The Tobin Tax: A News Blackout
The media's power to influence public debate is at its greatest not through biased news coverage, but in the choice of what to cover and not to cover. Nowhere is this more evident than in the discussion of the Tobin Tax.
Though residents of Europe and Latin America have legitimate concerns about the openness of media in their countries, the Tobin Tax is at least discussed in those media. Over the past two years (since October 2001), the tax was mentioned 76 times in 23 non-American English-speaking papers, 159 times in 66 Spanish-speaking papers, 366 times in 35 German-speaking papers, and 447 times in 19 French-speaking papers, according to the electronic database NEXIS.
Meanwhile, the tax was mentioned all of 3 times in 29 of the most widely read American newspapers, all of them in obituaries the day after Tobin's death. Most of the papers did not even mention the tax in their obituaries.
Not surprisingly, discussion of any sort of control over capital flows is nonexistent in America.