News Discovers that Corporations Are Repressive
Judy McGovern is surprised that Pfizer employees don’t want to talk to the media. “It’s plainly, and in some cases explicitly, about the fear of being punished for doing or saying anything that might offend Pfizer officials … Few of us would choose to create an organization where folks who work hard and contribute on the job would worry about being penalized for what they say off the job.”
Well, okay. Maybe Pfizer is an unusually repressive company. But it’s more likely that this is a case of the mainstream media being out of touch with their readers.
McGovern is asking Pfizer employees to speak publicly about their jobs. Is she aware of how many bloggers are fired for publishing their opinions on issues that have nothing to do with their jobs? And the mainstream media both stoke these fears and legitimize employers’ actions by producing a steady stream of “be careful what you put online” stories, framing it not as a free expression issue, but as an issue of careless employees or job seekers facing the consequences of their indiscreetness. So why, if it’s dangerous to put anything out there on your own site, where you can be sure that your ideas will be represented fairly and completely, would you talk to a reporter, over whom you have no influence as to how your statements will be used? The risk is just too high.
Journalism is a clubby, insular world where you can speak your mind without much fear of reprisal, and it’s probably easy for journalists to forget that most of America works for companies that can and will fire them at any time for any reason, including expressing ideas that the corporate brass doesn’t like. Maybe more ordinary Americans starting to shun the press as if they were officials under indictment will help them remember.
Excellent post there, AAIO–reading through some of the stuff a lot of journalists put out these days makes me regard the whole “upstart blogger” stereotype with… not even outrage, but just a sort of weariness. It’s bad enough at the Ann Arbor News, it seems, but even reaches over to better papers and outlets as well.
posted by Lazaro on February 4th, 2007 at 3:41 pmThanks Lazaro. Yeah, I’ve heard a lot lately about people’s drunken college MySpace pictures hurting them in the job search. This one’s kind of a double whammy, because the media get to imply both that it’s reasonable to base hiring decisions on some wacky pictures you put online for your friends, and that people whose online activity concerns potential employers are probably doing something about as intellectually substantial as uploading drunk MySpace photos.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on February 4th, 2007 at 3:53 pmHmmm… should we turn the tables and ask Judy M. how she feels about the management at her paper. What, for example, does she like & dislike about Ann Arbor News employee policies? As another example, could she be among those who are happy that former top editor Ed P. moved on? Can we expect Judy to talk with the kind of openness she seems to expect from Pfizer’s local employees?
posted by Reader's Viewpoint on February 4th, 2007 at 4:13 pmDrunken myspace photos have yet to harm my job prospects!
posted by Brandon on February 4th, 2007 at 5:18 pmBut that’s because your drunken MySpace photos have intellectual substance, Brandon.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on February 5th, 2007 at 10:37 amMy drunken photos are on Flickr, not MySpace. Maybe the corporate world hasn’t found them yet.
posted by Dave on February 5th, 2007 at 2:33 pmNew art form…imagine what Jackson Pollock could have done with drunken MySpace photos and a few tomatoes and turnips. Oy.
posted by David Boyle on February 5th, 2007 at 2:56 pmMmmmmm… turnips!
I’m sure very few people would want to publically state their opinions about their employer, especially in a situation where it isn’t clear who will lose their jobs and who will be transferred.
Reader’s Viewpoint has a good point–I bet Judy would be hesitant to write a column about her management.
posted by Monica on February 5th, 2007 at 3:44 pmYeah, I’d like to hear from Judy McG. as well, considering that she was demoted from editorial page editor to Connections columnist.
I didn’t know that Ed P. had “moved on” - his name is still on the masthead as editor.
posted by justme on February 5th, 2007 at 4:22 pmReader’s Viewpoint asks: “As another example, could she be among those who are happy that former top editor Ed P. moved on.”
Ed Petykiewicz is still editor-in-chief of the News.
posted by Fact Check on February 5th, 2007 at 4:25 pmR.V. might be confusing Ed Petykiewicz with former Publisher David Sharp, who left not too long ago to go to another Booth newspaper.
posted by Newsy on February 5th, 2007 at 8:04 pmI interpreted Judy’s article as simply a wail of frustration that the MSM media format was utterly incapable of producing any original journalism about the single most important news event in Ann Arbor in, well, months.
Unless Google starts creating real jobs at its McCall Center, the loss of Pfizer’s salaried PhD positions will have a much bigger negative impact on Ann Arbor than the addition of thousands of 47K “insourced” support people who might as well be in Bangalore.
I have yet to read any good analysis of the fundamental issue that the loss of Pfizer seems to raise, which is how does a place like Ann Arbor compete with R&D centers like Boston and San Francisco, which are going to make the cut when a global corporation cuts from 10 R&D centers to 7? It now turns out that all that well-meaning investment in Life Sciences did not do enough to close the gap between Ann Arbor and Boston, which, when you put it that way, isn’t very surprising.
posted by Fred Zimmerman on February 7th, 2007 at 2:11 pmI liked the story overall, and I thought it was one of the most interesting News columns I’ve read in a while. I just thought that McGovern was being pretty naive by pointing out, for example, that the employees weren’t being asked about R&D secrets. In corporate America — and I have no evidence to back this up, but I think it’s more true now than a few decades ago — secrets are anything they don’t want you to talk about. Which is pretty much everything about your job and a lot of things with no discernible relation to it. I think she’d get a similar outcome with just about any company’s employees, especially those about to lose their jobs and wanting to appear as “team players” for prospective new employers.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on February 7th, 2007 at 2:26 pm40 of 200 Ann Arbor News employees to be bought out. 2 weeks of pay for every year of service wow thanks!
http://www.mlive.com/business/aanews/index.ssf?/base/business-5/1170859202212880.xml&coll=2
posted by Anonymous on February 8th, 2007 at 10:20 amDo you suppose Judy would like to talk about how she feels about this? Was she offered a buyout? Will she take it?
posted by Chris on February 8th, 2007 at 12:28 pmMy friend’s mother works for Pfizer. Right now she’s applying for similar jobs in their other locations; apparently, so are many of her co-workers. It’s not a “transfer”, exactly; more like applying for a new job. But still.
If you know you’re in a huge pack for a few jobs in other Pfizer locations, you probably aren’t too keen on getting your name in the press. Obviously, as everyone else has mentioned.
That said, the overwhelming desire to talk to the employees brings to mind, for myself, the ambulance-chaser lawyer. What could they really say that’d be essential to know? How it was really sudden? How it really sucks for their families? How it’s amazing that Pfizer would abandon Ann Arbor after buying up all the UM land and doing new construction (the real reason it surprised the hell out of me - I ride past it every day).
… anyhow, except for a good quote to pad a story, I’m pretty sure I know what they’d say. If it’s about frustration with MSM, I’d say direct it more towards the company itself and less towards the ex-employees.
posted by Anonymous on February 10th, 2007 at 10:36 pmAt some big companys, at that same meeting when you get the nice exit package, you sign a leetle note promising that you won’t say anything to anyone.
posted by LittleB on February 10th, 2007 at 11:11 pmWell, we’ll never know what the employees might have said that might have benefited the public; they are understandably too nervous to talk. And I doubt it’s just about being considered for Pfizer jobs elsewhere; it’s about being considered for any job elsewhere and not wanting to be seen as a troublemaker.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on February 12th, 2007 at 10:04 am“…it’s about being considered for any job…” Sure, just what is in it for the employee, to get their name in the paper?
posted by Anonymous2 on February 12th, 2007 at 12:17 pm“name in the paper”.
I’ve gotten some of the internships and jobs I’ve had in large part *because* people knew my name. I suppose it depends on the field, though. The newspaper for urban planners, The Journal of Otolaryngology for ex-Pfizer employees…
posted by Murph on February 12th, 2007 at 7:08 pmWell, yeah, me too, but politics is funny that way.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on February 12th, 2007 at 7:25 pm“…but politics is funny that way.” Yeah, as in Jack Abramoff is now more likely to be elected president than he was three years ago.
posted by Anonymous2 on February 12th, 2007 at 9:09 pmMaybe not president, but with his big-time name-ID, I bet Jack would do really well in a hundred-plus-candidate free-for-all for something like park commissioner or community college trustee.
(Los Angeles Community College trustee was Jerry Brown’s first election. He spent zero dollars, did zero campaigning, and finished first of a huge field on name-ID alone.)
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on February 13th, 2007 at 8:57 amThis blog was a recent recommend by a friend of mine–I’m an ex-Michiganian who escaped to the Left Coast–and I must say I’m impressed by the level of discourse that is happening (at least for this post; I’ll admit I haven’t read much farther yet). As someone who has actually worked for a mainstream newspaper as well as other assorted smaller media publications, I have to wonder where exactly Ms. McGovern learned her rules of newsroom culture? Anyone for ANY company will be wary of commenting on controversial issues their employer is involved in, ESPECIALLY when jobs are on the line. From taxi drivers to legal clerks to, yes, even journalists, in our increasingly communicative world, people are even more reluctant to say anything that might be construed as biting the hand that feeds them. Ms. McGovern might consider it could be due to a lack in her own interviewing skills that she is not able to put her subjects at ease enough for them to consent to talk.
I would, however, like to disagree with the statement “Journalism is a clubby, insular world where you can speak your mind without much fear of reprisal.” Reality check: Journalists have to worry about getting fired for what they say, do, and write just as much as everyone else. The trend has become for media companies–much like any other big business–to establish company policies of not allowing their employees to discuss publicly topics that might constitute conflicts of interest (ranging from issues the company might be facing to a reporter blogging on something he/she wrote about in a news article). Journalists do not act with one mind, the media are not one singular entity, and I’m sick of people making sweeping statements about an entire segment of the workforce population based on statements made by a handful of our number. We don’t judge all presidents by the way Bush has acted; don’t judge all members of the media based on one or even one hundred individuals.
posted by A Journalist Myself on March 12th, 2007 at 9:13 pmI bumped this wrongly spam-filtered post up. If you’re still reading, A Journalist Myself, I didn’t mean to bash individual journalists; it’s just my impression of the overall industry culture after working in it for a short time. I hope it didn’t sound like the kind of uninformed media-bashing that we’re probably both all too familiar with.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on March 20th, 2007 at 8:35 am