* COMMERCIALS AS NEWS * * PROTESTS AT THE FORUM * * THE STOCK MARKET SOIREE *

It is Superbowl Sunday–a good day for TV news programs to preview the commercials which will be aired during the broadcast. That’s right. MSNBC IS PREVIEWING THE COMMERCIALS! (What is the news, you ask? Britney Spears has gone retro for Pepsi.) Why is commercialization rarely newsworthy? Never mind.

On CNN, the crawl tells us that Arafat has appealed for peace. Where? Not on CNN, but in the op-ed pages of the New York Times. He had to write his own article, it seems, to get his unadulterated views into the press. And then there are, count them, three items on terrorism, possible terrorism and fears of terrorism. It’s too early. My mind is tuning it out, and so I click it off.

It’s time for the NEW YORK TIMES, but there it is again. For them, the Superbowl belongs below the fold, and the threats above. Lead Headline: “ECONOMIC FORUM SHIFTS IT FOCUS TO NEW DANGERS. A SENSE OF VULNERABILITY”…Next to the story is a photo. In color. A woman wrapped in an American flag looks angry while she speaks with a policeman. Caption: “A World Economic Forum Protester talked to a police officer yesterday about restrictions put on the activists.” In the background, two placards defining positions one rarely sees in the news columns, and even more rarely on the front page: “MONEY FOR JOBS, NOT FOR WAR,” and “FREE MUMIA. REPEAL THE PATRIOT ACT.”

I ask myself: is this what the editors really fear, their subliminal danger is the protesters? Are they to blame for the sense of vulnerability? The story concludes that inside the forum, and at the ritzy restaurants serving delegates, “the main dish is anxiety.”

THE PROTESTS STORY IS A POLICE STORY

For more about the protests, I had to drill down to page 1,7 where the story is not on what as many as twenty or more thousand people had to say. Oh no. The focus is on more anxiety–the anxiety of the largest police presence that I have ever seen in one place at one time in all my years in this town. Headline: “POLICE WATCH AND WAIT FOR THE COLORFUL TO TURN NASTY.” The photo, this time in black and white, features a not so colorful protester (not from the main body of “the colorful” either) Caption: “Using barricades the police kept most protesters peaceful at the World Economic Forum.” Ach so. If the cops hadn’t used barricades, they would have turned “nasty.” Editorializing anyone? Their frame is the police, not the protest. A protester with something substantive to say rates a soundbyte only at the bottom of a piece spread across four columns.

Unquoted was Norman Siegal, former head of the NY Civil Liberties Union and failed candidate for public advocate who was acting as a legal observer. I ran into him when I left the hotel and saw some protest signs called “THE WALLED OFF ASTORIA” (Others featured a drawing of an erect member of the male body with the slogan: “GLOBALIZE THIS!”)

Siegel denounced the police practice of penning protesters and undermining their sense of empowerment. “It defeats the real exercise of their free speech,” he told me. He may only be the best known civil libertarian in the city, but the The Times couldn’t find him.

THE ENRON SCANDAL IN THE UK IS A MEDIA SCANDAL HERE

As it turns out, ,the paper was lugged over to my pad by a guest, Greg Palast, BBC journalist and columnist for The Observer, who was in town speaking at a variety of forums and promoting his forthcoming book “THE BEST DEMOCRACY MONEY CAN BUY” (Pluto Press). He is jumping up and down as he draws my attention to page 27 of the Times.

There, under the subhead “global reach,” is “SCANDAL DRAWS CRITICS WHEREVER ENRON WENT.” It focuses on world reaction to the Enron scandal and focuses on a story about Enron influence buying in Britain. It features a picture of the front page of the Daily Mail: “ENRON SLEAZE ENGULFS LABOUR” is the head, and the story reprises an earlier investigative triumph by none other than Greg Palast, which came to be known in the UK as “Lobbygate.”

You would think that Palast would be happy to see his story in the bigger deal Sunday New York Times. He isn’t. With bagel and cream cheese splattering through his teeth, he calls the New York Times a bunch of hypocrites and worse. “I offered this story to them in l998. It was front page in London and triggered an official probe, which led to officials resigning. The Times REFUSED to carry it. And you can name the editor I talked to. Put his name in. It was none other than Warren Hoge. He said it wasn’t news! “ENRON WASN”T NEWS! (Hoge was a major top banana at the Times then, and although I can’t call him for a quote this morning for this column, I cannot judge him any more harshly that I judge the paper’s coverage this morning on the protests. Let’s assume he may have a very different recollection, if he has any at all, in the best Nixonian sense. (”What did you know and when did you stop knowing it”)

BEING INTERVIEWED BY THE RIGHT AND LEFT

I was still pursuing an “inside-outside” strategy yesterday, mingling with the mighty in the suites and a watching with considerable respect those in the streets. Their passion for change is admirable, as is their willingness to dissent. Nearer the hotel, a small gang of very loud counter-protesters were supporting the police and denouncing them as traitors. I later heard there were 36 arrests on minor matters.

I was happy to be interviewed by two sides of the media spectrum yesterday as well, by Nina Siegel of Bloomberg News–who is doing a story on people you would never expect among the hoi polloi like your news dissector, and later by WORLD LINKS TV, the satellite-fed station, which was also carrying coverage and commentary from the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Laura Flanders ably moderated this far more amateurish but spirited conversation. I am not sure why alternative TV programming doesn’t seem to believe in lighting and heat. The people in Brazil were fuzzy and dark on the screen I saw, and those of us in NY were freezing in the under-heated studio at Downtown Community TV. Unfortunately, WORLD LINKS doesn’t have the access to the airwaves it deserves.

PARTYING AT THE STOCK EXCHANGE

One of the themes I heard on several business panels at the Forum was how business is always better at getting things done than governments (Treasury Secretary Paul O Neil was dissing foreign aid for this reason among others) And yet, the Forum’s soiree gala last night was held at the New York Stock Exchange, Half of lower Manhattan was locked down to assure that the delegates could get to this Mecca of Modern Capitalism, which became for the night anyway, a party palace with the five trading floors done over in theatrical fashion and each serving food from a different corner of the globe. An exchange employee–there are 1500 of them–told me that most of the people who work there are assigned to Surveillance and Regulation. The implication is that regulation rules, and why is that? Because in its absence, we have an Enron scandal a day, Regulation protects the public against their own greed, policing them in the public good. So why if they have to play by well enforced (or maybe not so well enforced) rules at the place that defines capitalism, they are always denouncing such rules in matters of trade and investment?

Good question, hey? (And speaking of regulation, I ran into an ex-SEC commissioner who told me that she was the first woman to visit the Exchange in the late 70’s only to find they had no ladies room at all. One was finally installed in a TELEPHONE BOOTH on the 7th floor. That shows you the power of regulators (and protest!)

For me, the MARKET WAS UP. One of my musical idols rocked and rolled — a first, in this stuffy citadel of eco-seriousness. None other than Gary US Bonds, a pride of New Jersey, got the forum on its feet. At one point I was dancing with half the cabinet of Mozambique. Two beautiful backup singers to the side of the stage fronted for Gary. One was his wife, the other his daughter. Both, he told me, are named Laurie. “It was the only name I could think of at the time,” he told me in response to a question.

EXCUSE ME, MR. GATES

As for other questions, I did get to lob one earlier in the day at none other than Bill Gates,who was on hand discussing his interest in global health and the billions his foundation gives to fight diseases and epidemics. At the close of a panel he was on, he called for more public awareness. So I asked him why his foundation spends so little on media to promote his message, while Bono looked on approvingly. He responded that they give out reports and releases to reporters– I thought that this media mogul was being rather naive about how public opinion is formed and often manipulated for bad causes. Why not try it the other way, me thinks. If his response was wimpy, other journalists patted me on the back for asking a good question. That seems to my fate in this life: asking good questions.

LAST ROUND, PERHAPS? from the emotional editor JF, who has now been called silly and naïve, too.

Militant is not a word that should describe the behavior of Hamas, PFLP and other Palestinian groups and individuals who are out to kill Israelis and Americans in Israel.

Yes, many people targeted by these suicide bombers and snipers are also Americans. Many Americans. Why is terrorism against Americans on Israeli soil different than terrorism against Americans in Somalia, Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon or Yemen? Why should ANYONE justify it or give it moral equivalence to people who are trying to protect themselves from suicide bombers and snipers disguised as civilians, but are twisted around as the bad guys by many in the media, led by the leftists in Europe.

Why don’t the Palestinians blow up a power plant instead of people? Because the US would never let them get away with blowing up a power plant or the waterworks. But it’s ok for Palestinian militants to kill my fellow New Jerseyans at the Sbarro’s in Jerusalem or my friend’s daughter and fiance while they were shopping in Tel Aviv.

Is it naïve to think that if suicide bombers disappear, jobs will appear? If suicide bombers disappear, checkpoints will be less clogged. Is it silly to think that if the suicide bombers encouraged by a corrupted, hate-ridden and tyrannical leadership disappear, the equation changes and peace becomes possible?

Expose Arafat’s corruption, dictatorship and tyranny. Expose his squashing of moderates, like those who think the way King Abdullah of Jordan thinks, expose what he did to the Christians in Bethlehem and its environs, expose him for the terrorist that he really is. Stop telling those who want to expose him that they are naive and silly. Defend democracy. It may not be the best system, but it certainly is better than anything else out there–even if it is delusional.

Tell the truth about Arafat, and try to find someone moderate to talk to. The best Fox News could come up with was Marwan Barghouti, a true follower of the Arafat/Bin Laden terrorist tradition.

There are better ways to get cheap oil. Israel and Americans in Israel, as well as people from around the world who live there, deserve protection from terrorists… defined as people who kill civilians in other countries and Americans anywhere to make a political point.<< End of emotional tirade.>>

HOW ABOUT SOME ANSWERS?

I am on my way back to the Forum to ask some more. Let me hear from you. What is being reported in your town or corner of the world on the forums (in NY and Brazil) and the protests? Tell us all. Write: dissector@mediachannel.org.