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 now finding itself on the defensive on the issue, as members face a deep split over a Democratic plan to extend a payroll tax reduction.

What might normally be a no-brainer for most congressional Republicans is being resisted by many tea-party-conscious members who oppose what they consider a short-term gimmick that would worsen the federal deficit and siphon money from Social Security.

These Tea Party Republicans are concerned about the effects of a tax cut on the deficit? For real? It's the kind of thing that a reporter might challenge by, say, quoting a critic who would point out this absurdity. But the piece gives readers an array of Republican and conservative quotes, with one comment from Democratic Sen. Harry Reid.

Then again, the claims of the  politicians actually quoted could stand to be factchecked too. Like this one:

"The president’s suggesting we raise taxes on small-business folks to give a temporary one-year tax holiday and make job creators pay it off over the next 10 years," said freshman Rep. Tim Huels­kamp (R-Kan.). "That's not the way you grow this economy."

That "tax on small business owners" line refers to the White House plan to pay for the payroll tax break with a surtax on millionaires. Republicans claim that this would devastate small business owners don't stand up to scrutiny, something the New York Times pointed out yesterday:

But Jenni R. LeCompte, a spokeswoman for the Treasury Department, said the proposed surtax "would affect only a very, very small number of small-business owners."

"Only 1 percent of all small-business owners have adjusted gross income over $1 million and would be affected by this surcharge," Ms. LeCompte said, citing a new study by Treasury’s Office of Tax Analysis.

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 there would have been 2,000 reporters there, if not more.

Watch the segment on the Charlie Rose website. And you can leave a comment there--as others already have--noting that it's refreshing to see these voices on a show that doesn't usually feature such guests.

Today the New York Times (1/18/11) reports a big scoop.

A "Tea Party commission" convened  by Freedom Works is set to announce its crowd-sourced $6 trillion debt reduction plan--"A copy of the preliminary findings was provided to the New York Times," Kate Zernike reports.

The story's second paragraph critiques the plan from the right for not doing enough about Social Security and Medicare, which Zernike asserts "are two of the biggest contributors to the nation's deficit." This is not true, especially when it comes to Social Security--but corporate media prefer to have discussions of the deficit that bash Social Security.

The larger problem is why this proposal is being covered at all. Even Zernike's account suggests that it doesn't really add up:

FreedomWorks says that repealing the healthcare legislation would cut $1.2 trillion, but the Congressional Budget Office has projected that repealing the legislation would actually increase the deficit by $210 billion over the next 10 years.

It's useful to recall how the People's Budget of the Congressional Progressive Caucus was treated by outlets like the New York Times. This was a serious plan put forward by legislators and endorsed by several high-profile economists.  And it couldn't get into the news section of the New York Times. But this thing can.

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 just don't get the attention. A thousand people arrested in front of the White House a couple of weeks ago on the tar sands environmental issue -- hardly any coverage of this.

Can you imagine if 1,000 Tea Party members had been arrested in front of the White House? It would be at the top of every news story.

People are down on Wall Street right now, holding a sit-in and a camp- in down there--virtually no news about this protest.

This goes on with liberals and the left all of the time, and it gets ignored. And, fortunately, there are shows like yours and others who aren't ignoring it. It doesn't mean it isn't happening, and it will continue to happen.

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 and Brian Stelter also picked up on CNN's weak attempts to spin their Tea Party connection--despite the fact that questions were being piped in from Tea Party events, and the Tea Party Express picked the audience members inside the auditorium:

Here in Tampa, there were signs the network was sensitive to perceptions that it was being too cozy with Tea Party activists. During a tour of the debate hall, Mr. Feist referred to the gatherings in Arizona, Virginia and Ohio, saying, "We'll have watch parties." He was swiftly corrected by CNN's special events producer, Kate Lunger, who interjected, 'Well, we won’t have watch parties."

That distinction--whatever it might be--was probably lost on most viewers.

Veteran journalist Bob Parry wrote a great piece about "the hidden political reality behind 'centrist' journalism--a never-ending pandering to the right." Parry added that he's seen this kind of thing first-hand:

it's useful to have some specific right-tilted story--or event--to point to, just in case a right-wing critic decides to target you as a "liberal." CNN, which the right has sometimes smeared as the "Communist News Network," can now cite its collaboration with the Tea Party as valuable right-wing "cred."

When I was working at PBS Frontline in the early 1990s, senior producers would sometimes order up pre-ordained right-wing programs--such as a show denouncing Cuba's Fidel Castro--to counter Republican attacks on the documentary series for programs the right didn't like, such as Bill Moyers' analysis of the Iran/Contra scandal.

In essence, the idea was to inject right-wing bias into some programming as "balance" to other serious journalism, which presented facts that Republicans found objectionable. That way, the producers could point to the right-wing show to prove their "objectivity" and, with luck, deter GOP assaults on PBS funding.

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.

Jesse Jackson had some tough criticism for the Tea Party movement at a Martin Luther King event on Thursday. USA Today's Melanie Eversley  covered his remarks, getting a Tea Party activist to respond to his criticism. The piece then added this, presumably in order to add some context:

The group has faced criticism of being a racist group, a claim made most visibly by former National Public Radio fundraiser Ron Schiller, who was caught on hidden camera calling the group racist and xenophobic, prompting his immediate resignation.

In other words, lots of people seem to hurl accusations of racism at the Tea Party, right? One tiny problem: Schiller didn't actually say that--he said that was what some Republicans were saying about the Tea Party. NPR's David Folkenflik (among others) pointed out that the video--released by right-wing hoaxer James O'Keefe--was edited in order to make a totally misleading impression:

in the shorter tape, Schiller is also presented as saying the GOP has been "hijacked" by Tea Partyers and xenophobes.

In the longer tape, it's evident Schiller is not giving his own views but instead quoting two influential Republicans--one an ambassador, another a senior Republican donor. Schiller notably does not take issue with their conclusions--but they are not his own.

This is the problem with the O'Keefe/Andrew Breitbart school of right-wing advocacy. Their work can't be trusted, and some people usually manage to figure out where they've cut a corner or edited a tape in order to advance a bogus storyline. But too many reporters remember the initial bogus story as fact--ACORN workers helped a "pimp" set up a brothel, for example--which is precisely the point of this propaganda.

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 at the expense of the little guy.

We've seen this before; that is, attempts to brand the Tea Party movement--which is in no small part bankrolled by wealthy corporate interests-- as anti-corporate populism. He writes:

Indeed, for some Tea Party activists, the summer of 2011 has been all too reminiscent of the fall of 2008, when the movement truly took root. After the financial world crashed, Washington insisted that a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street banks was necessary to avert a depression. To the Tea Party, however, this was yet another scare tactic to justify transferring taxpayer money to the bankers who helped cause the mess in the first place.

There are probably some Tea Party activists who opposed the TARP bailout, but it's a stretch to suggest this is where the movement "took root." Glenn Beck, as much as an intellectual godfather to the movement as there is, supported the bailout, only to later recant and wish he hadn't.

The Tea Party movement was really energized by a rant from CNBC host Rick Santelli--the one where he called for a Tea Party based on some class resentment directed at  people in expensive homes who were all getting bailed out while hard-earning stockbrokers were making their payments. Or something like that--read this piece from CJR to get a sense of what Santelli was upset about, which was a modest mortgage modification program directed at people who were, in Santell's words, "losers." His call for Tea Party protests led to, well, actual Tea Party protests.

This happened in February 2009, months after the TARP bailout. Very little of his rant was based on bashing Wall Street--it would have been rather remarkable for an anti-Wall Street movement to be birthed on CNBC, a network whose target audience is people who trade stocks. And, of course, the movement began to really find political success during the health care debate--when it was mostly concerned with portraying Obama's plan as some sort of Communist killing machine.

Crowley adds:

In Tea Party doctrine, both major parties are complicit with an elite Washington--New York establishment that lies to the public to cover for policies that enrich the wealthy and strengthen the powerful.

If this were really what was motivating Tea Party activists, you'd see more evidence to that effect--and it'd be more ideologically diverse than it is. The truth is that there are such activist mobilizations--US Uncut, the One Nation march on Washington--but they're hardly given the media platform granted to the Tea Party.

"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 Caucus was never covered in a hard news story in the Times (Extra!, 6/11).

Apparently there is a need for another Paul Ryan-type budget plan. Just talking about organizing to come up with one is good enough to score a New York Times story.

The paper didn't cover the People's Budget when it came out--which was, you know, an actual thing, not a series of committee meetings that might produce something someday.

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" is what this is about. Huh. Then came New York Times columnist David Brooks (6/14/11), who wrote:

The Tea Parties are right about the unholy alliance between business and government that is polluting the country.

So that is what the Koch brothers are fighting for?

Protests were held across the country yesterday to pay tribute to the legacy of Martin Luther King and to push back against attacks on workers' rights. Alex Seitz-Wald at Think Progress provides this take on one  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 deliver the invitation, "I'd be here with you guys if I wasn't working right now." Noting that he works for the building, not Koch, he said, "I don't want to be here."

And the media?

Last Thursday, Tea Party activists rallied on Capitol Hill to pressure Republican lawmakers to cut government spending. Crowd estimates ranged from "dozens" to "fewer than 200," yet the event attracted dozens of reporters and significant media interest, producing hundreds of stories in local and national press. At today's rally, which was 10 times bigger than the Tea Party one, ThinkProgress spotted three reporters--none from mainstream publications.

To corporate media outlets, nothing says "news" quite like a lightly attended Tea Party rally.

Corporate media's preference for "centrism" can often translate into reporting 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 creates some friction between 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 from the Agency for International Development would kill kids. That's right. Kill kids.

RAJIV SHAH, USAID ADMINISTRATOR: We estimate, and I believe these are conservative, that HR 1 would lead to 70,000 kids dying.

Karl then turns to former Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean saying that Democrats could benefit from a government shutdown. Karl closes with a snide reference to the choice confronting lawmakers: "Compromise with extremists out to kill kids?"

Budget cuts have actual, real world consequences--especially when you're talking about health aid to the Third World. This is not in serious dispute. But apparently talking about those effects is a problem.

What Karl considers hot-headed extremism is Shah's claim that deaths will occur due to, among other things, cuts to USAID's anti-malaria programs. Others will die because they would lose access to life-saving medicines. Others will die at birth.

New York Times food writer Mark Bittman points out that many anti-poverty organizers have organized a fast to draw attention to the GOP budget cuts. He's joining them, and writes that some organizers are praying that God create a "circle of protection" around the world's poor and hungry.

What a bunch of hotheads.

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....

It's normal for the opposition party to deliver a rebuttal address to the State of the Union. Last night Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin was given that responsibility. But further-to-the-right Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota delivered the "Tea Party" response to the State of the Union, which was initially scheduled to air on the Tea Party Express website.

That is, until CNN decided it would air it on television. Which meant, as Washington Monthly's Steve Benen put it, CNN broadcast "the president's address, followed by a speech by a far-right Republican, and then followed by another speech by a different far-right Republican."

In response to CNN's justification--that the Tea Party is a "major political force"--he wonders:

Would CNN be inclined to air a SOTU response from the AFL-CIO? Labor unions are a major political force.

I think we know the answer to that one.

The Washington Post, meanwhile, voiced an odd concern about all this in a news article today, wondering whether the GOP message would get lost in the shuffle:

This year, the dueling responses probably made it even harder for either Republican to be heard.

Would viewers remember Ryan, using only his expressive face to convey worry about the debt? Or would they remember Bachmann's screen, which showed bar graphs and patriotic images behind her? At one point, she showed the iconic photo of Marines raising an American flag over Iwo Jima in World War II.

I don't think many people would worry about their own political point of view getting too much uninterrupted TV time.

New York Times reporter Matt Bai had a long piece Sunday (10/31/10) that argued that Tea Partiers are really the right-wing version of Bush-era MoveOn activists and bloggers (the "netroots"). Bai writes of "the larger forces that unify many self-styled activists on both the left and right," and suggests that "the recent uprisings on both ends of the ideological spectrum shouldn't be viewed as opposing trends, but rather as points on the same cultural continuum."

The only way to pull this off with a straight face is to decide that political beliefs that motivate both groups are not worth inspecting or critiquing. Thus  activists who coalesced around opposing the war in Iraq are basically no different than Tea Party activists who believe Barack Obama is a socialist. (As the Tea Party activist Bai profiles puts it: "He's a socialist.... There's no question. He's a statist.")

In a more rational media system, one would point out that one group was motivated by an actual policy decision--one that  killed hundreds of thousands of people and cost hundreds of billions of dollars. The other group believes Barack Obama adheres to a political philosophy that he most certainly does not.

The ability to see these two political movements as being roughly comparable requires the suspension of critical judgment--an example of media "false balance" of the most extreme variety.  At one point Bai writes: "Ideology, of course, presents an unbridgeable chasm between the progressives and Tea Partiers." So does reality. Journalism that seeks to muddy up this inescapable truth does a great disservice.