Glenn Beck's rally ignored by major media outlets (except for CNN, MSNBC, CBS News, ABC News, NPR, and Fox)

I've been to a lot of national rallies in DC over the past few years: anti-war, women's rights, LGBT rights, and others. These have ranged in size from 10,000 to over half a million attendees and have been organized by both mainstream and more radical organizations. However, I don't think I've ever been to one that was covered, live, from start to finish, by any major news network.

Must be nice.

I say this because Glenn Beck, host of today's "Restoring Honor" rally, likes to play pretend that he's a grassroots activist who is always ignored by the "liberal media." He began his rally today by joking, "I have just gotten word from the media that there are over 1,000 people here today."  I know this because CNN, MSNBC, CBS News, ABC News, and of course Fox are all streaming the entire day's events on their websites.

Okay, so corporate-sponsored Glenn Beck playing oppressed grassroots activist is not something that's particularly new.  But to take a jibe at the very hand that's feeding your ideology to millions of Americans via every major news outlet... now, that takes some cojones.  But I will agree with Beck on one thing: many large-scale demonstrations don't usually get the full, unspun media attention they deserve.  This hardly applies to anything Beck has ever endorsed or been a leader in himself, but if we have to agree on one thing, that's going to be it. 

What we might not agree on, however, is the role of Fox News in all this.  According to Glenn and his fellow talking heads, Fox News is "fair and balanced."  The people's network, if you will, but not in the icky socialist way.  And true, in the past 12 months Fox News has devoted much more air time to protests than other networks, though let's be fair... some of the only major demonstrations of the past 12 months have been organized by the Fox-supported Tea Party Movement.  But you gotta give it up to them for turning their cameras in the direction of the people, right?

Or do they?  I remember a rally I attended not so long ago: The National Equality March last October.  It was by far one of the largest and most inspiring rallies I've ever been to.  The single demand?  Equal protection under the law regardless of race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, class, etc.  It was huge.  Police and organizers estimate over 200,000 in attendance, though mainstream media outlets (including Fox, ahem) reported numbers around 75,000. 

The mainstream media, however, was definitively absent from the day's events.  As Jon Stewart so wonderfully pointed out, Fox itself used only a small amount footage from the march, footage that was initially taped by ABC News, even though Fox has a Washington bureau that could have easily seen the large crowd from an office window.

The kicker, however, was what Fox chose to report on instead: the same day, a small sidewalk demonstration took place in front of a Burlington, NJ school that had taught students a song celebrating President Obama as part of a Black History Month presentation.  The demonstration attracted crowds in the double digits, and Fox saw fit to send a satellite van out to the site to later show viewers where the crowd had been earlier that day.  The final tally of time the network devoted to either protest?  National Equality March: 3 minutes, 42 seconds.  The anti-Obama sidewalk deal: 8 minutes, 16 seconds.

I'll let Glenn Beck go on and on about his so-called "grassroots movement" spearheaded by one of the largest media corporations in the world.  I'll even let him make a complete ass of himself by holding what is essentially a nouveau-white power rally on the anniversary of (and on the grounds of) MLK's historic "I Have a Dream" speech.  I won't, however, allow his poor oppressed white dude personae pretend he's being censored or just ignored by the media when he is the media and receives abundant coverage from not only his own network, but competitor networks as well.  Mr. Beck, you are either an idiot or an evil genius.  (I believe I know which, and it's frightening.)




P.S. Okay, I won't let him hold his offensive mock-MLK rally unchallenged. I just don't have the energy to go on about that particular issue right now.  There's just too much wrong with what GB does... you gotta choose your battles, right?  The hijacking of the Civil Rights Movement is offensive, and that's all I really have to say about it.