Think Occupy Wall St. is a phase? You don't get it

By Douglas Rushkoff, Special to CNN

updated 1:09 PM EST, Wed October 5, 2011

A protester holds a sign at the Occupy Wall Street protest last weekend

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Douglas Rushkoff says traditional media condescends to Occupy Wall Street movement
• He says that's because its 21st-century, net-driven narrative doesn't fit old media model
• He says protest not about end-point, it's about a new discourse on variety of complaints
• Rushkoff: Protest may be unwieldy, but aims to correct disconnects in U.S.

Editor's note: Douglas Rushkoff is a media theorist and the author of "Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age" and "Life Inc: How Corporatism Conquered the World and How We Can Take it Back."

(CNN) -- Like the spokesmen for Arab dictators feigning bewilderment over protesters' demands, mainstream television news reporters finally training their attention on the growing Occupy Wall Street protest movement seem determined to cast it as the random, silly blather of an ungrateful and lazy generation of weirdos. They couldn't be more wrong and, as time will tell, may eventually be forced to accept the inevitability of their own obsolescence.

Consider how CNN anchor Erin Burnett, covered the goings on at Zuccotti Park downtown, where the protesters are encamped, in a segment called "Seriously?!" "What are they protesting?" she asked, "nobody seems to know." Like Jay Leno testing random mall patrons on American History, the main objective seemed to be to prove that the protesters didn't, for example, know that the U.S. government has been reimbursed for the bank bailouts. It was condescending and reductionist.

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