Here's something you don't see very often–a progressive person of color on a Sunday morning chat show. There was Van Jones on ABC's This Week on April 1. Also there? Right-wing firebrand Ann Coulter. Huh. But it was something that Jones said that caught my attention. Well, you know, I think that probably the majority of people who are in the Democratic Party, progressive independents or what I would call post-hope Democrats–we're Democrats, we did the vote and hope. And when we–what happened was, we sat back and we let the Tea Party crowd dominate the protests world in the [...]
Dec
07
2011
When Right-Wing Tax Spin Goes Unchallenged
By 18 Comments
The Republican Party is in something of a bind. Many oppose White House efforts to extend–and perhaps increase–a Social Security payroll tax cut next year. This might sound strange, since if conservatives are supposed to be fond of anything, it's tax cuts. So they have some explaining to do. They're given a valuable assist when journalists, thanks to the conventions of corporate media, will print their words with little in the way of critical analysis. Take this from today's Washington Post (12/7/11) by Rosalind Helderman: A Republican Party that has for decades benefited from a commitment to lower taxes is [...]
Oct
28
2011
Occupy Charlie Rose!
By 24 Comments
With the bad news we've been talking about on the public broadcasting front, it's worth pointing out a bright spot: On Monday (10/24/11), Charlie Rose featured a discussion of Occupy Wall Street with Chris Hedges and Amy Goodman. Goodman made an important point about media coverage of the protests: CHARLIE ROSE: Does it have anything in common with the Tea Party? AMY GOODMAN: Well, it's interesting you ask that. When the people gathered on September 16 and 17–what, 2000 people–hardly any coverage they got. If it was 2000 Tea Party activists who gathered on Wall Street, I would dare said [...]
Sep
21
2011
Michael Moore on Progressive Protests and Media Blackouts
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Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC (9/19/11): Or, if you prefer reading: But last week when Wolf Blitzer and CNN had that debate, the CNN/Tea Party Express debate, and Wolf sat there and called them his partners–I just thought, this was amazing, because would you ever see the CNN nurses union debate or the CNN teachers union debate? Because I think there are a few more teachers and nurses in this country than there are members of the Tea Party. But we'll never see that in the mainstream media. And liberal organizations which have many more members [...]
Sep
13
2011
More on CNN's Tea Party
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The New York Times reported today (9/13/11) on the controversy, citing FAIR: But the CNN debate on Monday was the first event hosted jointly by a major news organization and a Tea Party group. And their partnership left some questioning whether the network had gone too far in reaching for centrist credibility. "Is there really a need for another national cable news channel devoted to promoting far-right elements within the Republican Party?" the liberal media watchdog group FAIR said Monday in an e-mail alert to its members in which it labeled the Tea Party "a controversial political group." Jeremy Peters [...]
Sep
12
2011
Action Alert: Why Is CNN Partnering With Tea Party Express?
By 110 Comments
Send a message to CNN about the cable network's partnership with the Tea Party Express, a far-right group with a history of virulent racism, to produce a Republican presidential debate: See "CNN Throws a Tea Party," FAIR's latest Action Alert. Please post copies of your messages to CNN, or comments on this Action Alert, in the comments thread below.
Aug
09
2011
Tea Party: Raging Against the Wall Street/DC Machine?
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Time's Michael Crowley deserves some credit for saying this about the Tea Party movement, in his piece about how they largely won the debt standoff: The Tea Party movement has proved not only that people can have their own facts but also that they can use them to vast tactical advantage, crashing through the taboos of political convention and changing the game along the way. But in explaining the political origins of the movement, he writes: It is an article of faith in Tea Party circles that Washington and Wall Street are in bed together, colluding for power and profit [...]
Jun
27
2011
To NYT, Tea Party's Talk Is More Newsworthy Than an Actual Progressive Budget
By 9 Comments
"Tea Party Plans Its Own Debt Panel" reads a headline in today's New York Times (6/27/11), where reporter Kate Zernike described efforts by the well-financed right-wing lobbying group FreedomWorks to organize a debt commission that will come up with yet another right-wing fiscal blueprint. They don't have a plan yet–they're merely talking about having meetings that would produce a plan: "It aims to have proposals ready by January, when the presidential campaign will draw even more attention to economic proposals." Well, they're off to a good start in the Drawing Attention department. Remember, the People's Budget of the Congressional Progressive [...]
Jun
15
2011
Tea Party: Anti-Corporate Corruption Fighters?
By 28 Comments
Some in the press still seem to have trouble defining whatever it is that motivates the Tea Party movement. I noticed this in an L.A. Times piece last week (6/5/11): Americans possess a long-standing wariness of power and its potential as a corrupting influence, especially in the hands of large institutions. That instinct bred our government system of checks and balances and, more recently, led members of the "tea party" to embrace the nation's founders (repackaged as a band of small-government crusaders) as the guiding lights of their movement. So "wariness of power" and the "corrupting influence" of "large institutions" [...]
Apr
05
2011
Not Tea Party? Not News
By 40 Comments
Protests were held across the country yesterday to pay tribute to the legacy of Martin Luther King and to push back againstattacks on workers' rights. AlexSeitz-Wald at Think Progress provides thistake onone D.C. rally: In Washington, D.C., today, an estimated 2,000 protesters marched on Koch Industries' Washington, D.C., offices and attempted to give Charles and David Koch an invitation to come out and speak with the protesters. Not surprisingly, the building's doors were locked and no one was allowed inside. However, a representative from the real estate company which managed the building told an handful of organizers who attempted to [...]
Apr
04
2011
Only Hotheads Talk About the Effects of Budget Cuts
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Corporate media's preference for"centrism" canoftentranslate intoreporting that casts two sides of a debate as equally belligerent or unwilling to compromise. ABC reporter Jonathan Karl's report yesterday on This Week (4/3/11) offers a perfect example of the absurdity of this worldview. His focuses was on the battle over the federal budget. On one side are Tea Party activists who want deeper spending cuts. Karl notes that this createssome frictionbetween the activists and GOP leaders. Then there's the other side of the debate: KARL: Democrats have their hot heads, too. One Obama administration official said the Republican bill, which cuts $5 billion [...]
