Roughly fifteen protesters were arrested early Friday morning as activists shut down the printing plant of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the New York Post in an attempt to force the papers to cover the growing global climate crisis.
The New York Post, who was not included in the activists statement about the protest, wrote an article in response assuring its readers that the protesters are indeed the bad guys, calling them “extremist eco-warriors.”
According to the Post, 73,000 editions of its paper failed to reach subscribers and newsstands. More than 30,000 copies of the Wall Street Journal never reached their destination. It is not immediately clear how or if the delivery of USA Today and The New York Times were disrupted. The Post says delivery trucks were delayed for five hours and the protesters said it took police six and a half hours to remove them.
The protesters were charged with obstruction of governmental administration, disorderly conduct and criminal trespass, according to The Post.
The activists, who call themselves NYC Extinction Rebellion, chained themselves to 50 gallon drums and cement structures. They say that their protest was not intended as an attack on the importance of free speech or a free press. Instead, according to their statement it was designed to “draw the public's attention to how mass media corporations like News Corp, The New York Times Company, and Gannet are failing to cover the climate emergency with the frequency it deserves.” News Corp is the parent company of the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal. Gannet is the parent company of USA Today.
“By failing to cover the climate emergency with the depth and frequency it warrants, the media is enabling the government's gaslighting of the public, making it easy for the government to act like the climate and ecological crisis is years away, ignore scientists' urgent calls to action, and refuse to take the steps we need to start transforming our systems from finite and fragile to strong and resilient,” the statement says.
Meanwhile, the Post’s coverage of the event failed to quote any of the protesters directly, relying on one short sentence taken from the activist’s website as their sole token attempt at objectivity. They did manage to find room for extensive quotes from News Corp employees both at the plant and from around their organization, all predictably bashing the activists.
“This morning’s puerile protest was an attack on press freedom, imposed a wasteful burden on the stretched resources of the New York Police Department, and generated unnecessary emissions that contributed to environmental degradation,” a News Corp spokesperson was quoted in the Post as saying “the protesters are unashamed polluters.”
NYC Extinction Rebellion has specific gripes with every news outlet it prevented delivering on Friday. For USA Today, they cite a study showing that the paper publishes the least amount of climate change coverage of all major newspapers in the country.
The Wall Street Journal, the activists say, uses its Opinions section to perpetuate climate change denialism, pondering if that might be because the “infinite economic growth and consumption of natural resources is at the heart of the climate and ecological crisis,” and that fixing that “would require admission that the system of consumerism and focus on GDP and Wall Street earnings is part of the problem.”
The New York Times was actually given some faint praise from the activists for having their own climate change section and covering the crisis more than any other paper. But, they argue, they still allow fossil fuel companies to advertise in the paper, and even help design some of their ads. They want the Old Gray Lady to treat fossil fuel ads like they treat tobacco ads, which the paper banned in 1999. The ads “legitimizes fossil fuel corporate greenwashing and gives them a social license to operate,” according to NYC Extinction Rebellion.
The New York Post was not included in their statement.
The group is planning more events to fight climate change. A “Listen to the Science, March for Science” protest is planned for tomorrow from noon to 2 p.m. EST at Central Park.