...CNN saw a ripple, while a huge wave passed them by

[G_j]

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0503/S00191.htm

Media Downplay Historic Day of Anit-War Protests
Monday, 21 March 2005, 12:11 pm
Opinion: Scott Galindez

Media Downplay Historic Day of Protests

By Scott Galindez
t r u t h o u t | Report

From: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/032005A.shtml
Sunday 20 March 2005

Fayetteville, NC -- The second anniversary of the war was the impetus for major demonstrations throughout the world. In the United States, over 800 communities held events calling for an end to the occupation.

CNN, however, reported that in the United States "barely a ripple was made while large protests took place in Europe." The New York Times reported that protests in the United States ranged from 350 people in Times Square to thousands in San Francisco. Later in the same story, the Times reported that several thousand marched from Harlem to Central Park. If thousands marched in New York, why did the Times highlight the 350 in Times Square?

CNN's report was worse … nothing about US protests. While they only saw a ripple, a huge wave passed them by. If CNN had been in Fayetteville, North Carolina, they would have seen what could be a major turning point in the anti-war movement. The largest Anti-war protest ever in this heavily military town took place.

<snip>
CNN missed the boat … perhaps a good thing for them, since they were only prepared for a ripple and not the giant wave that formed in Fayetteville.
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Photo Essay, M19 Fayetteville:
http://chapelhill.indymedia.org/news/2005/03/14179.php
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[Az]

1. Protests are meaningless without attention

The MSM has no interest in handing off the power they have gained in conjunction with the rise of the right. They will not cover anything that may topple the current conditions. Budgeting and marketting require stable environments. When the consumers control the market it is more difficult to plan for future budgets.

The MSM finds itself happily drinking from the same trough as the NeoCons. Peddling fear makes for profits and votes in our day and age. Protests threaten the nature of this system by undermining the control. They will never be covered by the current MSM and as a result the activists will not get the attention such movements require to live.

[G_j]

2. and your definition of "meaningless" is...? n/t

[BiggJawn]

3. If 10,000 paraded down Lake Shore Drive, and CNN didn't cover it...

..Did it happen?
Not according to Mr. amd Mrs. Murkan Sheeple.

you could have a MILLION people gather in a park, and if the media refuses to mention it, they all may have well just stayed home and and worked on their blogs.

[Luminous Animal]

4. I disagree.

If 10,000 paraded down Lake Shore Drive then hundreds saw them. And if out of those hundreds dozens agreed the message then you've got more bodies for the next one. The labor movement made great strides with mass demos, soap box speakers, and handbills. They didn't need no stinkin' CNN or blogs either.

[BiggJawn]

7. Different culture then.

" The labor movement made great strides with mass demos, soap box speakers, and handbills. They didn't need no stinkin' CNN or blogs either."

Indeed, they did. and they had newspapers like the Daily Worker and others. and people read those papers, and they read the handbills, and they listened to the guy ranting on top of the soapbox.

But that was THEN. NOW, popular culture says that if it doesn't come out of the glass tit, it didn't happen.

And when those hundreds get home and can't find anything on the MSM about what they saw with their own two squinties, then they doubt what they saw. After all, if it was REALLY that big, wouldn't they be saying something about on the Teee-Veee?

TV has a death-grip on this country, and the neo-cons, RW and Karl know it.

[G_j]

8. so in other words

we lost before we started, stay home....

BTW, I believe that when more Iraq Vets leave the military and are legally allowed to speak up, they will be at the vanguard of the American peace movement. I also don't think the Vets and military families involved now view the showing in Fayetteville as meaningless.

[BiggJawn]

10. No...

In other words, don't pat yourself on the back too hard, there's still untold millions yet untold.

I think you're right about the vets. They could very well be the catalyst behind the peace movement. Right now, it's ignored, or they find the guy with the biggest dredlocks and put HIM on TV. How they gonna ignore a guy with only one arm and leg?

[ktowntennesseedem]

6. Even if MSM ignored it, it was not entirely without attention.

True, I wish that MSM had been all over this. Protests in Europe? That's not news; everyone knows Europeans hate * and do nothing but protest anyway. But that kind of protesting right here in our backyard? Now that's news! But your are right, the MSM is carefully controlled so that news such as this never sees the light of day. Or does it?

I'm convinced that the need to protest is only made greater by the lack of coverage. (Heck, it conveniently gives us one more thing to protest!) And although average Joe Citizen didn't hear about it on Faux News, a few heard about it loud and clear. Some will hear about it through word of mouth, some learned of it because they just happened to be out and about when a protest was held in their town. And all who took part should be encouraged and emboldened to continue the fight, even though they were denied their 15 min. of fame this time.

Reminds me of one of Jesus' parables, about a poor widow who persistently begged a government official for help. He repeated denied her requests because he was corrupt and because women had no power in that day. But because she wouldn't give up, he finally gave her whatever she asked, just to stop her from nagging him to death! We've got to keep at it, discouraging though it may be at times. If we persist, our voice will eventually grow loud enough that either they won't be able to ignore us. But if we don't persist, soon there won't be anything left to ignore.

[LiberallyInclined]

11. Exactly.

the VAST VAST majority of people in this country have NO IDEA that these protests even took place.
the media is complicit- the coup that was staged in 2000 would not have succeeded without their help.

[Fovea]

5. This is how 1968 happened

the pravda was so thick, you could cut it with a knife. I was a 13 year old who had just read all the Tom Dooley books about Vietnam. I had relatives in the war.

I had african american friends though I was irish american, I had jewish american inlaws, but I was raised WASP. On the other hand, I suspect I grew up knowing a lot more shady characters than most.

But it was a lot like now, where a significant numbers of Americans wanted to believe the Pravda, because the Pravda was that we were winning. That we were going to keep that fatal domino from falling.

We were winning the space race, we were going to elect Bobby.

Then it all fell down and caught fire. When it was over, we were headed to Nixon's peace with honor, Arclight, and rolling right along to Watergate.

The key to the collapse of 1968 was the acceptance of the lie as truth for too long. It was as true as it was in Chigago as it was in Prague.
All over the world, delusional plans that relied on unstable things being stable, and worn down order going on as though nothing had changed since WW2.

Eventually the normality absorbed too much stress, and began too crack
under 20 years of fantasy. So it is today. I know an educated scientist who believes that oil spontaineously generates at rates that will allow us to sustain current usage. He believes as Bush** does, that global warming is an unproven theory. Why does he believe this?

Because he must, or he would have to really change. Instead, he will struggle on to maintain George Bush**'s fantasy America against mounting evidence that 2005 is going to catch fire, fall over, and ooze Dioxin from every pore, world wide.

[Jacobin]

9. Damn!....I thought you typed a "nipple".....

nevermind.