[rad-green] With People in the Streets Worldwide, Media Focus Uniquely on Hong Kong

https://fair.org/home/with-people-in-the-streets-worldwide-media-focus-uniquely-on-hong-kong/

*FAIR          DECEMBER 6, 2019*

With People in the Streets Worldwide, Media Focus Uniquely on Hong Kong In
total, there have been 737 stories on the Hong Kong protests, 12 on
Ecuador, 28 on Haiti and 36 on Chile. The target of Hong Kong’s protesting
is an official enemy of the US, hence the extent and favorability of the
coverage.

*ALAN MACLEOD*

[image: New York Times photo of Hong Kong militants]

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[image: CNN: Joshua Wong and Other Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Leaders Arrested
Ahead of Rallies]

*Unlike protests against US client states, the Hong Kong demonstrations
were frequently given the approving “pro-democracy” label (CNN, 8/30/19
<https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/29/asia/hong-kong-joshua-wong-arrest-intl-hnk/index.html>).*

2019 may be remembered as the year of the protest, as demonstrations are
engulfing the world. From the Yellow Vests in France to demonstrations in
Lebanon, Gaza, Chile, Ecuador and Haiti, sustained movements all over the
planet have taken to the street demanding change. Yet US corporate media
have been disproportionately interested in only one: the Hong Kong protests.

As FAIR argued previously (*FAIR.org*, 10/26/19
<https://fair.org/home/the-revolution-isnt-being-televised/>), this
disparity in coverage can largely be explained by understanding who is
protesting and what they are protesting against. The unrest in Hong Kong
flared up in March in response to a proposed extradition treaty
<https://thediplomat.com/2019/06/hong-kongs-extradition-bill-and-taiwans-sovereignty-dilemma/>
between
the island city, the Chinese central government and Taiwan, which many
residents feared would be used by Beijing authorities to arrest and
persecute opponents of the Chinese state. Thus, the target of Hong Kong’s
protesting is an official enemy of the US, hence the extent and
favorability of the coverage.

FAIR conducted a study of *New York Times* and *CNN* coverage of four
important protest movements around the world: Hong Kong, Ecuador, Haiti and
Chile. Those outlets were chosen for their influence and their reputation
as the most important, agenda-setting outlets in the print and television
media. Full documentation, including links to all articles in the sample,
can be found here
<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11HKhkg1bZ_XTyFofnnYHi0DteBLYaI47Mh8kzm_LO8w/edit?usp=sharing>.
All relevant results to “country+protests” on those outlets’ websites were
counted, except purely rehosted content, since each protest began. This was
March 15 for Hong Kong, October 3 for Ecuador, October 14 for Chile and
July 7, 2018, for Haiti. The end date for the study was November 22, 2019.
[image: NYT and CNN Protest Coverage]

*Protest stories in the New York Times and CNN through November 22, 2019.*



In total, there have been 737 stories on the Hong Kong protests, 12 on
Ecuador, 28 on Haiti and 36 on Chile. As the graph illustrates, both the
*Times* and *CNN* had similar ratios of coverage.
[image: CNN: Ecuador government leaves capital city amid violent protests]

*CNN devoted only two stories to the protests in Ecuador, in which eight
people were killed.*

This enormous disparity cannot be explained by the other protests’ size or
significance, nor the severity of the repression meted out by security
services. After barely a week’s worth of turmoil, the death toll in Ecuador
was eight, according
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/16/ecuador-indigenous-protesters-bittersweet-triumph>
to
that government’s own Human Rights Defender, while the UN confirms that 42
Haitians have been killed
<https://reliefweb.int/report/haiti/press-briefing-note-haiti-unrest-1-november-2019>
in
the last two months alone. And in Chile, where right-wing President
Sebastian Piñera literally declared war
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/23/chile-protest-war-pinera-inequality>
on
the population, sending tanks
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnDn-SBOoLY> through
the streets, 26 have died
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/26/chile-troops-sebastian-pinera-reports-abuses>
 and over 26,000
<https://www.elciudadano.com/chile/26-mil-personas-han-sido-detenidas-en-todo-el-pais/11/14/>
have
been arrested. In contrast, no one has died at the hands of the Hong Kong
security forces, although one protester died after falling from a building
<https://www.npr.org/2019/11/08/777524249/grief-sweeps-through-hong-kong-where-protesters-death-portends-further-unrest>,
and a 70-year-old man
<https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-23/hong-kong-protesters-who-killed-elderly-man-urged-come-forward/11732536>
was
killed by a brick thrown by protesters, both deaths occurring in November
after months of demonstrations.

Of course, the protests in Chile and Ecuador started well after Hong Kong,
so it would be unwise to compare the totals directly. But even taking that
into account, the disparity is still enormous; during the hottest moments
of the Ecuador crisis (October 3–14), the *New York Times* ran six stories
covering it, *CNN* three. This is in contrast to 33 and 38 articles on Hong
Kong over the same time period. And since the beginning of the Chilean
protests (October 14), while the *Times* has covered the event 14 times and
*CNN* 22, the two news organizations ran 59 and 92 articles on Hong Kong,
respectively.

Meanwhile, the Haitian protests have been raging for twice as long as Hong
Kong, yet the coverage of the far more deadly repression on the Caribbean
island has been minute in comparison, with Hong Kong receiving more than 50
times the total attention Haiti has.

However, the quantitative difference, while great, actually undersells the
disparity of the coverage in a number of important ways. Firstly, many
Ecuador and Chile stories were not focused on events in those countries,
but were merely “protests around the world” roundup articles, with barely a
sentence or two about events (e.g., *New York Times*, 10/23/19
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/world/middleeast/global-protests.html?searchResultPosition=72>;
*CNN*, 11/3/19
<https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/03/world/joker-global-protests-trnd/index.html>).
In fact, *CNN* has run a total of only two stories (10/8/19
<https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/13/americas/ecuador-protest-curfew-intl/index.html>
, 10/13/19
<https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/13/americas/ecuador-protest-curfew-intl/index.html>)
focused mainly on the events in Ecuador. In contrast, the great majority of
the Hong Kong stories were dedicated to events on the island city-state,
and articles that merely mentioned the protests, such as *CNN*’s report (
11/13/19
<https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/13/investing/asian-market-latest/index.html>)
about the decline in the Asian stock market, were not included in the count
towards the Hong Kong total. Meanwhile, almost half of *CNN*’s Haiti
coverage (e.g., 2/16/19
<https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2019/02/16/tourists-haiti-evacuated-protests-ac360-sot-vpx.cnn>
, 2/18/19
<https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/18/americas/americans-arrested-in-haiti/index.html>)
centered on US citizens affected in some way by the upheaval.
[image: NYT: After Fare Hike Stirs Violent Unrest in Chile, President
Suspends It]

*Chilean protesters were more likely to be described as “violent unrest”
(New York Times, 10/19/19
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/19/world/americas/chile-protests-emergency.html>)
than as “pro-democracy activists.”*

Demonstrators in Hong Kong are almost universally referred to as
“pro-democracy protesters” (e.g. *CNN*, 8/30/19
<https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/29/asia/hong-kong-joshua-wong-arrest-intl-hnk/index.html>
, 10/15/19
<https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/15/politics/hong-kong-house-vote/index.html>; *New
York Times*, 10/15/19
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/business/hong-kong-starbucks-vandalism.html>
, 11/21/19
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/21/us/politics/trump-hong-kong-china.html>),
whereas the protests rocking Chile were commonly denigrated as “riots”
(e.g., *CNN*, 10/19/19
<https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/19/americas/chile-protests-intl/index.html>)
or “looting and arson” (*New York Times*,  10/19/19
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/19/world/americas/chile-protests-emergency.html>).
Likewise, the violence of the Ecuadorian protestors was constantly
emphasized (e.g., *New York Times*, 10/9/19
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/world/americas/ecuador-protests.html>;
*CNN*, 10/8/19
<https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/08/americas/ecuador-government-protests-scli-intl/index.html>).
The “wrath of labor and transport unions,” *CNN* (10/9/19
<https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/09/us/five-things-october-9-trnd/index.html>)
told us, was “unleashed” as “violent protests have raged” in Quito, and
protestors held military members hostage.

This sort of language is rarely used with regards to the Hong Kong
protesters, even when it is arguably more applicable. In addition to
widespread
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2019/nov/17/hong-kong-protesters-set-bridge-on-fire-amid-clashes-university-video-report>
property
damage
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests-insurance/hong-kong-firms-lacking-riot-insurance-pick-up-pieces-from-protest-damage-idUSKBN1X001P>
and
the aforementioned bricking of a retiree, protestors recently doused
another elderly man
<https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/hong-kong-protests-latest-today-man-fire-national-identity-police-shooting-a9197846.html>
in
flammable liquid and set fire to him on camera. He spent more than ten days
in a coma.

The *New York Times* (11/17/19
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/17/world/asia/hong-kong-protests-chinese-soldiers.html>)
used passive voice to describe protesters shooting an arrow through an
officer’s leg: “A police officer was hit in his leg with an arrow” as
“activists resisted” the police onslaught to “suppress them,” it told its
readers. *Times* reporters also describe seeing the rebels producing
“hundreds or thousands of bombs” they were going to use. Despite this, the
paper continued to describe the militants as “pro-democracy activists.”

Perhaps most worryingly, *CNN* (11/17/19
<https://edition.cnn.com/asia/live-news/hong-kong-protests-live-nov-18-intl-hnk/h_7806c2a38f45d96f5f2b6eb1236e7ead>)
shared an image of a homemade gas canister-sized bomb, not unlike the one
used by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at the Boston Marathon, except much larger.
*CNN* also
noted it received confirmation that protesters had already used these bombs
against police. If, for instance, Black Lives Matter or Antifa had killed
passers-by, shot police or created Tsarnaev-style bombs, would they be
called “pro-democracy demonstrators,” as both *CNN* (11/22/19
<https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2019/11/22/hong-kong-china-protests-timeline-lon-orig-bks.cnn>)
and the *New York Times* (11/22/19
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/us/politics/trump-hong-kong-protests-xi.html>)
have continued to do for those in Hong Kong?

Corporate media has glossed over many of the more unseemly details of the
Hong Kong protests to continue the simple narrative of lauding the
“democracy-minded people of Hong Kong,” fighting for freedom against the
repressive “Communist authority” of Beijing, as the *New York Times* editorial
board (6/10/19
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/opinion/hong-kong-protests.html>) puts
it.

The quantity of Hong Kong articles is inversely proportional to the
diversity of opinion. The reality of the situation is much more nuanced,
but this nuance is entirely lacking in the hundreds of articles sampled.
Corporate media sing the same song on Hong Kong, presenting the situation
in a lockstep single-mindedness that would impress any totalitarian
propaganda system.
------------------------------

*Research assistance: Matthew Kimball*

*Featured image: New York Times photo (11/17/19
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/17/world/asia/hong-kong-protests-chinese-soldiers.html>)
of Hong Kong protesters with Molotov cocktail.*

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