RADICALLY DIFFERENT VIEWS ON PROTESTS

I know a thing or two about how student protests can be covered by
the media - from the protester perspective.

Twice while bagging an undergraduate degree at Laurentian University,
I ended up in student protests. One was about the removal of a Canada
Employment Centre from campus. If I ever knew what the other one was
about -- and I might not have -- I forget.

I was swept up into the employment centre event when its organizers
conscripted a group of us from a campus pub. We were cajoled into
participating in the occupation of a federal office away from the
school. We were herded onto a bus, briefed on the matter and fed the
protest plan.

I had no prior knowledge of the matter and only ambivalence about it
when it was explained to me. But, when the militant types later lost
their edge, I agreed to be the first student to enter the targeted
office and was on the local TV news for this act.

I remember engaging in some chanting because the TV cameras were on,
then getting back on the bus and later watching myself on the news.

The second protest was less taxing. I remember being pulled from a
cafeteria to demonstrate in front of another TV news crew -- on cue.
I couldn't pick myself out on the news after that one. But I only
stayed for the first take of feigned angry chanting and fist-waving
ordered up by the organizers for the cameras.

It's a sorry record as a protester. But it's interesting background
for someone who frequently fields requests to have journalists cover
myriad protests.

Peter Haggert, whom I worked under at three newspapers, more
profoundly influenced my opinion of such things. He felt news
organizations too often allowed their reporting resources to be held
hostage by anyone carrying a protest sign. He sent out journalists to
cover them. But he did so when their numbers were huge or their
passion was real or their efforts were impacting a lot of people
trying to go about their business.

He had no time for covering the lone picket at the local MP's office
or the like.

I thought of Haggert's protest coverage axioms and my dalliance with
student activism this week in stewarding and defending coverage
decisions surrounding the marijuana decriminalization smokefest at
the University of Guelph Monday.

The 4/20 event - named, at least in part, because it formed part of a
wide and annual protest each April 20, was well attended. That's one
of the reasons we covered it. Monday's weather was dreary. Wet. Cold.
Breezy. When we took in the day's weather, we assumed some sorry
small lot would take part in the pot party and it might make for a
rich, ironic, colour story. But our "serious grass fans missed the
sun" headline was not to be.

Our journalists encountered hundreds of pot puffers. The weed
advocates danced. They grooved. They took pulls on joints small and
spectacularly oversized.

A story and photo landed on our Tuesday front page. A slide show of
the action was our featured multimedia item on the Mercury's website
for a spell.

Two reader objections reached me. I pointed out to each complainant
that the protest attracted hundreds of participants locally -- a
newsworthy and noteworthy size of civil and disobedient gathering. I
also shared links to national media stories about 4/20 events
elsewhere. The one on Parliament Hill looked lively too.

I convinced neither of the parties protesting the protesters'
prominent play that the paper had done the appropriate thing.

Then again, maybe the word is out that back in the day I was quite a
student radical myself.