1
Taking it to the Streets:
Mainstream Media Coverage of Anti-Global Capital Protests
Paper Submitted to the International Communication
Association 2003 Conference
At the turn of the twenty-first century, millennium
hyperbole and hysteria dominated U.S. headlines. The mainstream
news media issued dire warnings of a “Y2K bug,” a glitch in
computer time-keeping systems that threatened to shut down
everything from Main Street to Wall Street at the stroke of
midnight on New Years Eve 1999. Apocalyptic predictions of retail
shortages invariably featured good consumers as smart
survivalists, stocking up on bottled water and flashlight
batteries. But the turn of the twenty-first century also
witnessed an extraordinary surge of impassioned protests against
global capitalism—demonstrations that were staged and struggled
and sometimes squashed but never silenced at meetings of the rich
and powerful around the world. It didn’t get as many sound bites
as the Y2K bug, yet it proved to be far more real and long
lasting. The movement was inspired in part by what has come to be
known as the “Battle of Seattle.”
It is fair to compare the massive protests against the World
Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle in the early winter
of 1999 to the shot heard round the world, or at least the Boston
Tea Party. More than 70,000 people gathered in the rainy city and
marched through the streets, protesting the WTO’s attempts to
advance global capitalism by “lowering trade barriers.” They came
Page 1 of 29 
Convention