The current crises of Democracy in Seattle brings home more than ever the massive amount of propaganda and thought-control that the Mass Media have accumulated over the years. Throughout Texas, every major city has only one daily newspaper, and television is the property of elite corporations. Mass media is continuously harping on the "violent protesters" in Seattle, but the truth is far from that.

Even the New York Times subtly admits as such in today's front-page story, "Black Masks Lead to Pointed Fingers in Seattle". Sandwiched between broad accusations of anarchist upheaval, is this little gem: "...demonstrators had expected - and prepared for - the police to make about 1,000 arrests. But they made only a handful of arrests, relying on the stinging vapor of tear gas to disperse people who refused to allow delegates into the trade group's opening session." This and other stories from the NYT go on to elaborate that Seattle has outlawed gas masks and cell phones to break the will of protesters.

The brunt of police force and brutality has clearly been aimed not at small groups of anarchists breaking storefront windows, but at the center-stage of peaceful activists who have been blockading access to the summit meetings themselves. This is a critical point that all mass media are attempting to deceive the public about. Take this paragraph from another article in today's NYT, "Seattle Is Stung, Angry, and Chagrined as Opportunity Turns to Chaos":

"The destruction was carried out Tuesday with near-impunity by a relatively small gang of self-proclaimed anarchists while the police were using tear gas nearby to contain what had been a largely peaceful protest near the convention hall where the world trade group delegates were to meet."

Even within articles aimed at condemning all the "violent protesters", there is this accidental admission that police were unable to stop people breaking the windows of corporate businesses because they were too busy tear-gassing and shooting rubber bullets at the peaceful activists that were blocking access to the trade meetings. Had these police been truly concerned about public safety, they would have been apprehending the window-breakers, and not several blocks away brutalizing peaceful activists primarily engaged in sit-ins.

Read between the lines of this and other articles within the mainstream mass media, and you will find islands of truth amidst the seas of lies. What elites and mass media wanted was for the trade ministers to get their dirty business done of undermining democracy and getting the trade negotiations back on track. Seattle police are the enforcers of elitist policies and pressures, and are not there to maintain safety and peace.

Within the mass media, there is still an ongoing lack of real discussion about past WTO trade rulings and their broad authority to intervene in national, state, and local decision making. Most U.S. citizens are being denied access to real information about the impacts of both past trade agreements, and the new round of negotiations.

While the press echoes the mindless platitudes of Clinton to "open up" the WTO process, this is just more lip service reflecting corporate desire to move forward new agreements. There will be no major structural shift in WTO organization or representation. Clinton has proposed opening the process to observation, but not to real representation for varied interests and communities. The WTO will remain as undemocratic as ever, and will reflect solely the interests of elites and TNCs (trans-national corporations).

Mass media could sponsor community discussions and articles on actual past WTO rulings, but has massively betrayed public interest and communities by ignoring these issues in favor of their own corporate-dominated interests. It is a continued agenda of the status quo, and there will be no discussion of the issues that activists have brought to Seattle.

Effectively, media has glossed over the issues in order to line their own pockets. As a friend of mine pointed out yesterday, this is perhaps the most glaring example of media thought-control and issue-framing that we have seen in the last generation. It is truly a sad time to be a journalist, as they have now become little more than puppets and mouthpieces of the corporate world.

In America today, we can safely say that there is no other profession that requires such a high level of lies, self-deceit, and propaganda than journalism. They are perhaps surpassed only by the political elites themselves.

Austin and Texas Need Community Media Centers

The idea of being able to edit multimedia content is only one of several things that a good InfoShop or Media Center can do. A good media center would focus on a broad spectrum of media such as radio, television, and traditional media like print.

General access to computers for word processing, magazine layout, web-authoring, web-hosting, email distribution lists, email client access, and general Internet access is a lot cheaper than most people think. Some of these tasks can even be done on 486/66 class machines, which are about $100 these days for complete systems in newspaper ads and used computer shops.

After time, as such a media collective stabilizes and gains reputation, people will begin to donate computers, printers, office equipment, and other essentials. The key is to build a stable, diverse, and secure environment for such an endeavor. It is critical to the vitality of such a space that it be open to a broad spectrum of sentiments, particularly non-traditional ones such as radical and direct action activists, anarchists, socialists, punks, etc.

The actual equipment is the easiest part. It will come over time and be accumulated from diverse resources. It may even be possible to work with existing groups like Austin FreeNet (http://www.austinfree.net) and the Austin Community Access Center (http://www.eden.com/~actv/new.website/) to gather and maintain resources.

Such a media center should be organizationally open, and ruled by consensus between participating *individuals*, without being tied to an organizational structure allowing one group or another to control it, as has been the case with KOOP Radio recently. (Not a side-swipe, but an idea about how to avoid such problems in the future, which we need to be sensitive to.) Perhaps small membership fees could also be used to maintain general day-to-day functioning.

But most primary of all is GETTING A SPACE. This will ultimately be the hardest thing to obtain beyond anything else. Such a space would have to be centrally located to be accessible to all. The space would also have to be somewhat neat, clean, and secure because of the nature of the equipment. Such a space would have to be roomy enough to get work done, and capacity to grow as new equipment is acquired. New ideas will inevitably create new needs as well.

There needs to be room space to teach small classes, as such a media center would function as part InfoShop and Teach-In space at times. Also needed are flexible hours, perhaps from afternoon to evening, so that it would be accessible to people who have to work in the day and must use the space later. In fact, it might need to be openly accessible 24-hours to certain members who need to do critical media editing to get material out on tight deadlines or during critical events, such as the one going on in Seattle now.

The NEEDS of the community place such a plethora of conditions that obtaining and maintaining a space would be MUCH harder than merely obtaining computer/multimedia/office equipment. It is a task hard enough that those establishing it would have a their job cut out for them.

Outside of that, it is a need worthy of the endeavor. Major media has provided little choice in the matter, and progressive communities need such spaces more than ever. While there are limited outlets around for such media already, there is still more that needs to be done. We need a broadening of outlets, services, and more diversity in the activists served.

Keith A. Vick is a regular talk show host on Free Radio Austin 97.1FM and recent English/Anthropology graduate from Southwest Texas State. He makes his living as a computer helpdesk agent. Permission is granted to reprint and redistribute this work without motive or intent of making profit. However, this article may not be quoted, printed, posted, distributed, or in any way transmitted across Microsoft's MSN Network.