In citing how Talking Points Memo creator Josh Marshall "has talked many times about the ways in which the Washington establishment is 'wired for the GOP,'" Steve Benen (Political Animal, 9/13/09) notes that "the Washington Post offers a helpful example today"--as posted on Media Matters: "Behold the media's glaring double standard. Today, the Post puts the 'tens of thousands' of Obama-hating tea bagger protesters on A1; makes it the lead story as a matter of fact."

Compare and contrast.

And just so there's no doubt in people's mind, the blanket coverage the mini-mobs are lapping up (i.e., the mobs are hugely important!) stands in stark contrast to the way the press often did its best to ignore liberal protesters who spoke out against the war in Iraq.

For instance, in October 2002, when more than 100,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., to oppose the war, the Washington Post put the story not on the front page, but in the Metro section with, as the paper's ombudsman later lamented, "a couple of ho-hum photographs that captured the protest's fringe elements."

Not that crowd size is the be-all, end-all of an event's significance, but it's worth remembering that no credible count of yesterday's right-wing protest puts it in the 100,000 range. (And the anti-war protesters didn't have the advantage of a highly-rated cable network promoting their event every day for months.)...

But I still think it gets back to the fact that D.C. is just "wired" for Republicans. Anti-war protesters, the thinking goes, were liberal hippies out of step with the mainstream. After all, there was a Republican president and Republican House in 2002, and polls showed reasonably strong support for the war in Iraq. Why pretend the liberal protesters are important?

In contrast, seven years later, Tea Baggers have to be considered a major political movement. There's a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress in 2009, and polls show reasonably strong support for the administration's economic agenda, but the right-wing cries can't be relegated to a few throw-away paragraphs in the Metro section.

Benen further quotes Barack Obama's 60 Minutes statement that "in the era of 24-hour cable news cycles, the loudest shrillest voices get the attention," but explains "that's only partially true--it depends on what the shrill voices are saying and from what perspective." See the FAIR Action Alert: "Fox Hunting Trumps Peace Activism at Washington Post & NYT" (9/30/02).

Just one highlight in Brad Jacobson's wide-ranging interview of Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell (Media Bloodhound, 5/5/09) is Mitchell's scorn for "media coverage of the anti-tax tea parties":

Greg Mitchell: Most amazing was that they tended to treat it like protests in the past. There have been national abortion rights protests and immigration rights protests and of course anti-war protests and everything spread out around the country. But never, that I'm aware of, has there ever been protests like this that were essentially promoted by a major news organization, that is Fox, who were actually promoting it, not just saying we're going to cover this. And so it was almost like the mainstream media was afraid to sort of say, "Look, this is not just grassrootsy or even sponsored by a national organization." It was also promoted by talk radio and promoted by the leading cable news network, which makes it a completely different thing than local activists who want to speak out. They're going to a rally to see Glenn Beck. It's a whole different thing.

Well worth reading, the interview also hits upon coverage of the McCain/Palin ticket, Internet media's effect on for-profit journalism and Jon Stewart's "boiling point." Also listen to any of Mitchell's CounterSpin appearances--on topics as varied as media presentations of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima, friendly fire-victim Pat Tillman and the New York Times' mea culpa for pre-Iraq War misreportage.

A nice round-up from TVNewser of the evening newscasts. Will conservatives ever catch a break from the left-wing media?

How The Evening Newscasts Covered the Tea Parties

• NBC Nightly News led with two stories on tax day. Lee Cowan reported on the tea parties while Savannah Guthrie reported on the White House message of middle-class tax cuts. In his open, Brian Williams said the tea parties were "organized on the Internet and by some cable TV personalities."

• ABC's World News made it the third story. First a soundbite from President Obama and a Dan Harris story on the tea parties which were "cheered on by Fox News and talk radio," Harris explained. The Charles Gibson broadcast led with two stories on the pirate attacks--Jim Sciutto in Kenya with the crew of the Maersk Alabama and David Muir with a story on the attack of another U.S. ship.

• CBS Evening News led with tax day--a soundbite from President Obama, a live picture of a rally in Arlington, Texas and a tea party story from Dean Reynolds. Reynolds referenced "a fistful of rightward leaning websites and commentators...embraced the cause," while showing Neil Cavuto and Glenn Beck at two different rallies.

With all the fuss about tea parties today, it's worth noting again that the original Boston tea party was not, as is often claimed, a protest against the British imposing a tax on tea.  What the colonists were actually objecting to was the British lowering the tax on tea in order to favor the East India Company, the era's corporate giant, and undercut illegal tea smugglers. The real successors to the civil disobedience initiated by Samuel Adams in 1773 are not today's media-boosted events, but the protests against corporate globalization, big business monopolies and the war on drugs.

With Fox News Channel relentlessly promoting--and MSNBC mostly mocking-- the right-wing "tea party" demonstrations around the country today, middle-of-the-road media critics are making a typically middle-of-the-road complaint: Yes, Fox shouldn't be sponsoring such events, but the rest of the corporate media shouldn't just ignore these allegedly newsworthy events.

As Howard Kurtz put it in the Washington Post today:

Some Fox News hosts have been pushing the tea party protests slated for hundreds of cities today, almost to the point that they seem to be the ringmasters of the event.  "It's now my great duty to promote the tea parties. Here we go!" Fox Business anchor Stuart Varney said the other day.

But there's another side to this saga. Most of the mainstream media fell down on the job, ignoring the growing movement or mocking it as a bunch of wingnuts.

The New York Times has run zero stories. (The only mention was Times columnist Paul Krugman taking a brief swipe at the parties.) The Washington Post has done zip until today, with a story on two planned D.C. parties on Page B-4. The Chicago Tribune ran a 300-word story and an item on postal workers mistaking tea for a hazardous substance. The Los Angeles Times did a 500-word piece on a small protest in Hermosa Beach and has a media piece today. The Boston Globe, published in the city famed for the original tea party, nothing. CNN ran its first news story on the protests Monday (followed by a piece by me on the coverage). MSNBC's coverage had consisted of Rachel Maddow and Ana Marie Cox mocking the "teabagging" until Chris Matthews held a more serious debate on Monday.

I must say I'm struck by this new standard for coverage of citizen activism--papers should cover small protests, some of which haven't happened? Was this the standard for, say, anti-war protests in 2002 and early 2003?

The pressure to treat these events seriously seems to be having some effect. Moments ago CNN had a long introduction to its live report from the Boston tea party, explaining that the protests have spread across the country, stoked by plain old citizen passion. The correspondent on the scene in Boston then explained that there were perhaps a few dozen attendees on hand. I guess Howard Kurtz will be pleased.