Coverage of the writers strike by entertainment magazines

From an article by Shealeigh Voitl. Read the whole thing here.

...Trade publications zeroed in on workers immediately, minimizing their demands and rarely focusing on the major studios’ inaction. After Snoop Dogg canceled two Hollywood Bowl shows in solidarity with WGA and SAG-AFTRA, Rolling Stone tweeted that the strikes were “completely unrelated to what he does as a musician.” Rolling Stone later deleted the post. A May Variety headline villainized a writer for a tongue-in-cheek picket sign, referencing Jenna Ortega’s comments about having “chang[ed] lines” on her show Wednesday. Deadline published an article in July, quoting an executive who said, “The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.”

A pattern in trade publications’ coverage of the strike soon emerged: Writers against viewers; writers against actors; and finally, writers against each other, where forging ahead might mean losing everything. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) immediately called out the “union-busting” Deadline article as “studio propaganda.” Comedian, actor, and writer Jenny Yang told Yahoo! News, “As a former labor organizer, this article reeks of a desperate attempt by these corporate insiders to break our morale and scare us.”

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Writers and actors expect to earn a living wage, especially for projects that make a killing for multibillion-dollar studios. Disney CEO Bob Iger recently told CNBC that the writers’ and actors’ expectations are just not “realistic” and that he finds the strikes “disturbing,” but that’s coming from someone who makes “535 times a Disney employee’s median pay.” It doesn’t get more disturbing than that.