FAIR MEDIA ADVISORY: Media Missing New Evidence About Genoa Violence

Police in Genoa, Italy have admitted to fabricating evidence against globalization activists in an attempt to justify police brutality during protests at the July 2001 G8 Summit. In searches of the Nexis database, FAIR has been unable to find a single mention of this development in any major U.S. newspapers or magazines, national television news shows or wire service stories.

It received largely indifferent coverage in the U.S., but reports in independent and non-U.S. media indicated that some 200 police officers brutally beat sleeping activists in an attack that led to more than a dozen of the arrestees being carried out on stretchers, some unconscious (Guardian, 7/24/01). Of the 93 people arrested at the school, 72 suffered injuries. All were eventually released without charge (DPA, 1/8/03).

The coverage of this attack on the nightly newscasts of the U.S.'s three major broadcast networks was instructive. At first, ABC World News Tonight did not report the raid at all. CBS Evening News (7/22/01) mentioned it in passing, with the reporter noting almost approvingly that "the tactics were heavy-handed, but the streets were quiet today." Commendably, NBC Nightly News (7/22/01) devoted more significant attention to the attack and reported organizers' claim that all the arrestees had been non-violent and were "the latest victims of police brutality."

A couple of weeks later, it emerged that some of the victims were American. The three nightly newscasts then showed somewhat more attention to the issue of police brutality, running reports that included footage of the blood splashed on the floors and walls of the school (ABC, 8/8/01; CBS and NBC 8/11/01). CBS distinguished itself poorly again by introducing its follow-up report with excuses: "However provoked the Italian police were during the rioting around last month's summit in Genoa, their behavior has become the subject of an embarrassing domestic inquiry in Italy."

According to reports from the BBC and the German wire service Deutsche Presse-Agentur (1/7/03, 1/8/03), a senior Genoa police officer, Pietro Troiani, has admitted that police planted two Molotov cocktails in a school that was serving as a dormitory for activists from the Genoa Social Forum. The bombs were apparently planted in order to justify the police force's brutal July 22 raid on the school.

The BBC and DPA also report that another senior officer has admitted to faking the stabbing of a police officer in order to frame protesters. Three police chiefs have been transferred and at least 77 officers have been investigated on brutality charges.