Freeloaders, Thugs, and Communists: Media Matters report on right wing media and union smearing.

If you haven't read it yet, you should: media monitoring group Media Matters just recently released a report on the systemic smearing of unions in right wing media.

Some choice material from the report:

• Glenn Beck claims unions have "raped" police and firefighters. First of all, it would be remiss of me not to point out that this comment trivializes rape. Second, Beck's implication about unions and their relationship with public workers is is just wrong. Unions are the front line in the fight to preserve public funding for social services--and as we've seen in the fight against fire station brown outs this summer in Philadelphia, both the community and rank-and-file public workers support them.
  
  
• Pretty much everybody on Fox seems to think unions are composed entirely of fat cats and thugs. Limbaugh's take on the Employee Free Choice Act, a piece of legislation that might have evened the playing field a bit for workers: "The Union Brass Knuckles Busting On Your Knees Act."
  
  
• And my personal favorite, another Beck-ism: "even the Boy Scouts aren't safe from SEIU's thuggery."
  
  

Chances are that if you're reading this post, you've got at least a little bit of a workers' rights sensibility to you. If we want to win this fight, we need to be aware of the kind of virulent disinformation that the corporate-funded right wing media is spreading about the labor movement. Workers' rights are under attack. What do we do? Stand up, fight back.

But first, we need to know what we're up against.

link: Media Matters report on union busting in the media.