Media Cheers the Loser and Ignores the Winners

Imagine if the Calfornia Angels (I'll never call them the Los Angeles Angels) won the world series over the Chicago Cubs (yeah, it's hard to image the Cubs anywhere near the World Series), but in the paper the next day the only thing the media wrote about was the Cubs.  How great the Cubs played, how wonderful their manager was, how brilliant their Chicago strategy...etc.  We'd all think they had lost their minds, ignoring the winners and celebrating the losers.

That's pretty much what's happening in the political media today as they praise Obama and the Dems, as their approval numbers plummet, and ignore the Tea Party crowd that has been picking up support and drawing large crowds all across the country.  Paul Bedard takes note:

Big media, especially the TV networks, seem to be going out of their way to diss the conservative-leaning Tea Party movement as they work overtime to cheer on the Obama administration whose Gallup job approval rating has dropped to 43 percent, say conservative media critics who today are issuing a report that they say confirms suspicions that the mainstream media have got it wrong in their political coverage.

In their report provided to Whispers, the Media Research Center charges that the networks and much of the non-Fox cable have limited their coverage of the growing Tea Party Movement. And when they did cover the protests, the stories were laced with charges of racism and hate. Among the highlights:

*Total coverage by the networks was miniscule. ABC, CBS, and NBC aired 61 stories or segments about the Tea Party over a 12-month period despite the movement's demonstrated political force.
*By comparison, more liberal protests in the past won far wider and more positive coverage. For example, the Nation of Islam's "Million Man March" in 1995 was featured in 21 evening news stories on just the night of the march–more than the Tea Party received in all of 2009; and the anti-gun "Million Mom March" in 2000 was preceded by 41 broadcast network reports heralding its message with a dozen positive pre-march interviews with organizers and participants.
*Some coverage suggested Tea Party racism and extremism.
*The make-up of the Tea Party movement has been wrongly reported as a collection of angry white men when credible polling has shown that women are a big part of the protests and a quarter are Democrats with another 10 percent Independents.

This Thursday the media will be faced with the unenviable task of ignoring hundreds of Tea Party gatherings all over the country. Of course they won't be able to ignore them completely, so they will instead focus on the extremes of the day. If someone shows up with a sign they consider racist or threatening, we'll see that. If someone gives a "birther" speech about Obama, we'll hear that. What we won't see or hear is the thousands of good Americans who are worried about losing their freedom and their rights and have taken some of their precious private time to express their political views.  Those people don't count anymore...as far as the media is concerned.

Thankfully, the media can't keep them from voting.