Over 100,000 people in Madison, Wisconsin were joined by thousands of other Americans around the country in protest of Gov. Scott Walker’s attempt to strip collective bargaining rights from the state’s unionized workers, but you would not have known any of this if you watched cable news on Saturday as the coverage of the protests ranged from disappointing (MSNBC) to scant (CNN) to non-existent (Fox News).
AFL-CIO spokesman Eddie Vale estimated that the crowd was over 100,000 people before the rally began at 3 PM. According to the Wisconsin State Journal, police estimated the crowd size at around 70,000 three hours before the rally began, “Madison police spokesman Joel DeSpain said the number of protesters around the Capitol is on the scale of last Saturday’s peak crowd of an estimated 68,000 and could swell even more for a 3 p.m. rally.”
Here are some highlights from the protests around the country from Moveon.org:
Hundreds of thousands of Americans around the country march on their governments in an event that would be a perfect fit for the 24 hour cable news cycle. Even better, the protests were occurring during the news cycle dead zone of Saturday afternoon. The coverage should have been everywhere in the media, but if you turned on your television in hopes of watching the rally from Wisconsin live, you were disappointed.
As the official state run television of the Republican Party, Fox News has been openly and loudly supporting Gov. Walker. It is no surprise that the right wing network would ignore the events in Madison and around the country today. A propaganda outlet never spends much time relaying information that is detrimental to their message.
CNN, which is supposed to be the moderate network in the cable news ideological spectrum, sort of thought they should cover the story, so they did a few minute and half live cut ins here and there. No wall to wall coverage of course, but they at least managed to pull themselves away from celebrating the Tea Party long enough to take a quick glance at Madison.
Now we come to MSNBC. Sigh, the so called liberal news network. MSNBC couldn’t be bothered to break away from their Lock Up and Dateline reruns documentary bloc to cover a landmark event that has reunified the left, and is likely to have an impact on the 2012 presidential election.
If there is one network that progressives/liberals thought understood this, it was MSNBC. However MSNBC has never really been overly interested in covering the news, much less live news events on a weekend. If I had a dollar for every time MSNBC has disappointed their viewership by being AWOL when news happens, I’d be a very wealthy man.
All three cable networks share something else in common besides their decision to ignore today’s rallies. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News along with most other forms of media have decided that liberal protests aren’t newsworthy. They believe that the ratings and the money are in the right, not the left. The three cable networks are corporate owned and only for the purpose of profit. They don’t care about journalism or their obligation to inform the public.
This is all about dollars, and the outdated notion that the most profitable way to run a cable news outlet is to be like Fox News, which is why CNN keeps hiring more and more right wingers and has hopped into bed with the Tea Party Express.
There is a deeper bias evident in the case of the Wisconsin rallies. The corporate ownership of these networks, like most businesses, is anti-union. They assume that all of America is also anti-union, and they have conveniently ignored all the polling that shows the American people are behind the protesters in order to rationalize ignoring the protests.
The networks assume that since there is no money to be made by covering the left, America isn’t interested in events like the protests in Madison. At least this is what they tell themselves in order to justify their own biases in filtering out the news. The problem is that when the cable networks stay stuck in their old model and ignore these stories, new media steps up to fill the void, today’s generation of Internet news viewers and tweeters are tomorrow’s would be cable news viewers. If cable news insists on imposing their myopic definition of news, those viewers may not be tuning in.
By focusing on a misguided cash grab, corporate cable news is sowing the seeds of its own stagnation. A protest was held today that was bigger than anything that the Tea Party has ever done, but you wouldn’t know it if you were watching TV. There is something seriously wrong with a news gathering and reporting apparatus that devotes more live coverage to the protests in Egypt than protests in Wisconsin. Egypt was a big story, but the a fight for the very survival of the middle class should not be ignored.
Cable news, your bias is showing.
Image Courtesy of Move On
Related posts:
- Watch Fox News Get Owned By The Wisconsin Protesters
- Fox News Viewership Plunges 21% While MSNBC Grows
- Fox News Attacks Freedom Of Speech and Calls Wisconsin Protesters Vile
- Olbermann and Maddow Power MSNBC to Second in Primetime Cable News Ratings
- MSNBC is Not Fox News: Keith Olbermann Suspended for Political Donations
Fox news is not “the official state run television of the Republican Party”. Fox news is a publicly traded company, and is not officially Republican. They do, however, lean to the right, or towards Republican ideologies, as its founder and CEO is Murdoch. Don’t let this liberal bashing of Republicans influence the way you think. Check actual facts before believing anything online.
LOL
Uh huh
Yeah, that’s why they donated a million to the RGA this past year. The REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS ASSOCIATION. We are dealing with a Republican Governor here.
That’s why they raised money on the air for GOP candidates. Uh huh.
That’s why they read the faxes straight from the machine with the spelling errors from the Bush White House.
That’s why they declared Bush the winner in FLA before the votes were counted.
The list is endless, but suffice it to say, I’d like to hear from you as to why you don’t support hard working Americans from the heartland of this great country fighting for their liberty.
If Hannitys lips are moving he is lying. The same for Doocey and Kilmeade. Nothing left to be said about Beck.
Vimeo dotcom—You have to join!—has real videos of Wisconsin.
Under “Search”, select “Search Videos”. Then, enter Wisconsin, click the magnifying glass icon.
When the page comes up, set the “Show me” menu to “newest”. There are some about music, and some useless ones, also, but the fight against hate is very prominent.
Drag a video to a new tab, or new window. Page-Down, to see a black bar, “About this video”. There should be a link, labeled “download this video”. If not, then I just skip it, as the supposed built-in player does not show up, for Me!
The downloaded movies are usually excellent quality! I but RARELY use youtube, anymore!
DO NOT click the page numbers, to go to older videos: It does not work. Click the “>” icon, which moves you one day at a time. I am new to this, so there could be a better way.
I do not bother with the “Lamestream Media”, as they are almost entirely propaganda channels, now. The Founding Fathers would be in shock, and Joseph Goebbels in love, with the situation!
There is no real news on cable television period! They are all entertainment channels now bent on ratings and advertising dollars; nothing more. This is the dumbing down of America. To get informed, I have to go on the internet read the most reputable papers, search for the topics I am interested on, figure out which sites are partisan (MOST ARE) and which are neutral and then do some research to get to the facts! It’s insane!! When did the machine take over all the news?!
Anyway, this is how I found out about the protests, the issues, the protester’s side and Walker’s side. And guess what? It’s more partisan politics!! Is anything in this country NOT about partisan politics anymore?? Well, after considering all the facts and partisan politics on both sides, I side with the union. Taking away collective bargaining rights is wrong and will be hurtful to our democracy. I support those 100,000 plus protesters all over the country. They are you and they are me and they are inspiring; just when you thought democracy in the US was dead. I hope our spirits remain strong and I have confidence in the people in this country to fight off any minority interests in oligarchy no matter how much money is behind the idea. May lose a battle here or there, but we’ll win the war; always have. Cheers and thank you Wisconsin!!
News channels such as Fox and MSNBC need to be blacked out. They have served as nothing but societal ills.
[...] Media Blackout: CNN Fox News and MSNBC Ignore 100,000 WI Protesters. [...]
The revolution will not be televised.
Thank GOD they are finally helping shut down this chaos . This is costing tax payers a lot of money. I would like to see it end .. and quickly.
What is costing the tax payers? I’m just curious since Walker cost the taxpayers all that money he wasted hiring a UK firm to do the jobs of the union security guards he fired last year. Turns out, he was wrong and now you all have to pay for them on top of the criminals he hired to “guard” the courthouse. Privatization – tax payers still pay, and often it costs more for less.
Friends; fellow citizens,
It’s time to start naming all of the cable “news” networks for what they are: purveyors of industrial dishonesty. Fox is the worst, but only by degree.
If Walker is anyone’s hero, let them explain this: “16.896 Sale or contractual operation of state−owned heating, cooling, and power plants. The department may sell any state−owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or WITHOUT SOLICITATION OF BIDS, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. No approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary…”
That’s the Trojan Horse article in the “Budget Repair Bill” that allows the state to sell off it’s power plants (WITHOUT BIDS) at low-ball prices, to Koch Industries; enter contracts (WITHOUT BIDS) with Koch Industries to operate it’s power plants for any amount of money the corporation wants to charge; allow Koch Industries to charge ratepayers anything it wants for the electricity and gas it just acquired for pennies on the dollar.
Destroying labor unions after reading that is like building a gallows for the kid who spray-painted your mailbox, while ignoring the white-collar gangsters behind your house (with a really big truck) who are about to haul everything you own down to Kansas. Read and comprehend the bill if you really love your hard-earned money.
Union thug here, at least according to Fox news. Fox gets yelled at for lying every time they turn the camera on!, haha fox news, ha, ha, ha. We don’t need the national media, bloggers unite! If the media won’t tell the truth then no sense reporting anyways.
Kind of reminds me of how the “MSM” completely ignored the TEA Parties march on Washington, hundreds of thousands marched in perfect peace! So how does it feel?
News to me. The tea party has been covered ad nausea since it started. the Koch brothers and the conservative think tanks that started the tea party seen to that with money
Ignored it? They covered it extensively. You must have been watching Fox, who told you everyone but them ignored the tea party march on DC. Try switching channels and doing some independent research to find out how often Fox flat out lies, distorts facts, and misleads their audience by claiming to be the only one’s telling you the truth.
so what do we do about it
Not only was there very little coverage of the union support marches that took place all over the country on Sat., I saw no mention at all of the March for Choice rallies that took place in cities nationwide, in protest of attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, Titlx X, and to weaken access to legal, safe abortion. Was Feb. 26, 2011 the day the media officially abandoned the people?
In Russia too protest, but it is not enough successes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbU5x1AaKK8
Excuse me, but I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about. MSNBC has covered this since Ed Schultz first reported the story the day it began. They’ve had a reporter there all weekend (I think it’s Mike Taibbi) giving updates to both MSNBC and the weekend Nightly News. CNN is also reporting the story.
Please don’t commit the same errors made by the corporate media and report selectively. CNN, MSNBC, and NBC are reporting the story. I’m not sure what ABC or CBS are doing because I don’t usually watch their nightly news programs.
Ed Schultz had Matt Taibii there all weekend and you watched the rally live on Ed’s show on Saturday? Link please.
Surely I saw the story reported for a minute on CNN before they cut back to their celebration of the Tea Party’s second anniversary. Are you saying that’s the same as covering a rally live?
By the way, this isn’t about the story Ed has been covering all week – it is about a specific rally on Saturday- you know, the big one that took place all over the country.
CNN spent more time on a baby laughing when his dad tore a pc of paper today than they did Wisconsin
But Shiva, that baby had a tea bag on his head, which makes him immeasurably more important plus the Sheen – must cut to the Sheen.
I actually saw coverage on all three of those channels, sadly, FOX gave it the most.
[...] http://www.politicususa.com/en/cnn-fox-msnbc-ignore-wi Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tweet about it Subscribe to the comments on this post [...]
Without reading through all of replies this may have been already said. I was a that rally also on Saturday. I as a voting voting Republican, decided to join my friends who are mostly teachers and show my support for their cause. After 2 hours of reading signs that said Republicans=Hitler, Republicans Are Koch Suckers, a moving sign with a guillotine cutting of a head that had Republican written on the forehead etc etc… And you call that peaceful demonstration? Also, FOX news was there and tried to broadcast, but every time they went on air multiple people stood 5 feet away with megaphones and blared the sirens. I watched this go on for a half hour as the crowd cheered when they blared the siren. The chants were “this is what democracy looks like”? All I can say, is I have a hard time supporting a cause that is less than peaceful.
Maybe peaceful means something different to Democrats, like no t-shirts proclaiming it’s time to kill our leaders, no armed assault weapons, etc. You know, violence. Protests by their nature involve speaking loudly, signs, etc. They are protests.
As for the the Fox issue, they do lie and everyone knows so, it’s a fact. Why would anyone allow themselves to be lied about night after night without calling out the liar?
I think thats the problem. Not enough kill t-shirts for some.
The real problem here is not yelling at Fox News, its losing rights. Its obvious that for some, much like the balloon boy on Fox news, the surroundings overshadow the reality. But then again I would not support a group that has to wear assault weapons in order to gather peacefully.
[...] by invizweb on March 1, 2011 The following article below comes from guest of the Podcast and my personal friend Kenaz Filan. Here is another [...]
Where was C-SPAN in all of this? I checked it out before leaving for the rally in St. Paul. Regular programming. Yet they covered the Stewart/Colbert rally, if memory serves. Our rally, which drew 1000, was covered in the Minneapolis paper’s metro section, and not even on the front page!
I too am extremely disappointed in the media coverage, or lack thereof, throughout the protesting that is going on in Madison, WI. The only news I get is through the newspaper and that information is twisted and wrong to made the protesters look back. This entire situation is sick and keeps getting worse because of the behaviors of Mr. Walker, but nobody knows this is going on unless you are at the Capital. There is no violence at the Capital, only people politely asking for rights and liberties that we have all worked so hard for. I was there on Saturday and was amazed and in awe of all the people. I also saw all the media vehicles but saw nothing on TV indicating what is really happening. This affects all of us, but I guess we have to create our own coverage since the media is obviously hiding the truth and is seemingly on Scott Walker’s side.
[...] ‘Media Blackout: CNN Fox News and MSNBC Ignore 100,000 WI Protesters,’ Politicususa, 26 February. [...]
but if 12 baggers show up with idiotic signs, then you will see 13 satellite trucks show up, and fox will run a loop all day. this is another example of why the corporate owned cables are in cahoots, and are only interested in infotainment, not news.
i had to watch the rally on ustream! while msnbc ran their old jail crap shows.
This mysterious lack of coverage also happened when there was a massive rally of 100,000 in D.C. against the Iraq war, way back in the day. Who is behind these media blackouts? Very strange stuff. There was media blackout on coverage of protests the day of Bush’s first inauguration. It is particularly odd that CNBC participates in these blackouts.
[...] Media Blackout in Wisconsin [...]
Talk about news BLACK OUT on this issue, there is almost zero videos or images from last night 3/9/11 (after they back-doored the vote) and the 10000 people who rush into the state house. Zero images or video on the 80000+ prostesters already there today 3/10/11 who are fighting for our rights and getting beat by police.
Everyone, Never forget the “backstabbing” actions of the police & firefighters on this issue. When state was going to include them in the cuts, they walked with us BUT now that they are officaly EXEMPT from the bill they are kicking protesters in the head; acting as if they never stood beside the people.
BUT there is plenty of news covercage and paid online bloggers who are against the unions and attempting to make them look bad at all cost. How much more rights and abuses from the corprate elites are the people going to put up with before they use real force? These disgraceful types Complain that the unnion workers get to many benifits and pay (which might add up to a few thousand dollars more at the end of the year) from the very corporations & governments that stole trillions from every man women and child in America, is insane!
These government and corprate elites kept all their 100 million dollar bonuses and pay scale, even after “We the People” bailed them out… but they spin the issue back on the regular Joe worker who is barely feeding his family!
Wake up America, you want to be treated like slaves, well keep on believing the BS that the news and paid bloggers are spoon feeding you.
Forget Fox and support workers instead!
We’ve created a workers’ rally song “Down On The Line” in support of the hardworking middle class brothers & sisters nationwide. You can listen & download it free here:
http://www.mikekonopka.com/downontheline.htm
Fight on! The Joe Hill Heartlanders