ROLE OF NEWS MEDIA IN DELEGITIMISING THE ACTIONS OF PROTEST GROUPS

Role of News Media in Delegitimising the Actions of Protest Groups

Role of News Media in Delegitimising the Actions of Protest Groups

Introduction

Protest groups, challenging established orders, are regularly marginalised and delegitimised by the mass media (McLeod & Detenber, 1999, p. 310). Evidence of a protest paradigm has been yielded by past research on social protests' media coverage: a set of patterns of news coverage that characterises mainstream media coverage. Protesters are generally disparaged with this coverage, and such coverage hampers their role as dynamic players on the political ground. The absence of reverence for the value of social protest intrinsic in news media coverage has led to frustrated feelings among the protesters, which in turn has paid out for dysfunctional confrontations. However, at times, journalists become out of line from the protest paradigm under certain circumstances, for example, one of such aberrations was the May 1, 2006 coverage in the Los Angeles Times as “Day without immigrants” demonstrations. An examination of this news coverage unwraps that the protest paradigm's conventions were relaxed by reporters in favour of more positive and productive forms of news coverage, allowing a more functional discourse to come out of the conflict (McLeod, 2007, p. 185). The objective of this paper is to evaluate the argument that news media routinely ignore or delegitimize the actions and objectives of protest groups. This paper will address different scenarios when the protest paradigm's conventions were either applied or relaxed by the journalist. Recommendations will also be provided at the end for improvement of protest coverage, which could ultimately enrich the outcomes and dynamics of social conflicts.

Discussion

Media & the Protest Paradigm

News stories are often covered within the 'protest paradigm' context which, by means of its fundamental features of ...