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Where a story appears in your daily paper tells you a lot about how newsworthy the editors think it is. Some items, the real important ones, appear on Page One, with giant headlines, "over the fold." Other stories, less important, get relegated to the back pages, where only the hardcore news junkies are likely to come across them. Bearing these realities in mind, we turn to Tuesday's news. You may have heard about this already. In Oakland, there was an antiwar protest on Monday. A group called "Direct Action to Stop the War" (http://www.actagainstwar.org/) was calling for acts of civil disobedience, in remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (whose speech to the Riverside Church, "Beyond Vietnam," is as relevant today as it ever was - come back and read it when your done with today's "Grasshopper" - it's long): http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html So, in honor of Dr. King, an antiwar demonstration was called, and some of the demonstrators engaged in civil disobedience. When the police showed up shortly thereafter, they indiscriminately fired rubber bullets into the crowd, including shots at people's backs and heads. And whereas it may seem incongruous to be remarking on wounds inflicted by rubber bullets at a time when bullets made of lead are shredding Iraqi civilians, I think we Americans need to take stock of where things are heading on the homefront. According to the majority of eyewitnesses (meaning everyone but the police), the use of force in Oakland was excessive. So where did the news appear in the "liberal" press? In the Boston Globe's "War in Iraq" section, in the "In brief" column on page A31, you can read this little blurb (I'll give you the whole thing - it's that short): 12 hurt in protest at Oakland port So that's the "liberal" Boston Globe, content to downplay the event by running a small Associated Press clip that gives us what "Oakland Police said," but no version of the events from demonstrators or the longshoremen caught in the crossfire. The Wall Street Journal gave the incident more prominent coverage, but even less reporting. It appeared in the "What's News" column on page A1 of the nation's business paper: "Police in Oakland, Calif., fired rubber bullets at antiwar demonstrators." That's it. Given the editorial slant of the Journal, I can guarantee that that short sentence was met with more than a few approving nods by members of the business class on Tuesday morning. The New York Times gives the incident much better coverage, albeit on page B11 of the "A Nation at War" section. It appears on the same page as a story about war correspondents for the major networks, which contains this memorable line: "War coverage can be especially rewarding for two kinds of television reporters, pretty young women and graying anchors." So you get some idea of how newsworthy the Times thinks the story is. Here's the link to the Times report: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/08/international/worldspecial/08OAKL.html It's interesting to note that in the online version of the article, the headline reads "Oakland Police Fire Nonlethal Rounds to Disperse Protest." In the New England Final print edition, the headline is more matter-of-fact: "Oakland Police Use Crowd-Control Ammunition at Protest." My guess is that the word "ammunition" was deemed a little harsh for the Times' vast online audience. There were, of course, other accounts of the incident, and you should read them if you're concerned about what's going on in America right now. I'm biased, of course, because if violent police tactics like shooting rubber bullets into crowds of peaceful demonstrators migrate east, I'll be at risk. Take a look at the photo of the young woman who took a rubber bullet to the face, only a few inches from her eye, which would have surely blinded her, and you'll see what I'm talking about: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0407-07.htm Tuesday's newspapers also included a few stories about recently awarded Pulitzer Prizes. The Boston Globe noted on its front page that the Boston Globe won the Pulitzer for "meritorious public service." The Times was equally proud, giving page one coverage to the Globe (which it owns) and to its reporter Clifford Levy, who won the Pulitzer for investigative reporting. The Wall Street Journal gave front-page coverage to its Pulitzer for explanatory reporting. My point is not that the Globe and the Times and the Journal have no business tooting their own horn on their own front pages. That's to be expected - free advertising. These are businesses, after all, and part of the business is to let your audience know that your paper is the one to be trusted, the one that has the facts, the one that can be relied upon to give you "All the News That's Fit to Print." They're newspapers. That's what they do. Newspaper readers have a different job. We need to understand that newspapers are businesses first, with advertisers and payrolls and expenses and corporate headquarters. We then have to figure out if we trust businesses, even "liberal" ones, to keep us fully and accurately informed about what other businesses are up to. |
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