A Dereliction Of Journalistic Duty
By K. Daniel Glover | March 11, 2009
If a revolution happens and no reporters cover it, will it make a sound? That's a good question because an anti-tax revolution as American as they come is under way, and the country's top newsmen could care less.
Anti-tax protests have been sprouting like spring flowers from sea to shining sea the past couple of weeks. Inspired by the "Chicago Tea Party" rant of CNBC business analyst Rick Santelli, taxpayers have rallied in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Nashville, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, among other locales. A national "Tax Day Tea Party" of coordinated rallies is planned for April 15.
But if you only get your news from the mainstream media, you probably wouldn't know the protests ever happened. Most major news outlets have provided zero coverage of any of the individual events or the grassroots movement as a whole. The conservative-leaning Internet startup Pajamas TV is the only outlet consistently covering the protests, which totaled nearly 30 by PJTV's count after last weekend.
Readers who know of the gatherings are beginning to ask questions. Hence this defense from the Los Angeles Times for its failure to cover a protest focused not on the national level but in California:
We all agree that the tax issue is extremely important. That's why, in the last few weeks alone, the Times has run more than 30 stories about the tax and budget proposals being pushed by the Legislature and the governor. That's also why we ran a tax chart so you could see how much the new taxes would cost you. ...
Between now and the May 19 election, we plan extensive coverage of both sides of the campaign over the ballot initiatives. We'll explain the issues, tell readers what both sides are saying, figure out where the money is coming from to pay for the campaigns on both sides and show people what's at stake. What we're not likely to do is cover a lot of individual rallies -- from either side. That's not a political thing. We don't cover a lot of government-worker rallies in favor of tax hikes, either.
To the extent that the Times maintains a consistent policy on covering rallies, that is a reasonable news judgment. But choosing not to cover individual rallies is quite different from blissful ignorance about the taxpayer unrest at the root of the protests. The ongoing reluctance of the establishment press to cover the grassroots revolt against tax-and-spend government is looking more and more like dereliction of journalistic duty.
The time-honored media tradition of trend stories is abused too often, but sometimes a trend is real and demands reporting. The tea parties and the anger that underlies them -- an anger increasingly being voiced by celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg and Jim Cramer, too -- are in the latter category.
As I've watched the movement materialize and my journalistic colleagues sit on their hands the past few weeks, my mind has drifted to the government-funded cartoon series "Liberty's Kids," which my wife and I just finished watching with our kids.
Apprentice journalists James and Sarah, the Ben Franklin proteges and stars of the show (who amazingly never age), are driven by passion to tell every story they can about the American Revolution unfolding before them. They have different viewpoints -- James the colonial and Sarah the British loyalist -- but both embrace the privilege they have been given to write the first draft of history. They give no quarter to doubters, naysayers and cynics.
True, James and Sarah are just cartoon characters, and the creators of the sometimes-politically-correct series had the benefit of hindsight in portraying the young journalists. But I can't help but think that if they were around today, they would be covering the modern-day equivalent of the Boston Tea Party.
Their real-life counterparts, on the other hand, have become too jaded and cynical to think anyone could get that upset about taxes.
UPDATE: Patterico's Pontifications shoots holes through the L.A. Times' defense of its decision not to cover the protest -- and instead to mock it as "a radio stunt." So contrary to its editor's suggestion, the Times doesn't have a consistent policy on covering protests; they just cover the ones they agree with.
K. Daniel Glover is the online communications strategist for AIM for Accuracy In Media. He has worked as an editor, writer and new media specialist in the Washington area since 1991, spending most of that time at National Journal and Congressional Quarterly.
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“So contrary to its editor’s suggestion, the Times doesn’t have a consistent policy on covering protests; they just cover the ones they agree with.” That would go without saying, no matter what they say. Their political stance also determines HOW they cover the protests they cover.
I’ll never forget the coverage the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette gave to a pro-life march in Pittsburgh one January 22nd. Thousands and thousands participated in the march. A handful of counter-protestors (“pro-choice”) were standing on a corner. And a photo of that small group was the ONLY photo that accompanied the story.
Journalism is politics by another name.
There was a Tea Party in Houston a week ago. I didn’t attend it but I expected at least a little news coverage. The You Tube video shows dozens of people in Houston’s largest downtown park. But, I couldn’t find any mention of it on the Houston Chronicle website even though the demonstration took place just a few blocks away from the Chronicle offices.
That doesn’t happen when the local homosexual agitators or racial racketeers want coverage. When they hold a rally, even one of similar size to the Tea Party, the Chronicle prints a report with photographs.
You wrote “could care less”? That means they care. Clearly they don’t care. Please use the correct phrase, “couldn’t care less”. Thank you.
Signed,
Your faithful English nag
How many reports did we have about Mother Shehan and Code Pink??
See what the Tea Parties are all about here:
http://www.pjtv.com/video/PJTV_Daily/Braving_the_Elements:_Kansas_City_Tea_Party/1503/
I can’t believe any of Sheehan’s protests numbered anything like 15,000, nor could the total of all her and Code Pink protests come close to the total of all tea parties so far. April 15th and July 4th tax protests will dwarf all lefty protests in this country since 9/11, I am betting.
What is a journalist anymore anyway, other than a shill for the Democrats and Obama and an administration hopeful? Dereliction of duty is right, and nothing more than we should expect. That’s why so many of us won’t pay for news anymore - we’re not getting it.
I wish the tea parties were getting more attention, too. But it’s kind of hard to complain about lack of news coverage—for ANYTHING—when we’ve basically sat here and killed off our country’s journalism industry. I wonder how many people here actually subscribe to a print paper, or would be willing to cough up cash for their local paper’s website. These newsrooms are working with bare-minimum staffs now, prelude to disappearing altogether.
This is what the future looks like, y’all: a bunch of niche information randomly sprinkled around the Internet. Until somebody figures out how to make advertising work on the web, the days of powerful journalism are set to disappear. That’s not good for any of us.
(Cue up predictable comments about bias, etc.)
“...when we’ve sat here and killed off our country’s journalism industry.”
No, we didn’t kill them, they committed suicide. Why would I want to buy something that doesn’t work? They are no longer reporters, but facilitators of the news, and that is what they are being taught in most j-schools these days.
And I know of what I speak. I was the managing editor of a newspaper, and I wouldn’t give the time of day to most of these people who masquerade as journalists these days.
“Thom,” my heart bleeds for you, really it does. You actually do mean to say the Times couldn’t mention that these rallies even existed—because of manpower? Pull the other one. What’s next, a shortage of typewriter keys? You beggar belief.
Think of how you consider guns. You want the police and army to have a few, sure. But if the Merchants of Death were to wither and die, you would not shed a tear about fellow citizens deprived of the power of life and death over others, since it was so often dealt out with impunity, whimsically even, will-he nill-he, or with malice aforethought. Now think of a newspaper. Keep thinking of that newspaper. Y’all.
Is the following comment predictable?
What I would say in response to you, Thom T, is that you’re setting this up as a chicken and egg problem when really it’s not. You are trying to make the case that because newspapers are dying economically they can’t do a good job, and because they don’t do a good we don’t give them our business, and because we don’t give them our business then they are even worse off economically and it becomes a vicious cycle.
But it’s not a chicken and egg problem. They were they chickens ruling the roost and they chose to lay an egg through their ineptitude. They started the vicious cycle. During the years and years and years when they were the only game in town (and from everything I’ve read were cash cows with profit margins in the high teens and even higher) they wasted the opportunity they had at that point to endear themselves to many thousand of their potential readers. They destroyed their brand loyalty in a very substantial section of the population because they couldn’t be bothered to print all the news that was fit to print. They just printed what appealed to them, even though any business should know it needs to appeal to and serve all its potential customers. Non-monopoly businesses know that. Perhaps they knew it, too, but being a monopoly, chose to ignore it.
So while I think it’s obvious that developments in technology are at the heart of their current problems , and the newsaper in it’s current format may simply no longer be viable, they set themselves up for their precipitous decline by doing a poor job of their core mission of informing the public without fear or favor. When the very large section of the public they had alienated over the years when times were flush finally had an opportunity to get their news somewhere else, they jumped quickly and forcefully on that opportunity. Only a moron (or a submissive) pays someone else their good, hard-earned money to be treated like crap. Newspapers would have declined in either case, but by choosing only to serve part of their audience properly, the papers ensured that when the decline came it would be swifter and more devastating than they could ever have imagined. They took their customers for granted and now they are paying the price.
“But it’s kind of hard to complain about lack of news coverage—for ANYTHING—when we’ve basically sat here and killed off our country’s journalism industry. I wonder how many people here actually subscribe to a print paper, or would be willing to cough up cash for their local paper’s website.”
You’re right. Many people don’t and are unwilling to do so. But why would they? Why give money to a news organization that has shown over many years, and even decades (before the current economic troubles came along), that they simply aren’t up to the task of being fair, competent and complete. It’s not a chicken and egg problem except insofar as they were claiming to sell us free range chicken and instead what was showing up on our plates night after night was deranged chicken.
Eminent collapse of most newspapers and many TV outlets, driven by dissatisfaction on the part of information consumers and alternate sources of information for those consumers.
Faster, please.
Nothing warms the heart like a laid-off journalist.
Why do these articles credit Santelli with starting the protests? Four of the protests, including the one in Denver, preceded his “rant,” as it is called here. They weren’t inspired by Santelli. They were inspired by ordinary people becoming fed up with policies coming from the federal government.
If the fact that an anti-war protest is set to take place this weekend in Chicago is any indication, President Barack Obama seems to have let down some of the very people he once counted among his most-ardent supporters: the anti-war set. But that’s not the most important aspect of what I have to share.
This is: Only miles from the president’s Hyde Park home, an anti-war and immigrants rights march is set to take place Saturday at “Noon Sharp” in Pilsen, the heart of the Windy City’s Latino community. According to a report by Examiner.com’s Sergio Barreto (a.k.a., “Chicago Progressive Examiner”), the Chicago rally is taking place after a month-long court battle between organizers and city officials who tried to prevent the group from obtaining a permit.
Interestingly, neither the Chicago Sun-Times nor the Chicago Tribune appear to have published any news about the aforementioned court battle. But I digress.
Click on my name above to read about it.
Did the Tea Party rally futher the agenda of the Left? If the answer is “NO” then why should the L.A. Times cover?
The original Tea Party was all about destruction of property. The new Tea Parties aren’t going to get any real attention until someone throws a brick through a window.
-K
The tea party rallies are clearly “man-bites-dog” events worthy of significant coverage. Taxpayers and citizens per se aren’t the kind of “special interest group” one would normally see turning out en masse for rallies (unlike, say, pro- and anti-abortion forces who are constantly staging protests).
Also, why shouldn’t the LAT cover individual demonstrations in this country if they cover them elsewhere, like in Tiannamen Square?
Journalistic duty?
The only duty most feel, as far as I can tell, is to support liberal policies. Just this week, I saw more than one lie-by-omission of Bush’s stem cell policy.
Journalists seem to understand their (partisan) duty. It’s their integrity they’re ignoring.
All you talking heads need to take a page from the mainstream media: Check you facts before you run your mouth.
My colleague wrote this story two weeks ago. Oh, and a couple of weeks later he nearly lost his job due to corporate cutbacks.
What did you do for Democracy this month?
‘Tea party’ protest takes aim at stimulus package
By Aman Batheja
Source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Credit: Star-Telegram Staff Writer
Saturday,February 28, 2009
Edition: Main, Section: Metro, Page B01
————————————————————————————————————————
FORT WORTH DEMONSTRATION
*Republican officials are among several hundred showing their displeasure with recovery program
FORT WORTH—Chanting “No more pork!” and “No more bailouts!” a few hundred “tea party” protesters stood outside a west Fort Worth sports bar for hours Friday, cheering and waving signs at passing drivers to protest the Obama administration’s economic stimulus program.
“I bet there’s not a single person here today who wants to pay their neighbor’s mortgage,” Tarrant County Republican Chairwoman Stephanie Klick said to yells and applause.
Klick was echoing a self-described rant last week by CNBC personality Rick Santelli against the Obama stimulus policy.
Friday’s protest outside Cowtown Sports Bar and Grill on Camp Bowie West was one of many reported nationwide including in San Diego, Atlanta and St. Louis.
Carrying a sign that read “News flash: There is no money,” Mindy Wood of Fort Worth said the far left was using the economic crisis as an opportunity to stage a “Marxist revolution” within the federal government.
“I’ve been getting more and more frustrated as the days go by,” Wood said.
Those interviewed approved of Gov. Rick Perry’s recent declaration that Texas might not accept all of the stimulus money designated for the state.
“This isn’t about Obama. This is about taxation,” said Rick Ledoux, 50, of Fort Worth. “No one’s saying do nothing. That’s a straw man. We’re saying do the right thing.”
Ledoux said tax cuts should be the main way to stimulate the economy. While acknowledging that the stimulus bill has already been signed into law, some said they hope Congress will push for changes.
Several people said a host of elected officials, Republicans and Democrats, have betrayed their constituents by supporting part or all of President Barack Obama’s stimulus proposals.
“I think we should throw everyone out of there who is for all this government spending,” said Robert Paul of Benbrook, son of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, a former presidential candidate.
Many of the signs targeted Obama’s fiscal policy with words such as “Hope + Change = Fear + Debt” and “Taxpayers revolt against Gimme-mania.” Some took aim at the president himself, with slogans such as “Obama is a damn liar” and “Obama ‘bin Lyin’.”
Klick said signatures on petitions collected Friday will be sent to state and federal elected officials.
Participants predicted that the rally was just the first step in a movement to vigorously oppose Obama’s policies.
“We can’t allow this assault on the principles that make America great to succeed,” former Arlington state Rep. Bill Zedler said.
AMAN BATHEJA, 817-685-3932
(C) The Star-Telegram 2009
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Filename: TX00055.SGM
Service:
Category:
Supplemental Category:
Instructions:
Created: February 28, 2009
City:
Country:
Reference: GTRU7O7
Merlin ID: 16545433
Copyright:
Copyright year: 0
Keywords:
Library enhanced? Yes
Rights? Yes
Input Date: 2009/02/28
““Thom,” my heart bleeds for you, really it does.”
Er… why?
“You actually do mean to say the Times couldn’t mention that these rallies even existed—because of manpower?”
No. I didn’t say that. I said it’s hard to complain about the lack of coverage of ANYTHING as newsrooms dwindle to bare nothingness.
“Think of how you consider guns. You want the police and army to have a few, sure.”
How *I* consider guns? What are you talking about? What do you think you know about me? I’m a diehard conservative and hardcore gun-rights supporter.
And why do you keep addressing me as if I’m in the media?
I’m just a guy who thinks we no longer have the luxury of calling out the media for not-covering-this and not-covering-that. I don’t care how valid those arguments used to be, because those days are gone. These newspapers hardly have the staffs left to cover ANYTHING that needs to be covered.
I don’t want the news media to die. You might. I don’t. The notion is scary as hell. That’s an America I don’t think any of us want to live in. You think Obama is bad with a news media that’s doing a half-assed job? Imagine an Obama without ANY news media keeping track of his goings-on.
Would I like for the media to do a better job being objective, removing itself from the Obama tank, etc.? Absolutely. But that’s a hollow hope when we’re about to not even have a news media anymore. The bottom line is that somebody needs to figure out how to make this stuff work in an Internet world where advertising makes a pittance and nobody likes to pay for information.
I’m just tired of bad arguments by conservatives regarding the news media’s demise. It’s frustrating, because it puts the focus in the wrong place as we—society—try to figure out how to keep the act of newsgathering alive. I’m a news junkie. I don’t want the news to go away. But more than anything I’m an American who doesn’t want completely unaccountable government.
If this isn’t the place to make this sort of argument—if this is just a site where commenters write kneejerk stuff about “bias” and don’t welcome any other perspective—then I genuinely apologize, and I’ll drag myself somewhere else. Because there is a real discussion to be had about the media’s health and fate that far transcends temporal concerns about what did or didn’t get covered this week by some paper or another. This whole thing is well beyond that at this point.
Hey Charles Foster Kane, it’s “couldn’t care less.” As in, “I couldn’t care less about using English properly,” a statement you use frequently, I would imagine.
The mainstream media recognizes this “tea-party” bullshit as just that: a slick astroturfed effort by a tired, dying American institution: no, not journalism (which is healthier than ever) but the GOP. The Gasping Old Party.
Marv,
Clearly you have no idea of, or experience with, what you’re talking about. I’m sure you didn’t know what astroturfing was until you read it in Playboy’s paranoid hit-piece. Have you been to one of these Tea Parties? No.
Have I? Yes.
Did you read about it in the mainstream media? No. Why? Because it’s not there.
And if you don’t care about, why are you making it such and issue. You’ve only made a gigantic fool of yourself. The smart thing to do about something you devalue is to ignore it.
No arguments on the Gasping Old Party, though.
But taxes aren’t going up, except for a tiny minority of well-to-do Americans. And they did exceptionally well taxwise under Bush, much better than the rest of us. Get your facts straight.
OK, Dave. The top 2% of earners already pay 60% of total taxes, and account for tremendous amount of consumption in the country, which equates to sales taxes. Meanwhile, I believe over 40% of earners pay no taxes at all, yet receive a “tax REFUND” in the form of the earned income tax credit. Hmmm. And their REFUND on taxes they don’t even pay is going to grow, while the top 1% and 2% are going to get soaked. Ever hear of blood from a turnip? Taking money out of the markets (investment, jobs, capital) equals cutting jobs through reduced consumption, and cutting local sales tax revenue.
What a fair system. I don’t see any possible argument that justifies this system of taxation. It’s simply an amplification of the class warfare democrats love to stoke. Maybe it would be more fair to have the lower 40% of earners pay a little bit of tax. They will, anyway, with the new Cap-and-Trade scheme and other taxes on business. Also, universal healthcare - that costs money - taxpayer money. All of those costs are going to get crammed down on the consumers at all levels of taxation. We’re all paying for it, and it leaves less money at the end of the month for everyone. You should be pissed off, too.
What you’re all complaining about is the propaganda machines of both sided bloviating, distorting, and intentionally misleading “popular” (i.e., uninformed, uncritical, and irrational) opinion. “Popular opinion” is nothing more than second-handers looking to anyone else to give them an opinion so they don’t have to take the time or trouble to form one of their own. Those with collectivist and statist agendas are only too happy to oblige.
Casey, your numbers are low, if anything. The intention of the collectivist fascists (i.e., Democrats) is to get as many as possible to be unaffected by tax policy so the can loot those who create wealth without fear of backlash in the elections. The neo-liberal fascists (i.e., Republicans) go along with that simply because both are fighting over which side gets the power to pick the winners and losers and fatten themselves through the graft and corruption such power brings.
They’re already very close to that tipping point—I believe I read that 45% - 48% of wage/salary earners pay little or nothing in federal income taxes. Federal income tax is a relatively minor issue to most Americans—it is local sales and property taxes that have the greatest impact on their wallets.
We’re already well along The Road to Serfdom.
Check it out:
www dot mises dot org slash books slash TRTS slash
Yessiree Bob… that ol’ commie-pinko-liberal mainstream media is ignoring this here grassroots uprising.
That’s why a simple Google News search finds stories from:
Atlanta Journal Constitution
Dallas Morning News
San Franciso Chronicle
MSNBC
Chicago Tribune
Numerous smaller market newspapers (Idaho, N.C., S.C., Tenn., to name a few)
Numerous local television stations web sites
AND
THE NEW YORK TIMES!!!
Next time you want to pontificate out your posterior, consider standing up first.
“...commie-pinko-liberal…”
LOL! How 50s-ish of you Rod!
Get with the program—they’re all either fascists or tools of fascists.
:... Federal income tax is a relatively minor issue to most Americans…” -me
I need to qualify that:
“... Federal income tax (excluding payroll taxes to pay for Medicare/Medicade/Social Security welfare) is a relatively minor issue to most Americans…”
While I’m not yet sure if I agree with the other commenters here, this was a well written article. I do agree that the media tends to focus their coverage on issues with which they agree, and they have the unfortunate ability to direct the opinions of the masses when they pass off significant events as publicity stunts.
A lot of folks haven’t heard about Pajamas TV, and no, Pajamas TV does not feature scantily clad vixens in sleepwear. Pajamas TV is a conservative internet media site that has a lot to say about a lot of things, especially around tax day. Well, they are now turning to college grads who still wind up needing payday loans. They’re looking into the salaries of college grads with bachelor’s degrees and, using a mathematical algorithm, they are predicting what a grad will make five years from now out to 25 years from now. You may not need to take out online cash advances in the future, if you choose an occupation by following the advice of Pajamas TV.
It is always interesting to me that when something is not slavishly “faith affirming” (a.k.a. completely uncritical of the LDS Church and its policies) it is made into being “anti-Mormon.” This is a rather twisted way of looking at the world. It is, in fact, what is called a generic fallacy. One can criticize something and not be opposed to it in general. The real issue is the hyper-sensitivity to some in that particular religion to any sort of criticism whatsoever. Come on, LDS faithful: grow a pair.
Interesting article. I would say that any time in our history the discussion of taxes comes up, there will always be protesters.
Thanks for a great article, its always great to see whats happening on the other side of the world when it come to things like this and its also nice to see that here in South Africa we are not the only ones that protest and strike when we don’t get our own way.
“While I’m not yet sure if I agree with the other commenters here, this was a well written article. I do agree that the media tends to focus their coverage on issues with which they agree, and they have the unfortunate ability to direct the opinions of the masses when they pass off significant events as publicity stunts. ” - I absolutely agree here too. I also agree with the other commenters here.
March 12 at 7:40 am | #1 | Link
So, did anyone at the LA Times say how many “government-worker rallies in favor of tax hikes” there were?