Local News Coverage of Antiwar March Sensationalized and Biased

There was considerable coverage of the March 17 anti-war demonstration in Grand Rapids organized by the group ACTIVATE. Local news agencies that had stories on the demonstration were the Grand Rapids Press, WOOD radio, the GVSU student newspaper The Lanthorn, and TV stations WXMI 17, WZZM 13 and WOOD TV 8. WZZM 13 showed up near the end of the demonstration, WOOD radio had no reporter on the scene, and WOOD TV 8 only stopped by the demonstration at East Beltline and Burton. Only the Grand Rapids Press, WXMI, and The Lanthorn had reporters at the demonstration when it went to the home of Representative Vern Ehlers.

Most of the stories focused on the arrests that took place after the march left Congressman Ehlers house. The WOOD radio headline read “GR Protest Leads To Arrests” and Channel 8′s online posting read “Arrests at anti-war rally.” Both of these stories were short, did not source the march organizers, and in the case of channel 8 provided inaccurate information. The online story read in part “The protesters were remembering the more than 3,000 service members killed.” This in no way was the focus of the demonstration, with the media release clearly stating that “, residents of Grand Rapids and beyond will gather at 12:30pm at the corner of East Beltline and Burton to call for an immediate end to the United States’ occupation of Iraq.” The media release, while acknowledging the loss of the lives of 3,200+ US soldiers and 655,000+ Iraqi civilians, made it clear that the primary goal was to call for an end to the occupation of Iraq and to advocate for cutting funding for the war.

The three longer stories also framed the demonstration in a biased fashion, particularly the WZZM 13 story which began by saying “A protest in West Michigan was one of many taking place across the country, but some police in Grand Rapids said this group went too far.” This is interesting since Channel 13 was not even present when the arrests were made. They relied on comments from the Grand Rapids Police Department, as did the other media outlets, and took the police comments as fact. The GRPD used the media to spread disinformation and falsehoods about the protests, claiming that a person using a megaphone resisted arrest and in one WOOD TV 8 story, even going so far as to claim that explosives were thrown. The only source cited on the arrests that was not from the police was in the Grand Rapids Press story, which cited a witness who had a much different take on what occurred.

There was significant attention given to the fact that the protest did go to the home of Congressman Ehlers, but little information was provided as to why the group targeted him. The Grand Rapids Press story does cite part of a flyer that people dropped off at the homes of people on that street, but beyond that the coverage only has vague commentary on why Ehlers was targeted, such as this comment by the reporter from WXMI 17 “Protestors want to show Ehlers that his constituents are against the war in Iraq.” In contrast, Ehlers is provided space to make numerous comments and claims about the war, but none of the reporters questioned the Congressman or verified the claims he made. As we have pointed out in the past, the local news media has allowed Ehlers to position himself as a reluctant supporter of the war, despite his consistent voting for maintaining the occupation and continued funding of the war in Iraq. The only source that the news media (The Grand Rapids Press) cited on Ehlers’ voting record was the Congressman’s neighbor who said, “Vern is an outstanding, Christian man. I know he votes his conscience.” Instead of looking at the actual voting record of the Congressman reporters felt it was more important to point out that some of the protest signs were “profane” and “obscene.”

Once the arrests were made the Grand Rapids Press left and did not report on the rest of the march, which lasted for more than an hour with protestors marching down the East Beltline and 28th Street. There was near unanimous support for the marchers even though intersections were blocked at times by the march which used the crosswalks as another tactic to communicate with motorists. At one point the march attempted to enter the mall, but were stopped by Kentwood City Police and mall security. The police told protestors that the mall was private property and that they were not welcomed. None of the media was present for this exchange except at the very end when WZZM 13 arrived. They wanted to speak with the march organizers about the arrests made, but ACTIVATE members decided that since channel 13 was only there because of arrests that they would not let the reporter interview them.

The following day, March 18, WXMI 17 contacted ACTIVATE to get an interview that they wanted to have to “contrast what Congressman Ehlers told them” in an interview earlier that day, with the story being a follow-up to a story that 17 did on Saturday. ACTIVATE agreed to the request to have a spokesperson talk with Channel 17, but it was clear that the reporter was more interested in the arrests that what the group thought, since the reporter kept asking “can we speak with someone who was arrested.” ACTIVATE decided to have their spokesperson stand in front of a banner used during the march that highlighted the deaths of 655,000 Iraqi civilians, even though the reporter kept trying to coax the spokesperson away. The questions that the reporter asked dealt with issues such as how many people are in the group and how often they meet. No substantive questions were asked and the comments used by the Fox 17 reporter had nothing to do with why ACTIVATE decided to march to Ehlers’ house. Once the interview was over the reporter tried to get inside the ACTIVATE meeting to tape and was quite rude in the process. They also asked if they could get video footage of the arrests, which citizen journalists had taken, but the group responded by saying that they should have been at the demonstration.

Overall, the coverage was sensationalized and focused on the arrests, and when they were not focusing on that gave Congressman Ehlers space and airtime to say what he thinks about the war. The majority of the stations did not provide any clear reasons why the march was organized and what the objectives were, instead choosing to portray the demonstration as a chaotic mass that was seeking confrontation with the police. In response to the poor quality of the journalism employed by the local news outlets, we encourage individuals to contact the local media to engage them about the poor journalism employed by their reporters.

In order to facilitate this process, we have four online email letter writing actions that we encourage people to send to the local news outlets:

WZZM 13

WOOD TV 8

WXMI 17

The Grand Rapids Press

Related Posts:

1. Local News Coverage of Antiwar March in Grand Rapids
2. Antiwar March Confronts Congressman Ehlers at his Home
3. ACTIVATE Statement on the March 17 Antiwar Protests
4. Local News Coverage of Bush Iraq Policy Speech and Protest
5. Local News Coverage of Bush Protest at Calvin

Tags: antiwar, grand rapids, media, michigan, protest