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Kantar Media Wall Street

Media treating Occupy Wall Street movement as 'a sideshow' says analyst as it goes largely ignored

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By Stephen Lepitak, -

October 19, 2011 | 2 min read

The Occupy Wall Street movement is being treated as ‘a side show’ says one analyst as the spreading protest continues to be largely overlooked by the media around the world.

As the movement has grown in recent weeks, with protestors all around the world voicing their anger against what they claim to be ‘greed and corruption’ taking place on Wall Street, there has been little coverage by most media outlets.

Philip Lynch Director of Kantar Media Intelligence says that this is largely due to the “questionable relevance of the movement as a mechanism for change.”

He added: “Rightly or wrongly, the media are treating Occupy as a sideshow.”

Lynch continued: "The media are reporting on tectonic shifts in global finance. The risk of sovereign defaults raises fundamental challenges to the Developed World’s financial system and stability. Faced with such a profound issue, the media does not attach the same importance to tents on Wall Street. From the media’s viewpoint, the camps are a symptom which add colour to the story, but they are not the story. The Occupy protesters are unlikely to impact the way Wall St and the City do business (the money markets will do that), nor do the protesters offer an alternative agenda (so there is very little for the media to engage with).

"The media would sit up and take notice if there was a real momentum behind the movement, but at present the media believes the momentum of events lies elsewhere – in the EU debt crisis talks, China’s pervasive power in the financial markets etc. So that’s where their focus is." concluded Lynch.

Kantar Media Wall Street

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