Why Won't The Media Cover The Protests?
By Keith Boykin, in politics
Saturday, March 22 2003, 7:44PM
After days of saturation coverage from the Iraqi frontlines, television networks finally got around to covering the antiwar protests over the weekend. But even then, the coverage was still biased against the protesters.
NBC Nightly News spent less than 30 seconds on its coverage of worldwide antiwar protests on its special hour-long extended edition Thursday night. Friday's coverage was equally paltry. But by Saturday, television news seemed to wake up slowly to the reality that not everyone supports the war.
New York's News Channel One dispatched a team of reporters to cover the scheduled antiwar demonstration in Manhattan Saturday afternoon, but almost each time the reporters interviewed the demonstrators, they peppered them with antagonistic questions. "How do you respond to the charge that you're being unpatriotic when the troops are on the ground?" they asked.
An 11-year-old boy told the reporter he felt sorry for the kids his age who were suffering in Iraq because of U.S. bombs, and he asked the president to stop the killing.
On MTV, in between segments in a marathon daylong session of The Real World, a reporter played a taped interview with an Iraqi teenager who was obviously smitten by American culture. He played rock music on his MP3 player and complained that his father had taken down his posters in his bedroom. War did not seem to scare him then.
MTV called him again just as the bombs began falling in Baghdad, and he expressed much more concern and fear. With bombs blasting around him as he spoke, the phone call suddenly ended. MTV called back and reconnected with him briefly, and although the conversation was inaudible for airplay, the reporter in New York said the teenager appeared frightened.
Saturday afternoon, CNN reported police estimates that 200,000 people marched through New York at the antiwar demonstration here. Then, switching to footage of a pro-war rally in Chicago, the on-air anchor described this visibly smaller march as "massive."
Continuing with the bias, the anchors reported that 100,000 people marched through the streets of London, but then dampened the significance of the turnout by labeling it "considerably smaller" than the 750,000 people who marched there last month.
If the media had paid more attention to the earlier antiwar protest in the first place, perhaps the significance of the reduction in size might be relevant. But given the absence of coverage of antiwar protests, it hardly seems fair to downplay an event that sparks 100,000 people to take to the streets.
Polls show that 75 percent of Americans support the decision to send in U.S. troops to Iraq. That's to be expected. Anytime any president sends our troops in harm's way, American's rally around the flag. It happened in 1991 during the Gulf War as well. In fact, you might say that's old news.
Antiwar protests are not always new news either. But considering how long it took for Americans to mobilize against the Vietnam War, huge protests at this early stage are remarkable. When 200,000 Americans march down the streets to protest in the first week of a war, that's big news, whether the media knows it or not.