Corporate Media Minimize Massive Hands Off! Protests
fair.org
Corporate media journalists are apt to regard protesters as akin to spectators rushing onto the field during a game.

After the biggest anti-Trump protests since the 2017 Women’s March, many major media outlets seemed intent on downplaying the size and significance of the massive demonstration of opposition.

The Hands Off! protests took place on April 5 in 1,400 locations across the country, with solidarity rallies in Europe and Canada. Volunteer organizers said the events were aimed at opposing billionaire government and corruption; cuts to Social Security, Medicaid and other vital programs; and attacks on immigrants, trans people and other vulnerable groups. At a conservative minimum, hundreds of thousands of people turned out to resist the Trump administration’s many assaults on democracy; organizers estimate the total reached into the millions.

  • Absaroka@lemmy.worldEnglish
    53·
    13 days ago

    There were two telling things for me in the coverage.

    First, it was always “thousands” of people at the event. Not tens of thousands like in Boston. Not something on the order of 100,000 or more in NYC (it stretched for 20 BLOCKS). All over the media “thousands” of protesters. Not “millions attend Anti-Trump rallies across US cities” like the National Post wrote.

    The coverage tried to make it sound like this was 1,200 mostly insignificant protests across the country.

    Second, most of the news websites weren’t covering it live. And when it finally made the front page later that day or the next morning, it was 2/3/4 stories down.

    Now … compare that to what happened in South Korea. Yes, a very different ballgame, but it was halfway across the world and ALL of the news media were treating it as breaking news and halting all other coverage.

    That protest had about 1 million people.

    Our protests had about 5,000,000 people across the country.

    It should have been covered as a much bigger deal.