[Nettime-bold] NYC Newspapers Smear Activists

["Kermit Snelson" <ksnelson@subjectivity.com>]

MEDIA ADVISORY:
NYC Newspapers Smear Activists Ahead of WEF Protests
January 28, 2002

In a few days, the World Economic Forum will hold its annual meeting, an
elite gathering of what the WEF calls the world’s "top decision-makers" --
in other words, big business leaders and government officials. The event
usually takes place in Davos, Switzerland, but will be in New York City this
year (January 31- February 4), ostensibly as a gesture of solidarity after
the September 11 attacks.

Many globalization critics identify the WEF as a nerve center for neoliberal
economics, and past WEF meetings have been the focus of significant protest.
This year’s meeting promises to be no exception, and local media are serving
up some of the same distortions that have greeted past globalization
protests.

Mainstream New York City newspapers have tended to frame discussion of the
demonstrations in terms of their status as a security problem.  A search of
the Lexis-Nexis database (12/1/01 - 1/28/02) found that most articles in the
New York Daily News, New York Post, New York Times and Newsday mentioning
the WEF have focused on police preparations for the protests. As a result,
the political debate over the WEF has been obscured, as have concerns about
police brutality and civil liberties.

Though the New York Times and Newsday didn’t manage to overcome this skew
toward security questions, it should be noted that both papers provided more
substantive coverage that did the Post and the News. Commendably, Newsday
steered clear of the vitriol that has characterized some of its competitors.
One recent Newsday article, "Activists: We Come in Peace" (1/25/02), focused
on the protest organizers’ endorsement of non-violence and concerns about
potential police brutality; another (1/27/02) attempted a serious overview
of recent political controversies over globalization.

Contrast this approach to one particularly vicious editorial from the New
York Daily News (1/13/02), which referred to anti-WEF activists as "legions
of agitators," "crazies," "parasites" and "kooks."  The paper threatened
activists, saying "You have a right to free speech, but try to disrupt this
town, and you'll get your anti-globalization butts kicked. Capish?"

The Daily News compared critics of the WEF to the terrorists who attacked
the World Trade Center.  "New York will not be terrorized," declared the
paper.  "We already know what that's like. Chant your slogans. Carry your
banners. Wear your gas masks. Just don't test our patience. Because we no
longer have any."

It’s hard to read such rhetoric as anything other than an attempt to
manipulate New Yorkers’ legitimate anger and grief over September 11 in
order to whip up a backlash against dissent. Unfortunately, the Daily News
wasn’t the only New York paper to attack activists in these terms. Much WEF
coverage has been dominated not by serious reporting, but by unsubstantiated
commentaries that portray activists as violent thugs.

New York Times columnist Clyde Haberman (1/19/02) described globalization
activists as people "less known for their deep thinking than for their
willingness to trash cities," saying "some would say that New York needs
this [protest] about as much as it needs another airplane attack."

In an account of an extremely friendly interview "over a light beer at
Lanagan’s" with former New York City deputy police chief John Timoney, the
New York Post’s Steve Dunleavy (1/18/02) asserted that planned protests are
"a potentially scary scene, promised by little nasty twits." The column was
titled "Econ Summit Brings Own Terror Threat."

"There are some very serious bad guys out there," Timoney told the Post,
"and I am not talking about Osama bin Laden. We are talking about pretty
sophisticated bad guys."  Though Timoney seemed to be making the outlandish
suggestion that globalization activists are as dangerous as international
terrorists, Dunleavy relayed the claim uncritically, following up with a
tough-guy endorsement of Timoney’s prowess: "Timoney, like most cops, has
been beaten and shot at by punks all his life."

The ease with which commentators equate activists with terrorists has its
roots in the mainstream media’s rewriting of the history of U.S.
globalization protests. Recent articles about the WEF have referred to
previous, overwhelmingly peaceful globalization protests in Seattle,
Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and Philadelphia as "window-smashing,
flame-tossing spectacles" (Daily News, 1/24/02), "violent mayhem" (New York
Post, 1/20/02), "radical protesters rampag[ing] through the streets...
clashing with police" (Daily News, 1/18/02), "wild protest melees" (New York
Times, 1/25/02), and, simply, "violent" (Newsday, 1/18/02).

It’s true that violence has been a problem at globalization protests, but
the majority of it has been initiated by police, not protesters. The
November 1999 WTO protests in Seattle were characterized by unprovoked
tear-gassing, beating and unlawful arrests of peaceful demonstrators (and
even of bystanders), and a National Lawyers Guild investigation
characterized the Seattle violence as a "police riot." The American Civil
Liberties Union has expressed alarm over police abuses at globalization
protests, and in more than one case filed suit against law enforcement
authorities over the issue. Yet time and again, media have distorted events
to suggest that police force was a necessary response to "violent"
activists. (See Extra!, 1-2/00 and 7-8/00.)

When coverage is dominated by news and commentary that presents lawful
political assembly as a terrorist threat-- a threat that the police "know
what they have to do" to deal with (New York Post, 1/18/02)-- it has a
chilling effect on dissent, raises tensions between police and the public,
and risks creating a climate where law enforcement agencies feel able to
exercise force against demonstrators with impunity.

FAIR
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
112 W. 27th Street
New York, NY 10001
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/pre-wef.html

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