April 05, 2011 07:23 PM UTC

If reporters don't care about basic political expression, people will stop caring along with them

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• by: Jason Salzman

(No good place to invoke “Jimmy Hoffa?” What gives? – promoted by Colorado Pols)

As someone who’s organized many a rally, I’m biased in favor of any group who can turn out around 1,000 people for any political cause, whether it’s the Tea Party’s agenda or a union’s.

But it’s a bias you’d think journalists would have as well. Any self-respecting news outlet should cover big political rallies, even if they’re just another rally with speakers and such. And 1,000 people is big by today’s standards.

Maybe rallies are boring at face value, but a journalist or photographer should be able to find some excitement among 1,000 people.

So it was great to see that Denver’s Fox News (which has the same name but is not affiliated with the national Fox network) and The Denver Daily News covered yesterday’s pro-union rally at City Park, which was organized to show that the basic goals of unions (e.g. fair pay, decent working conditions, healthy economic growth) are broadly supported.

But where were Denver’s other TV stations and media outlets? The Denver Post ran a brief AP story about the rally before it occurred, and the newspaper deserves credit for this.

But there was no coverage of the event itself from The Post or channels 4, 7, or 9.

If reporters don’t care about legitimate political expression, then you can be sure that more and more people will stop caring along with them.