An interesting video looking at how press coverage of antifa protesters (themselves hardly anything resembling a coherent organization) is misleading in terms of outlier bias (extremity is always more interesting than mainstream; violence is always more interesting than peaceful protest) and in terms of distracting from the message of protest to the practices of a tiny fraction of the protesters.<\/p>\n
There’s a fascinating stat early on comparing violence at various anti-alt-Right, anti-White Supremacy, anti-Nazi protests to something much more mundane (and far less covered in the press).<\/p>\n
One element left out of the video’s mix is that for much of the mainstream media, the need for catchy headlines and “if it bleeds it leads” journalistic practices are one thing. But there are those (Fox News being the most benign) for whom such coverage focus is actively pursued because<\/i> of the misleading message it presents, a message they can actively, rather than passively, use to discredit what’s being protested in the first place.<\/p>\n
It occurs to me, incidentally, that media coverage of pro<\/i> Nazi \/ White Nationalist \/ White Supremacist \/ etc. protests, and the violence inflicted there, can similarly be misleading. I can certainly argue that the message of those protests is inherently violent, the rhetoric and culture intentionally aggressive, and the fascist ideologies profoundly dangerous on their own, but it’s still possible to aware that what one sees in a thirty-second blurb on CNN about such gatherings is going to be the most extreme and eyeball-grabbing, whether it’s a grotesque outlier or just the worst of the worse.<\/p>\n
This doesn’t mean that one should actively mistrust the media, just that it should not get an automatic pass for what it does, and anything that seems particularly outrageous or troublesome is worth further digging into. Being aware of the bias toward blood that the media (and, honestly, the consumers<\/i> of the media, i.e., ourselves) has is simply a good thing to remember in updating one’s view of the world.<\/p>\n