– As TPP Opposition Soars, Corporate Media Blackout Deafening (Common Dreams, Feb 6, 2014):
Opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership—dubbed ‘NAFTA on steroids’—is receiving unprecedented popular opposition and nearly no news coverage by major outlets
Last week, more than 550 groups, representing tens of millions of individual members, signed a letter to members of Congress urging them to vote against a push by President Obama for ‘fast track’ authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a so-called “free trade” now under negotation between the U.S. and eleven other Pacific rim nations.
The week before that, another 50 groups launched an energized online campaign called StopFastTrack.com in order to kill the TPP agreement—dubbed “NAFTA on steroids”—that they say “threatens everything you care about: democracy, jobs, the environment, and the Internet.”
But if you watch the evening cable or broadcast news shows, you might not know anything about the TPP—not what it is, not why Obama says it would be good for the country, and certainly not why these hundreds of public interest groups, environmentalists, economists, and labor organizations say trade agreements like this are the source of economic and labor woes, not the solution to them.
According to a new study by Media Matters, over the last sixth months the network evening news shows—including ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS—have ignored the TPP almost completely.
After reviewing transcripts of CBS Evening News with Scott Pelly, ABC’s World News with Diane Sawyer, and NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams from August 1, 2013 through January 31, 2014, Media Matters found no mention of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Not a single one.
The PBS Newshour did only slight better by having one guest mention the TPP on exactly one occassion when a representative for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argued on the show “that approving the TPP would improve relations with Asian nations.”
And the evening cable news shows did little better, with just one show on MSNBC—The Ed Show—offering any routine coverage of the issue while CNN mentioned the TPP only once during the six-month period, and FOX News making no mention of it at all.
Though the nations involved in the talks, as Media Matters notes, “account for nearly 40 percent of the world’s GDP and 26 percent of the world’s trade,” it seems odd that the pending trade deal is receiving so little mainstream coverage even as the amount of opposition it’s receiving is so widespread among those trying to promote a more democratic, progressive, and more visionary trade paradigm.
Then again, perhaps it’s not odd at all.
You know what would strengthen our relationship with China? If the U.S. would give them back their gold.
This is how the US media avoids the truth…..they do a total blackout. Look at how they have handled Fukushima, the Obama civil rights outrages, the banking thefts…….it goes on and on, and nothing is done to fix or stop any of the crime.
The apathy in law enforcement or government agencies is equally shocking. Nobody gives a damn about anything. Nothing ventured, nobody finds out, so who cares? The cover jobs in US propaganda is insulting and ought to be illegal.
Doing a quick check of evening news in the US right now…..FOX, robots doing the job of surgeons in operating rooms, NBC, finally some rain in CA, they have been covering this a lot, but it has been a full year since we have seen any rain…..and it will go through the weekend, so they can use this and the Winter Olympics as the weekend fodder. CNN, heroin addict speaks out…., HLN, Nancy Grace with the latest crime story, CNNI, same addict, BBC, Winter Olympics, FOX, Karl Rove spewing hate about Chris Christie, Fox Business, CAVATO, anti Obama stuff, CNBC American Greed, Bloomberg, Charlie Rose……NOTHING on any story of meaning or value……just pure junk.
It has gotten so bad, even the most apathetic viewers notice they cover nothing.