The Occupy Movement and Media - Essay Example

The coverage, for example, by the global organization The Christian Science Monitor, the movement is painted as being misdirected, and a force that can potentially harm ordinary people. This is because, as that news outfit reports, the Occupy Movement has shifted its attention away from Wall Street and towards the pillars of the consumer economy, namely the likes of Wal-Mart and Amazon.com. This shift, according to the report, amounts to the movement waging a war against consumers, and therefore against the American masses (Lerman and Kaspersky). In London, meanwhile, the movement is being portrayed as one that disrupts preparations for the Olympics by an online media outfit catering to London residents. On balance, this coverage likewise portrays the movement as carrying the message of negative disruption of something good, namely, the Olympics. Moreover, the title of the news article clearly labels the movement as being “anticapitalist” (sic) (Bartholomew). Elsewhere, the influential The Washington Post portrays the movement in somewhat more positive terms. Going against popular media portraying the movement as without purpose, the article notes that in fact, the movement has a purpose, even if it is not well-articulated. Moreover, the movement has grassroots support from many sectors of society (Glantz).

Moving over to TV coverage, as exemplified by CNN coverage of the movement, the overall impression one gets is that of a group that is militant and aggressive in going against established authority. Recent CNN coverage is about the movement and the police in violent confrontations (Kastenbaum; Verello).

For the average citizen, of course, media is a primary source of input on the movement, and of course, as such the current media coverage shapes the message of the movement. As can be gleaned from the coverage examples above, the message seems to be lost in the more prominent portrayal of the movement as being violent, unruly, against ordinary consumers, and such good things as the Olympics. Seemingly more intelligent coverage and opinion, meanwhile, is not as prominent and reaches only an intelligent few. The overall impact of the media coverage seems to be a blurring of the movement's real message or messages, because of the noise and the chaos that the media has come to associate with the movement in general (Kastenbaum; Verello; Lerman and Kachersky; Bartholomew; Glantz).