Illegitimizing Protesting

A lot of talk has been going around about the NATO summit last week, mostly about how effective the Chicago police were from the news outlets. In our American Studies class, we talked about this sort of
construction, and how many sources failed to adequately report on the actually 'demands' or reasons why the people were protesting. This, our class called unfair.

But I'm not really sure how unfair it was on the reporter's parts. First of all, what were they supposed to say. There were so many different reasons for why people were protesting, with so many nuanced opinion, it would have been impossible for any single new outlet to fairly represent them all. Furthermore, it would have been impossible, I feel, for the newspapers to 'adequately' report on the opinions of the protesters without making some of the protester's arguments for them. In my opinion, it is not the job of media and news outlets to spread the message for them.

The second reason why I feel the decisions made by the newspapers were more or less justified, is an illegitimization of the protests. This is certainly more prevalent in other protests, it can still be seen in some way in this recent example. In the case of many anti-war protests, it's always ironic when protests turn violent in one way or another. The Oakland occupy movement's image was very discredited when general riots, looting and violence broke out across the city. While the NATO summit's protesters were not as extreme as Oakland, any amount of disruption, spray painting, or prompting clashes with the police tarnishes all of the protesters image, and in many people's views, which could include various news outlets, discredits the protester's cause.

While, of course, the news are always looking for the exciting, juicy stories, maybe there is a deeper, more thoughtful, meaning behind the newspaper's decisions of what to write about.