"Are things really that bad?" a friend in the media texted me on Wednesday, regarding what the public is being told and shown about the protests in Los Angeles, where I am currently reporting. "I want to murder the media," they continued.
The concept of "the fog of war" can accurately be applied to the protest movement. Opposing factions will, for obvious reasons, obfuscate the positions and tactics of protestors, while politically sympathetic media gleefully amplify those obfuscations. Weapons of mass destruction, the Russia collusion, "Biden is fine." We've been conditioned to expect news outlets to lie, or at least mush around the truth to serve a specific agenda.
I'm mostly indifferent to messaging that is little more than P.R. Do I care that Kylie Jenner admitted her boobs aren't real? I don't, and I probably wouldn't know the difference. But there are a few things I do know about, and one of them is protesting. Since 2019, I have spent more than 100 days and nights with protesters on the streets of Portland, New York, and Chicago, writing about my experiences dozens of times throughout.
