\r\n\r\n\r\nNorth American Media Silent On Massive Post-G8 Italian Protests<\/b>
\r\nReal News Brief: #1 (July 25\/01)<\/b>\r\n By Paul Boin<\/i><\/b>\r\n<\/p><\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n| <\/td>\r\n | \r\n\r\nIf 150,000 protest in the streets, and the media doesn't cover it, did it really happen?\r\n<\/b>\r\n\r\n<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/table>\r\n\r\n<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/table>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n <\/td>\r\n <\/tr>\r\n<\/table>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n
\r\n\r\nYesterday (Tuesday, July 24), massive simultaneous demonstrations\r\noccurred in cities throughout Italy.\r\n\r\n<\/b>Remarkably, if you were watching, listening, or reading North America's\r\nmainstream news media, you'd think this real world event never happened.\r\n\r\n <\/p> <\/p>
\r\n \r\n <\/td>\r\n <\/tr>\r\n <\/table>\r\n\r\n <\/td>\r\n | \r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nYesterday (Tuesday, July 24), massive simultaneous demonstrations\r\noccurred in cities throughout Italy in response to what many Italians feel\r\nwas an unjustified use of force during the Genoa G8 meetings.\r\n\r\n<\/b> Yesterday's spontaneous peaceful protests were also a reaction to the\r\nbrutal police raid, at the Summit's close, of two schools housing\r\nparticipants from the Genoa Social Forum and members of the Independent\r\nMedia Center, that also went largely unreported or illreported.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Accounts from Reuters {Reuters (Rome) 2001}, the Indy Media Centre\r\n{Brabinger 2001}, and other European news sources confirm that\r\napproximately 150,000 people marched through the city centre's of Rome\r\n(approx. 50,000), Milan (approx. 45,000), Balogna (approx. 15,000),\r\nFlorence (approx. 6,000), Genoa (approx. 5,000), Napoli (approx. 5,000),\r\nPalermo (approx. 2,000), Trieste (approx. 2,000) and a number of others,\r\nbringing the total number of participating cities to about thirty.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Remarkably, if you were watching, listening, or reading North America's\r\nmainstream news media, you'd think this real world event never happened.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Participants in these Italy-wide marches represented a broad coagulation\r\nof pro-democracy ('anti-globalization') activists, environmentalists,\r\nunion members, parliamentarians, families and children.<\/p>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n <\/p><\/td>\r\n <\/tr>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n | \r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n
\r\n\r\nApparently such a huge and broad-based\r\nexpression of outrage aimed at the Italian\r\ngovernment and other G8 nations isn't\r\n\"newsworthy,\" while CBC TV News aired \"N Sync's newest\r\nCD\"\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n <\/b><\/p>
\r\n \r\n <\/td>\r\n <\/tr>\r\n <\/table>\r\n\r\n <\/td>\r\n | \r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nApparently such a huge and broad-based expression of outrage aimed at the\r\nItalian government, and other G8 nations, isn't 'newsworthy' to 'leading'\r\nnews outlets like the CBC, the National Post, CNN and others.\r\n\r\n<\/b> This real news story consistently remained invisible on CBC radio's World\r\nReport, CNN's Global Minute, and the entire July 25th edition of the\r\nNational Post.<\/p>\r\n\r\n This, while CBC Television's newscast managed to find time to air \"N\r\nSync's newest CD\", and CNN managed to fit \"McDonald's new public stock\r\noffering in Japan\" into its 'Global Minute' slot (itself struggling for\r\nnews air through the cracks of the CNN-frenzy over the Condit-Levy\r\naffair).<\/p>\r\n\r\n The Globe and Mail<\/i>, while doing it's best to ignore the story, managed to\r\ninclude a misleading and skeletal wire copy paragraph piece (in their\r\nWorld Report box on page A9) that read (in its entirety): \"Tens of\r\nthousands of people, many shouting 'Killers, killers,' protested\r\nthroughout Italy yesterday against the use of police force that left one\r\nperson dead and more than 230 injured at the recent Group of Eight summit\r\nin Genoa.<\/p>\r\n\r\n There were no immediate reports of serious violence during marches in\r\nRome, Genoa, Florence, Bologna, Palermo and a host of other smaller cities\r\nacross Italy.\" {Reuters 2001}.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n <\/p><\/td>\r\n <\/tr>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n | \r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n
\r\n\r\nBesides scandalously understating the numbers of people in the streets\r\nboth reports focused on the death of Carlo Guilianni, and neglected \r\nthe terrible beatings of people in the two school buildings at the very \r\nend of the G8 summit.\r\n\r\n <\/b><\/p>
\r\n \r\n <\/td>\r\n <\/tr>\r\n <\/table>\r\n\r\n <\/td>\r\n | \r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nThe Toronto Star<\/i> also included a wire copy article that lead with\r\n\"Thousands marched in cities across Italy...\"\r\n\r\n<\/b> The piece continued to explain that marchers were \"demanding the\r\nresignation of the country's Interior Minister over the death of a\r\nprotester during the Group of Eight summit.\" {Reuters\/Canadian Press 2001}<\/p>\r\n\r\n Besides scandalously understating the numbers of people in the streets\r\n(the Toronto Star<\/i> actually managed to include the figures for Balogna,\r\nFlorence and Palermo, while failing to mention the huge turnouts in Rome\r\nand Milan; since the participants for these two cities alone amounted to 95,000\r\nperhaps the crafter of this piece felt the people of Rome and Milan's role\r\nwouldn't go to well with the lead line \"Thousands march...\"), both\r\nreports again focused on the already internationally (and unavoidably)\r\nknown death of Carlo Guilianni, and neglected to mention the terrible\r\nbeatings that people took while working and sleeping in the two school\r\nbuildings at the very end of the G8 summit.<\/p>\r\n\r\n So why wasn't this massive news story 'newsworthy', or worthy of proper\r\nand accurate coverage, to our agenda-setting news media?<\/p>\r\n\r\n Thankfully, there are media scholars and authors that can help guide us\r\nthrough the media fog towards an answer.<\/p>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n <\/p><\/td>\r\n <\/tr>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n | \r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n
\r\n\r\nWinter labels this 'consensus', and the process\r\nthat forms it, 'Media Think.'<\/b>\r\n\r\n\"By this I mean a\r\nform of group think on a vast scale which\r\npermeates the lives of elites, news workers,\r\nand much of society at large...\"\r\n\r\n <\/p> <\/p>
\r\n \r\n <\/td>\r\n <\/tr>\r\n <\/table>\r\n\r\n <\/td>\r\n | \r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nJames Winter, from the University of Windsor, point's out that \"the news\r\nmedia in Canadian [Western] society predominantly may be seen as promoting\r\na narrow ideological 'consensus' on the world around us.\"\r\n\r\n<\/b> Winter labels this 'consensus', and the process that forms it, 'Media\r\nThink.' \"By this I mean a form of group think on a vast scale which\r\npermeates the lives of elites, news workers, and much of society at\r\nlarge...It is a process by which the mainstream, corporate media largely\r\nfunction, wittingly and unwittingly, as the delivery system for\r\nneoconservative (and neoliberal) dogma...It's the means by which the media\r\ncreate particular pictures of the world in our heads, all the while\r\nomitting and thereby preventing the formation of alternative, competing\r\npictures.\" {Winter 1997 :114}.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Robert Hackett, with other researchers based at Simon Fraser Univiversity,\r\npoint out that \"...the most important and debilitating blind spots in the\r\nCanadian [Western] media: [are] the lack of coverage afforded to Canada's\r\n[North America's] deepening social inequalities, growing corporate power,\r\nand alternatives to neo-liberal economic perspectives.\" {Hackett, et al.\r\n2000: 166}.<\/p>\r\n\r\n And, of course, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's media analysis revealed\r\nthat \"views that challenge fundamental premises or suggest that the\r\nobserved modes of exercise of state power are based on systemic factors\r\nwill be excluded from the mass media even when elite controversy over\r\ntactics rages fiercely.\" {Herman & Chomsky 1988: xii}.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Sure, mainstream publishers, editors, and even many journalists (in\r\nperpetual denial), will speak volumes on how this tradition of media\r\nanalysis is baseless. But actions or, more accurately in this recent G8\r\ncase, inactions speak far louder than words.<\/p>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n <\/p><\/td>\r\n <\/tr>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n | \r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n
\r\n\r\nObviously our mainstream media, and the elite\r\nclients and advertisers they serve and\r\nrepresent, feel threatened by reality.\r\n\r\n <\/b><\/p>
\r\n \r\n <\/td>\r\n <\/tr>\r\n <\/table>\r\n\r\n <\/td>\r\n | \r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nObviously our mainstream media, and the elite clients and advertisers they\r\nserve and represent, feel threatened by reality - a reality that\r\ndemonstrates the failures of corporate-led globalization and the ever\r\nblossoming resistance to it.\r\n\r\n<\/b> As our predominantly corporate media's content becomes ever more\r\nabstracted from, and irrelevant to, today's real world, thankfully\r\ninspiring media alternatives and actions are emerging to help citizens get\r\na more accurate picture of our world - the Independent Media Centre\r\n(www.indymedia.org), Democracy Now's daily radio\/web-audio programs\r\n(www.pacifica.org\/programs\/democracy_now), the Straight Goods\r\n(www.straightgoods.com), Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting\r\n(www.fair.org), the Media Channel (www.mediachannel.org), NewsWatch\r\nCanada\/Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom\r\n(www.presscampaign.org\/newswatchlist.html), and the up-coming Media\r\nDemocracy Day on October 19th (Actions are being planned in cities\r\nthroughout North America and beyond. Contact pjbaines@yahoo.ca for\r\ninformation). These organizations and initiatives are providing both\r\nalternatives to, and lessons for, the mainstream news media's performance.<\/p>\r\n\r\n A performance which is increasingly becoming more dreadful and\r\nembarrassing.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n <\/p><\/td>\r\n <\/tr>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n | \r\n \r\n
\r\n \r\n\r\nPaul D. Boin<\/b> is an investigative journalist and educator\r\nbased in Ontario, Canada, the founder of the Real News Network (to be\r\nofficially launched in October), and is presently completing his doctoral\r\ndegree in Education (in the program focus of Critical Global and Community\r\nIssues, at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the\r\nUniversity of Toronto).\r\n\r\n Paul is also a co-founder of Media Democracy Day (Web site,\r\nwww.MediaDemocracyDay.org, to be up and running soon).<\/p>\r\n\r\n Paul is presently working on a book entitled \"Reclaiming Our Minds:\r\nTowards a Democratic News Media and Society\", to be published in 2002.<\/p>\r\n\r\n He can be reached at pboin@home.com<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\r\nREFERENCES<\/b>\r\n\r\n1. Reuters (Rome), \"G8, Manifestations in 30 Cities. In 50,000 They Parade\r\nto Rome,\" Yahoo-Italy News July 24 2001,\r\n(http:\/\/it.news.yahoo.com\/010724\/58\/14wqq.html\r\n[Translated from Italian to\r\nEnglish via http:\/\/babelfish.altavista.com\/translate.dyn]).<\/p>\r\n\r\n 2. Airven Brabinger, \"Protests Against Police Violence,Throughout Italy,\"\r\nIndependent Media Centre July 24 2001, (www.indymedia.org).<\/p>\r\n\r\n 3. Reuters, \"Marchers Protest Against Summit Police,\" Globe and Mail<\/i>, July\r\n25 2001, A9. 4. Reuters\/Canadian Press, \"Fire Italian Minister,\r\nProtesters Demand,\" Toronto Star July 24 2001, (www.thestar.com).<\/p>\r\n\r\n 5. James Winter, Democracy's Oxygen: How Corporations Control the News\r\n(Montreal: Black Rose, 1997), 114.<\/p>\r\n\r\n 6. Robert Hackett, Richard Gruneau, et al., The Missing News: Filters and\r\nBlind Spots in Canada's Press (Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy\r\nAlternatives\/Garamond Press, 2000), 166.<\/p>\r\n\r\n 7. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political\r\nEconomy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon, 1988), xii.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/p> <\/p> <\/p> <\/p><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/td><\/tr><\/table>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","contact":"","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/html","summary":"If 150,000 protest in the streets, and the media doesn't cover it, did it really happen?","numcomment":0,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/2001\/09\/real_news_1.htm","filesize":"18.4 kibibytes","article_url":"\/news\/2001\/09\/9919.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[]} | | | | | | | | | |