4 ms·

One thing that's interesting about all this is the media's coverage. The U.S. media has virtually exclusively covered the protests in Hong Kong, and barely ment

One thing that's interesting about all this is the media's coverage. The U.S. media has virtually exclusively covered the protests in Hong Kong, and barely mentions any of the other (often larger and more violent) protests.

chewz 7y ago
Better do not give people the ideas..
adventured 7y ago
> The U.S. media has virtually exclusively covered the protests in Hong Kong, and barely mentions any of the other (often larger and more violent) protests. That's clearly not true and very easy to disprove. Iraq, Iran, Chile, Colombia, Bolivia have all gotten continued coverage in US media. I can provide, say, 100 links to stories spanning all the major US news sources for those protests if you require it, dating back to the beginnings of the protests in Chile and going forward. NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, NY Post, NPR, TIME, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Hill, Bloomberg, Voice of America, Reuters US, CNBC and so on have in total covered all of the protests persistently. A quick drop into Google news with "Iraq protests" or "Iran protests" or "Bolivia protests" or "Chile protests" pulls up a lot of US news articles spanning the totality of the protests in question. Chile got enormous coverage in particular.
- jethro_tell 7y ago
  well, sure, if you're reading your news. I'm not sure why someone's surprised this didn't bump the dog riding a tricycle from evening news shows?
- dv_dt 7y ago
  Try France general strike protests to see a relative pacuity of coverage in the US media - one round at the start, and 6-7 days later, another round as the government moves a bit. Maybe a smattering a couple days ago. I think the assertion is not there is no coverage, just little coverage - and that's difficult to prove with data as it's a judgement call as to how much is too much or too little. It ends up a matter of opinion for the most part.
paulpauper 7y ago
that is because Hong Kong is very close to china, geographically and economically, so the stakes are higher. China under Trump has become more relevant than ever, compared to the rest of the world which has been pushed to the periphery
- microcolonel 7y ago
  Yes, this time we actually have a chance of fixing the mess we've gotten into with China. They tried to lord rare earths over the rest of the world, and it backfired massively, that's a great sign.
CM30 7y ago
The media coverage is likely affect by the increasingly elite backgrounds of people working in it, and the large corporations buying outlets/pushing more pro status quo views (for the latter, see Sinclair and their buyouts of local TV stations).
tempsy 7y ago
Not true...I can recall seeing news on Chile, Iran, Lebanon, Netherlands, Germany, France in recent weeks/months.
- chmod775 7y ago
  What protests in Germany could possibly have been large enough to make international mainstream news? There were a bunch of protests about mostly random things, but none were really large by German standards. Well maybe the farmers protesting (imteresting because somewhat unexpected), but that seems too boring from an international perspective.
  - tempsy 7y ago
    i'm thinking of the farmer protests on tractors
dcolkitt 7y ago
Have any of the protests been anywhere near the scale of Hong Kong? The Hong Kong protests regularly drew as many as 2 million people. That's more than 25% of the entire country. For comparison sake, that'd be like a single US protest drawing 82 million people. Even comparing to the Chile protests, those were just 1 million people in a country with 18 million. Proportionally that makes them only one fifth the size of Hong Kong. Plus the Chilean protests only lasted for a few weeks before quickly falling to under 10,000 people. In comparison the HK protests have been ongoing for nearly a year.
- incompatible 7y ago
  I'm not sure why the Netherlands is even included in the list. There have been some protests against specific government policies, but not an attempt to overthrow the government as such (as far as I noticed). Edit: Currently certain suburbs of The Hague are in revolt because the New Years bonfire was cancelled. It seems pretty childish, and I think most of the rioters are in fact children, but they have heavy weapons in the form of fireworks taped together.
- Miner49er 7y ago
  I'm a little late, but maybe Iraq is? I can't find anywhere online that mentions the protest's size, but security forces and militia have killed over 400 protesters so far. In some ways that seems to make it more newsworthy then Hong Kong. Here's an article criticizing the media for not covering it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/13/hundreds-iraqis-have-been-killed-medias-silence-is-deafening/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/13/hundreds-...

chewz 7y ago

Better do not give people the ideas..

adventured 7y ago

> The U.S. media has virtually exclusively covered the protests in Hong Kong, and barely mentions any of the other (often larger and more violent) protests. That's clearly not true and very easy to disprove. Iraq, Iran, Chile, Colombia, Bolivia have all gotten continued coverage in US media. I can provide, say, 100 links to stories spanning all the major US news sources for those protests if you require it, dating back to the beginnings of the protests in Chile and going forward. NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, NY Post, NPR, TIME, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Hill, Bloomberg, Voice of America, Reuters US, CNBC and so on have in total covered all of the protests persistently. A quick drop into Google news with "Iraq protests" or "Iran protests" or "Bolivia protests" or "Chile protests" pulls up a lot of US news articles spanning the totality of the protests in question. Chile got enormous coverage in particular.

jethro_tell 7y ago
well, sure, if you're reading your news. I'm not sure why someone's surprised this didn't bump the dog riding a tricycle from evening news shows?
dv_dt 7y ago
Try France general strike protests to see a relative pacuity of coverage in the US media - one round at the start, and 6-7 days later, another round as the government moves a bit. Maybe a smattering a couple days ago. I think the assertion is not there is no coverage, just little coverage - and that's difficult to prove with data as it's a judgement call as to how much is too much or too little. It ends up a matter of opinion for the most part.

paulpauper 7y ago

that is because Hong Kong is very close to china, geographically and economically, so the stakes are higher. China under Trump has become more relevant than ever, compared to the rest of the world which has been pushed to the periphery

microcolonel 7y ago
Yes, this time we actually have a chance of fixing the mess we've gotten into with China. They tried to lord rare earths over the rest of the world, and it backfired massively, that's a great sign.

CM30 7y ago

The media coverage is likely affect by the increasingly elite backgrounds of people working in it, and the large corporations buying outlets/pushing more pro status quo views (for the latter, see Sinclair and their buyouts of local TV stations).

tempsy 7y ago

Not true...I can recall seeing news on Chile, Iran, Lebanon, Netherlands, Germany, France in recent weeks/months.

chmod775 7y ago
What protests in Germany could possibly have been large enough to make international mainstream news? There were a bunch of protests about mostly random things, but none were really large by German standards. Well maybe the farmers protesting (imteresting because somewhat unexpected), but that seems too boring from an international perspective.
- tempsy 7y ago
  i'm thinking of the farmer protests on tractors

dcolkitt 7y ago

Have any of the protests been anywhere near the scale of Hong Kong? The Hong Kong protests regularly drew as many as 2 million people. That's more than 25% of the entire country. For comparison sake, that'd be like a single US protest drawing 82 million people. Even comparing to the Chile protests, those were just 1 million people in a country with 18 million. Proportionally that makes them only one fifth the size of Hong Kong. Plus the Chilean protests only lasted for a few weeks before quickly falling to under 10,000 people. In comparison the HK protests have been ongoing for nearly a year.

incompatible 7y ago
I'm not sure why the Netherlands is even included in the list. There have been some protests against specific government policies, but not an attempt to overthrow the government as such (as far as I noticed). Edit: Currently certain suburbs of The Hague are in revolt because the New Years bonfire was cancelled. It seems pretty childish, and I think most of the rioters are in fact children, but they have heavy weapons in the form of fireworks taped together.
Miner49er 7y ago
I'm a little late, but maybe Iraq is? I can't find anywhere online that mentions the protest's size, but security forces and militia have killed over 400 protesters so far. In some ways that seems to make it more newsworthy then Hong Kong. Here's an article criticizing the media for not covering it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/13/hundreds-iraqis-have-been-killed-medias-silence-is-deafening/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/13/hundreds-...