This teachable moment is a useful template for exploring the media's treatement of the protest movement.

On April 20-22, the free-trade Summit of the Americas will be held in Quebec City. Already it is a controversial event because of the anticipated protests and what has been seen by some as excessive security measures in response to the success of protesters in the"'Battle in Seattle" last spring. It is axiomatic that the media love conflict. 'If it bleeds, it leads" is by now a cliché and the visual drama in Quebec City will be tailor-made to the lead stories in the daily news. What happens to an event when all sides - from protesters to the government reps and corporate spokespersons - play up to the media? Media coverage will range from clashes with police and the military, to interviews with high profile leaders at the summit and some coverage on the alternative and parallel conference(s) taking place.

The summit is, therefore, an ideal media studies case study for scrutinizing bias, intentional or otherwise, and power relations and the creation of news stories which tend to support the dominant ideologies. What is omitted will often be as important as what we are allowed to see.

• A month before and after the protest, acquire your basic summit resources through organizing files, bookmarking Web sites, and clipping newspapers and magazine articles. Tape a variety of newscasts, especially during the summit. (Try to get variety.) For example, try to compare traditional right-of-center coverage (small "c" conservative) versus left-of-centre (small "l" liberal). Seek out right-wing newspapers such as The National Post versus the slightly left-of-centre Toronto Star and the slightly right-of-centre Globe & Mail. The Washington Post and New York Times will also take different editorial positions. Before the day of the protest, try to explain these differences. Look for what Barrie Zwicker calls "pre-summit spin" - statements that appear intended to influence how the public should interpret the summit. (After the summit, "post-summit spin" will dictate how the public should interpret the event.)

Marshall McLuhan pointed out in his famous phrase "The medium is the message" that each medium will cover the major conflicts of an event in different ways. This is because each medium has its own inherent sensory and technological biases.

• Try to determine the difference in the messages from learning about the summit through radio and television, compared with impressions formed through newspapers and magazines. To what extent do the images of both the official representatives and the protesters change according to the medium involved in the coverage?
  
• The media have been accused of intensifying a conflict through over-emphasis well in advance on riots and protests and their destructive, negative fallout. This tendency, combined with what many believe is excessive security measures for the summit, can only aggravate the conflict. Toronto media critic Barrie Zwicker comments: "The media salivate when they talk about Quebec City and the probability of violence, with the result that the positive views for global changes get put aside." Find evidence of fear mongering tactics and try to reach a consensus on its impact.
  
• Debate the following assertion: "I am pleased that the true undemocratic nature of the Canadian government is being so starkly revealed by these extreme measures that they're taking. This is a wake-up call to all Canadians that we don't live in a democracy." (Duff Connacher, chair of the Government Ethics Coalition and coordinator of Democracy Watch, an Ottawa watchdog group. Toronto Star March 17, 2001.)
  
• How much coverage is given to the parallel conferences like The Council of Canadians' "The Peoples' Summit" April 20-23. Is it fair and adequate coverage? Explain.
  
• Follow the coverage in alternative sources such as http://www.indymedia.com and http://www.straightgoods.com. What do you learn from these sources that mainstream media coverage fails to address?
  
• Role play and/or stage a debate in which you agree to play the part of various representatives and protesters with their distinctive ideological positions. Here are some roles to consider:
  
  • Government officials who often work secretly with leaders from other countries who believe that free trade has given us jobs, that our economy is better off, and that free enterprise has served us well.
  • Groups such as The Council of Canadians, environmentalists, and concerned citizens not officially linked to a specific group, all of whom believe that unless major pressure of a nonviolent nature is brought to bear on governments that we will end up surrendering our economic, cultural and social rights to transnational corporations.
  • Representatives from corporations who will want special trade advantages and, if necessary, deregulation of laws about the environment.
  • Hard core activists - people who are prepared to fight and destroy property. (They were quoted in The Toronto Star article on "Fortress Quebec," March 17. "We are interested in nothing less than the destruction of the table of capitalism.")
    
• How would you assess the media coverage of each of these groups before, during and after the Summit?
  
• As an exercise in constructing meaning, cut out photographs in magazines and newspapers which show conflict. Show how the captions serve to anchor the meaning. To put you in the driver's seat, choose some dramatic examples and write your own captions, thus changing the meaning. If you have access to Len Masterman's book Teaching the Media, you could photocopy the exercise in which we are given photographs of a protest and police skirmish and below each, two sets of captions with opposite meanings. One set of captions makes the police look like likable officers of the law and in the other, they come off looking like vicious, repressive goons.
  
• The following write-up comes from the on-line anarchist Web site. What is your response to this news item? Write a press release from a government spokesperson in which you offer a critique to the anarchist on-line editor.

Resisting capitalist globalization ... Mobilizing for Quebec City ... Creating radical alternatives ... Next April 20-22, 2001, Quebec City has the dubious honor of hosting the Summit of the Americas, which brings together the 34 heads of state of North, South and Central America, as well as the Caribbean (except Cuba). Besides the usual scare-mongering about security and terrorism, and empty rhetoric about democracy and human rights, the stated purpose of the Summit will be to put the final touches on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement. The Summit of the Americas meeting will be largest police and security operation in Canadian history, all while the 34 leaders and an entourage of big business elite's, technocrats and corporate media enjoy their cocktail parties, gala dinners and public relations spectacles. The FTAA extends the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) to the entire hemisphere, and is to be implemented by no later than 2005.