Study: Networks snub, malign tea party movement --oh those poor neglected VICTIMS

**I read this today at lunch and actually busted out laughing. Surely the legacy Brent Bozell is all over Fox News tonight**

The Big Three television networks virtually ignored the massive, grassroots tea party surge in 2009, and so far this year have maligned the movement as teeming with racists and violent fringe figures, according to a new report by the Media Research Center.

"Rather than objectively document the rise and impact of this important grassroots movement, the 'news' networks instead chose to first ignore, and then deplore, the citizen army mobilizing against the unpopular policies of a liberal president and Congress," wrote MRC Research Director Rich Noyes.

The Media Research Center, a watchdog organization founded by conservative L. Brent Bozell, compiled reams of statistics to support its findings about TV network coverage, among them:

• ABC, CBS and NBC aired just 61 stories or segments on the anti-spending movement over a 12-month period, and most of that coverage is recent. "The networks virtually refused to recognize the tea party in 2009 (just 19 stories), with the level of coverage increasing only after Scott Brown's election in Massachusetts" in January, the report said.

• Overall, 44 percent of the network's reports on the tea party suggested the movement reflected a fringe movement or a dangerous quality. "Signs and images at last weekend's big tea party march in Washington and at other recent events have featured racial and other violent themes," NBC anchorman Brian Williams said in a September 2009 report.

• Coverage of the movement pales in comparison to coverage of "protests serving liberal objectives," the report said. For instance, the Nation of Islam's "Million Man March" in 1995 garnered 21 evening news story on the night of the march — more than the tea party demonstrations received in all of 2009.

No one from any of the three networks returned phone messages or e-mails seeking comment.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/14/study-networks-ignored-maligned-tea-party-movement/

I had a conversation with a bagger earlier wherein I mentioned the racist signs, the epithets and spitting at Congressmen, and the fact that simple civility would go a long way toward changing their image. I finished up by telling said bagger that respect had to be earned and that the baggers are throwing it away with both hands. Nobody likes them.

He slunk away quietly.

When they do cover the protests, they actually >>Shutter<<, show the signs that the carry! And yikes!, interview the people who carry them. How biased!

Snub? It's practically all teabaggers all the time on the TEE VEE.

Malign? You mean it isn't worthy of being maligned given the nature of its rhetoric and openly racist imagery?

Of course, this is from the Moonie Times and to say the "watchdog organization founded by conservative L. Brent Bozell" is biased would be putting it mildly.

As for the 1995 "Million Man March" garnering different coverage, there are at least a couple of reasons for that:

1. It was a real grassroots movement, not something created out of whole cloth by Fox.

2. Fifteen years ago it was a very different time. For one thing, there was no Fox channel spewing propaganda 24 hours a day. Rush was a growing but still nascent presence on radio (he started his hate-radio career seven years earlier.)

it mentioned MRC but didn't mention Bozell

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/washington-whispers/2010/04/13/media-cheers-obama-ignores-tea-party-movement.html

Seriously, the only protest serving 'liberal purposes' that they name that got more coverage then tea parties is some protest from 15 years ago in 1995?

And someone seems to forget liberal protests with just as many, if not more people then the tea party protests that the media largely ignored, such as the antiIraq war protests.