Newspaper Guild: Washington Post Jettisons Core Journalism Principle in Effort to Escape Labor Ruling

Company Reveals Contents of Off-the-Record Talks

Newspaper Guild Files New Labor Complaint

    WASHINGTON, March 26 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Journalism is full of
 secrets. And the Washington Post, one of the nation's most venerated news
 outlets, makes a living keeping secret the identity of those who help it
 navigate through the White House, the halls of Congress and layers of
 bureaucracy.
     The Post kept the identity of Deepthroat, of Watergate fame, secret for
 four decades, and through the years has championed the need for "off-the-
 record" conversations as essential to the nation's democracy.
     But last week, the Post threw those ideals out the window. Facing a
 pending loss in a pivotal case before the National Labor Relations Board,
 Washington Post management has filed a last-minute addendum with the Labor
 Board revealing the contents of off-the-record talks that it had with The
 Newspaper Guild over a period of more than a year.
     The move is a blatant violation of the core journalistic principle that
 holds a promise of confidentiality as inviolable -- a principle that
 reporters have gone to jail to defend. The unilateral disclosure is also a
 breach of the newspaper's legal obligation under federal labor law to
 bargain in good faith.
     As a result, the Newspaper Guild today is filing an Unfair Labor
 Practice charge against The Post -- the third filed by the Guild against
 Post management in 12 months. The charges are part of an escalating battle
 over The Post's refusal to negotiate fair work rules and compensation for
 the growing number of employees whose jobs have changed significantly with
 the company's expansion into various new media platforms.
     "Unfortunately, The Post has sent a chilling signal that it will
 violate a confidentiality pledge when it suits the newspaper's business
 purposes," said Linda Foley, President of The Newspaper Guild. "The Guild
 will fight to force The Post to honor its promise of confidentiality."
     The Guild, which represents about 1,250 Post employees in the newsroom
 and in various commercial departments, launched the initial Labor Board
 case in 2006, charging that The Post violated federal labor law by refusing
 to bargain over the terms of new work assignments relating to Washington
 Post Radio.
     After the general counsel's office of the Labor Board let it be known
 that, based on testimony given by both sides, it intended to rule in the
 Guild's favor, Post lawyers asked for a special meeting with the Board.
 They told Board officials that they wanted to reveal the contents of talks
 they had engaged in with the Guild from late 2003 to early 2005 regarding
 work done by Post employees for http://www.washingtonpost.com.
     Post officials acknowledged that the talks were held on a strictly
 "off- the-record" basis, a ground rule agreed to by the Guild at The Post's
 request. Yet the Guild has learned that The Post has now provided sworn
 testimony to the Board revealing details of the contents of those talks, as
 part of an effort to reverse the Labor Board's pending decision.
     "The Post, which passionately goes to bat for the right of reporters to
 keep off-the-record conversations confidential, has unilaterally repudiated
 that principle in an effort to avoid facing a charge by the federal
 government," said Robert Paul, a Washington attorney with Zwerdling, Paul,
 Kahn & Wolly, P.C., who is representing the Guild before the Labor Board.
 "At The Washington Post, promises of confidentiality apparently stop at the
 door of labor relations."
     Paul emphasized that the Guild has no concerns that the contents of the
 talks will weaken the Guild's case. But by cavalierly breaking the
 newspaper's promise of confidentiality -- a promise that The Post had
 demanded -- Post management has shown a remarkable failure to live by a
 rule of journalism that it has touted as sacrosanct, not to mention a
 failure to honor the agreement it had with the Guild.
     In a July 7, 2005 editorial, for example, The Post wrote: Commitments
 of confidentiality by journalists to their sources will have little value
 if they can be invalidated by waivers obtained by prosecutors or demanded
 by senior government officials from their subordinates. In such cases,
 journalists are obligated to protect their sources even if the law is
 against them."
     The editorial called efforts to force a New York Times reporter to
 reveal her sources "highly questionable" and it applauded the fact that for
 decades "reporters have been willing to face jail to protect confidential
 sources ...."
     In another editorial, which ran on Oct 15, 2005, The Post again stood
 up for the principle of keeping off-the-record information secret,
 applauding a journalist "for refusing now to identify all of her sources,
 turn over all of her notes and otherwise lay bare her reporting." If
 off-the-record conversations are to be forced into the open, The Post
 wrote, "journalism and the public will be the losers."
     The new Unfair Labor Practice complaint filed today claims that "The
 Washington Post has violated its fundamental, statutory obligation to
 bargain in good faith with the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, Local
 32035, by publicly disclosing the terms of settlement discussions that were
 held between the Guild and the Post, despite an express agreement that
 these communications would be and would remain confidential, private and
 off-the-record."
     "Post executives, trying to protect an ill-conceived anti-Guild
 business interest, violated the principle of confidentiality of sources to
 avoid a federal government charge of refusing to bargain over radio work,"
 said Guild representative Rick Ehrmann.
 
 

SOURCE The Newspaper Guild-CWA