Norman Lear Center director Marty Kaplan published an op-ed in the Huffington Post on how the media's portrayal of Occupy Wall Street could determine how the protests end. Kaplan proposed the movement could end in two ways: either it inspires a momentous shift in American politics and finance or it dies out. The way the media frames the protests "could actually determine the way it will play out in real life," Kaplan wrote. "The right's strategy is: If we don't build it, they won't come. So its narrative is: These people are lazy, losers, hippies, stooges, drug-takers, a mob. They don't know what they want. They want to destroy capitalism. This is no Tea Party. Move along, there's nothing to see here," Kaplan wrote. The left has taken the opposite approach, with liberal-leaning news organizations like MSNBC framing the movement from the perspective that it is a big deal and it is going to generate change in America, Kaplan argued. The media can report aspects of the protests at face value or they can analyze these events to shed light on the bigger issues at hand. "Wall Street's escape from accountability, its capacity to thwart even the most modest attempts to rein in future recklessness, can be a story about the regulatory process, or it can be a warning that there are dangers to democracy that our Founders' checks and balances were unable to anticipate," Kaplan wrote. The outcome of the Occupy protests is unknown, but, as Kaplan believes, the media will influence how they end. Read the entire article here.