From Sydney To Prague: Newspeak Clouds Global Coverage

Danny Schechter

LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND: Poor NBC. They spent a small fortune to scoop up the rights to the Olympic Games, and now no one in the United States is watching. To get the games, they paid buckeroo bucks, even reportedly "donating" a cool million to the International Olympic Committee's monument to itself, a museum here in Lausanne where the winners write their own history and the IOC's scandals are safely sanitized. As I was driving through this town, headquarters of the IOC, last week, I wondered why the American public has been tuning out in droves, while the rest of the word, especially here in Europe, is glued to the televised images of the Sydney games. General Electric, NBC's parent company, makes billions marketing to the world. Why can't they market an interest in the world to Americans?

You would think that in this hyped-up age of globalization, global events, problems and challenges would be high up on the American media agenda. The truth is that they are not --- by design. As the world becomes knitted together, our media ---which could be doing so much to promote cross-cultural understanding --- is doing the opposite by slashing international news and reinforcing parochialism, if not hostility to others, even to Australians. New York Times sports columnist Harvey Araton even sings the praises of Team USA for its "in your face" attitude, lionizing the style of America's "hard-staring gladiators."

"We are making them understand that in the arena of serious competitive endeavor, there is nothing quite like a little hate, mate," he enthuses, explaining how our athletic adversaries have been turned into enemies. "Without politics to fall back on, Communists to target, we have to make do with what's out there."

With all the concerns about doping at the Olympics, this mentality is just plain dopey and makes Americans seem like dopes. There is plenty of hate, mate, to go around. As the world's athletes battle it out down under, another global clash is being played out in Prague, where protesters from all over Europe are challenging the International Monetary Fund/World Bank and the values that are thought of there as American. To paraphrase the cartoon character Pogo: "They have met the enemy and they are us."

 Where's The Party? By the time you read this, you will know what happened, and how the Czech police did or did not defend the bankers from the rabble. The American media is out in force to tell us how ignorant the protesters are, and why the system they are challenging is in our best interests. Case in point: The cover of Newsweek's international edition immediately tells you where that magazine stands: "JOIN THE PARTY. Globalization's Biggest Fans: The Young Capitalists of Eastern Europe." Pictured are two young woman boogying over another headline: "What Do the Prague Protesters Want?"

The tone is one-sidedly pro-capitalist in the same way that Pravda used to trumpet the wonders of Communism. "At the IMF summit, the protesters will be outnumbered by young East Europeans who think globalization is just fine, thank you," Newsweek International (NI) reports. And thank you, writer Karen Lowery Miller, for this juicy spread about Prague, filed not from the Czech Republic but from neighboring Poland. True, the article, plastered with pictures of how "Prague and its café society aim to dazzle the global financiers," was filed from another country. But why let the facts get in the way of its focus on a handful of success stories who "brandish Nokia phones and race around in BMWs"?

The story line is a throwback to Horatio Alger, leading with a young man who "dreamt of escaping communism" only to end up, natch, an Internet millionaire. He has just raised $20 million for his new portal and is pronounced by NI as "typical of a new divide in Europe, where the most enthusiastic fans of 'Western values' are often young elites of the East." The journalism here is typical of the way controversial global issues are handled. The U.S. media sides with those in power, praising the new upwardly mobile elite as "debutantes of a global society of up-and-comers" for whom globalization means "a passport, a laptop and the right to order all the Western books and music they want over the Internet." In contrast, the protesters are portrayed as naïve, Marxist fanatics or worse.

These young capitalists are labeled "real idealists" because they are inspired by Western role models, or in other words, they want to be like us. Example: The story praises the "tough and ambitious" Czech "Chat Show Queen" Pavlina Wolfova who modeled her program on ones she saw in the West. What does she chat about: Economic inequality? Home-grown hostility to gypsies? No way. Instead, she dumbs it down with yet more discussions of prostitution and other topics that seem to come from the universal commercial TV talk show agenda. In the business it's called "KISS," standing for "Keep it simple, sensational and stupid.

The media monitoring group Media Tenor, which has an office in the Czech Republic, has just published a study of Czech television showing that a once high-quality state broadcaster now mimics the sensationalism and sleaze of private broadcasters financed with American money. NI typically doesn't cover any of this or other real problems in Prague. Only in the next to last paragraph of a five and half page spread does it even mention economic realities in Central Europe. It does so briefly but then squeezes in a sound bite attributed to a hard leftist from a fringe group who raises the red flag. "We need to go back to Marx," he says.

Newsweek then reassures its readers: "Well, that probably is not going to happen. Certainly Central Europe still has to work out the kinks if it means to be a player in the free market." Work out the kinks? What a quaint way of avoiding discussion of the realities of life in Central Europe, including the privatization giveaways, slashing of social services, displacements of workers and the growth of debt to the IMF and the West. These realities are alluded to but not described. The result: an image of a society basking in freedom. On the day I read this piece, the Financial Times noted that the Czech economy has been sluggish, hoping to grow only by 2.5 percent and only then because of massive infusions of Western private investment. In other words, their economic hopes are tied to selling off their industries and markets to outsiders.

 What Does A Protester Want? So, what about the protesters? Here, Newsweek turns to an outsider, Pranay Gupte, editor of the Earth Times. Note that they don't ask protesters to explain their own objectives, but instead commission a journalist who is decidedly critical. Gupte spends one paragraph summarizing their critiques and then devotes the rest of the article to ridiculing them by asserting that the real problem is leadership in the developing world. Why aren't these do-gooders protesting that, he asks. He doesn't point out that the U.S. and its key allies control these "global" institutions.

Later in this convoluted commentary posing as journalism, Gupte blasts protesters "subsidized by weighty Western foundations with heavy wallets." (No evidence is given. To my knowledge, some unions funded some protest but most of the "Seattle-style" activism is self-generated, funded by NGOs and the individuals who turn up.) Gupte then contradicts his own thesis, admitting that the protests he calls for against bad leaders in poor countries will be ruthlessly suppressed. He doesn't bother to explain that many of the despots he claims he wants challenged are in power thanks to military aid and loans from the West.

Newsweek's troubling and distorted package did show that the protests were important enough to cover, however propagandistically. At least the issue flickered on their radar screen. It wasn't until I came home that I discovered that the U.S. edition in the same week made no mention of Prague. The cover story was different; the story itself was omitted altogether. The editorial assumption no doubt is that Americans don't care, earlier protests in Washington and Seattle notwithstanding. But how can we care when the reporting is so shallow? It seems obvious that those who are in the streets are not relying on the Newsweeks of the world for validation or information. In some ways, this points to the ways in which mainstream outlets are not as effective in delivering an ideological message as they may have once been.

 Equal Time Time magazine was a bit fairer in its discussion of the issues, but it too offered an either-or perspective. Either accept globalization as it is, or return to the bad old days of state control. The notion that capitalism can or needs to be reformed or regulated, or that international economic agencies can be held more accountable, has not seemed to occur to either newsmagazine. Neither takes up the issues of canceling foreign debts or rectifying basic injustices in the global economy.

The International Herald Tribune doesn't resort to so much loaded language --- "newspeak" --- but its ideological orientation is unmistakable despite the excellent economic reporting of financial journalists like Alan Friedman and a more varied range of op-ed perspectives than is usually found in either The New York Times or The Washington Post, which own the Paris-based Tribune. It too is dominated by the upbeat, bullish-on-globalization commentary of the Paul Krugmans, Thomas Friedmans and Robert J. Samuelsons of the world. Critical pieces do make it in from time to time, including one of my own, (LINK) but the values of big business and big government are firmly in command.

These outlets agree on one thing: Violence in the streets is bad. And yet, one wonders, if the threat of conflict and violence didn't hover over these events, would they be covered at all? How many Americans had heard of the World Trade Organization before someone threw a rock through the window of Starbucks? That's a paradox protesters face: If they are not militant, they are ignored. If they are, their arrests make news while the issues they care about rarely do.

So, what should the rest of us do if we want to find out what is really going on, in Prague, in the highly charged globalization debate, or even at the Olympics?

o First, learn to read between the lines and understand that the corporate media are not neutral or disinterested bystanders sitting above the globalization fray. They have corporate agendas that are increasingly global in scope. They are part of the system, not apart from it.

o Second, don't buy the biased language and slippery reportage that is tilted toward one side of the debate. Recognize ideology posing as journalism. Go to original sources. Check out what activists are saying by checking out the Indy Media Center and Znet --- but also NGOs, policy organizations and the World Bank.

o Third, be on guard about reducing complex issues to simplistic formulas on either side, or taking refuge in nationalistic formulas and parochialism. There are many sides to globalization. There is a top-down form of imposed globalization, but there is also a bottom-up form of internationalism that brings people together across borders. Think seriously about Czech President Vaclav Havel's fears that some protesters are too simplistic by turning on symbols like McDonald's rather than confronting deeper structural issues.

"We cannot emigrate from Earth to another planet," he says. "We are destined to live together, and the only way to meaningful coexistence is by dialogue, an exchange of views, a search for solutions." This protester turned president sponsored a meeting between activists, economists, academics and World Bank officials. It is doubtful that this would have happened without the protests. Standing up for justice drives change; sitting down for discussions builds awareness on all sides. We need dialogues as well as diatribes. Let the debate continue --- and let the public be informed about it in a way that transcends labels, stereotypes and superficial issue framing.

In point of fact, as the New York Times reported, there is an internal debate within the World Bank with some staff members even arguing that they should be in the streets, too. There is a lot of research being done there on world poverty, with many Bank officials who are trying to promote strong advocacy and development work --- including president James Wolfensohn --- running up against opposition from the United States, Britain and France. According to South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, the protesters are focused on the wrong people: targeting the bank but not the rich industrialized countries. "The protesters seem not to understand these things," he says. This is not to say that the Bank is a force for revolution or that Manuel, who endorses the tenets of neo-liberalism, is without his own agenda, but the reality is often more complex than the sloganeers in the streets who denounce the Bank recognize, or the media outlets who dismiss the protesters admit.

Wouldn't it be great if the Prague protests were covered thoroughly and fairly? And wouldn't it be great if the TV color commentators in Australia were to inform those who are watching more about the countries and cultures that are competing? More context and background would make the games more interesting and worth watching. Perhaps, if we were given a better understanding of the real world, as opposed to the MTV show of the same name, we'd be more interested in righting the great divides of our times, which undercut the ideals of peace and harmony that are the core of the Olympic idea.

The last thing we need, mate, is more hate.

Danny Schechter is the executive editor of MediaChannel.org and author of News Dissector (www.electronpress.com)

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