As a side note, whie driving through several stretches of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia over the weekend, I couldn't get any radio coverage of the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament, and my only radio source of war coverage was NPR. As an example of how biased NPR is, even by mainstream media standards, while most radio news outfits cover the actual war, NPR seemed to find coverage of the anti-war protests far more interesting - and provided virtually play-by-play coverage. My general impression was that they'd start in Washington, and after several minutes, "we now take you to New York where protests are under way", and by evening "protests are winding down around the country, but protest activity is still heavy in San Francisco at this hour..." Unbelievable. And of course, despite this comprehensive coverage, almost no mention was made of the extremist views of so many of these protestors, nor was much shrift given to pro-war views, nor (unlike on DC Television that night) was coverage given to law enforcement professionals describing legal infractions by protestors.
That doesn't match my experience this weekend. I listened to some NPR over the weekend, and I watched some CNN and some Fox News Network. I wasn't glued to the TV or radio 24/7, but I listened and watched probably at least 8 hours over Friday and Saturday, about half of that being NPR and the other half being TV. The *only* news outlet where I saw coverage of anti-war protests and pro-troop rallies was NPR, interspersed with news of the war. That's not to say the TV networks didn't cover them, but I certainly didn't see it.
The times I was listening to NPR would have been times when nothing new was happening overseas. Instead of spending all their time rehashing for the 30th time the same events that had already occurred, they spent some time talking about the demonstrations and only rehashed the same warfront news 20 times.
Would you agree that the anti-war protests and support-our-troops rallies are valid news items?
Reggie Bautista
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