March 28, 2003
'Trib' Continues Pro-Business Anti-Protest Slant
This week's Tuesday edition of the Portland Tribune (as mentioned here previously) went out of its way to let the Portland Business Alliance rant and rave about downtown protests.
Today's edition simply offers its own smear piece about protestors. While Jennifer Anderson briefly (and I mean very briefly; blink and you'll miss it) allows that peaceful protests do exist, her hatchet job mainly consists of subjective accounts such as this one:
Bertrand DeBruge, a Portland State University student trying to catch a bus home, said he and a friend ran into a group of protesters being corralled by police March 20 on Southwest Second Avenue. The experience was scary.
"We heard this ruckus," he said. "There was screaming, and a woman's voice yelling 'Go, go, go, go.' There were 20 to 30 people rushing at us."
As I've asserted before, I have no problem with the need to keep the conversation about downtown protests expansive. Business impacts, emergency vehicle routes, overtimes costs -- there are all legitimate issues to have as part of the discussion.
But articles such as the one in today's Tribune are not part of a conversation. They are part of continuing attempts (I won't call them concerted because I am not a civic conspiratorialist) to demonize the antiwar movement. For all I know it's not even intentional. Maybe it's just piss-poor journalism.
The effect, however, is the same. The growing trend in local protest coverage of lining up against dissenters, falsely claiming that they are ruining our fair city and running wild in the streets.
Comments (1)
bertrand DeBruge on 28 Jan 2005
The scary experience was less in that 20-30 (actually probably closer to 50) fearful, nearly panic-stricken humans were sprinting directly toward us than in the realization that we might well find ourselves mistaken by the overly excited, mace-spraying, military-looking vehicle laden with troups in uniform, for protestors. We were simply headed home from a restaurant when this happened.