"So, is there any chanting or stuff like that?" (was Media anti-Hanson demo)

David Gerard, Wed 06 Aug 1997

From: David Gerard <fun@thingy.apana.SPAMTRAP.org.au>
Newsgroups: aus.media-watch
Subject: "So, is there any chanting or stuff like that?" (was Media anti-Hanson demo)
Date: Wed, 06 Aug 1997 16:29:02 -0700
Message-ID: <33E908BD.F99@thingy.apana.SPAMTRAP.org.au>

Peter McCallum wrote:

> I was at a demonstration outside a meeting of the One Nation party last
> night. The demonstration was a silent one with people holding placards
> and flags and not attempting to hinder people from entering the meeting.
> It was interesting to see the TV news journalist trying to create the
> story by asking people to chant when someone arrived to enter the
> meeting. He also tried to encourage people from the protest to go inside
> to listen to the meeting (with hopefully good footage resulting). He
> didn't get any bites this time but it was interesting to see first hand
> how the media works in these situations.


Yep, they sure do love a bit of the ol' chanting. Even the papers:

Last year, we had one of many demonstrations against the Church of
$cientology (see the URL in the .sig for details) - a very restrained
affair indeed, a few of us and a few of them, politely holding our
respective signs and handing leaflets to passers-by. A Herald-Sun
photographer came by to Get The Scoop (I'd blanketed the media with
faxes and spoken on the phone to a reporter earlier in the week). He
spoke to myself and to Brian Johnston from the Co$. The photographer
asked 'so, is there any chanting or stuff like that?' There is no love
whatsoever lost between myself and Mr Johnston, but we did give each
other a 'who is this moron?' look before telling him that, er, no, there
wasn't ...)

(The ensuing report had two paragraphs attributed to me, one of which
was actually a quote from another demonstrator, Cyril Vosper. The focus
of the report itself was that not only are there SEX and BOMBS on the
Internet, but CULTS RECRUITING as WELL! So you'd better Keep Away from
the Internet and just read the Herald-Sun, okay. Ah well. I still think
it was worth participating, on balance. I faxed 'em for publicity, after
all, and the Co$ certainly weren't too happy about being referred to in
the same breath as Moonies, the Family and neo-Nazis :-)



--
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