If You Were Wondering Why Protest Coverage Seems Fairly Muted, NPR's Public Editor Confirms This is Intentional
If You Were Wondering Why Protest Coverage Seems Fairly Muted, NPR's Public Editor Confirms This is Intentional
https://www.threads.net/@nprpubliceditor/post/DIhOEQQOyqP
EDIT: Also worth noting that the next nationwide protest date for 50501 is May 1st
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This is why strikes are more newsworthy: they disrupt things.
With a protest news will cover:
- That it happened
- What the protest was about / why it happened
- How many people were involved
After that, you're basically done, other than maybe taking some pictures of interesting signs or costumes.
With a strike you get all the above plus:
- What services are disrupted
- What is being done to end the strikes
- What's being done to mitigate the disruption
- What people who are disrupted feel about the strikes
The disruption part is key, because disruptions lead to other disruptions and that leads to a new story.
Look at the coverage of the trash collectors' strike in Birmingham
- First paragraph: the disruption being caused
- Second paragraph: more about the disruption
- Third paragraph: what's being done to end the strike
- Fourth paragraph: what the strikers want
- Fifth paragraph: what the strike is about
- Sixth paragraph: what the authorities are doing about the disruption
- Seventh paragraph: more about the disruption
- Eighth paragraph: more about what's being done to end the strike
- ...
Or look at the coverage of the transport strikes in Greece. Again, because a lot of things are being disrupted, there's more to talk about.
Part of the reason that disruption is key is that there's a long chain of side effects. For example, with the garbage strike there's uncollected garbage. That has a side effect of attracting rats and other vermin. People worry that that might have a side effect of causing disease outbreaks. That might have an effect on the already strained public health system.
In addition, the more disruption, the more pressure there is to fix it. That results in various people passing the buck / blame to other people, which results in more news-worthy things to write about. You get conflicts between different levels of government. Conflict is interesting, so it's something that makes the news.
A protest on the weekend that doesn't really disrupt anything just isn't going to get the same level of coverage.
11 days until May Day which would be the perfect opportunity for a really disruptive general strike. But, I guess Americans aren't concerned enough about the state of their country to really disrupt anything yet.
Protests too can be disruptive. They don't have to be just people along the side of the road, building, etc. For instance, here's thousands of people blocking a freeway in downtown LA as part of anti-ICE protests in February
(Did get more media coverage indeed due to being more disruptive)
Organizing a general strike is also more difficult in the US with union membership being so comparatively low. Greece and the UK both have around double the unionization rate (~20% vs ~10%). Not impossible, and would be great to see, but protests themselves are a tool that can help get there. Help people see that people within your community are just a pissed as you are and you'll have a lot more people willing to join in. Unions are some of the people organizing various protests too. They are able to drive membership up because of it
Protests that block key roadways are generally not received well. People are often mad that they're inconvenienced and will use moral arguments regarding potential disruption of emergency services.
At least with strikes, most of who you're fucking over is your boss and not the people you're trying to have side with you.
Blocking roads is not the only method of disruptive protest. There are a lot more options than that. Everything from sit-ins to much more creative disruptions
For instance, one technique that animal rights activists have successfully used before is gluing hands to tables to protest various things. May sound silly, but it gets outsized attention on both traditional and social media. For instance, it's been a factor to help get over 330 coffee chains to drop their non-dairy milk upcharge (including some major ones like Starbucks, Dunkin, Tim Hortons, etc.)
This is my hope, too, but it's happening slower than I'd like. Enthusiasm for https://generalstrikeus.com/was strong at first, but has slowed significantly. It's always on my protest sign "Signs a strike card!" My hope is that the protests will grow and develop into momentum for a strike... I'm not sure what else to do...
Thing is NPR should be promoting protests and gs
Why?
They just got defunded, for one. For another, the collapse of our government seems imminent?
How does that affect the newsworthiness of a protest? It seems like you just came up with two bigger, higher priority stories that they should be covering.
Because people need to rise up