Why doesn't the whole world know about these issues?
Although a lot of people are aware of these issues and feel strongly
about them, many people do not know about them. One reason for this
is that these issues rarely make the newspaper headlines or fill
our TV-screens. They are not often not considered news, as they
don't easily fall into traditional news categories. In fact, the
issues concerned are even regarded as "old news" because
the problems in the global garment industry became the subject of
debate and campaigning in the late 1980's. What has been achieved
since then is not easily explained in two sentences or short sound
bites, and it is difficult to persuade journalists that they haven't
heard it all before. In addition, corporate interests continue to
grow in the media landscape (including in what is considered to
be the independent media), as fast as anywhere else. Corporate interests
can prohibit the publication and distribution of knowledge about
brand-related abuses - they certainly aren't going to sponsor air
time around broadcasts or pay for the publication of material that
is critical of their operations.
Nevertheless, these themes have received considerable attention
in the past, and continue to do so now and again. When we launched
an international campaign on March 4th, 2004, that focused on
the Olympics ("Fair
Play at the Olympics - Respect worker's rights in the global garment
industry"), the campaign immediately received media attention
from around the world - television, newspaper, radio and internet
features were published in, amongst others, South Africa, Sweden,
Spain, Canada, France, Belgium, Germany, United Kingdom, Austria,
Ireland, Norway, Australia, Bulgaria, New Zealand, India, United
States, the Netherlands and Hong Kong.
Research also shows that these issues are increasingly attracting
more media attention. For example, a search of the Dow Jones Interactive
media index shows that between 1991 and 1995 the average number
of newspaper articles covering allegations of sweatshop conditions
in Nike factories in English-speaking papers around the world
barely reached 100 a year. In contrast, every two years between
1996-97 and 2000-01 there were close to 2,000 articles referring
to the issue (see table below). This surge in coverage can be
attributed both to the work done by anti-sweatshop activists over
the previous five years to build journalists' awareness of poor
working conditions in Asia and Latin America, and to the way in
which activists influenced and capitalised on a particular set
of events in the United States in 1996.
Media Coverage of Nike Sweatshop Allegations
| Years |
1990-1 |
1992-3 |
1994-5 |
1996-7 |
1998-9 |
1 Jan. 2000 - 30 June 2001 |
No. of newspaper articles found in search of
Dow Jones Interactive media index.
(*1) |
29 |
155 |
254 |
2 588 |
2 381 |
1 836 (averaged
to 2 years = 2 448) |
Estimated failure rate (percentage of articles
unrelated to sweatshop allegations)
(*2) |
90% |
30% |
33% |
23% |
7% |
3% |
(Source: Tim Connor - unpublished research paper)
*1 These statistics were generated
by conducting "All Publications" searches on the Dow
Jones Interactive media database on 4 July 2001. I searched for
articles containing the word "Nike" within sixty words
of a reference to factories, workers or labour and also within
sixty words of a reference to sweatshops, exploitation, abuse
or wages. The exact search phrase was "Nike near60 (factory
or factories or worker or workers or labor or labour) near60 (sweatshop
or sweatshops or exploit$ or abus$ or wage$ or strike or hour
or child)." The search phrase was only applied in English,
not in other languages. Note that this a relatively blunt measuring
instrument, used here to give a broad indication of trends rather
than specific data on extent of media coverage gained. Refer to
chapter three of this thesis for a consideration of the usefulness
and limitations of using the Dow Jones Interactive Index as a
research tool for this purpose. As noted in that chapter, not
all publications in the Dow Jones index have all issues from1990
to 2001 available. This may have played a part in reducing the
number of relevant articles found in earlier years compared to
those found in later years.
*2 This estimate was reached by surveying
a sample of thirty of the articles found in each two-year period.
The exception is 1990-1991 in which all articles were assessed
(as less than thirty articles were found).
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