“In a few days, the World Economic Forum will hold its annual meeting, an elite gathering of what the WEF calls the worldÂ’s “top decision-makers”– in other words, big business leaders and government officials. The event usually takes place in Davos, Switzerland, but will be in New York City this year (January 31- February 4), ostensibly as a gesture of solidarity after the September 11 attacks.
Many globalization critics identify the WEF as a nerve center for neoliberal economics, and past WEF meetings have been the focus of significant protest. This yearÂ’s meeting promises to be no exception, and local media are serving up some of the same distortions that have greeted past globalization protests. Mainstream New York City newspapers have tended to frame discussion of the demonstrations in terms of their status as a security problem. A search of the Lexis-Nexis database (12/1/01 – 1/28/02) found that most articles in the New York Daily News, New York Post, New York Times and Newsday mentioning the WEF have focused on police preparations for the protests. As a result, the political debate over the WEF has been obscured, as have concerns about police brutality and civil liberties…”
All I have to say is that since Sept. 11 the mainstream media–especially in the New York area–has become a propaganda tool of the state of a type arguably unseen since WWII. This press coverage has nothing to do with informing the public and everything to do with galvanizing opinion in favor of the power elite. Disgusting.
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