Occupy Movement The Darling Of Media Eyes

Occupy LA, which has had the help and support of City Council, finally got their eviction notice. In reporting the official pronouncement, one news outlet finally released some numbers. In all 700 people have been involved over the months, though the numbers “swelled” from time to time to as many as 1000. In all fairness, I may have misunderstood. She may have meant 700 tents, swelling to 1000. This could double, even triple the numbers.

I’ve been suspicious of low numbers since the media coverage of the occupy movements began. After all, the camera shots were all tight close ups, no wide views, no sweeps panning a broad area. Nevertheless, the media has religiously covered the events, especially any clash with authorities, though the details of the provocation of such clashes were most often bypassed.

How odd. I mean, there are more people at my church week after week, even if we use the tripled numbers, than showed up at city hall. Did the media bring their cameras to our church service? And how about those 1800 dinners members of our church served on Thanksgiving — media coverage there? I must have missed it.

Another thing I missed from our nightly news and the national early morning news show I watch from time to time were the five rapes connected with the Occupy Movement and the sexual assaults. Yes, I did hear about some property damage, but the news anchors were quick to point out that this activity was perpetrated by a group of anarchists who have attached themselves to the movement. The real leaders, the anchors reported, were actually involved in helping clean up the mess the usurpers created. The news show then put on screen a lone worker trying to scrub graffiti off the side of a building.

No word, however, about using some of the millions of dollars earlier reported that were coming into the Occupy Movement in support of their protests, to pay for the damage and clean-up.

The thing that stands out the most to me about the way the media at large has handled the Occupation movement is the disparity with how they covered the Tea Party. Note, for example, this quotation:

“Tea Party supporters”, says Patrik Jonsson of the Christian Science Monitor, “have been called neo-Klansmen and knuckle-dragging hillbillies”. Jonsson adds, “demonizing tea party activists tends to energize the Democrats’ left-of-center base”. He notes that “polls suggest that tea party activists are not only more mainstream than many critics suggest, but that a majority of them are women (primarily mothers), not angry white men” (from “Tea Party movement”).

A fairly objective view of the media coverage comes from Poll Watch Daily, reporting on the findings of the Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism analysis comparing media coverage (good or bad, apparently) of the two protests.

What I find informative is the decline in Tea Party coverage and the rise in Occupy Movement coverage, though apparently many more thousands of people were involved in the former.

What’s a Christian to make of all this? First, political protests and media coverage, problems in government, in business, in labor organizations, in the political process only reflect the problems in the human heart.

Second, there will be no perfect human solution. Interestingly, the Antichrist will offer a solution which will seem to be The Answer. But there is no answer apart from Christ.

Believers need to focus our energy and efforts on what ultimately makes the only significant difference — changed lives. Only through faith in Jesus Christ will anyone be other than greedy at the core.

We sinful humans are selfish, prideful people; our goodness serves us or conforms to societal expectations more than it serves those we say we’re helping. That’s true for the members of the media, politicians, bankers, anarchists, Tea Party organizers, and homeless people. It’s true for those of us who stayed home through all the protests.

Christ alone can mend the rift that our sinful natures create. He brings us back into relationship with God. In turn God gives us the impetus to care for others as He’s told us to.

When we love our neighbor, and when we see the corporate banker who looks like he’s getting away with highway robbery as our neighbor, we love him anyway and determine not to steal from him no matter how much he’s stolen from others. We also work for a fair and just government that will hold thieves accountable, no matter what color collar their shirt is. And we pray.

Mostly we should pray. God can do far beyond what we ask or think, so imagine if His people rose up and had a Prayer Party or an Occupy Prayer Movement asking for a revival in our land — not so the economy would improve or so that the people we want to see in office, win elections, but so that many more people come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, so that they place their faith in Him, and find forgiveness for their sins — what couldn’t God do?