I find it moderately hilarious that people always think the opposite side has control of the media.
My parents think the conservative right has control of the media because rich people. Conservatives seem to think the progressive left has control of the media because journalists/scandal-hounds.
In other news, Fort Sumter didn't fire first. Which is why you march up, tell them 'you're on federal land, we need to use this building, kindly leave and take your firearms with you'. Have the police wear protection, but if they get shot at, give 'em 24 hours to surrender or we storm the place. Don't blow it up, that's expensive and sets a really bad precedent I'd really like to avoid. But nonetheless, this isn't just a protest. Protests usually involve people saying 'hey we're protesting and this is what we want to change and we've got a lot of people who agree with us but we'll try to be civil about it'. (whether they manage that, when protests involving large numbers of people are inevitably chaotic and ripe with chances for opportunists, is another story) This is people saying 'We're going to be carving out an enclave to be separate from the government and if people don't like that they can talk to my gun'.
And Loud Whisper...ethnic minority group numbering in tens or hundreds of thousands, trying to get a state separate from an oppressive government that is biased against them, when they have a predominantly their-ethnicity/language area they could manage that in, is rather different than a few dozen people of the predominant ethnicity of a state, trying to carve out land in the middle of said state because they feel like their economic rights weren't being respected, is just a little different. Maybe not in the sense of 'either way they're trying to separate', but in the sense of 'who has the better reason' and 'how supported is the cause'.
Because that's part of the thing about democracy. The more people support your cause, the more legitimate it is, almost by definition. More people opposing can hurt the legitimacy, but if it doesn't affect them directly, then it's considered less legitimate, because it's easier to condemn things that are distant on principle without looking at the people involved.
And if I remember right, BiggerFish, we pseudo-unofficially recognize Taiwan. Or something.