It has always been the job of a journalist to write and make known the news of the day. It is in our curious nature to find out what is really going on behind a war, a scandal or a movement. Traditionally the media in America has sided with these protests, providing a more progressive viewpoint to many movements where none might otherwise be seen by the public eye.
During the middle of the twentieth century, racial tensions were higher than ever. There were African Americans being harassed in schools and people unable to vote without fearing for their lives. The horror of these situations were enough to gain national attention.
During the Vietnam War, there were riots in the streets and major protests organized in Washington, D.C., by the young people against the war. They hated to see our citizens dying in a war overseas that no one understood. The aggregation of these incidents were enough to gain the nation’s eye.
In the 1980s the big movements became MADD or Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Every other day one could open the paper and see a drunk driving-related story. Kids were dying because they were drinking and driving. This lead to the group MADD to organize protests and lobbying to make a difference. That caught national attention.
Today there is the #BlackLivesMatter campaign, which has spurred protests and even a couple riots across the nation over police brutality against African-Americans. Ask any young person today what they believe the most prevalent social issue in the country today is, and they will most likely refer to this movement.
All four of these movements have one thing in common that people seem to forget: each movement, no matter how just or how gruesome, rode into the minds of the nation on the wings of the media. Each one of these movements began as something small in a local community. It has always been the job of the media to help make a difference in the nation by giving small movements the momentum needed to carry out a national campaign.
There are those today that seem to have forgotten this. It is not just on the media to report but on the protesters to accept the burden of intrusion when organizing these campaigns. The students of Missouri have lit the provocative torch but have refused to allow anyone else to add tinder.
Earlier this month, the African American members of the football team organized a protest by refusing to play another game unless the president stepped down. The president stepped down shortly after. But the protest continued with other students to end the racial inequality at the university. These student-organized protests brought about the media.
When a student photographer at the university attempted to photograph and document the protests he was pushed out and told by the students to respect their space. This has become the case with many other media outlets and their attempts at covering the protests first hand.
This is a huge mistake on account of the protesters. The main goal of any protest is not to simply make a change for the ones offended but to attract as much attention as possible to the protest. Essentially the Missouri protesters are shooting themselves in the foot by now bullying away the media coverage. Without a realization that any publicity of this protest is good publicity, the Missouri students will not make any change further than their campus.
