The many problems with media coverage of protests

The organizer of a local protest asked the big newspaper in town if it planned to cover the event. The answer was no. The organizer paused. “Then maybe we won’t do it.”

I heard that anecdote at some point in my journalism career, and though I can’t prove it actually happened, it does make a point. Protesters want publicity.

“Getting media attention is fundamental,” says the website for the “No Kings” protests scheduled for Saturday around the nation, including multiple locations in Alabama.

The second Trump administration has spawned a string of public political protests – against immigration enforcement tactics, against Elon Musk and Tesla, the “Stand Up For Science” rallies in March and the “Hands Off” protests in April. The Gaza war has prompted many, as well.

Some movements – Black Lives Matter, for instance – feel hostility toward Big Media, which they see as part of the establishment they’re fighting against. But more commonly, national news organizations get criticized for insufficient volume and prominence of protest coverage. That was especially the case with Hands Off.

For some disreputable newsrooms, coverage decisions are influenced by their own political bias. In some other cases, coverage is influenced by editors’ desire not to appear manipulated by publicity seekers. But in general, decisions on scope of protest coverage come down to the importance of the cause and how many people show up.

News media have ways to estimate crowds but that vital measurement of newsworthiness inevitably gets distorted (in opposite directions) by both organizers and protest targets. Even accurately assessed turnout can get interpreted differently. It didn’t go over well with some media critics when the public editor of NPR pointed out that the approximate 3 million people who attended Hands Off rallies meant that “statistically, most news consumers are not protesting.” (It takes a lot of logistical commitment and these days even some courage to attend a public protest, so I advise against a strict numerical proportionality test. Absence does not mean indifference.)

Another complaint, usually from only the side of the target, is that reporters fail to disclose the true nature of protesters. This is bogus. Protesters are not Antifa. They are not paid actors.

the NEW YORK TIMES’ PAGE 1A COVERAGE OF APRIL’S hands off rallies CONSISTED OF a bottom-of-the-page photo tease to more coverage inside.

The most substantial problem with protest coverage in general is that the press prefers to emphasize conflicts between protesters and law enforcement as well as acts of protest violence, at the expense of explaining and fact checking the issues that prompted the protest. “Baked-in news practices cover only the worst moments of protests and neglect telling people what protesters are asking for,” according to a June 2024 Scientific American article by Douglas M. McLeod, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The article, which cites numerous research studies of left-wing and right-wing social protests on a variety of issues, also says that in general, media coverage “privileg(es) officialdom’s views of the protests” and “minimizes the effectiveness” of the protests.

News organizations can be forgiven for the focus on the response of government to the current immigration enforcement protests in Los Angeles, as the Trump administration’s effort to manufacture authoritarian powers stands hand in hand with the treatment of immigrants as national alarms that the media must cover exhaustively.

To do this fairly requires another task on which news reports often fail: the accurate portrayal of the extent of protest violence. LA is not on fire. “The idea that Trump needed to put soldiers on the streets of the city because riots were spinning out of control is pure fantasy,” New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote Monday.

Citing research from a two-week period in 2024, McLeod wrote that 97% of Gaza war protests on U.S. college campuses were peaceful. But “news coverage tends to ignore peaceful protests.” Protest violence against people or property usually arises from uncontrolled anger over an issue or from provocation by law enforcement. Let’s hope that no protester decides to get violent because they thought it was the only way to get media attention.