In the early morning of March 20, 2003, US Navy bombers on aircraft carriers and Tomahawk missile-launching vessels in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean, along with Air Force B-52s in Britain and B-2s in Diego Garcia, struck Baghdad and other parts of Iraq in a “Shock and Awe” blitzkrieg to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and occupy that oil-rich country.
Twenty years on, the US news media, as is their habit with America’s wars, published stories looking back at that war and its history (FAIR.org, 3/22/23), most of them treading lightly around the rank illegality of the US attack, a war crime that was not approved by the UN Security Council, and was not a response to any imminent Iraqi threat to the US, as required by the UN Charter.
Oddly, none of those national media organizations’ editors saw as relevant or remotely newsworthy a groundbreaking protest rally and march outside the White House of at least 2,500–3,000 people on Saturday, March 18, 2023, called by a coalition of over 200 peace and anti-militarism organizations to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Iraq invasion.
The Washington Post, like the rest of the national news media, failed to mention or even run a photo of the rally in Lafayette Park. It didn’t even cover the peaceful and spirited march from the front of the White House along Pennsylvania and New York avenues to the K Street Washington Post building to deliver several black coffins as a local story—despite the paper’s having a reporter whose beat is actually described by Post as being to “to cover protests and general assignments for the metro desk.” An email request to this reporter, Ellie Silverman, asking why this local protest in DC went unreported did not get a response.
National press a no-show
The rally, organized by the ANSWER Coalition and sponsors such as Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, Black Alliance for Peace and Radical Elders, drew “several thousand” antiwar, anti-military protesters, according to ANSWER Coalition national director Brian Becker. He said the demonstration’s endorsers were calling for peace negotiations and an end to US arms for Ukraine, major cuts in the US military budget, an end to the US policy of endless wars, and freedom for Julian Assange and Indigenous prisoner Leonard Peltier.
Becker said that the coalition had a media team that spent two weeks on phones and computers, reaching out to national and local media organizations, including in the seven or eight other cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco, that held rallies on the same day. “Not a single member of the national press even showed up,” he said.
Two local Washington TV stations (CBS and ABC affiliates) did do brief stories on the rally and march, but Google and Nexis searches turned up not a single major mainstream national news report on the event, though it was the second, and significantly larger, antiwar demonstration in Washington in just four weeks, and the first by specifically left-wing peace and antiwar organizations. (The first rally, on February 19, called “Rage Against the War Machine,” organized primarily by libertarians and some left-wing opponents of the US proxy war with Russia, did get a mention in the conservative Washington Times (2/19/23) and promotion a day before the event by right-wing Fox News host Tucker Carlson (2/17/22).
“We talked to reporters and gave them details about our planning events during the two weeks before the march—the kinds of things that journalists years back used to like to attend to hear what the activists were saying and thinking, but nobody showed up from the media at those sessions,” says Becker. “I guess those who make the decisions about assignments and coverage didn’t want this event covered.”
Shift from the ’60s
FAIR founder Jeff Cohen noted a shift from the way peace demonstrations were covered in the 1960s. “Even a few hundred antiwar protesters at a local anti-Vietnam War march would get local news coverage,” he recalled:
We weren’t ignored, but every participant complained about the quality of the coverage that so often focused on the length of men’s hair, length of women’s skirts, usage of four-letter words, etc. and not substantive critique of war or US foreign policy. National protests in DC got significant national coverage, but not friendly coverage.
Cohen contrasted this with antiwar protests in recent decades, which have frequently been snubbed by media. “I think the ignoring of local and even national antiwar marches kicked in during the mid- and late 1980s around movements opposing US intervention in Central America,” he said.
Noam Chomsky (who knows from personal experience the sensation of being virtually blacklisted by corporate media) was a speaker at the March 18 event. Asked to explain this latest blackout of antiwar sentiment and opposition to military aid to Ukraine, he responded, “Par for the course.” He added, “Media rarely stray far from the basic framework imposed by systems of power, as FAIR has been effectively documenting for many years.”
Filling the hole
Fortunately, alternative media, which have proliferated online, are filling in the hole in protest coverage, though of course readers and viewers have to seek out those sources of information. There was a news report on the march in Fightback News (3/23/23), for example, and commentary on the World Socialist Web Site (3/21/23) and Black Agenda Report (2/22/23).
Foreign coverage of the March 18 antiwar event in the US was substantial, which should embarrass editors at US news organizations. Some foreign coverage, considering that it appeared in state-owned or partially state-owned media, were surprisingly professional. Read, for example, the report by Xinhua (3/19/23), China’s government-owned news service, or one in Al Myadeen (3/18/23), the Lebanese satellite news service, which reportedly favors Syria and Hezbollah.
It’s rather disturbing to find such foreign news outfits, not just covering news that is being hidden from Americans by their own vaunted and supposedly “free” press, but doing it more straightforwardly than US corporate media often do when they actually report on protests against US government policy.
Efforts to get either the Washington Post or New York Times to explain their airbrushing out the March 18 antiwar protest in Washington were unsuccessful. (Both publications have eliminated their news ombud offices, citing “budget issues.”)
Fortunately Patrick Pexton, the last ombud at the Washington Post, who now teaches journalism at Johns Hopkins University, and writes on media, foreign and defense policy, and politics and society, offered this emailed observation about the March 18 demonstration blackout:
I confess that I am surprised no major national news organization covered it. I know that some people look down their noses at Code Pink and ANSWER Coalition, and journalists generally are supportive of the Ukraine War, but the demonstrators have a legitimate point of view, and my general personal rule is that anytime you get 1,000 people to turn out to protest something, you should at the very least do a local story about it. I don’t know what the Post rules are today.
Doug Latimer
Kept out of sight
To be kept out of mind
ahoy_polloi
“Some foreign coverage, considering that it appeared in state-owned or partially state-owned media, were surprisingly professional.”
That’s a puzzling offhand smear coming from someone writing for FAIR, which has consistently documented both the emptiness of what “professionalism” means in US corporate media as well as that media’s corporate biases.
Dave Lindorff
Not following your line of thought here. I’m saying not that corporate journalists are “professional.” In my 52 years as a journalist, most of it in the US and for US newspapers, TV and magazines, the journalists in those places were not professional, but were basically shills or careerists, not journalists with a sense of mission to get the truth out — in other words, were giving “professional” as in “professional journalist,” a bad name. What I was saying was that state run media, in this case — for example RT of all places and Iran’s PressTV, reported more fairly and accurately on the demonstration than I’ve seen the US corporate media do when they even bother to cover an anti-war demonstration.
John Wheat Gibson
Face it: the governments of Iran and China keep the media they own on no shorter a leash than the U.S. government keeps on its propaganda organs, like CNN and the New York Times, and the rest of the corporate media.
Klavs Hansen
The mention was of a Lebanese news service, not an Iranian. Lebanon and Iran are two different countries.
Dave Lindorff
I was referring to Press. TV, an Iranian state-owned Television network.
Miranda C Spencer
I’ve been hoping FAIR would cover this notable *lack* of coverage of the antiwar movement today; thank you, Dave Lindorff. Even back in the ’80s, when arms control protesters were often branded as ‘communist dupes,’ we saw regular coverage of peace activism.
Another trend of note is the legacy media’s general hawkishness these days. Recent examples in the New York Times:
War in Ukraine Has Changed Europe Forever
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war.html?searchResultPosition=1
From Rockets to Ball Bearings, Pentagon Struggles to Feed War Machine
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/24/us/politics/military-weapons-ukraine-war.html?searchResultPosition=1
It’s almost as if they think the end of the Cold War was a bad thing…
Billy
Protesting war has never kept the US out of war. What WILL keep us out of war is the refusal of the citizens to send their children to participate in war. Mass civil disobedience and corrupt rulers will stand naked before the world. Let’s make that happen.
George Corsetti
Interesting that the author complains about lack of coverage on the March demonstration but he never mentions the February anti-war demonstration sponsored by both left and right groups. It was also given little to no coverage by the mainstream media and this author. Why is that?
Dave Lindorff
Because it was not completely ignored the way the March 18 demo was. It at least got covered by Fox News.
Dave Lindorff
Because it was not completely ignored the way the March 18 demo was. It at least got covered by Fox News, and was even endorsed ahead of time and touted the day before by Fox host Tucker Carlson on his program. That’s a big difference.
Chris
WSWS did criticize the protest. If an action is to be effective, then valid criticism will improve further actions.
This is one point of criticism from the wsws coverage: “However much they might attempt to deny it, having called for a vote for Biden, Chomsky and Benjamin bear political responsibility for the actions of the administration, including the US-NATO war against Russia.”
Klemperer
Writing from the often (in jokes^^) called the wrong side of the Atlantic Ocean, I get the impression that even long standing “Progressives” (let me say so to shorten this comment) like “democracy now!”, or Ilhan Omar, AOC, Bernie Sanders and many more, are somewhat neglecting other options than sending more and more weapons and prolonging this horrible war Russia had started.
There is a short mentioning of the March 2023 rallies at democracy now!, but the general trend seems to be that peace movements are seen as “naive” by those Left-wingers. While the mass killings and ongoing war is seen as “without alternative”. Is that right, or am I missing something progressive groups like democracy now! are publishing? And how did Bernie Sanders and Ilhan Omar change their views?
@Chris: I think you are not right in the way you criticize Chomsky and Benjamin. Yes, this is the old, old problem of “lesser evil” theory a voting system in the USA or UK causes. But to fight Trump without any other alternative than to vote for Biden – whom both Chomsky and Benjamin rightfully criticized very, very often – does not make them responsible for US wars.
Chomsky, as far as I understood, is for the right of Ukraine to get defensive weapons to defend their country and help saving lives. And like Medea Benjamin he wants to end this war as soon as possible through negotiations, so tens or hundreds of thousands of people could survive. I think there is hardly something to say against? Chomsky is very clear in a recent interview which – abbreviated – many websites, most probably not the mainstream media though, covered. In fact Chomsky and Benjamin fight against a huge mainstream (hopefully not including democracy now!…) which calls them “naive”, “do-gooders” etc etc.
Phillip Jarrell
Media is a paid PR business. Have someone write the story and pay a PR company to get in in the media. New is a business like everything. Concerning Xinhua (3/19/23), China’s government-owned news service: Anything that makes America look troubled, divided, etc. is good PR for China. Everything in China is 100% controlled by the Gov. for the purpose of making the Gov. God.
Mark
Do you think that holding a second anti-war demonstration a month after the successful “Rage Against the War Machine” event might have diminished the coverage? The RATWM event had a better location, better speakers, better presentation, better live streaming coverage then this second March 18th event. Local press did indeed provide positive coverage of the RATWM event. Probably the politics or the reasoning behind having a second competing anti-war event were not clear to many people including the media, the message already got out at the first event.
Erik Bonnett
Hey Dave, I would love to get in contact with you to discuss some pressing matters you’ve mentioned. My email is erikbonnett@outlook.com and look forward to hearing from you.