An Obscured View of “Both Sides”: Default Whiteness and the Protest Paradigm in Television News Coverage of the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” Rally

Abstract

The violence surrounding the 2017 Unite the Right rally challenged journalists with ambiguities from a euphemistic language like “alt-right” to describe White supremacy, to President Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” statement. This critical discourse analysis of television news coverage of Charlottesville applies the protest paradigm, and theories of default Whiteness, to reporting on both the White supremacists and the counterprotesters. The analysis finds misrepresentations of the true nature of both protesters and counterprotesters diluted the danger of the former movement as well as the purpose and diversity of the latter, including a vague portrayal of slain counterprotester Heather Heyer.

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