American TV news buries Spanish protests but could cover...

[alp227]

...certain events with over-signification and filler words and low-priority human interest stories.

The protests against the government's austerity measures drew thousands to the Puerta del Sol square in Madrid, Spain. The protesters had stayed at the square for nearly a week as of now and even defied a police order to disperse after Friday. One estimate of protests on May 15 was at 20,000.

So in America, newspapers left-wing grassroots anti-war rallies but rush to plaster Glenn Beck/Koch Brother/FreedomWorks-organized Tea Party rallies on the front page. Also, of course, such TP rallies become the top story on TV for days.

Last week, ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS all ignored the story as the people of Spain occupied Puerta del Sol, even after the Associated Press filed its first report about the event on Thursday. The New York Times ran a story "Despite Ban, Protests Continue Before Spanish Vote" on Saturday in page A12. The Guardian (based in London) published "Spanish protesters head for standoff with police in Madrid square" on Friday in page 21, the International section. That same day, The Guardian found it fit to cover the phony 5/21/2011 Rapture on page 3, the "Top Stories" section and two pages later a story about musician Pete Doherty going to jail for doing crack. (On Saturday, The Guardian published an online-only analysis, "How corruption, cuts and despair drove Spain's protesters on to the streets".

How many segments did the American TV networks run about this event? TWO! On video, 11:58 mark). But NBC could cover people's responses to the Rapture not happening (for 2.5 minutes) and spend a minute with mostly speculation over the Amanda Knox appeal; the Knox story was right after the miniature Spain story! NBC's top story on Saturday was about Dominique Strauss-Kahn's bail (3 minutes) again of more speculation and opinion than fact. OK I get it: DSK posted a million dollars in bail and must have armed guards and had to live in an undisclosed place after the media blurted out his location. That could've made a brief summary rather than full story.[br />
In contrast, Channel 4 in the UK had the protests as the top story on Saturday; that evening news show comes on during the midday in the US.

The Spanish-language Univision had the other segment, a full story on Sunday's Noticiero Univision. On Friday, Univision.com posted an article about the post-ban protests, but I couldn't find any related video on its website. Sunday, Noticiero Univision ran a .

Astonishing. You had to watch a Spanish-language network just to get a full TV story about the Spain protests.

Meanwhile, what else did the American networks have time to cover in the "evening news"?
- CBS Evening News (Sunday): A music school in Florida created a scholarship fund in honor of a local murdered child. Sweet story, and condolences to the girl's family, but this is more appropriate as local newscast material. Russ Mitchell also profiled an anti-bullying program in Massachusetts public schools.
- NBC Nightly News on Sunday had time to run a full story about the upcoming finale of the Oprah talk show and a tattoo artist's copyright lawsuit attempting to block the release of the movie The Hangover 2.

[villager]

1. you don't want to cover news that would give people bad ideas...

...like organizing against some of the same corporations that... own the news!

[alp227]

2. I'm a Giants fan too! And also note how NBC is owned by defense contractor GE

so NBC tries not to run stories that reflect poorly on the military industrial complex, so that's why they'd have extra incentive to follow the mainstream media lead of "ignore anti war protests". And i noticed that MSNBC (not even Cenk Uygur's show) never covered the Spain protests at all.

[alp227]

3. another finding: Mexican channel Azteca had a full story on Friday

www.aztecanoticias.com.mx/capitulos/internacional/50160/tension-en-espana-ante-prohibicion-de-protestas

(lol...the way the reporter narrates this is SO dramatic...but still pretty detailed regardless)

Hechos Noche had 10 seconds of footage on Thursday (21 minutes in this video)

Televisa had full stories today and yesterday (can't view the videos in the US though) on its news shows.

I couldn't find any TV coverage by the American Telemundo network...also owned by NBC.