John Sherck made a good point about political demonstrations and the media. I remember a situation in the mid-60's that will forever affect my attitudes toward the media:

During our Free Speech Movement, all (or most) of the students sitting around the police car were in regular student-type clothing, most were studying or talking. An out-of-it hippie wandered up, dirty and clearly stoned on something, hair all tangled with leaves, unshaven, raggedy. The media immediately surrounded him and began to interview him and take photographs.

Sure enough, the next day the newspapers featured his picture above the fold, though the story quotations made it clear he had just wandered by and had no idea what was going on. However, the impression was left that we were all drug-crazed dirty hippies, stumbling around, doing "our thang." And that opinion of the Free Speech Movement remains to that day. Mario Savio may have had somewhat wild hair, but he was relatively conservatively dressed, clearly sober and very articulate.

Yes, the image and the message are distorted by the media. All the more reason for the movement (whatever it is) to be clear about its own goals and to exercise information dissemination of its own.