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So How Important <i>Was</i> That Protester, Anyway?

By Brian Montopoli

April 21, 2006 / 3:29 PM EDT / CBS News

(AP)

Journalists regularly have to make decisions about how much prominence to give a particular piece of news. Sometimes the decision is easy – no one's going to put the moon landing on page 2, for example. But other decisions are more difficult. The presence of a screaming protester at yesterday morning's White House ceremony for visiting China president Hu Jintao could be seen as either big or small news, depending on your perspective. I asked Dan Collins, CBSNews.com's senior producer for hard news, how he decided how to play the story. Here's what he said in an e-mail:

One of our competitors, MSNBC.com, made the disruption the lead on its site under the headline "White House Protest … Heckler disrupts China president during ceremony." This was true enough, but we decided that the disruption wasn't significant enough to warrant changing the focus of the story from Bush and Hu. We opted instead for mentioning the disruption high in our story about the meeting between the two men.

There was disagreement all over the media universe about the importance of the protester, a woman named Wenyi Wang who had obtained temporary press credentials through a Falun Gong newspaper. Just look at the New York tabloids: The New York Daily News screamed "Boo Hu" and featured a large picture of Wang, while the New York Post put Bush and Hu on the cover with no mention of the protester.

The New York Times, meanwhile, led this way:

President Bush and China's president, Hu Jintao, pledged to cooperate more closely on fighting nuclear proliferation and reducing trade imbalances on Thursday, but broke no new ground on the most delicate issues that divide the two nations.
The meeting, the first at the White House between the men since Mr. Hu became China's top leader in 2002, was plagued by gaffes that upended months of painstaking diplomacy over protocol and staging.

(In case you're curious, one gaffe occurred when "a White House announcer introducing the national anthems at the same ceremony mistakenly referred to China as the Republic of China, which is the formal name of its archrival, Taiwan." And then there was Vice President Cheney's decision to wear sunglasses during the ceremony, and Bush's tugging at Hu's jacket as Hu tried to leave the stage the wrong way.)

The Los Angeles Times didn't mention the protester or any kind of gaffe until the fifth paragraph of its piece. The Washington Post mentioned the protester in paragraph three. (There were, in some papers, separate stories on the incident, such as this one in the Post.)

What about the nightly newscasts? Here's Bob Schieffer of the CBS "Evening News":

China's president came to see President Bush today, but this was not the best day the White House ever had. First a government announcer introduced China's national anthem by calling it the national anthem of the Republic of China. In fact, the Republic of China is the name--the formal name of the island of Taiwan, which claims to be an independent nation, a claim that China fiercely disputes.
Then a heckler got into the White House grounds and caused a commotion, and finally when the two presidents sat down together, it does not appear they got much done.

Here's Brian Williams of the NBC "Nighly News":

The stakes were understandably high today when the president of China arrived at the White House for the first time. President Bush welcomes President Hu in grand style, but it was not an official state visit and that in itself was a subtle message. There are a number of issues between these two nations and that became clear when the Chinese president started his speech and a not so subtle message was shouted out by a woman standing with the news media. A minor incident in the scope of things, but one that might have set the tone for the entire day.

And Elizabeth Vargas on ABC's "World News Tonight":

There are few relationships as important to Americans and the world as the one between the United States and China. Their agreements and disagreements affect the globe. So, when Presidents Bush and Hu Jintao met at the White House today, it was an important step toward addressing disagreements, on everything from trade to energy to human rights. There was a sharp reminder of China's dissenters when a protester stole the spotlight at the official welcoming ceremony.

I'm not sure what the right level for the protester should have been. In and of herself, she's not really news – just a lone protester who happened to find a way to get close enough to Hu to make her voice heard. But as a symbol, well, that's another story. She was a living, breathing reminder in the middle of a carefully choreographed ceremony that all was not well with China, nor with the US-China relationship. And if the Chinese are as concerned with protocol as media reports suggest, the protester could end up making a real impact on the meeting between the world leaders. Or she could just be a blip on the radar screen. It's not easy to tell, and thus not easy to tell how much play the story deserves.