The Hypocrisy of American Media Exposed

_{BY: Andrew Springer, NOTICE News co-founder}

Dear readers: We’re changing things up at NOTICE News. Instead of a daily round-up, our newsletter will now focus on single-issue deep dives—stories that reveal how the day’s news fits into the bigger picture. We’ll be digging into how power, profit, and prejudice—rooted in greed, racism, colonialism, and late-stage capitalism—shape the news of the day. Thanks for being part of this journey.

Last night, Anthony and I joined thousands of protestors in Barcelona to march to the city’s monument to Christopher Columbus: Mirador de Colom—a massive column topped with his statue at the top, right at the bottom of the city’s most famous street, La Rambla.

The protest was to mark October 12—basically Spain’s Fourth of July. The date was chosen because it marks Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, and for centuries was framed as the beginning of Spain’s global influence.

But it was also the beginning of a genocide unmatched in all of human history. Historians estimate 50 to 90 million indigenous people died from the European invasion in the centuries that followed.

To counter an officially sanctioned parade held earlier in the day, progressive activists and indigenous groups held their own march—one challenging all forms of colonization that continue in our world, particularly in Southwest Asia.

Thousands turned out waving Palestinian flags, chanting “¡Palestina libre!” and burning posters of Columbus.

But despite this massive crowd—and an even bigger protest that drew over 300,000 people at the beginning of the month—most American news outlets didn’t even mention it.

Let that sink in for a moment: Three hundred thousand people. In a single city. Flooding the streets to protest a bipartisan, U.S.-backed genocide. And American journalists acted like it never happened.

The only story American media seems to cover in Barcelona is the city’s (rightful) protests against over-tourism. A few tourists get squirted with water guns? Front page news.

The hypocrisy is glaring. In June, a few hundred people protested over-tourism and the New York Times ran a full, multi-city roundup. My old employer, NBC News, also covered a July anti-tourism rally.

But 300,000 people flooding Barcelona’s streets to protest the American/Israeli genocide in Gaza? Both outlets refused to cover it.

I guess their editors—my old bosses—didn’t deem it newsworthy. Perhaps the protestors would have had better luck if they’d shot tourists with water guns instead of trying to stop the slaughter of children.

This is the most common form of censorship in our world today. Not government agents storming newsrooms (at least not yet), but billion-dollar media companies choosing which stories deserve attention and which don’t.

Media scholars like Noam Chomsky have a name for this: manufacturing consent. It’s how corporate media protects the powerful by deciding what we see and what we ignore.

When 300,000 people march against our taxpayer-funded genocide and it doesn’t get a mention, but a tourist getting sprayed makes headlines—that’s not just bias. That’s control.

It’s quiet censorship, where protests against colonialism and empire are simply erased from the public record. Because if they don’t show it, maybe we’ll forget it happened. Maybe we’ll stop caring.

But here’s the thing: they’re counting on our silence. They’re counting on us to shrug our shoulders, scroll past, move on to the next thing. They’re betting that we won’t notice when entire movements disappear from view.

We can’t let them win that bet.

Here’s what you can do starting today: seek out independent journalism not beholden to corporate interests—outlets like this newsletter, Mondoweiss, and Democracy Now, and local independent reporters on the ground telling stories mainstream media won’t touch.

Share what you find with your networks, your family, your group chats. Screenshot major protests that get ignored and post about them—become the amplifier for voices they’re trying to silence.

And trust your instincts: if something massive happens and you don’t see it covered, that’s not an accident. That’s a choice. Someone decided you shouldn’t know about it.

The revolution might not be televised, but it will be documented—by us, for us. We just have to refuse to look away.

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We’ll be back tomorrow morning.

Thank you for reading! - Andrew & Anthony