With the Hollywood writers strike now in its second week, media coverage often describes the labor impasse as a dispute pitting writers against producers, The Los Angeles Times reports.

But a loose-knit group of 85 independent producers, many of them with credits on studio and independent films, wants to make it clear: They aren’t the ones negotiating with writers, and they don’t control how much — or how little — residuals writers receive.

To clarify their point, the informally organized group of producers signed a joint statement asking the print and broadcast media to quit referring to the strike between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers as between “writers and producers.”

“Actually, the Writers Guild is negotiating against an entity that represents studios, networks and multinational conglomerates,” said Linda Goldstein Knowlton, whose producing credits include the film “Whale Rider.”

Julie Lynn, whose producing credits include “The Jane Austen Book Club,” said: “In many of the publications we read and [broadcast] stations we listen to, it almost always is viewed as a dispute between the writers and producers. While the AMPTP has ‘producers’ in its name, that’s not really what it is.”

In their statement, the producers say that “it serves the studios’ interests to pretend to represent individual producers instead of corporate entities.”

Read the full L.A. Times story

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