PROTEST

Media Coverage Frustrates Protesters

Small Violent Clashes Dominant Headlines And Overshadow Peaceful Demonstrations, They Say

by Kevin Friedl

Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008


Republicans aren't the only ones scrambling to deal with last-minute schedule changes and message control this week. Protest groups, some of which spent months or even years preparing to demonstrate during the convention, are finding their plans altered and their causes forced out of the news by small-scale violent clashes between anarchists and police.

An anti-war march on Monday drew an estimated 10,000 people to St. Paul, but most news accounts focused on the small bands of breakaway protesters who skirmished with police well into the evening and caused minimal property damage. "There are so many more people who are nonviolent, and the violence is what gets covered" by the media, said Sonya Johnson of the Campaign to End Torture. "Then it paints everybody else."

On Tuesday, a demonstration to raise awareness about poverty started nearly two hours late because local police concerned about security removed electrical equipment that organizers needed to power their amplification system. During the delay, a skirmish broke out between police and a small group of demonstrators, resulting in three arrests. The next day, press accounts devoted few words to the problems that the event was meant to address.

Willie "J.R." Fleming, who helped organize and run the poverty march, said he was initially impressed by the amount of media attention that his group, the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, was able to drum up for its cause beforehand. "But then I read the paper today, and it's something totally different," he said on Wednesday. Fleming blamed news reports of this week's earlier violence for depressing turnout at the march and distracting from its message.

Likewise, organizers of a trucker parade meant to protest the high price of fuel said that concerns over anarchists' smashing car windows, slashing tires, and deploying homemade road spikes kept many would-be participants away from their demonstration as well.

"Talking with a lot of drivers here, there was serious concern about damage to their vehicles," said Michael "J.B." Schaffner, a truck driver who coordinated the parade. "These vehicles are what we rely on for our livelihood." Schaffner said he'd hoped for 50 to 100 drivers to ride with him, but instead his was the only truck to make the route.

Although some organizers did blame the anarchists and others who have fought with police for distracting from their message, many were reluctant to come out and criticize those elements, preferring instead to point to shortcomings of the press and the police. The reticence was due in part to informal agreements between the various groups that they would not disagree publicly. But it's also a product of sheer frustration.

"If we instead took the route of issuing broad denunciations of those activities, then the media still wouldn't focus on our message and would instead focus on those broad denunciations," said Steff Yorek of the Coalition to March on the RNC and End the War. "It's really a no-win situation."

Yorek said that her group, which led the logistical efforts behind Monday's anti-war march, tried to get its agenda into the news by setting up a credentialing process for reporters and making sure that speakers at the rally made time to talk to the press. For their part, the anti-poverty marchers recruited a New York-based PR firm to spread their message.

"I feel like we tried hard to give the media an opportunity to write a story that was full of facts and full of details," Yorek said. "The fact that they chose not to says more about the media than it does about us."

Jessica Taylor contributed to this story.

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