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

This article critically analyzes mainstream U.S. television news coverage of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, applying the protest paradigm and theories of default Whiteness to examine how White supremacist protesters and antiracist counterprotesters were represented. It finds that news media often used euphemistic language such as "alt-right" to describe White supremacists, which diluted the explicit racist nature of the movement, while coverage of counterprotesters was vague, underrepresenting their racial diversity and minimizing their message. The study highlights how President Donald Trump's public statements, especially his "very fine people on both sides" remark, dominated coverage and diverted attention from the events and participants, reinforcing power dynamics consistent with the protest paradigm. Additionally, the posthumous portrayal of counterprotester Heather Heyer was limited, often reducing her to a symbol without fully acknowledging her antiracist activism or the broader multiracial coalition opposing White supremacy. The article concludes that these media patterns contributed to normalizing White supremacist ideology and obscuring the complexity of the counterprotest, underscoring the need to critically address default Whiteness and colorblindness in news reporting.