Press: Making Hostility a Media Event

In West Germany, Uncle Sam is a journalistic whipping boy

Jets swooped in formation, spun in circles, flew upside down: the show at the U.S. Air Force base in Ramstein, West Germany, this month was flashy enough to draw some 300,000 enthusiastic spectators. Yet as the display appeared on West German television and in newspapers and magazines, the main event seemed not to have been the five-hour show, but rather the largely nonviolent arrest of about 250 left-wing demonstrators by U.S. military police. For the protesters, who sought to publicize their opposition to scheduled...