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Antiwar movement sets the record
straight
Read
ANSWER's Op-Ed in the SF Chronicle below
*Please
forward widely to your email lists, friends and family*
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San Francisco front banner, March 18
(Photo: Bill Hackwell)
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After a week of pressure exerted by
angry people in
Northern California, the San Francisco Chronicle agreed to publish an
Op-Ed by the ANSWER Coalition that tells the truth about the March 18th
demonstration in San Francisco. The demonstration, like others around
the country, was a sign of a growing antiwar movement. You would never
have known it from reading the San Francisco Chronicle report.
Background information
On the fourth anniversary of the
U.S. invasion of
Iraq, people took to the streets in more than 1,000 U.S. cities and
towns. The largest demonstrations took place in Washington, DC at the
March on the Pentagon, in San Francisco, and in Los Angeles, all
initiated by the ANSWER Coalition and co-sponsored by a wide array of
progressive organizations. These demonstrations reached people in the
U.S. who had never participated in a protest before and also included
many Iraq war veterans, active-duty servicemembers, family members, and
veterans of other wars.
This resurgence of the anti-war
movement, and the
breadth of its makeup, signifies a sharp turn by the public against the
war. But just as tens of thousands were marching in these major city
demonstrations, the corporate mass media were fine-tuning their
atrocious coverage and providing huge undercounts. As we all know, mass
demonstrations have a major ripple effect. Many who are not there learn
about the actions and seeing a vibrant anti-war movement feel that they
too can be a part of it. A number of major media outlets across the
country made tens of thousands of people disappear from the
demonstrations and provided often hostile, misleading and false
coverage.
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San Francisco crowd shot, March 18
(Photo: Peter Maiden)
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This
isn’t the first time the media has attempted to rewrite the reality of
a major political protest. As many will remember, when the ANSWER
Coalition organized the first major national demonstration against a
looming war in Iraq on October 26, 2002 that brought 200,000 people
into Washington, D.C., NPR announced the number to be in the hundreds.
Deluged with phone calls and letters, NPR was forced to issue a
correction. The New York Times said the demonstration was in the
“thousands.” Only after it received thousands of angry faxes, phone
calls and emails, did the New York Times write a second article a few
days later stating that the anti-war movement had been “invigorated” by
a massive turnout.
On the weekend of March 17-18,
among the
most egregious coverage was the “crowd count” put out by the San
Francisco Chronicle for the March 18 rally. The Chronicle article on
the march, which was picked up the Associated Press and distributed
worldwide, reported that just 3,000 people participated -- less than
10% of the number who actually marched. The reporters claimed to have
“counted” the march, and to back up their ludicrous number, falsely
asserted that the march organizers had “announced” the same number from
the stage. The Chronicle report provoked hundreds of angry emails,
calls and letters to the editor in the next 48 hours.
Under growing pressure, the
Chronicle
agreed to publish an Op-Ed written by the ANSWER Coalition in
yesterday's newspaper (Monday, March 26).
This is an important victory, one
that
was only achieved because of many people taking action to express their
outrage. It must also be said that publishing the Op-Ed is a step, but
it does not mitigate the damage done by the wide distribution of the
Chronicle false report.
Our movement must create and
strengthen
our own media, while continuing to pressure the corporate media to tell
the truth about the growing antiwar struggle in the United States.
Please read ANSWER's Op-Ed, which
is available
by clicking this link. Please send this Op-Ed to every one
in your email address book, and forward it to other email lists.
Please take a moment to donate to
support the
important work of the ANSWER Coalition. You can make a much-needed
donation right now by clicking
on this link.
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