Protests may be public, but they're not always news
One of the great qualities of this country is that everyone has a right to speak his mind. Another is that not everyone has to be heard all the time. For a newspaper, navigating between the two alternatives requires some judgment calls.
Through letters to the editor, online commenting and the occasional guest view, the Daily Herald offers a variety of options for letting people speak out. But sometimes people want to show the popular strength of their ideas. They want to show how many people share them. They want to demonstrate.
And, of course, they want people to see the demonstration. On that goal, we don't always accommodate them.
Our front page Wednesday featured an especially telling picture about the nature of public political demonstrations. Gathered along the street outside the office of U.S. Rep. Melissa Bean, pro- and anti-health care forces brandished signs that mostly said, in Stephen Stills' famous phrase, "Hooray for our side." Some of the signs were handmade, supposedly representing that the bearers at least had enough passion to make their own placard, although it should be noted that often, protest organizers provide such informal signs to look more "natural." Most of them, though, were prepackaged, professionally designed and painstakingly edited by full-time political operatives, then handed out at the site.
Demonstrations like this take place nearly every day. Hang out at Daley Plaza downtown around lunchtime and, at least a couple times a week, you'll see a gathering of people hoisting signs decrying everything from the injustice of war to the horrors of eating chicken. We get frequent calls from union locals or consumer groups announcing their plans to picket some job site or store and urging us to come out with our cameras and notepads. Both sides of the health care lobby have routinely pressed political editors and reporters at the Daily Herald to report on their activities at, especially, Bean's or Rep. Bill Foster's offices, because the two Democrats could be pivotal votes on the issue, but also at the offices of Peter Roskam, Judy Biggert and other Republican congressmen whose anti-health care positions they want either to promote or protest.
Tuesday, the health care demonstrations acquired actual newsworthiness, as the pressure builds toward a possible House vote on a federal health care law. So, there was a strong reason for us to chronicle the scene at Bean's Schaumburg office, where the appearance of demonstrators from both sides helped illustrate Projects and Politics Editor Joseph Ryan's point about the intensifying heat on suburban congressmen.
Despite that extremely evenly balanced story and picture, we received at least one complaint Wednesday for failing to cover a similar rally at Foster's Batavia headquarters. The common thread in complaints when we don't cover a particular demonstration is that we must agree with the other side, but our decisions are not nearly so calculating. Our approach to demonstrations includes such questions as how many people will be there, how many people will see them and wonder what they were doing, how urgent, interesting or unusual is the issue they're raising, and many others, no one of which determines on its own whether or how we will cover the event.
We want to cover all the local news that may engage the interest and emotions of suburban residents. And, we want to be a resource enabling people to speak their minds on the topics they care about. Sometimes, though, the two goals have to be carefully blended when it comes to deciding who will be heard.