Saturday, January 21, 2017

Real Community, Unreal Coverage

Courtesy of the Gazette-Times, I had my "Ah ha!" moment this morning. Actually, there were a couple of them.

Per my last post, about the absence of any elected officials attending the community march and protest yesterday, well, we now have a partial answer. Why wasn't Anne Schuster there? Because she was being honored at the hastily arranged "Celebrate Corvallis" awards, which also took place yesterday. Despite the fact that said awards took place after the march, I guess she was too busy getting ready to be feted to join in and say "No!" to Trump, and "Yes!" to community. As were, it seems, all other local elected leaders associated with Corvallis or Benton County.

Which was very much a missed opportunity for them, because the real community, the real people, were out on the streets, raising their voices. The fact that so often politicians would prefer to be raising a glass of wine instead, at some self-congratulatory but meaningless event, is one of the reasons people so dislike politicians. And, coming full circle, that dislike of politicians is a huge part of why the monstrous Trump won in the first place.

Of course, he also won because the media couldn't stop covering his campaign as a freak show, while going light on the fact-checking and dirt-digging that might have made a difference. That sort of distorted, fact-light coverage absolutely helped him win. And I thought of such distorted coverage when I saw the GT's headline for their article about yesterday's march: "More than 500 protest Trump." Which is true, if deceptive. Yes, there were at least 500 people there, but, with years of experience putting on and working various events, I would say the actual total was closer to 600 to 700, at a minimum.

The article also states that "The rally dissipated at the riverfront at around 5 p.m." That is just plain false. It makes it sound like the event wasn't organized, and an ending wasn't planned, so things just "dissipated."

Of course, the fact is, the march continued to the Odd Fellow's hall downtown, where there were speakers, representatives from various community organizations, food and drinks, etc. My wife and I were designated to count heads at the door, and we counted nearly 300 people coming in from 4:30 to 5:30 PM.

As a final comment, let me point out that the march and protest was a big, moving, and extremely colorful and photogenic event. Signs, banners, costumes, etc. The "Celebrate Corvallis" event was, almost certainly, a lot of people sitting at tables and a few talking heads. The GT ran one photo of the march; they ran three from the "Celebrate Corvallis" event.

Please do keep these types of things - these subtle editorial highlights and fact-fudgings - in mind when you read the news. Even the local news.

1 comment:

  1. The whole "liberal mainstream media" lie is just that: a lie, a hoax. Large media outlets are big businesses. Just because many people who work producing the news are less rabidly conservative than the most extreme, far right reactionaries doesn't make them liberal. Big businesses will always have a strong conservative element to them.

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