There's No Protest Here

The New York Times on Sat., Oct. 1, 2011 at 6:59 PM, posted an article online by Colin Moynihan titled "Protesters Arrested on Brooklyn Bridge." The article began as follows:  "After allowing them onto the bridge, the police cut off and arrested dozens of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators."

Twenty minutes later, the article was updated with an added author, new text, and a different title. The title of the changed article passively read, "Hundreds arrested on Brooklyn Bridge." The updated posting read as follows;  "In a tense showdown over the East River, police arrested hundreds of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators after they marched onto the bridge's Brooklyn-bound roadway."

   For unknown reasons The New York Times felt it necessary to take out the word "protesters" from the title and add that the scene on the Brooklyn Bridge was a "tense showdown," while negating the facts of the prior article.

Walking through Zuccotti Park there are signs, chants, dissenters, camp outs, and heated discussions on reform. If the eclectic groups of people in Zuccotti Park aren't protesters, as the New York Times reported, they sure look like protesters. Perhaps a uniform with the word "protester" should now be required for public demonstration to clear up any future confusion.

 Dwyane Henry, 25, a videographer explained how local news has been handling the protests. "When we went to protest on the bridge the cops let us on, there were no fences or any guys yelling at us to stop," he explains while he puts the finishing touches on a communal protest sign. "Then once on the center of the bridge they corralled us in a circle and then demanded we leave... but the news on NY1 just showed some cop telling us to leave and then the chaotic arrest."

The police ended up arresting 700 protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge that day, and Dwyane was one of them. The incident breaks a 1970s record for the most arrested at once in New York City.

Dwayne, like many protesters, feels the media does not give their cause enough validity. "We are going up against massive corporate powers," Dwyane continued, "and the majority of mainstream news media are massive corporate powers! It's only natural we don›t get fair recognition."

The Occupy Wall Street group is going up against the top 10% of wealth holders in the nation, so of course, that top 10% who controls media (which is now down to five major corporations) are threatened by the group's popularity.

On Sun., Oct. 2, a retired economic advisor for New York Times and author Jeff Madrick, spoke to the Occupy Wall Street group during a general assembly. Madrick denounced his old newspaper, citing that 1% of America owns 20% of all wealth, and the top owners of major news corporations are in that 1%.

 The media representation has been poor. Instead of representing the protesters as active American citizens who are utilizing their free democratic society in order to bring about change, they are demonizing the protesters as unorganized and lacking a cohesive goal. Is this fair? When covering Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, the media made it clear: these were revolutions. Yet in the west when civil unrest occurs it becomes, as David Cameron so starkly put it, "thuggery."

Subtle media tricks to marginalize the group's progress may have worked up until this point, but with offshoots of the campaign springing up in Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles, the group shows no signs of slowing down.