200 alleged violations.
\u201cWe can't thank these courageous Support Partners from Starbucks HQ enough for speaking out, calling on executives to reverse the Return to Office mandate and to respect the right to organize and sign the Fair Election Principles. #tobeapartner \ud83e\uddf5\u201d— Starbucks Workers United (@Starbucks Workers United) 1677682575
"This behavior of not listening to partners has also impacted us, the support partners," the letter stresses. "An unforeseen and poorly planned 'return to office' mandate is making our lives more difficult, prioritizing corporate control over productivity, diversity, and inclusion, and individual job satisfaction, effectively reducing our ability to positively impact store partner experience."
"We love Starbucks, but these actions are fracturing trust in Starbucks leadership," adds the petition—signed by 44 named individuals and another 22 who wish to remain anonymous—advocating for a commitment to "a policy of neutrality and respect for federal labor laws" and a reversal of the return to office mandate for those who were able to work remotely.
As Bloomberg detailed:
In January, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz sent a memo requiring workers within commuting distance to return to the office three days a week. He told white-collar staff that baristas "are asking us to do the transformative work that I believe can only be done effectively when we are physically together."
Employees say their protest letter emerged from online discussions over the past couple months that were triggered in part by Schultz's January email. It also reflects long-running frustration by some white-collar staff with Starbucks' response to the union campaign, which U.S. labor board prosecutors have alleged included illegal threats and terminations of around 50 activists. Workers United barista-activists and organizers have been advising the white-collar workers' nascent efforts.
"After Howard issued his edict, I definitely did not feel good working for Starbucks anymore—it felt like I am working for a dictator," Starbucks app developer and letter signatory Peter de Jesus told the outlet. "I feel like this is not the Starbucks that I signed on for."
"A lot of people just want to have their grievances and their demands aired, and hope for change," de Jesus added. "If it doesn't lead to any meaningful change, then the next step is obviously to think about possibly unionizing."
According to Bloomberg:
A Starbucks spokesperson confirmed that the letter was received and said that the company has already been responding to feedback by making adjustments to its office return policy, such as boosting commuter benefits. The spokesperson shared a Wednesday Slack exchange in which a manager, in response to an employee's link to the open letter, said that he would not be clicking the link but would instead like to schedule a meeting to hear the worker's perspective.
The letter—support for which carries risks for members of management, given limits of federal labor laws—not only could be "a precursor to eventual unionization efforts by white-collar Starbucks staff themselves," as Bloomberg noted, it also could aid organizers fighting for contracts and union elections at Starbucks locations across the country.
In response to the new reporting, journalist Bryce Covert
tweeted: "Hundreds of Starbucks stores have unionized but none have a contract. This is the kind of pressure that could force the company to the bargaining table."
\u201cWhen you\u2019re unionizing a large corporate workforce get this corner of its labor on your side it\u2019s like oxygen for the fire\u201d— Jordan (@Jordan) 1677682821
The letter from Starbucks' white-collar workers came as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—a supporter of the unionization effort at the company—announced that since Schultz has declined a recent
invitation to testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which he chairs, members will vote next week on whether to subpoena the CEO, who is set to be replaced on April 1 by Laxman Narasimhan.
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Ignoring Pain for Workers, Bloomberg Editorial Openly Endorses Fed-Induced Recession
The prominent business publication founded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg urged the Federal Reserve to "show it understands" the need for more layoffs and lower wages.
Sep 21, 2022
With the Federal Reserve expected to impose another large interest rate hike on Wednesday, the editorial board of Bloomberg openly encouraged the U.S. central bank to demonstrate that it is willing to "cause a recession" in order to get sky-high inflation under control.
Critics were quick to note that the Wednesday editorial, which claims "wage growth will need to slow" and unemployment will need to rise for inflation to come down, doesn't grapple with the severe damage a recession would inflict on workers who would face job losses, pay cuts, and other consequences in the case of a Fed-induced downturn.
"This editorial doesn't mention workers, families, and communities--the lifeblood of our economy and the people who will bear the brutal costs of a recession."
"Imagine my absolute shock that this editorial doesn't mention workers, families, and communities--the lifeblood of our economy and the people who will bear the brutal costs of a recession--at all," Claire Guzdar, managing director of campaigns and partnerships at the Groundwork Collaborative, wrote in a sarcasm-tinged Twitter post.
The editorial from Bloomberg, a publication founded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, argues that while the Fed's stated goal of lowering inflation without hurling the economy into recession is "a worthy goal," reining in runaway price increases "almost always involves a temporary contraction of output together with higher unemployment."
"The central bank can't afford to equivocate about the need to slow the economy," the editorial continues. "Wage growth will need to slow substantially for inflation to gradually settle back at the Fed's 2% target. That, in turn, is likely to require short-term interest rates that peak at well over 4% and, unfortunately, a somewhat higher rate of unemployment. The Fed surely understands all this. But it needs to show it understands--and won't balk at the prospect."
In his recent public remarks, Fed Chair Jerome Powell has hardly been coy about his willingness to push the economy into recession and cause "pain" for households and businesses in his effort to tame inflation.
"Reducing inflation is likely to require a sustained period of below-trend growth. Moreover, there will very likely be some softening of labor market conditions," Powell said during his closely watched speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming last month. "These are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation."
By endorsing a recession as an acceptable outcome in the fight against inflation, Bloomberg's editorial board joins a group of media outlets, analysts, and pundits that economist Dean Baker has dubbed "the recession lobby."
"There is a large recession lobby in Washington these days that seems to view a recession as a positive good for the economy and society," Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote in a blog post earlier this month. "The basic story is that we have seen a big jump in inflation associated with the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. They argue that a recession will be needed to bring inflation back down to acceptable levels."
"I, and others, have pointed out the enormous human costs associated with a recession," Baker added. "Unemployment is traumatic for everyone, but we know that the people who are most likely to lose their jobs in a recession are those who are most disadvantaged in the labor market, such as Blacks, Hispanics, people with less education, and people with a criminal record."
The Bloomberg editorial was published hours before the Fed's announcement on its latest interest rate hike, which is expected to be 75 basis points following a hotter-than-expected August inflation reading.
Economists have warned for months that the Fed's rate-hiking frenzy, which other powerful central banks around the world have replicated, risks a destructive global recession. The World Bank cautioned last week that a worldwide recession is becoming increasingly likely as interest rate increases take their toll on demand.
Writing for Project Syndicate last week, Baker and Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz called on the Fed to pause its rake hikes, arguing that "it would be irresponsible for the Fed to create much higher unemployment deliberately."
"With inflation and inflationary expectations already dampening," they wrote, "the Fed should be assigning more weight to the downside risk of additional tightening: namely, that it would push an already battered U.S. economy into recession."
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