Analysis  of U.S. Mainstream Media: A Case Study of News Reports on Occupy Wall Street Event

Key words: Occupy Wall Street; News Value; Media Bias; Mainstream Media; Discourse Analysis

Abstract

The “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS) movement, started from Zuccotti Park at the Wall Street in New York City on Sep.17, 2011. It expanded to 951 cities in 82 countries around the world¹. The U.S mainstream media’s attitude towards OWS turned from ignorance, neutral, denial, to acceptance. Keith Olbermann, American political commentator criticized the initial media response for ignorance in the first five days.² Also, Chen Weihua, deputy U.S. editor of China Daily followed with a shameful “media blackout”.³ However, both of them failed to give comprehensive and multi-dimensional analysis except for small sample data and subjective tendencies. To give an objective view on how U.S. mainstream media defined news value by media bias detection, this thesis tracked news coverage and analyzed the content of 4 specific mainstream media on OWS from Sep.16 to Dec.16 in 2011, including 417 publications on New York Times, 268 on Wall Street Journal, 487 news coverage on CNN.com, and 286 on NPR.org. The author combined literature research with discourse analysis to conclude that U.S mainstream media didn’t have adequate reports in the beginning but followed by regular coverage with little bias. The reason for ignorance maybe owed to OWS’s unclear goal and blocking by government.

Introduction

Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was initiated by the Canadian Vancouver-based counter-culture magazine, Adbusters Media Foundation,⁴ which was inspired by Arab Spring protest from Tahrir Square during Egypt protests in 2011.⁵

Starting from Zuccotti Park in the Wall Street financial district, the OWS protest reached 847 national cities⁶ such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Denver, and 104 overseas cities⁷ including London, Toronto, Madrid, Barcelona, Sydney, and Rome. OWS was alleged to oppose income inequality, unemployment, environmental destruction, and oppression of the economic crisis.⁸ Until April 2012, there was no exact number of protesters, but it can be deduced to be over 100 thousand protesters and 1 million participants based on the reach of 951 cities in 82 countries around the world and at least hundreds of participants for each protest.⁹

The protests involved and were organized by anonymous volunteers without leadership in conducting their pleas by sit-ins, encampments, and parades. However, those numbers didn’t keep growing smoothly until New York police corralled and evict them from Zuccotti Park, called the home base of protesters, in Nov.15, 2011, for “health and fire safety” hazards.¹⁰

According to the 99 percent declaration of General Assembly,¹¹ the governing body of the OWS movement sought to “elect Delegates in the spring of 2012 to convene a Third Continental Congress. This was referred to as “The National General Assembly” the week of July 4, 2012, in the City of Philadelphia. It ratified a “Petition For a Redress of Grievances” on behalf of the Ninety-Nine Percent of the People of the United States to be served upon the United States Congress, United States Supreme Court, and President of the United States prior to November 6, 2012.”

As their slogan, “We are the 99%,” OWS protesters represented themselves as the 99 percent which indirectly refers to the concentration of wealth among the top 1 percent of income earners, and the rest of 99 percent are paying the price for the mistakes of the 1 percent.

The outline of big news during Occupy Wall Street movement from Sep.16-Dec.16 2011 can be summarized as the table 1 below.

The media response to OWS can be organized into three groups. One group of journalists noticed the U.S mainstream media ignored and failed to report the event. Another argued OWS was not well organized with a clear message.⁴⁹ Yet, the last group refuted that the protesters actually pursued “sustainability” and “consensus” rather than “victory” and “one-pointedness.”⁵⁰

Keith Olbermann, a political commenter of Current TV, was the first mainstream media journalist who reported the full protest and criticized the ignorance of other mainstream media on Sep.21, the fifth day of OWS. He said they were “Ignored by those who presumably support them, by those who seemingly should just be reporting on them.”⁵¹ When Ginia Bellafante summed up “pantomiming progressivism rather than practicing it knowledgeably⁵²” because of the ambiguous demands of OWS on The New York Times, Mr. Olbermann said “The protesters are not going to able to refine their goals based on reading bad reviews from the protest critics of the New York Times.⁵³” However, Mr. Olbermann didn’t explain why NY Times should support OWS.

On Sep.27, Joanna Weiss, from The Boston Globe and Lauren Ellis of Mother Jones magazine, followed by other journalists, criticized OWS for “circus⁵⁴” atmosphere and unclear message.⁵⁵

Until Oct.4, Richard Wolff was the first journalist who refuted the critics on unclear message of OWS in The Guardian and even encouraged OWS to invite and gather more people.⁵⁶ Meanwhile, Kalle Lasn, the editor in chief of Adbusters, which initiated OWS, believed that the movement finally hit the mainstream and became “a kind of a political left movement in the U.S., hopefully to rival the Tea Party.”⁵⁷

Literature Review

News Value & Media Bias Relation

News value is the criteria for media outlets to judge whether the event can be published and for the audience to determine whether to pay attention to the news or not. As Boyd put it, “News journalism has a broadly agreed set of values, often referred to as ‘newsworthiness.’”⁵⁸ Media researchers J. Galtung and M. Ruge summarized several factors to determine the core news value.⁵⁹

The most important hypothesis behind those factors is that the more factors an event satisfies, the higher the probability that it becomes news. If the media disobey the hypothesis, such as ignoring qualified-news or publish nonqualified-news (qualified means satisfy those factors above), we may suspect the media has bias. Media bias is the way media outlets or journalists violate journalism ethics and standards in selecting and reporting news. Different media have their own professional code of ethics, but most share common principles, such as truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness, and public accountability.⁶⁰,⁶¹.

Therefore, the content of news value itself can mirror media bias. Once the media publishes qualified-news, the way of narration or comment reflects media bias. For example, when the media’s coverage on OWS inclines to negative attitudes, it reflects that the media considers the relevance of OWS as negative effect on a likely or potential audience. This relation can be summarized into the chart below.

Based on this logical relation, this thesis narrowed down to analyzing the ignorance of coverage and partial attitudes within the discourse.

The Study on OWS News Coverage

To judge the performance of U.S mainstream media on OWS, many commentaries focused on whether media ignored or lacked adequate coverage or not. If yes, there would follow critics on media bias because of capitalism control. However, these commentaries were mainly based on authors’ subjective opinion or small sample of news coverage analysis (less than 30 days’ news coverage).

Protesters concluded that the lack of news coverage by mainstream media as “media blackout.”⁶² Chen Weihua, the deputy U.S editor of China Daily concluded that this was a ‘shameful’ media blackout, and questioned why mainstream U.S media chose to ignore the prolonged demonstration since the message from protesters was quite clear.⁶³ He also condemned U.S. mainstream media because it paid more attention to demonstrations in other countries, such as North Africa and the Middle East. Jon Stewart, an American political satirist, joked that the mainstream media coverage of OWS went from “Blackout” to “Circus.”⁶⁴ RT, the first Russian 24/7 English news channel, pointed out that CNN still ignored OWS until MSNBC and Fox swelled reports on Oct.12.⁶⁵ On Oct. 15, Vlad Teicheberg launched globalrevolution.tv for OWS, which was alleged to break mainstream silence and said, “This is sort of a model for a replacement of CNN.”⁶⁶ Chris Chambers, a journalism professor of Georgetown University, agreed that there was a lack of media attention on OWS and explained the reason was that mainstream media was biased from corporate ownership since the 1980.⁶⁷ Joe Pompeo revealed that there was plenty of coverage on OWS but none was big media news.⁶⁸

In addition, there were some comprehensive perspectives on the process of OWS. Jonathan Weiler classified the response of media into 5 stages, from Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. He eventually highlighted the fact that the failure of a media spotlight postponed the recognition and resolution of problems, which was from the beginning, “Denial.”⁶⁹ Anastasia Churkina described mainstream media performance in 3 steps, from Ignore, to Ridicule, to Undermine. It was said that media coverage peaked when arrests took place and mostly the independent foreign media gave in-depth coverage.⁷⁰.

However, in contrast, Jack Mirkinson argued that journalists were blocked from covering OWS. The Society of professional journalists and The New York Press club condemned the New York Mayor’s Office for arresting reporters.⁷¹

Methodology

Based on the small sample problem of previous literature research, this thesis tracked 1458 news coverage, including 417 news items from New York Times, 268 news items from Wall Street Journal, 487 news items from CNN.com, and 286 from NPR.org. News publications on New York Times and Wall Street Journal were queried from full-text database, ProQuest ARL (Academic Research Library) with key word “Occupy Wall Street” in the timespan from Sept.16, 2011 to Dec.16, 2011. News, special reports, commentary reviews, and op-ed were all included. CNN news stemmed from “search” engine with “Occupy Wall Street” on cnn.com, including video, news, commentary and special report. So did the search on NPR, but with more kinds of news coverage, such as radio and radio script.

For the sake of content analysis, this thesis reclassified all the news coverage into hard news and soft news. Hard news uses factual approach to cover subject up-to-the-minute news, such as news, features, video news, radio news, on-the-spot interview announcement, and hearings.⁷² But soft-news tried to educate, advise, or entertain people through special report, commentary, interview, debate, illustration, readers’ letters, and op-ed.

With the news coverage sample of the 4 media, the number of news coverage in time sequence showed media attention on specific news events during OWS. On the other side, to give an intuitive sense on the ignorance problem, the comparison of Tea Party and OWS protest on the quantity of news coverage in time sequence indicated whether the 4 media had bias on OWS.

Secondly, to mitigate subjective inclination of content analysis, critical discourse analysis was used to conclude whether the 4 media had partial attitudes on OWS. Wodak (1989:1) believed that Critical Discourse Analysis treats “language as social practice and takes consideration of the context of language use to be crucial,” in order to investigate critical social inequality as it is expressed, signaled, constituted, legitimized by language use, or in discourse. Practically, as Xin Bin (2002:38) introduced the methodological framework of depth hermeneutics (Thompson 1990:128), the analysis includes social-historical analysis, formal or discursive analysis, and interpretation/re-interpretation. This thesis adopted social-historical and discursive analysis. The former analysis focused on how the news coverage responded to social events and the latter analysis on how the news reporter persuaded with certain logic structures. Specifically, the two included positive/negative coverage analysis and collections of quotations in which journalists revealed their beliefs on CWS.⁷³

Based on the conclusion of analysis above, the author tried to deduce the reason behind the results and the need for further research on this issue in the end.

New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN and NPR

This thesis chose 4 mainstream media as sample study, including New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, and NPR. These 4 media horizontally covered multiple media, including newspaper, TV channel and radio, and vertically massive quantity and diversity of consumers.

Mainstream media are those media that represent the predominant currents of thought, influence, or activity by large distribution channels with the majority of media consumers.⁷⁴

Outreach of Reader or Audience

As for the outreach of readers or audience, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations FAS-FAX Report on U.S newspaper in 2011, Wall Street Journal ranked the first among daily newspaper with total average circulation of 2,117,792, followed by USA Today (1,829,099) and New York Times (916,911).⁷⁵ Meanwhile, New York Times reached the top on Sunday newspaper list with total average circulation of 1,339,462.⁷⁶ CNN was positioned as the top one consistently on average cumulative audience over its competitors. Throughout 2011, CNN reached 99.4 million viewers, 20 percent ahead of FNC (82.8million), and 23 percent in front of MSNBC (80.7million), according to the report⁷⁷ of Nielsen, a New York based global marketing and advertising research company. Even though Radio is alleged as old-fashioned media, half of Americans get local news from the radio according to Pew Research.⁷⁸ NPR ranked the third based on number of people who click ‘like’ for each outlet’s Facebook page, following CNN and Fox News.⁷⁹ It showed where NPR was heading on reaching audiences compared to other platforms and devices. With a network of 959 public radio stations, NPR reached 26.4 million⁸⁰ listeners every week and 17.2 million⁸¹ visitors to npr.org every month in 2011.

On one hand, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, and NPR held large readers and audiences in U.S. On the other hand, to satisfy the millions of outreach, it is reasonable to represent prevailing ideas rather than minor or marginal thought. Therefore, these 4 media are regarded as mainstream media in U.S.

Ownership & Operation

New York Times is owned by The New York Times Company privately, a Midtown Manhattan-based media company which has been traded and listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. is the chairman, CEO, and publisher of the New York Times Company, which also owns International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, and several related media properties, including NYTimes.com, Boston.com, and About.com. The company gained 93 percent revenue from advertising and circulation and spent 45 percent cost on publication and 48 percent on selling, general and administrative, according to the 2011 annual report.⁸²

Wall Street Journal was published by Dow Jones & Company, which is a subsidiary of News Corporation after an extended takeover bid in 2007. Prior to the sale to News Corporation, Dow Jones & Company was led by Bancroft Family for 105 years. The acquisition by News Corp. provoked media criticism and discussion⁸³ on whether the news coverage would be inclined to rightwing under Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and CEO of News Corp.

CNN, Cable News Network, belonged to Turner Broadcasting System, owned by Time Warner Company. Time Warner Inc. operates film, television, and publishing companies. It was the world’s largest entertainment conglomerate in terms of revenue.⁸⁴ CNN was the first channel to have 24-hour television news coverage and all-news television channel in U.S.⁸⁵

NPR, National Public Radio, as an independent, non-profit media organization, does not own or operate NPR member stations that provide NPR’s largest source of operating revenue, but they are licensed or affiliated with colleges, universities, or community-based Boards. These 266 independent member organizations operating 823 stations and 140 non-member public stations pay fees for the programs they choose from NPR.⁸⁶

Quantitative Analysis on Ignorance

Numbers of News Coverage on OWS

There are over 1458 numbers of news coverage from the 4 mainstream media, including New York Times (417), Wall Street Journal (268), CNN (487) and NPR (286). The Chart 3 below calculated the daily news number from Sep.16 2011 to Dec.16 2011. Sep.16 was the day just before the first day of OWS. Meanwhile, there was no aggregated report about OWS after Dec.16 until the author studied the statistics. The original data about Chart 3 is attached in Appendix—Data 1.

From the consistency of the trends, New York Times constantly reported on OWS since Sep.27 after nearly 10 days’ silence, while Wall Street Journal cumulatively hit 14 days zero coverage, CNN 18, and NPR 32. The degree of consistent reporting showed the level of concern and importance. However, this was not the only factor. For example, NPR possesses less reporters and distribution than CNN.

From a focus on the amplitude of the trends, it was obvious that CNN ranged the largest gap between the highest point and lowest point, followed by New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and NPR in order. NPR had flat coverage without big fluctuations. Still, it can’t be determined whether CNN responded to OWS related events or just because lack of other media agendas. Therefore, it was reasonable to check the relationship between the trends above and OWS events timeline. From news search on Google, the author pointed out the most popular (the number of clicks, shared) events as the big events of OWS (Chart 4), organizing into a timetable as Table 1 in Appendix showed.

After integrating news events of OWS into the trends, the trends almost fit with most big events---- when the event emerged, news report followed on the 4 media. CNN and New York Times followed ups and downs in similar proportion. NPR usually lagged by CNN and New York Times’ trends. But Wall Street Journal sometimes went opposite, such as on the big events of Oct.2, Oct.5, Nov.20 and Nov.26. To some extent, this suggested that CNN and New York Times set parallel news agendas which sometimes opposed Wall Street Journal’s. NPR followed others.

Comparison between OWS & Tea Party Movement

To compare the two, the coverage trends figured out whether this was the normal way for U.S mainstream media to report protests. Chart 5 (below) was calculated by the daily cumulative number of U.S. mainstream news coverage for Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street protests from the first day of each protest to the 30th day. The original data for Chart 5 was attached in Appendix—Data 2.

Apparently, Tea Party protests gained more media attention in 2009 than OWS in 2011. It was questionable to compare the total coverage numbers or simulate the trends. However, the first five days’ gap showed the inadequate coverage of OWS in contrast to Tea Party protest. Perhaps the mainstream media didn’t regard OWS as a worthy. Dick Meyer, NPR’s executive editor, said the absence of coverage was warranted because the events were not newsworthy and didn’t “involve large numbers of people, prominent people, a great disruption, or an especially clear objective.⁸⁷”

To conclude, OWS was ignored by U.S. mainstream media at the beginning but followed regular event-oriented coverage. Nevertheless, the trends could just show an ambiguous concept. It still needed specific analysis in news content as below.

Qualitative Analysis on Attitude

Content was analyzed by discourse analysis, including positive, neutral, and negative coverage analysis and collections of quotations in which journalists revealed their beliefs on OWS.

The way to judge positive, neutral, or negative news coverage depended upon whether the news author supported OWS with obvious main ideas or hidden logic.

The content of news follows with different types of news. Hard News is produced by regular journalists or other media’s reproduction, but soft news can be made by self-employed freelance, regular employee, special correspondent, or reprint from other media. Therefore, Hard News attitude can show certain media’s attitude directly but Soft News reflects media’s attitude by the selection of comments and their freelancers and critics. So Hard News and Soft News need to be analyzed separately. Take the following reports on New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, and NPR as example.

Hard News Attitude

Positive example: “As the protest ends, what now for Occupy Movement? by Eyder Peralta. NPR⁸⁸

Although this was a live news report with 2 protestors’ quotations, Eyder Peralta emphasized positive words to describe OWS, such as “organized,” “expansive,” “progress,” “success,” and “new phase,” Meanwhile, Eyder denied negative words, such as “despite a sizable crowd that overflowed onto the streets,” “something the occupiers have vowed not to do,” and “something the occupiers have never done,” As a whole, it was easy to tell the positive support from the author.

Neutral example: “Medical Triage At Encampment,” by Jassica Firger & Sumathi Reddy. WSJ⁸⁹

This news introduced how OWS protesters dealt with the descending temperature and other events. There was no complimenting adjective but all facts. Jassica Firger & Sumathi Reddy interviewed members and volunteers from Physicians for a National Health Program, protesters’ street medic committee, National Nurse United, Access Community Health Center. They described the whole health care system development from the former medic committee to cooperation among unions and formal organizations.

Negative example: “Wall Street Demonstrations Test Police Trained for Bigger Threats,” by Joseph Goldstein, New York Times⁹⁰

In this update news, Joseph Goldstein pointed out “the loose protest movement” broke the law by marching in the street without a permit. However, Joseph ignored protesters to prove this conclusion. He interviewed police spokesman, police official, chairman of the city council’s public safety committee, and the New York civil liberties Union, but no mention about whether protesters had applied for permit or how protesters responded to police arrests. The ignorance of protesters reflected author’s inclination of a negative attitude toward OWS. The same way was used to analyze all the news coverage on the 4 media; the results are demonstrated as below in Chart 6,7,8, and 9.

From the charts above among the 4 media, the neutral trends dominated the data and correspondently matched total numbers of trends, while the positive and negative trends were randomly and frequently positioned. This indicated that the major current thought of mainstream remained neutral but was combined with interaction of positive and negative attitude. As a result, the hard news reports didn’t turn to liberal or conservative bias.

Soft News Attitude

Positive Example : “Protesters: Today’s ‘rioters’, tomorrow’s righteous”, by Sally Kohn, CNN⁹¹.

In this special report, Sally Kohn directly put “Suffice to say I’m sympathetic with their (OWS) critique that our economy and political system is too beholden to the interest of Wall Street . . . .” Moreover, in the end, she mentioned “I don’t wonder why people protest. I wonder why more people don’t join them.” It was obvious that the author supported OWS.

Neutral Example: “Are crackdowns a turning point for Occupy Protests? By Scott Neuman, NPR⁹²

This article was kindled from police crackdowns in Atlanta and Oakland. But Scott Neuman didn’t stand on any side of police or protestors. He started from the news facts, penetrated into the two’s perceptions, and gave opinions on how violence affected each side. Even though he ended with “an impact on police,” it didn’t weigh much on police side since it did stress the influence of OWS on politics and ‘”long-term endeavor” for the future of protest.

Negative Example : “Channel protest anger into progress” by Brian Flynn, CNN⁹³

First, Brian Flynn put “Today, we see many groups of people jumping on the Occupy Wall Street bandwagon, and I have to admit it looks like a ton of fun, in particular the free cookies.” Here “jump” “particular” and “cookie” indicated the sense of satire on OWS protestors, followed by several rhetorical questions: “But what good are cookies without an organizing principle, or a well-defined idea of what exactly is being protested against?” It was apparent that Brian asked for clear goals and the organized principles of OWS. Then, “I will happily admit that it looks like the protest movement has had a good start, but without a specific ideal behind, the occupation will either fade or flare.”

Using the same way to analyze all the news coverage on the 4 media, the results are demonstrated as below Chart 10,11,12,13.

Compared to the Hard News chart, it was obvious that Soft News’s negative and positive trends fluctuated more heavily than Hard News. However, neutral trends still led the largest percentage. Because Soft News was embedded with author’s opinion, positive or negative attitude was reasonable within the content. So, to evaluate media bias on Soft News is to balance the weight between positive and negative.

From the total number, except WSJ, the other 3 media had more positive than negative soft news. Specifically, NY Times (41 Positive: 17 Negative), CNN (60 Positive: 31 Negative), NPR (40 Positive: 30 Negative) and WSJ (20 Positive: 24 Negative). This could reflect mainstream positive inclination toward OWS, but we still need micro track on the flow of numbers.

A look at the 4 media’s trends of positive, neutral, and negative attitude, it showed that NY Times and WSJ became negative, but NPR and CNN expressed positive at the beginning 10 days. Then positive and negative interwove with each other, but positive won in the end of sample date. This means mainstream media may hesitate about OWS’s purpose at the beginning, that’s why positive-dominant or negative-dominant phenomenon existed. With the emerging of the OWS movement, mainstream media followed with hot discussion, so that positive and negative interweaved with each other. In the end, positive got small but won based on absolute numbers. Therefore, mainstream media didn’t have an obvious bias on OWS movement because the data matched the logical process of events.

Conclusions

According to the analyses above, U.S mainstream media did lack adequate coverage on OWS at the beginning but followed with regular reports. Additionally, there were few attitude biases on the content. However, the reasons for ignorance and bias still need further study. Here are two reasons the author can deduce.

Ambiguous Goals

Journalists may get confused about the goals of OWS, which varied beyond income inequality. First according to the official list of goals, there are 6 clear ones, followed by numerous others in the comments.⁹⁴

Secondly, in reality, some protesters explained their goals as against “corporate greed, global warming, and social inequality.”⁹⁵ It seems that everyone wanted something different. Even the organizers didn’t want specific goals, “We don’t want New York to form its own political agenda and drive the conversation in other cities,” said press team member Mark Bray. “I would be unhappy if people in LA or Chicago were waiting on us to do something. That would be politics as usual.”⁹⁶ Matt Stoller, the former Senior Policy Advisor, spent a few days with protesters and commented that OWS was “a church of dissent” without a formal list of demands.⁹⁷

Last but not least, the Gallup poll showed that most Americans were uncertain about the goals of “Occupy Wall Street” and lacked opinions on the way the protests were being conducted. (See the Chart 3⁹⁸ below)

Chart 3: How Americans respond to the goals and the way of Occupy Wall Street

Government Block

Reporters Without Borders, a nonprofit advocacy group degraded the annual press freedom of U.S. from 20 to 47 because of “the many arrests of journalists covering OWS protests.⁹⁹ There were 76 journalists in 12 cities in the U.S. since OWS began¹⁰⁰, including professional press, freelancers, photographers, independent filmmakers and citizen journalists, charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct, although it was clear from the video that some recorded that some were just doing their job.¹⁰¹ This violent block from government threatened and stopped coverage by journalists.

However, the weakness of this analysis was the over-dependency on the author’s subjective judgment on the attitude of each report. To improve this, it may need further research on how to control subjective variables.

Bibliography

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²⁸ Wall Street Demonstrators dressed as ‘corporate zombies’ lurch past stock exchange as protests spread beyond America, Daily Mail, Oct.4 2011,< http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2044983/Occupy-Wall-Street-protesters-dressed-corporate-zombies-lurch-past-stock-exchange-protests-spread-America.html>

²⁹ Christina Boyle, Emily Sher, Anjali Mullany and Helen Kennedy, Occupy Wall Street Protests: Police make arrests, use pepper spray as some activists storm barricade, Daily News, Oct 5 2011, http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-10-05/local/30265211_1_pepper-spray-protest-thousands-of-union-workers/2

³⁰ Kate Taylor, Thomas Kaplan, Bloomberg Says Protesters Can Stay On, If they obey laws, The New York Times, Oct 10, http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/bloomberg-says-protesters-can-stay-on-if-they-obey-laws/

³¹ AP, Boston police arrest 50 Occupy Boston protestors, USAToday, Oct.11 2011, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-10-11/boston-protesters-arrested/50727182/1

³² Adam Gabbatt, Occupy Wall Street: protesters fear evicition, The Guardian, Oct.13, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/oct/13/occupy-wall-street-protests-eviction-live#block-13

³³ Mark Egan, Michelle Nichols, Who’s behind the wall street Protests?, Reuters, Oct.13 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/14/us-wallstreet-protests-origins-idUSTRE79C1YN20111014

³⁴ Esme E. Deprez, Joel Stonington and Chris Dolmetsch, Occupy Wall Street park cleaning postponed, Bloomberg, Oct 14 2011, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-14/occupy-wall-street-park-cleaning-is-postponed-as-14-protesters-in-custody.html

³⁵ Mark Egan, Michelle Nichols, Soros: not a funder of Wall Street Protest, Reuters, Oct 13, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/14/us-wallstreet-protests-funding-idUSTRE79D01Q20111014

³⁶ Wil Longbottom, Obama’s backing for greed protesters: MLK would want us to challenge excesses of Wall Street, Mailonline, Oct 18, 2011, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2049985/Martin-Luther-King-Jr-Memorial-dedication-Obama-offers-support-Occupy-protesters.html

³⁷ Zeke Miller, White House Draws Closer to Occupy Wall Street, Says Obama is Fighting for the Interest fo the 99%, Business Insider, Oct.17 2011, http://www.businessinsider.com/white-house-draws-closer-to-occupy-wall-street-says-obama-is-fighting-for-interests-of-the-99-2011-10

³⁸ New York City General Assembly Demands Working Group, The 99 Percent Declaration, Oct 20, 2011, https://sites.google.com/site/the99percentdeclaration/

³⁹ Adam Clark Estes, Dino Grandoni, Another Public Radio Freelancer Gets the Ax Over Occupy Wall Street, The Atlantic Wire, Oct 28, 2011, http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/10/another-public-radio-freelancer-gets-ax-over-occupy-wall-street/44278/

⁴⁰ Jack Shenker, Adam Gabbatt, Tahrir Square protesters send message of solidarity to Occupy Walls Street, The Guardian, Oct 25 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/25/egyptian-protesters-occupy-wall-street

⁴¹ Occupy Wall Street Protesters support injured war vet, CNN, Oct 26 2011, http://articles.cnn.com/2011-10-27/us/us_occupy-wall-street_1_protesters-support-demonstrators-war-veteran?_s=PM:US

⁴² Peter Walker, Matt Wells, Occupy Wall Street police evict protesters, The Guardian, Nov.15 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/nov/15/occupy-wall-street-police-action-live

⁴³ Chris Bowers, Retired police captain arrested at Occupy Wall Street, Daily Kos, Nov.17 2011, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/17/1037495/-Retired-police-captain-arrested-at-Occupy-Wall-nbsp-Street

⁴⁴ Jason Cherkis, UC Davis Police Pepper-Spray Seated Students In Occupy Dispute, The Huffington Post, Nov 20,2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/19/uc-davis-police-pepper-spray-students_n_1102728.html

⁴⁵ Gingrich to Occupy Wall Street “ Go Get a Job Right after You Take a Bath”, The Weekly Standard, Nov 20 2011, http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/gingrich-occupy-wall-street-go-get-job-right-after-you-take-bath_609253.html

⁴⁶ Holly Bailey, Occupy Protesters hands President Obama a note, AP, Nov 22, 2011, http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/occupy-protestor-hands-president-obama-note-201229558.html

⁴⁷ Christina Hoag and Shaya Tayefe Mohajer, LA Police Move in on Occupy Camp, AP, Nov 30 2011, http://news.yahoo.com/la-police-move-occupy-camp-082656631.html

⁴⁸ Dominique Debucquoy Dodley, Jesse Solomon, 50 arrested in Occupy Wall Street Demonstration, CNN, Dec.18 2011, http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/17/us/new-york-occupy-arrests/index.html

⁴⁹ New York Daily News, Occupy Wall Street protesters are behaving like a bunch of spoiled brats[N/OL], Sep. 28, 2011.< http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-09-28/news/30236515_1_pepper-spray-nypd-parade-route>

⁵⁰ Douglas Rushkoff, Think Occupy Wall St. is a phase? You don’t get it, CNN, Oct.5 2011, http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/05/opinion/rushkoff-occupy-wall-street/index.html

⁵¹ Jack Mirkinson, Keith Olbermann, Michael Moore criticize media for ignoring Occupy Wall Street, The Huffington Post, Sep.23 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/23/keith-olbermann-michael-moore-occupy-wall-street_n_978052.html

⁵² Ginia Bellafante, Gunning for Wall Street, With Faulty Aim, The New York Times, Sep.23, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/nyregion/protesters-are-gunning-for-wall-street-with-faulty-aim.html?_r=1

⁵³ Kat Stoeffel, Occupy Wall Street’s Media Problems, The Observer, Sep.26 2011, http://www.observer.com/2011/09/occupy-wall-streets-media-problems/

⁵⁴ Joanna Weiss, The right way to get heard, The Boston Globe, Sep.27 2011,< http://articles.boston.com/2011-09-27/bostonglobe/30209075_1_tea-party-protest-female-protesters-liberal-rage/2>

⁵⁵ Laurren Ellis, Is Occupy Wall Street Working? ,Mother Jones, Sep.27 2011, http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/09/occupy-wall-street

⁵⁶ Richard Wolff, Occupy Wall Street ends capitalism’s alibi, The Guardian, Oct.4 2011, < http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/04/occupy-wall-street-new-york>

⁵⁷ Michael O’Brien, Wall Street rallies could be left’s Tea Party, MSNBC,Oct 4 2011, < http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/44775365/ns/today-today_news/t/wall-street-rallies-could-be-lefts-tea-party/>

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⁶¹ Society of Professional Journalist, SPJ Code of Ethics[R/OL], 1996, < http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp>

⁶² Gloria Goodale, Occupy Wall Street: Why this revolution isn’t made for TV, The Christian Science, Oct 5 2011, http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/Vox-News/2011/1005/Occupy-Wall-Street-Why-this-revolution-isn-t-made-for-TV

⁶³ Chen Weihua, U.S media blackout of protest is shameful, China Daily, Sep 30 2011, < http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2011-09/30/content_13823311.htm>

⁶⁴ Jon Stewart, Mainstream media coverage of occupy wall street went from ‘blackout’ to ‘circus’, Daily Show, < http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/676113/jon_stewart:_mainstream_media_coverage_of_occupy_wall_street_went_from_%22blackout%22_to_%22circus%22/>

⁶⁵ Tina Berezhnaya, Occupy Wall Street Still largely ignored by CNN, RT, Oct 12 2011, < http://rt.com/usa/news/occupy-wall-street-cnn-633/>

⁶⁶ Emmanuel Dunand, OWS TV breaking mainstream silence, RT, Oct 15 2011, < http://rt.com/news/occupy-wall-street-arrests-media-915/>

⁶⁷ Debbie Menon, Mainstream Media biased coverage of Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, Oct 16 2011 < http://www.shoah.org.uk/2011/10/16/mainstream-media-biased-coverage-of-%E2%80%98occupy-wall-street%E2%80%99-demonstrations/>

⁶⁸ Joe Pompeo, The “Occupy Wall Street” media blackout myth: plenty of stories, none of them big”, Sep.28 2011, http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2011/09/3533389/occupy-wall-street-media-blackout-myth-plenty-stories-none-them-big>

⁶⁹ Jonathan Weiler, The Media and the five stages of grief over Occupy Wall Street, The Huffington Post, Oct 11, 2011, < http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-weiler/occupy-wall-street-media_b_1005544.html>

⁷⁰ Anastasia Churkina, Mainstream media vs. Occupy Wall Street – the battle, RT, Oct 13, 2011, < http://rt.com/usa/news/media-occupy-wall-mainstream-725/>

⁷¹ Jack Mirkinson, Journalist Arrested, Roughed Up, Blocked From Covering Clearing, The Huffington Post, Nov. 15 2011, < http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/15/occupy-wall-street-raid-journalists-arrested_n_1094564.html>

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⁷⁶ Jim Romenesko, WSJ remains largest circulation U.S. daily newspaper, Poynter.org, May 3 2011, http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/130676/wsj-remains-largest-circulation-daily-newspaper/

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⁷⁹ Facebook Top 10 Fastest-Growing News Pages of 2011, Poynter Online, http://stateofthemedia.org/2012/audio-how-far-will-digital-go/audio-by-the-numbers/

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⁸¹ NPR Audience Comparison by Platform, Omniture 3-month average, Dec. 2011-Feb. 2012, < http://www.npr.org/about/aboutnpr/audience.html>

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⁸⁸ Eyder Peralta, As the protest ends, what now for occupy movement?, NPR, Nov.17 2011, http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/11/17/142486226/as-the-protest-ends-what-now-for-occupy-movement

⁸⁹ Jessica Firger & Sumathi Reddy, Medical Triage At Encampment, Wall Street Journal, Oct 22 2011,< http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204485304576645531217538502.html>

⁹⁰ Joseph Goldstein, Wall Street Demonstrations Test Police Trained for Bigger Treats, New York Times, Sep 16, 2011, < http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/nyregion/wall-street-demonstrations-test-police-trained-for-bigger-threats.html>

⁹¹ Sally Kohn, Protesters: Today’s rioters, tomorrow’s righteous, CNN, Sep 28, 2011, < http://edition.cnn.com/2011/09/28/opinion/kohn-tradition-of-protests/index.html?iref=allsearch>

⁹² Scott Neuman, Are Crackdowns a turning point for occupy protests? NPR, Oct.26 2011, http://www.npr.org/2011/10/26/141733471/are-crackdowns-a-turning-point-for-occupy-protests

⁹³,Brian Flynn, Channel protest anger into progress, CNN, Oct.7 2011, < http://articles.cnn.com/2011-10-07/opinion/opinion_flynn-wall-street-anger_1_anger-management-protest-arab-spring?_s=PM:OPINION>

⁹⁶ Julianne Pepitone, why Occupy Wall Street isn’t about a list of Demands, CNN, Oct.12,< http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/12/technology/occupy_wall_street_demands/index.htm>

⁹⁸ Jeffrey M. Jones, Most Americans Uncertain About “Occupy Wall Street” Goals, Gallup, Oct.28 2011, http://www.gallup.com/poll/150164/americans-uncertain-occupy-wall-street-goals.aspx

¹⁰⁰ Josh Stearns, Tracking Journalist Arrests at Occupy Protests Around the Country, April 7 2012, < http://storify.com/jcstearns/tracking-journalist-arrests-during-the-occupy-prot>

Analysis of U.S. Mainstream Media: A Case Study of News Reports on Occupy Wall Street Event

Laya Liu Linjun Fan Shantou University, Guandong, China

Abstract

Introduction

Literature Review

News Value & Media Bias Relation

The Study on OWS News Coverage

Methodology

New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN and NPR

Outreach of Reader or Audience

Ownership & Operation

Quantitative Analysis on Ignorance

Numbers of News Coverage on OWS

Comparison between OWS & Tea Party Movement

Qualitative Analysis on Attitude

Hard News Attitude

Soft News Attitude

Conclusions

Ambiguous Goals

Government Block

Bibliography

Appendix

Analysis of U.S. Mainstream Media: A Case Study of
News Reports on Occupy Wall Street Event

Laya Liu Linjun Fan
Shantou University, Guandong, China