It has taken weeks, but the mainstream media has finally focused their cameras — at least some of them — on the Occupy Wall Street movement. Journalist Cenk Uygur, however, says they aren’t doing all they could.
While Fox News has begun broadcasting from Lower Manhattan as hundreds and thousands rally against corrupt greed, Uygur says the coverage they are offering might be a step up from nothing, but barely. “First they didn’t want to cover it,” Uygur told RT America, “they they cover it with disdain.”
Uygur said that the mainstream media has all the resources to report accurately and efficiently, but that doesn’t mean that the big networks will utilize them to bring the story to the mass. That’s because, he said, it would be against their best interests. Earlier this week, Uygur took to his own Young Turks program to respond to CNN’s coverage that poked fun at the supposed hippies protesting in New York. With corporate sponsorship footing the bills for the networks, why would they ever encourage Occupy Wall Street to continue?
And while CNN may have also joined Fox in reporting from the scene, calling it “reporting” might be an overstatement. “CNN has become basically the Camera News Network,” he told RT’s Lauren Lyster. “What’s the last story that CNN broke? I don’t remember it,” he said. “They aren’t going to do any investigative reporting.”
“Can you do the very least, which is show up with cameras?” he asked.
Sadly, that’s all the mainstream media is offering.
While coverage might be slim still, Uygur said that to movement is indeed gaining momentum and there is no telling where it will go from here. The best bet for the protesters, however, is not to take the issues before Congress. Lawmakers in Washington, said Uygur, are just as paid-for as the political news.
“My estimation is that 99 percent of the Republican Party is bought. And at least 80 percent of the Democratic Party is bought,” Uygur said.
As a result, Americans need to start small and call for another constitutional convention.
“We need to take it to the state level,” Uygur said. “We need to take it to the local level and demand that all those different states get on board to say . . . corporations are not human beings . . . they cannot buy our politicians.”
Once Americans can really against cronious capitalism, he said, more progress can be made. And that argument, said Uygur, is something that everyone can get behind.
“I hope that the right, the center, everyone joins this movement and that we can do it together,” he said.