‘Who cares?’ About 7 million people, that’s who
Media coverage of Saturday’s ‘No Kings’ protests included the New York Times’s shrug
Asked to comment on the thousands of anti-Trump protests around the nation, a White House spokeswoman kissed them off.
“Who cares?” That was the dismissive response from Abigail Jackson when journalists asked her about the millions of Americans at some 2,500 gatherings — the largest of their kind in recent memory, although it’s early to know exactly how many people turned out. By at least one report, she also responded to a reporter’s query with this: “Cry more libs!” (Punctuation, particularly the lost art of direct address, is not the strong suit of this administration, though that certainly ranks low on the list of problems.)
At some news organizations, the response seemed almost as blasé.
CBS News, newly conservative, played “No Kings” very quietly on their website — by Sunday afternoon, you had to search to find it. And when you did, the first paragraph managed to include the Republican diss. It went like this: “Crowds hit the streets Saturday … to vent their anger over President Trump’s policies in ‘No Kings’ protests, which Republicans have slammed as ‘Hate America’ rallies.”
The New York Times was almost as unmoved, despite the many huge gatherings in the paper’s own backyard. The Times’s print front page on Sunday morning featured two small photographs, below the fold, and the story appeared on page 23. It was part of their wrap-up titled “The 47th President.” Not exactly a depiction of people power, although Times journalists had reported from Kentucky to Utah, and from Chicago to Washington, D.C. Commenting on the Times’s yawn, Columbia Journalism School professor Bill Grueskin told me, “It’s hard to understand why the Times would relegate its coverage to a couple of unreadable standalone photos below the fold of its Page One linked to a story stuck back on Page 23. And it’s not like they had such compelling live news to compete with the protests. Their top headlines on the upper-right corner of Page One — traditionally, where readers’ eyes go first — start with ‘Little Urgency from Trump’ and ‘Democrats’ Ads Make Old Pitch.’ A more soporific set of headlines would be hard to write.”
Far different was the coverage in the Washington Post, whose front page was dominated by a banner headline and three large photos; or local papers like the Missoulian in Montana, where a huge headline spanned the whole top of the front page, or the Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, Colorado, with its big quote-headline from a participant: “This is America.”
As CNN’s Brian Stelter noted, The Times of Northwest Indiana went straight at House Speaker Mike Johnson’s unfair rhetoric about hate rallies with its headline: “No Hate, No Fear.”
If you’d like to see images of these front pages, check out the Freedom Forum’s daily gallery, Today’s Front Pages here. And States Newsrooms, the nation’s largest nonprofit news organization, covered the protests in all 50 states. Here’s their wrap-up.
CNN gave the story a lot of attention, as did the Guardian US, which led its site with the story on Sunday morning while offering a number of sidebars (related stories) and continued playing it big all day long. In sharp contrast to CBS, rival networks ABC News and NBC News gave the protests a lot of coverage.
Fox News, of course, was doing its usual Trumpy thing with a report about funding from George Soros and one that claimed that organizers trying to destroy Israel had joined the protests.
It’s tempting for some — even those who strongly oppose Trump — to say these mass gatherings don’t matter. What do they tell us that we didn’t already know? And it’s true that they only really matter if the spirit of them is reflected when people go to vote, particularly in next year’s midterm elections. And those elections run the risk of being undercut by voting suppression efforts, as this story shows.
But I do think the protests matter. If Trump — or the MAGA movement — is to be defeated, right-minded Americans really need to care. They need to register to vote, to get others registered to vote and they need to get out the vote. Taking to the streets and feeling the spirit of like-minded people is a part of the foundation for that.
Readers, were you out there? Do you think these mass protests can make a difference? And if so, what’s your reasoning? And what do you think of the media coverage that you saw?
Separately, reporter Astead W. Herndon offered a revelatory cover story in the New York Times magazine about New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. The piece makes it clear that establishment Democrats have a lot to learn from this 34-year-old’s meteoric campaign. Above is a gift link to the article; it’s well worth your read, whether you care about New York politics or not. (Side note: Congratulations to my former Washington Post colleague and friend Swati Sharma who just lured Herndon away from the Times to join Vox as editorial director; Sharma is Vox’s editor in chief. Quite a hiring coup, since 33-year-old Herndon has been a major star at the Times.)
Also, here’s my Guardian column from last week on the Pentagon’s appalling effort to suppress coverage, and how we saw some media solidarity for once. I also appreciated James Risen, the excellent longtime national security reporter’s take, in Columbia Journalism Review: “I covered the CIA for a long time, and the CIA does not give reporters press passes. And in a way, I think it forced reporters who covered the CIA to be adversarial. And I think that’s been a long-standing problem with the coverage of the military. The reporters get so close to specific generals or military units that they begin to kind of carry water for them.” But, he acknowledged, “it’s going to be very difficult.”
Readers, thank you so much for caring about the relationship between the press and American democracy, and for your support and your always enlightening comments. Keep them coming!
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I wrote to the editor of the NYT yesterday about the lack of coverage- and perhaps others can do the same.
The news should have included the pathetic and divisive video Trump released, of a crowned Trump in a jet dumping human excrement on the marching crowds. Presidential? Peace-prize worthy?!
Let's start planning for the next one, folks. The people, united, will never be defeated.
I think mass protests do matter. Not necessarily because they effect change or even 2nd thoughts on the part of Republicans, but because they embolden everyone else. They give us comfort that we’re not alone and it’s ok to dissent loudly and publicly. I also remember how early protests against the Vietnam war were sparse and ‘controversial,’ but as time passed and more people joined, they grew and grew till a tipping point was reached and the majority had come to oppose the war. The lesson is, even if protests at first feel futile, they can be like the harmless snowball starting at the top of the mountain, gaining mass and momentum till they’re an unstoppable force.