Next week, we're going to start our new season, The Real Free Speech Threat, covering the growing criminalization of environmental protest around the world. It's our first big cross border series, and it will include dozens of stories both in the podcast and online. One thing we'll be looking at in that series is the media's role in enabling this trend. Before you can criminalize protest, you have to vilify the protesters, and to do that effectively, you need the media's help.
Ivlando Cooper at Media Matters reviewed media coverage of climate protest in the US from May thirtieth, twenty twenty two to July thirty first, twenty twenty three for a new study. He documented a trend that we've been seeing too. Not only has the US media perpetuated the idea that climate protesters are uniquely disruptive and radical, but their general failure to cover anything about climate protest other than the disruption
that they call further perpetuates this thinking. Ivlando's research found that while multiple national outlets have run stories about climate protesters being annoying and destructive, not a single broadcaster has run even one story on the fact that nearly half of the states in the US have now passed laws criminalizing protest. That fact is both shocking and worrisome. We're going to get into all of that and more with Avlando after this quick break. I am Westervelt and this
is drilled. So I wanted to start by just asking you what prompted you to start looking at how media was covering climate activism.
Yeah. So I had been seeing these infrastructure laws, the Steady March, and state of the state of the criminalization of protest climate protests specifically, and so I wanted to
see how the media was covering it. The problem was, we knew that the media wasn't covering specifically the criminalization of climate protests, and so seeing this kind of global surge and climate activism specifically around kind of provocative climate actions and civil disobedience, we thought that was a way that we could kind of get at understanding how media was covering climate protests generally and to see if they were adding some context to these protests.
So, yeah, I know that just purely anecdotally. Whenever I pitch a story that's related to protest, it's kind of a hard sell, you know, It's like, what's really happening? Is it new? Nobody wants to cover a particular action, because then it feels like you're just doing pr for the environmental organizations. What do you outlets when they do cover protests at all, What are the sorts of stories that you're seeing.
So the vast majority of the stories were kind of dry recitals of what happened, you know, first, there still wasn't even that much coverage of I guess these more controversial climate actions, right, So we had to put that in context that I think a lot of these actions are designed for kind of social media of ability. But it's important for me to understand that, you know, social
media is its own kind of activism. But I think there are also a lot of persuadables, older people, older voters who were trying to get on board with understanding the need for urgent climate action, who still get most of their news from mainstream sources. So that's why we wanted to kind of focus on the kind of traditional corporate news media environment. And but all you would see really is just a dry recital of, you know, a
specific action. You didn't get any context about the urgency behind the action, why the people were protesting, And to me, it called to mind there have been a lot of really great justice movements that have employed controversial tactics, and their good faith disagreements within those movements themselves about which tactics to deploy. But I think a lot of those would have been much less successful if people didn't really
understand why they were protesting in the first place. And so the media presenting these climate activists is disruptors, as nuisances, as knucklehead kids who don't really know what they're doing or why they're doing it. Paved the way for me which I think is a more dangerous trend, which is where you have an organization like Fox News, which covered the protests with way more than other mainstream news outlets, and their coverage was full of derision, climate denial, and
mocking and even calls for violence against the protesters. So I think you have a mainstream news environment that when they cover these protests, they cover them is just the most basic kind of headline news rundowns these activists did this at this gallery, or they protested this sports event. There's no climate context, there's no context about the escalating criminalization of their protests, there's no context about the violence
being directed at them. And then you have a network swooping in and filling that gap with These are bad people who are protesting a fake thing, and they deserve whatever they have coming to them.
That's so interesting just how much the vacuum creates the ability to kind of do the Fox News style coverage and have it land too. But yeah, it's been very interesting to me to see how much the coverage focuses on, you know, how disruptive these kids are, and like, like even so, the example that is top of mind me right now is the recent New York Times piece where they.
Talked about the Arn't protests and how they're costing museums money, right, and I like completely coincidentally, I happened to be interviewing Joanna Altman Smith the same day that that story came out, Right, so like, this is she's one of the people who protested at the National Gallery. They put water soluble kid's fingerpaint on the display case of a dagd statue in the National Gallery, so like, not an incredible amount of damage,
very easy to clean up. You know, they read a manifesto and talked actually a lot about why they were doing this and whatnot. And she she told me she's like I spent hours, hours and hours talking to the reporter who wrote that piece about all of the reasons why, like it was worth the risk for us. And and by the way, this is someone who's facing a charge as a person who is conspiring against the United States. Yes,
it's which is insane. She's facing ten years in jail and half a million dollars in fines for this action. She has had her passport taken, and none of that was in the story, Like it's there was nothing about the reason for the protest. There's nothing about the overwhelming weight of the charges compared to what the action itself
actually cost. So anyway, it's just it's really interesting because I feel like that kind of framing really helps the criminalization of protests because it makes all of these protesters seem like annoying mosquitos, right, It's very dehumanizing. Was there anyone that you saw doing a good job of covering this, and like, did it tend to break down across sort of expected lines in terms of mainstream media versus smaller or more independent outlets.
Yeah, well, okay, so on on the broadcast side. Note, I mean they didn't they didn't cour it enough for it to even be meaningful on cable not really either.
I mean.
It was with sparse coverage, and what it was was kind of, like you said, just a kind of dry recitation, no context. The newspapers provided a more nuanced picture. Washington Post published the most stories. And this is just looking at print, because I know there were some on like online specific articles that were really harsh against the client protesters, and there were someone that were that were really kind
of wonderfully defensive of their actions. And you saw that kind of coexisting on the print side too, which to me is problematic because you're sending mixed messages to your to your readers. You know, I know you're trying to present a kind of broad outlook on this, but like you said, any any article that doesn't include the context about the scale of the protests versus the scale of the response, to me is not doing its job. So but you did have a more nuanced picture among the
print outlets. The New York Times published one or two decent pieces, so I think the overall, I can't say though, that there were very many standouts because among print, any standouts were kind of negated by harsh, chastising or decontextualized
articles that didn't present the whole picture. And I think part of what what angers me about this is that a lot of these papers, and especially on CAB when you see ANEMBC, present themselves as democracy defenders, right, But when it comes down to it, the people who are actually practicing democracy in the best tradition civil disobedience on behalf of a righteous cause, there these draconying responses to them,
whether it's legally or through the police. You had a forest defender murdered in Atlanta for protesting police facility, and
this doesn't get covered, it doesn't get contextualized. And so instead of being democracy defenders, while they're good on you know, the kind of right wing Trump stuff, they are completely falling down to me on the people who pose the biggest threat to with the system, which are climate activists, leftist protesters who are being demonized and humanized as you mentioned, and being criminalized, and this gets no attention in this corporate media sphere.
Yeah, did you look at all at whether there was any difference in how publications covered different types of activism, whether there's any difference in how they cover a climate protest versus something that's more like general interest democracy kind of thing. I feel like I see a lot more annoyance with the climate protesters that I've seen with other types of protesters, and it's really interesting to me. I'm like, where is this coming from.
So we don't have a data point for this, but I can definitely say that there is no small measure of respectability politics at play with regards to these specific protests, right because you know, they they cover Earth Day, right, you know, it's not well, it's not particularly great coverage, but Earth Day receives generally positive coverage, at least amongst the mainstream news. The youth climate protests for a few
years ago, right, we're generally well received. You know, they're deemed to be you know, proper way of protesting, you know, marching in the streets, holding signs. When it comes to any anything slightly more subversive or direct, you do see a lot of this handing, specifically with regardless of climate.
You know, you can argue that the BLM protests were disruptive, they were allowed, they were aggressive, and you know, they got their point across, but the media didn't cover them like they cover climate activists, right because rightfully so, criminal justice demand for criminal justice and racial justice are deemed to be worthy causes and their protests given more leeway
and how they agitate for those causes. But something about climate or if it's not done, and it's a very specific way, it's very kind of old school style protests. Anything slightly provocative is really integrated, and it's viewed as illegitimate.
Yeah, you know, we did this episode Mary and I when we were doing hot Take. We did this episode maybe like two or three years ago talking to Reverwood about how like, in the early days of the environmental movement, a lot of the environmental organizations were very specifically not wanting to engage.
In either class struggle or racial equity, and part of why they had created this whole separate environmental thing was to be like, we're not engaging with that, you know. And now I feel like climate has become a broader movement and it has become more of a challenge to certain class and racial problems as well. And I wonder if, like, I don't know, maybe it's just as simple as like, hey, it's a threat to capital.
I mean, let's get to the core of it, right, I mean, the core of the of the problem is that the media, you know, despite you know, certain instances we're talking about broadcasts and cave of news right now, they're they're kind of they don't really do a great job on climate already. Right climate is not a top priority. It's not covered like it needs to be. It's not providing the context and substances it needs to be right
outside of a few moments in a few instances. So already climate isn't taken seriously enough by these corporate news outlets. Then on top of it, you add climate driven protests, and then you add a climate during protest that are deemed disrespectful or illegitimate because of the form of protest. You know, you have this ready made recipe to either
ignore or distort what the protests are. And then you add on the threat that they posed to vested interests like the FALSS fuel industry, because all of the demands are you know, immediately transition away from a false fuel economy in order to thwart climate change. You got to add that messaging in as well. I mean, it's just it's a perfect recipe for poor coverage.
Yeah, have you gotten any sense in looking at all of the coverage that may be part of it too.
Is the way that controversy sells. Having a bad guy always kind of you know, brings people into a story. There's just that kind of framing happening too, to make the story more interesting.
I mean, definitely on a I mean, that's that's the thing right on the Fox side, definitely. You know, however you feel about these protests, they are designing to get media attention, and they do get a lot of social media attention. I thought they would be getting a lot more attention on broadcasting cable news, but they didn't, which is why Fox saw a ready made villain for their audience and they seized it. You know, they seized that narrative and they hammered it home time and again what
you got from the from mainstream corporate news was basically indifference. Yeah, which to me, you know, yeah, so it's weird. You have protests designed to write media attention and it got mostly indifference from the from the main from the mainstream media sources. But Fox definitely saw that narrative that you point, know of already made villain. I think you know you
were talking about the weird tenor of the coverage mounted protests. Yeah, another weird thing for me, which I would have at least captured in some of the methodology, right, is, Yeah, the media is complete lack of concern for the surveillance capitalism state that is literally being built around us in the shadows, and you don't hear about it at all, and to me, more so to even protests, it's a direct threat to how journalists can do their job.
Totally.
Yes, it's really interesting, and I wanted to ask you too about the I know I've seen several stories in this vein and I'm curious if you saw this emerging as sort of a thread, But I do see coverage of like who's.
Funding these activists, and not not just in the Fox News you know, Sorrows Checks kind of way, but like you know, the Near again, the New York Times, sorry New York Times, but they read they ran a story I don't know, maybe two years ago where the focal point was that like a lot of the organizations that are funding activism, their money comes.
From oil airs basically. But it was very much in this like Soros checks kind of framing, and again there wasn't much in there about why the individual people showing up to these actions felt compelled to be doing this work. And the idea that someone would be engaging in activism as their job is like really vilified in the media like that automatically means you're not credible, you're biased or whatever,
like you're a paid actor, that kind of thing. And I mean, I don't know, I'm like, people have to eat and pay rent. I don't think it's terrible for someone to devote their life to something that they actually feel strongly about. You know, that's usually applauded in many areas of society. So yeah, I'm just I'm curious what you've seen on the coverage of the money side of things.
Yeah, I remember reading that article, and they seem more upset that she was a class trader than you know, than anything, right. I mean, you know, I think transparency and funding of journalists can dig into that stuff and highlight it. I think an informous public discourse. But you know, it's very one sided because ALEC is pushing a lot of these infrastructure laws, and the false few industry is behind them. It's funding them to push these criminalization of protests,
domestic terrorism, all this kind of draconian stuff. But you never hear about this industry who's being greenwashed in the mainstream media on the backhand pushing laws that would that literally undermine democratically protected protest. So yeah, yeah, if you want to cover the money trail, cover it for both sides, and I think you'll find much deeper pockets on a fossil fuel and then you will on a few rich progressives funding some climate activist groups.
Yeah. I can't think of a single mainstream outlet that I've seen even cover the critical Infrastructure laws, which like seems like a pretty big deal. Post has covered it, The Intercept, Unicorn Riot, you know, these kinds of outlets. The Guardian has covered it. That seems like it would make for really good TV. That story.
You know, I always think, like the generalists print and online during has worked so hard. These stories are already prepackaged, right, so building a news segment around it, to me doesn't seem like that big of a stretch because most of the work's been done, but you still don't see it.
It's been very well documented that the fossil fuel industry funded that work. American fuel and petrol chemicals helped to write the legislation. I mean, it's literally it's all there in some.
Ways, you know, like we're doing this series and some of the stories I'm kind of like, isn't that old news?
But I'm like, well, it hasn't actually really broken through somehow to people that this is happening. And I also feel like, actually it has bipartisan appeal when I talk to people who are otherwise fairly right wing about and I don't even tell them that it's related to climate protest in particular. I just criminalization of protest. They're like, that's not right, you know what es should be happening, you know, So I don't. I don't know. It's very strange.
I mean, there are people in my life who, you know, who I love, but who get their news primarily from kind of the main corporate They don't get much of their news from online news sources, independent news sources, and yeah they don't you know, every time I publish something or share something with them, they have no idea that this stuff is going on. Yeah, I mean, no idea. And to me that's a complete dereliction of duty.
Yes, especially when you're talking about laws that criminalize sort of a key part of democracy in this way. I just it's really shocking that it's not everywhere. In general, I feel like the we just are so far away from the media kind of taking any responsibility for this stuff.
I mean, I guess it wouldn't matter as much if so many voting age people still didn't primarily get their news from one of these mainstream news sources. And I think these are these are people that we need to reach in order to actually drive climate action, to put profession on politicians and policy makers, and you know, I think that's why it's so important. If they're not hearing about any of this stuff, Yeah, it's it's just only going to get worse.
Yeah. Is there anything that you've found in the study that we didn't talk about already that you want to make sure people know about.
I think the media they think that if they mentioned climate change or connected to an extreme whether you're in you know, that is an improvement. But this is what should have been happening ten twenty years ago. What they don't understand is that they have to rapidly improve their coverage to catch up to where we are now. We're way past just mentioning climate change. I mean, like you mentioned climate I mean, thank you for doing it again.
Keep doing it, Yes, but you have to like rapidly scale up the quality of your courage and I just don't. I think they're still caught up in well, we were mentioned in climate, we're saying extreme weather. But we're way past that and they need to really and the more people, more groups can agitate for that kind of rapid improvement, yes, shame shame them, I think the better