The second of inauguration of George W Bush Thursday was met by
thousands of protesters who took to the streets of Washington DC amid
unprecedented levels of security to oppose the policies of the Bush
administration - but you wouldn't have known it by watching the
corporate media.

The major cable news networks showed footage of the presidential
inauguration on the Capitol, the motorcade through Pennsylvania Avenue
and President Bush and the first lady getting out of their
heavily-armored Cadillac to walk the last block to the White House. In
the evening, news anchors reported from glamorous events as they
followed the president and his wife to nine inaugural balls.

This past weekend, the organization MediaMatters issued a report
criticizing the major cable news networks for ridiculing the protesters
at the inauguration and for downplaying their numbers. It is estimated
over 10,000 protesters took to the streets of Washington.

At one point Fox News reported only a few dozen people showed up at a
large rally organized by the ANSWER coalition. On the next day the New
York Times reported thousands of protesters had shown up in the area
where ANSWER receive a protest permit CNN host Wolf Blitzer described
the protesters as "angry, angry people" and he also explicitly tried to
downplay the protesters significance.

On air he said, "We don't want to make too much of the protesters,
because we don't know how many there were. Certainly, the nature of this
business, the nature of television, we could over-exaggerate based on
the images, and they might just be a tiny, tiny overall number."

And Fox News host Brit Hume said the fact that protests were occurring
"isn't very important."

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/24/1542206

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