By PHK
Whatever happened to International Women’s Day (March 8) and the “women say no to war” petition signed by the more than 100,000 women who oppose the continued US occupation of Iraq?
A friend in Washington, DC alerted me to this apparently non-story earlier this week. She told me that she had caught just a small part of the story on NPR’s “Democracy Now” but had seen it reported or heard it nowhere else in the MSM.
Actually, the women's anti-war petition story was reported in a few short wire service pieces – but simply because Cindy Sheehan (and three supporters) had been once again arrested – this time outside the UN when no one from the august organization would accept the “womensaynotowar” petition with then 60,000 signatures. At least the White House allowed the group to thrust the petition - by that time with 100,000 signatures on it - through its iron-barred fence to some unidentified munchkin inside a couple of days later. (There's a photo of this on Code Pink's website.)
I checked with a friend in Santa Fe who told me that Code Pink had circulated said petition, that she had signed it and that Code Pink had subsequently notified her by e-mail that over 103,000 women had been signatories by March 8. The goal had been 100,000. The plan, then, was over-fulfilled. Both of my sources are savvy, experienced professional American women who are appalled by the invasion and its aftermath and the lack of MSM coverage of the anti-war movement in this country and elsewhere.
I went to the Code Pink website – and sure enough easily found the petition story, accompanying photos as well as a link to the story carried on NPR’s “Democracy Now.”
I also discovered photos from local protests and links to the few MSM news reports that did exist. None of those reports appeared to have been carried by our wonderful national chains. A few local stories did appear in their smaller local brethren. It’s as if this latest anti-US Iraq occupation petition meant nothing and as if the women who had lost children or loved ones in the war did not exist. With one minor caveat: the arrest of Cindy Sheehan in NYC. The AP story of this event is worth reading. Does this mean one needs to be arrested, hand-cuffed and hauled away to have one’s views published in the MSM? Makes me wonder.
Why am I not surprised?
It’s clear that this latest event did not draw the crowds that came to Washington DC’s mall on September 24 to protest the Iraq invasion and the Bush Administration’s continuing attempts to impose a U.S. military solution on a country now wracked by various civil wars. Code Pink’s March 8, 20006 activities also did not draw the huge crowds that had participated in the pre-Iraq invasion anti-war demonstrations in major US cities, London or elsewhere. But these demonstrations of civic disapproval of an ill-begotten policy - drew little coverage when they happened, too.
Is this just another example of the MSM’s conspiracy of silence? And if so, why? It’s hard to link to stories in the media that barely exist.
Is this another way of silencing those who oppose the administration’s policies in Iraq? Just don’t cover them in the media? If they aren’t covered, they don’t exist so why bother? No wonder print readership - in particular - is in decline.
Does it mean that opposition to the U.S. military occupation of Iraq has decreased so substantially that such a petition with so many signatures on it is not worth reporting? Or does it mean that such opposition and doubts have so permeated the MSM - in part expressed by W’s ever shrinking popularity at home as well as abroad - that Code Pink and other anti-war groups no longer need to perform their advocacy function?
Or does it mean something else: That women – in this country – in reality remain second-class citizens? After all, we got the vote less than 100 years ago. There remain far fewer women in the US Congress than there are in the parliaments of a number of other countries – the Nordics in particular. And we still have never had a female president or head of government. This, off the top of my head, puts us behind India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines, Finland, Norway, Germany, Turkey, Sri Lanka and the UK. So much for equality for all.
What if, for example, the petition had been signed by over 100,000 men? Would that have made a difference to MSM coverage - or not? Was, then, lack of coverage simply a case of neglect or of the more malicious intent?
Conspiracy or no?
I’m not conspiratorial by nature, but one could certainly read conspiracy into the way this story and other anti-war protest stories are being handled: by the corporations who profit from the occupation and a White House and Republican Congress that would rather not talk about how badly, in fact, it is going. I don’t know. But the poor coverage of anti-war protestors, in itself, might make an interesting story. Too bad it’s unlikely to appear in the MSM.