I wasn't blogging during the run-up to the war or during the war itself, so y'all never saw some of my best arguments. But, interestingly, the anniversary is giving me a chance to bring some of them out since the media is replaying some of the coverage.
For example, their coverage of the anti-war marches yesterday replays exactly the same pattern as their coverage before the war. The principle seems to be: give them as much attention as possible, but protect them from themselves. Last year, for example, as is well known, the major marches were all organized by ANSWER, a truly odious group. And because they were the march organizers, they grabbed all the microphone time for themselves and their friends. Now, if you watched any of the march on C-SPAN what you saw were the speeches and whatever word would come to mind to describe that motley crew, "mainstream" would not be it. But because the networks were invested in the storyline that the marches were populated by a veritable "cross section of America," every bit of footage I saw focused on middle America: teachers, doctors, grandmothers, bankers, and I never once saw a word from the podium used in a network news piece.
It is interesting, given the principle is to nonetheless give these marches as much attention as possible, that this piece isn't in the dead tree Times. Now, I can only speak for the paper I get, which is the version of the National Edition that goes to the southeast. Not only is the National different from the Metro, there are slight differences between the regional editions, and because the Sunday edition goes out earlier, it's the paper with the most variation region to region. I'll bet it's in as many regionals as possible, because the Times got into some trouble with the movement by giving a lower head count to one of the earlier marches in the run-up to the war than the movement liked, and they've been very good boys and girls since.
Indeed, when it comes to providing a head count, they studiously avoid doing so:
It is virtually impossible to guess the size of crowds without wading into a swamp of politics. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said there were about 3,000 demonstrators on each city block. Since Madison Avenue from roughly 23rd to 34th Street was filled before the march, that would mean some 33,000 people. The march's organizers, on the other hand, said there were more than 100,000.
That's a difference of 70,000 people. Note the implication of their reporting: any number we provide would be political. No, any number you provide would lead to a charge of playing politics, but that doesn't mean that everyone providing a number has a political motive. Bloomberg's number isn't just pulled out of a hat, it comes from City police and park officials and is generated from numerical formula. But phrased this way, the Times creates the assumption that it comes from the Mayor a political official, rather than the professionals that work for him. So, given a spread of 70,000, a reader is likely to simply shrug, assuming there's no way to know, when in fact one of these numbers has been generated by apolitical professionals, one by marchers who really do have an agenda and a reason to drive the number up as high as possible.
Once again the groups supporting the marches are absent, as the marchers are for the most part aggressively mainstreamed.
The presence of counter-demonstrators in Fayetteville was left unmentioned. More interesting to me then the presence or absence of counter-demonstraters in Fayetteville is where those protesters came from. Every story I saw mentioned the protest outside Ft. Bragg. That is, of course, newsworthy -- peace protest outside military base! -- because the implication in every single story was that it was people from that community who were protesting. I was extraordinarily skeptical of that implication. Fayetteville is essentially an Army town and despite the escalating number of stories about military families turning against the war, those are stories about soldiers moms (in other words, family members who are not really "military families" in the sense of being totally absorbed in the military community, the military life, the military support system). I had big doubts that there would be a peace rally in Fayetteville made up mostly of people who live in Fayetteville. Surely enough: at least some of them were people who had driven to the base to protest at the base.
But you had to go to the local Fayetteville paper (a paper for people who probably already knew that) to find that out.
The story line that kooks expose the dark authoritiarian conspiracy doesn't hook into any drama that anybody recognizes. So the kooks are protected from being kooks. So you get the regular old drama that sells to lots of people. There you are. Courageous moms demonstrate against illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq.
I don't think it's that the media is biased so much as that they're not interested in the kooks, courageous moms, or Iraq. I mean, they really don't care. Compare Bush, who really does think it would be great if Iraq were free, and doesn't care about the media's profitability. The media drag out poor old Andrea Mitchell and she comes up with some angle that will dramatize what's going on enough to hold the audience. She doesn't care beyond that.
There's a confluence for the opposition though : what story line interests people, and so will profit the media, and gets rid of Bush?
They don't care about Iraq either. That care will come later, if they bother to care.
Posted by: Ron Hardin | March 21, 2004 at 10:41 AM
I think it is a shame that groups like ANSWER run the anti-war movement and select speakers with their own agendas who are outside the mainstream. I was against the war, but I never went to any protests because I am not comfortable with groups like ANSWER. They allow their marches to be hijacked by people with other agendas, such as anti-Israel and anti-American speakers. As a Jew, I did not feel comfortable lending a body to speakers who call for the "liberation of Palestine from the racist Zionist state." And my whole purpose in protesting the war would be to say "I am a proud American, and therefore I am troubled when I see my government doing something I can't be proud of." So I don't want to lend a body to speakers who are not just anti-war and anti-Bush but anti-American period, who say things like "everything this country has ever done has been motivated by greed." I know many people like myself who opposed the war but felt shut out of the anti-war movement because there seemed to be no room for mainstream, patriotic Americans who love our country but oppose actions that we feel run counter to American values.
Posted by: Regime Change USA | March 21, 2004 at 11:48 AM
I can't get this comment out of my mind. I think it's a damn shame that a TRULY mainstream person has no way to demonstrate without basically being used by these people (and you remember that was a big debate within the left last fall: should we agree to be used given that ANSWER is organizing all the marches or not?) and it makes me even angrier that all of that is just being papered over by the media. Did you ever see a mainstream piece that talked about the fights within the left over ANSWER's role as march organizer, given that many on the left believed them hopelessly morally compromised?
That leaves the time honored means of letter and oped writing (and, now, blogging) but the left of center is being eaten at by people who want to attack more than just policy choices. And it has, don't kid yourself, driven people out. Permanently.
Posted by: dauber | March 21, 2004 at 04:26 PM
I would appreciate it, however, if for "email" you entered an email and not your goods and wares. I don't particulary appreciate your using my blog to sell your stuff, particularly since your stuff is partisan. Please do not do it again or I'll have to block you.
Posted by: dauber | March 21, 2004 at 04:31 PM