On the afternoon of Aug. 1, 2000, Marc Miclette was pulled over by Philadelphia police while making a delivery to a pet store. He was driving a bright red school bus crammed with 2,000 iguanas, white mice, exotic snakes, crickets, desert toads and lizards. The police ordered Miclette out at gunpoint and confiscated his bus and his cargo. The city had been on edge for weeks with media reports of “anarchist†protesters planning to rampage through the city during that year’s Republican National Convention (RNC). Would a poisonous toad be the protesters’ weapon of choice? With the demonstrations under way, the police weren’t taking any chances. A puppet-making warehouse was “pre-emptively†raided and shut down for various “building code violations,†and more than 400 people were arrested during convention week itself. The local press responded with applause. “Phildelphia police have shown how to do it right,†wrote the Aug. 3, 2000 Philadelphia Inquirer. “Police have kept control of the city by not losing control of themselves.†Unfortunately for both the protesters and the city of Philadelphia, nearly all of the police successes turned out to be overreactions. Months after the Philadelphia confab ended, barely a half-dozen of the hundreds of arrestees had been convicted – none on felony charges. Exasperated city judges dismissed dozens of cases at a time. As for Marc Miclette and his bus full of poisonous reptiles, he actually did work for a local pet store. Miclette was “a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time,†Sgt. Earl Schoen sheepishly admitted to the press. “It's unfortunate he was caught up and associated with the RNC protests.†Expect more RNC-related media hysteria this summer, says Chris Anderson, author of “Getting Used How the Mainstream Media Helps Create a Climate of Fear and Repression During Political Protests.†Anderson, a PhD candidate at the Columbia School of Journalism (and reporter for The Indypendent) studied hundreds of newspaper articles over the past five years and found a consistent pattern of what he terms “media malpractice†whenever citizens come together in large numbers exercise their right to disagree with the government. The report documents how the media consistently repeat unsubstantiated police claims about violent troublemakers before protests began. Furthermore, once arrests occur, newspapers parrot police statements about the reasons for detention, reasons that often turn out to be either exaggerated or false. “Many of these same journalists angrily denounced their own manipulation once the protests ended,†says Anderson. “What we see in the hundreds of articles we examined is a shoddy form of journalism that threatens the civil liberties and safety of ordinary Americans who choose to exercise their right to disagree with their government.†Will the New York media learn from the past? Early signs are not encouraging. More than a month before this summer’s convention, city residents needn’t look far for the latest example of pre-protest hysteria. Readers of the July 12 New York Daily News were greeted by a screaming front-page headline (“Anarchy Threat to the City: Cops fear hard-core lunatics plotting convention chaosâ€) warning them away from protests against the Republican National Convention. The “exclusive†story inside about how “sneaky†protesters were looking to fool bomb-sniffing police dogs turned out to be based on an alleged internet post, with no web site ever given. Despite the lack of sourcing and balance, dozens of radio stations and cable TV outlets repeated theDaily News story, while quotes about rifle-range prowling anarchists spread across the web. In the end, Anderson admits that it will take unusual restraint on the part of the press to avoid the mistakes of the past. “Whether they’re overtly embracing a police agenda or are simply getting led around by the nose,†he concludes, “it seems unlikely that the media gatekeepers will be able to resist the kind of drama that comes from hyping a violent, bandana-wearing threat – even if that threat doesn’t actually exist.â€
To see Chris Anderson’s report, go to: http://nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/97252/index.php