Bias and Violence
Tuesday 5 July 2011 - Filed under Uncategorized
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the media largely ignores violence committed by left wing groups, while simultaneously portraying peaceful protests by right wing groups as mobs ready at any moment to engage in revolution.
Boy, those sure have been some mighty peaceful protests against government budget cuts in Greece, haven’t they? You bet they have—at least if you ignore the rock-throwing, fire-setting, window-smashing, and blood-spilling.
Which, it seems clear, a lot of major news organs would like to do. According to one story in The Wall Street Journal, the demonstrations “began peacefully.” According to another, last week Constitution Square in Athens “seethed with indignant, but peaceful, demonstrators.”
“The day began noisily but peacefully,” intoned The New York Times on Wednesday. The Washington Post likewise observed that “a peaceful protest . . . quickly degenerated into violence.” Reuters reported that, regardless of “clashes between stone-throwing masked youths and riot police . . . thousands of peaceful protesters demonstrated against the austerity plan.”
Sure, blood was spilled. But don’t blame the protesters. As the Journal reported, it was Greece’s parliament that approved a “widely hated austerity package” despite “the best efforts of peaceful grass-roots activists., megaphone-touting [sic] labor unionists, and stone-throwing anarchists.”
This is a sharp contrast from how, say, Tea Party protests against the passage of ObamaCare were treated.
The D.C. protests in March of last year were nonviolent affairs, without a single arrest despite one disputed episode in which someone allegedly hurled a racial slur at Rep. John Lewis and spat on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. (No independent report could verify the allegations.) But that didn’t stop ABC’s David Muir from reporting that “shouted words turned very ugly,” and reporting on “late word from Washington tonight about just how ugly the crowds gathered outside the Longworth office building have become.”
Nah, no bias there!
2011-07-05 » madlibertarianguy