De Commerciele Massamedia 204

Desondanks zijn Henk Hofland en Jan Marijnissen voor het subsidieren van de commerciele massamedia:

Media Focus on Minor Violence; Ignore Peaceful Protests at Global Summit
By Maria Margaronis, The Nation. Posted April 1, 2009.

While thousands of protesters peacefully pushed for a global economic policy, the media chose to focus on the more violent acts of dissent.

In London today, Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev agreed to make cuts in their nuclear arsenals; Obama and Gordon Brown announced that the G20 were "within a few hours" of agreeing a global plan for economic recovery; and Nicholas Sarkozy, in cahoots with Angela Merkel, threatened to scupper the whole show if his calls for tighter financial regulation are not met. But at 11 am, outside the Bank of England, we waited under an eggshell sky for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: red against war, green against climate chaos, silver against financial crime and black (the website said) against borders and land enclosures, in memory of the Diggers.

War got there first, escorted by a small crowd offering the usual British cocktail of whimsy ("Queers against capitalism and other nasty things" "Eat the bankers") and testosterone ("We are fucking angry"). There were fists in the air, and singing, to the tune of "Clementine": "Build a bonfire, build a bonfire, Put the bankers on the top…" Small knots of anarchists in black drummed up a rapid rhythm; police in day-glo green formed equally rapid cordons; the last red double-deckers tried to nose through the crowd. Everyone was taking pictures, with cameras and mobile phones: if it isn't mediated, it isn't happening. "Jump! Jump!" people shouted up at the windowless bank, and "Where's our money?" and "Shame!"

The protest seemed a broad bricolage of causes: a young man waving a red flag allowed that we're not in a revolutionary situation yet, "but I think we might be soon"; three feet away, a woman holding one end of a banner ("Capitalism isn't working") said she was furious with Gordon Brown for saddling her children with debt and may well vote for the Tories in the next election. But Mary -- retired, with a "Wage Slave" label on -- rebuked my cynicism. "I refute the idea that we're all talking about different things," she said. "The kind of world we want to see is the same world -- -a world where money is used to help people. We're all just talking about different bits of it."'
Lees verder: http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/134613/media_focus_on_minor_violence%3B_ignore_peaceful_protests_at_global_summit/