War Protests: Why No Coverage?

[babylonsister]

War Protests: Why No Coverage?
by Jerry Lanson

Coordinated antiwar protests in at least 11 American cities this weekend raised anew an interesting question about the nature of news coverage: Are the media ignoring rallies against the Iraq war because of their low turnout or is the turnout dampened by the lack of news coverage?

I find it unsettling that I even have to consider the question.

That most Americans oppose the war in Iraq is well established. The latest CBS News poll, in mid-October, found 26 percent of those polled approved of the way the president is handling the war and 67 percent disapproved. It found that 45 percent said they’d only be willing to keep large numbers of US troops in Iraq “for less than a year.” And an ABC News-Washington Post poll in late September found that 55 percent felt Democrats in Congress had not gone far enough in opposing the war.

Granted, neither poll asked specifically about what this weekend’s marchers wanted: An end to congressional funding for the war. Still, poll after poll has found substantial discontent with a war that ranks as the preeminent issue in the presidential campaign.

Given that context, it seems remarkable to me that in some of the 11 cities in which protests were held - Boston and New York, for example - major news outlets treated this “National Day of Action” as though it did not exist. As far as I can tell, neither The New York Times nor The Boston Globe had so much as a news brief about the march in the days leading up to it. The day after, The Times, at least in its national edition, totally ignored the thousands who marched in New York and the tens of thousands who marched nationwide. The Globe relegated the news of 10,000 spirited citizens (including me) marching through Boston’s rain-dampened streets to a short piece deep inside its metro section. A single sentence noted the event’s national context.

As a former newspaper editor, I was most taken aback by the silence beforehand. Surely any march of widespread interest warrants a brief news item to let people know that the event is taking place and that they can participate. It’s called “advancing the news,” and it has a time-honored place in American newsrooms.

With prescient irony, Frank Rich wrote in his Oct. 14 Times column, “We can continue to blame the Bush administration for the horrors of Iraq…. But we must also examine our own responsibility.” And, he goes on to suggest, we must examine our own silence.

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/30/4907/

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. chicago had coverage.

I read about other stuff, but the stories did not have legs.

[librechik]

2. well, it might remind people how unpopular the war is.

And our commercial sponsors in the MSM wouldn't like that

[libodem]

3. I know what you 'er saying

20 decapitated bodies dumped in Iraq, I heard it once, this week end.

[damntexdem]

4. Protests of all types are less covered.

I wonder why. It couldn't be related to media ownership, now could it?

;-)

[Fierce]

5. Protests aren't news anymore.

Wasn't there one last month? And a day of action before that?

[babylonsister]

7. The media hardly covered them either. nt

[Fierce]

8. Right, because we've had these protests for the last four years.

People show up, they carry a sign, yell a little bit, and maybe get arrested, and nothing changes. There's no news in that.

[babylonsister]

11. Defend the lack of coverage if you want. I think there's a bigger problem

here. Even when demonstrations are covered, the number of attendees are deflated. Yet I do recall within the past year where CSPAN had quite good coverage of pro-war people. I think it's twisted and the msm has its marching orders to ignore as much as possible, not just because demonstrations 'happen' occasionally.

[Fierce]

12. What would ideal coverage look like for you?

And when you say "MSM," do you mean the cable news stations, or something more?

[EFerrari]

15. I used to kid with the LAPD about the "count".

I'd say, "I see about two million people here", and my cop friend would say, "twenty, twenty-five, tops". I think the PD used to undercount to deflate the threat of ungovernability -- on orders from their politically appointed chain of command. fwiw

[babylonsister]

16. And do you remember, in DC, copters were not allowed to fly over and

guesstimate how many people might be there? I don't think this admin wanted the population knowing just how many people were angry enough to show up. I don't know if it's the same way in San Fran or anywhere else though.

[EFerrari]

18. What some agencies have started doing is taking no count.

And, that doesn't work very well because people always want to know the count, and someone winds up estimating anyway.

[BonnieJW]

19. In the 60's,

students would occupy buildings on college campuses to get media coverage otherwise no one would pay attention.

[WinkyDink]

6. Because the ILLEGAL INVASION gets no coverage. VietNam was SHOWN.

[bdamomma]

9. maybe it's because they (the media) does not want to show

there are some Americans who think dissent is patriotic!! they do not want us in the consciousness of the American people, the media motto "Keep the truth away from the American people", just my two cents. or how can you keep a democracy if the people do not have that check and balance of the news.

[patrice]

10. "news" is a misnomer. it's the Olds.

Only that which is familiar and recognizable is repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated . . . .

Besides having a ve$$$$$$$$$ted intere$$$$$$$$t in the Olds, Media is just quite simply too stupid to figure out what to say about anything that has not already been identified for them by some "authority" figure, i.e. anything that actually is new, such as the beginnings of an alternative American culture that we see in the anti-War movement.

[unpossibles]

13. because to acknowledge the protests

would create uncomfortable questions for the relative handful of people who don't realize the war is going badly or that most folks are against it. Without that confirmation, the 23%ers can continue to claim it is a media misrepresentation that things are going badly or that we want it to end. It's easy to call a minority names like "unpatriotic" or worse - to know they are in the minority would crush them.

Seriously.

I know a couple of freeper-types here in Ohio, and they really do seem to think that (a) most of America is conservative, and that (b) the media is liberal. If they saw thousands of people marching nation-wide to stop the war - and more importantly, the small handful of folks counter-demonstrating - it would put yet another crack in their warped propaganda-fed worldview.

Look at who owns the "news" media in this country. With very few exceptions, they are all Conservative (like CBS) and/or war mongers (like GE), or both (like FOX).

This is nothing new either. I remember going to an anti-war march for the first Gulf War, and experiencing getting full bottles and cans of beer thrown at us by frat guys. The news story that night showed the frat guys chanting "USA! USA!" instead of the more common chants of "Crack Hippie skulls!" and "Drop bombs not acid!"

[Omphaloskepsis]

14. The protest don't have teeth..

They end early so people don't have to deal with rush hour.. Get 10,000 people to camp out for a week in the middle of the street and it might get coverage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Revolution



The Starbucks fueled protests while checking your watch so you can get home in time for Desperate Housewives will never work.

[HughBeaumont]

17. Corporations learned their lessons from the 60s.

Americans protesting is dismissed as "hundreds" of a "focus group" or "fringe". That would sort of kill the myth that the people in general love the Failure Fuhrer and his cowchip policies. When hundreds of thousands gather in DC and other places, you think the corporate-owned media takes time from their six-martini lunches to give a crap?

Corporations own the media. Corporations own the voting machines. Corporations and the military sleep in the same bed. Corporations own the government. We have no voice because we're "bad for business". All around.

[Mojorabbit]

20. We had some

coverage but it was awfully slanted and the few freepers that showed up got a lot of time and space. they played up that the young communist league was there but totally ignored that gold star mothers and vets against the war were also there.

[babylonsister]

21. That's just pitiful. And WHY? The reasoning for that fails me. nt