Media coverage of OWS

Chapter 13 begins, "Conventional wisdom holds that the media served as an ally and a tool of the black civil rights movement" (152). Larson complicates this statement later in Chapter 13 by providing examples as to how the media did not actually serve as an ally--i.e. riot coverage or coverage of the Black Panthers. This chapter made me think about events that are presented unfavorably by the media today--or, more unfortunately, not covered at all.

Occupy Wall Street is one modern day social movement that came to mind that received a fair amount of attention, both positive and negative, from the media. Someone produced this incredible mashup of coverage between MSNBC and Fox News, and the disparity between the two stations is compelling. The video is featured at the end of this article.

Quotations from MSNBC:
"There is no doubt the Occupy Wall Street protests have ignited support around the country."
"We're witnessing thirty years of failed Republican economic policies all coming to a head."
"It is appalling, the brutality that was used against these young people and the people of Occupy Wall Street in Oakland. Appalling."
"Do you think the Republicans are behind closed doors afraid of the 99 percenters? Cause it doesn't look like they're going away and it looks like they continue to resonate with the American people in the polls supporting them."
"They have definitely affected the discourse in the country, no doubt."

Quotations from Fox News:
"As the Occupy Wall Street movement grows in numbers across the country, it is also accumulating trash, and lots of it."
"They put their tent there for a couple of weeks, next thing you know, the sod is dead."
"You've got people having sex on the street, sex where they want, sex on the sidewalk, walking around topless, smoking pot, doing drugs in the street, drugs in public the way they want."
"The gatherings have morphed into a destructive mix of the homeless, the criminal, the left-wing agitators, pervs, drug dealers, aging anarchists with hygiene issues, and misguided grad students mad at daddy."

I could go on and on--it's a terrific video. The quotations that I have included really give us a glimpse into what each station was interested in covering or how they wanted to portray the movement. In Chapter 12, Larson discusses how the media is often only interested in the sensationalist aspect of events--the fact that there are riots, or rivalry, or drama of any sort. It is less often that we see the media actually dissecting the issues at play, and I think that MSNBC does a good job of that in their coverage of OWS. Fox, however, seemed more intent on portraying the protesters as slovenly, promiscuous liberals determined to run America into the ground.

In this article, however, John Knefel laments the failure of the mainstream media, including MSNBC, to continue covering the issue of inequality and corporate greed once the OWS protests waned toward the end of 2011. This reinforces the notion that the media has a flare for the dramatic, to say the least. Once the protests were out of sight, they were also out of mind, and so too were the important issues that MSNBC seemed devoted to during the time of the protests.

In closing, I wonder how the OWS protests will be remembered fifty years from now. Will journalists proudly claim that the media had the movement's back, even when that clearly wasn't the case most of the time? It has made me also think about the ongoing fight for marriage equality and the possible overturning of DOMA and Prop 8--we've all heard marriage equality advocates urge the public to be on "the right side of history." It will be interesting to see fifty years from now how the media portrays the important social movements that are going on today and whether or not that will be an honest portrayal.