I Wasn't Using my Civil Liberties Anyway


Personal reaction to covering the 4/20/04 protest of President Bush's speech promoting the so-called P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, as well as a critique of local news coverage of the event. Includes selected photos. More photos here.

I wanted to get a long shot of the crowd, but I wasn't allowed to. Only the big corporate media were allowed to be on the other side of the barricade. So this was the best I could get that gives a sense of the whole:





By even reaching over the orange plastic wire fence to get this shot, I was risking having the police come after me. I had to do it quickly, and dashed back into the crowd when I saw them coming.

The crowd was barricaded into an small area across from a very large, open park space the equivalent of possibly two blocks from the auditorium where Bush was to give his speech. There were a few tv cameras around, but hardly any other media. They were all inside with the President, taking down his words.

Here's a shot showing where one cameraman decided to station himself with respect to the crowd:





That cameraman never moved from that spot during the two hours I was there. The police officer told me that the man in a wheelchair is a judge, and that was why he was allowed to be on the other side of the barricade. I never got a chance to get close enough to see the sign the judge held in his lap, so I don't know if he was for or against the president. Although, being a judge, if he was for the President, I imagine he would have been allowed inside the auditorium.

Someone else from Rochester Indymedia challenged the officer to explain why the cameraman could be where he was, but we weren't allowed. He pushed her really hard, and I joined in at first. She kept repeating that she could not do it, without responding to our questions about the First Amendment and Freedom of the Press. I took this shot after we had been hounding her a while.

Finally I said, "I know this isn't your decision to make. But this is one reason why we have to get that man out of office, because the press isn't allowed to do its job."

She nodded her head and said, "I know."

And then it struck me. She really didn't want to be there. If she had her 'druthers, she might be on our side of the barricade. So I looked at her a long moment and said, "I got it." She nodded.

I hope that my posting this photo together with what she said doesn't get her into trouble with her job. I could leave it out of this story, and I thought at first that I would ... but it's just too good of a telling detail to keep silent about. I deliberately did not get her name, although I know that if someone from the Buffalo police sees this weblog with her photo, they are likely to recognize her. She took a big risk by responding to me the way she did.

I hope my friends with Indymedia and in the anti-war movement will remember when they confront the police that they aren't all "pigs." They don't all want to see us in jail. They don't all support the President, and they don't all want to be part of the force that suppresses dissent.

There was one cameraman who was on our side of the barricade, from WROC-TV (Channel 8) in Rochester. The WROC-TV reporter, Dave McKinley, was inside. As far as I could tell, WROC-TV was the only television station with a cameraman in the crowd. The cameraman (I am sorry, I didn't get his name) got people in the crowd to comment. I made a note to myself to tape Channel 8 to see how they covered the story. I also watched Channel 13, and visited the websites for all three of the big network stations in Rochester, and checked the website for the Democrat and Chronicle upon my return.

When I checked the D&C I was astonished at how one-sided the story -- written by reporter Steve Orr -- was. It was only about what Bush said, with no words of opposition, and no mention of the crowd outside. So I called the D&C news desk and pointed out that there were probably 400 people there protesting. The guy at the news desk said Orr would no doubt add those comments later. I dashed off a note to Orr, saying I would have my photos up on the web soon. He wrote back within the hour that by the time he got out of the auditorium, the crowd had dispersed. He would try to talk to others later for his morning story.

I thought, right. You know what happened here? This is exactly what the President and his propaganda staff wanted. They would keep the media inside as long as they could. I am sure they got into the auditorium long before the opposition crowd gathered, and they made sure that people inside were all Bush supporters, making it appear that no one dissented.

I missed the 6 o'clock news as I was buried deep in work for my online class. Later in the evening, however, I checked the websites for Channels 10 and 13. Out of 305 words in Channel 10's story, there were two paragraphs about the opposition, and nothing from people out in the crowd protesting. This is what Channel 10 provided as "the other side" of the story:

Barbara deLeeuw of the American Civil Liberties Union says, “There's no indication that having this very aggressive act has done anything to make us safer. We're not any safer and I believe we can maintain our constitutional provisions, our constitutional rights, our civil liberties and make our country a safe place for all Americans.”

Several Republicans have joined Democrat [sic] in saying that portions of the law are too intrusive on Americans’ lives. They are threatening to allow certain provisions of the Patriot Act to die at the end of next year.

Channel 13 did a bit of a better job on its web story, quoting deLeeuw at greater length -- but the update currently on their site barely mentions any opposition and doesn't quote deLeeuw at all. I wonder...what happened? Did Bush-happy Clear Channel, which owns WOKR, come down hard on them?

On the 11 o'clock news, Channel 13 showed Bush giving his speech and said not one word about the opposition. Since I could watch only one station while taping the other, I didn't see Channel 10, so I don't know how they covered it, but if their web story is any indication, I doubt they had the opposition on camera.

I am very glad I taped Channel 8. In contrast to the other news outlets I looked at, McKinley did an outstanding job of providing balanced coverage of the event. He had a lot of the same images and quotes others had from inside the auditorium, but he went back and forth between what Bush said inside and what protesters outside said, giving each side equal time. I sent him a congratulatory note by e-mail.

I waited for the morning to read Orr's update in the newspaper. Well, lo and behold, out of a 1,130 word story, only 212 came from the opposition. Nice going. The D&C rides roughshod over objectivity and balanced reporting once again. Is it any wonder that I no longer subscribe to the paper and rarely even buy it from the newsstands? Gannett has joined Clear Channel and Fox in being the rah-rah guys for George W. Bush. Shame, shame, shame on you. I know that wasn't what the reporters and editors were taught to do when they went to journalism school -- certainly not at my journalism school, the University of Iowa.

And thank you, Dave McKinley, for remembering what you were trained to do.

Notable: there was one photo in the D&C of the crowd outside the auditorium -- an Associated Press shot taken from the other side of the barricade.

The so-called "liberal" media in general continues to promote the Bush Administration, despite the fact that it is clear the Administration lied to them and to the American people about the real reasons for sending our soldiers off to die.

It's time the news media stopped following Bush around like lapdogs and instead paid attention to what real people have to say. I won't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.



Posted: Thu - April 22, 2004 at 09:24 AM          

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