Photo credit: Aaron Wiener, The Washington Independent
America's broadcast television networks brand the Tea Party movement as an insignificant assortment of cranks and reactionaries. Members are also portrayed -- when they're covered at all -- as tools for self-serving corporate interests and racists dragooned by the Republican Party.
Those are among the conclusions of a Media Research Center study, which tracked network coverage of the Tea Party movement since it burst onto the political scene a year ago.
Reviewing every mention of the Tea Party on the ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening newscasts, Sunday talk shows and ABCs "Nightline" from Feb. 19, 2009 (when CNBC contributor Rick Santelli first suggested throwing a Tea Party to protest government takeovers) through March 31, 2010, MRC researchers found:
- ABC, CBS and NBC aired 61 stories or segments on Tea Parties. Another 141 items included brief references to the movement.
- After broadcasting 19 stories in 2009, the level of coverage increased in the wake of independent Scott Browns upset victory in the U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts.
- Network reporters were "dismissive" of the first Tea Party events in 2009. Theres been some grassroots conservatives who have organized so-called Tea Parties around the country, NBCs Chuck Todd noted on the April 15, 2009 "Today" show. "The idea hasnt really caught on.
- After the Sept. 12 rallies, the networks suggested the Tea Party was an extreme or racist putsch. On CBS, "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer decried the angry and nasty Capitol Hill rally.
Bad press may be preferable to no press, the MRC study says.
"Coverage is piddling compared to that lavished on protests serving liberal objectives," stated the MRC report. "The Nation of Islams 'Million Man March' in 1995, for example, was featured in 21 evening news stories on just the night of that march more than the Tea Party received in all of 2009.
"The anti-gun 'Million Mom March' in 2000 was preceded by 41 broadcast network reports heralding its message, including a dozen positive pre-march interviews with organizers and participants, a favor the networks never granted the Tea Party."
In Florida, the Tea Party movement has been anything but predictable or unified. Groups in the state have splintered -- and even sued each other -- over the right to use the name.
And while the national media have attempted to portray Tea Parties as a GOP subsidiary, Tea Partiers in Florida have not moved in lockstep.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Paula Dockery -- who has pointedly criticized the state's GOP leadership -- is supported by some Tea Party factions, but opposed by others.
GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio -- who campaigns as a rock-ribbed, anti-tax conservative -- has not been universally endorsed by local Tea Party organizations.
"There's wide disparity in interests and agendas," said Karl Zimmermann, a board member of the Indian River County Tea Party. Despite those differences, negativity remains "the mainstream media's attitude toward most conservatives," he observed.
Doug Guetzloe, consultant to the Florida Tea Party, said the report "confirms what all Tea Party supporters have seen for themselves -- the wide disparity between the truth and what appears in the liberal media.
"When we attend a Tea Party, we know for a fact the reality of that event.When we watch the same event on the evening news, every network, except for Fox, appears to be at an event in a parallel universe -- not reporting the reality of the event, but creating images to match their socialist agenda."
News pundits defended the networks' overall coverage and characterization of the Tea Party movement.
Blogging on the Washington Post Web site, David Weigel wrote:
"I don't see that the MRC has included coverage of all Tea Party-related incidents in its numbers. Tea Party activists happily include the town hall rebellions against health-care reform and cap and trade as milestones. The report, when it includes those stories, makes hay out of the way protesters were portrayed as angry.
"The argument, basically, is that non-Fox stories were not deferential enough to activists, and that the incidence of stories increased after the Tea Parties showed that they had political heft. I guess you can call that bias. You could also call it careful."
MRC, based in Alexandria, Va., and founded in 1987 as a conservative-oriented media watchdog, is chaired by Brent Bozell, whose op-ed columns regularly appear on Sunshinestatenews.com.
The MRC study, titled "TV's Tea Party Travesty," concluded:
"While the broadcast networks seldom devolved into the juvenile name-calling and open hostility evident at the liberal cable news networks, their coverage of the Tea Partys first year reflected a similar mindset of elitist condescension and dismissiveness.
"Given how the networks have provided fawning coverage and helpful publicity to far-less consequential liberal protest movements, their negative treatment of the Tea Party is a glaring example of a media double standard.
"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."
Jason Hoyt, co-host of the Tea Party Patriots Live radio program in Central Florida, drew another conclusion.
"We the people need to stop calling them the mainstream media because they've proven over and over they don't represent our values and they are clearly biased.
"If our underlying goal was to please the media then we're definitely not in this for the right reasons."
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Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
