What did you hear about Genoa?

In the 1970s Gill Scott Heron sang "The Revolution will not be televised". On Saturday 20th July I watched as Sky News broadcast from the police front line in Genoa. Walking past the camera, lines of police moved forward. We could hear the tear gas guns go off, watch them fall a distance away and see the clouds of tear gas fill the air. The tear gas floated towards the camera and we saw pictures of bushes as the camera man stumbled and then the screen went black. Who said the revolution would not be televised.

But as time went on, I became more aware of the spin that was being put on the reports. There is no such thing as neutral news.

One of the interesting things to do with rolling news-coverage, such as on Sky News, is to watch how the spin changes in the course of the day. At midnight on Saturday, the Italian police raided the offices of Indymedia (an internet based service that allows anyone to publish a story, interview or photo) and the Genoa Social Forum.

You'd expect that the media would have been outraged at this attack on press freedom. Instead, early reports relayed verbatim the police line. First these were the 'headquarters of the black block', a few hours later these were the people who organised the riots - "was this the rioters' nerve centre in Genoa, Italian police obviously think so". By 2.00 on Sunday afternoon, the line had moderated somewhat and an element of doubt had crept in.

Then Sky reported that these people "were thought" to be behind the protests. Again you have to ask yourselves, 'thought by whom?'. Here we saw reference, un-attributed and oblique, to the police source that they had been relying on for information since the raid began. By 2.30, they seemed to be loosing further faith in the official line, then the people raided are "believed to be co-ordinating protest action".

It was several days before the mainstream media was reporting what those of us who had followed the story on Indymedia knew straightaway. That is that this was a brutal and unprovoked police raid that left dozens hospitalised.

Genoa demonstrates again that we cannot trust the bosses' media to tell us the truth. For those with internet access Indymedia is playing a vital role in getting the truth out about what is actually happening at the global protests. To do this we need alternative printed papers like this one that are given out door to door, where we work and study and on the street. Help us to do this!

Indymedia can be found at www.indymedia.org

A longer analysis of the media coverage that this article is based on is at
http://struggle.ws/wsm/news/2001/genoatv_july.html

This page is from the print version of the Irish Anarchist paper 'Workers Solidarity'. We also provide a PDF file of the latest edition (with pictures) for you to print out and distribute locally

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This edition is No66 published in September 2001

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