When Coverage Matters: Tea Party vs. US Social Forum
Mass movements that matter for media—Round 2
When it comes to covering activist gatherings, corporate media have
established clear standards: Numbers don't count nearly as much as
politics do.
Last fall, when tens of thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender activists and their allies marched on Washington in a
grassroots rally for equality, media gave it far less coverage than the
similarly sized, largely corporate-funded Tea Party protest in
Washington just a month earlier (Extra!, 12/09).
It was almost a total blackout for the USSF. Aside from local coverage,
the only corporate media mentions found in the Nexis database came from
Glenn Beck (Fox News, 6/29/10,
6/30/10)-warning viewers about "socialists and communists coming out of
the woodwork to co-opt the youth and spread a dangerous disease"-and Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman, a guest on John King's CNN show (6/30/10).
Not one major newspaper outside of Michigan covered the story. Time and Newsweek ignored it. The Associated Press didn't run a single story on its newswire.
Of course, many alternative journalists did cover the huge event, including prominent reporting from Inter Press Service (e.g., 6/25/10).
By contrast, in the two weeks surrounding the February Tea Party Convention, the right-wing gathering got 12 mentions in the Washington Post, eight in the New York Times, seven in the L.A. Times and four in USA Today. CNN mentioned the convention 71 times, Fox News 27, MSNBC 19, ABC 21, and CBS and NBC four. Politico (2/12/10) reported that CNN sent a crew of 11 to cover it; soon after the convention, the Washington Post assigned a reporter to "make sure the movement's covered fully in its pages" (Politico, 3/12/10).
In Detroit, the USSF was too big to ignore; the local alt-weekly, the Metro Times (6/23/10), even dedicated a front cover to it. The two daily papers, the Detroit Free Press (e.g., 6/20/10) and Detroit News
(e.g., 6/23/10), for the most part offered respectful coverage of an
event that brought a boost to the decimated Detroit economy. But Nolan
Finley, editorial page editor of the News, mocked the gathering
(6/20/10): "This ain't no tea party. The forum is a hootenanny of
pinkos, environuts, peaceniks, Luddites, old hippies, Robin Hoods and
urban hunters and gatherers. In other words, a microcosm of the Obama
administration."
Finley seemed only to be giving colorful voice to the unspoken thoughts
of most corporate journalists. The Social Forum certainly wasn't the Tea
Party; it was a gathering of people whose voices are routinely
discounted by the media gatekeepers, no matter how big a hootenanny they
can muster. When one side has 600 people (and one Sarah Palin) pushing
the fiscal conservatism beloved by corporate media bigwigs, and the
other has 20,000 challenging the neoliberal status quo and highlighting
the struggles of the working class and people of color, journalists
don't need to be told how to do the math.
Sidebar: The Spurning of Atlanta
The non-coverage was essentially a repeat of the first U.S. Social Forum
in 2007, which drew some 12,000 activists and not a single major
newspaper or television reporter outside its host city of Atlanta. (Two
local AP reporters did file stories on the wire that year-7/27/07.)
The Boston Banner, Boston's African-American weekly paper, published two in-depth pieces (6/28/07, 7/5/07), and other smaller papers like the Albuquerque Journal (6/21/07) and the Miami Times (7/4/07) also ran articles. The local Augusta Chronicle
(7/2/07) declared that the "Forum Shows Far Left's Faults," concluding:
"Until those on the far left begin to sacrifice their priorities for
the sake of gaining power as a group, the republic seems safe. The
revolution barely sputters."
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When it comes to covering activist gatherings, corporate media have
established clear standards: Numbers don't count nearly as much as
politics do.
Last fall, when tens of thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender activists and their allies marched on Washington in a
grassroots rally for equality, media gave it far less coverage than the
similarly sized, largely corporate-funded Tea Party protest in
Washington just a month earlier (Extra!, 12/09).
It was almost a total blackout for the USSF. Aside from local coverage,
the only corporate media mentions found in the Nexis database came from
Glenn Beck (Fox News, 6/29/10,
6/30/10)-warning viewers about "socialists and communists coming out of
the woodwork to co-opt the youth and spread a dangerous disease"-and Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman, a guest on John King's CNN show (6/30/10).
Not one major newspaper outside of Michigan covered the story. Time and Newsweek ignored it. The Associated Press didn't run a single story on its newswire.
Of course, many alternative journalists did cover the huge event, including prominent reporting from Inter Press Service (e.g., 6/25/10).
By contrast, in the two weeks surrounding the February Tea Party Convention, the right-wing gathering got 12 mentions in the Washington Post, eight in the New York Times, seven in the L.A. Times and four in USA Today. CNN mentioned the convention 71 times, Fox News 27, MSNBC 19, ABC 21, and CBS and NBC four. Politico (2/12/10) reported that CNN sent a crew of 11 to cover it; soon after the convention, the Washington Post assigned a reporter to "make sure the movement's covered fully in its pages" (Politico, 3/12/10).
In Detroit, the USSF was too big to ignore; the local alt-weekly, the Metro Times (6/23/10), even dedicated a front cover to it. The two daily papers, the Detroit Free Press (e.g., 6/20/10) and Detroit News
(e.g., 6/23/10), for the most part offered respectful coverage of an
event that brought a boost to the decimated Detroit economy. But Nolan
Finley, editorial page editor of the News, mocked the gathering
(6/20/10): "This ain't no tea party. The forum is a hootenanny of
pinkos, environuts, peaceniks, Luddites, old hippies, Robin Hoods and
urban hunters and gatherers. In other words, a microcosm of the Obama
administration."
Finley seemed only to be giving colorful voice to the unspoken thoughts
of most corporate journalists. The Social Forum certainly wasn't the Tea
Party; it was a gathering of people whose voices are routinely
discounted by the media gatekeepers, no matter how big a hootenanny they
can muster. When one side has 600 people (and one Sarah Palin) pushing
the fiscal conservatism beloved by corporate media bigwigs, and the
other has 20,000 challenging the neoliberal status quo and highlighting
the struggles of the working class and people of color, journalists
don't need to be told how to do the math.
Sidebar: The Spurning of Atlanta
The non-coverage was essentially a repeat of the first U.S. Social Forum
in 2007, which drew some 12,000 activists and not a single major
newspaper or television reporter outside its host city of Atlanta. (Two
local AP reporters did file stories on the wire that year-7/27/07.)
The Boston Banner, Boston's African-American weekly paper, published two in-depth pieces (6/28/07, 7/5/07), and other smaller papers like the Albuquerque Journal (6/21/07) and the Miami Times (7/4/07) also ran articles. The local Augusta Chronicle
(7/2/07) declared that the "Forum Shows Far Left's Faults," concluding:
"Until those on the far left begin to sacrifice their priorities for
the sake of gaining power as a group, the republic seems safe. The
revolution barely sputters."
When it comes to covering activist gatherings, corporate media have
established clear standards: Numbers don't count nearly as much as
politics do.
Last fall, when tens of thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender activists and their allies marched on Washington in a
grassroots rally for equality, media gave it far less coverage than the
similarly sized, largely corporate-funded Tea Party protest in
Washington just a month earlier (Extra!, 12/09).
It was almost a total blackout for the USSF. Aside from local coverage,
the only corporate media mentions found in the Nexis database came from
Glenn Beck (Fox News, 6/29/10,
6/30/10)-warning viewers about "socialists and communists coming out of
the woodwork to co-opt the youth and spread a dangerous disease"-and Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman, a guest on John King's CNN show (6/30/10).
Not one major newspaper outside of Michigan covered the story. Time and Newsweek ignored it. The Associated Press didn't run a single story on its newswire.
Of course, many alternative journalists did cover the huge event, including prominent reporting from Inter Press Service (e.g., 6/25/10).
By contrast, in the two weeks surrounding the February Tea Party Convention, the right-wing gathering got 12 mentions in the Washington Post, eight in the New York Times, seven in the L.A. Times and four in USA Today. CNN mentioned the convention 71 times, Fox News 27, MSNBC 19, ABC 21, and CBS and NBC four. Politico (2/12/10) reported that CNN sent a crew of 11 to cover it; soon after the convention, the Washington Post assigned a reporter to "make sure the movement's covered fully in its pages" (Politico, 3/12/10).
In Detroit, the USSF was too big to ignore; the local alt-weekly, the Metro Times (6/23/10), even dedicated a front cover to it. The two daily papers, the Detroit Free Press (e.g., 6/20/10) and Detroit News
(e.g., 6/23/10), for the most part offered respectful coverage of an
event that brought a boost to the decimated Detroit economy. But Nolan
Finley, editorial page editor of the News, mocked the gathering
(6/20/10): "This ain't no tea party. The forum is a hootenanny of
pinkos, environuts, peaceniks, Luddites, old hippies, Robin Hoods and
urban hunters and gatherers. In other words, a microcosm of the Obama
administration."
Finley seemed only to be giving colorful voice to the unspoken thoughts
of most corporate journalists. The Social Forum certainly wasn't the Tea
Party; it was a gathering of people whose voices are routinely
discounted by the media gatekeepers, no matter how big a hootenanny they
can muster. When one side has 600 people (and one Sarah Palin) pushing
the fiscal conservatism beloved by corporate media bigwigs, and the
other has 20,000 challenging the neoliberal status quo and highlighting
the struggles of the working class and people of color, journalists
don't need to be told how to do the math.
Sidebar: The Spurning of Atlanta
The non-coverage was essentially a repeat of the first U.S. Social Forum
in 2007, which drew some 12,000 activists and not a single major
newspaper or television reporter outside its host city of Atlanta. (Two
local AP reporters did file stories on the wire that year-7/27/07.)
The Boston Banner, Boston's African-American weekly paper, published two in-depth pieces (6/28/07, 7/5/07), and other smaller papers like the Albuquerque Journal (6/21/07) and the Miami Times (7/4/07) also ran articles. The local Augusta Chronicle
(7/2/07) declared that the "Forum Shows Far Left's Faults," concluding:
"Until those on the far left begin to sacrifice their priorities for
the sake of gaining power as a group, the republic seems safe. The
revolution barely sputters."