[NTA] FW: FAIR: Some Breaks in the Blackout of Wall Street Protests
- From: "Ericsson, Aprille J. (GSFC-5050)" <aprille.j.ericsson@xxxxxxxx>
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- Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2011 15:13:09 -0500
From: AMY T BILLINGSLEY [mailto:amytate@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, September 30, 2011 5:21 PM
Subject: Fwd: FAIR: Some Breaks in the Blackout of Wall Street Protests
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From: FAIR <fair@xxxxxxxx<mailto:fair@xxxxxxxx>>
Date: September 29, 2011 5:02:28 PM EDT
Subject: Some Breaks in the Blackout of Wall Street Protests
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Activism Update
Some Breaks in the Blackout of Wall Street Protests
9/29/11
After a FAIR Action Alert
(9/23/11<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=6qyd1mXa7e9GixNF9LKNlb5yaTtj%2B%2FnX>)
criticized the virtual media blackout of the Occupy Wall Street protests,
corporate news coverage has increased--sparked largely by the escalating police
brutality at the ongoing demonstration. (See FAIR Blog,
9/23/11<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=LQ8VavqRbvaLDTSULKKHCr5yaTtj%2B%2FnX>,
for a sample of the messages sent by FAIR activists to the network nightly
news shows.)
On ABC World News Sunday (9/25/11), anchor David Muir read this short item
while playing footage of cops assaulting protesters:
And here in New York, protests continued against the big banks and the bailout
that helped the banks, Wall Street, they say, not Main Street. It turned ugly
this weekend when protesters marching through Lower Manhattan clashed with
police. One man right there brought down forcefully by an officer. About 80
people were arrested, in fact. The protesters posted this video on the Internet.
NBC Nightly News aired a somewhat longer report the next day (9/26/11), with
correspondent Ron Allen actually traveling downtown to the protest encampment
in Liberty Plaza. His report included this "he said, she said": "The protesters
charge that the police used excessive force. The police say that anyone who
resists arrest can expect to encounter some level of force, but nothing
excessive." The following morning's Today show (9/27/11) briefly aired footage
of a police official pepper-spraying nonviolent demonstrators in the face,
noting that "the NYPD calls the officer's actions appropriate."
Some journalists seemed strikingly reluctant to take videotaped evidence of
police violence at face value. CNN anchor Ali Velshi
(9/26/11<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=SZpH7d7XUDtVY9MPlBYti75yaTtj%2B%2FnX>)
introduced footage of a police assault by dismissively saying that protesters
were "now screaming abuse after they were arrested over the weekend." After the
footage of a cop violently subduing a protester, co-anchor Carol Costello
noted, "Of course, what you can't see is what came before the fight"--a
disclaimer that could be made of every single piece of videotape that CNN runs.
A September
27<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=R4e4tZGCoeY9UbXTYc%2B2hL5yaTtj%2B%2FnX>
New York Times piece (FAIR Blog,
9/28/11<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=5rtsH9wKoSGJRkm0xzWJCb5yaTtj%2B%2FnX>)
seemed to defend the police force's brutal response, with reporter Joseph
Goldstein depicting a police department concerned about "terrorism" and the
"destruction and violence" that supposedly accompany "anticapitalist
demonstrations." Such police worries, according to Goldstein, "came up against
a perhaps milder reality on Saturday, when their efforts to maintain crowd
control suddenly escalated"--an oddly passive way to introduce the use of
pepper spray and body slams against nonviolent demonstrators.
"Even as the members of Occupy Wall Street seem unorganized and, at times,
uninformed, their continued presence creates a vexing problem for the Police
Department," Goldstein wrote--though his acceptance of media myths about
violent demonstrators (Extra!,
1-2/00<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=C5ye3pNPpUIbOedGLaGVdr5yaTtj%2B%2FnX>,
3-4/00<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=KTl9rE9L%2BwUBlBsWsjc0ub5yaTtj%2B%2FnX>;
FAIR Action Alert,
7/25/00<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=7%2FO%2BMdotWR7giVoz8tORs75yaTtj%2B%2FnX>)
makes the reporter seem less informed than the protesters he patronizes.
Similar condescension was on display in another New York Times piece ("Gunning
for Wall Street, With Faulty Aim," 9/25/11), with reporter Ginia Bellafonte
deriding the "intellectual vacuum" of the protests, with "its apparent wish to
pantomime progressivism rather than practice it." Bellafante described one
protester as a "half-naked woman... with a marked likeness to Joni Mitchell and
a seemingly even stronger wish to burrow through the space-time continuum and
hunker down in 1968."
The Times did, however, print a column by Jim Dwyer
(9/28/11<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=rPUgiK5sUgb7y24P5Ds1q75yaTtj%2B%2FnX>)
that grappled seriously with the police brutality on display in the videos of
the march. "If a nightstick were substituted for pepper spray, a conventional
weapon instead of an exotic one, the events on 12th Street would bear a strong
resemblance to simple assault," Dwyer noted straightforwardly.
Perhaps the harshest critic of police violence in corporate media was MSNBC's
Lawrence O'Donnell, who devoted a remarkable segment to the issue on September
26<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=iGwd%2Byp4jXrKTMwO55z09L5yaTtj%2B%2FnX>.
Pointing to footage of police tackling a person carrying a video camera,
O'Donnell noted:
The reason that man is being assaulted by the police is because of what he has
in his hand. He's holding a professional grade video camera. Since the Rodney
King beating was caught on an amateur video camera, American police officers
have known video cameras are their worst enemy. They will do anything they can
to stop you from legally videotaping how they handle their responsibility to
serve and protect you.
Another outstanding moment in corporate media coverage was filmmaker Michael
Moore's appearance on CNN
(9/26/11<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=I5ziSv%2B82ZkN%2Fqqhgs2MRb5yaTtj%2B%2FnX>).
Host Piers Morgan gave Moore a rare opportunity to actually articulate some of
the grievances that have prompted the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in the
first place:
The main thing is, number one, is that the rich are getting away with a huge
crime. Nobody has been arrested on Wall Street for the crash of 2008. They're
not paying their fair share of the taxes. And now with the Citizens United case
of the Supreme Court, they get to buy politicians up out in the open....
It all points to, are we going to live in a democracy that's run by the
majority of the people, or are we going to be living in a kleptocracy, where
the kleptomaniacs down on Wall Street, who have stolen people's pension funds,
they've wrecked people's lives, millions have been thrown out of their homes,
millions are without health insurance, millions have lost their jobs?
Still, as late as this week, some in the media establishment were continuing to
debate whether the Occupy Wall Street protests were worth covering at all. NPR
ombud Edward Schumacher-Matos devoted a column
(9/26/11<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=OQYY4nCiNke3oZF0%2B1Cg5L5yaTtj%2B%2FnX>)
to the network's decision not to air any reports on the demonstration:
We asked the newsroom to explain their editorial decision. Executive editor for
news Dick Meyer came back: "The recent protests on Wall Street did not involve
large numbers of people, prominent people, a great disruption or an especially
clear objective."
The next day, the previously unimportant non-news was worth covering after all,
as Schumacher-Matos wrote (9/27/11):
The Occupy Wall Street protests have persisted into this week, so the newsroom
has decided to include a segment on tonight's All Things Considered.
FAIR thanks all media activists who wrote to news outlets and helped to change
their minds about the newsworthiness of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.
There's still a long way to go.
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