Disappeared News

by Larry Geller

The Associated Press provides a variety of slants for newspaper editors to choose from. There are also sometimes variations on stories from which editors may choose. Yesterday the Star-Advertiser made its pick, and ran a story edited to basically suggest that the Occupy movement was damaged and would re-emerge at the 2012 national political conventions.

The essence of the story, if I may pick one paragraph as representative, might be this:

While some observers wondered whether the movement would wither without ground on which to make its stand, many protesters refused to concede defeat.

[Star-Advertiser, Bowed but not broken by evictions, Occupy demonstrators retrenching, 12/1/2011]

Of course, we don’t know who “some observers” are, and the article presents no evidence that protesters needed to concede defeat. Police have taken their tents and trashed encampments, but the Occupy movement has returned, just without tents. In other words, the police actions might be described as unsuccessful.

While the story ran in most papers with the headline “After raids, Wall Street protesters shift tactics,” the SA wrote the headline above. “Raids” is quite accurate. “Evictions” is not, since protesters have returned to raided locations without their tents, in many cases.

The AP story as posted on the web by other papers actually ends by noting that the movement is undaunted. The SA cut out all but one weak sentence from the story’s conclusion. The parts that did not appear in the SA showed that the Occupy movement is alive and well. Basically, the cuts changed the tone of the article completely.

Here’s what was cut out near the end (comparing with the version posted by the Anchorage Daily News):

They planned to protest outside a fundraising dinner by President Barack Obama on Wednesday night and a conference of aerospace executives Thursday that they branded a meeting of "war profiteers."

On Monday, Occupy protesters disrupted a session of the Washington state Legislature in Olympia. State troopers used stun guns against at least three people and issued 30 trespassing citations. In Bloomington, Ind., police arrested five protesters who tried to block the entrance to a recruiting event by JPMorgan Chase Bank at Indiana University's business school Tuesday night.

In St. Louis, protesters whose camp was broken up by police on Nov. 12 planned to march to the Federal Reserve Bank office on Thursday. John Mills, a technical writer, called the dissolution of the camp a minor setback.

"It's dampened some spirits, but I think people are just as passionate, just as excited and just as ready for change as they were before," Mills said.

In Atlanta, where protesters moved to a homeless shelter after police drove them out of Woodruff Park in October, organizer La'Die Mansfield said the group will participate in an international day of action in support of Egypt this weekend and occupy a home marked for foreclosure next week, as part of a national Occupy protest on that issue.

It doesn’t sound like the protests have withered, does it? It doesn’t look as though protesters have gone into hiding until the 2012 conventions. What you couldn’t read in the Star-Advertiser, what was selectively edited out, is the part that might have restored balance to an already flawed article.

Bottom line: we are not getting the full news. This is an example, right here in Honolulu, of selective editing that distorts the news.

Commercial media around the country have tried to play down the success of the ongoing Occupy movement, which is why we need alternative media such as Democracy Now.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 12/02/2011 07:20:00 AM