1968 Democratic Convention

If you haven't heard the series on NPR's "All Things Considered"  where Walter Cronkite recalls important stories he covered, with lots of clips, you're really missing out.  Today he recalls the 1968 Democratic Convention.  The timing is obviously inspired by the upcoming Democratic Convention.
Listen to it--it's something else.  It's impossible to listen to this and not think about how crappy our media coverage has gotten, how many sacred cows have developed that the media won't touch.  One of the big sacred cows is police brutality towards protesters.  Nowadays, it's covered up--on this tape, you hear the commentator actually criticize the police.  It's clear that the cops are, if not starting the violence outright, escalating it by attacking peaceful protesters.  The crowd is yelling, "Sieg Heil" at the cops and it's clear that the reason that they're doing it is because they are taunting the police, who are attacking them with tear gas and nightsticks, calling them Nazis.  The commentators are trying to be even-handed, but their sympathies are clearly with the protesters.  Of course, it didn't help the police's cause that they were treating the press like they were just a bunch of worthless thugs themselves, no better than "hippies". 
Still, I couldn't help but reflect on how it would be if the 1968 Democratic Convention was covered by our modern press.  There wouldn't be a whiff in the mainstream press of any suggestion that the police started the fighting and the ruckus.  (Yes, I'm aware that the press gleefully covers police brutality--but only if it's an isolated incident with some sort of twist to it.)  They certainly wouldn't describe the police as "looking for a fight", no matter how true it was. 
They employed an equivalent to "free speech zones" at the 1968 Democratic Convention.  I don't know if that escalated the violence--but it seems to me that it may have made things worse.  By positioning the protesters as caged animals, it encouraged the police to view them as wild animals when they inevitably broke through the police's boundaries.  The press would probably be sympathetic, no doubt echoing the official line that protesters have to be separated from the convention, because of (fill in a 1968 equivalent of terrorists--Communists, probably). 
The protesters yelling, "Sieg Heil!" would be shown repeatedly, and probably with no mention of the police brutality context.  Pundits would gleefully point out that protesters hate America and no doubt love Nazis.  Polls would be taken repeatedly to show that the American people support the police overwhelmingly.  It would be forgotten within days, except when brought up by pro-war pundits as an example of how hating the war means anarchy and hating America.
I mean, I know a lot of that went on.  But I was absolutely floored by the reporting on this program, the willingness to point out institutional failures, to hold actual leaders responsible for bad decisions.  The person listening to these clips would be under no doubt that it was the police department itself that was not only falling down on the job, but willfully violating their duty to protect the peace by instigating fights with the loathed hippies. 
Contrast that to the fallout over Abu Gharib.  Yes, there were a lot of major journalists that pointed to leadership problems going up to the President, but I am still reeling over how fast that got buried and the whole thing got pinned on a few bad apples.  It's a great strategy, to always sacrifice a few "bad apples" and let the institutional abuses thereby go unchecked.
Anyway, I'm not media analyst and I'm a bit tired to boot.  But the introduction of this part of the program showed exactly how weaselly our major media is, even NPR, which is the best of the bunch in a lot of ways.  The 1968 Democratic Convention is a ghost haunting this election season, and I think that they chose to tell the story of it for that reason.  Good choice.  But then they decided to cripple the impact of the story by saddling it with the 2004 Democratic Convention, even going as far as to make a couple jokey comments about how the Democratic Convention will go off easier this time.
No shit, Sherlock.  The 1968 Democratic Convention isn't haunting the modern Democratic Convention.  No, the ghost of it is gathering over New York City and preparing to haunt the Republican Convention.  The Democrats got us into a phony war with a bunch of lies last time.  This time it's the Republicans' turn. 
The administration is all but spelling out that they expect protesters at the Republican Convention to be treated like terrorist sympathizers.  Hell, the entire choice of time and place to have it is meant to echo dramatically as a reminder that 9/11 somehow belongs to the Republican party.  The pundits are lined up, ready to remind the audience that protesting the President is protesting our very right to safety.  Fox News is no doubt thoroughly prepared to find the weirdest, most obnoxious protesters they can find and do a quick montage of only those people.  Let's hope that the cops aren't being whipped up to hate the protesters, but I'm not holding my breath or anything.  A million strong are expected and they are going to be corralled into a small area far from where they can make the statement they came all that way to make.  And once the cops start cracking skulls, we can hope that journalists are there actually bothering to show that the cops are the ones causing and escalating the violence--but again, I wouldn't hold my breath.  Because the first journalist to criticize the NYPD will probably be the first to get stoned by the right wing punditry who will wrap themselves in the events of 9/11 and declare the NYPD above criticism. 
I hope it's not that bad.  But I just don't see how that minefield is going to be avoided.

There's been a lot of talk lately about professional journalists vs. bloggers, with opinions all over the place.  Elayne Riggs recently weighed in on the whole issue.  And she's right.  In the mad dash for liberal bloggers to get the coveted Democratic Convention press credentials, what's been lost is that the convention is going to be pure canned, pre-chewed stories.  There's not much there that won't be covered by the major journalists really.  Not that everyone who's going should do anything less than a stellar job, of course.
What journalistic strength blogging has isn't going to be scoring chances to be with the big boys.  It's going to be in its accessibility to the ordinary people, not only gathering their stories but also giving a voice, and more importantly, an echo chamber to the things that ordinary people are talking about.  Steve Gilliard makes a good argument about how blogging's very ordinariness is its strength, because it's forcing the power brokers to pay attention to the little people.  So, it's really kind of silly to be bickering over getting an okay from the mainstream press--we don't need another branch of the mainstream press, we already have enough of them.
What liberal bloggers who want to make a name for themselves should realize, in my never humble opinion, is that they won't be making that name at the Democratic Convention, taking the same notes on the same speeches as everyone else.  Go the Republican Convention and join the protesters.  If and when the protests turn ugly, you can be there, taking pictures and otherwise gathering evidence--show how this administration treats protesters, prove that the cops were the instigators!  That's where bloggers can prove their value. 

Alright, that's all I'm saying about the politics of blogging itself.