Media and Trade: A Love Story
by William Greider
The Nation magazine, July 24/31, 2000
On the. final day of the Seattle demonstrations this past
December, Peter Jennings of ABC's World News Tonight introduced
the story with a sly aside: "The thousands of demonstrators
will go home or on to some other venue, where they'll try to generate
attention for whatever cause that moves them." His tone reflected
the media's general puzzlement. Where did these odd creatures
come from? And good riddance to them.
Six months later, at the time of the China-WTO vote, the media's
puzzlement over "free trade" opponents had hardened
into disdain, and stories that supported the opponents' arguments
were hard to find. It wasn't until the day after the House vote
that the Wall Street Journal reported in a lead story that the
China-WTO deal is important to US companies as an investment agreement
that lets them move more factories into China, not as a boost
for made-in-USA exports. "If the strategic plans of American
companies are anything to go by, U.S. exports aren't the big trade
story here," the article said. This is the very point that
trade critics like Alan Tonelson of the US Business and Industry
Council had been making-in a media vacuum-for weeks.
"I'm seeing a huge change in the media," said Charles
Kernaghan of the National Labor Committee, whose May report on
horrendous factory conditions in China received almost no coverage
despite his having established a strong track record for accuracy
with the Kathie Lee Gifford story. "We've never had such
a hard time. There was enormous self-censorship on this China
vote; the [New York] Times and the [Washington] Post turned themselves
into cheerleaders. I sense there is a certain fear about the issues
raised by Seattle-a feeling in the media that if we go down that
road, it can open up some real dangerous doors."
One-sided coverage of globalization is not new, of course,
but what's striking is how the best and brightest have mobilized
post-Seattle, to support the corporate line. Like governing elites
in general, the media have embraced the mantras of globalization
as the new sustaining ideology for America's role in the world-
better than me cold war because nobody's getting shot and lots
of people are made wealthier. Seattle scared them, more deeply
than many of us at first appreciated. Seattle forced uncomfortable
facts-the empirical contradictions-into a public discussion that
has long been confined to ideological abstractions. The alarmed
reaction may be read as a backhanded compliment to the movement,
but the media also have the power to poison the political atmosphere
and block out an honest debate that's grounded in facts. That
direction is potentially dangerous because if there is no space
for dissenting views, the conflicts may well drift into irrationality
and rage (at which point, those in power will accuse dissenters
of extremism-but, hey, that accusation has already been made).
What's especially disturbing is how the New York Times-bell
| cow for the media herd and indisputably the best newspaper in
the country-has taken the lead in trying to snuffout dissent.
The Times has always spoken for the establishment and generally
scorned rabble newcomers (a century ago, during the last Gilded
Age, the Times expressed similarly harsh contempt for Populist
reformers). Yet in recent years, the newspaper has brilliantly
enriched its coverage and developed bold ways of opening up neglected
issues that aren't in the news but should be. On this subject,
its mind is closed its gaze averted.
The opacity and plain ignorance are regularly reflected in
the news columns, but the bully pulpit is the editorial pages,
where the Times has not one but two Op-Ed columnists repeatedly
assuring elites that their ideology of the self-regulating marketplace
is not only correct but unassailable.
Friedman's views on globalization, reiterated twice a week,
are simple: "Shut up and eat your spinach. Globalization
is good for you, even if you're too stupid to understand why.
Besides, there's nothing you can do about it." He resolves
complex disputes on large matters with words like "crazy"
and "ridiculous," accusing globalization's critics of
being "quacks" and "extremists." His colleague
Paul Krugman relies on a loftier form of condescension. "Economists
are smarter than most people, and I'm smarter than most economists.
Anyone who disagrees is an unlicensed hack or a hired gun with
an economics degree from a second-rate university." Regular
readers of the Times can attest that my mild caricature does not
exaggerate.
These two strain to be amusing as well as wise. "Everyone
knows that I am a hired tool of global capitalism," Krugman
wrote. "This charge upset me greatly. In fact, I asked my
masters for a raise, to thirty-five pieces of silver, to compensate
for my hurt feelings." Friedman's over-the-top denunciations
of people who disagree with him are more entertaining than Krugman's
pose of weary sarcasm, though perhaps not in the ways he intends.
(Personal disclosure: Krugman was instrumental in drawing elite
readers to my own book on the global economy, One World, Ready
or Not, by attacking it repeatedly in learned journals for several
years. Smart people began to wonder what I had said to so upset
the professor.)
Krugman and Friedman may not be "hired" tools, but
both have been officially credentialed as "Global Leaders
for Tomorrow"-so selected by the World Economic Forum that
gathers multinational titans for the annual confab in Davos, Switzerland,
every winter. The GLTs, as they call themselves, are a kind of
junior varsity for the New World Order, several hundred under-45
moguls and managers from business and finance (familiar brands
like Disney, AOL, Microsoft, Siemens, the Gap, IBM) who mingle
with a smattering of rising political figures and prestigious
journalists. The GLTs meet every few months to consider how they
might solve the world's problems and work on projects with titles
like "Wake Up Europe!" Their stated mission is "to
create a worldwide network of individuals for dynamic mutual support
in facing the challenges of leadership for economic and social
progress."
Friedman often talks like that in his column. He went tramping
through the rainforest of Venezuela (or at least flew over it)
with corporate execs and conservationists to report that the major
oil companies are now most sensitive to the needs of indigenous
peoples and other endangered species. "In a networked world,"
he explained, everybody works amicably together for social progress,
not like those nasty people in the streets throwing rocks at the
IMF and World Bank. "The real solution lies not with he who
throws the biggest stone but he who builds the most effective
coalition to get these players working together." Friedman
actually wrote that sentence, and the Times actually published
it.
Krugman has a more supple intellect, certainly, but seems
less interesting because he more or less tells the same story
in every column. The subject is how right reasoning as an economist
has, once again, spared him from errors of thought made by us
commoners. Friedman at least goes places-always traveling to exotic
datelines where he breakfasts with trade ministers or important
CEOs. Then he enthusiastically relates what he told them (and
how they agreed with him). Differences aside, the two GLTS come
out at the same place: Unions are morally defective protectionists
trying to take bread from desperately poor people, and the other
social activists are deluded. Companies are taking us on the high
road to a better future, if governments are wise enough not to
interfere. The public's role is cleaning up afterward.
Pundits are naturally entitled to preach their own eccentric
views, but the weird inversion at the Times is that the sermons
sometimes seep into the news columns. After K and F. pounded away
at the unions, the newspaper followed with a front-page lead on
the same theme: UNIONS DENY STAND OVER TRADE POLICY IS PROTECTIONISM
...SOME ECONOMISTS CRITICIZE OPPOSITION TO LEGISLATION AS MYOPIC
AND SELFISH. The story, more balanced than the headline, did not
cite economist Krugman as authority, but it did quote an executive
vice president of the US Chamber of Commerce, a California Republican
Representative whose principal contributors include Nike, and
a trade economist whose think tank is financed by multinational
banks and corporations. Are these the "hired guns" Krugman
warned us not to trust?
In any case, organized labor is no more selfish or myopic
than Nike or Boeing or Motorola, all of whom are "protectionist"
in the sense that they will vigorously oppose any trade agreement
that does not serve their self-interest, regardless of its supposed
benefits to the world. The only difference is that labor lacks
the power-even a seat at the table-to influence the outcomes,
just Iike the other protest elements in Seattle. The great, unreported
story in globalization is about power, not ideology. It's about
how finance and business regularly, continuously insert their
own self-interested deals and exceptions into rules and agreements
that are then announced to the public as "free trade."
The antidote for biased coverage is, of course, more honest
reporting-old-fashioned, on-the-ground reporting where the story
is happening, free of abstract presumptions promoted by the established
order. In this complex new world of globalization, that kind of
reporting is never easy, especially when authoritative experts
are assuring editors and reporters that they can ignore those
voices in the streets. The realities are dispersed across continents,
always complicated and sometimes ambiguous-difficult to see with
clear eyes whether the story is labor conditions in a poor developing
nation or the cloaked investment strategies of the multinational
corporations.
In other words, don't hold your breath waiting for the big
media to back off their convictions and dig into the story. Notwithstanding
its heroic self-image, the press does not lead the way when a
new social movement arises but usually follows hesitantly, reluctant
to side with dissent until the public itself is greatly aroused
or the story too big and obvious to be ignored. So the smart work
of this new movement is to keep on agitating-explaining globalization
to people in the human terms they do not read in their newspapers
or see on TV, dramatizing the conflict that events pose between
public ideology and visible truth on the ground. In time, if we
are lucky, a few brave reporters will also start some arguments
in the newsrooms.
William Greider is The Nation's national affairs correspondent.
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