by Cheryl Seal
IndymediaApril 20, 2002
Professional journalist Cheryl Seal gives an off-the cuff assessment of the network news' coverage of the D.C. protests. Coverage given by CBS, NBC, AOL, ABC, CNN, and FOX as of 7:30 pm, April 20 assessed.
First, When you have a total of 30 different protests planned for a weekend, all involving different groups, and just ONE large protest of the bunch accounts for 50,000 people (the Free Palestine event sponsored by ANSWER), you know the total head count for the weekend will be well over 200,000 all tallied, in coming and going. It was definitely larger than the pro-Israeli event last week because the D.C. police said it was the FIRST time they had required the full deployment of their new crowd management resources. The Pro-Israel event, however, received top billing by all news stations by the time the evening news was aired. So, while Bush hid out at Camp David, shaking in his phony cowboy boots, the network media put their wagons in a circle and tried to minimize the REAL story in these protests: Everyone gathered here was bound by ONE COMMON uniting theme: Anger at Bush Administration policies, from his support of Sharon to his support of globalization.
CBS: CBS gave the story front page placement with photos and made it the lead story, which it should have been. However, they said there were 35,000-50,000 present without mentioning that this group represented just the largest of a total of about 30 protest events being held throughout the weekend. Nonetheless. This was the best it got for the networks.
GRADE: B
NBC. Did not even carry story of protests by 7:30. Lead story was about Ashcroft's bank threat hoax with a big photo of Ashcroft (yuck!!)
GRADE: F-
AOL: Used a time-honored spin tactic: put it on page one, then completely revised the "history" of the event according to the "corporate model." So this lame story says there were "over 10,000" protestors (trying to imply, of course, that the number was closer to 10,000 than the actual grand total of over 50,000!). AOL also reported early in the story (the section most likely to be read) that protestors chanted "Down, down with Israel." If anyone chanted this, it was just a very few people! I didn't hear that chant the entire time I was listening to CSPAN, which carried the main event sponsored by ANSWER. The chant that was heard over and over was in fact "Free, free, Palestine!" (The Aol story mentions this only later on). The spin is obviously intended to present the protestors as anti-Semitic. Even more outrageous was the spin put on the Freeper (rightwinger "Free Republic" group) counterprotest going on. This was a group was about 200 protestors, tops by most counts. But AOL only says "much smaller than the main protest" - trying to imply, of course, that it could have been in the thousands! Instead, they dwelt on the anti-globalization/IMF/bank protests. Why? Because that plays into the idea that there were bomb-threat-calling protestors lurking about, justing waiting for their chance to "terrorize."
GRADE: C-- and that is that high ONLY because they ran it as a lead story.
FOX: Not a trace of coverage on "page one", However, they did run a photo of the devastation of Jenin as the lead photo, which is less offensive by far than CBS's Ashcroft mugshot.
GRADE: D-
CNN: Gave the story secondary status, with withdrawal from Nablus top billing. Secondary status on page one wouldn't have been too bad, but CNN's spin job of the protests was worse than AOL's Not only did they not mention the size of the protests, except to say thousands, which like AOL, implies such a broad range as to be meaningless, but, worse, by the third paragraph, they had launched into all out negative spin. They mention the arrests of the cyclists and then insert a government quote that the accusation that the School of the Americas is a terrorism training ground is "propaganda." They then proceeded to give the pathetic 200-person Freeper counterprotest a full paragraph, mentioning that sorry-assed group BEFORE even mentioning the 50,000-person protest on the mall in support of the Palestinians! In fact, CNN even listed the Free Republic web link at the end of the article along with only about 5 of the 30 other groups in D.C. this weekend. They must have yogi masters in the newsroom to be able to bend over backwards and so far to the right at the same time to please a handful of rightwingers! The protest in support of the Palestinians (sponsored by ANSWER), was then all but dismissed as merely "one of the largest protests." And these reporters actually get PAID for this stuff? What a joke!
GRADE: D
ABC: Not one mention of the protests on page one. The lead story was the Nablus withdrawal, while the second-to-top story was, as a royal slap in the face to the protestors in D.C., about the G-7 talks! Other "leads" that were considered more important than a total of about a quarter-million people converging on D.C. were the Robert Blake murder case, Ashcroft's latest terrorism hoax, and Feds detect anthrax at Fort Dietrick (as if we believe the timing of this "discovery" is just an amazing coincidence!).
GRADE: F-
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