With a few notable exceptions
Media sticks head in the sand
By G. Dunkel
El Diario, the Spanish-language daily in New York City, was
the exception that proved the rule. It ran a huge picture of
the Washington anti-war demonstration on its front page.
But for the most part, the media in the U.S. tried to ignore
the demonstrations that mushroomed up after President George W.
Bush announced he was mobilizing for war.
Before the demonstration, according to the International
ANSWER office, many calls came in, especially from the foreign
press: the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Canadian
Broadcast Corporation, the French Press Agency, Hong Kong,
Italian, and Dutch television, and a Korean and Japanese news
service. A few U.S. media chains like NBC, NPR and MSNBC called
about the events. They generally wanted a statement from an
ANSWER spokesperson or information on how the day was
planned.
While U.S. media interest wasn't absent, it was noticeable
that the international press was more interested in the
demonstration.
The coverage on Sunday after the Washington demonstration
was varied but consistently downplayed its size. National
Public Radio reported that hundreds marched. The New York Times
first reported hundreds, then upped it to thousands in a later
edition, while the New York Daily News put the number at
2,000.
The Washington Post quoted a police estimate of 7,000. The
Dutch press used the figure of 1,500. The British Guardian and
the Independent used 8,000, while CSPAN, which televised nearly
the whole demonstration, estimated 13,000.
Organizers counting the march as it climbed Capitol Hill,
however, estimating from the number of rows and how many people
were marching abreast, believed there were 20,000 people at
that point.
Reprinted from the Oct. 11, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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