Amy Gardner’srecent reporting on the Tea Party in the Washington Post has been very insightful. Today’s piece (10/27/10) deals with the activists’ views of the media.There’s astandard right-wing whine about mainstream media neglect, but actual Tea Party activists see things differently:
Most local tea party organizers interviewed in an extensive canvass this month by the Washington Post said media coverage of their groups has been fair, suggesting that perceptions of antagonism between the tea party and traditional news media are overstated.
Seventy-six percent of local organizers said that coverage of their groups is either very fair or somewhat fair. Only 8 percent said coverage has been very unfair; 15 percent said somewhat unfair.
It’s difficult to imagine many progressive activists could say the same thing. The truth is that Tea Party activism has receivedan abundanceof press coverage. But Gardner tries to make the case that this wasn’t so, at least early on:
Media coverage of the tea party has evolved markedly since the groups first began forming in February 2009.
Major news outlets paid little attention to the first wave of tax-day protests in April 2009 and even a large march the following September in Washington.
Those April 2009 anti-tax protests were actually well-covered by the media; as FAIR noted at the time, they werefeatured prominently on every network newscast, which is a pretty good indication that an event has been deemed important by the press. The idea that these events escaped the media’s notice is a popular one, butthere’sno good evidence toback it up.
As for otherTea Party coverage, Gardner cites the September2009 event in Washington, which happened around the same time as a gay rights National Equality march. The events were of comparable size, but as Julie Hollar noted (Extra!, 12/09), one was considered far more newsworthy:
In major newspapers, the Washington Post and L.A. Times ran articles about the Tea Party on the front page (9/13/09), and the New York Times (9/13/09) published a front-page photo (teasing an article inside); a month later, only the Post (10/12/09) put the gay march on A1. (USA Today didnâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢t cover either rally.)
Across the handful of segments on network TV news, conservative protesters got twice as many quotes as gay rights protesters, 32 to 16. (CBS was even with eight apiece.)
It’s good to know that Tea Party activists realize that they’re not being ignored by the media. But it’s odd to see journalists try to argue that the movement was ever neglected; if anything, it’s hard to imagine a Tea Party movement would exist at all without the constant press attention it’s been getting all along.
“[I]t’s hard to imagine a Tea Party movement would exist at all without the constant press attention it’s been getting all along.”
I think it would exist in some form, but without anywhere near the visibility that corpress attention creates for it.
And that’s a direct result of Koch and other million/billionaire boys club funding watering the Astroturf, isn’t it?
And can someone explain to me why some “progressives” seem to view most Tea Baggers as “sincere but confused” – as if their money woes might make them open to ideas of economic fairness and social equality, and thus potential allies?
You could’ve made that argument for Klansmen, couldn’t you?
Yes, there are some dupes within the ranks, but I’d say the ‘tude displayed by that Rand Paul thug’s attack on a “lib’rul” activist is shared by the vast majority of Tea Baggers, and it’d be pretty damn foolish to waste any time trying to “convert” them, when there are many millions of Americans in dire straits much more open to the principle of “justice for all”, don’t you think?
What Doug Latimer said. I think the press attention generated groups that identified as TPers rather than the reverse. Kind of like agencies that suddenly discovered they had anti-terror (or War on Drugs) projects when that virtually guaranteed funding. This easily explains the scattershot nature of TP ideology.
One thing that has been missed is -it is a movement that is greatly being run by woman! Probably why it is being run so well with intelligence and poise.It is simple really. Unfettered by silly social issues it attends to the blatant overstepping of the bounds our government routinely undertakes……to all our detriments.The Dems hate it because it eviscerates their ability to control beyond what our constitution allows.The Rs are warry of it for same.The Ds look rediculous trying to paint it as racist, or all the other nonsense they try for political gain.It is a movement that is probably unstoppable.Why?????Because they(the tea party) are 100% correct!
That’s exactly right, Doug L. That goon who assaulted that woman felt perfectly within his rights doing so; I’m sure he thinks that liberal groups (and liberals in general) are the devil’s spawn, and really are dangerous to his “rights” as a patriotic American, and the future of this once-great country. Typically, in fine ignorant and narcissistic fashion, the jack-ass suggested that an apology from his victim was in order (!), and that once the “facts” came out (Breitbart-style paranoid lies and slander, soon to come), he would be vindicated. And the video? Proof of the Move-on woman’s true intentions, that’s all (She was getting ready to lunge at the great man Paul, armed with a poster and a wig.) A cowardly, stupid, frightened, fascist fool stomps on a small, utterly subdued woman’s head, and we’re supposed to feel sorry for him. Goddamn ass-kissin’, boot-lickin’ freak, with the balls of a mouse! Unfortunately, all too typical of these Neo-republicans. (See? I didn’t call him a Bagger. It’s just so passe . . . .)
So far Glenn Beck has been right but he picked the wrong side. So far it is the perceived Left that is being harassed, man handled, bullied, and stomped by the Right. I don’t expect him to mention that fact much less trumpet it.
That’s right, Nightgaunt. That’s always been the case–it’s simply transference, whereby what one percieves in oneself as odious, evil, and awful is placed on another, in this case “The Liberal,” or The Progressive. It starts with creating a false history of the group, and takes off from there. That right-wing politics naturally goes in for violence, and supreme ignorance on the part of it’s leaders, is natural. “History buff” Glenn Beck doesn’t know anything about anything–and this is considered just fine by his admirers. Of course, they think he’s onto something, but Beck’s ridiculous and fantastic stories and tales are what passes for intellectual rigor on the reactionary right. The right has always been suspicious of intellectual pursuits, so Beck’s queer, fun-house mirror-image of the intellectual, bookish pursuer of facts and logic is the perfect display of the Right’s utter, angry, steaming hot contempt for the Left’s cosmopolitan, easy embrace of the life of the mind. It’s very funny to watch the whole mad spectacle. (My favorite comic scene is Beck sitting there with his phony reading glasses on, a big, bad book in lap, pretending to give a shit about what some fraud author is telling him.)
Funny, but ultimately ruinous. The bad thing about it all is that Beck, Gregory, Sawyer, Williams, et. al. are making fortunes to forward the freight of Plutocracy. They’re in it for the money and prestige (!), and there’s a lot of it to be made. The exact opposite of Democracy, and a country that had any sense of itself as a democracy (or had a future as a democracy) would have put dunce caps on these fools a long time ago.
TIMN
I take great pride in fighting hard not to be “embraced to death”by the slave state mentality of the “cosmopolitan”left. Easy life of the mind indeed.They intrude on every freedom with this sharade.
charade oops
Way to correct yourself michael e.
thanks DJ