Funny to notice the unusually detailed coverage of today's immigration protests. Typically at anti-war or WTO protests we can't get on the news, and if we do there are few visuals and the talking heads always minimize the head count (one New York protest a couple years ago clearly had more than a half-million people, and CNN said "tens of thousands"--the same was true of the more recent DC protest where likely a quarter of a million showed and the media grudgingly said "perhaps 100,000"). What coverage there is nearly universally negative or tepid in tone, focusing on Black Block violence or vandalism instead of peace, justice, human rights, and environmental concerns.
But even before today's rallies and marches got started there were lavish and enthusiastic predictions of "hundreds of thousands expected," and I've seen many aerial shots (usually banned when it comes to war or WTO protests), and all the coverage is overwhelmingly positive instead of grudging.
Hmmm--what could explain this? Perhaps the huge corporate interests behind the news for once support the message at these rallies, and decided to give them a lot of positive coverage? I say great, because these marchers deserve to be heard--but is it the media's job to decide which protests are acceptable and which should be given the red carpet treatment? I guess so when the cheap labor their corporate overlords require is at stake.
I didn't bother watching Fox to see their coverage.
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