Depth Needed in News Coverage of Wall Street

http://www.truth-out.org/depth-needed-news-coverage-wall-street/1319139109

Nate Silver's analysis of news coverage of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations shows how clashes with police have increased media attention to the movement. Silver presented evidence in his 7 October New York Times piece that after each major confrontation with police American media increased the number of articles devoted to the movement. For example, when nonviolent Occupy Wall Street protesters were maced, news stories jumped. When more than 700 were arrested in a nonviolent march across the Brooklyn Bridge, the number of news articles surged nearly 400 percent.

Silver's analysis supports what is already known about the dynamics of nonviolent action, and also supports a long-held perception among members of the American peace community that news outlets are obsessed with violence to the exclusion of other worthy events. However, you would not likely know this from reading about the protests in most major publications.

When nonviolent activists are repressed by force - even when they are breaking the law - public opinion often turns in their favor. Nonviolent activists are more likely to be thought of as "reasonable people" than are violent activists, who are perceived as extremist and as a threat to public safety. Reasonable people attract allies, sympathy and material support. Extremists attract repression and social isolation. Gene Sharp, the Harvard scholar of nonviolence, coined this dynamic "political ju-jitsu," because the force that the opponent uses to squash the movement tends to backfire by attracting more support for that movement.

There are diverse examples of this dynamic. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 Children's Crusade in Birmingham, Alabama, knowingly put unarmed school children out into the streets to face police dogs and fire hoses. The images of that confrontation between a nonviolent community seeking justice and the police were branded upon our national consciousness and led to an expansion of public support for civil rights. The injustice of systemic violence against African-Americans already existed, but the issue was not thrust into public debate until it was laid naked by violent repression of the nonviolent movement.

More at the link --