The Conservative Front

Does the Media really care what Americans think? Do they really believe we should have a voice? Has the Media become an enemy of the People? Do I sound like a right-wing extremist yet?

There has been a lot of criticism of the Media for ignoring the Tax Day Tea Parties, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of people attended tea parties in their area. Attendance numbers run from the hundreds in smaller towns, to thousands in places like Cincinnati and Sacramento.

I wanted to see first-hand whether or not the criticism was merited. I went to AP.org, the website for the Associated Press. They have a search feature on the site where you can use a keyword search to look up stories within the last 7 days. The keyword “tea party” returned 38 entries, only 4 of which occur on April 15th. Of those four results, only two had some connection to the tea parties; one referred to protesters throwing tea bags at the White House, the other covered a tax counter-protest in Vermont where about “two dozen people” demanded higher taxes. The story did not cover whether or not those people were later referred to competent mental health professionals.

None of the stories dealt specifically with any of the tea parties.

So, I tried “tea parties” as the keyword. The results were just as bad. Of 18 results, only one was returned for April 15th, a story about Next Gingrich’s possible bid for the presidency in 2012.

How can I conclude anything other than, at least as far as the AP is concerned, the tea parties never happened? We expected to be treated unfairly by the Media. After all, we all know how they operate. But I don’t think we were prepared to be completely ignored.

The very point of a protest is to get the attention of the Media, who will then relay that information, via news coverage, to government officials. At least, that’s the theory. But in this case, a small handful of environmental protesters dressed up as polar bears and sea turtles appearing at a city council meeting in Sacramento got more coverage by the AP than more than 6,000 tea party goers in the same city a day earlier.

The Media has abandoned its once honored position as the watchman of the People, keeping us apprised of government misbehavior. The Media is supposed to report, not interfere. It has instead become an enabler of corruption and unchecked power. Barak Obama said he had not heard of the tea parties before they happened. There are two possible reasons for that. Either 1) he is kept intentionally in isolation by his handlers, which includes the Media, or 2) he is lying. Every other elected official in America knew about these events. How are we supposed to believe Obama didn’t? Either way, he is only adding more evidence to the case against him.

Take a look at the coverage of one of the tea parties by CNN (one of the rare events that was covered). Pay close attention to the questions this reporter asks the man she is interviewing. Ask yourself what her underlying assumptions are. What does she believe, that causes her to ask these questions?

Her belief is that these people should not be protesting, because of the benefits they can receive from the government. She is so completely steeped in Statism that no other alternative even registers in her mind. Individual liberty and independence are foreign concepts to people like her. She also fails to understand that the protests were not about taxes per se, but about Washington ignoring the voices of We, the People. 90% of the millions of contacts made to government officials in Washington DC at the time the stimulus bill was being considered, were opposed to it’s passage. They ignored us, and passed it anyway.

The Media is not to be trusted now, anymore than the government can be trusted. If we want our elected officials to stay in touch with us, we’re going to have to get the word out by our own methods, and circumvent the Media. They don’t want our voices to be heard. But we must not allow them to dictate either the terms in the debate or who has a voice in it.