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Police brutality catapults Occupy Wall Street into the mainstream media

October 7, 2011 by 11 Comments

Occupy Wall Street: Officer Connoly beats protesters, makes news

Here’s irony for you. The Occupy Wall Street movement spread across the country yesterday, with massive peaceful protests and plenty of mainstream media coverage.

But it sure looks like what has fueled the coverage, after two weeks of being ignored by the media, was the stupid, barbaric acts of police brutality and mass arrests. The cops couldn’t have been more helpful.

Here’s a handy chart Nate Silver put together over at the New York Times:

police brutality sparked the media into coverageIt’s pretty clear – The media did its best to ignore OWS, until the gross overreaction by the police made it impossible to ignore.

First it was the flagrant pepper-spraying of completely non-violent female marchers (that even caught some of the police!).

Then it was the manipulative set-up attack on the Brooklyn Bridge marchers – where police first guided the demonstrators onto the roadway, then arrested them for being on the roadway, and swept nearly 700 of them up into the vans and buses they had ready and waiting.

And finally it was the clashes Wednesday night, where police bragged they were going to give their nightsticks a workout, and then waded in swinging against otherwise peaceful protesters and Fox news crews, as the demonstrators picked up the chant from Chicago in ’68, “The whole word is watching!”

Not watching

Up until the brutality the media had done an exemplary job of completely ignoring the protests. After all, it’s just a bunch of dirty effing hippies, right? Not like the Tea Party, where it was intelligent, mature, solid citizens in the forefront of the protests.

tea party publicity vs occupy wall street publicitySilver put together this second chart:

Surprised? I’m not. Fox News started pimping the Tea Partiers from the get-go, of course, but it’s more than that – the MSM just doesn’t like DFHs.

That’s been demonstrated in much of the coverage that HAS happened, which has been overwhelmingly “But they don’t know what they want! What are their demands?”

Their demands have been pretty clear: Get corporate control out of government, get corporate cash out of elections, and reign in the banks that have been trampling the middle class under their hooves like mad bulls.

To which the MSM has responded by sticking their fingers in their ears and going “NanananananaCan’tHEEEEEEEAAAAAAR you!”

Maybe now the message will start getting through.

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Filed Under: Ideas, Occupy Wall Street Tagged With: , , , , , ,
About Jeremy Bloom

Jeremy Bloom is the Editor of RedGreenAndBlue.

Comments

  1. Bob says:
    October 17, 2011 at 7:34 am

    My friend, you hit the nail right on the head.. NYPD should have stayed on the side out of the way and the news would had never shown up. If this continues to spread there could be big trouble up the road. With all what’s going on in the world today, I fathom the near future..

    Reply
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Trackbacks

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    October 7, 2011 at 3:42 pm

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  2. Cops get violent vs Occupy Wall Street – Red, Green, and Blue says:
    October 7, 2011 at 3:42 pm

    [...] What appears to have sparked the violence was a group of protesters who decided to stage a night-time march on Wall Street – this one, unlike the day’s protest, without permits. This may have greenlighted the cops to make arrests… by any means they deamed necessary. UPDATE: Ironically, it appears that the cops may have done Occupy Wall Street a favor. The media has been pretty much ignoring the protests – until the police started macing and beating on people. See: Police brutality catapults Occupy Wall Street into the mainstream media [...]

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