August 30, 2004

Today's Elephant + Follow up on 400,000 marchers

Oooops, they did it again,
Based upon a personal "surfing survey" of news channels last night, there definitely was minimal coverage of yesterday's gigantic protest in New York City. Average coverage on news programs: maybe a 20 second close up shot of the crowd, followed by at least 45 secs of footage showing the "usual" people arrested for disorderly conduct. The best shot of all was on CSPAN yesterday- a long shot down Seventh Avenue at the start of the march, following block after block of marchers for miles.

Today the Republicans are dominating the covers of magazines, newspapers, and local/national TV news programs as they kick off their convention. There has been no mention of any scheduled interviews with protest leadership in New York this week. The media has chosen to "blow off" this important event, thus filtering away any "message" behind this massive, civic gathering. Viva el status quo!

Today's elephant? After hearing some of the marchers interviewed on CSPAN, I must say they were very articulate folks, chosen at random, well spoken and intelligent. So, why haven't we seen anyone from United for Peace and Justice or folks from the crowd interviewed anywhere in the mainstream media today?

The obvious conclusion, and this elephant is huge, Americans, who assume that we have "freedom of the press" and have current information from mainstream outlets are only getting one side of the story convenient to ownership. This on-going effort to filter the news, to keep the electorate disconnected and to make sure that the status quo is upheld, can be observed hogging the center of your TV universe nightly.

Tell us your thoughts...

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