It’s Saturday, the one day of the week I get to sleep in, and so I didn’t go for coffee until after 10 am, this morning. The line was long, and so I perused the newspapers that were on display. The first one I picked up was The New York Times. I thought I might see some story about the Occupy Wall Street Movement, but instead, above the fold, on the right side this was the first story I saw:
West Sees Libya as Opportunity for Businesses
WASHINGTON — The guns in Libya have barely quieted, and NATO’s military assistance to the rebellion that toppled Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi will not end officially until Monday. But a new invasion force is already plotting its own landing on the shores of Tripoli.
Western security, construction and infrastructure companies that see profit-making opportunities receding in Iraq and Afghanistan have turned their sights on Libya, now free of four decades of dictatorship. Entrepreneurs are abuzz about the business potential of a country with huge needs and the oil to pay for them, plus the competitive advantage of Libyan gratitude toward the United States and its NATO partners.
“There is a gold rush of sorts taking place right now,” said David Hamod, president and chief executive officer of the National U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce. “And the Europeans and Asians are way ahead of us. I’m getting calls daily from members of the business community in Libya. They say, ‘Come back, we don’t want the Americans to lose out.’ ”
The other major story on the front page of the most important newspaper in America? One about the European Union seeking help from China. Here’s the headline: China Is Asked for Investment in Euro Rescue
This does not entail a rescue of the civilians in countries all across Europe suffering under the obligatory neo-liberal austerity programs that have been imposed by their governments, by the way. No this is a rescue of the major financial institutions and investors in debt who are looking for a helping hand from the nation that soon will be their major trading partner. Here’s the most significant paragraph in the piece that spells out what the EU is really seeking from China:
In a sign that the crisis was far from over and that investors were still wary of Italy’s political paralysis and its huge debt, it was obliged on Friday to pay the highest rate in more than a decade to sell a new bond issue.
Yes, this is about debt and investors and markets. Not the 99%. Not the people in the streets around the world protesting against the greed and rapacity of our current political system, one dominated by Central Banks, large investment firms, major oil and insurance companies, commodity traders, hedge fund managers, oligarchs and other wealthy individuals who still have the resources (i.e., moolah, lucre, dirty money) to invest. These are the lead stories and headlines that The New York Times deems fit to put on its front page.
Meanwhile Americans who have exercised their right to peacefully protest the massive income disparity in our country and the control of our government by the .01% (aided and abetted by many of the .99% who owe their livelihoods to these mega corporations and Billionaires) have been arrested, brutalized, pepper sprayed, beaten, run over with motor vehicles and policemen on horses, gassed, flash bombed, shot at from close range and generally treated like enemies of the state. We haven’t seen protests or violence by the authorities on this scale over the issue of economic conditions (conditions created by the .01% as the result of criminal fraud on such a scale that it boggles the mind) since Hoover ordered the Army under MacArthur to destroy the Bonus Army encampments.
So does the New York Times include in today’s edition any stories about the Occupy movements around the globe, and in particular here in the United s States? Not really.
From Friday, buried in a blog post by Marjorie Connelly ran a story about a survey that claims the Occuoy Wall Street protestors are ““disgruntled Democrats” who aren’t happy with Obama. Was there any mention of what the protestor are really unhappy about–the gross income inequality that is sapping our economy of jobs and and our people of hope? No. It was all about the political angle of how the Occupy movement would effect the Democrats. Another instance of avoiding the real story of the Occupy movement by focusing on matters that are extraneous to the real reasons this true grass roots movement arose. In short, a version of focusing on the ginned up superficial electoral horse race prospects of Democrats (i.e., the Occupy movement must be bad for Democrats) instead of why Occupy Wall Street even exists, much less why it has spread around the country.
Here’s another story about OWS by the New York times in the last day. one reported by
Joshua Brustein, yesterday. Guess what his story was about? An app for your i-phone called “L’m getting Arrested,” which you can use if you are about to be handcuffed by the police. Isn’t that revealing. I’m sure the story is helpful for people who (1) own and i-phone or its equivalent and (2) are about to be arrested by police for their involvement on OWS protests and rallies, but I can think of far more important stories the New York Times could be using its reporters to cover, can’t you?
One more example: a NYT story yesterday by Shaila Dewan that wins the prize for stating the obvious:
Occupy Wall Street protesters have touched a nerve with their slogan, “We are the 99 percent.” It has focused attention on the ground gained by the rich even as a brutal economy has pushed the typical American family backward. Economic inequality may or may not become a central issue in the presidential race, but the candidates have at least one reason to hope it does not.
A look at the finances of those vying for the presidency shows that almost all of them rank at the very top of the country’s earners. In other words, they are the 1 percent.
Well, duh.
To be sure, The Times is not the only member of the so-called liberal media to be dismissive or deliberately ignore the most salient feature of this movement. Even MsNBC, which I have been watching the last week, has focused far more on the political race for the Republican nomination than it has on OWS. Even the Scott Olsen story has hardly registered as more than a blip on the major network news or in the New York Times and Washington Post which earlier this month had the audacity to print an op-ed piece claiming the media was correct in not covering the OWS protests before the NYPD decided to bust some heads.
The bigger point is that the media should ignore protests in their earlier phases. As Jack Shafer of Reuters (sounds so weird, no?) wrote yesterday, protests happen all the time. They’re boring and predictable.
What’s the downside if your reporters and camera crews are a couple of days late to the OWS movement? Will the protesters have forgotten their talking points? Will you miss the arrests, the arrests that are all over YouTube as filmed by the protesters themselves?
Here’s a link from Reddit showing the paucity of the coverage by the major news media. Sure, there have been stories by the wire services, but they have often been shallow and lacking in important information. The best coverage has been local, i.e., the San Francisco and Bay area newspapers, or alternative news sites.
The Times did print a story about Scott on October 27th but it was relatively brief compared to coverage by other papers. And today they printed a story about the effect of Oakland’s crackdown on the future political career of Oakland’s mayor, Jean Quan, but nothing in depth on the effect of the movement or why so many people are becoming involved in these peaceful protests. The coverage is either sensationalist in nature, or oriented toward OWS’ effects on political figures. In short, it is severely lacking in substance.
But then, what should you or I really expect. The Times lack of in depth coverage is simply a symbol for the fact that we have no “major liberal news media” in the United States, and if we were honest we never have. Even MsNBC is more a Democratic Party oriented media operation, and it still employs Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan. The Times is simply no longer relevant except as a partner with Wall Street in distracting us from the real story behind the single largest protest movement since the Vietnam War era. It, and the other national and local corporate media outlets are performing that function very well.