Stenography Journalism, Oakland Edition
by zunguzungu
I want to start with this CNN article:
(CNN) — Occupy activists tossed pipes, bottles, burning flares and other objects Saturday at Oakland police, who responded by using tear gas and smoke grenades and arresting more than 100 demonstrators, city and police officials said.
Now, I have no difficulty believing that at least a few protesters threw things at the police, though we should also be extremely skeptical; they always say that, and it’s at least usually not true (or at least wildly exaggerated). But while I had an obstructed view of those events – and I know what I did and didn’t see – it’s very easy for you, when you read a news article like CNN’s, to not see the most important clause in the article, the last one, “city and officials said.” This indicates for you (or should) that CNN is essentially doing to OPD’s press release the same thing that desperate college students sometimes do with wikipedia articles: copy and paste, and then change just enough words so that it isn’t plagiarism. CNN was not there yesterday, so they only saw what the Oakland Police Department told them to see. OPD wrote this:
Officers were pelted with bottles, metal pipe, rocks, spray cans, improvised explosive devices and burning flares.
And then CNN wrote down a garbled version of it. Similarly, they took this paragraph from the OPD press release:
By 12 pm, a crowd of approximately 250 had gathered in Frank Ogawa Plaza for the Occupy rally. Just before 1:30 pm, the group started marching southbound on Broadway. As the group of approximately 450 marched, traffic disruptions occurred on downtown streets.
And (slightly) re-wrote it as:
The tension began Saturday around noon when about 250 activists gathered in Frank Ogawa Plaza. They were joined later by another 200 people as they marched around the city.
They turned “12 pm” into “around noon” and they copied down OPD’s crowd estimates exactly (ABC7 guessed 2,000; I would have guessed about a thousand), and slightly altered the wording to cover their trail. After that, to their credit, they found the time to copy and paste text from the Occupy Oakland twitter feed and web site. And then they called it a day and went home, apparently; while real journalists were still being arrested while doing their jobs (Susie Cagle and Gavin Aronsen were both arrested, despite having press passes, then later “unarrested”), the good people at CNN were finished putting the imprimateur of “objective” journalism on OPD’s press release, and laughed all the way to the bank.
Pretty much exactly the same thing happened with the New York Times article, which has exactly the same architecture: liberal excerpts/paraphrasing from OPD press release, followed by copied text from activist social media. Even the Oakland Tribune managed to not only paraphrase the OPD press release – and they’re a terrible newspaper, but still, they’re right there – but also to get the time of the weekly march wrong:
In what has become a weekly march, about 250 protesters gathered around noon at Frank H. Ogawa Plaza for a rally. At 1:30 p.m., the group began marching with a crowd of about 450 protesters. Forty-five minutes later, some of the marchers entered the campus of Laney College, city officials said. That was when police first fired tear gas, a witness said. At 2:50 p.m., marchers began tearing down perimeter fences around the vacant Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, city officials said. Police declared an unlawful assembly and fired more tear gas. Witnesses said police fired rubber bullets after protesters began hurling items at them.
That error (the weekly marches happen at night) is so pointless, and yet also such a rookie mistake that it gives the game away. To make that mistake, you have to know almost nothing about what’s going on in Oakland. And the repetition of the same numbers and times should start to feel like what it is, an activity utterly empty of anything like professional journalism. The fact that all of these “journalists” repeat the same ridiculous crowd number, march times, etc isn’t just an indication of their tendency to downplay activist mobilization; its an index of their basic and fundamental worthlessness as news sources. They’re just copying and pasting. Or take the line “some of the marchers entered the campus of Laney College,” another phrase lifted directly from the OPD press release: almost all of the marchers got to the Kaiser center by marching through Laney. It’s not important, but there’s no “some” about it; virtually all of us got to the Kaiser center by marching through Laney and anyone who was there would know this. It isn’t just that there are errors, or that these errors are small and pointless; it’s that the level of non-knowledge required to produce these texts is huge: these articles are what they are as a function of the total distance and disconnect from what actually happened and a total dependence on being told what happened by the Police press officer (and an inability to do anything more than write that down, and slightly change the word order to cover their tracks).
This is a small post; I will write more later. For now, this: I don’t know everything that happened yesterday; I know what I saw and what I didn’t see. But if you only read the NY Times, CNN, and the Oakland Tribune, you won’t even have the benefit of knowing what they don’t know. Which is a whole hell of a lot.
zunguzungu 
Also: “improvised explosive devices”? That’s a weasel word if I’d ever heard one.
Probably a firecracker
An IED (improvised explosive device) is the official US military term for what terrorists and “enemies” use in Afghansitan, Iraq, elsewhere. Its use in regard to Oakland is deliberately inflammatory, suggesting that the protestors are terrorists and enemies of the American people.
channeling your inner post-structuralist! 🙂
“[W]hat [this crappy journalism] does not see, is not what it does not see, it is what it sees; it is not what it lacks, on the contrary, it is what it does not lack; it is not what it misses, on the contrary, it is what it does not miss. The oversight, then, is not to see what one sees, the oversight no longer concerns the object, but the sight itself. The oversight is an oversight that concerns vision: non-vision is therefore inside vision, it is a form of vision and hence has a necessary relationship with vision.”
–Louis Altusser, *Reading Capital*
great meta-reporting, as always.
xo
aj
These pointless errors and liberal copying shows how little the main stream media cares about what’s happening with the Occupy movement. Evidently, they think that, if they ignore us, maybe we’ll just go away. Think again, sister. We’re not going anywhere.
The Chinees mayor of Oakland and the Police chief (who runs things) could care less by the USA Constitution. The OWS iS peacefull but the police do not want it that way. How long before CHINA WILL OWN THE WEST COAST?
WHEN THE BANKS BORROWS FROM THE US TREASURY At 1% THEN GIVE THE LOANS TO PEOPLE at 25% THEY KNOW THEY CAN NOT SOONER OR LATER PAY IT BACK (THEN IF THEY LOOSE THEIR jOB THE THE BANK CAN CALL ON THE POLICE TO TAKE OVER THE HOUSE . THE THE BANKS WILL SELL THAT HOUSE AFTER KICKING OUT THE OWNER. Then the bank makes a big profit on the taxpayers money that the present government bailed the banks out with, WITH THE VERY SAME TAXPAYERS PRNTED MONEY!
I WAS ALIVE IN THE LAST DEPRESSION WHEN THE BANKS DID THE SAME THING. SO THE PEOPLE WITHDREW THEIR MONEY FOR THE BANK AND THE BANKS WENT BANKRUPT AND MY GRAND MA LOST HER LIFE SAVINGS, AS THE BANKS LOCKED THEIR DOORS SO THE PEOPLE COULD NOT GET THEIR MONEY
WAKE UP AMERICA ,YOUR CONSTITUTION IS UNDER ATTACT BY BIG BUSINESS, GOV. PRESIDENT CONGRESS (all parties) . Next the Banks apprasers go all over the country and devalue the homes so that people are under water and could never get thie investment Back. Our own gov. (not following our constitutuion ) lets it happpen.
THEN IN THE WINTER WHEN THE OWS PEOPLE WHO KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON DO RESPECT THE CONSTITUTION. Then the mayors oF NY and Oakland call on the same taxpayes paid police to throw them out of their homes.
WHY? Because corporations now are declared by the Supreme COURT AS PEOPLE . OUR CONSTITUTION SAY WE THE PEOPLE NOT WE THE CORPORATIONS.
SO THE BIG MONEY FROM THE 1% WHO OWN THE TV , RADIO STATIONS AND NEWSPAPER, DO NOT TILL THE TRUTH. IF THEY DID LIKE ED FROM MSBC THEY WOULD BE FIRED!
SO THE OWS MUST RUN THEIR OWN INATIONAL NEW SERVICE AS THEY ARE NOW DOING AND THE INTER NET MUST TELL THE TRUTH FROM THE EDUCATED PEOPLE WHO KNOW THE TRUTH AND ARE JOINING THE PEACEFULL OWS. PLEASE IF YOU WANT A HITLERS GERMANY IN THE USA OR A CHINA GOV. YOU MUST RESPECT THE USA CONSTITUTION.
OUR COURTS, WHITEHOUSE, CONGRESS, THE POLICE AND THE MILITARY DO NOT SUPPORT THE CONSTUTION EVEN THOUGH THE TOOK AN OATH TO DO SO. NO WONDER HILARY CLINTON LEFT HER JOB–SHE KNOWS WHAT THE GOV. IS DOING TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE—DO YOU?
I have to argue with this racist (maybe just foolish) attack on her. Yes she is terrible. but really? Because she is Chinese American she is an agent of China? I simply cannot let that slide. We as a movement are smarter than to allow that kind of thing to go unchecked.
That aside, EXCELLENT article, and very very similarly to how I feel. Glad to hear the reporters were “unarrested” though I am not sure what that actually means.
I don’t delete comments, but I almost deleted this one.
There might be provocateurs planted in these demonstrations. This has certainly gone on before.
It sounds like the media are doing what they always do. I think this practice of transcribing press releases is fairly common in the press. I believe there was a study ~1990 that found half the articles in the Washington Post were based on corporate press releases.
Remember, there are two groups protesting: Occupy Oakland (large) and Black Block (small). Black Block does deliberately want to provoke police overreaction by doing some of the things Occupy Oakland people are accused of doing. The fact that the journalists do not know that two groups are operating, and are in contradiction to each other, is the most basic sign that they simply do not know what is happening. And they probably do not care as long as they get their stories filed.
Black Block could easily be infiltrated, even lead, by police agents provocateurs or agents of Homeland Security. That alone is a story worth investigating.
Black Bloc (spelled without a k) is not a group. It is a tactic of wearing all black as a sort of uniform to present a unified mass than a disorganized throng. It also encompasses maintaining anonymity when faced with violent authority figures, unarresting people held with zip ties and bringing stragglers back to the main group to prevent divide and conquer tactics from police.
That’s it. There isn’t a separate “Black Block” faction beyond people who are willing to use these tactics to promote safety and solidarity.
The non-groupness and unidentifiable nature of Black Bloc as you describe is one element (not the only one) that makes it easy for various groups, including the police, to claim, legitimately or not, Black Bloc status.
That’s not a criticism. Just an observation. I can easily imagine provocateurs getting into Black Bloc or other people claiming Black Bloc status and identifying as such who don’t maintain the same idea of what it is as you do.
“But if you only read the NY Times, CNN, and the Oakland Tribune, you won’t even have the benefit of knowing what they don’t know. Which is a whole hell of a lot.”
What kind of conclusion is this? Of course I won’t have the benefit of knowing what they didn’t know. Empty statement. Your article is pointing towards a much bigger indictment of absentee journalism, your conclusion left me feeling like you got distracted by a text message and posted unfinished.
A newspaper that writes an article about an event without having a reporter there — and hiding the fact that they’re simply writing down what OPD tells them — *is* hiding something, hiding their own ignorance. An honest newspaper would admit what they know and don’t, like, for example, “OPD says x, y, and z but we have not independently confirmed it” which would still be not great, but at least not an attempt to quietly deceive. By writing an article about an event they have no real knowledge of — no ability to fact-check or verify — they are being deceptive, and that’s what my last paragraph was about.
Actually, the key point, as the first commenter points out, is the mention of IED. CNN just teed up the terrorism frame for its readers. Joseph Goebbels would be proud. Stream a non-violent march and you make it a lot harder for CNN to create the drama it needs.
Hardly. Why go straight to Hitler, dude? Smearing your opponent by association is a universal and time-honored tactic.
And I think the bigger point here is that it’s accepted journalistic practice to “write about an event they have no real knowledge of.”
“journalists who systematically misrepresent events to justify violence against protestors are guilty of violence against protestors” (David Graeber)
https://twitter.com/#!/davidgraeber/status/163670156386631680
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The day after ‘Movin day’I wrote in a comment at Greenwald’s blog about this ‘stenography journalism’ in almost the exact same way as it is written about here. I posted that the OPD press release was being reported almost verbatim by CNN and others, and that all one had to do to prove that to themselves would be to read the OPD press release. The larger problem, or really the whole problem, is that that is how the mainstream press, which is owned and operated by the 1% operates on nearly all issues of importance. We have great bloggers/reporters such as Zunguzngu, Hyphy_Repub, Kevin Gosztola, and we have some excellent live feed people out documenting Occupy. That’s great and has really helped me to keep my spirits up through out this historical unfolding movement. But, ultimately, how are we going to get our truth out without taking on each and every lie told nearly each and every day without diverting so much of our energy to that task as to be detrimental and draining from other tasks we must face and are facing?
I know that was a huge and overly generalized question, but I am extremely interested in having that conversation.
[…] start by talking about this because I want to expand on the post I wrote on Sunday morning — and I apologize for the excessive length of this — but […]
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