All The News That Fits: Columns By Two NY Times Pundits Picked Apart [Part 1]

The Strawman's Revenge - IMC's E-zine Of Media Analysis

All The Facts That Fit
Columns By Two NY Times Pundits Picked Apart
By Paul Rosenberg, IMC-LA reporter.

Coinciding with the anti-FTAA demonstrations in Quebec, two NY Times columnists lambasted the demonstrators as enemies of the poor, ignoring several decades of Third World resistance and IMF riots in response to cruel and deadly neoliberal policies. Part One of this article recalls some of that lost history, Part Two criticizes other elements of Tom Friedman's column, and Part Three does a more detailed job with Paul Krugman's.

Part One: The Hidden History of Third World Resistance To Corporate, Neoliberal Globalization. | [ Part Two ] | [ Part Three ]

Zapatistas Enemies of Poor?

Protesters Painted As Enemies of Poor

In his column, "Media Scrutiny Of The White Bloc," Normon Solomon takes note of two top New York Times columnists representing the liberal side of the White Bloc. Both accused anti-FTAA protesters of being enemies of the poor.

"Paul Krugman ended his column by writing that the protesters 'are doing their best to make the poor even poorer,'" Solomon noted, before citing Thomas Friedman's parting salvo that "these 'protesters' should be called by their real name: The Coalition to Keep Poor People Poor."

The corporate media's 'spoiled white kids' lie echoes Southern sheriffs in the early 1960s, denying the long history of resistance struggles by the poor and oppressed.

Friedman and Krugman are hardly alone, of course. It's one of the corporate media's favorite lies: the only folks opposed to neoliberal, corporate globalization are spoiled white kids, who will only make things worse for the poor. Southern sheriffs tried a similar line in the early 1960s