“What’s Good for UPS is Good for America”

Abstract

The 1997 United Parcel Service (UPS) strike highlighted the conflict of interests between corporations and their employees, challenging the notion that the 1990s economic recovery had benefited all Americans equally. Television coverage of this strike, however, failed to reflect the class nature of this conflict. Instead, it framed the strike in nationalist terms and projected the interests of business onto the nation by constructing a harmonious national community with shared goals. Through a textual analysis of 269 news reports on ABC, CBS, and NBC, this article discusses the economic and social components of the “nationalist antistrike narrative.” Economically, this narrative constructs the viewer as a middle-class consumer and invites the audience to identify with UPS. Socially, it offers mechanisms of corporate and national conflict resolution based on idealized nuclear family relations. This article argues that the narrative’s logic stems from the institutional structure of American television, which is simultaneously a national and a nationalizing medium.