U.S. Political Protest

Media attention often follows protest. For environmental causes, television footage of small Greenpeace boats and rafts moving against giant factory whaling ships epitomizes the adage "a picture is worth a thousand words." Another notable protest was the highly photogenic occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco by Native American rights activists from 1969 to 1971.

Media coverage can potentially expand the audience for a protest worldwide, thus embarrassing and pressuring dominant groups to explain themselves and account for the issues protesters are raising. In the early 1960s, images of peaceful civil rights protesters being set upon by police dogs, water cannon, and police with truncheons troubled the consciences of citizens observing this on television news programs. Highly placed U.S. government officials were also forced to explain the contradictions between their Cold War rhetoric about oppressive governments abroad and the images shown worldwide of brutal treatment of their own American citizens.

Media attention can be harmful to a protest movement if the images are negative. For example, the anti–legal abortion group Operation Rescue found that extensive media coverage of abortion clinic blockades partly backfired against their cause. Even when the public's reaction to media coverage of protests is negative, the protesters have achieved something because they have publicized their cause. The group ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), for instance, engaged in wild and confrontational acts of protest about the spread of AIDS/HIV and the relatively weak governmental programs to address the disease. As a small group, ACT UP was able to broadcast its causes through media coverage of its flamboyant demonstrations, a sure success even though the television public was shocked and repelled by some of its performances. ACT UP's slogan, "Silence Death," deftly epitomizes its approach.