Papers Boost Coverage of Antiwar Movement
NEW YORK -- Under scrutiny from both antiwar advocates and media-watchdog groups, most major U.S. newspapers took seriously the sentiment percolating from large rallies Jan. 18 in Washington, San Francisco, and a host of smaller cities.
The Washington Post ran a lengthy Page One story the following day with the deck, "Chill Doesn't Cool Fury Over U.S. Stand on Iraq." In the Windy City, where there was no major protest, the Chicago Tribune ran a front-page story (below the fold), and even its generally apolitical youth tab, RedEye, produced an Iraq-related cover report. The Chicago Sun-Times published its protest story on A3.
Earlier in the week, the Los Angeles Times enraged some readers with a Page One photo caption that referred to "the usual anarchists" and socialists among the crowd at a big local protest on Jan. 11. The paper's coverage on Jan. 19, however, spotlighted the diversity of those attending, including military veterans. Its story that day even referred to march organizer Ramsey Clark's representation of "high-profile criminal defendants," without mentioning that one of them is Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites), Yugoslavia's ex-president and an accused war criminal.
Criticized for underplaying October's antiwar protests and their turnouts, The New York Times on Jan. 19 ran a photo of the Washington march on the front page and a thorough story inside, with an editorial sympathetic to the protesters appearing the next day. This time, the Times identified the crowd as consisting of "tens of thousands of protesters representing a diverse coalition of peace."
While Peter Hart of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) praised newspaper coverage of the march as a significant improvement over October, he criticized the oft-used phrase "tens of thousands," labeling it needlessly vague in this case. Some police estimates of the crowd in Washington clocked in at around 200,000.
The San Francisco Chronicle also produced a Page One story on the march in that city, which drew either 200,000 people (according to organizers) or 150,000 (according to police estimates).
FAIR's Hart praised newspapers' focus on diversity. "The implications are that now people know that the antiwar movement is more diverse than first thought," he said. "Some organizations are certainly on the far-left but the rank-and-file protesters were a varied group of people."
Coverage also gave readers a sense that many demonstrations took place across the country on Jan. 18, "which helped show the scope of the day's events," Hart noted.
Not everyone shared this view, however. In a Jan. 21 column, Wesley Pruden, editor in chief of The Washington Times, wrote, "Most of the coverage in the newspapers (which ought to know better) ... went along with the charade that this was a mighty outpouring of national sentiment." Because of the marchers, Pruden wrote, Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) can now "dream dreamy dreams," of solidarity with some Americans.
The New York Sun echoed this theme with a front-page head: "U.S. Anti-war Protests Are Hailed by Saddam."
The New York Daily News' Zev Chafets described the Washington marchers as "a thin crowd of cold white people cheering on ... America-hating radicals, second-rate demagogues, and plain weirdos."
--Ari Berman (<aberman at editorandpublisher.com>) is a reporter for E&P.