Yesterday (Tuesday, July 24), massive simultaneous demonstrations
occurred in cities throughout Italy.
Remarkably, if you were watching, listening, or reading North America's
mainstream news media, you'd think this real world event never happened.
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Yesterday (Tuesday, July 24), massive simultaneous demonstrations
occurred in cities throughout Italy in response to what many Italians feel
was an unjustified use of force during the Genoa G8 meetings.
Yesterday's spontaneous peaceful protests were also a reaction to the
brutal police raid, at the Summit's close, of two schools housing
participants from the Genoa Social Forum and members of the Independent
Media Center, that also went largely unreported or illreported.
Accounts from Reuters {Reuters (Rome) 2001}, the Indy Media Centre
{Brabinger 2001}, and other European news sources confirm that
approximately 150,000 people marched through the city centre's of Rome
(approx. 50,000), Milan (approx. 45,000), Balogna (approx. 15,000),
Florence (approx. 6,000), Genoa (approx. 5,000), Napoli (approx. 5,000),
Palermo (approx. 2,000), Trieste (approx. 2,000) and a number of others,
bringing the total number of participating cities to about thirty.
Remarkably, if you were watching, listening, or reading North America's
mainstream news media, you'd think this real world event never happened.
Participants in these Italy-wide marches represented a broad coagulation
of pro-democracy ('anti-globalization') activists, environmentalists,
union members, parliamentarians, families and children.
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Apparently such a huge and broad-based
expression of outrage aimed at the Italian
government and other G8 nations isn't
"newsworthy," while CBC TV News aired "N Sync's newest
CD"
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Apparently such a huge and broad-based expression of outrage aimed at the
Italian government, and other G8 nations, isn't 'newsworthy' to 'leading'
news outlets like the CBC, the National Post, CNN and others.
This real news story consistently remained invisible on CBC radio's World
Report, CNN's Global Minute, and the entire July 25th edition of the
National Post.
This, while CBC Television's newscast managed to find time to air "N
Sync's newest CD", and CNN managed to fit "McDonald's new public stock
offering in Japan" into its 'Global Minute' slot (itself struggling for
news air through the cracks of the CNN-frenzy over the Condit-Levy
affair).
The Globe and Mail, while doing it's best to ignore the story, managed to
include a misleading and skeletal wire copy paragraph piece (in their
World Report box on page A9) that read (in its entirety): "Tens of
thousands of people, many shouting 'Killers, killers,' protested
throughout Italy yesterday against the use of police force that left one
person dead and more than 230 injured at the recent Group of Eight summit
in Genoa.
There were no immediate reports of serious violence during marches in
Rome, Genoa, Florence, Bologna, Palermo and a host of other smaller cities
across Italy." {Reuters 2001}.
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Besides scandalously understating the numbers of people in the streets
both reports focused on the death of Carlo Guilianni, and neglected
the terrible beatings of people in the two school buildings at the very
end of the G8 summit.
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The Toronto Star also included a wire copy article that lead with
"Thousands marched in cities across Italy..."
The piece continued to explain that marchers were "demanding the
resignation of the country's Interior Minister over the death of a
protester during the Group of Eight summit." {Reuters/Canadian Press 2001}
Besides scandalously understating the numbers of people in the streets
(the Toronto Star actually managed to include the figures for Balogna,
Florence and Palermo, while failing to mention the huge turnouts in Rome
and Milan; since the participants for these two cities alone amounted to 95,000
perhaps the crafter of this piece felt the people of Rome and Milan's role
wouldn't go to well with the lead line "Thousands march..."), both
reports again focused on the already internationally (and unavoidably)
known death of Carlo Guilianni, and neglected to mention the terrible
beatings that people took while working and sleeping in the two school
buildings at the very end of the G8 summit.
So why wasn't this massive news story 'newsworthy', or worthy of proper
and accurate coverage, to our agenda-setting news media?
Thankfully, there are media scholars and authors that can help guide us
through the media fog towards an answer.
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Winter labels this 'consensus', and the process
that forms it, 'Media Think.'
"By this I mean a
form of group think on a vast scale which
permeates the lives of elites, news workers,
and much of society at large..."
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James Winter, from the University of Windsor, point's out that "the news
media in Canadian [Western] society predominantly may be seen as promoting
a narrow ideological 'consensus' on the world around us."
Winter labels this 'consensus', and the process that forms it, 'Media
Think.' "By this I mean a form of group think on a vast scale which
permeates the lives of elites, news workers, and much of society at
large...It is a process by which the mainstream, corporate media largely
function, wittingly and unwittingly, as the delivery system for
neoconservative (and neoliberal) dogma...It's the means by which the media
create particular pictures of the world in our heads, all the while
omitting and thereby preventing the formation of alternative, competing
pictures." {Winter 1997 :114}.
Robert Hackett, with other researchers based at Simon Fraser Univiversity,
point out that "...the most important and debilitating blind spots in the
Canadian [Western] media: [are] the lack of coverage afforded to Canada's
[North America's] deepening social inequalities, growing corporate power,
and alternatives to neo-liberal economic perspectives." {Hackett, et al.
2000: 166}.
And, of course, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's media analysis revealed
that "views that challenge fundamental premises or suggest that the
observed modes of exercise of state power are based on systemic factors
will be excluded from the mass media even when elite controversy over
tactics rages fiercely." {Herman & Chomsky 1988: xii}.
Sure, mainstream publishers, editors, and even many journalists (in
perpetual denial), will speak volumes on how this tradition of media
analysis is baseless. But actions or, more accurately in this recent G8
case, inactions speak far louder than words.
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Obviously our mainstream media, and the elite
clients and advertisers they serve and
represent, feel threatened by reality.
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Obviously our mainstream media, and the elite clients and advertisers they
serve and represent, feel threatened by reality - a reality that
demonstrates the failures of corporate-led globalization and the ever
blossoming resistance to it.
As our predominantly corporate media's content becomes ever more
abstracted from, and irrelevant to, today's real world, thankfully
inspiring media alternatives and actions are emerging to help citizens get
a more accurate picture of our world - the Independent Media Centre
(www.indymedia.org), Democracy Now's daily radio/web-audio programs
(www.pacifica.org/programs/democracy_now), the Straight Goods
(www.straightgoods.com), Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting
(www.fair.org), the Media Channel (www.mediachannel.org), NewsWatch
Canada/Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom
(www.presscampaign.org/newswatchlist.html), and the up-coming Media
Democracy Day on October 19th (Actions are being planned in cities
throughout North America and beyond. Contact pjbaines@yahoo.ca for
information). These organizations and initiatives are providing both
alternatives to, and lessons for, the mainstream news media's performance.
A performance which is increasingly becoming more dreadful and
embarrassing.
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Paul D. Boin is an investigative journalist and educator
based in Ontario, Canada, the founder of the Real News Network (to be
officially launched in October), and is presently completing his doctoral
degree in Education (in the program focus of Critical Global and Community
Issues, at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the
University of Toronto).
Paul is also a co-founder of Media Democracy Day (Web site,
www.MediaDemocracyDay.org, to be up and running soon).
Paul is presently working on a book entitled "Reclaiming Our Minds:
Towards a Democratic News Media and Society", to be published in 2002.
He can be reached at pboin@home.com
REFERENCES
1. Reuters (Rome), "G8, Manifestations in 30 Cities. In 50,000 They Parade
to Rome," Yahoo-Italy News July 24 2001,
(http://it.news.yahoo.com/010724/58/14wqq.html
[Translated from Italian to
English via http://babelfish.altavista.com/translate.dyn]).
2. Airven Brabinger, "Protests Against Police Violence,Throughout Italy,"
Independent Media Centre July 24 2001, (www.indymedia.org).
3. Reuters, "Marchers Protest Against Summit Police," Globe and Mail, July
25 2001, A9. 4. Reuters/Canadian Press, "Fire Italian Minister,
Protesters Demand," Toronto Star July 24 2001, (www.thestar.com).
5. James Winter, Democracy's Oxygen: How Corporations Control the News
(Montreal: Black Rose, 1997), 114.
6. Robert Hackett, Richard Gruneau, et al., The Missing News: Filters and
Blind Spots in Canada's Press (Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy
Alternatives/Garamond Press, 2000), 166.
7. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political
Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon, 1988), xii.
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