by A
Saturday, Oct. 22, 2011 at 1:16 PM
WEST LOS ANGLES, October 21, 2011 - A crowd of about 75 people protested today outside the entry to the Fox Studios lot in Century City where the Fox News Corp. annual shareholders meeting is taking place today. Rupert Murdock is expected to attend the meeting today.
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Fox News was chosen as a target for protest mostly for their right wing bias and deference to corporate interests but also in particular their portrayal and ridicule of the Occupy Movement. As put by one spokesperson at the rally: “We believe that the concentration of media power under News Corp. as had a corrosive effect on our political process”. Shortly after making this statement the spokesperson delivered a letter of complaints to a representative from Fox News.
The now familiar new chant of “We are the 99%” along with the tried old “This is what democracy looks like” and “Hey Ho corporate news has got to go” was the main expression of the demonstrators as a group. The protest was mainly comprised of people from the Occupy LA encampment, people from the group, Good Jobs LA, and a smaller group of animal rights activists. Also present were representatives from AVAAZ.org and Freepress.org. Also of note is that the Occupy LA segment of the demonstration was bused in from downtown in a bus chartered for them by SEIU.
The protest in general was a bit lackluster, and no effort was made to directly address the shareholders, the event really came to nothing more than a short hour picket on the sidewalk. There were more police and media and NGO dot org folks present at the event than actual protesters. Almost every local TV news van was there (with the exception of Fox 11).
The LAPD deployed an absurdly excessive number of resources to this event. A full command center was set up in a nearby parking lot, complete with slammer vans, the infamous LAPD painted blue bus, used for mass arrests, and what looked to be at least two officers for every one protester. Perhaps the event was over hyped by its promoters and the LAPD over estimated the numbers that would turn out. Or maybe it was just a show of force to appease reactionary executives inside the meeting.
Never the less it was interesting to see the large turn out of every local corporate TV media outlet (with exception of Fox) cover the protest of Fox when they themselves are not un-guilty of the same practice of agenda setting programming and service to corporate interests at the expense of the public.
