2008 Woodie Awards
Robby, Asheesh and Howard have brought up some great points concerning the Condoleeza Rice speech protest.
I’d like to look at the protest in a different way, however - by defining success not as holding a moral high ground, or convincing the most Princeton students, but rather as attracting media attention.
Here is a sampling of articles on the protest:
BBC News World Edition: Rice warns against quitting Iraq
Voice of America: Rice Warns Against Abandoning Fight Against Iraqi Insurgency
Trenton Times: Anti-war protesters rally during Rice’s Princeton visit
North Jersey Herald: Rice warns Iraq pullout would raise terror threat
Hindustan Times: Rice defends military actions in Iraq
The Guardian: Rice: Iraq Must Not Be Given Up to Killers
Newspapers that weren’t local tended not to mention the protest. It is not the protestors’ fault - it is the way media works. Protests must be unusual to be covered in national media.
The media - even taken collectively - is not an objective gauge of events. Furthermore, news out of Princeton - if not done over the internet from livecast or television - tends to get written by Princeton students writing for the University Press Club - thus it is not even journalists (themselves part of the professional class) covering the protests. It is Princeton students, with all their biases.
With a view to the debate on this blog, then - the media, as usual, did not cover the protest in a way that might seem appropriate for ‘public’ reactions to a ‘public’ event. The disconnect between the sincerity and actions of the protestors and the media coverage they received is not only due to differences between conservative Princeton students and liberal protestors - it may be fated due to the nature of media coverage.
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