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The Philadelphia Inquirer, in today's edition, ran an article under the headling "Temple dispute goes to labor board," that treated as fact statements by the university's president, Ann Weaver Hart, which were, alternately, misleading and flat out wrong.

The article, by reporter Susan Snyder, was a classic of the "he said/she said" genre, in which the reporter gives quotes from each side in a dispute, with no effort to verify the veracity or accuracy of those quotes, leaving the reader to assume that she is getting an accurate picture of what is happening. In fact, as was also famously true with the paper's reporting on the run-up to the Iraq War, readers got lies and misrepresentations from one side, and ended up being thoroughly misled about the real story.

For starters, the article was clearly based upon a news release by Temple management announcing that the university had filed a claim with the state Labor Relations Board of "unfair labor practices" against the faculty union, the Temple Association of University Professionals (TAUP), charging that the union was refusing to bargain in good faith. But the article didn't mention that a filed claim is basically a meaningless "event," since the labor board has yet to determine whether the claim has merit and should go to a hearing.

In labor disputes, both managements and unions frequently file such claims in hopes of gaining a PR advantage, but journalists need to try to establish whether such claims are serious or just frivolous efforts to score media points. In this case, the reporter made no such effort. While she did quote TAUP President Art Hochner saying the union felt the claim was "frivolous," she should have gone on to note that the union itself earlier filed a claim against the administration charging unfair labor practices and that that claim has been found to have merit and is currently in hearings before the board--a story that the Inquirer has completely ignored to date.

The article then goes on to quote from a letter sent last week by President Hart to all university faculty (itself a violation of labor relations law which bars "direct dealing" by management with employees, and the subject of another union-filed claim of unfair labor practices), in which she claims that the union's current negotiation position of seeking a "fair share" payment from all non-union faculty members in lieu of dues would be "inappropriate" and an effort to "force Temple to do TAUP's organizing."

If the reporter had done her own research, she would have discovered, and could have reported to readers, that far from "inappropriate," so-called Fair Share policies are in place already at Temple, requiring only that the union sign up 70% representation (it currently recieves dues from 65% of faculty). How "inappropriate" could such a plan be, if the university is ready to require Fair Share payments if just 5% more of the faculty sign on with the union? Furthermore, the Snyder could have reported on the fact that most other public universities in the state have fair share plans in their contracts.

Beyond that, she might have reported on the reason unions need fair share: by law, they are required to provide services to all employees, whether dues paying union members or not--services which include providing information and assigning grievance officers in the event of an individual's having a dispute with management. These can be costly, requiring paid union staff time and even legal services. Furthermore, all employees, and in this case, all faculty members at Temple, benefit from the contracts negotiated by the union--the raises, the job protections and the benefits, such as health care--whether they are union members or not.

Journalist Snyder also reported, as fact, a whopper in President Hart's letter, where Hart claimed that a proposed option offered up in the union's current negotiating position--allowing faculty members who are opposed in principle to unions to donate their "fair share" amount to a charity instead of to the union--would not work because such a compulsory charity donation "would not be tax deductible." This is factually incorrect, as the reporter could have learned by contacting the IRS or the Department of Labor. In fact many universities, including several Philly-area community colleges, have such an option in place, and they report that the charity donations are tax deductible, just as are union dues.

Snyder's whole story was a sorry case of misinformation passed off as news, and the reason for the problem was the reporter's having resorted to a simple quoting of sources, without any effort made to verify or debunk what was being said.

Speaking as a veteran journalist of 36 years' experience, I would have to say that this is probably less the reporter's fault than the newspaper's. Given all the staff cuts that have been made over the years at the Inquirer, the reporters that are left are both inexperienced and overworked and probably haven't got the time to do the kind of reporting needed here, even if they did know that they should go beyond simple quoting of the two sides' statements.

On the other hand, it speaks badly of the Inquirer that when I pointed the problems in the article out in a comment at the end of the online version of the story, my comment, written in a completely civil tone, was blocked from publication.
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-area journalist, veteran labor reporter, and was a founder of the National Writers Union. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net