Under the somewhat nonsensical headline, “Wall Street Demonstrations Test Police Trained for Bigger Threats,” New York Times reporter Joseph Goldstein may have managed to turn in (9/27/11) a more offensive piece than Ginia Bellafante’s June 25 dispatch (picked apart by Allison Kilkenny here).
The piece begins:
When members of the loose protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street began a march from the financial district to Union Square on Saturday, the participants seemed relatively harmless, even as they were breaking the law by marching in the street without a permit.
But to the New York Police Department, the protesters represented something else: a visible example of lawlessness akin to that which had resulted in destruction and violence at other anticapitalist demonstrations, like the Group of 20 economic summit meeting in London in 2009 and the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999.
Well, that’s just silly, for any number of reasons. (Times reporters in particular might want to be sensitive about these issues, since the paper was roundly criticized for printing erroneous articles about Seattle violence–one of which the Times corrected.)
But it gets worse:
The Police Department’s concerns came up against a perhaps milder reality on Saturday, when their efforts to maintain crowd control suddenly escalated: Protesters were corralled by police officers who put up orange mesh netting; the police forcibly arrested some participants; and a deputy inspector used pepper spray on four women who were on the sidewalk, behind the orange netting.
So a controversial, well-documented act of police violence was a “milder reality” of a concerned police force whose “efforts to maintain crowd control suddenly escalated.” Note the nobody’s-responsible phrasing–whoops, efforts at crowd control just suddenly escalated!
The Times says that the “police’s actions suggested the flip side of a force trained to fight terrorism.” If assaulting peaceful protesters is the “flip side” of anti-terrorism, what does that look like?
Goldstein adds:
So even as the members of Occupy Wall Street seem unorganized and, at times, uninformed, their continued presence creates a vexing problem for the Police Department.
At this point I think most readers aren’t wondering about the protesters seeming uninformed. But yes, attacking protesters is indeed a “vexing problem.”
The piece’s framing of the demonstrations is so curious that a reader might almost miss this bit of actual news:
Since August, investigators with the Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have monitored the online efforts of activists to bring demonstrations to Wall Street, people briefed on the matter said.
That sounds vexing too!
One of the most disturbing things about corporate media’s disdain for (non-Tea Party) protests is the fact that this is fundamentally a serious attack on the speech rights of citizens. One would think that journalists, so quick to celebrate First Amendment rights, might consider this kind of police action something to treat critically–instead of covering for the cops.
I’d call this another form of violence.
Not unleashed with fists and batons and pepper spray, but with keystrokes and printing presses.
It too is directed against the protestors, but it also takes aim at what is supposedly the goal of journalism.
The facts.
If you search the term “pepper spray” on the New York Times website, you will find these reports amongst the top hits:
“New York Police to Examine Pepper-Spray Episode – The city’s police commissioner said the Internal Affairs Bureau would examine the use of pepper spray on four protesters.”
“Inspector May Have Used Pepper Spray on Others, Video Shows – A new video suggests that the same police official who used pepper spray against four female protesters also sprayed others.”
“Videos Show Police Using Pepper Spray at Protest – One of the women sprayed said neither she nor others around her had done anything to warrant it; the police disagreed.”
“A Burst of Pepper Spray Like a Punch In the Face – A police official stepped up to protesters in a corral, unleashed pepper spray, and just walked off.”
“Video Appears to Show Wall Street Protesters Being Pepper-Sprayed – A video seems to show a high-ranking member of the Police Department using pepper spray against several women.”
As well as this particularly critical commentary a ways down the list:
“N.Y. Police Badges Lose a Bit More of Their Luster” (http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/police-badges-lose-a-bit-more-of-their-luster)
Also, I don’t know how you define “corporate media,” but — though I am a decidedly anti-Tea Party individual — I have heard and read plenty of criticism of, questioning of, and even disdain for the Tea Party on Comedy Central, MSNBC, NPR, and The New York Times, among others.
Joseph Goldstein’s piece in the 9/27/11 New York Times is frightening. Here we have the third-largest circulation daily in the country advocating, in essence, police brutality — and in a news article. Thanks FAIR, for alerting us to this one. The Gray Lady, obviously, has become a prostitute.
Great post. My head spun when I first read that article. What a spin job. I had sent the writer an email to express my disappointment in the Times’ coverage. Your post was far better. Thanks for writing it.
Get educated!
What is a “Paid Troller”?
People who are paid for posting FUD content (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) at the bottom of online articles in order to discredit the author.
What is a “HoneyPot”?
A deceptive website set up as a “false flag” to lure targeted groups of people to post comments and/or register their personal information. The info is
then correlated against other online data to identify those people.
If I post from my home, can my street address be identifed?
Yes! All computers have a MAC address that can be tracked down through the supplier who sold you your computer. Also your external IP address (the
ID code used to connect you to the internet) can be correlated to your previous online activity. Google calls it “finding a needle in a haystack.” And of
course, the Google Street View cars have already photographed your street front.
How can I safely get involved?
MAKE TIME AND PLAN YOUR TRAVELS so you can post from hotel lobby computers or any other non-managed public kiosk that is not near your
home. Public libraries typically require your library card to be swiped and should be avoided. Internet cafes offer no safety unless the computer is public.
DON’T WORRY if you’ve already posted from home because there is a considerable degree of ‘security in obscurity.’ Just don’t make it a habit!
What should I post?
Educate your worldwide brothers and sisters on these topics.Do it often and BE CONCISE!!!
MOST IMPORTANTLY, have a positive intention, imagine what a peaceful world would be like and conjure a joyful feeling of that already being in place.
What are the Banksters MOST worried about?
1) exposure of the operations of the Federal Reserve Bank and fractional lending
2) people losing confidence in paper currency and bartering instead
3) people avoiding mainstream news media (mainstream news induces fear and generates hopelessness
4) positive thinking and self-awareness of individuals
5) anonymous mass resistance as described above
Remember that your identity is not important… only your ideas… which can go viral. We love you. Good luck!
I like this one:
Did Goldstein even go there? The protesters were marching on the sidewalks.
The next time the police crack heads on the streets (or sidewalks) of Tehran or Beijing, will the NY Times write an article sympathetically explaining the challenges facing their police departments?
My Letter to the NYT Editor:
Dear Editor,
It’s clear that that NYT has taken sides against the Occupy Wall Street protesters, but Joseph Goldstein’s article “Wall Street Demonstrations Test Police Trained for Bigger Threats” (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/nyregion/wall-street-demonstrations-test-police-trained-for-bigger-threats.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Joseph%20Goldstein%20&st=cse) is textbook propaganda.
Mr. Goldstein seems to equate an anti-capitalist is an anti-Christ. And how would I or any other reader know the protesters are really anti-capitalists? Your reporter never bothers to interview a single protester or bother to mention precisely what they’re protesting about or what their agenda is or their goals. Nothing. He minimizes police corruption and blames the victims for bringing police brutality upon themselves while simultaneously silencing them with his purposeful dismissal of their cause, like they’re just a group of juvenile delinquents protesting out of sheer boredom.
Why, exactly, are the NYT and the other corporate media not reporting on Occupy Wall Street’s continued protests as they should? These are American citizens who are clearly very concerned that the insatiably greedy corruption which has caused the worst economic recession in 80 years – which we’re still living in three years later, by the way, with no real end in sight – is still in play, still intact, still as greedy as ever and still reaping the benefits of unfettered economic exploitation. THAT’S THE STORY! Instead, the Times, other papers, news websites and the major TV news networks are all either ignoring the protests altogether or treating the protesters like they’re some kind of evil, subversive anti-American secret society bent on destroying democracy.
And I’m sorry, but if the NYC police have better things to do with their time than deal with what routinely comes up in their job, perhaps they should consider splitting the department in two. That way half of them can devote themselves to fighting terrorism full-time while the other half is tasked with the somewhat menial and bothersome task of oppressing free speech.
Mr. Goldstein’s apparent hero-worship is sickening, to be honest, especially coming from an so-called journalist. I respect the law and police officers, but simply putting on that uniform does not make one a hero, and it does not give them license them to behave in either a dishonorable way or contrary to the law they’re pledged to uphold. Pepper-spraying protesters is a despicable, cowardly act perpetrated only with the hopes of angering the Occupy Wall Street protesters into doing something violent. (The police say the pepper spray was “used sparingly” but the question Mr. Goldstein should have asked them was, “Why was it used at all?”) Only then would the corporate media surely descend upon the protesters like ravenous vultures at a feeding frenzy.
Either that or officers like Anthony Bologna are simply corrupt, rogue cops who need to hand in their shields – they seem to have forgotten that they’re there to protect citizens from senseless violence, not inflict it themselves.
How sad it is what a short distance we’ve come – the police in the South hosed blacks peacefully protesting in the 1950s and ’60s, and in 2011 the NYC police use pepper spray on peaceful protesters. What’s the difference? That the protesters of 50 years ago had a legitimate cause? Don’t today’s protesters? Oh, that’s right – Mr. Goldstein didn’t bother to ask.
And I don’t buy for a second that Officer Bologna now feels like his family is in danger; I’m quite sure that’s a lie the police department made up in order to turn a few victimizing police officers into victims themselves to gain public sympathy. A very transparent and pathetic maneuver that’s played in ever similar situation, yet for some reason the police officers and their families – supposedly trembling in fear – are never met with any violence, of course – peaceful protesters do not typically threaten violence against others. If Officer Bologna were such a scaredy-cat about retaliation – or fearing discipline from his commanding officers – he wouldn’t be violently abusing peaceful protesters year after year.
And so what if the group didn’t have a permit? Does that mean the police are allowed to abandon all morality and guidelines in how to behave toward protesters? Permits are doled out politically, anyway, and sometimes it’s necessary to protest without them in order to expose the corrupt government that denied the permit in the first place. That’s what the whole Declaration of Independence was about, after all, unshackling oneself from a corrupt leadership. You’re obviously not going to start that process with the blessing of the corrupt.
Did the Occupy Wall Street protesters seek a permit and were denied? I think that’s an interesting question, but unfortunately not one Mr. Goldstein bothered to ask. Then again, it’s pretty clear in his propaganda that he has no interest in presenting the protesters’ side of this story whatsoever. Like a good little political lapdog he only tells the side of his masters.
Mr. Goldstein and whatever editor or editors approved this story should be fired either for journalistic stupidity for failing to see the real story in front of their eyes, or journalistic insipidity and allowing themselves and the New York Times to be be used as a propaganda tool to appease the dictates – corrupt or otherwise – of New York City’s political and economic elite.
What ever happened to the supposedly liberal, biased media?
Regards,
Frank Sellers
Philadelphia
I’m as liberals as any of the Times’s critics noted here. And I read The Times story and got the decided impression that the police were wrong and the protesters were right. What more can you ask?
The paradigm is shifting from conservative versus liberal to corporations versus democracy.
If the media can talk about the Arab Spring, they can talk about the Wall Street Fall.
What else can we expect from the mouthpieces of the corporate police state? Free and honest journalism died on the day Reagan trashed FCC rulings that enabled a handful of billionaires to consolidate ie gobble up all the independent broadcasters. That’s why Rupert Murdoch owns a third of our entire media and why so many people in the US have next to no clue about anything detrimental to them. Note when the racist right wing teabaggers who wave their weapons and threaten, they are called patriotic people exercising their rights. When peaceful protestors on the left do it, they are endangering the very fabric within our society that keeps us safe!
The NY Times story said: “The Police Department’s concerns came up against a perhaps milder reality…” and Peter Hart responds: “So a controversial, well-documented act of police violence was a “milder reality” of a concerned police force…” No, a “milder reality” than the Seattle demonstrations or the London demonstrations is what the protestors provided, and what the police came up against, as opposed to the dangerous situation the police mistakenly perceived. The central problem with this article is Peter Hart’s inability to read and understand the English language. Ray Warner, on the other hand, can read and understand the English language, and that is why he “read The Times story and got the decided impression that the police were wrong and the protesters were right.”
“But to the New York Police Department, the protesters represented something else: a visible example of lawlessness…”
Lawlessness. Big word, serious connotations. Conjures up riots and anarchy, criminality and violence. We are put off by the word lawlessness and sympathetic to police efforts to quell it. Right? So, is using that highly loaded term a bit of propoganda to help us take sides? Of course, the police may err on the side of caution by pepper spraying these law breakers, but hey, we can’t have people marching or protesting without a permit, can we.
Reading about the NYT’s ball-licking coverage of Occupy Wall Street makes me long for the day when some Times reporters get crushed by the police. I will revel in the schadenfreude. But to get clamped down upon, first they’d have to do something that challenges the authorities. I don’t recall any Pravda or Isvestia reporters ever being arrested in the latter days of the Soviet Union, so the suck-ups at the Times probably won’t cross the line either. I can only hope that the paper goes out of business, because what good is it anyway? Leave the field open for the New York Post, which at least has a point of view it’s willing to stand up for, even if it is the fascist one.
New York Times = the CNN of print. Media that WANT to be Fox, but that job has already been taken.
I’m so glad I moved out of the U.S. It’s more fun to watch the implosion from somewhere outside the borders of the imploding empire…
Bukko I want to be the first to thank you…..for moving out of the U.S that is!You must tell us what country won the lottery …….and got you?If you say France i warn you my eyes will bleed.Really give………What country matches your special brand of beliefs?
Good work FAIR.
@ Steve
Come on man. Only in imperial nations like the US could the domestic affairs of our rivals / military targets on the other side of the world be distorted by media into being of equal or greater importance than our very own homegrown police state. And that’s assuming the Anglo corporate media even gets their story straight…as seen here they can’t even get reporting right in their home base.
oh, my god. you are living your lives as the people did in the times of Franco in Spain, the sixties in the Brazil dictatorship, the seventies in Chile after Pinochet Coup d´Etat, Vietnam in the 70s war… ¿where is freedom of speech, and further more, freedom of concience and acting? How the US came to that dead end… Like the song goes… “Must be hell, living in the world, suffering in the world like you” (Rolling Stones)… solidarity with you…
That is some GREAT information. I am very impressed and can’t wait for more like it.