ACTION ALERT:
April 11, 2000
Mainstream media have begun to turn their attention to Washington, D.C., and the Mobilization for Global Justice, a week-long series of protests coinciding with the meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) scheduled for April 16 and 17. Many of the stories draw parallels between the events in D.C. and the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle last year ("Seattle Protesters Are Back, With a New Target, " New York Times, 4/9/00).
But recent TV news broadcasts have distorted or omitted basic facts about the upcoming protests. On April 6, ABC World News Tonight aired a story about people arriving for an "unusual demonstration" focused on "American trade relations with China." The broadcast never even mentioned the wider targets of the protest: the World Bank and the IMF.
On the same night, CBS Evening News presented a report loaded with inaccuracies. Anchor Dan Rather opened by warning protesters that "if they're hoping for a replay of last year's violence in Seattle, those charged with keeping the peace in Washington, D.C., have other ideas."
The report continues with this distortion of the Seattle protests: "By all accounts, protesters outside last December's meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle simply got the better of police."
That conclusion is certainly not the consensus of "all accounts." The firsthand accounts of activists and bystanders alike depicted a police force in Seattle remarkable for its brutality, not its inadequacy. It is doubtful that many activists who were beaten or gassed at the WTO protests feel they "got the better" of the police force. (See "Pepper Spray Gets in Their Eyes: Media missed militarization of police work in Seattle," Extra!, 3-4/00, www.fair.org/extra/0003/pepper-spray.html.)
Nonetheless, the idea that protesters are interested in creating violence is reinforced later in the broadcast, where correspondent Jim Stewart incorrectly asserts that activists are "practicing urban assault techniques" in preparation for the protests. Ironically, moments later the report features Ruckus Society program director Han Shan advocating non-violence.
The media focus on the potential for "violence" by the D.C. protesters reflects a rewriting of what actually happened at Seattle. The New York Times (4/9/00) was typical when it referred to "the unrest in Seattle, where a rare alchemy of violence and vandalism by a small group of anarchists botched crowd control."
In fact, police began using chemical agents against non-violent protesters long before a handful of WTO opponents engaged in window-breaking. (See "Prattle in Seattle," Extra!, 1-2/00, www.fair.org/extra/0001/wto-prattle.html.) Media accounts have consistently reversed the chronology, however, blaming the police violence on the vandals, who in fact were largely ignored by police. The vast majority of violence-- which is a different thing than vandalism-- was committed in Seattle by the Seattle police department.
ACTION: Please contact these media outlets in the next few days, and encourage them to cover the protests against the World Bank and IMF fully and fairly. You might suggest that they begin by including the views of anti-World Bank and IMF activists on issues other than the potential for violence.
CONTACT:
CBS Evening News
Phone: (212) 975-3691, (202) 457-4385
Fax: (212) 975-1893
audsvcs@cbs.com
ABC World News Tonight
Phone: (212) 456-4040
Fax: (212) 456-4297
netaudr@abc.com
New York Times
Washington, DC Bureau
Fax: (202) 862-0340
harland@nytimes.com
For background on the protests, please visit www.a16.org .
Independent media coverage of the protests will be featured at www.indymedia.org.
As always, please remember that letter are taken more seriously if they maintain a polite tone. Please cc your correspondence to: FAIR