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Sunday, January 31, 2016

Davos: Global news event or public relations exercise?

Every year, over 500 journalists congregate in Davos in the Swiss Alps to report on an invitation-only meeting of the global elite, The World Economic Forum.
Davos is a spectacle where the elite parades itself as concerned citizens while also networking with each other. And so I think it's a kind of ritual that helps us understand the world a bit better just by seeing it. You could watch it with the sound off but just the spectacle is informative.
Simon Kuper, columnist, Financial Times
Coverage of the exclusive annual alpine assembly offers business leaders and political figures a great media platform to spin their profit numbers and market their countries.
Yet the forum has an optics problem. Advertised as a conference "to improve the state of the world", it would be the ultimate place for journalists to challenge the rich on issues as inequalities and yawning wealth gaps.
But with financial news outlets deeply embedded in capitalism's status quo, social and economic inequalities are everything but high on the news agenda.
The Listening Post's Meenakshi Ravi reports on the annual spectacle that is Davos, the media embedded at the event, and how the forum is reported.

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