“The press did you in”: the Poor People's Campaign and the mass media

Abstract

Using the Poor People's Campaign of 1968 as a case study, this essay explores the considerable influence media framing had on the social justice movements of the time. While campaign organizers including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. sought the nation's rededication to the War on Poverty, national press coverage flattened out the campaign's complexities. A systematic examination of such reporting reveals that common media practices helped obscure many of the campaign's class‐based goals and the practical impact the experience had on those who participated.