Micah's Response 4/4

On my Facebook feed, I often have friends who are proponents for specific types of protests.  On the rare occasion that I peruse my news-feed, I will see posts like, “If you are against animal cruelty please like this post and re-post it on your wall; the animals need you!” Or I will see things like, “If you support this nations veterans, then you must re-post this!” Well I’m definitely not a fan of animal cruelty, and I most definitely support our troops, but what happens if I don’t re-post? Have I hindered the progress of important social issues?

Today, people have the opportunity to become pseudo-journalists every time they post an update or tweet a comment. If we look at the success of the protests in Egypt, we can see how popularity of the events on Facebook correlated with the amount of media coverage.  At times, news stations were even covering the different Facebook quotes that described the violence at the protests. Although this is a good example of how social media works to help protests, how helpful is social media for your everyday Facebook cry for help? If I started a newsfeed or tweet that called for the fair treatment of circus clowns and found 100,000 people who reposted and “liked” my cry for help, how much media coverage would I receive? The answer – none.

 Larson discusses, “Instead, they were a part of the emerging ideology that would soon become the dominant one.” In other words, the agenda of the majority influences the change and reforms we see that are created with social media.  The need for change in Egypt already existed and was felt by the majority of the people. Unfortunately, the existence of a problem does not necessarily mean that a change will occur.  Fortunately for the Civil Rights Movement, the northern majority were already starting to see the need for change – this is when the news coverage was in abundance; media coverage follows popularity. In modern terms, not only did enough people “like” the status and felt compelled to repost, but also these people were a part of the dominant the discourse and were very popular on Facebook.

Unfortunately, I am not very popular on Facebook.  I only have 140 friends (I only talk to about 30), and my niece tells me that this number does not make me a very popular person on the Internet. So the clowns will have to wait for now until I increase my number to at least 180.  Or, maybe I can alter my aspirations of clown freedom and join the dominant conversation on Gun Control; maybe then my voice will be heard.

Bree, response 4/4

These chapters got me thinking about some contemporary movements that we've seen both flourish and fail in the media. I first thought of the "Occupy" movement and how people participating in it that were upset with our current economic status were quickly painted as criminals trying to upset the American dream. The news has a way of twisting the truth, and this representation is reminiscent of how the South portrayed activists in the Civil Rights Movement. But what about the movements that the news actually presents as "good". I found this on globalresearch.org when I started looking around the internet....

"One US group that seem to have their protest coverage (positively) amplified in the mass media is the Promise Keepers, “an evangelical men’s organization with an anti-feminist and anti-gay theology”. Dane Claussen analysed their coverage in US newspapers – from 1991 (their founding year) through to April 1996 – and concluded that it was “overwhelmingly positive”. [9] In fact, one of their protests in Washington DC received “more than three times the coverage” the television networks devoted to a women’s march held the day before, which was more than double its size."

This is interesting to me, though it was a social group in the 1990s, it still resembles the coverage we see today. Consider all of the protestors and groups in support of same-sex marriage, depending on what news station you tune into, it seems as though you're given stories on two different countries, one country that mostly supports it, and one that mostly opposes it. Say you regularly watch a news station with a conservative agenda, I find it unlikely that you'd see many gay rights protests covered, and if you did, they'd likely be painted as degenerates crushing "American ideals". But on the other side of the coin, were you to watch Anderson Cooper's news program, the views would likely be more than sympathetic to the cause of gay rights. 

It's really quite terrifying that news varies wherever you go. But unfortunately, the conventional wisdom still remains that the media is just there reporting the facts, when they are mroe than skewed form every which way. 

4/4 Response to Larson

This week’s reading focused on media coverage of minorities’ social movements. After the overview, there was one chapter on media coverage of African-Americans’ civil rights movements and one chapter including coverage of all Asian-Americans’, Native-Americans’, and Latinos’ movements. At one point the author pointed out that media often ignores minority movements other than African-Americans, but I thought it was a little ironic that she subsequently lumped the others together and said of most of their movements that their beginnings are probably in the African-American civil right movements in from the 1950-70s.

The critique the author set up in the first chapter of the section focused on how the media does not help promote the agendas of minority movements by either downplaying their importance, demonizing the movement, or discounting their motives, or simply ignoring groups who have a social agenda. The second chapter in the section was about media coverage of African-American social movements, mainly civil rights era protests and organizations. The author said that in general, it was widely held that the media was on the side of the activists by spreading their message. She didn’t seem to want to believe this though. She went on to make the exception that it was easier for journalists to take sides in what was fairly a good side/bad side situation. She also detailed media coverage of many major civil rights movements and protests, but some of it still seemed like she was making an effort to show how the media is still bad in general.

The third and final chapter in the section included all other minorities, each of which had been given their own chapter in previous section. I wonder why the author decided to break with this formula. Clearly she did not have as much to say, or there was less information, but it still seemed a bit unfair. My first reaction to this imbalance was to think of my own knowledge of media coverage. It occurred to me that the history of American slavery might have created more background for a larger movement and that was the reason my public school education did not mention Latino, Asian, or Native-American social protests, but then the author also pointed out so many actual protests and movements happened. I’m almost ashamed to say how surprised I was at how little I learned in history. One thing I find a bit ironic was that I had heard about Latino labor movements, but it wasn’t in Texas public schools. It was in my tiny private school in Delaware. We read a book about it, but I guess it makes sense considering how much of a religious focus Chavez’ movement had that it might seem to be one of the most “moral” protests for my little school to focus on. 

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.

Aryeh Response 4/4

The book’s section on the media coverage of the civil rights movement was pretty engaging; I think like a lot of people, I am familiar with the event as covered in history books rather than the way it was covered at the time. Because of this, I was somewhat surprised to learn how the media either ignored or didn't appropriately cover the civil rights movement in the national press. When I think about it more, however, it makes sense to me that the media would have covered Dr. King and these events in this way. As a white-controlled enterprise, the mainstream media really did not have a vested interest in civil rights. I thought it was interesting that even the most infamous protests were not covered at length in the mass media. While, as the book states, the media loves to cover violence at protests, because it helps them frame something unfamiliar (difficult political issues) within a familiar category (violence). I think it’s still this way. I recall seeing similar coverage of the occupy movement over the last few years. The news media seems obsessed with violence rather than issues. I can also see how the white, news community's unfamiliarity with African-American culture and causes lead to a lack of coverage. I thought it was absurd that the newspapers had trouble covering Watts because they had no information on the area. While this seems like it would be a thing of the past, I believe that the media still systematically ignores what goes on in African-American neighborhoods. Take, for example, the way the media covers tragedies that involve white children versus those of African-American children.

Another issue that came up quite often in the text was the local vs. national media bias. According to the book, many of the Native-American protests of the 1960’s were covered on a local level but not mentioned nationally. One of the benefits of the internet is that we can find news about issues we care about. When those 60’s protests were going on, you needed to live in an area that received the local paper to get information on what was happening. Though our reading was historical, the mainstream media continue to use formulas to fill news rather than investigate what’s truly happening. At least we have the internet now, no?

The White Black History

Either I’ve became accustomed to Larson’s writing style or this week’s reading wasn’t as… shall we say, disruptive, as it could have been. What bothered me the most other than Larson’s omission of Malcolm X, Elderidge Cleaver and The Crisis magazine, was how she wrote about the media as having two sides, but that ‘double-sided monster’ was more often than not being told from the dominant, white perspective. There were few times that Larson gave her readers the inside outlooks of these social movements when there are obviously sources to gain insight from, such as The Crisis magazine (which used to be titled Fire!) that is the NAACP journal. It strikes me odd that nowhere in this text has she yet to mention that text when it’s been one of the premiere sources for African American scholarship since the Harlem Renaissance. This is not just an issue with her Civil Rights section (and the lack thereof any other minority during this time) but this same issue is seen in the next chapter as well. Although, Larson does make one other noticeable differance in chapter 14, and that is if your a minority other than black, then you are capitalizing on stereotypes in order to gain publicity and possibly promote stereotypes rather than marketing the publics impressionability to gain awareness for a social cause.

 Nonetheless, the issue of presenting a skewed media is one thing but framing minority issues in the media as not having a voice because the media is slanted, and then writing about this by omitting the ethnic point of views just seems illogical and counterproductive. This is one of those times where you say, “It’s good, but there’s always room for improvement.”

Give the people what they want?

         This week, our chapter discusses social movements within the media and why certain movements or stories are granted more coverage than others. We all know (well, some of us) are aware that the news is created for profit, and the stories that will appeal to larger groups of people are given much higher priority.
          Take today, for example. On Wednesday, April 3rd, I checked several news and media sites and the majority of what I found are fluff pieces. Despite the various dire, news worthy situations that are currently unveiling in our world, articles about the Rutger's head coach being fired, an MTV star dying, and other ridiculous stories (I'm looking at you, Fox news!) were the main focal points.
         Last month was the deadliest month in Syria thus far, with over 6,000 people dying. In order to read about this, however, one had to leave the home page of CNN, go to the World section, and find this information in a small bullet underneath other stories about North Korea's hostility towards South Korea (which we already know and nothing new has happened). I'm enclosing several screen shots for your own sad amusement.