This rhetorical question is, perhaps, self-answering. A protest called Occupy Wall Street, trying to underscore and gum up the financial industries' influence on who's rich and who's not -- why wouldn't that get extensive news coverage?
In our third story -- after five straight days of sit-ins, marches and shouting and some arrests, actual North American newspaper coverage of this -- even by those who have thought it farce or failure -- has been limited to one blurb in a free newspaper in Manhattan and a column in "The Toronto Star."
It started Saturday when about a thousand people marched into New York's financial district to express their anger over how the financial system treats the majority of Americans -- what they call the 99 percenters -- and to draw attention to the misdeeds of Wall Street. They have been confronted with an ever-increasing police presence which is blocking certain streets and attempting to keep protestors away from the stock exchange itself.
While the protesters are peaceful, tensions are beginning to rise. According to the group's own website, seven protestors were arrested yesterday, with four more being arrested today. The police have resorted to using a 166-year-old law which bans "the wearing masks in a gathering of two or more people except at masquerade parties." Simple solution to that crap? Call those protests outdoor masquerade parties.
While the majority of the media is ignoring the public uprising, it is not going completely unnoticed. Take, for instance, Yahoo which blocked any e-mail containing the group's website with the message, "Suspicious activity has been detected on your account." Yahoo later acknowledged the error, tweeting, "We apologize for blocking occupywallstreet.org, it was not intentional and caught by our spam filters. It is resolved. It may be a residual delay."
Joining me now is a veteran of many residual delays, Will Bunch, senior writer for "The Philadelphia Daily News" and author of "The Backlash: The Right Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama." Good evening, my friend.
WILL BUNCH: Hey, Keith, it's great to see you again.
OLBERMANN: My -- my pleasure. Before the blackout questions, who are these protestors? Are they the unemployed new graduates or disenthralled Wall Streeters? Who do we got out there?
BUNCH: Well, there was a great line in "The Guardian," which, of course, is a British publication, so they're actually covering it there.They called -- they quoted one of the people calling themselves 'the underemployed and the overeducated.' And I thought that was a pretty good line. Many of them are young, but not all of them. Some of them are in their 50s or older.
They were run by a couple of groups. One is a magazine that I was not familiar with before, but it's very popular in Canada, called "Adbusters." It’s a liberal magazine that I think came up with the idea for this event, and then the group Anonymous -- which is very controversial for its hacking activities -- promoted it, too. But mainly, it's been promoted on Twitter and Facebook, but especially Twitter, not unlike the protests we saw in the Arab Spring overseas. It's very similar in that regard.
OLBERMANN: Short-term goal is what? Obviously, they are not going for the same thing as they were going for in Tahrir Square.
BUNCH: I think the short-term goal -- well, I think, like in Tahrir Square, I think people showed up there because they were just unhappy with the regime, and I think that's what's happening here, too. I think when you talk to people, mainly they are frustrated, they're angry, many of them are unemployed or that they, you know, can't make it in this economy.They're the -- part of the 99 percenters, but they are the part that are dealing with unemployment and things like that.
I think that's been a problem. I think they can and should refine their goals, and perhaps they will over time if they can keep it going. But right now, I think it's a sign of the deep unrest and anxiety that a lot of people are feeling in this country.
OLBERMANN: Well, apparently, they're not going to be able to refine their goals based on reading bad reviews in, you know, of the -- of the -- of the movie or -- or protest critics of "The New York Times".
I'm going to ask our director Chris Valente to show those still pictures again and give you an alternate meme as what they came from. So, the crowd shots especially, Chris.
Why isn't -- why isn't any major news outlet covering this? Do we have the crowd -- the crowd shots by any chance? Just to give it that dimension -- that one, that's the one. If that's a tea party protest in front of Wall Street about Ben Bernanke putting stimulus funds into it, it's the lead story on every network newscast. How is that -- that disconnect possible in this country today with so many different outlets and so many different ways of transmitting news?
BUNCH: It is a real disconnect. And "The New York Times," I mean, this is the hometown newspaper of Wall Street and there have been no print articles in "The New York Times" to date -- with these people camping out down there for four or five days now. It's crazy.
I think three things are going on. I think one -- I think the word "disconnect" that you used is a very good word because a lot of people in news rooms still are not in touch with the real pain and the real suffering of 25 million Americans who are unemployed and underemployed in the struggle to make ends meet there. So, I think there is that.
I think there's something else -- and the media critic Jay Rosen from NYU writes about this all the time, which is what he calls "savvy" -- which is that it’s just kind of uncool for journalists to take these people who want to change the world seriously, you know?
That -- I've seen a lot of coverage, like in "The New York Observer"'s coverage is basically to make fun of these people. You know, 'Oh, these are the guys with the masks we saw a couple of years ago, weren't they?' And to kind of put it down and not really trying to get to the bottom of what's going on here. And there's that. And, as far as the tea party, you know, Keith, you and I both know the newsrooms overreact to conservative carping.
OLBERMANN: Right.
BUNCH: They've been doing it since the days of Spiro Agnew .
OLBERMANN: By the way, "New York Observer" -- piece of crap. But, all right. But, moving on to the last -- just an observation.
BUNCH: Yes.
OLBERMANN: They don't really fit into this -- this explanation. But is it possible that because those people don't look like mainstream newspapers' or -- or television networks' viewers or readers -- that they aren't old ladies with purple wigs or purple-dyed hair, and they aren't seemingly, you know, typical middle-American Americans, that they're in New York -- that's that -- is that what the suspicion is? Because you're not going to be able to sell that videotape or story about that protest to your audience?
BUNCH: Well, I thought it was funny that the biggest story in "The New York Times" during the five days of the protest -- the biggest local story -- has been the demise of "Ray's Pizza." And so -- so it is kind of like the Grey Lady selling nostalgia to its grey -- grey-haired readers. And I think there is an element of that, in maybe the fact that the tea party protesters were people who -- like a lot of us survivors in newsrooms are in our 50s -- you know, maybe the fact they look like them, I think maybe that had something to do with it. I mean, I think there is also kind of a man-bites-dog thing about the tea party, is that --
OLBERMANN: Yeah.
BUNCH: -- conservative are protesting whereas, you know, they write off protests on the left that they should not.
OLBERMANN: You'd think, at least, it would have made it into the traffic reports. Will Bunch of "The Philadelphia Daily News" and the vast "Hackley Dial Alumni Association News Page," principally -- always a pleasure, my friend. Great thanks.
BUNCH: Always a pleasure, Keith. It was great.
OLBERMANN: Thank you, sir. Gave him his first job --1974. We're old guys.
