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StumbleUponPre-Convention Coverage Whitewashes Police Violence, Distorts Activists' Agendas
7/25/00
Early coverage of the upcoming protests at the Republican and Democraticnational conventions has followed a familiar pattern: Mainstream media arestoking fears about the potential for violence in Philadelphia and LosAngeles by rewriting the actual history of police brutality at last year'santi-WTO demonstrations in Seattle. In its place, media are developing amythology of dangerous protesters who, for unspecified reasons, violentlyoverpowered police.
"It is widely agreed that the Seattle police got out-foxed by betterorganized protestors trying to shut down the World Trade Organizationmeeting last year," reported NBC's Fred Francis in a story about theconventions (Nightly News, 7/14/00). Francis went on to describe activistswho attended the "violent" Seattle demonstrations as a "battle-tested" force"better trained than the LAPD for street violence."
Widely agreed? Francis must have either missed or discounted the AmericanCivil Liberties Union's recent report on the Seattle protests."Demonstrators [in Seattle] were overwhelmingly peaceful," wrote the ACLU."Not so the police."
According to the ACLU's 87-page report, "Out of Control: Seattle's FlawedResponse to Protests Against the World Trade Organization," the City ofSeattle's response to the WTO protests was characterized by "unwarrantedrestrictions and outright assaults on citizens and on their basic Americanrights." The "draconian" violations of civil liberties committed by Seattlepolice and officials included widespread use of "chemical weapons, rubberbullets and clubs against peaceful protesters and bystanders alike";numerous "individual acts of [police] brutality"; the suppression of freespeech rights; hundreds of improper arrests; and intimidation and "brutal"abuse of arrestees. (See www.aclu-wa.org/ISSUES/police/WTO-Report.html.)
NBC, ABC and CBS all ignored the release of the ACLU report, as did CNN. TheSeattle Times is the only major American newspaper to have covered theACLU's findings (7/5/00).
Yet the media haven't forgotten Seattle-- mainstream reports on the upcomingconvention protests consistently refer to them as follow-ups to Seattle, andfrequently ask whether authorities in Philadelphia and Los Angeles will beable to avoid a similar scenario. But which scenario?
One ABC World News Tonight report (7/23/00) asked what lessons Philadelphiapolice have learned from Seattle, and how they will be applied to theconvention. According to reporter Jim Sciutto, Philadelphia police observersin Seattle saw protesters "at times playing to the television cameras" byfeigning injury. Sciutto's report features, without rebuttal, a Philadelphiapolice lieutenant claiming that at the sight of a camera, activists aretrained to "fall down and start screaming and yelling whether you hit themor not." ABC's report made no mention of any substantive allegations ofpolice brutality in Seattle.
When riots erupted in Los Angeles on June 19 after the Lakers won the NBAFinals, several news outlets discussed the random acts of vandalism asthough they were comparable to the protests planned for the Democraticconvention. "Los Angeles officials hope that the convention crowd willexercise more self-restraint than the Lakers crowd," reported the NBCNightly News (6/20/00). The CBS Evening News (6/20/00) made the samecomparison, reporting that officials promised "much less access forpotential troublemakers" at the convention than there had been at the Lakersgame. CBS voiced skepticism however, adding, "but that's what they said inSeattle.... And some of those [protest] groups have already announcedthey're coming here."
What emerges from this coverage is an image of activists as a paramilitarymob preparing to take to the streets to frustrate and discredit the police.This distorted view has been helped along by the three major networks'failure to discuss in any depth protesters' critiques of the conventions.CBS mentioned that Los Angeles anarchists would protest in order to "shinethe spotlight on economic injustice" (7/10/00); NBC (7/20/00) noted that theprotesters' message is "simply that the political parties have been takenover by big money interests." Neither network featured any furtherexamination of the activists' political positions.
Demonizing activists and ignoring police brutality may imbue policedepartments with a sense that they can operate with impunity-- or at leastwithout fear of serious scrutiny from the press. This media whitewashing mayheighten the risk that citizens assembling to speak out at the conventionswill face police violence.
ACTION: Please contact the media and urge them to provide more balancedcoverage of the protests at the Republican and Democratic conventions thanthey did of last year's protests in Seattle. Acknowledging the ACLU'sfindings about the growing problem of anti-protest police brutality would beone way to improve coverage. Taking activists' politics seriously would beanother.
For more information on the protests planned for the Republican Convention(7/31/00-8/4/00), visit http://r2kphilly.org/ . For info on actions at theDemocratic Convention (8/14-17/00), visit www.d2kla.org .
CONTACT:
NBC Nightly NewsPhone: 212-664-4971 or 202-885-4259Fax: 202-362-2009Nightly@nbc.com
ABC World News TonightPhone: (212) 456-4040Fax: (212) 456-4297netaudr@abc.com
CBS Evening NewsPhone: (212) 975-3691, (202) 457-4385Fax: (212) 975-1893audsvcs@cbs.com
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