I was struck by how much coverage yesterday's rather small-looking Tea Party rally in Washington got in the national media.  Slate's Dave Weigel has a piece (3/31/11) explaining that the event wasn't as "extreme as Democrats would like it to be," as the subhead says.

But the movement's also not nearly as popular as the media coverage would lead you to believe. As Weigel notes, this rally was rather sparsely attended--especially if you weren't counting reporters:

About 200 Tea Party activists trod over damp grass to hear their leaders respond to [House Speaker John] Boehner. There was at least one reporter for every three or four activists. They were there to hear conservatives rip into Republicans for statements like the one Boehner had just made. "I think there are more press than Tea Party Patriots here," joked freshman Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., in an aside to one of the organizers.

Liberal media! The Tea Party media blackout continues....

Reporting on Andrew Breitbart's latest bit of deceit--using a selectively edited video to paint a low-level USDA official Shirley Sherrod as a racist--has given the media a chance to resurrect one of their favorite myths: Breitbart's triumphant takedown of the community-organizing group ACORN.

In September 2009, Breitbart's website BigGovernment.com posted videos, made by conservative activists Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe, supposedly showing ACORN employees counseling the pair--ostensibly pretending to be a prostitute and a pimp--on how to avoid paying taxes and other illegal activities.  The videos were later found to be completely misleading. Among other things, it was revealed that O'Keefe never dressed as a pimp in ACORN's offices, and in many cases he pretended to be Giles concerned boyfriend protecting her from abuse.

In covering the Shirley Sherrod story, many outlets have mentioned the videos--not as an example of Breitbart's established incredibility, but rather as a vindication of his heroic muckraking track record.

Answering for viewers the question, "Just who is Andrew Breitbart?," CNN American Morning anchors Kiran Chetry and John Roberts (7/21/10) said Breitbart "built a brand around his 'big' websites, and that includes BigGovernment.com, the site that first posted the video of Sherrod. There is also BigHollywood.com, BigJournalism.com, BigPeace.com." Roberts then reminded viewers that BigGovernment.com "was also the first site to post those undercover ACORN videos featuring the pimp and prostitute."

In their initial report on the Sherrod story, AP's Ben Evans and Mary Clare Jalonick (7/20/10) applauded BigGovernment.com as the site that "gained fame after releasing video of workers for the community organizing group ACORN counseling actors posing as a pimp and prostitute." Later versions of the story were changed to read "prostitute and her boyfriend." However, in a more recent article (7/21/10), Evans and Jalonick reverted to the less accurate "prostitute and her pimp."

Slate (7/22/10) even saw Breitbart's latest smear as reason to "recycle" Christopher Beam's fawning profile of Breitbart, where he praises him as the one who posted "the now-famous videos that showed two young conservatives, James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, entering several offices of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, better known as ACORN, posing as a pimp and a prostitute looking to open a brothel for underage, illegal immigrant girls."  This statement is made even stranger by the fact that, much further down in the profile, Beam quietly relents that O'Keefe was actually wearing "business casual" clothing. Beam also repeats the lie that Giles and O'Keefe "had been instructed to, among other things, bury their sex money in a tin in their back yard."

Again, O'Keefe never wore his ludicrous "pimp" out fit in the ACORN offices. Most times he was asking employees how to protect his girlfriend from an abusive pimp. The "tin in the backyard" suggestion was in response to a question from Giles on how to hide her money from the same fictitious pimp.  Also, it is now clear the videos were heavily edited to make employees appear to be answering questions in more sinister ways. In fact, Juan Carlos Vera, a San Diego ACORN employee who was fired as a result of the videos, was found to have called his cousin, a police detective, after the pair left to report their activities. Furthermore, ACORN has now been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing by three separate independent investigations.

All of this has been noted numerous times by FAIR (Action Alert, 3/11/10) and others (Brad Blog, 3/3/10). But considering the pervasiveness of this myth within the corporate media, it apparently needs to be pointed out again.

Slate's Jack Shafer (5/1/09) has had his fill of NPR senior news analyst Cokie Roberts' "four minutes of on-air blather about politics, the economy and world events with whichever unlucky Morning Edition host has drawn the short straw" on Mondays. Shafer writes of how, "drained of controversy and conflict, the Cokie minutes provide perfect editorial balance if your idea of balance is zero":

I can think of no comparably sized media space that's as void of original insight and information as Roberts'. Her segments, though billed as "analysis" by NPR, do little but speed-graze the headlines and add a few grace notes. If you're vaguely conversant with current events, you're already cruising at Roberts' velocity. Roberts doesn't just voice the conventional wisdom; she is the conventional wisdom.

Initially wanting to "blame NPR for the segment's wretchedness or Morning Edition hosts Renee Montagne and Steve Inskeep for pitching her nothing but giant, slo-mo softballs," Shafer then reconsiders: "No, softball isn't the right sports analogy, if only because Roberts never puts wood on the questions. The segment really unfolds like a brief set of air tennis, with Roberts and a host play-acting a vigorous volley"--which might in some sense be lucky for listeners, considering what comes out when Roberts actually tries to say something....