How the Media Fail to Get the Message

Dear Friends,
I include here a copy of a Letter to the Editor I wrote to the Bergen Record in response to their Sunday article covering the August 25th People’s March for Peace, Equality, Jobs and Justice. I don’t know if it is going to be published, but I thought I’d also share it here. It expresses my deep frustration at the way that the media continue to present our actions as a series of unrelated special interests and concerns instead of something well-thought out that emphasizes the way in which these seemingly unconnected issues are all linked together.

Feel free to take this letter and submit it to the Bergen Record with some modifications – perhaps if they receive more than one letter on a similar theme, they’ll print one of them.

Madelyn Hoffman, Director, NJ Peace Action

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Dear Editor,
I am glad the Record covered the August 25th People’s March for Peace, Equality, Jobs and Justice (Several Causes on the Peace Rally Menu, by Elizabeth Fitch), but disappointed that the event was described as a series of unrelated causes, not as a conscious effort to draw connections between the war in Iraq and the war on our communities. The $186,000 spent each minute in Iraq is money taken away from jobs, education, housing, health care, public safety officers for our streets, and the resources needed to prevent bridge collapse and Hurricane Katrina-type devastation following a natural disaster.

The article also fails to communicate the multi-racial nature of the event. Participants traveled to Newark from all over New Jersey and beyond because they understand how the tremendous costs of the war, both human and financial, are being borne disproportionately by urban residents but affect us ALL, regardless of where we live.

Perhaps the media are afraid that if they reported on the how military families, civil rights organizations, the labor movement, the peace movement, urban and suburban residents, all see that our current foreign policy makes us all “prisoners of this war,” that they would convey a vision of hope. Perhaps they are afraid to motivate the vast majority who believe the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction. The nearly 2000 people marching down Broad Street in Newark on August 25th, dared to think that perhaps we are moving closer to Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream expressed so movingly 44 years ago!! Shouldn’t we all be allowed to dream?

Sincerely,

Madelyn Hoffman
Director, NJ Peace Action