2024 will not be 1968 – and the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago might be very different from the times of Walter Cronkite

The U.S. presidential nominating conventions, which happen every 4 years, are usually not only political events, but in addition media events. Ever since television was invented, the organizers of the Democratic and Republican conventions have tried to stage their events in addition to possible for viewers in their very own homes, and so they have often succeeded.

But not at all times.

One of the worst failures was the 1968 Democratic Party Convention in Chicago, when anti-war activists on Michigan Avenue chanted into the tv cameras: “The whole world is watching”, while Mayor Richard J. Daley’s police beat them with batons. In the convention hall itself, the delegates staged their very own protests in front of the cameras, and Daley’s security forces famous blow against CBS news anchor Dan Rather.

Images of this chaos circulated for months, and Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey was never in a position to make up for the points he lost when Americans saw the violence on television.

As an authority on the 1968 Convention and particularly how television news covered this crisis, I even have been serious about how Chicago might handle – or mishandle – the Democratic National Convention in August as a political and media event.

Fear of a repeat of the 1968 game is greatlike the town has to date refused permits for groups that wanted to collect near the United Center, the convention venue. This denial of permits seems like a page out of Daley's playbook.

But simply because a situation is paying homage to the past doesn't mean history will repeat itself. Today's media may be very different, and Chicago now not has a celebration politician in charge.

Protesters outnumbered by police forces

Since 1998, the congresses have been legally recognized as national special events on security, largely managed by the Secret Service.

But back then, in 1968, Daley had the reins firmly in his hands. When asked whether his police had “overreacted” to the demonstrators, Daley explained“The policeman is not here to create disorder. The policeman is here to maintain disorder,” an announcement that was less a malapropism than a Freudian slip. Under his leadership, the town was secured like a fortress when 10,000 protesters turned against Phalanxes of police and national guardsmenThe demonstrators were outnumbered by 2:1.

Daley has scared 1000’s with threats of “law and order” within the run-up to the convention, but it surely is affordable to expect much larger numbers of protesters in 2024. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is a progressive who’s widely seen as more sympathy for activists than for the policeHe didn’t discourage protests on the upcoming party congress.

This fact alone represents an important difference between Johnson and Daley. Johnson is a Democratbut not the team player and machine boss that Daley was. Nor is he the authoritarian that Daley was. Daley had the Police in your pocket.

But he didn't have the media in his pocket, and neither does Johnson. In fact, even when he desired to, Johnson couldn't suppress the voices of journalists, influencers, bloggers, TikTokers and podcasters who were sure to come back to Chicago.

The media ecosystem is fundamentally different from what it was over 50 years ago, when news was more centralized and media technologies were less portable and harder for laypeople to acquire.

Shocking reporting

Daley took advantage of this top-down communications structure and did all the things he could to hamper journalism throughout the convention. Crucially, he didn’t solve a strike by electrical employees against the local telephone company, which led to a double-edged crisis.

First, not enough extra phones were installed on the convention grounds and in other key areas just like the convention hotels. This shortage made it difficult for print journalists to speak with editors and get stories through by phone. The 3,200 extra phones installed before the convention were nowhere near enough to satisfy the demand. It's unbelievable, but this was life before everyone had a phone of their pocket.

Second, the facility lines and connections that the networks needed for live street broadcasting couldn’t be installed due to strike, which meant that the one live broadcast on television was within the Congress Hall itselfFootage shot on the road was delivered by motorcycle couriers to the convention venue, the International Amphitheatre, where it was developed, edited and broadcast.

A careless but more apt chant throughout the Battle of Michigan Avenue would have been, “In three or four hours the whole world will be watching!”

CBS, NBC and ABC understood that Daley was deliberately attempting to bring them to their knees. It felt like “a total news blackout,” as exasperated CBS anchor Walter Cronkite explained, an uncharacteristic, temporary remark that may only be noticed by a media historian who obsessively watches every moment of convention coverage.

NBC anchor Chet Huntley reported that “the news occupation on this city now under fire by Chicago police.” Those were harsh words. Before the arrival of cable news, which regularly leans left or right, the skilled norms that governed television news stubbornly dictated neutrality. If Huntley went out on a limb to criticize the Chicago police, it needed to be true.

Or was that it? Could Huntley be trusted?

Support for the police, not for journalists

This is the a part of the story that sounds most contemporary. In polls conducted after the convention and in mountains of letters and telegrams sent to the networks, a majority of Americans concluded that the police had used an appropriate level of force, and even insufficient violence against demonstrators.

There was hardly any criticism of the violence against journalists. Instead, the broadcasters were accused of “liberal bias” because they showed an excessive amount of violence from the police and too little from the protesters. The CBS News archive is filled with letters to the editor complaining about a scarcity of objectivity. Many stated sharply that Dan Rather got what he deserved.

The broadcasters responded to the critics by saying that they’d only shown what happenedA radical content evaluation conducted by NBC on the time found that 3% of the network's coverage included street demonstrations. At CBS, NBC estimated the figure was closer to five%.

Having followed the coverage from starting to finish, I can confirm that the networks covered police violence against protesters in a quite subliminal and covert manner, quite than the opposite way around.

Oppression “unimaginable today”

In 1968, Daley's defenders claimed that the press had misrepresented the Chicago story, but they didn’t deny that the police were violent. Today, nevertheless, Fundamental truths are subject to partisanshipand the assumption that the mainstream media is permeated by liberal bias has grow to be Conservatives and right-wing extremists.

Former President Donald Trump used this pre-existing worldview to his advantage during and after his term in office by spreading the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Republican members of Congress and Fox News personalities also seized on their supporters' belief that the mainstream media can’t be trusted once they called footage of the storming of the Capitol on January 6 evidence, not proof, of an rebel. but of “sightseeing.”

Allegations of “False reports” and cries that the mainstream media “the enemy of the people“Journalists are usually not only in danger at high-profile events reminiscent of political congresses, but in addition of their on a regular basis work.

All of this might be within the air in Chicago in August. And also on the Republican convention in Milwaukee in July.

Suppressing live reporting is unimaginable today, with mainstream media distributing fast photos and unprofessional videos circulating like mercury on social media.

With everyone in 2024 carrying a phone that doubles as a camera, the challenge for Americans watching the 2 conventions remotely might be less censorship and a scarcity of live footage than, quite the opposite, an overabundance of unsorted footage, possibly coupled with a diffusion of misinformation amplified by those with malicious intent.

There are many differences between the conventions of 1968 and 2024. One of the largest is that now the entire world is filming. The problem today will not be how much we are able to see, but how much we are able to imagine.