This afternoon on Fifth Avenue, across the street from Rupert Murdoch’s vacant apartment, the pressure group Color of Change staged a demonstration against Fox News. Nominally, the protest was in response to the News of the World scandal in the United Kingdom, with a couple of signs mentioning the alleged phone hacking of 9/11 victims. In reality most of the sentiment and rhetoric were against Fox News per se, for what the Democrats pressure group (not affiliated to the Democratic party) described, in an invitation to the event, as “racism, sexism, homophobia, immigrant-bashing, union-bashing, and just plain lying.” There was little said that couldn’t have been said two weeks ago, but recent events provided a convenient backdrop.

One protester I spoke to claimed that there were around 35 people in attendance. With this estimate he did his movement down; there were at least 40. But whether it was 35 or 40, the press far outstripped the demonstrators. Organizer Rashad Robinson said he was “excited about the turnout.” Each to their own. Those less excited about 40 people standing around on the street vaguely shouting at an empty building need not worry, however. “The whole country is against Fox News,” one woman told me, before proceeding to blame the network for brainwashing “a majority of the country.” (Perhaps this is evidence of John Edwards’s “Two Americas”?) If both of those statements are true, she needn’t waste too much energy on trying to bring them down.

I wandered around and spoke to people in attendance, asking them about their signs, and their reasons for being there. A couple of people wanted to express their fair disgust at the phone hacking allegations, but generally the issue of misconduct had been mixed so far in with a general disdain for Fox’s “bias,” that it was lost altogether. Broadly speaking, the latent argument was that Fox News is abusing its position on the “public airwaves,” and peddling lies and bias for — shock horror — “profit.” “They have an agenda,” was a frequent refrain. I asked whether, like it or not, saying whatever they wanted to was their constitutional right, and whether there were any other stations which might have an agenda. “Not on this scale,” was the view.

When I suggested that maybe the network was successful because people liked it, our “whole country” woman shook her head. “It’s the corporations,” she insisted, “we need media reform, and campaign-finance reform or we’ll never get anything done.” She at least stopped short of suggesting that the government should step in, except in cases where the network has committed a crime, but she did endorse the Fairness Doctrine. “We need to decide, through government, how the media should work.” Maybe, I asked, we could do that by just tuning to the things we wanted to watch? “No, no,” she said. “It’s the corporations.” In fairness, she did not go so far as to argue that the station should be shut down. But another demonstrator I spoke to was not so generous: “Remove their license,” he told me, “if they can’t use it responsibly.” First Amendment be damned.

I learned a few things, most notably that Fox News is a public institution, just like PBS. Why? “Because the government doesn’t tax them as much as it should, which is the same as a subsidy, so we’re paying them.” (An answer to whether I will be convicted of murder for not donating my liver to donors in need of a replacement was not forthcoming.) I also learned that Fox News is “a criminal organization” and the largest propaganda machine “in the history of the world,” outstripping the Nazis and the Soviet Union:

The most farcical moment came when the protesters tried to deliver a ream of paper — carrying signatures, it seemed — to the rather bewildered doorman of the building. He explained that he was just the doorman, and couldn’t accept anything, let alone pass it on to a tenant or make an official statement. This was the cue for Rashad Robinson to make another speech in front of the waiting cameras. “Rupert Murdoch is showing once again that he does not want to hear our voice,” he shouted. With this level of debate, it is little wonder.