Duty to Warn

        When the World Trade Organization summit collapsed in Seattle, major American news outlets seemed to go into shock. The failure to launch a new round of global trade talks stunned many journalists who were accustomed to covering the WTO with great reverence. In the wake of the crucial meeting, the mainstream media plunged into stages of grief:

• SHOCK

          Misled by its own reporting and punditry, the media establishment was unprepared for the strength and effectiveness of worldwide anti-WTO efforts that came to fruition at the summit.

          According to conventional media wisdom, the United States can prevail over Third World countries by brandishing various carrots and sticks at trade negotiations. That mindset did not prepare the press corps for what happened in Seattle, where delegates from poor nations refused to knuckle under.

It's one of the marvels of the season that Bill Bradley has been able to muster to his cause such bankable liberal names as Senator Paul Wellstone, Prof. Cornel West, Robert Reich and the editor of The Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel. This passion for Bradley is strange. After all, Bradley is a man who flirted with the idea of running for the presidency in l996 on an independent ticket, with Colin Powell.

Lately, Al Gore has been tagging Bill Bradley as a free-spending liberal of the kind that the vice president and Bill Clinton have worked so tirelessly to extirpate from the party. There isn't much substance to the charge. Indeed, on the big issues, trade, labor, defense, crime, health care and the environment, Bradley and Gore are pretty much indistinguishable. Both sedulously follow the neo-liberal line charted by the Democratic Leadership Council back in the late 1980s.

        It's a pro-democracy movement. And it's global.

        The vibrant social forces that converged on Seattle -- and proceeded to deflate the WTO summit -- are complex, diverse and sometimes contradictory. Yet the threads of their demands form a distinct weave: We want full democratic rights for all people.

        Leaders of the U.S. government are pleased to say nice things about some pro-democracy movements -- far away. But here at home, their pretense is that the conditions of democracy have already been achieved.

        Yes, many of us sampled those conditions in Seattle, complete with tear gas and pepper spray, thick batons and rubber bullets. The law-enforcement partners of the WTO pursued the goal of routing protesters in much the same way that top officials of the WTO go about reaching trade agreements. They want to do whatever it takes -- to maintain control and preserve the power of elites.

        In a media world with few bright spots, I'm thankful for "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood."

        Every day, people of all ages are watching hyped-up and commercialized TV programs that emphasize surface appearances. Sitcoms often brandish put-downs as cutting edges of humor. When aiming at children, many shows rely on computer-generated glitz.

        But for half an hour, five days a week, Fred Rogers looks into the camera and into the hearts of viewers -- mostly preschoolers -- who hear about simple and humanistic values. Mister Rogers explores how feelings matter. He doesn't talk down. He doesn't dodge tangled emotions. And he engages in plenty of fun.

Amid the latest batch of Nixon tapes, there's a ripe one from May 13, 1971, recently described by James Warren in the Chicago Tribune. Discussing welfare reform with Haldeman and Ehrlichman, the president snarls about the "little Negro bastards," before remarking indulgently that "I have the greatest affection for them, but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years." The leader of the Free World and his senior advisers then drift into a chat about homosexuality, occasioned by the president's viewing of an "All in the Family" episode featuring Archie's son-in-law, described by the prez as "obviously queer, wears an ascot, but not offensively so."

Nixon: "I don't mind the homosexuality, I understand it. ... Nevertheless, god---mn, I don't think you glorify it on public television, homosexuality, even more than you glorify whores. We all know we have weaknesses. But god--mn it, what do you think that does to kids? You know what happened to the Greeks! Homosexuality destroyed them! Sure, Aristotle was a homo. We all know that. So was Socrates."

Ehrlichman: "But he never had the influence television had."

        Welcome to an all-new episode of "Media Jeopardy!" This is a game that never ends, whether you like it or not.

        A reminder of the rules: First, listen carefully to the answer. Then, try to come up with the correct question.

        Today's main category is: "Overseas and Under-reported."

• When President Clinton visited this far-off nation of 64 million people in mid-November, a New York Times article reported that he "gently nudged the country to strengthen its adherence to human rights." That was a newspeak reference to ongoing patterns of torture and murder by police and security forces.

          What is Turkey?

Before the Aaron McKinney trial in Wyoming gets boxed away in the national memory, we should linger on some very disturbing features of the plea agreement, starting with the successful demand by Matthew Shepard's parents, Dennis and Judy, that neither McKinney nor any members of his defense team ever speak to the press about the trial. Indeed, the state of Wyoming effectively ceded to Shepard's parents the disposition of the penalty phase of the trial. Amid Dennis Shepard's remarks to the court (where he emphasized his belief in the death penalty) came these words addressed to McKinney. They are worth quoting at some length.

"Your agreement to life without parole has taken yourself out of the spotlight and out of the public eye. It means no drawn-out appeals process, chance of walking away free due to a technicality, no chance of a lighter sentence due to a 'merciful' jury. Best of all, you won't be a symbol. No years of publicity, no chance of a commutation, no nothing -- just a miserable future, and a more miserable end. It works for me ...

        When thousands of protesters converge on Seattle at the end of this month to challenge the global summit of the World Trade Organization, they're unlikely to get a fair hearing from America's mass media.

        Consider how one of the nation's most influential newspapers framed the upcoming confrontation as November began. The Washington Post reported on its front page that the WTO has faced "virulent opposition" -- an assessment not quoted or attributed to anyone -- presumably just a matter of fact.

        "Virulent"? According to my dictionary, the mildest definition of the word is "intensely irritating, obnoxious or harsh." The other definitions: "extremely poisonous or pathogenic; bitterly hostile or antagonistic; hateful."

        Don't you just love objective reporting?

Welcome to Corcoran state prison, 170 miles northwest of Los Angeles in the San Joaquin valley; built at a cost of $288.9 million on what was once Tulare lake, home of the Tachi Indians; opened in 1988, designed for 3,000 prisoners, now holding 5,030. Kings County has dairies, cotton fields, Corcoran and two other state prisons besides. When they were selecting a jury for a recent trial of four prison guards in Hanford, 15 miles from Corcoran, 500 residents were called to be available for jury service, and more than a third said they either worked at one of the prisons or had a relative in the corrections sector.

Corcoran vividly incarnates the peculiar horrors of our national gulag. It was conceived in the eighties' prison boom as a new model of "absolute control," whose heart was the Secure Housing Unit, holding 1,500 of those deemed to be the most dangerous inmates in California's metastasizing prison population. In Corcoran's SHU, the guards -- many of them fresh out of the academy -- determinedly pursued a policy of forced integration of deadly rivals -- Aryan Nation with Mexican Mafia, gang with gang.

Nabbed for speeding in my 1964 Newport station wagon ("I didn't think this old wreck would go that fast," the Highway Patrol officer said sarcastically as he wrote me up), I opted for traffic school.

Under California law, you can thus shield your rashness from the public record, provided there's an 18-month interval from your last citation. The class in Eureka was run by a former cop from San Diego, who divides his time between running a driving school and representing tax deadbeats before the IRS. He offered a torrent of statistics. The most dangerous time to drive: Friday evening, closely followed by Saturday night, closely followed by Sunday night. The safest day is Tuesday. The last 24-hour period in California in which no one was killed on the roads was on May 1, 1991 (which turns out to have been a Wednesday).