I suppose it does come across that way to some of the audience, but that might be necessary.

When I was learning photojournalism on the side, I shot a bunch of political demonstrations. A lot of those I saw were performances solely for media coverage (not really for, say, the occupants of a building they were in front of, nor for cars driving by). They would tell the media when they would be protesting, media would show up with cameras, media would leave, demonstration would disperse. For those media-centric ones, I guess it would be foolish to show a sign that the TV crew can't easily include in their footage (because it contains a banned word they'd have to go to work to edit out while already on a hectic news cycle schedule).