At first glance, it seemed to be just another U.S. flag: red,
white and blue, 13 stripes. But this flag, carried by a protester
during the anti-war march last Saturday in downtown Los Angeles,
had a very subtle and yet telling difference to it.
All fifty stars had been replaced by the logos of big-name
media.
What did this flag represent?
“It’s pretty obvious,” said James Lafferty of
the National Lawyers Guild, a civil liberties group.
Corporate media, says Lafferty, “have interests in oil and
hegemony, same as Mr. Bush has.”
Lafferty and a growing number of dissenters assert that
corporate media ““ household names like CNN and MSNBC ““
have a definite pro-war, pro-Bush bias that marginalizes the
anti-war movement.
“It’s a one-sided debate, and that’s bad for
democracy,” he said.
Despite protests, rallies and sit-ins around the nation, peace
groups complain big media turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to their
programs, while dedicating hours of air time to covering warlike
rhetoric from the White House.
“The most important thing we need to cover is how the
government is regulating the media of the United States,”
said Eva Georgia, the general manager of the independent radio
station KPFK 90.7.
At Saturday’s demonstration, protesters ranked CNN and Fox
News up with the likes of “war mongers” President Bush
and Secretary of Defense Colin Powell.
Peace advocates cite several reasons for accusing the media of
bias.
Part of it is because big name media either doesn’t
dedicate the time and effort to covering protests, or doesn’t
cover them at all.
Scott Scheffer, an organizer for the ANSWER coalition, points to
the Oct. 26th protests in San Francisco and Washington D.C., where
he claims “a quarter of a million people showed
up.”
The media response? While the San Francisco Chronicle and the
Washington Post ran front-page articles, the Los Angeles Times gave
the event little attention.
And, on Saturday, participants pointed out the lack of
mainstream news outlets covering the protest, as well as coverage
in the L.A. Times that some found to be lackluster.
The Los Angeles Times did not return calls for comment.
Activists also accuse media of being involved in a hodgepodge of
investments that secretly want war.
“It doesn’t take a genius to recognize the fact that
conglomerates are owned by corporations that have their hands on
other industries other than media,” said Trevor David, the
news editor for KPFK.
Although specific companies aren’t cited, activists
mentioned that media are also invested in aerospace, defense
contracts and “big oilism,” industries that would
profit from a war.
Another issue is the problem of media dynamics.
Lafferty explains that, “whereas Bush and Cheney can stand
in front of a TV with a microphone” to get cameras rolling,
protests have to have numbers in the thousands to attract a
broadcast station.
“We have to force the issue,” Lafferty said.
John Hansen, an organizer for ANSWER, agrees.
“The way the media are set up, with 15 to 20 seconds to
get a story across, they have to get the most dramatic,
eye-catching stories,” Hansen says.
Another common lament is that war increases ratings and ratings
increase profit. For example, CNN was boosted to the forefront of
media with its dramatic coverage of the Gulf War, and now is
considered one of the pillars of television journalism.
Media corporations strongly deny the allegations of bias.
“I don’t think there is a bias in the media. I
don’t think the media are taking a bias either way,”
said Ed Pyle, the news director for KNX 1070 in Los Angeles.
Although Pyle declined to comment on the issue of media
ownership, he ridiculed the idea that media were taking orders from
a higher power on what to cover, and pointed out that KNX had a
reporter at Saturday’s protest.
KNX 1070 is owned by Viacom, a giant corporation that owns,
among many media outlets, CBS News.
Thomas Plate, a professor at UCLA in communications and policy
study and a syndicated newspaper columnist, also discounted the
accusation of a media conspiracy.
“It’s a theory that assumes that the media have the
time and intellect to construct a conspiracy, and the media
don’t,” Plate said.
He explained that media generally are reluctant to criticize the
government in anything because they try to reflect American public
opinion.
“American public opinion gives the president the
presumption of innocence and the presumption of support,”
Plate said, adding that these presumptions are not necessarily
shared by younger people, the loudest voices in the anti-war
movement.
But Plate predicts the media can change their position very
quickly and that media coverage of the anti-war movement will grow
steadily the longer the issue of war is dragged out.
“If war goes on too long, if it’s perceived to be
unjust, if there are too many body bags, the media will turn on the
president,” he said.