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were privileged in this newspaper coverage? How does this coverage fit within the
previous scholarship on media and social movements? What does the newspaper
coverage of the student anti-sweatshop movement suggest for other social movements as
they attempt to garner media attention? These questions guide the inquiry that follows.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
Andrew Ross dubbed 1995, “the year of the sweatshop” (1997) after it was
revealed that Kathy Lee Gifford and a host of other prominent apparel retailers – The
Gap, Liz Claireborne, Guess Jeans and eventually, Nike – were found to be using
sweatshop labor to make their products. This awareness campaign quickly became what
Naomi Klein has dubbed, “the brand attack” and “anti-corporate activism” (1999). The
attention to sweatshops became distilled in Nike, reinforced by a broad based campaign
to force the largest manufacturer of sports wear to address this issue. From Michael
Moore’s The Big One to a steady onslaught of protests, Nike has been under fire since
1995/6.
Since the mid-1990s, university students have focused their attention on
sweatshops. This student activism emerged in part out of a program to reach out to
college students developed by labor unions. In the summer of 1996 the AFL-CIO began
“union summer.” This program sponsored 1200 college interns to spend three weeks
working in regional labor union offices, learning about the history of labor unions and
current labor issues around the globe (Greenhouse, 1996, p. B1). This immersion
education lead to a body of informed students who returned to their universities with a
new perspective on labor issues.
Convention