At 03:35 AM 12/1/99, Jay Fenello wrote:

Well, it's 3:30 a.m. EST, and I have seen very little coverage of the riots. It's seems that the Pete Rose story is a much higher priority topic tonight!

In other words, I'd say were in the midsts of another media blackout. For those who missed the last one, there is a good summary at:  http://www.icann.org/comments-mail/icann-current/msg00677.html

Consider the situation. We have a World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, one that has delegates arriving from over 130 countries of the world, one that has been disrupted by riots in Seattle.

The riots are so bad that police have reportedly fired rubber bullets, and used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse the thousands of protesters who took to the streets on Tuesday. Riots that were so bad that the opening WTO meeting was canceled. Riots that were so bad that the mayor of Seattle imposed a 7 p.m.-to-dawn curfew, and has called out the national guard.

We practically have marshal law in Seattle, and yet, the Network news has done very little to cover the fiasco.

On my cable system, I get all four networks, and I get CNN, CNNFN, CNN Headline News, CNBC, MSNBC, and Fox News. After hours of channel surfing, I have very little to report. Other than the three minute leader that is run at the top of the newscasts, I have seen little in depth coverage. 

[Compare this to the recent coverage given to the Kennedy search and rescue. We had non-stop coverage on every network for hours and hours, with live pictures of the empty ocean, and little else to report.]

The media is obviously hiding this story!

One blatant example is the current story running on MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.com/news/340805.asp#BODY It's one of the longest I've seen, yet it doesn't even mention why so many people are protesting.

It's like the question WHY doesn't even exist!

Not only are they hiding it, but they are even taking sides. The one in-depth news report that I did see was on MSNBC and featured a spokesperson for the White House. Unfortunately, she characterized the protestors as a confused bunch of disparate parties who were all protesting a disjunctive and contradictory slate of issues.

Why the bias? -- you ask.

The truth of the matter is that the riots in Seattle, the fight over ICANN, and the media blackout given to both topics, are all related. The riots in Seattle are about the loss of U.S. [any national/tribal/state]  sovereignty to multinational corporations, just like the Domain Name Wars were about the loss of the Internet to the same multinational corporations.

Not possible! -- you say.

Consider that the media is owned by these same multinational corporations:

"The notion that journalism can regularly produce a product that violates the fundamental interests of media owners and advertisers ... is absurd."
-- Robert McChesney, journalist and author

Consider that while knowledgeable people recognize the bias of the media in the U.S., the vast majority of Americans doubt that it is possible:

"The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent. "
-- Gore Vidal, novelist and critic

Consider the implications of this email:

"Corporations have been enthroned .... An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people... until wealth is aggregated in a few hands ... and the Republic is destroyed."
-- Abraham Lincoln

Until next time . . .

Jay.