There was another huge but entirely peaceful antiwar rally Saturday, this time in Florence, Italy.

I get the idea that these enormous gatherings of antiwar demonstrators are creating some problems for the media.

Here's a small sampling from some major news sources reporting in early editions on Monday 11/11.

All of the following stories were "buried ", i.e. not given front page coverage, with the single exception (among sources I checked) of the LA Times, qv.



MSNBC (AP source):

"There was no count from police, but organizers said 400,000 people from across Europe marched."

USA Today (AP source):

"Police in Florence said about 450,000 people took part in the demonstration, the highlight of an anti-globalization gathering here that started Wednesday and ends Sunday. The figure was more than twice the number expected.

"Organizer Vittorio Agnoletto estimated the crowd at 800,000 to 1 million."

Then there are these organizations. <a href=http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/11/10/world/main528797.shtml">;
CBS at least, included coverage from Florence in their article:
"Brussels Anti-War Protest Turns Violent"
(Florence coverage half-way down), while CNN and ABC apparently ignored the much larger Florence rally in their early Monday editions, and instead focused on the much smaller Brussels rally, where violence was reported.

Finally, the online BBC, two levels deep, offered its take on the Florence rally:

"There was no official police count of the numbers taking part, but observers estimated that about 300,000 people had turned out. "

In its Sunday print edition, the LA Times once again had a front page photograph with caption tying into its page 3 coverage of the Florence event.

"Police estimated the crowd at 450.000".

Interestingly, the two reporters credited for this story filed their pieces from Rome and Moscow.

Check out your local Sunday paper. See any coverage of this big rally in Italy? And how many read about or were informed by their media of the 9/29 rally in Great Britian where another 450,000 were reported to have demonstrated? The BBC and CNN reported that about 30,000 took part in that event.

The myth of the "Liberal Media" will die a hard death, and only when people begin to open their eyes and think for themselves.

Individual reporters may be liberal, but none of them decides which stories will fill the front pages, which will be buried, and which will not run at all. Those decisions are made elsewhere.

There are no large media outlets owned by liberals in this country, and that's why we'll have to dig a little to find out what's really going on in the world, like the true number of protesters at antiwar rallies, or even whether or not the local police provided crowd estimates.

Discrepencies in media coverage hint at hidden agendas and biases.

sp