The march and the media
Though not downtown at the time of the Day of Action march yesterday, I was curious about coverage of it. The local daily didn’t report all that much this morning. What I saw yesterday was channel 36, which alternated between attendance estimates from the helicopter pilot and crowd shots taken very low from the air. The chopper was all over close-in Austin and very much a noise nuisance as it kept circling back and around. The studio commentator kept talking about how many of “them” there were and how “they” would cause traffic problems for “you.”
There’s no cable television here. The news teams for the local network affiliates interviewed people who seemed to be UT students and organizers. What we know as channel 31, whatever it may be on cable, did a great many interviews of non-student Spanish-speakers. One comment heard over and over again was that human beings should not be referred to as illegals. That station carried Univision coverage from all over the nation, where nearly every city (and some of them were quite unlikely venues) seemed to have a larger turnout than Austin did.
During the day I tried to tune in to Spanish-language radio around town, but caught references to the march only on Univision 107.7-fm, formerly known as La Invasora and now as Recuerdo. The station’s person on the ground was breaking in quite frequently with live interviews of demonstrators and was also announcing that people should consider coming to the Capitol after work, wearing a white shirt if possible but, if not, just to come.
First-person coverage of the event appears to be scant. Burnt Orange Report seems to have the most comprehensive on-line roundup.
I don’t know what you’d consider “all that much” coverage, but the local daily had a large photo above the fold along with another full page for local and the other side devoted to national coverage of it.
The local daily’s story is fine, but there weren’t many interviews of participants. It would have been interesting to know how people heard about it, for instance, and whether people left work or school to be there.
580 KLBJ radio covered it on Jeff Ward’s afternoon show and their half-hourly news. I saw mention of it on all cable news channels, though I’m sure their feeds came from local affiliates. News 8 Austin also covered it with live reports and later coverage.
Both Jeff Ward and News 8 had interviews with people in attendance and those stuck in traffic.
What I meant about the local daily coverage was perhaps that it didn’t contain enough human interest to suit me personally. The local daily’s really big story today was about dumping a new water treatment center over on parkland east of the Inter-Regional. Certainly there was a big news hole devoted to the story of the day of action. I’m sorry that channel 8 is for cable-subscribers only. It often seems to cover local stories very well. I neglected to say that I know that many, many people heard about the march from announcements in church on Sunday.