Op-Ed

By the time I became a college radical and activist in the fall of ’73, and a mistaken supporter of Eldridge Cleaver, I firmly believed that the students should have been better organized with well-armed militias and shot back. Hell, I dreamed about getting down to it, as Neil Young advised. It’s one of the reasons I spent the 70’s boycotting Wendy’s -- you know, the Rhodes/Dave Thomas connection -- and fighting to stop the construction of the gym at the death site at Kent State. I have these vivid flashbacks of October 1977, tear gas everywhere, and I swear Dana Beal and a group of yippies emerged from the fog to line dance wearing gas masks. It still makes me smile.

A senior vice president at Ameritrade proclaimed that online investing "empowers individuals to take control of their financial lives." Within several months, the Nasdaq composite index nearly doubled. When spring 2000 began, plenty of satisfied new customers were glad to be playing the click-and-invest game.

Now, four seasons later, the Nasdaq is less than half of where it was. Losses have been particularly devastating for many of the investors who'd found the get-with-it advertisements and other media hype too irresistible to resist a year ago.

One of the ways to test for media slant is to put the shoe on the other foot. A big story this month provides an opportunity for inquiry in the world of intense media spin.

Here are some excerpts from actual U.S. news coverage, with only one type of change -- I've reversed the references to China and the United States. The mirror-image narrative is worth pondering.

ABC World News Tonight: "There are concerns about national security and a Chinese military flight crew that was forced to make an emergency landing during a surveillance flight along the East Coast of the United States. The Chinese spy plane was equipped with sophisticated intelligence-gathering technology."

CNN: "Chinese military officials say that they are, first and foremost, concerned about the safety of the crew. They want that crew returned back to China."

Subcommandante Marcos and the Zapatistas

As the Zapatistas say, “Our struggle is yours.” As we go to press, Subcommadante Marcos and the Zapatista delegation are in Mexico City attempting to negotiate an indigenous Bill of Rights, long overdue after 509 years of the conquistadors. We salute their efforts and stand in solidarity with their struggle against corporate “neo-liberal” economics ravaging Central America under the guise of “Free Trade.”

THE FREE PRESS SALUTES

Columbus City Councilwoman Charleta Tavares

Once again, we salute Charleta Tavares. With the School Board moving in the opposite direction in restricting citizen input, Tavares has courageously opened up the committee she chairs on Council, the Health, Housing and Human Services Committee, to more citizen’s input. Tavares understands that when democracy isn’t working just right the solution is not to hide in the bunker, but to invite more participation.

ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE

Ex-Columbus Public Schools Superintendent Rosa Smith

"I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant," E.B. White observed in a 1956 essay. To that candid assessment he added a more dubious one: "The beauty of the American free press is that the slants and the twists and the distortions come from so many directions, and the special interests are so numerous, the reader must sift and sort and check and countercheck in order to find out what the score is. This he does."

By now, we understand that our response is supposed to be -- must be -- affirmative. But our best answer may be a question: "Ready for what?"

History tells cautionary tales. After the first rudimentary telegraph went into operation 207 years ago in Europe, media analyst Armand Mattelart says, "long-distance communication technology was promoted as a guarantee of the revival of democracy." During the next several decades, a powerful concept took hold -- "the ideology of redemption through networks."

By the next day, the media verdict was in: The nation's leader is learning to make effective use of a TelePrompTer!

Stage presence, cadence, rhythm, choreography -- they can really add up in the professional calculations by journalists. And Bush, known to have a remarkably short attention span, seems to be well-suited to a medium that greatly values style over substance. Like a negative in a developing pan, the current president's TV profile is taking shape. Some political reporters scoff in private, no doubt, but their on-the-job respect is thick as dense smoke.

• "Who benefits, who profits?"

• "Who rules the rulers?"
• "What the hell will they do to us next?"

The "Who benefits?" part of President Bush's proposed tax cut has been thoroughly examined. Even the dimmest of us have got the point that it's a tax cut for the very rich with a little sop thrown in for some of the rest of us. According to the Citizens for Tax Justice, the poorest 20 percent of taxpayers receive on average a $15 tax cut the first year and $37 by 2004.

The 20 percent of taxpayers in the middle of the income distribution scale get an average of $170 in tax cuts, rising to $409 in 2004.

The average cut to the top 1 percent of taxpayers would be $13,469 in 2002 and $31,201 in 2004. The Bush plan gives 43 percent of all the tax relief to the richest 1 percent of the people.

Few of us seem to be alert to the other shoe here. The counterpart of "Who benefits?" is "Who pays?"

Nearly three years after the U.S.-backed coup that overthrew the elected socialist president Salvador Allende in September 1973 and brought Augusto Pinochet to power, Kissinger huddled with the general in Chile. A declassified memo says that Kissinger told Pinochet: "We are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here."

While interviewing Kissinger, "NewsHour" correspondent Elizabeth Farnsworth asked him point-blank about the discussion with Pinochet. "Why did you not say to him, 'You're violating human rights. You're killing people. Stop it.'?"