When a North Carolina TV reporter attempted to film a group of protesters dragging statues honoring confederate soldiers through the streets of Raleigh earlier this month, many tried to block the camera with their hands and protest signs. At one point, a crew member pushed several angry protesters back with a tripod. One yelled out: “Where were you during the peaceful protests? If you didn’t show us being peaceful, don’t show us now!”

The reporter for WRAL in Raleigh, an NBC news affiliate, had followed a crowd of several hundred for hours on June 19, first as they strung up one of the statues to a traffic light, then as they heaved it up the steps of the state courthouse. Despite objections, the crew insisted on filming, albeit without seeking out any interviews from the crowd. In the end, the footage, which was streamed on the station’s local website, wasn’t picked up by any major network in the United States.

The scene is just one of several recent confrontations between activists and TV crews since the demonstrations erupted. Increasingly, these protests are being ignored by both national and local broadcasters; when they are televised, networks show little interest in truly exploring or understanding what motivates the demonstrators or the significance of the events sweeping the country. That the lynching of confederate statues was largely overlooked serves as a striking comparison with the American media’s mesmerized fascination with TV footage of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in 2003.