Benjamin Parke writes from LA:

”La Opinión, Los Angeles’ Spanish-language newspaper, and the largest such paper in the U.S., did a story about the protest outside CBS and put it on the front of their Ciudad (City) section with a photo.

“The story, with a link, is pasted below. Unfortunately, the photo doesn’t appear on the website, but the online version of the story is five grafs longer, in which one learns that CBS wouldn’t even talk to La Opinión! An image of the story as it appears in the paper is attached.

“Coverage in a newspaper like La Opinión is great for a city like LA. A lot of people who the peace movement probably doesn’t often reach will read it. The paper’s newshole isn’t huge, but the stories they do run are generally very good.”

From http://www.laopinion.com/ciudad/?rkey=00060315200601012809

As for media covering media protests, I did get a call from the LA Times but have not seen any report there. The NY Times blacked it out. Probably too close to home. Also never saw any report in the Globe and Mail in Toronto even though they sent a reporter. Yesterday, I had a good conversation with a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. Where’s Knight Ridder on this?

PRIYA’S REPORT

Priya Reddy did the heroic job of organizing the media march sans resources and adequate time and now shares her recollections in this eloquent report:

”NY Times reporters grimaced and slinked by as Danny reminded them of the difference between “jingoism and journalism.” We left the NY Times, just as the sound permit expired. “Guess you’re done!” cackled the police captain. “For now,” I answered in my best Terminator voice. Danny made sure that the cowardice and crimes of the media did not go unnoticed. However, he was in great pain due to a recent foot infection, and could not continue on the march. “Go on without me!” he implored. By the time we got to MTV (which I’d always referred to as phlegm TV) we’d lost a good part of our march to the unusually cold afternoon. Still several people, including the intrepid Raging Grannies, and Neil, whose son was in the military, were with us. We assembled at MTV as they constantly ran ads for military recruitment to its large youth audience….

AT MTV

“The teenagers hanging out on the sidewalk probably waiting for some pop star to emerge, eyed our rag tag protest with suspicion and curiosity. When we started speaking about the recruitment ads and how the youth of this country are sacrificed as cannon fodder in an insane war, the teens’ bemusement gave way to anxiety…

“Truth can be a bitter pill. Still, to my surprise the kids stayed and listened. We had spent the morning visiting the biggest media outlets, causing guilt and discomfort for the occasional media executive, and yet it was the impression we were making on these youth that seemed to matter the most. After all it was their future that was endangered. It was they who were inheriting the madness that could not be mitigated without a democratized media. “We can not afford to do things that don’t work, as things are getting worst fast and the world is more dangerous than ever,” I told them, knowing that I addressed the ADD generation. Their attention was a brief and precious thing, so I summed up as quickly as I could. “The environmental crisis, the ecological collapse when combined with escalating human conflict which will probably play out in a nuclear dimension,… doesn’t give us a lot of time.”

“The kids stared with increasing strain on their faces. I hoped I didn’t sound too much like “the end is nigh” doomsayers one sees occasionally in Times Square. The teens seemed as if they did not want to accept what I was saying and yet knew they couldn’t deny reality.”

VIGIL AT REUTERS

Priya picks up the story with the vigil later that night at Reuters.

“Later that evening, we returned to Times Square, this time to Reuters’s doorstep, to commemorate the 67 journalists who had lost their lives while reporting on the war on Iraq. Some had been killed by the unfriendly fire of U.S military aggression because as Amy Goodman said, “they find independent reporting threatening.’ We had planned to light candles and hold a silent vigil for those who had made the ultimate sacrifice in pursuit of truth. The wind picked up and we could not light the candle. This did not bode well. We stood in artificial neon lights of Times Square, beneath the towering spires of the corporate empire, in the howling night wind, with our candles that would not light. Perhaps as they say, it was the thought that counts. But we knew that if things were going to change, it would take more than empathetic thoughts.”

“HECUULEAN”

Lawyer and activist Andi Novick writes from Upstate New York:

” I read your piece and heard your disappointment which I can wholly appreciate, but I think the value of getting to the point of having an anti war coalition recognize for the first time media activism is the starting point we should now run with. It was Herculean of you to try to organize on such short notice (maybe that’s the only thing you need to learn from yesterday).

“But maintaining the contacts and raising the awareness on an ongoing basis is what we can get out of this so that next year can we have the synergy that was lacking this year.

“In terms of the positive effects you couldn’t perceive, Jeff Cohen spoke about the connection with media at the ANSWER rally up here on the 11th- which was our big anti war rally as did Fred Nagel, a steering member of Northeast Citizens for Responsible Media. Yesterday, the day of the would be concerted action I appeared as the guest on Fred’s radio show, Activist Radio (on WVKR out of Vassar) and talked about this.

“At the vigil last night in Rhinebeck I showed up with 8 pictures of bloodied children that someone else in the group had blown up for me and turned into home made posters with slogans connecting the dots between the war and the media and had others hold them (I’ll send you copies of the pictures of the posters when Jake gets home since I don’t even know how to do that). We will continue to use these posters and others and make the point that the media must take responsibility for its irresponsibility, as we continue to educate our fellow leftists along with the rest of the world.

“And just because it was clear you were feeling down when I read what you wrote today, I was wondering if you realized how integral you were to my forming Northeast Citizens for Responsible Media. True, you didn’t get me down to that conference in St Louis, but if I hadn’t met you on the plane coming back I wouldn’t have pursued what I did which turned out to be the start of a media reform group in the Northeast part of the country in an area where none existed previously.

“I also heard you today on WAMC just an hour ago–was recorded from the other week when you went up the Hudson–that Youth Media Project Alan Chartock is doing (which I didn’t know anything about)–. You were very good at handling the Rex person who doesn’t think we have a problem and even AC (who was on his best behavior as moderator–that’s why he likes having Rex around on that Media show he does weekly)– he doesn’t like people to be to the left of him very much). So now I guess you guys are buds and that leads to the next way you can spread your influence over this part of the world.”

MEDIA CHANNEL TAKEN TO TASK FOR A GRAPHIC

And a graphic, not of our making, shown on our home page provided, I think by UFPJ. Gabriele of The Cats Dream blog apparently wrote to me earlier on this and I missed it. He is right and we will will fix it later but it speaks to a debate that is underway over the number of civilians dead in the war in Iraq. A group called Iraq Body Country has used a far lower number than appeared in the Lancet, the British Medical journal.

Here’s the core of a concern I share but hadn’t focused on. With our website under attack from spammers and hackers, I must have missed his first communication and didn’t focus on this because we joined a campaign that provided the graphic as their logo for the event. He writes:

”Forgive me if I write you again about the same subject. But I haven’t got any reply about that poster on Media Channel website that reads “30000 Iraqis”
http://www.mediachannel.org/

“A few days ago, the Independent wrote: “But IBC admits that with the increasing inability of journalists to move around and report freely, its method of monitoring civilian deaths is becoming increasingly inaccurate. What evidence has emerged indicates that a widely ridiculed study published in The Lancet in autumn 2004, estimating that at least 100,000 civilians had died violently since the war began, might not be so inaccurate.” http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article350776.ece

“The Financial Times, on November 19, 2004 wrote: “This survey technique has been criticised as flawed, but the sampling method has been used by the same team in Darfur in Sudan and in the eastern Congo and produced credible results. An official at the World Health Organisation said the Iraq study ‘is very much in the league that the other studies are in … You can’t rubbish (the team) by saying they are incompetent‘”. (Stephen Fidler, ‘Lies, damned lies and statistics,’ Financial Times, November 19, 2004)

“According to Les Roberts (Center for International Emergency Disaster and Refugee Studies at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, one of the world’s top epidemiologists and lead author of the Lancet report) there might be as many as 300,000 Iraqi civilian deaths (Do Iraqi Civilian Casualties Matter?, By Les Roberts, AlterNet, February 8, 2006 - http://www.alternet.org/story/31508/ )

“On Media Channel website homepage, the poster stands next to an article whose title is “ TAKE ACTION: Demand Better Iraq War Coverage”

“So, I am again asking why Media Channel chose to use that poster. As a Media Channel associate, I’m demanding a better Iraq war coverage.”

You will note that this blog did report on new allegations that as many as 250,000 plus Iraqis were killed. We are not downplaying the issue. At the same time, alas, we do not have our own graphics team and in this case were tied into a larger initiative. Thanks for raising this.

HORNETS AND BEES

Virginia Weldon writes from Boulder:

”Dear Danny: Three years ago the Ides of March took us to Iraq, which has proven to be a Rubicon we still haven’t been able to cross. Today, in the Ides again, this band of miscreants have pronounced a new National Security Strategy Report backing and supporting the ludicrous validity of “Preemptive Invasion.” Obviously, these mental giants never seem to learn … anything, but how to really rile up a hornet’s nest.

To further that end, today the Pentagon released breaking news of an unparalleled “air assault on insurgents” called Operation Swarmer, ostensibly to locate and destroy groups of resisters who must be converging, conveniently, out in the open instead of from the gorilla protection of hit and run. With no media news coverage allowed on this operation, our chances of learning anything factual will be less than slim to none. As to the folksy title of “Operation Swarmer”, now these great minds are liking our troops to killer bees swarming all over the Sunni Triangle. Well, hornets do not react in the same manner as bees, and this has all the earmarks of a prideful stirring up of more hornets nests. I guess panic begins to set in when the CIC is dropping free fall in the polls. The Ides of March can be pesky, indeed.”