As the “Occupy Wall Street” protests in the US enter their third week, American critics complain that the mainstream media is doing its best to downplay the phenomenon.

“The US media intensively covered Egypt’s recent youth revolution; its struggles and aspirations,” said Lauren Ross, a participant in the ongoing “Occupy Austin” demonstration in Austin, Texas. “But they’re not giving the young people of ‘Occupy Wall Street’ the same kind of coverage.”

US mainstream media coverage of the protests reveals the complexity of the American media system. While government censorship does not exist in the US – at least officially – Robert Jensen, journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, points to other factors that interfere with the journalistic process.

“It’s about who owns the media,” Jensen explained. “Where does the revenue come from? And what kind of media ethics are applied?”

Some American activists have gone so far as to describe the paltry media coverage of the ongoing protests as a “media blackout.”

“CNN and Fox News, I’m really disappointed in you,” protest organizer Lucas Vazquez said on television network RT. “When we contacted the new channels to tell them about police brutality against protestors, they simply hung up on us.”

American blogger Alexander Higgins voiced similar concerns. “I’m here at Occupy Wall Street because of the total corporate media blackout,” he wrote.

According to a recent report by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, news related to the Occupy Wall Street protests accounted for a mere 7 per cent of total news coverage in the week starting 3 October –and that was nearly four times the level of coverage the previous week.

Jensen, however, believes the term “blackout” is excessive, although he concedes that mainstream media organs “have been slow to recognise the voices of anti-Wall Street protestors.” He attributed this tardiness to the fact that US media was generally poor at covering “ideas or spectacles.”

“American journalists are generally trained to give priority to those wearing suits – those who have speechwriters – more than grassroots movements,” he said. “It’s to be expected that the big media corporations would shy away from demonstrations protesting corporate greed.”

“Journalists aren’t independent from the professional norms of the organisations they work for,” Jenson added.

Lauren Welker, a media organizer for the Occupy Austin protest, pointed out that, once the Occupy Wall Street protests increased in size, they began to attract the attention of corporate media. “Their coverage, however, was intentionally negative,” she said.

Columbia University journalism professor Todd Gitlin, writing in the New York Times, criticized the negative coverage generally given to protesters. “Is it any surprise that Fox News and its allied bloggers consider the protesters ‘deluded’ and ‘dirty smelly hippies’?” Gitlin wrote.

Media columnist James Rainey, writing in the Los Angeles Times, voiced similar criticism. Newscasters on Fox News, Rainey noted, had reported that, “The number-one reason protesters gathered in New York's Zuccotti Park was the free food.”

According to Jensen, negative coverage of popular protests – and protesters – was hardly new to the US mainstream media.

Activists that protested against the US war in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, he recalled, were also portrayed as “hippies, freaks and weirdoes,” rather than members of a genuine political movement. “And the ‘Tea Party’ strikes in early 2009 received similarly cynical coverage, but because that movement had funding, it quickly managed to secure favourable coverage,” Jensen explained.

That being said, Occupy Wall Street protesters have successfully utilized new social-media platforms to spread the word and mobilize the public. A website launched by protesters now provides live streaming video from Wall Street, along with regular updates on sister protests currently taking place across the country.

What’s more, thousands of supporters – and, no doubt, some concerned federal agencies – are also following the protests through Facebook pages and Twitter accounts.