Protesters Disrupt Bush's Inaugural Address
As reported on Democracy Now!
The second of inauguration of George W Bush Thursday was met by thousands of protesters who took to the streets of Washington DC amid unprecedented levels of security to oppose the policies of the Bush administration - but you wouldn't have known it by watching the corporate media.
The major cable news networks showed footage of the presidential inauguration on the Capitol, the motorcade through Pennsylvania Avenue and President Bush and the first lady getting out of their heavily-armored Cadillac to walk the last block to the White House. In the evening, news anchors reported from glamorous events as they followed the president and his wife to nine inaugural balls.
This past weekend, the organization MediaMatters issued a report criticizing the major cable news networks for ridiculing the protesters at the inauguration and for downplaying their numbers. It is estimated over 10,000 protesters took to the streets of Washington.
At one point Fox News reported only a few dozen people showed up at a large rally organized by the ANSWER coalition. On the next day the New York Times reported thousands of protesters had shown up in the area where ANSWER receive a protest permit CNN host Wolf Blitzer described the protesters as "angry, angry people" and he also explicitly tried to downplay the protesters significance.
On air he said, "We don't want to make too much of the protesters, because we don't know how many there were. Certainly, the nature of this business, the nature of television, we could over-exaggerate based on the images, and they might just be a tiny, tiny overall number."
And Fox News host Brit Hume said the fact that protests were occurring "isn't very important." In addition, MediaMatters also tracked the degree that Republican and conservative guests and commentators outnumbered Democrats and progressives. On Fox, the ratio was 17 to 6 on FOX. It was 13 to 2 on MSNBC and 10 to 1 on CNN.
On Democracy Now we continue our coverage of inauguration 2005 by bringing you the voices of dissent not aired in the corporate media. During the official inauguration proceedings Thursday, a number of protesters managed to disrupt President Bush during his address. We caught up with two of them after they were removed from the Capitol by security officials.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/24/1542206
Informant: John Murphy
The second of inauguration of George W Bush Thursday was met by thousands of protesters who took to the streets of Washington DC amid unprecedented levels of security to oppose the policies of the Bush administration - but you wouldn't have known it by watching the corporate media.
The major cable news networks showed footage of the presidential inauguration on the Capitol, the motorcade through Pennsylvania Avenue and President Bush and the first lady getting out of their heavily-armored Cadillac to walk the last block to the White House. In the evening, news anchors reported from glamorous events as they followed the president and his wife to nine inaugural balls.
This past weekend, the organization MediaMatters issued a report criticizing the major cable news networks for ridiculing the protesters at the inauguration and for downplaying their numbers. It is estimated over 10,000 protesters took to the streets of Washington.
At one point Fox News reported only a few dozen people showed up at a large rally organized by the ANSWER coalition. On the next day the New York Times reported thousands of protesters had shown up in the area where ANSWER receive a protest permit CNN host Wolf Blitzer described the protesters as "angry, angry people" and he also explicitly tried to downplay the protesters significance.
On air he said, "We don't want to make too much of the protesters, because we don't know how many there were. Certainly, the nature of this business, the nature of television, we could over-exaggerate based on the images, and they might just be a tiny, tiny overall number."
And Fox News host Brit Hume said the fact that protests were occurring "isn't very important." In addition, MediaMatters also tracked the degree that Republican and conservative guests and commentators outnumbered Democrats and progressives. On Fox, the ratio was 17 to 6 on FOX. It was 13 to 2 on MSNBC and 10 to 1 on CNN.
On Democracy Now we continue our coverage of inauguration 2005 by bringing you the voices of dissent not aired in the corporate media. During the official inauguration proceedings Thursday, a number of protesters managed to disrupt President Bush during his address. We caught up with two of them after they were removed from the Capitol by security officials.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/24/1542206
Informant: John Murphy
Starmail - 26. Jan, 23:11
