FAIR’s Action Alert on April 8 encouraged media activists to contact CNN in response to a report by Bill Schneider that there was “no action out there on the streets or on campuses — no marches, no demonstrations, no teach-ins.”
On April 9, FAIR associate Norman Solomon appeared on CNN‘s “TalkBack Live” to discuss media coverage of the war. Then on April 23, the CNN program “Inside Politics” featured a segment with Pacifica Radio‘s Laura Flanders (also a FAIR associate) on the issue of anti-war activism. A transcript of her appearance appears below.
ACTION: Let CNN know that you’re glad to see coverage of anti-war dissent. Encourage the network to incorporate a broad range of perspectives into its overall coverage of the war in Yugoslavia.
Contact information:
Frank Sesno, D.C. Bureau Chief
Fax: (202) 898-7923
CNN President Richard Kaplan
Phone: (404) 827-1500
Fax: (404) 681-6363
E-mail: on-air@turner.com
From CNN‘s Inside Politics, 4/23/99:
—–(Transcript begins)—–
SESNO: And the NATO mission in Yugoslavia has sparked a number of anti-war demonstrations. During the president’s visit to San Francisco last week, protesters made it clear they did not support U.S. involvement in Yugoslavia — similar protests occur with some frequency outside of the White House, here in Washington — but the numbers are relatively small, despite what the pictures may show you.
Joining us now from New York to talk more about the opposition to the war, Laura Flanders of Pacifica Radio.
Thanks very much for coming in, appreciate it.
LAURA FLANDERS, PACIFICA RADIO: Thank you.
SESNO: There are those within the pacifist movement who say that the anti-war sentiment has been ignored, swept under the rug, minimized. Do you buy that, or are the numbers relatively small compared to other conflicts?
FLANDERS: Well, I think that’s been the, sort of, media drumbeat, that the left has been silent on this war; and I would say it’s true, the left, if you look at the mainstream media, has been silent, but it’s not been silent, so much as silenced.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been seeing demonstrations in the thousands from the very first night of the bombing. Today in New York, there’s a demonstration called by the War Resistance League, that I’m going to after this. There’s another similar demonstration called by, among others, Peace Action, outside of the NATO shindig you mentioned in Washington, tonight. And there’s a national demonstration called June 5th. Now I bet that’s the first time you’re hearing that mentioned on these airwaves.
SESNO: Now, what is it that anti-war protesters are saying, that this war is immoral, that any war is immoral, unjust, unjustified?
FLANDERS: Well, the media tends to — I think they can have a kind of theme tune of sort of looking for the left in all the wrong places. I mean, if you want to understand what the left position has been on this war, you just need to look at the line that has been consistent since the Vietnam War, that militarism is not the solution to conflict. You have had every major organization that you would expect — the War Resisters League, Peace Action, Fellowship of Reconciliation, AFSC, MADRE — many, many other groups, who’ve all made statements calling for an end to the bombing, an end to the NATO involvement in Yugoslavia, and a negotiated settlement to the problem in Kosovo.
SESNO: Isn’t getting your message out and, in fact, mobilizing many of your followers complicated by the fact that the commander in chief of this country was opposed to the war, the Vietnam War, that the national security adviser was opposed to the war, that the chancellor of Germany protested nuclear weaponry in Europe, that the prime minister of Britain was, again, part of his generation, opposed to the war.
FLANDERS: Well, there you go again, looking for the left in all the wrong places. I mean, progressives have never counted any of the people you’ve mentioned as their leaders. The leaders you could look to are people like the folks from the Catholic Workers — Daniel Phillip Barrigan, Elizabeth McCallister, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Vivian Stromberg, Lou Walker. There’s no shortage of leadership that has held absolutely firm.
But Clinton may be the king of inconsistency — it’s not exactly the left’s fault. The left is not responsible for him.
But what holds back that coverage, I think, is the media. The people care about issues and concerns that they are shown. And when we’re shown, for example, a bomb hitting a building that turns out to house the Serb television office, and we’re told this is a war victory, well then you have to think, what are people being led to believe? If we were shown that and we’re told it was a terrorist victim, a terrorist attack, the world would be up in arms just as they would have been for the images of a petrochemical refinery spewing oil into the Danube River.
SESNO: And what do you make of the pictures that you’re shown and that you see of the hundreds of thousands of refugees, and what should be the world’s response to that?
FLANDERS: Well, I think that that’s part of the problem, that the media have narrowed the frame of the debate so that people are led to believe that they can only be pro-Milosevic or pro-bombing. And most of the people in the U.S. and across all the NATO countries want an end to the suffering on all sides. But what they understand is that bombing cannot bring about that end to suffering. Bombing cannot make peace in Yugoslavia anymore than it’s making peace — and the bombing continues — in Iraq.
People on all sides, particularly in the peace movement, have been calling for an anti-war agenda in the Yugoslav region since before this war even began. But instead, rather than building up infrastructure, building up the multinational pro-democratic opposition in those countries, we’ve seen continued negotiation with war — with killing regimes that blame minority groups for a depression that I think U.S. and international monetary institutions have played a role in exacerbating.
SESNO: All right Laura Flanders of Pacifica Radio, appreciate your point of view, and you joining us today. Thanks.
FLANDERS: Thanks for inviting me on.
SESNO: Pleasure.
—–(Transcript ends)—–
