Can We Still Have Fair Reporting in an Age Without Twinkies?

To the dismay of snack-lovers and pre-diabetics everywhere, Hostess will be shutting its doors for good.  The maker of such treasured staples as the Twinkie and Snowball announced on Friday that it will close its 33 bakeries and 565 distribution centers, laying off over 18,000 employees in the process.  

The company has gone through rough patches in the past years, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy twice and shuffling through 7 different management teams over the past 10 years.  Despite these facts, the company has placed sole blame for the closings on a strike by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union.  Hostess CEO, Gregory Rayborn, released a statement declaring "We deeply regret the necessity of today's decision, but we do not have the financial resources to weather an extended nationwide strike."

Trumpeting the headline, “Hostess to close, lay off 18,500 after 'crippling' union fight,” Fox News has readily endorsed this version of events.  Throughout their article, which appeared on Friday soon after the announcement, Fox intentionally created a heavily one-sided narrative that pits the beloved, well-intentioned folks at Hostess at the mercy of cut-throat, greedy unions.  

If you don't believe this is a biased account of events, take a closer look:

Where-Oh-Where Did the Working Class Go?

Regarding the gubernatorial re-call election last week, many expressed shock that Wisconsin's working class did not overwhelmingly oppose Governor Scott "Unions-Are-the-Plague-of-the-Earth" Walker.  The man who once described collective bargaining as an "expensive entitlement" walked away last Tuesday with 38% of the working class vote, and 61% of the white working-class vote.  To me, these numbers do not demonstrate that the labor movement has drastically changed its agenda, but rather signify the decline of the working class as a unified political identity, altogether.

There are several explanations for this trend.  Psychology professor, Jonathan Haidt, proposes that economic interest is not the unifying force in electoral decision-making that people assume.  In his research into political decision-making, Haidt found that “When working-class people vote conservative, as most do in the US, they are not voting against their self-interest; they are voting for their moral interest.” Contrary to popular opinion, he explained, people vote in accordance with their moral value-systems rather than  economic interest.  While liberals are more concerned with “care,” as a moral value (thus often advancing policy related to social welfare), conservatives tend to value more respect for authority, group loyalty, and sanctity.  Haidt suggests that in the wake of the financial crisis and looming uncertainty, American citizens are more likely to vote for the order and national cohesion that conservative values and candidates offer.