Marginalizing Dissent

Analysis:

First, the story doesn’t say who organized the protest, which sort of implies that it is this one woman crusade. You can see in the video b-roll the name of one of the groups, Bring Them Home Now, yet this group not any of the other organizations involved were never mentioned in the story. Second, the reasons for the protest are not provided other than to simply say that Sheehan’s son was killed in Iraq in 2004. Sheehan did provide the more substantive reasons for her protest, but channel 8 did not run those. Here is an excerpt of those comments “I want him to tell me is ‘just what was the noble cause Casey died for?’ “Was it freedom and democracy? Bullshit! He died for oil. He died to make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East. We’re not freer here, thanks to your PATRIOT Act. Iraq is not free. You get *America out of Iraq* and *Israel out of Palestine* and you’ll stop the terrorism. There, I used the “I” word, imperialism, and now I’m going to use another “I” word, impeachment because we cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail.” A question for listeners to consider is, if comments like these are included in the story, does that change how the public understands what is going on? What we have found in our news monitoring is that while protests might be reported on from time to time, the reasons for the protest are rarely given.

Story:

WOOD TV 8 News reader – President Bush spoke publicly today about the California mother who has been protesting outside his Texas ranch. The woman’s son died in Iraq a year ago.
Reporter – Cindy Sheehan says her grief turned to anger, but feels the two demands she brought from California to a tent in Crawford. Sheehan – This is George Bush’s accountability moment and we are not leaving Crawford until we hold him accountable.
Reporter – Accountable for the deaths of US troops, including her oldest son Casey, an Army specialist, killed in Iraq last year. Sheehan met the President then, but wants another meeting now turn urge Mr. Bush to withdraw from Iraq. Sheehan – He is on vacation here for 5 weeks. I don’t understand why he can’t take an hour to speak with somebody who’s life he has devastated. Reporter – Other military families joined her here. Demonstrators planted hundreds of crosses to line the dusty road. While senior advisors said the President understands and respects her position he does not plan to meet Sheehan and says a full pull-out of troops would be wrong. Bush – Listen, I sympathize with Mrs. Sheehan. She feels strongly about her position and she has every right in the world to say what she believes. This is America, she has a right to her position.
Total Time: 1 minute 22 seconds