Muted response to Ashcroft’s
sneak attack on civil liberties
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Microsoft, GE bring bigotry to life
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MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS
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The FTAA is none of your business

By Rachel Coen

Trade ministers from across the Western Hemisphere gathered at the Marriott Hotel in Quito, Ecuador from Oct. 31-Nov. 1. The occasion: the 2002 ministerial meeting on the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

Thousands of other people gathered in Quito that weekend too — in the streets. Organized by a coalition of indigenous, labor, environmental and student groups, approximately 10,000 people marched to protest the FTAA. After enduring tear gas and intimidation, the protesters won a meeting to present their demands to the assembled trade ministers. At the confrontational meeting, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick was told he should be ashamed for "trying to force Latin American governments to sign a trade agreement that will only bring them misery and poverty" — a spectacle that made the news on Ecuadorian TV (FoodFirst.org, 11/1/02).

Coverage on US television was rather different — that is to say, virtually nonexistent. According to a search of the Nexis database, no major national broadcast television or cable news program in the US did a single story focused on the protests or the Quito ministerial. Nor did National Public Radio’s national news programs, or the three major newsweeklies, Time, Newsweek and US News & World Report. USA Today, the country’s largest circulation newspaper, ignored the story as well.

A challenge to democracy
The FTAA would link all the countries in the Americas (except for Cuba) in one massive free trade zone. Though it’s often described as an expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — which would be momentous enough — in fact the FTAA is far more powerful than that.

As envisioned by the US, the FTAA would follow the undemocratic approach of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) proposed General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Under a proposed "liberalization" scheme, the FTAA would all but force member nations to allow privatization of vital social services including water, energy, education, healthcare, and postal and financial services, whether or not their electorates support it (National Catholic Reporter, 5/24/02).

Sounds like an agreement the public should have a say in, doesn’t it? The FTAA, however, has been negotiated largely in secret, with virtually no input from civil society. The provisions that are known make clear that, if enacted in its current form, the FTAA could seriously erode national sovereignty by allowing corporations to override the laws of democratically elected governments.

One such provision is modeled after NAFTA’s investment chapter (also known as Chapter 11), which allows a corporation to sue the government of a member country in a secret tribunal if it feels that a law or policy — for instance, an environmental or labor regulation — adversely affects its investments. These proceedings are also called "investor-to-state" suits.

During the last round of FTAA negotiations, at the April 2001 Summit of the Americas in Quebec, most mainstream US news stories on the negotiations omitted any mention of Chapter 11 (Extra!, 7-8/01). This year, there was so little coverage of the negotiations that a Nexis search (10/1/02-11/18/02) of TV transcripts, major newspapers, magazines and wire service articles revealed only two US stories dealing with the FTAA and investor-to-state suits (Miami Herald, 10/13/02; The American Prospect, 11/18/02).

The lack of coverage of these controversial provisions is all the more striking given that grassroots activism — and, more recently, opposition from the US Congress — may be initiating a shift in US policy.

During recent bilateral trade negotiations with Chile and Singapore, the US for the first time suggested limits on such suits, including rules that would better protect health and safety laws by narrowing the basis on which corporations could sue governments (Financial Times, 10/2/02). The Miami Herald (10/13/02), the only major US outlet to report this important change, suggested that as a result, the US may now modify its support of investor-to-state suit provisions in the FTAA.

It’s hard to say how likely such a reversal is; it might be easier to judge, and for the public to influence the outcome, if mainstream media mustered an interest in the subject.

A threat to public health
The FTAA also includes proposals for intellectual property protections that are even more stringent than current WTO rules. If included in the final agreement, these rules would make it difficult for Western Hemisphere countries to override patents in emergencies, hindering states from producing generic, affordable HIV/AIDS drugs (Foreign Policy In Focus, 4/29/01).

Despite the serious consequences this would have for global public health, mainstream US media have largely failed to pick up on the story. In the month before the summit and the two weeks following it, there were no stories examining the FTAA’s potential impact on the availability of HIV/AIDS drugs in any major US newspapers, national television shows, major magazines or national NPR programs. The only US wire service story on that subject to appear during that period was from Inter Press Service (11/1/02).

IPS reported that the health advocacy group Doctors Without Borders issued a strongly worded warning that "if the FTAA creates a system that blocks use of equivalent but cheaper drugs, it will be a catastrophe for our patients and for all people with HIV" in the Americas, because "the difference in price can be the difference between life and death." IPS noted that the Caribbean is "the second-most HIV/AIDS affected area in the world, after sub-Saharan Africa."

Interestingly, the New York Times’ Business section did run an article during this period about intellectual property conflicts between the US and developing countries (10/14/02). The article addressed the question of how WTO rules affect HIV/AIDS drugs — described as "the lightning-rod issue" in intellectual property — but did not mention the FTAA.

An international movement
A common conceit in mainstream US coverage of the globalization movement is that critics of trade pacts like the FTAA are, for the most part, spoiled rich (North) American kids who have no clue what the world’s poor want or need. Writing about the 2001 FTAA protests in Quebec, New York Times columnist and globalization guru Thomas Friedman dubbed globalization protesters "The Coalition to Keep Poor People Poor," and claimed that these "protectionist unions and anarchists" were hopelessly out of touch with the public of developing countries (New York Times, 4/24/01).

Had the US media paid attention to the demonstrations at the October FTAA summit, they would have seen this assumption turned on its head. The Quito protests were a thoroughly Latin American manifestation of the globalization movement, organized by a broad coalition of groups that included the National Campesino Social Security Organization, the National Indigenous Confederation, the Andean Indigenous Federation, the Ecuadorian Federation of Free Trade Unions, and grassroots environmental groups Acción Ecológica and Cequipus.

According to Food First’s Peter Rosset, who confronted Trade Representative Zoellick during the meeting between protesters and trade ministers, only "seven or eight" of the thousands of demonstrators in Quito were North American. "Almost everybody there was an indigenous person, was a small farmer, was a trade unionist or was a student from Ecuador or from somewhere else in Latin America," Rosset told FAIR’s radio show CounterSpin (11/8/02). "It really gives the lie to this notion in Western media that nobody in the Third World is against free trade," said Rosset.

Initially, Ecuadorian authorities greeted protesters with barricades, water cannons and tear gas, resulting in a number of injuries. It became evident that the tide had turned, said Rosset, when indigenous members of the police force were shamed by indigenous women activists into switching sides and marching with the protesters. "Once the police broke ranks" Rosset told CounterSpin, "the government immediately freaked out" and insisted that Zoellick and the other ministers agree to a meeting.

Like most of the events at the FTAA ministerial, this remarkable activist victory went unrecorded by the US press, though not, perhaps, unnoticed: Rosset also told CounterSpin that he spoke to reporters from the New York Times and Miami Herald who had done "extensive interviews with indigenous leaders and farmers" which never appeared in either paper. Evidently, the reporters were aware of these perspectives, but they — or more likely their editors — did not judge them newsworthy enough to share with US readers.

Source: Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)’s Extra!: <www.fair.org>

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Microsoft, GE bring bigotry to life

Feb. 12— The latest hire by the cable news network MSNBC — co-owned by General Electric/NBC and Microsoft — is Michael Savage, a radio talk show host noted for his unabashed bigotry. Savage is scheduled to have his own weekly one-hour show on MSNBC beginning in March. Savage routinely refers to non-white countries as "turd world nations" and charges that the US "is being taken over by the freaks, the cripples, the perverts and the mental defectives" (San Francisco Bay Guardian, 9/20/00). In a recent broadcast he justified ethnic slurs as a national security tool: "We need racist stereotypes right now of our enemy in order to encourage our warriors to kill the enemy," he explained (San Francisco Chronicle, 2/6/03).

"Turd world" immigrants are a frequent target of Savage’s anger: "You open the door to them, and the next thing you know, they are defecating on your country and breeding out of control" (Oregonian, 4/24/02). At times Savage’s arguments echo the conspiratorial scapegoating of the white supremacist movement: "With the [Latino] population that has emerged, since they breed like rabbits, in many cases the whites will become a minority in their own nation... The white people don’t breed as often for whatever reason. I guess many homosexuals are involved. That is also part of the grand plan, to push homosexuality to cut down on the white race" (San Francisco Bay Guardian, 9/20/00).

Commenting on the "Million Mom March" in favor of gun control (which he dubbed the "Million Dyke March"), he dismissed organizers’ reference to American children killed by guns (5/15/00): "They’re not kids, they’re ghetto slime... they’re the same kids that are in Sierra Leone toting AK-47s."

In addition to racism, misogyny and homophobia are staples of Savage’s show. In his book Savage Nation, he argues that Sen. Hillary Clinton and Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor have "feminized and homosexualized much of America, to the point where the nation has become passive, receptive and masochistic."

Discussing student volunteers distributing food to the homeless in San Francisco, Savage declared that "the girls from Branson [school] can go in and maybe get raped... because they seem to like the excitement of it. There’s always the thrill and possibility they’ll be raped in a dumpster while giving out a turkey sandwich" (San Francisco Bay Guardian, 9/20/00). In announcing the hire, MSNBC president Erik Sorenson described Savage as "brash, passionate and smart," and promised that he would provide "compelling opinion and analysis with an edge."

Source: Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR): <www.fair.org>

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Muted response to Ashcroft’s
sneak attack on civil liberties

Feb. 12 — In an attempt to further increase the government’s surveillance and law enforcement powers, and decrease judicial review and protections of civil liberties, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has secretly drafted a sweeping sequel to the USA Patriot Act of 2001.

Despite the draft legislation’s authoritarian provisions -- including one that would empower the government to strip Americans of their citizenship if they participate in the lawful activities of any group that the attorney general labels "terrorist" -- mainstream US media have responded with only a handful of news stories.

The news was broken on Feb. 7 by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), which obtained and published a full copy of the DOJ’s draft "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003" or "Patriot Act II" legislation (www.public-i.org).

According to CPI, the Jan. 9, 2003 draft was prepared by Attorney General John Ashcroft’s staff and has not been officially released by the DOJ. Elected officials were kept in the dark about Ashcroft’s initiative, says CPI: "Senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee minority staff have inquired about Patriot II for months and have been told as recently as this week that there is no such legislation being planned."

Among other things, the draft includes provisions that would:

-- Authorize a DNA database of "suspected terrorists" -- a category so broadly defined that it could, according to CPI, include anyone associated with "suspected" groups, and any "noncitizens suspected of certain crimes or of having supported any group designated as terrorist."

-- Nullify most law enforcement consent decrees passed before Sept. 11, 2001 that do not relate to civil rights violations. Consent decrees are legal agreements that limit law enforcement’s ability to gather information about individuals and groups. Many, such as New York City’s Handschu agreement (which was severely weakened by a federal court ruling on Tuesday), were arrived at in response to police abuses, including the harassment of social justice groups.

-- Enable the government to "expatriate" US citizens "if, with the intent to relinquish his nationality, he becomes a member of, or provides material support to, a group that the United Stated has designated as a ‘terrorist organization.’"

Currently, you must formally state your intent to give up US citizenship in order to lose it, or take a drastic action such as serving in the military of a state that is at war with the US. CPI warns that Patriot Act II would allow the government to "infer" that intent from an individual’s political associations, and possibly deport any citizen who participated in the work of a group that the attorney general chooses to brand as "terrorist," even if he or she broke no laws.

These provisions build on the expanded law enforcement powers established by the first USA Patriot Act, which created the new category of "domestic terrorism," a crime defined in part as activities that "involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws" and which "appear to be intended" to "intimidate or coerce" civilians or the government. In examining the measures that Patriot Act II would authorize against "suspected terrorists," it’s important to recall that the legal definition of domestic terrorism is now so broad that it could encompass traditional forms of political protest, such as non-violent civil disobedience.

The Patriot Act II draft also includes measures to weaken the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) system by curtailing public access to information about accused terrorists being held in custody, and by restricting access to the "worst case scenario" reports that companies are required to file with the Environmental Protection Agency about the potential effects of environmental disasters.

Despite all this, the story has barely made a ripple in the US news media. On PBS, "Now with Bill Moyers" featured an extensive interview with CPI’s Charles Lewis (2/7/03), but apart from that, a search of the national television news programs archived in the Nexis database found only one report on the DOJ’s plan for a Patriot Act II, a segment on Fox News Channel’s "The Big Story With John Gibson" (2/10/03). The story was apparently ignored by ABC, CBS and NBC’s nightly newscasts and newsmagazine shows.

It wasn’t hard for newspapers to do better than that, but even so, their coverage amounted to a handful of stories. Of major papers included in Nexis, the Washington Post gave the story the most prominent treatment, with a front-page article (2/8/03), a news brief (2/11/03) and an editorial (2/12/03). The New York Times and Los Angeles Times ran articles on the draft legislation the same day, but on inside pages (A10 and A24, respectively). The Chicago Tribune printed a version of the Los Angeles Times story, and New York’s Newsday ran an article about Patriot II on page two. Aside from a brief news item in the Seattle Times (2/8/03) and editorials in the San Francisco Chronicle and Rocky Mountain News (2/11/03), that was the extent of the stories Ashcroft’s plans generated.

The fact that the DOJ has secretly prepared legislation that would fundamentally alter the protections afforded Americans by the Constitution is, by any measure, a huge story. The first USA Patriot Act was rushed through Congress in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks with very little media coverage or public debate.

Source: Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR): <www.fair.org>

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