Fox's Straight News Division Disappears Allegation That Boeing Retaliated Against Its Workers

Tonight, one of Fox News' supposedly “straight news” correspondents, Doug McKelway, promoted Republican efforts to derail a case brought by the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) general counsel against Boeing.

On Special Report with Bret Baier, McKelway aired lots of footage of Republican members of Congress attacking the NLRB but gave short shrift to the complaint against Boeing. Regarding the specific allegations against Boeing, McKelway reported only that “the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Boeing for moving the production from Washington state, calling the move quote 'discriminatory' against Boeing's unionized workers.”

However, the NLRB has charged Boeing with much more than “discriminatory” behavior towards unionized workers. The complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board states that Boeing illegally retaliated against unionized workers for engaging in lawful strikes.

The complaint also alleges that Boeing made “coercive statements to its employees that it would remove or had removed work from the Unit because employees had struck” and that Boeing “threatened or impliedly threatened that the Unit would lose additional work in the event of future strikes.”

Moreover, as Media Matters has documented labor law experts agree that if the allegations filed by the NLRB against Boeing are true, the Boeing case would be “a classic violation” of labor laws.

This is a paradigmatic example of how Fox's “straight news” operation works: It's hyping the latest GOP effort to tilt the playing field against workers while almost completely ignoring the allegations that a company is violating its workers' rights.