they need the bricks hopes to be able to or to remove the oval hold the dominance of the institution by the united states and european union country laying the bricks to a new global economic future by fastest growing economies in the world are meeting in india this week paving the way it's one international day and possibly a new global currency i'll give you a preview. and if you're wondering why you haven't heard about this historic meeting that's probably because you were watching the mainstream media viewership is down way way down on some of the top cable networks will ask journalist david

seaman why. these are news corp's these are in the business of making money and it's no secret that whether you're in the wrong or you're repeating them for your seat with iran people news channels. there's a crisis and. these days it seems the mantra is the bigger the crisis but that it is the ratings even if this means suppressing facts and censoring on popular opinions in the process will show you how most media coverage is based on what's profitable. it's wednesday march twenty eighth four pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching our. well a group of countries banding together in a troubled world economy they have been coined the grex that is brazil russia india

china and south africa heads of states from the emerging economies gearing up for their annual summit tomorrow in new delhi the brics are the five fastest growing economies in the world and i want to take a moment to show you how far they're a global reach actually is to gather these countries make up forty two percent of the world's population and a quarter of its landmass are responsible for twenty percent of the global g.d.p. and that is expected to surpass the u.s. g.d.p. in just three years and they own a whopping seventy five percent of the foreign reserves worldwide now their influence on the global stage is only growing and with their growing power they have plans in the works to form a joint development bank artie's preassure the reports to us from india with a sneak peak of the summer. of c. from the five leading emerging economies brazil russia india china and south africa

the brics nations need for their annual summit the five make up forty percent of the world's population are expected to contribute almost half of all global g.d.p. growth in the next eight years aeons have a rapidly growing influence in international affairs the. economy. but i would be it is what i did mean. to keep were the people who joined the geopolitics in the geopolitics of the word the summit this year is expected to discuss a new joint pain between the five other brics countries are interested in capping tiny's investment infrastructures and. of their resources so obviously a bank would be a very very useful vehicle for this kind of investment to. build this the

cotton. bricks stock exchange this is not a. this is the you would see the new tradition the political leader is believe that of brecht's being could merge the a growing economic power between the country that with centralized establishment they also believe that it could serve as an alternative to life there and lead financial institutions like the international monetary fund and the world bank certainly the brics hopes to be able to alter to remove the overall or predominance of the institution by the united states and the european union countries the brics countries have been busy this year not just in guarding against the impact of europe's financial crisis moving away from the dollar as a reserve currency to a brick strip and one is also still firmly on the agenda would become moody for the good could see experiencing it would be. pushed to.

europe it is just breaking the will pull you off the vis the summit will be hoping to advance further in the economic interests of the brics group further loosening reliance on bluster and dominated global economic architecture preassure either r t new delhi india. now to talk more about the rising power of the bricks and you get in our shell project manager of the people's project dot com joins us now welcome to the show and yours so tell us about the significance of it. creating alternatives like an alternative to the world bank possibly the i.m.f. this is an important sort of stepping stone for the brics nations coming into their own in the. international arena and specifically the realm of global governance now the question is whether or not these become alternatives or simply reforms to the

system of global governance already being evolved for example a lot of the reforms that talking about new global reserve currency these have been in the plans western elites and institutions for decades even timothy geithner the treasury secretary in two thousand and nine said that they're open to the idea of a global reserve currency but that this process has to be evolutionary and now the i.m.f. has its special drawing rights s.t.r. which are being set up to the global reserve currency the g twenty decided that in two thousand and nine and of course the brics nations already members of. the bank for international settlements which is the highest institution of global governance in the world today it's sort of the central bank of the world central bankers so if a new currency system comes up it's likely to be through the b.s. which is itself essentially a western dominated institution so whether or not they create an alternative or simply create reforms to what exist that i think is the real question now they are

expected to sign an agreement allowing their individual banks to extend credit to other members using their own currency so would you say that this is a step toward replacing the dollar. an evolutionary step yes i mean china and russia are already have agreements to exchange in their own currencies china and japan even are creating these type of exchange scenarios so it's decreasing the role of the us dollar in foreign reserves in exchange reserves so that these countries will be less dependent upon the stronger itself to trade in all various goods and currencies and that it's symbolic of the decline of the u.s. dollar in global markets it's sort of a type of rebalancing the poles of power in the world by the currency system itself is what is needed is what is in need of total overhaul i mean the fact that there

are simply reducing the role of the u.s. dollar does not exactly solve the problems of the global fractional reserve central banking system and i know other big announcement that they are expected to made is that there are all these countries are pointing to this joint the vellum and banker how do you think that this bank could rival the world bank. well it would be it would give better terms and fair conditions to those who use the bank specifically these countries it would be beneficial to them in their own economic interests it would be incredibly attract active so called third world nations because they would likely land on better terms than the world bank ever has and so i think ultimately this type of bank the west will probably try to undermine this scenario doesn't exactly fit in with their plans for the world so i think you'll try and see some reforms and you'll see some attempts at reforms within

institutions like the world bank and i.m.f. which have already begun to a small degree such as getting more seats to china and india on the i.m.f. but they'll try and bring the bridge nations more firmly within the framework of global institutions that already exist by creating a sort of development bank for the brics nations themselves that would be a type of alternative which could potentially be very beneficial to them now criticism that this group often gets is the fact that they there are so different there on different continents very different economy different governments critics say that they it's nothing more than an acronym but do you think that these countries will be able to find enough common ground. well of course they have enough common interests i mean the idea that china because its totality hereon brazil because it's democratic kept on common ground while china and the united states are heavily interdependent happens for several decades united states trades

with totalitarian governments all over the world there is no reason why brazil can't do the same henri india can't do the same it's sort of just another type of rhetorical ploy in the media i think to just undermine the efforts at potential alternative and speaking of the media and you want to ask you you know this is a huge sum a huge implications for the world economy but there is now let's talk about it in the mainstream media why not. the mainstream media isn't there to talk about information and issues that exist and are important and people should know about mainstream media is there to entertain to misinform and this educate and to essentially distract people so the way that they frame the issues that's what you're supposed to be focused on other major developments in the world just don't pay attention to them because then people won't exactly know what's

going on and it's easier to control a population if they don't know the actual situation and issues in the world the rest of the western media has no interest in educating the public and we are going to talk more about that throughout this show andrea thank you far away and that was under gavin marshall project manager at the people's book project dot com. well new report shows viewers are leaving the mainstream media by the grose here's a look at viewership for the networks comparing march of this year to march of last year well you can see c.n.n. feeling the most pain losing fifty percent of its total viewers even fox the so-called fair and balanced network is feeling the pain seeing a seventeen percent decline in viewers an m s n b c made out ok in comparison they're up three percent so it looks like people are turning elsewhere to get their news to talk about why people are choosing to ditch the mainstream networks and where they're turning to instead i'm joined now by david seaman journalist and host

of the show hi david so first i want to ask you where do you turn to for the news these days. hi liz thanks for having me on where do i turn i turn to the internet sites like read it and stumble upon basically tapped into the collective consciousness where you know millions of users are voting on what's important and what's not important and the things that they deem important and on the home page and then they get exposure and i also rely on networks like this one are to america i rely on current t.v. and the young turks other really only a handful of shows and networks that you can rely on these days unfortunately because stablished media companies are as your previous guest your previous guest andrew said they are there to entertain and to mr direct the american people and unfortunately that's not good and it's widespread and it's something that's really happened fairly recently when you turned on c.n.n. in the ninety's you got real news you got war correspondents and political

controversy and you know even if you didn't like it you got the other side the other political views were pushed your way so that maybe you could be better informed you get both sides of an issue and now that's not what you get you get tweets just watching c.n.n. before i came into the studio actually and it was we're going to go to some more tweets now from our viewers and see what they're saying on twitter here are some tweets oh it's like how many words how many times can say the word tweet in a single segment if i want to hear what somebody is saying on twitter i would log into my twitter account and read it and i do spend a lot of time on twitter but for to something someone like c.n.n. so just cherry pick a couple of tweets and then call that the news that really isn't the news they're not using their resources to go out there and gather facts and challenge the powers that be now is that we are seeing that there is this acts against the us from the mainstream you shared that's where you turn to for the news instead where would you say that the public is now turning to to get their news. oh the public slowly but

surely is wising up and they're doing the same thing the fact that c.n.n. is down fifty percent versus last year in total viewers and they're down sixty percent in the lucrative twenty five to fifty four dema which all the networks try to go after. they're down a tremendous amount and they're not the only ones hit almost all of the establishment networks are down versus last year and a couple of people out there have said oh this is because this time last year we had a japanese disaster and that's not that's sloppy logic this year there are plenty of issues we have bloodshed in syria we have we're on the edge of war with iran. we have one of the most contentious presidential elections in decades so they certainly could get the ratings if they started covering real news again i think most people are turning to the internet just like me and so talk a little bit more david about what is not being covered advice people are leaving.

what's not being covered really is what the obama administration and congress have signed into law over the past few months we saw obama signed h.r. three forty seven which criminalizes certain forms of peaceful protest literally makes it a felony a federal offense to protest in certain areas even if you were if you are peaceful and that has gotten hardly any media coverage outside of you guys and current t.v. and some of the big news blogs and then before that there is n.d.a. which contains imprisonment without trial provisions which people have i mean everyone says this is an atrocity and a serious rollback of american civil rights and yet you have to turn to european or russian networks to hear about it because here in the u.s. when you turn on c.n.n. or some of these other channels you get cardassian was heckled on the red carpet last night let's talk about that for half an hour and it's really troubling those are the big issues they're not covering the fact that our democracy is being chipped away our rights are being taken away from us by

a two party system that really does not come together on anything they couldn't agree to fund our federal government budget over the summer and yet they secretly came together to sign away a pretty significant portion of our bill of rights so when it comes to harming the american people democrats the republicans agree and when it comes to anything else they disagree and they bicker and they hate each other now i'm all those issues you just mentioned we do try to highlight them here at our tea we just don't know what they're not covering so why do you think it drives them like they do kids to car. i think it's purely driven by profit some people are conspiracy theorists and say that you know c.n.n. and fox are trying to distract people from this rapid takeover this rapid erosion of our rights and i think that's really their distraction is a by product they're not primarily out there saying we're going to distract people from this law it's that they know they just go for the low hanging fruit right they know they can get a certain number of ratings that they have this celebrity on and sort of having

some boring politician on who's going to talk about this new law that everybody should know about and so they go with that they only care about making money not if they're scared by profit holders networks sorry to intrude i will be sarah to interrupt you there but if they are driven by profit that are they just giving people what they want. well that's the problem is we're seeing that this is not what people want it work for a couple of years but then we have the economic crisis and we do have these laws being signed and people are waking up they read about it online and they turn on their t.v. because they want to hear more and what they're seeing on t.v. doesn't sync up and when that happens people go oh this isn't right i'm not going to listen to these liars anymore because i see protests right outside of my window in union square in new york or you know anywhere else in the country talking about these issues and it doesn't get mentioned on the news and whenever you have that huge gap between what you're reading online on facebook and twitter and with the evening news is showing you that some people choose alternative outlets and when they seek out information from other means so covering can cardassian work for

a couple years and that's great they can make their money but now people are like this isn't acceptable you know you guys should send reporters out and cover original stories you should break ground when was the last time that c.n.n. broke a story that really damaged some kind of power or some kind of authority and really went after corruption i can't tell you i don't remember the last time we have at all you want one thing's for sure you won't see us covering the in car dash and here at our i have you on the show that was david seaman journalist and house. well the exodus of us from the mainstream media didn't happen overnight so let's take a look at what's been leading up to this article on a chart and i reports from the big apple. this is cherry picked facts eighty's diet check unwelcome points of view discarded after russia blocked the u.n. check cookiecutter narrative no matter how a story develops as well walking the press or check america's mainstream media

rarely questions the need for military intervention iraq has done nothing to further comply at the height of the you know war there was with the right there was a study that showed that out of something like three hundred seventeen people interviewed on american television only three oppose the war minutes aereo to iran to libya to syria and western mainstream media seems to have lost the desire to critically assess information this is from instead copy pasting official press releases and self-imposed censorship if your is extremely driven by a particular point of view you tend to select facts that support your point of view that makes you an advocate it doesn't make you a journalist take syria the current foreign policy story making headlines to the cities of syria and of those two cities blasted by the leadership author and journalist sherman are one contributor to the huffington post says her syria

articles questioning the official story were rejected so now i want to western media coverage is a theater of the absurd needs of people slowly and first they have to have support for those of the staff members they move in large groups they have drivers and translators so if you're not going in quietly you know you're coming in late scam or action. you were given little if any background to the issues causing the crisis also missing balance they'll go straight for up. addition people in explicates will go straight for. it things that barely date their perspective or the perspective of their governments and. instead of seeking out alternative implementation information that may be a challenge of the dominant narrative in syria that narrative it's clear it's a government crackdown on civilian protesters in reality armed groups and

reportedly even al qaeda are part of the uprising activists say syrian forces this is left out of mainstream support but are knowingly or due to ignorance no good you deny new commentator so called serious commentator on syria he looks at define exactly the syrian opposition is what their goals are or really knows much about history of syria or its geography or its demographics they really don't know much at all this is created an information blackout but a major chunk of the story unavailable to viewers and what is shown there of questionable value age she still. keep in of something that doesn't even address the basic journalism question the who what where when how but they're happy to put that on their screen creating entertainment instead of journalism a cynic would say it's such a popular issue in western capitals that the media just decided to go all in and

you know you'll see anderson cooper saying i can't believe it this is the worst thing that ever happened and it's like did you just did you hear of free market ever heard of the congo or have you heard of sudan where two million people were killed killing our children whether they have or not few reporters have the guts to be the odd man out and there must be some of them there are actually aware of what the reality is you know the facts are not there it out in the open history is not what fear of losing access tempers the desire to stray from the official story line cash also matters these are news corp's these are in the business of making. and it's no secret that whether you're a beating iraq or you're used to. only with the iran people news channels you better when there's a crisis at hand and whoever pays chooses the tune the interests of the average size or the interests of wall street and corporate america all this leaves the american viewer poorly served by the mainstream media while the bad guys change the

angle remains the same so we run will be a threat regardless of facts proving the opposite an op rising favored by the west no matter the troubling reality will be portrayed as civilians crushed by a brutal regime the self-censorship is here to stay while the truth is kept further away from american t.v. screens as they say turkey not artsy new york but joining us now is someone who says she's personally dealt with media censorship sharmeen are wanting a blotter for our writing letters here to share her story welcome to the show there so i understand that the huffington post refused to publish one of your articles tell us what happens actually it's not one it's you've now not published eight out of nine articles on syria. and this started in december. and you know they basically haven't shut down my count we're just not publishing my syria articles and have they told you why it's. you know in fact if they are being

they're not communicating with me at all they're not responding to emails but they're not shutting down my account either it's kind of a very passive aggressive stance i think they don't want to take that that step you know yet but each one of my articles bring a regional information i am in the region now and one of my articles was reported from inside syria and they frequently report from wire services that are. published out of beirut and a man and not syria which actually turned on one of their bloggers he says from inside syria is quite kind of remarkable and tell us about these articles that say are not publishing is there something out a way you can point to that is controversial or something that they would want to censor. no you know. it quite astounds me like i said each of these pieces brings being there has not been available in the media marketplace some kind of

exclusive information sometimes from arab league sources you know one was accused from a u.s. diplomat a senior u.s. diplomat with serve at the embassy in syria three years who had something to say about how wrong u.s. policy was today on syria so these are you know things that people would like to read of course i really have no judgment other than the censorship started out her a.o.l. purchased huffington post prior to that for the last two and a half years huffington post and published online material no matter how controversial and how much a challenge dominant narrative is in washington so you think it has something to do or where to get the policy or are going to post now which is blocking them now publishing articles. why pick it's got to do with a wells purchase of the huffington post and a large media company with greater corporate interests. perhaps once an editorial

line now whereas the huffington post was we'll into leather bloggers people lean on that now as a journalist there spends a lot of time extensively covering syria how would you describe the coverage of the crisis in syria so far what's being left out. a lot you know the it's not just the western media or mainstream media it's also the arab media that's largely controlled by saudi arabia. who owns a lot of the larger media in the middle east so you know we're seeing for instance journalists calling exclusively from quoting arab it activists that is a very specific perspective that they are taking certain constructs at face value you know the syrian national council the free syrian army friends of syria these are recent constructs to suddenly become governments and exiles actual military forces you know to i find quite amazing now the interest today is calling the

syrian army forces loyal to us that. that's just not it you know so there's an awful lot of spin in this and there would be if you're only talking to one side of the mission the important thing is after a year. of anticipating regime change when that hasn't happened surely journalists need to question why it hasn't and start to talk to different sources i mean now that you are now getting your stories published or that you think that there is this app or to censor ads you plan to tell in down your stories or change the way you cover them now you know know i i'm not a conventional journalist i write commentary and analysis i think i think it's even more essential but i continue to question things there are other people doing it but it seems that you have to be in small media or online on blogs in order to get

heard these days and that's unfortunate because we are now seeing the media industry turn entirely into a news entertainment business all right sorry i don't mean to cut you off ever or out of or out of time that's going to wrap it up for this hour also right back here at five. culture is that so much excitement going which of course i'm right on it comes of unity with the rival of spring occupy wall street protesters are coming out of their winter hibernation with plans for renewed demonstrations six months. i.

get are sometimes you see a story and it seems so for life you think you understand it and then he limps something else you hear sees some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.