If a great protest falls upon Wall Street, and no reporter is there to write about it, does it make a noise?

September 25, 2011 by Uppity Wisconsin

Occupy Wall StreetThe other day I blogged about how the "occupation" of Wall Street in New York City by thousands of demonstrators for more than a week has raised hardly a blip on the domestic news media radar screen. It's as if editors and news directors (and their corporate masters) have decided there's nothing new to see here. So move on, move on (wait, even that sounds too radical).

But it's even worse than malign neglect, because in the rare moments when a mainstream news outlet does mention the protests (which like those in Wisconsin beforehand have been very peaceful, and which have attracted Web-based pizza orders from afar), the tone is almost ominous. Consider, for example, this lead-in from CNN "Situation Room" host Wolf Blitzer last Monday: "Protests here in New York on Wall Street entering a third day. Should New Yorkers be worried at all about what's going on?"

Well, they should be concerned about what's going on, Wolfster -- not with how the protesters are conducting themselves, but rather with what's going on with you and your colleagues at CNN and across journalism in general.

For instance, how about some concern with the way the police are handling these essentially peaceful if (to financial elites) bothersome protests? New York Police made 80 arrests on Saturday -- I only know that, though, because I read it in The Guardian, a news outlet in the UK, not the US. The Guardian said the NYPD was accused of heavy-handed tactics after making the arrests on Saturday when protesters marched uptown from their makeshift camp in a private park in the financial district.

"Footage has emerged on YouTube showing stocky police officers coralling a group of young female protesters and then spraying them with mace, despite being surrounded and apparently posing threats of only the verbal kind," The Guardian reported.

Nope, you won't find that kind of basic, pithy coverage in the US, even for the most part at the New York Times, much less at Faux News or your hometown news outlets.

There's another alternative to subscribing to a foreign news site: Like some of my friends and I, you can watch the proceedings live via streaming feeds and cut out the editors and their censorious mindset. Go to:

http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution

Now, besides Web-based pizza love, you can send supplies to the protesters in their tent city via a nearby UPS Store. See more info at globalrevolution's streaming page. No doubt somebody by now could use some deodorant, or a toothbrush, or a nail clipper, or vitamins. Why not send some love to our uppity brethren in the Big Apple?