Opinion: ‘Hands Off!’ protests deserved further front-page coverage nationally
Our columnist advocates for equitable media coverage of social justice. The recent Hands Off! protest didn’t get the attention it deserved and fails to highlight those directly impacted by President Trump’s policies. Flynn Ledoux | Illustration Editor
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Protests erupted nationwide on April 5, marking one of the most expansive demonstrations against President Donald Trump since the 2017 Women’s March. These 1,400 “Hands Off!” protests spanned cities across the entire United States alongside international support from Canada and Europe.
Demonstrators rallied to defend crucial public programs, including Social Security and Medicaid, and to peacefully push back against the expanding influence of billionaires in government. The assemblies also supported immigrants, transgender people and other marginalized groups under attack.
This was a historic moment of democratic engagement, with estimates of attendance ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions.
But the media’s response to it was disappointing.
Despite the scale of the protests, major newspapers and television networks offered only muted, peripheral coverage. The Washington Post ran a headline that read “Mass protests across the U.S. signal opposition to Trump, Musk,” but they buried the story in the Metro section instead of placing it on the front page.
The New York Times didn’t fare much better. They published a single photo captioned “A Day of Protest” and said people gathered “around the country,” directing readers to the actual story on page 18. The Boston Globe devoted its coverage for the full story to pages B1 and A11, with just a small snippet at the bottom of its front page.
As reader Nathan Aronow pointed out in a published letter in the Globe, this was not “please turn to page 11” news.
The broadcast coverage wasn’t much better. ABC’s World News Tonight gave the protests just 20 seconds of airtime before their focus shifted to tariffs with b-roll of the protests. Good Morning America managed to include a few protester soundbites, but even that was a rarity.
CBS mostly framed its sparse coverage through the lens of Trump’s tariffs, barely acknowledging the broader message behind the protests. NBC’s Nightly News did a bit more, referencing “huge turnouts,” but their coverage was folded into a broader story on Trump’s economic agenda, with no real context on the national scope or civic relevance of the protests themselves.
These protests, which spoke for millions frustrated with corporate corruption and authoritarian drift, were treated more like background noise than a national wake-up call.
This erasure matters.
The sheer coordination and turnout of the Hands Off! protests made it a national moment — one that warranted prominent coverage from the press. With massive crowds rallying across the country against policies that directly impact their lives, this level of public engagement should have commanded front-page attention. Yet mainstream media outlets continue to sideline events of this scale and significance.
Local outlets covered the protests in Syracuse, recognizing their relevance and urgency as 4,000 protestors flocked downtown. But the concern lies with national media, the legacy papers and major networks that shape public understanding across the country, and their failure to meet this moment.
Alex Levy | Design Editor
Ultimately, the national media minimized the scale and significance of the Hands Off! protests. This is symptomatic of a broader issue: the normalization of harmful policies and the marginalization of democratic resistance.
Underreporting mass political action, especially when it directly challenges those in power, contributes to a dangerous distortion of public perception.
If readers don’t see widespread resistance reflected in headlines, they’re less likely to believe it exists. That breeds apathy, disillusionment and the false sense that protesting doesn’t work or matter — but it does.
Silence from institutions we rely on for truth ultimately undermines the very democracy these demonstrations are fighting for.
Journalists have a responsibility to cover movements like Hands Off! with the seriousness they deserve. This protest was a unified, urgent and violence-free response to threats against social programs, civil rights and government accountability. It required front-page coverage and continued attention that matched its political and national gravity.
It has been more than a week since the protests, and not a single major national outlet has followed up as of Tuesday night. It’s our right to be informed by legacy papers. The media must show up when democracy does.
Grace Johnson is a junior majoring in english and textual studies. Her column appears bi-weekly. She can be reached at gjohns18@syr.edu.
