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protesters
Report Exposes US Media for Framing Social Justice Protests as 'Terrorism'
"Equating activism with terrorism is undemocratic and serves to silence dissenters," said Deepa Kumar, who analyzed how major U.S. media outlets have covered protesters of "Cop City" in Georgia.
Nov 07, 2023
A paper published Tuesday by a media studies scholar explores what she calls "one of the enduring costs of the 'War on Terror,'" mainstream outlets parroting police talking points on terrorism and "legitimating state violence while stifling democratic protest."
Rutgers University professor Deepa Kumar's paper—released by the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs—focuses on how major U.S. media outlets have covered protesters of "Cop City," Atlanta's proposed Public Safety Training Center just outside of city limits in Georgia.
"Even though the 'War on Terror' is supposedly over now that the U.S. has withdrawn from Afghanistan, U.S. federal and state governments continue to use and even expand punitive measures targeting those they label as 'terrorists,'" Kumar said in statement. "The U.S. mainstream media sometimes supports this expansion, and in doing so imperils U.S. democracy. All of this is part of the legacy of the post-9/11 wars."
As Kumar's paper notes, "previous research has shown that the mainstream media's framing of terrorism influences public opinion and shapes support or opposition to policies such as Georgia's 2017 terrorism law," which expanded the definition of terrorism to include certain property crimes committed with the intent to use intimidation or coercion to change policy.
The expert analyzed how a local newspaper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and six national outlets—USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, the New York Post, and the Los Angeles Times—reported on the "domestic terrorism" arrests of 42 anti-Cop City activists from December 2022 to March 2023.
The paper details her findings:
At first, the national news media did not cover the terrorism arrests in Atlanta. The local The Atlanta Journal-Constitution effectively served as the Atlanta Police Foundations' propaganda outlet. In January, 2022 several national media outlets picked up the story when violence and property destruction occurred, following the "if it bleeds, it leads" framework. However, some newspapers adopted a more critical stance. The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the LA Times humanized the protestors, depicting them as concerned activists opposing police militarization and environmental destruction. The New York Post and TheWall Street Journal, however, portrayed protestors as violent Antifa activists and justified their arrest on the grounds of terrorism. USA Today adopted a sensational tone, in effect also justifying the arrests.
As the protest movement gained national and international support, national media paid more attention. All seven outlets covered the story in March 2023. Also significant is that The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shifted to a more balanced tone and included the voices of Atlanta residents opposing Cop City. Rather than labeling protesters solely as "outsider agitators" and "far-left" activists who exist on the fringes of society, the newspaper quoted local activists, civil rights groups, and clergy. This happened at the highpoint of government arrests, when 23 more people were indicted on terrorism charges.
However, the analysis also reveals that apart from a handful of notable articles in The Washington Post and the LA Times that tacitly criticize the wider application of terrorism charges evidenced in Georgia, the majority of the seven media outlets have deferred unquestioningly to government authorities in the use of this label.
"Government and police officials have portrayed the protestors as violent terrorists," Kumar stressed. "For instance, in January 2023, when Georgia State Patrol Troopers shot and fatally injured activist Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, also known as Tortuguita, they claimed that Terán had initiated gunfire. Shockingly, Tortuguita was shot a staggering 57 times."
The DeKalb County medical examiner's autopsy report "indicated an absence of gunshot residue on Tortuguita's hands," the professor pointed out. There was also an independent autopsy. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation later claimed gunshot residue was found on the activist's hands. Stone Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney George R. Christian concluded last month that the use of deadly force "was objectively reasonable under the circumstances of this case," so police will face no charges for killing Tortuguita.
Kumar wrote that "in theory, the media are entrusted with the responsibility of posing critical questions and disseminating accurate information to the public so that troubling practices like the use of state violence and extrajudicial killings are not normalized. In reality, U.S. media institutions have often continued to defer to government sources, reproducing and thus reinforcing the expansion of terrorism discourses to criminalize protestors—with sometimes deadly consequences."
Costs of War Project co-director Stephanie Savell responded to the paper by nudging journalists to do better. She said, "The media can make or break how activism is portrayed in an increasingly militarized era of policing that imperils our democratic rights."
The research comes after 57 of the 61 Cop City protesters charged in September under Georgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law appeared in court on Monday, as hundreds of their supporters rallied outside the building in Atlanta.
"Among the defendants: more than three dozen people who were previously facing domestic terrorism charges in connection to the protests; three leaders of a bail fund previously accused of money laundering; and three activists previously charged with felony intimidation after authorities said they distributed flyers calling a state trooper a 'murderer' for his involvement in Paez Terán's death," according toThe Associated Press.
Noting the RICO charges, Kumar's paper quotes a pair of ACLU experts, who wrote in September that the indictment "paints the provision of mutual aid, the advocacy of collectivism, and even the publishing of zines as hallmarks of a criminal enterprise. In doing so, it flies in the face of First Amendment protections for speech, assembly, and association."
This post has been updated with additional autopsy reports.
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Five Decades After Momentous Civil Rights Action, Friendship Nine to be Exonerated
Demonstrators' decision to accept jail time, rather than to go free on bail, became a widely used tactic in the fight against racial inequality
Jan 19, 2015
More than fifty years after their 'jail, no bail' strategy helped galvanize the fight against racial inequality, serving as a model for other protesters nationwide and spurring larger actions like the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963 and the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, nine African-American civil rights activists will finally, later this month, have their names cleared.
On the morning of January 31, 1961, a group of African-American demonstrators, most of whom were students at nearby Friendship College, converged on the McCrory's Variety Store in downtown Rock Hill, South Carolina.
Ten young men went inside and sat down at the all-white lunch counter, while others--men and women--stayed outside with picket signs. The 10 activists at the lunch counter ordered hamburgers and soft drinks; they were denied service and asked to leave. When they refused to get up, the men were dragged from the establishment, arrested, taken to the city jail, and tried for trespassing.
According to a narrative at the website of Friendship College (which closed its doors in 1981):
These young men, along with many other Rock Hill demonstrators, had been arrested for trespassing several times during the previous year; each time they paid their bail and were released. But on this occasion in January 1961, they had decided ahead of time that if arrested, they would not accept bail but would serve out their sentences. By so doing they would not only break the cycle of continually paying money into an unfair legal system but also bring attention to the segregated nature of lunch counters and other public places in Rock Hill and elsewhere.
All but one of the men--who was concerned about possibly losing his athletic scholarship at Friendship--refused to allow the NAACP to pay their bail; on February 2, 1961, they began serving out 30-day sentences on the county prison farm.
Next week, 16th Circuit Solicitor Kevin Brackett will convene a special court hearing to have their records exonerated.
According to The Herald of Rock Hill:
Brackett will argue in court that the law in 1961 was unjust, so their convictions were unjust. He will ask that the convictions be vacated.
Circuit Court Judge John C. Hayes III--nephew of the Judge Hayes who convicted the Friendship Nine 54 years ago--will sign the order.
The Friendship Nine finally will have no criminal records.
While the 'Friendship Nine,' as they soon came to be known, served out their sentences, other protesters and supporters converged on the prison--including members of the influential Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, who were also arrested, jailed, and then refused bail. Over the course of the next year, further demonstrations and arrests followed in Rock Hill, as well as in other cities throughout the U.S., with protesters across the country adopting the 'jail, no bail' strategy--first utilized by the Nashville Student Movement--rather than helping to subsidize a system that supported segregation and inequality.
On Monday, the city of Rock Hill unveiled new street signs honoring the civil rights activists. The signs declare that Rock Hill has "No Room for Racism" and list the names of the Friendship Nine members: Willie Edward McCleod, James Frank Wells, Clarence Henner Graham, Thomas Walter Gaither, David 'Scoop' Williamson, Robert Lewis McCullough, Mack Cartier Workman, W.T. 'Dub' Massey, and John Alexander Gaines.
On Saturday, three members of the Friendship Nine were grand marshals in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day parade in York, South Carolina, just a few miles from Rock Hill.
In a speech to the crowd, Willie 'Dub' Massey called on young people and organizers to take proactive steps against racism and injustice: "If you're still acting like somebody owes you something," he said, "you gotta stop that mess and you gotta get it right."
For more on the Friendship Nine and their momentous civil disobedience, watch an excerpt from the 'Jail, No Bail' documentary produced in 2011 by South Carolina ETV:
'Jail, No Bail' Idea Stymied Cities' Profiting From Civil Rights ProtestersRead the transcript: https://to.pbs.org/hMvAHq Fifty years ago, the "Jail, No Bail" strategy became a new tactic in the fight for civil ...
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