Jen Schradie on Media Coverage of the Berkeley Protests
BCNM alumna Jen Schradie personally attended the counterprotest against a planned white supremacy rally in Berkeley. In a blog post for UC Berkeley, she writes of her surprise when she saw press headlines the next day that sensationalized the event as a violent gathering of extremists. Schradie took to Twitter to highlight the misconceptions portrayed by news outlets before offering an extended insight into the inaccuracies of the media coverage while drawing attention to the flawed nature of slanted reporting.
"The virtual blackout of the broader event was what struck me. None of the national mainstream news I saw represented the diversity of people and tactics that day. Fundamentally, the focus on violence feeds into the false narrative pushed by the far-right that there is some equivalence by extremists on the right and left."
Read the rest of Schradie's blog post here.
Interested in being part of this discussion around free speech and the media? Join us at Reply All: Free Speech in the Age of Social Media, a campus-wide symposium taking place on October 5.