WTO Media coverage analysis

[Tim Lohrmann <timlohr@yahoo.com>]

Excellent analysis of Seattle Corporate media
coverage. Well worth a read!
TL


   FAIR-L
 Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
 Media analysis, critiques and news reports
> 
> Media Advisory:  Initial Reports from Seattle Gloss
> Over WTO Issues
> 
> December 1, 1999
> 
> As trade ministers from over 130 countries meet in
> Seattle this week for the
> World Trade Organization summit, tens of thousands
> of activists from all
> over the world have converged on the city to protest
> both the undemocratic
> structure of the group and its record on labor and
> environmental issues.
> 
> But the news coverage anticipating the protests has
> shed little light on the
> specific charges being made against the WTO by most
> of the protesters. As
> the conference gets under way on November 30, a few
> trends in the coverage
> have already emerged.
> 
> To begin, news stories preceding the conference
> demonstrated a fundamental
> lack of understanding of the issues involved. A
> November 1st article in US
> News & World Report was headlined "Hell No, We Won't
> Trade: How an obscure
> trade organization became a lightning rod for
> protest." While one can debate
> the merits of labeling a group with international
> jurisdiction over global
> trade an "obscure" organization, "We Won't Trade" is
> a grossly misleading
> characterization of the anti-WTO arguments.
> 
> The article goes on to note that "For the moment,
> the movement against free
> trade seems to have little traction in the United
> States." This is a
> puzzling conclusion for an article that notes that
> "up to 50,000
> demonstrators" are planned to "attend mass rallies,
> a march, teach-ins and
> prayer services" to protest the Seattle trade
> meeting. Nonetheless, the
> assertion is backed up by this: "All major
> presidential candidates support
> free trade and the WTO."
> 
> Reports prior to the summit, and many appearing this
> week, argue that the
> WTO stands to "open up" trade around the globe. That
> is inaccurate, as Dean
> Baker pointed out recently in FAIR's Economic
> Reporting Review
> (http://www.fair.org/err/991108.html ):
> 
> "While its rules are designed to facilitate foreign
> investment, such as a
> U.S. auto manufacturer building a factory in
> Indonesia, in other areas the
> WTO has taken little action to facilitate trade,
> while in some areas its
> rules are intended to impede free trade. In the case
> of professional
> services, such as those provided by doctors, lawyers
> and other highly paid
> professionals, the WTO has done virtually nothing to
> facilitate
> international trade and competition. In the case of
> intellectual property
> claims, such as patents and copyrights, the WTO has
> worked to impose these
> protectionist barriers on developing nations, at an
> enormous cost to their
> consumers."
> 
> Nor do many media accounts explain what the
> protesters are focusing on--in
> most cases, a specific set of concerns and issues
> that have been before the
> WTO in the past few years (summarized well at
> http://www.accuracy.org/press_releases/PR112999.htm
> ). ABC's Peter Jennings
> commented that "it seems as though every group with
> every complaint from
> every corner of the world is represented in Seattle
> this week."
> 
> CBS Evening News explained some of the background on
> the same night's
> newscast, but bungled one of the core criticisms of
> the WTO. Dan Rather
> reported that the WTO had ruled on many
> environmental issues, but declined
> to make the simple point that the WTO has ruled
> *against* environmental
> restrictions in every case that has come before it.
> Indeed, Rather's
> reference to the WTO's ruling on "fishing
> restrictions aimed at saving
> endangered species" might have mislead viewers into
> thinking that the WTO
> was intervening on behalf of threatened animals.
> 
> Some reports, rather than dealing with the concerns
> of the protestors,
> instead focused on the hypothetical danger they
> pose. Tony Snow's first
> question to teamsters president James Hoffa, Jr. on
> Fox News Sunday
> (11/28/99) was: "Do you worry that there's going to
> be any violence there?"
> Likewise, NBC Nightly News (11/29/99) devoted their
> lead WTO segment to
> security concerns in Seattle ("The stakes are high,
> so is the security, so
> is the provocation"), highlighting local
> authorities' precautions against "a
> potential chemical or biological attack."
> 
> The report was followed by a segment by NBC
> financial correspondent Mike
> Jensen extolling the benefits of free trade. Jensen
> concluded that "most
> experts say getting rid of trade barriers on both
> sides is a good thing for
> American workers and consumers.  But no matter what
> comes out of this
> four-day meeting--and a lot of analysts don't think
> it will be much--world
> trade has such momentum, almost nothing can get in
> its way."
> 
> Yet, as Dean Baker points out in a recent ERR, there
> is "near consensus
> among economists that trade has been one of the
> factors that has increased
> wage inequality in the United States over the last
> two decades." But that
> "consensus" is decidedly harder to find in
> mainstream press accounts.
> 
> The theme of free trade "momentum" is also present
> in a story on MSNBC's
> website (http://www.msnbc.com/news/340513.asp ),
> which includes a link to a
> special section encouraging readers to "find out
> more about the hurdles on
> the way to free trade."
> 
> Similarly, a recent Associated Press report called
> protesters' concerns
> "far-fetched," and continued by noting that  "for
> every campaigner lying
> down on a sidewalk this week to protest the WTO's
> efforts to reduce trade
> barriers, there is a happily employed Seattleite
> whose job depends on free
> commerce."
> 
> A disturbing indication of mainstream media
> attitudes toward coverage of the
> WTO meeting came when ABC's Seattle affiliate
> announced that it would "not
> devote coverage to irresponsible or illegal
> activities of disruptive
> groups," adding that "KOMO 4 News is taking a stand
> on not giving some
> protest groups the publicity they want.... So if you
> see us doing a story on
> a disruption, but we don't name the group or the
> cause, you'll know why." In
> a revealing choice of words, news director Joe
> Barnes described civil
> disobedience as "illegally disrupting the commerce
> of the city." (KOMO has
> requested comments on its policy at
> tips@komo4news.com .)
> 
> This decision by a corporate-owned news outlet to
> explicitly ignore the
> messages of groups practicing civil disobedience
> underscores the importance
> of independent journalism. Organizers in Seattle
> have made a priority of
> setting up an independent media center
> (http://www.indymedia.org ), and much
> is planned for the coming week, including a daily
> newspaper, a daily radio
> broadcast (World Trade Watch Radio,
> http://www.radioproject.org ) and
> from-the-scene video documentaries that will be
> available via satellite to
> many public television stations.
> 
> For more information, see FAIR's Resources on Trade
> at
> http://www.fair.org/issues-news/trade.html .
> 
> 
> 

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