I've been watching coverage of the Martin Luther King Jr. monument dedication this week. I'm eager to visit DC again to see it.
While news networks are honoring the most famous advocate of civil disobedience in American history, I've seen very little coverage of the mass civil disobedience happening this week at the White House to protest the Keystone tar sands pipeline. So far 275 people and counting have been arrested in what must be the nation's largest act of civil disobedience to stop climate change.
Apparently, news outlets believe that memorializing civil disobedience of the past is more newsworthy than similar acts happening today. The only mention I've seen of the Keystone XL pipeline on MSNBC, for example, is in oil industry ads running to support the project. I have to get news updates at Tar Sands Action. It must be difficult for reporters in the White House press room to reach protests happening directly outside the White House.
I wonder how Martin Luther King Jr. would have fared in today's news environment. Modern police forces are trained to not repeat the public spectacles provided by Bull Connor and his dogs. Even in the rare cases when police tactics are overly aggressive it rarely receives news coverage and blame is routinely placed on the victims. You'll have to turn to the alternative press to learn about the unbelievable abuse of civil liberties surrounding the 2008 republican convention. Massive anti-war protests of hundreds of thousands before the invasion of Iraq received only brief mention on the evening news. Leaders of those protests were generally not given time to speak for themselves as guests on news programs.
Was the press this unimpressed with civil disobedience in the 1950's and 60's? Would MLK have been nationally known if the press of his time were as reluctant to cover civil disobedience as today's networks?
Next time environmentalists want news coverage for a protest they should pretend to be the Tea Party. Reporters will flock to them.
Originally posted at Democrats for Progress.