Just in case you might someday be teaching a journalism class, as I once did, you might save the papers and the video clips and the twitter feeds from this weekend’s coverage of Berkeley’s response to the threatened “No to Marxism” rally, a non-event since nothing ever materialized under that name.

Title of this week’s class: “If it bleeds, it leads.”

Let’s start with the big story on Monday’s print front page of what purports to be the Bay Area paper of record, the San Francisco Chronicle, now owned by the Hearst Corporation. 

BIG headline: 

Masked anarchists rout right-wingers.

Underneath, photo of black-clad figures, some masked, holding on to an old guy in an aloha shirt, captioned: “Anarchists rough up a man who walked into their inner circle as counterprotesters overwhelmed the right wingers.” 

And the sub-head, also BIG: 

Berkeley ‘No to Marxism’ demonstrators swamped by counterprotestors, some black-clad and violent

Now, I seriously doubt that the caption-writer quizzed any of the parties about their philosophical beliefs, but simply assumed that the pushers were anarchists (whatever that means to the Chronicle) and the pushees were “right-wingers” (another poorly defined term). 

And did any of the participants have any relationship at all to Marx? If so, which Marx, Karl or Groucho? 

This was just one instance of the typical coverage of Berkeley's Sunday counter-protests, everywhere from the Washington Post to the Washington Times. Reporters drooled over the appearance of a couple hundred or so scary-looking black-clad bully wannabes and the actual bad actions of a scant dozen among them. The Washington Times has of course been a joke since it was acquired by the Moonies, but their story calling a couple of fistfights “mayhem” is perhaps a new low. 

The onliners were even worse. A local public radio station offered a full day of breathless blogging by a guy who repeatedly claimed that the big stuff was really starting now, no kidding, and then--it didn’t. 

Hey guys, it’s been estimated that there were between four and seven thousand peaceful demonstrators, but I guess you needed to focus on the violent ones to sell papers? 

Well, I was there too, and let’s talk about what really happened. 

My concerned sister texted me from Paso Robles: “Are things in Berkeley as chaotic as they sound on the news?” 

No, Berkeley is calm today, and it was pretty calm yesterday too. 

In the first place, there were a whole lot of peaceful people a few blocks from Martin Luther King (Civic Center) Park between 10:30 and 12:30. 

And here’s a real peace miracle: for perhaps the first time ever I’m in 100% agreement with Eric Panzer, a good writer though mostly wrong on land use matters. Last week in a Berkeleyside.com op-ed Eric complained that U.C.’s over-reaching rules and barricades would make it difficult or impossible for many anti-right protesters to have access to the chosen site for what was being called A Rally Against Hate. 

He was right. 

I have a bad leg at the moment, so I thought I couldn’t walk from the police barricades on Oxford Street to the place where protestors were supposed to assemble on UC Berkeley’s “Crescent”west lawn. But many other people did make it, and it turned out they gathered in the street outside the barriers, which worked much better anyhow. 

But that’s why I went instead to yet another protest gathering, an inspiring one which seems to have been almost completely ignored by the major media in their quest for blood. This one was organized by the cleverly-named Choral Majority, along with an interfaith coalition of a world variety of religions. 

A standing room only group met at noon at First Congregational Church, which seats about 300 people, and sang their way through a songbook of familiar and unfamiliar protest songs. Many seemed to be church choir members, confirmed by a show of hands. Several men wore kippahs, and one bearded cleric a sky-blue turban. 

Most of the speakers were women, some in clerical collars. They worked their way through a long list of instructions on how to remain non-violent, seemingly no challenge for a fairly grey-haired group. 

After that, as many of the attendees who were able to make it began a three-block march to Civic Center. where they planned to sing their songs both in peace and about peace. 

As they left the church they were joined by an added contingent of African-American clergy and congregation members coming after church, many from The Way Christian Center on University Boulevard, led by Pastor Michael McBride. 

Here we should note that these religious and/or non-violent people clearly outnumbered the “black-clad and violent” when they got to the park. But the Black Baddies got the “ink”, as usual. Only local news site Berkeleyside.com, which did an excellent job overall of reporting what really happened, mentioned this group in their story on the counterprotests. 

Those who couldn’t walk, including me, went by car. About 1:30 I sat down on a ledge across from the police station (aka Public Safety Building) on the northwest corner of the park. Next to me was a regular, a guy who is probably homeless, someone I know because he’s always in that same place on Saturdays when the Farmer’s Market is on. He found me a bottle of water someone was handing out—it’s nice to have friends in the right places when you need them. 

There I was almost able to see whatever was going on. Something made a bit of explosive noise, and someone had a poor quality sound system, not intelligible. 

After the fact the popping noise was variously identified, by friends and in press accounts, as smoke bombs, tear gas, CS gas and pepper spray, but no one I trust has told me exactly what it was. I was told the police threw a smoke bomb to break up a fight, and I saw a photo of a protestor with something smoky spewing out of his hand, but whatever it was no one was reported as being injured by it. 

A few ugly scuffles have been reported in various media, but all of them seem to have been broken up promptly by the police. Otherwise the cops just hung out looking menacing, though not nearly as menacing as the boys (and a few girls) in the black costumes. 

It worked. 

All in all, the whole scene was approximately as mellow as a sixties blues festival. The Blackies marched out about 2:30 in a cloud of dust, at least a hundred of them if not more in a line. Here I have to admit they were pretty impressive—my companion even found them scary. But the point is, despite the reports in the blood-thirsty mass media, they didn’t actually do anything, good or bad, except supply video footage for their opponents to exploit. 

Leaving, they were part of a parade which included a truck full of people who’d spoken at the morning rally (including Pastor McBride and Berkeley comic Kamau Bell) and a miscellany of protesters who were probably pretty hot from standing in the sun all that time. 

This march ended up at Ohlone Park for one last hurrah, a “Victory Party” presided over by Pastor McBride. I didn’t make it, but my spies tell me it was conflict-free. 

Nothing much more seemed to be happening, so I headed for home. As I was leaving, I noticed a little knot of people in front of the Public Safety Building talking to Chief Andy Greenwood, and I joined them to see what was happening. 

I don’t know how the conversation had started, but when I got there a young African-American woman with stylish braids wearing a nice church outfit was explaining to the chief where the departing marchers were heading and why. He replied, reasonably, that the city had no desire to control what anyone said as long as their actions were lawful. 

Meanwhile, two or three of the other observers in the cluster were writing on tell-tale journalist’s notepads and/or taking pictures. When the church lady noticed this, she got somewhat agitated, saying she didn’t want her picture published, because she was just a volunteer trying to help out and she was afraid that publicity would be harmful in her work. 

And this is where I realized once again why the public when polled tends to dislike the press almost as much as you-know-who claims to. One of the notebook wielders, who ostentatiously identified herself as being with the L.A. Times, insisted that she had to use the woman’s picture and was obligated to report on what was said in the (pretty inconsequential) conversation with the chief. A man in the group contested this, saying he’d once worked for the Times himself and a reporter was under no obligation to report on everything he or she saw. 

The Times woman bristled, and continued to thrust her notebook in the face of the other woman, who looked like she was about to cry. 

At that point I remarked that what the volunteer was saying was equivalent to “off the record” or perhaps “no comment” and her polite request for privacy could and should be honored. Just then I remembered the reporter’s name and called her by it, and miraculously, perhaps because of losing her own cover, she backed off and left. 

We did get a good picture before the speaker asked not to have her picture published. It shows the chief doing his job as he’s supposed to, so we’ve decided to post it, but we’ve obscured the face of the woman as she requested to safeguard her privacy. 

Needless to say, the Times never used either the picture or the story from this encounter. Instead, what was their story? 

Why should you ask? Did you really think her editors wanted a story that said “Nice Polite Lady and Police Chief Agree During Berkeley Free-Speech Protest”? 

No—here’s what they said instead: 

Violence by far-left protesters in Berkeley sparks alarm 

Are you surprised?