News Media
Damn the New York Times and damn �permitted� marches
By Mickey Z.
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Sep 28, 2009, 00:15

On September 26, the New York Times deemed it fit to run an article, headlined �Thousands Hold Peaceful March at G-20 Summit,� in which propagandist Ian Urbina informed us of �several thousand demonstrators� converging on downtown Pittsburgh in light of that city�s hosting of the Group of 20 (G-20) meeting. Urbina called it a �peaceful and permitted march.�

The demonstrators, he said, were �calling for solutions to a range of problems that they attributed to the economic policies of the world leaders.� Later, he told of speakers urging demonstrators to �fight for an array of social issues they felt had been largely ignored in global economic policy.�

�They attributed� and �they felt.�

Okay, in a rare case of actual objectivity, Urbina was careful to clarify that not everyone agrees with the protesters. However, that�s where the any attempt at journalism ended. If Urbina were capable of even an iota of independent thought, he�d have found out why demonstrators feel and attribute what they feel and attribute. But . . . it�s so much easier to just describe what they looked liked.

Some wore fatigues, some chimed cymbals, one played a French horn, 400 �self-described anarchists� were clad in black, and dig this: one very radical group even �held aloft with bamboo poles a giant fabric replica of a dove.� None of these dissidents, Urbina reminded us, ever got closer than the steps of the city-county building, blocks from where the G-20 meeting was being held.

Ain�t dissent neat? Surely peace and justice will be upon us soon.

When telling his loyal readers about a group called �Students for Justice in Palestine� and what they were calling for, propagandist Urbina was extra-cautious to use quotation marks: �the Israeli occupation.� A practicing journalist might have at least used a search engine to include some context from United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 (1967), which refers to the �inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war� and calls for the �withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.�

Unburdened by such rudimentary journalistic standards, Urbina goes on to end his report by quoting a 20-year-old student from Duquesne University, who was somehow �optimistic that it would be hard to ignore thousands in the street.� As the student explained, �They will listen to a certain degree. They might not necessarily do anything.�

Take home message: Fuck the New York Times and fuck peaceful and permitted marches that won�t necessarily do anything.