The Baltimore Brew is reporting a rather embarrassing incident for local TV station WBAL (owned by Hearst).
Earlier this week, BUILD (Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development) organized a protest of roughly 100 people outside the station, complaining about media coverage.
“If young people were out shooting each other, they’d cover it,” thundered Bishop Douglas I. Miles, clergy co-chair of BUILD, outside the offices of WBAL-TV, as children clutching talking points about school construction and rec centers picked their way back down Baltimore’s “TV Hill.”
WBAL's response? To call the police.
5 squad cars of Baltimore's finest rolled into to TV hill from Northern District to protect these seasoned journalists and broadcasters from the protestors, roughly half of which were... wait for it... elementary school-aged children.
A station official defended the call by saying, "We can’t control how many police cars come.”
Actually, you can. By not calling the police on the protesters and addressing the crowd yourselves.
But WBAL never did that.
Wanda Draper, director of programming and public affairs for WBAL-TV, explained, “We were having a very busy work day.”
Evidently, the were too busy to cover the news that was taking place right outside their front door, too.
Protestors also took issue with the coverage of the Baltimore City mayoral primaries which, so far, seems to focus mainly on the issue of cutting property taxes. One might get the feeling that Tea Party madness has swept through our overwhelmingly Democratic city.
To make cutting property taxes the news narrative (the story the media chases) and the sole plank in any politician's platform is do to a majority of Baltimore a huge disservice as it focuses on an issue that does not immediately effect most of the city.
Over the past several years, Baltimore has seen a dramatic shift from homeowner-occupied properties to a majority of renter-occupied properties (which follows a national pattern of wealth consolidation).
As The USA TODAY reported: Twenty-five cities — including Baltimore, Minneapolis, Sacramento and Salt Lake City— swung from having more than half of homeowners in 2000 to majorities of renters in 2010.
So while the debate about cutting property taxes is sure to interest a minority in Baltimore City - the landowners - and while it could have some bearing down the line on the lives of a majority of Baltimore city residents - renters - it doesn't really make them feel engaged in the current debate, the election or the issues as there are other, more pressing matters they'd like to see addressed - ones that have a direct daily impact on their lives.
Draper explained, “We can’t go out and say, no, actually these are the issues.”
Actually, that is precisely what media do. The very act of story selection is a form of bias (that's Journalism 101). So when WBAL's producers decide what stories to send crews out to cover (or, in the case of this protest, not to cover), and then which stories to air - they are in fact deciding what the issues are.
And that is what BUILD's protesters were taking issue with.
Read Fern Shen's excellent, full account here, at the Baltimore Brew.
