The headline to today’s Arizona Republic online coverage of the March for Our Lives in Phoenix says it all: Marchers, Protesters Clash at Phoenix March For Our Lives. (Ed: They changed “Clash” to “Faced Off” since I posted this, after many commenters called the paper out.)
No, marchers and counter-protesters did not “clash.” An estimated 15,000-20,000 people, many of them families and students, marched to end gun violence today at the Arizona State Capitol. According to the Republic’s own article, a couple dozen gun huggers also attended, carrying AR-15s and waving Trump flags. This is Arizona, after all, a state whose legislature is owned by the NRA, so it’s no surprise the nutters showed up.
Sure, there was debate in a small corner of the commons—most of it peaceful, some more raw. Mostly people just shook their heads at the gun jerks and took photos of their silly, lying signs. Beyond that, I’d bet most marchers didn’t even know the tiny, pathetic group of boobs was there. Most people were focused on a peaceful message—like the fantastic Be Better Humans bus blasting Lennon’s “Imagine.” That drew many more people than the 2nd Amendment derps, yet the newspaper’s coverage makes it seem as if conflict was the order of the day.
The Republic’s online article includes six videos, of which two give gun lovers a platform, two others show people debating, and only two highlight the youths’ message. The article itself interviews as many counter-protesters as it does marchers, even though marchers outnumbered the NRA peckerheads 20,000 to 20. And most of the interviews are of adults, not the amazing students who planned the Phoenix march—they should’ve been the headline.
This day was about peace (not one arrest) and responsible gun reform, which most Arizonans support. The click-bait media just can’t help itself, hell-bent on turning a popular nonviolent message into a violent “clash” of false equivalencies. The truth is, even in Arizona, reformers far outnumber NRA Trumpers, who deserved a sentence or two in the newspaper, not half the story and certainly not a headline.