Sorry to disappoint the media

BY
EMMA CLANCY

SYDNEY — The copious numbers of corporate journalists present at
the April 2 student anti-war rally may have spent four to five hours dashing
from one end of Town Hall to another in search of a violent spectacle,
but, unlike the students, they left the peaceful protest disappointed and
frustrated.

The week between the March 26 student strike, attended by around 10,000
exuberant anti-war protesters, and the April 2 strike was full of media
hysteria. Television news and so-called current affairs programs, radio
talk-back, tabloid and broadsheet newspapers had worked themselves into
a frenzy of condemnation of young anti-war activists.

Books Not Bombs was accused of violence, of insulting Australia’s history,
of being too radical, of being racist, of splitting the anti-war movement,
everything, in fact, short of eating babies for breakfast, and it was only
a matter of time before that one came up.

Radio talk-back hosts on 2UE and 2GB gave out the telephone number and
an address, which was wrong, for the central Sydney Resistance Centre,
in which Books Not Bombs has been meeting. Activists in the centre have
subsequently had to field calls, over-the-top abusive as well as passionately
supportive, almost continuously for a week. Key Books Not Bombs leaders
Kylie Moon and Simon Butler have been receiving death threats as a result.

A lengthy attack on Books Not Bombs, and the socialist youth organisation
Resistance, was printed in the April 2 Sydney Morning Herald. Written
by Tim Wallace, who described himself as a “freelance journalist”, it attacked
protest organisers and told young people that “an independent mind does
not flourish by subjugating itself to the party line”. Wallace does not
mention, however, that he himself is identified with a political party.
He is a regular contributor to News Weekly, the fortnightly publication
of the rabidly right-wing and racist National Civic Council.

Callers whipped into a frenzy by the shock-jocks' programs called for
the student protesters to be locked in cages, to be beaten and even, in
one case, to be executed. The protesters were editorialised against in
almost every Sydney newspaper. It seemed the right-wing media simply couldn’t
get enough of the youth-bashing.

But strangely, after the success of the April 2 protest, some of this
media simply disappeared. Moon explained to Green Left Weekly that
a few hours after the rally, Channel Nine's “current affairs” program 60
Minutes pulled out of doing a profile on Books Not Bombs, which was
planned to air on April 6.

“After following students around for days, flying someone out to do
film interviews and prepare for the rally, the program backed out at the
last minute because of the 'lack of violence’. Well, we're sorry to disappoint
them, but we'd planned to hold a peaceful anti-war protest, and that's
what we did”, Moon commented.

Another aborted “expose” was carried out by Sydney’s highest-circulating
newspaper, the Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph. The Tele sent
a reporter into the Resistance Centre, pretending to be an anti-war activist,
who spent two days helping to prepare for the protest and attended an organising
meeting the night before.

From all that hard work, the intrepid infiltrator came up with nothing
more damning than that Books Not Bombs members were committed, organised
and some were revolutionary socialists. The final piece warranted around
300-400 words.

As well as running around the protest looking for "violence", the
media interviewed a lot of protesters, particularly Middle Eastern students.
Young Arab men and boys were asked, “Are you here for a fight?”. When one
young man told a Channel 7 reporter that he was there to protest the war
on Iraq, “same as last week”, and that “the police were the ones who started
violence”, the reporter replied by saying, “what police? I don't see any
police”.

It explains a lot about Channel 7's coverage of the March 26 student
strike that they employ reporters unable to see the roughly 800 police
officers that were ringing the protest at the time.

Unsurprisingly, most of the protesters distrusted, and many were hostile
to, the corporate journalists at the rally. (GLW reporters, and
other independent journalists, however, were warmly welcomed by most.)

Many young people who were at the March 26 rally and were attacked by
police, only to see themselves portrayed as “violent thugs” and “extremists”
on the evening news, were unwilling to give interviews and told the journalists
what they thought of the quality of their “reporting”.

Some journalists were reduced to trying to start fights themselves:
even assistant police commissioner Dick Adams was forced to describe the
media behaviour as “unhelpful” in his post-rally press conference. Some
camera operators were spotted shoving protesters in order to film their
reactions.

Still unable to get images of fighting, arrests and injuries, many media
reported the peacefulness of the protest as a “victory for police”. They
completely ignored the broad community support students had received, and
the parents, teachers, lawyers and older anti-war activists helping restrain
police aggression by acting as “peace monitors”, “legal observers” and
“parents for peace”. Maybe Channel 7 just didn't see them.

The student anti-war protests have been a learning experience for many
young people, particularly as the media’s lies about the war in Iraq have
been mirrored by lies about young anti-war protesters. At the March 26
rally, high school students had brought along a banner saying “Tune in
to your propaganda”, with the logos of Channel 7, 9, and 10 and a picture
of media baron Rupert Murdoch underneath it.

It’s a good sign. See, as one protester told Green Left Weekly
on April 2, we may be young, but we’re not the stupid ones. We’re the ones
who will keep fighting for a peaceful, just, liveable world. And none of
their propaganda is going to change that.

[Emma Clancy is a member of Books Not Bombs and the socialist youth
organisation Resistance. Visit <http://www.booksnotbombs.org.au>.]

From Green Left Weekly, April 9, 2003.

Visit the Green Left Weekly
home page.

From GLW issue 533