From WNYKKK in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

I'm Bob Carfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone.

As you know, there was a peace rally heard round the world last weekend,

the first protest against the looming war in Iraq that has garnered serious media attention.

Editor and publisher has been keeping tabs on the coverage of the anti-war movement since last October.

Editor Greg Mitchell says the shift is unmistakable. Last fall, after the first round of anti-war protests, we noted very small coverage.

The coverage that there was was buried in the back of newspapers, sometimes was dismissive,

and often the language was simply depicting protesters as leftovers from the 60s or ragged bands of ex-socialists.

So this time around, once again, you surveyed the newspapers all over the country after the rallies.

And what did you find? Well, it was interesting that both in cities that hosted

large rallies, such as Los Angeles and San Francisco and New York, and cities that didn't have

large rallies or any rallies at all, they still almost invariably put the demonstrations on the front

page, the European demonstrations, wrap-ups of the U.S. demonstrations. And then, of course,

if they had local rallies, like in New York, they gave it even more attention. We saw more

editorials that responded to the protest and wrote about them often in a favorable way.

So I think there's been quite a shift, you know, partly because the numbers are higher,

or it's because the protesters are a more

diverse group and it may be because the skepticism about the war is more general now.

And so it's really a combination of matters that may be bringing this to the fore.

Was the overall shift in coverage representative, you think, of a real shift in public opinion,

a real shift in the anti-war

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