Fwd: [FAIR-L] Overdue: Media Scrutiny of the "White Bloc"

[Doug Millison]

>
>
>April 27, 2001
>
>Media Beat--
>OVERDUE: MEDIA SCRUTINY OF THE "WHITE BLOC"
>
>By Norman Solomon
>
>As police fired rubber bullets through tear gas in Quebec City, many
>reporters echoed the claim that "free trade" promotes democracy. Meanwhile,
>protesters struggled to shed light on a key fact: The proposed hemispheric
>trade pact would give large corporations even more power to override laws
>that have been enacted -- democratically -- to protect the environment,
>labor and human rights.
>
>Newsweek responded to the turmoil at the Summit of the Americas with a
>column by Fareed Zakaria, a favorite policy analyst in elite circles. He
>declared that "the anti-globalization crowd is antidemocratic ... trying to
>achieve, through intimidation and scare tactics, what it has not been able
>to get through legislation." In recent decades, of course, the same was said
>about cutting-edge demonstrations for such causes as civil rights, peace in
>Vietnam and environmental safeguards.
>
>Protests against the likes of the World Trade Organization, and now the Free
>Trade Area of the Americas, have great impact because they resonate widely.
>Foes of global corporatization are speaking and acting on behalf of huge
>grassroots constituencies.
>
>The ABC television program "This Week" deigned to air a discussion with a
>real-live progressive activist, Lori Wallach of Public Citizen's Global
>Trade Watch. Journalist Cokie Roberts voiced befuddlement: "It's gotten to
>the point where any time there are global meetings, world leaders meeting,
>we have a sense that the protesters are going to be there, and there's not
>much sense of exactly what you're protesting." The interview only lasted a
>couple of minutes.
>
>Most news outlets showed little interest in the content of alternative
>forums in Quebec City that drew thousands of activists from all over the
>hemisphere. Likewise, a big march in the city, with some estimates ranging
>above 60,000 participants, got underwhelming coverage. For that matter, most
>reporters didn't seem very deeply interested in the several thousand people
>who bravely engaged in militant, nonviolent direct action -- risking and
>sometimes sustaining injuries from police assaults -- while confronting the
>official summit.
>
>What did get plenty of media attention was noted at the outset of the April
>24 lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal, which yearned for "a world
>where TV cameras prefer trade agreements to black-clad anarchists." Some of
>those few "black-clad anarchists" call themselves the Black Bloc.
>
>Routinely slipping by, with scant journalistic scrutiny, is what we could
>dub the "White Bloc" -- a nexus of immense media power serving corporate
>interests.
>
>The White Bloc is not monolithic. But on the issue of "free trade," it's
>difficult to find a major U.S. publication that does not editorially support
>accords like NAFTA, WTO and the new FTAA.
>
>The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, at the right edge of the Bloc, is
>much honored by the media establishment. Last year, Journal columnist Paul
>Gigot won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary. This year, in mid-April, the same
>award went to another very conservative columnist for the newspaper, Dorothy
>Rabinowitz. But it's the unheralded daily output of the White Bloc that can
>be most breathtaking.
>
>On the day Rabinowitz's prize was announced, for instance, the editorial
>page of the Wall Street Journal featured a freelance article that began this
>way: "In the early 1990s, America's major cities were on life-support,
>suffocating under socialistic policies that left them looking like
>Soviet-bloc relics." (It was not a humor piece, by the way.) Farther down
>the page was a column headlined "The Monarchy Is Worth Saving," written by
>the Journal's deputy editorial features editor, who earnestly argued that
>British citizens need their monarchy "as a source of authority."
>
>But the White Bloc has a liberal side, too. Several New York Times
>columnists take turns condemning those who have the gall to stand in the way
>of corporate Progress.
>
>Free-marketeers at the Times know how to pound away at the same line. While
>heads of state prepared to leave the Quebec summit, Paul Krugman ended his
>column by writing that the protesters "are doing their best to make the poor
>even poorer." Two days later, Thomas Friedman concluded his column by
>explaining that "these 'protesters' should be called by their real name: The
>Coalition to Keep Poor People Poor."
>
>The White Bloc (which includes people of all colors if suitably conformist)
>has its own forms of hip solidarity. On the "Hardball" national TV program,
>airing on both MSNBC and CNBC, host Chris Matthews closed his April 18
>interview with Friedman exactly this way:
>
>Matthews: "You are the future, my man. Thomas Friedman of the New York
>Times."
>
>Friedman: "Thanks, bro."
>
>Matthews: "The smartest columnist in the world."
>
>-------
>
>This is the most recent of Norman Solmon's nationally syndicated "Media
>Beat" columns.
>Solomon is a FAIR associate. His latest book is "The Habits of Highly
>Deceptive Media."
>
>For more about Media Beat:
>http://www.fair.org/media-beat/
>
>For more on trade:
>http://www.fair.org/issues-news/trade.html
>
>To listen to CounterSpin's interview with author and activist Naomi Klein:
>http://www.webactive.com/cspin/cspin20010413.html
>
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