The mainstream media's "biased" coverage of the recent war in Iraq as well as its portrayal of anti-capitalist protesters were given as the reason for protests planned at the World Association of Newspapers congress in Dublin today.
Gardaí plan an increased security presence at the conference being attended by some 1,200 newspaper publishers, editors and executives, at the RDS in Ballsbridge.
The annual conference will discuss current trends and future strategies for the newspaper industry.
A number of organisations will take part in two protests today - at noon at the RDS and at 8 p.m. at the Guinness Storehouse in James's Street where delegates are due to have dinner.
The Irish Anti-War Movement, the Socialist Workers' Party and women's groups will take part in the protests being organised by the anti-capitalist movement, Globalise Resistance (GR).
Mr Joe Carolan, GR spokesman, said "media diversity" was being "crushed under the power of huge corporations", such as Time Warner and News International.
Corporate print media was not a free press, he said, and the mainstream media's coverage of the war amounted to it becoming a "weapon of mass deception".
Mr Richard Boyd Barrett, spokesman for the Irish Anti-War Movement, said coverage of the war had failed to question the images or the spin put forward by the Coalition forces.
"And we will all be protesting at the tendency of the media to present all demonstrators as mindless extremists," said Mr Barrett. "At any of the big protests the only thing the media wants to talk about is whether there'll be violence, rather than looking at the issues that have given rise to an enormous global movement."
Mr Carolan said today's protests were neither anti-journalist nor anti-printer. "We're on the side of the workers and free press," he said.
