Hey, You Got Your PR Business in my Legal Department!
Get ready folks. You’re not going to get this time back. Ever.
Because we realize that sometimes there really IS nothing better in life than reading an official letter from a corporation’s PR office, we invite you to indulge in American Apparel’s jeremiad. We only ask that you also take a minute to read our reply to their Media Relations Director’s threat to sue us if we don’t retract the issue. Good times, really.
Our editorial and publishing staff consider this particular discussion over. Whether American Apparel does or not is really up to them. Time will tell, and it’s up to you to decide whether you feel like you need to hear more.
As for us, we’d really like all you new-to-Clamor friends to check out the new issue. Not surprisingly, there is some really amazing shit in there that has absolutely nothing to do with American Apparel. It’s a shame that it’s being eclipsed by all this nonsense.
If you don’t mind, we’ve got to get working on our Winter issue.
Keep at it.
September 24th, 2006 at 7:55 pm
I want to preface this by saying that I don’t really care about American Apparel, I’ve never bought anything from them, and until I read this article all I knew about them was that they made their clothes in LA and that their magazine ads look like stills from amateur porn. What I do care about though are the issues discussed in the articles and independent media.
Having said that, I’m so unbelievably pissed at Clamor right now. The articles were terrible for a bunch of reasons, but in particular the way they dealt with the unionization issue. Jim Straub interviewed an organizer with UNITE who said that American Apparel engaged in anti-union activities. This and an out of context quote from Charney’s letter to The Nation is the only evidence presented by the magazine that American Apparel was union-busting.
Questions: Did Jim Straub make any attempt to get the company’s version of the events? Did he try to contact the company? If they refused to comment why wasn’t that mentioned in the article? The only place where AA’s version of the union drive can be found is in their six-page letter, and Clamor’s article mocks AA for even sending a response. I don’t support AA, but at least be fair.
Really, in the end, the decision of whether or not to join a union should of course be up to the workers. And they might decide not to join a union for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with intimidation from management- for example not wanting to pay dues to a union if they feel it’s not necessary or the allegations of corruption, mismanagement, and possible Mafia ties reported at some other UNITE locals (to be clear UNITE does do some great work, but they themselves have acknowledged certain “bad apples” at some locals). I’m sure that Jim Straub as a union organizer knows this. It seems that the best way to get to the truth of whether American Apparel was indeed fighting a union that the workers themselves supported would be to TALK TO THE WORKERS. Or at the very least talk to an uninvolved, knowledgeable third party, like LA’s Garment Workers Center. Did Jim Straub attempt to do either of those things? The voice of ANY American Apparel factory worker is absent from this article- an article that talks about workers rights and is written by a union organizer, someone whose job it is to support workers. That’s just depressing.
After reading the AA article on knowmore.org (which ironically was suggested by the American Apparel staff woman on your bulletin board) it seems that there is evidence from places other than UNITE representatives that AA management was at the very least not neutral on the union issue and that working conditions at the factory could be improved. Their article also examines very good reasons why a union could be helpful to the AA workers who already work for much better wages and benefits than workers at other companies (No Sweat Apparel being one obvious exception). Obviously if women are being sexually harassed and legitimate efforts by workers to form a union are being undermined than those problems should be addressed. And yeah the ads are kinda creepy and merit some discussion. The knowmore.org article actually provides all the evidence from all sides and lets readers make up their own minds. I wish that Clamor’s writers and editors had done that instead of trying to force their own ideas about American Apparel on Clamor’s readers.
September 30th, 2006 at 9:14 pm
I wanted to respond to the American Apparel “expose,” but then Rob went and said it all for me perfectly.
My problem with this series of articles isn’t that I have something against Clamor (I like the magazine, and have for a long time) or that I am a big supporter of American Apparel (I’m not; I find their ads a little over the top and, really, I don’t need that many overpriced white undershirts). My problem is that these articles aren’t journalism. They are strongly worded and possibly very valid opinion. But they aren’t journalism.
Regurgitating rumors and vague inuendos (”Stories about workplace nudity, inappropriate come-ons, and outright sexual harassment seem to sprout out of Charney” or “and some girls under 15, if rumors are true,” etc), quoting sources that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the issue or add to the topic (why exactly is Susan Wayward’s opinion relevant to this story?), guessing as to individual’s intentions (Charney does such and such because he’s “paternalistic”), insinuating that workers would never organize against unionization, ad hominem attacks, accusations of a rape cover up based on a conversation with two people who “did not provide details or pretend to know any,” and random, demeaning insults thrown at readers (am I naughty or just stupid for eating fair-trade, organic, vegan food?)– none of this is journalism, none of this constitutes an “expose.”
I’m extremely disappointed in Clamor right now, in part for making the mistake of running something like this, but even more for standing by it, refusing to hear what people are saying when they complain about the way this was done. Being indie, being progressive, is no excuse for bad journalism, no excuse for stooping to the kind of journalistic ethics we would immediately condemn in others. I hope someone at Clamor acknowledges that some mistakes were made, and that this sort of article doesn’t run again. I hope, in the future, big “exposes” contain, here and there, substantiated facts.