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Did the NYT Coverage of Occupy Wall Street Just Get Worse?
Under the somewhat nonsensical headline, "Wall Street Demonstrations Test Police Trained for Bigger Threats," New York Times reporter Joseph Goldstein may have managed to turn in (9/27/11) a more offensive piece than Ginia Bellafante's June 25 dispatch (picked apart by Allison Kilkenny here).
The piece begins:
When members of the loose protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street began a march from the financial district to Union Square on Saturday, the participants seemed relatively harmless, even as they were breaking the law by marching in the street without a permit.
But to the New York Police Department, the protesters represented something else: a visible example of lawlessness akin to that which had resulted in destruction and violence at other anticapitalist demonstrations, like the Group of 20 economic summit meeting in London in 2009 and the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999.
Well, that's just silly, for any number of reasons. (Times reporters in particular might want to be sensitive about these issues, since the paper was roundly criticized for printing erroneous articles about Seattle violence--one of which the Times corrected.)
But it gets worse:
The Police Department’s concerns came up against a perhaps milder reality on Saturday, when their efforts to maintain crowd control suddenly escalated: Protesters were corralled by police officers who put up orange mesh netting; the police forcibly arrested some participants; and a deputy inspector used pepper spray on four women who were on the sidewalk, behind the orange netting.
So a controversial, well-documented act of police violence was a "milder reality" of a concerned police force whose "efforts to maintain crowd control suddenly escalated." Note the nobody's-responsible phrasing--whoops, efforts at crowd control just suddenly escalated!
The Times says that the "police's actions suggested the flip side of a force trained to fight terrorism." If assaulting peaceful protesters is the "flip side" of anti-terrorism, what does that look like?
Goldstein adds:
So even as the members of Occupy Wall Street seem unorganized and, at times, uninformed, their continued presence creates a vexing problem for the Police Department.
At this point I think most readers aren't wondering about the protesters seeming uninformed. But yes, attacking protesters is indeed a "vexing problem."
The piece's framing of the demonstrations is so curious that a reader might almost miss this bit of actual news:
Since August, investigators with the Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have monitored the online efforts of activists to bring demonstrations to Wall Street, people briefed on the matter said.
That sounds vexing too!
One of the most disturbing things about corporate media's disdain for (non-Tea Party) protests is the fact that this is fundamentally a serious attack on the speech rights of citizens. One would think that journalists, so quick to celebrate First Amendment rights, might consider this kind of police action something to treat critically--instead of covering for the cops.
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23 Comments so far
Show AllIt would appear as if the supposed newspaper of record for the United States is having another Judith Miller episode in regards to Occupy Wall Street. If so, another chink in their alleged journalistic armor has just fallen off. The next a Tea Bagger splutters that the New York Times is a 'liberal rag,' be sure to laugh heartily at him or her.
What an absolute joke. The lengths one must go to in order to obfuscate the truth to such a degree is incomprehensible. This Goldstein (how appropriate, thank you Mr. Orwell), must sit at his keyboard racking his brain at how best to pull the wool over the readers' eyes. Journalistic integrity at its finest.
You couldn't have stated this better!!! A tip of the hat to you!
As the adage goes, if you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem. The Times, of course, is on its usual side in this equation. The owners' demands are known to the Times' "prestigious" editors who are paid to make sure their peon reporters produce the required product like any other factory workers.
I know you don't love big brother and are being satirical, so how about Brother Love!
Big Brother: What you posted about the N.Y. Times also applies to the Democrats. The Republicans cater to the the super, wealthy greedy elite and clowns buffoons, racists war mongers and rednecks.
The Democrats just package the same poison in a far more sophisticated and seemingly " intellectualy serious " wrapping. B.O. and the most of the dems in Congress prove that statement over and over and....
You got it.
Actually, your description of the Times also fits NPR to a tee.
Be advised, the New York Times has changed it's name to PRAVDA! The truth is out there. You just won't find it in the New York Times!
These days Pravada gets a lot more facts right than the NYT.
Touche!
I call the NY Times "The Jewelry Shopper".
Why any sentient reader would be surprised at the Times reporting is beyond me. Is there ever an article on Venezuela that doesn't treat Chavez as equal to Mussolini? Haven't the Times's reports on Libya consistently demonized and infantalized a regime that has brought literacy and health care to its population on a scale beyond any comparable country? If you're not a supporter of American capitalism and exceptionalism, the Times will go to great lengths to diminish you and to make you appear silly, ignorant, malicious, and inhuman. The reporting on the Wall Street Occupation is exactly what one should expect from the Grey Lady. I agree with the comment earlier that the Times is more pernicious than the NY Post.
"Haven't the Times's reports on Libya consistently demonized and infantalized a regime that has brought literacy and health care to its population on a scale beyond any comparable country?"
Sad, sad, sad...
So, "Libya" brought literacy and health care to its population on a scale beyond any comparable country. Really? I guess Egypt doesn't count in that equation. Or Iraq. And Iran. Even Palestine just to name a few. But "we" get it. Just because "Libya" was so magnanimous to its people, it also reserved the right to oppress, repress and slaughter them. We get that! No double standard, hypocrisy or convenient blindness there or anything. Of course not! Also, no notice of the fact that the US is the only country in the world that doesn't offer such necessities to its people and, therefore, its ignorant citizens, assuming they are the center of the universe, take it upon themselves to judge everyone else based on that ignorant, inaccurate and myopic observation.
Well, I sure am glad that it's the likes of you that are going to save the world. Just think, in exchange for health care you'd sell your soul - and that of entire countries - to the devil. So, who gives a shit if the very tyrants that give those people health care take their lives and those of their relatives and countrymen? It's a small price to pay, right? Riiiiiiiiiight! Gotta love you lefties or whatever guise it is that y'all go under. You'll fix the world, one country at a time by giving them the health care they already have and a bloody tyrant who, somehow is not a tyrant because he talks the anti-imperialist talk that you'll are such suckers for. Just every bit as hypocritical, misguided and self-righteous as the right only you pretend to be smart and just because you decry "Amerikan imperialism and exceptionalism" it means that you're different and don't engage in exactly the same thing you decry under a different pretense. What a bunch of dangerous fools!
Wrong. The guy has a point. The Times dutifully demonizes whatever nation happens to be the US target of the month. Also, Qadaffi was a dictator, but he did bring health care and much higher standrds of living.
That doesn't make him a hero, but pointing out the positivetraits ogf his regime hardly makes the poster a dangerous fool.
By the tone of your statement, it's hard to tell if you support or oppose the US/NATO invasion. That makes you seem a bit "dangerous" and "foolish" in my book.
Anyone reading the NYT might think the Wall St protestors were criminals. But it takes a certain sort of psychopathy to be a Wall St speculator. One has to completely ruthless as to the effects of trades on nations, economy, markets, other traders, and only go for the bare mechanics of predictive and manipulative forcings and make a profit. And its all done with other peoples money.
This financial sector has evolved a criminal and psychopathic culture. It is unrestrained and uncaring for social consequences, and has high capacity to do great damage. It heavily rewards correct prediction rather than beneficial outcomes for the wider world. Trader manipulations and losses have not been defined as crimes, and so capacity for damage to reputation and trust of their targets goes unpunished. The adversity is not their own, and their is no selection pressure for altruism. The markets have the morality of sharks smelling blood. They will not experience the consequences of their actions, and take no responsibility. Since large amounts of money run the politicians, their is little chance of being asked to regulate. Absence of negative feedback acting on the main players is a recipe for an unstable system.
The protestors have to live on Jobless St, living off social charity, and whatever can be done to earn a next meal. Their is a stronger selection pressure to help each other in adversity, and recognition by experience of some of the basic needs of life. The protestors are smart enough to recognize that those parties responsible for their dimmed prospects are being allowed to carry on, and are being treated like royalty. This is the age of the monarchy of the financial speculator and hedge fund operator. They can sentence entire nations to financial vanishment. The NYT are merely amoungst their most worshipful courtiers.
We no longer have a "Fourth Estate" in this country.
We have a "Fifth Column".
"Well, that's just silly, for any number of reasons."
Silly? Really? Is that what you call Mr. Goldstein's Machiavellian attempt to distort the truth and turn it into the lawlessness act of a group of "terrorists"? Does the author not smell the Hasbara here?
Does this really spell "silly" or dangerous to you?
"...the loose protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street..." "the participants seemed relatively harmless, even as they were breaking the law by marching in the street without a permit." (No permit? Oh, the horror!)
"But to the New York Police Department, the protesters represented something else: a visible example of lawlessness akin to that which had resulted in destruction and violence at other anticapitalist demonstrations, like the Group of 20 economic summit meeting in London in 2009 and the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999."
Seriously! Even people who make a living writing have absolutely zero comprehension of their own language & can't see semantics manipulation and reality control for what they are. Jesus! Amerikans are gullible weaklings!
And you're so strong and smart.
What an egoistic blowhard.