Abstract
This study examines two successive days of U.S. television news coverage of the May 1, 2007, immigration rights rally in Los Angeles. As thousands of demonstrators appealed peacefully for comprehensive immigration policy reform, they were assailed by 450 police officers firing munitions and using truncheons. We evaluated fifty-one television news reports from three networks and five local stations using three complementary analyses (framing, visual coding, and critical spoken discourse analysis). News reporters on the ground at the time framed the events as a police attack. On the following day, however, news media blamed the victims by reframing the event as a violent provocation. We argue that the television news seized political agency and manipulated public opinion about domestic immigration policy.
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