‘How many people were arrested?’ is a lousy way to cover protests

As anti-ICE and anti-Trump protests are becoming increasingly frequent and newsworthy, our major news organizations need to reconsider how to cover them.

Right now, the emphasis in news reports is almost exclusively on how many people were arrested, and whether any of the protesters were violent. Even crowd estimates are oddly verboten.

See, for instance, this Washington Post report on Wednesday’s protests around the nation, which focuses almost exclusively on arrests and what the police said. Or see this New York Times report which tells us about arrests and police orders in Spokane, while saying nothing about significant protests in other cities other than they “ended with little sign of confrontation.”

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