Monday was the one year anniversary of the beginning of the Occupy Wall St. movement. It was on this day last year that the first activists camped out in Zuccotti Park in New York City, and the media love-fest began. No broadcast organization supported and lauded the Occupiers more than the BBC. So, while I actually expected a little more noise about it from them, the special video reports make their bias evident enough. I guess Mitt Romney’s series of “gaffes” (no word from the BBC yet on whether or not Romney has actually eaten any babies) have taken up all the space and air time.
What did Occupy movement achieve?
I love how this is in the Business section, as if it’s a legitimate economics issue as opposed to a purely political extremist one. But where’s the “What did the Tea Party movement achieve” video?
Not only do we hear excuses from various Occupiers about why they haven’t actually achieved anything (“It takes years for a movement to do anything”), but the BBC found a Columbia University professor to tell you that they actually altered the national consciousness, changed the way we all think. What he really means is that the supportive media latched onto a bit of their lingo and promoted it to the ends of the earth.
In essence, the BBC is still presenting a hopeful picture of the Occupy movement.
This headline of another BBC report accidentally tells you the Occupiers’ real achievements:
Occupy Wall Street anniversary: More than 100 arrested
Getting arrested: that’s pretty much all they have achieved, outside of inspiring hundreds of Left-wing journalists around the country and in Britain and Europe.
The BBC will never dwell like this on what the Tea Party movement has achieved. They have to admit the real achievements in the House of Representatives occasionally in reports, but they do it begrudgingly, and it’s presented as a negative affect. There was no special feature one year after the movement started, never mind one a year after the BBC actually started reporting on its existence. But their darling Occupiers deserve special treatment, because the BBC staff supports their ideology.
For those new to this blog, here’s a trip down memory lane, a reminder of how the BBC gushed over the Occupiers (comments on older posts have yet to be retrieved from our former Blogspot home).
The BBC Loves Left-Wing Protests
Katty Kay and Mark Mardell Love Far-Left Protests
Laura Trevelyan’s Occupy Poster Boy Is A Raging Anti-Semite
The Sickness of Mark Mardell (officially about the Wisconsin situation but includes positive reference to Occupy)
Matt Danzico uses his Twitter account to solicit donations for the Occupier library
(okay, that one’s not reporting, just blatant evidence of their support.)
Just do a search for Occupy stories on the BBC website. The enthusiasm is evident. And I won’t even get into all the negative Occupier stories and facts that the BBC censored.
For those who have an hour or so to spare, please compare and contrast what Katty Kay and Mark Mardell said about the Occupiers, along with any other impressions you may have gotten from the BBC, with my own report after spending a few hours at Zuccotti Park. Who got it right? Who was more accurate about who the Occupiers were, what they really wanted, and what they were going to accomplish? Who had a better idea of where this was all headed?
