Attention Mainstream Media! I have a challenge for you: "A Day Without the Tea Party." I challenge cable networks and their hosts and pundits, for one day, to ignore the Tea Party movement and focus on issues that affect everyday people, also known as their audience.
Which of the following issues matter to you the most?
• The 989 billion tax dollars and 5,450 lives spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• America's growing homeless population due to the jobless rate
• America's failing public school system
• The OECD's recent report that shows the US has nearly doubled the average child poverty level of industrialized nations
• Potential nuclear weapons in North Korea, Iran and Pakistan
Inspired by Walter Shapiro's 60-hour cable newsathon diet for Politics Daily, I recently conducted a cable news experiment to find out what issues matter to the media. My roommate just purchased a fancy-schmancy television for our living room, so what better time to conduct my experiment? Full disclosure up front: I am not a scientist, nor a statistician, nor do I have a team of experts readily available for consult. But I do have DVR, timer and calculator apps on my iPhone.
My newsathon objective was to quantify the hours that the moderate and left leaning media were spending on the ever-so-hot Tea Partiers.
No surprise, the Tea Party movement was the most popular topic of the week. Altogether, the Tea Partiers and their counterparts (like their self-appointed leader, Sarah Palin, the Birthers and the anti-government militia men) received over 25% of airtime. That's an average of 15 hours spent on an unofficial political party that has no official agenda, platform or spokesperson and is unrepresentative of most American people, let alone the audience of the cable news shows I watched.
To put this into perspective, in terms of 30-second ad time, the Tea Partiers would have purchased and run 1,800 30-second ads. You cannot buy this type of publicity.
Last week, Politico reported,
"Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism, which tracks media reports, found that the tea parties consumed a steady measure of news for most of this year before exploding during tax week to compete with the Icelandic volcano for attention and outstripping health care with 6% of all media reports that week."
One episode of Keith Olbermann devoted over 50% of his airtime to criticizing the so-called movement. While I appreciate his zeal to combat the falsities of this growing popular group, I have to ask him and the rest of these cable news show hosts: Why? Why are you giving these fringers so much attention? Why are you utilizing valuable airtime to debunk their obviously false claims? Why are you engaging them? Are these the most important issues of our day?
While Obama has done an admirable job ignoring the Tea Party outbursts and outlandish claims and focusing on moving his agenda forward, Maddow, Matthews, Olbermann, Colbert, Stewart, Cooper, Crowley, Sanchez and Shultz have missed an incredible opportunity to vocalize the progressive agenda while they have the floor. For eight years, progressives were unable to bring their agenda to the table and had to constantly act on the defensive.
Instead of mocking misspelled signs and ill-fitting George Washington costumes and debunking illegitimate birth certificates and death panels, why not cover one of the issues not once mentioned during my newsathon? Issues like the growing tent cities of homeless people across the country, or Net Neutrality, or America's growing water crisis? Or perhaps the standard liberal causes like Equal Pay, Education, Homelessness, or Energy? Or--remember the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our leaders' promises to end them?
Recently, Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist mother of a fallen Iraqi war soldier told Politico, "[The Tea Partiers] are being treated with a lot more respect than the anti-war movement was." She continued, "The anti-war movement has always been treated as a fringe movement - even though at the height of our movement we had hundreds of thousands of people at protests and the majority of public opinion on our side."
But, God Bless those Tea Partiers and their "Revolution!" (Or, should I say, God bless their publicists, who incidentally are paid for by America's 2nd largest private corporation, Koch Industries?)
Recently at a United Nations event in Los Angeles, an attendee stated, "The news never covers the everyday issues and injustices. Otherwise, that wouldn't be news." The problem is not the quality of news or the ratings or the uneducated people, it is the inability by the media to ignore these people.
The Tea Partiers have mastered the rhetorical tool of the "red herring." It's the same tactic an attorney uses on an opposing witness who is on a roll. He objects on useless grounds to throw off the witness' momentum and distract him. After winning an election, Democrats were on a roll, and citizens were finally listening. They needed to be interrupted.
We have allowed ourselves to be thrown off track by these distractors who have hijacked our debate. These information hijackers are terrorists--I call them,
information terrorists. And they are taking the reigns of our media and spreading their emotion evoking messages cross-country.
I suspect that the Republican Party has instigated its base to organize (on their donors' dime), intentionally not become an official party (because that would mean they have to disclose funding) and do their dirty work (because how can the GOP be vocally racist
and keep their moderates?) and then throw out meaningless statements that are easy targets for liberals. (Because is there anything liberals love more than debating?)
Post-Bush, the GOP needed to rebuild. Just as they did in the late 1970's evolving into Ralph Reed's Christian Coalition taking over Southern Democrats in the 80's, the GOP is reaching out to the Tea Partiers in search of another base. Just as with Post-Nixon, and now with Post-Bush, one bad president can leave the party scrounging for support. To a dying party like the GOP, it was a mere political tactic.
But New World Media is so different than that of the 70's and 80's. And to keep up, the Republican party has been engaging the 24/7 twitter newsfeed by employing media strategists, publicists, high priced campaign directors who know how to grow grassroots support and social networking gurus, all creating the illusion of a grassroots movement.
So, while on the outside Michael Steele and Mitt Romney may not be supporting the Tea Partiers, on the inside they're jumping with joy about their newfound base.
Let's face it Dems, you have the heart but you don't have the brains. The GOP has discovered a way to make the media work for them. The Democrats are working for the media because they're answering every allegation Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin throw out.
It's time that liberals put down their checker pieces and play chess. This information terrorism tactic is sidetracking the debate--a debate that should be easily won by liberals.
I urge the leaders of liberal media to do the country a favor and ignore the media whores. Ignore Palin; ignore the Tea Partiers and ignore Glenn Beck. They are no different than Speidi, Paris Hilton or Omarosa. Spend one episode not on the defensive and discuss education, the state of AIDS in Africa, the tent cities in San Diego and the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Democrats are supposed to be the intellectuals- so please, act the part and ignore the circus show. If you try, you may beat them at their own game.
Follow Nomiki Konst on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/nomikikonst
Aren't you giving too much credence to conservative talk?
The last powerful show that was on the radio was the Howard Stern Show. Much to the chagrin of his listeners, commercials usually lasted 20 minutes at every break. Stern had 50 million listeners from 35 stations, while Rush Limbaugh had 20 million on 600 stations. Divide the two and Stern had: 142,8571 listeners that day per station while Rush had 33,333 that day per station. When Stern left CBS, Rush's ratings went from 30 million down to 10 million, and Sirius went from 500,000 to 20 million which includes X.M. to this day. In other words, conservative talk has not been a popular medium.
Now with liberal talk, they started off small, but shot upwards after a few years. The major cities who market progressive talk are booming while many of Limbaugh's shows are needle pushers.
So if you look at the ratings per market, liberal talk is doing quite well and advertising is jumping on the liberal talk shows. Oh and liberals have the edge on Internet radio and liberal radio rating is growing like a weed. One such evidence is the Democratic elections of late. Regardless of what Fox News or Limbaugh says, people are not listening, and it is evident at the polling place and Arbitron too.
Nomiki, no need to worry about Limbaugh's reign on the airwaves, why? Because no one listens.
Imagine if you and I both had the financial backing of the second largest corporation in the US. We would have the ability to hire publicists, media strategists and organizers to spread whichever issue we fancied (in their case, anything following the word "NO") But instead, I just blog and respond to comments when I have free time. Hoping to share my message in some small way.
I hate to break it to you but Pakistan and North Korea already have nukes, and have had them for a while now...
As to comparing the Tea Party to reality TV types and claiming that it's not news, the fact is that according to polls, 13% of America claims to be a member of the Tea Party and for those with an opinion, their favorables rate higher than either the Democrats or Republicans.
http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1295.xml?ReleaseID=1436
That's not all that far behind people self-identifying with either major party (Dems 36%, GOP 31.6% and 32.5% who say they are not affiliated with either major party). As has been widely reported, the Democrats have lost significant Independent support since Obama was elected.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/partisan_trends
For you to say that they (The Tea Party) are a non-issue is just not seeing reality for what it is. As partisanship continues to manifest, it's clear that among major party voters, the vote will reflect that party affiliation. That leaves Independents, which includes the Tea Partiers, who will in all likelihood have a much higher participation rate in the elections than other Independents. That makes them a major player and thus, worth of news coverage.
The answer is that he and his audience are similar to Rush Limbaugh and Rush's audience. They all get a sick thrill out of demonizing their political opponents. For some reason, it makes them happy to discuss how other people are jerks.
Number of times the moderator interrupts their guests (especially guests expressing views contrary to that expressed by the moderator).
Number of times the moderator says "I think..." or "my opinion is..." vs. What do you think?"
Number of time the moderator makes a fact claim that has been debunked.
Number of times the moderator asks their guests a question and then procedes to answer it her/himself.
I think the results of comparing these few things would reveal which cable networks are more biased and which are less biased.
Being intellectual doesn't mean ignoring the situation, it means giving the situation its due attention. I agree we are giving them way too much attention, but ignoring them completely is too far.
Great article Nomiki!
Turning the other cheek is how you get Swiftboated. Fool me once shame on you...
SOme of my best friends were liberal arts majors,They were nice people,but not really good with factual information.Diffidently, I ask if you've ever read the book on Sen Kerry's Vietnam service. I offered $5oo to a cousin during the 2004 elections and he refused. I then offerred to send the fee to any charity he picked, Nope.
My feeling is too many Democrats have been in a belief system where ,if unruly reality intrudes ,the messenger must be attacked.I offfer the plot to steal the election from fmr VP Gore-which degenerated into talking points about a coup by peope who couldn't be bothered to read, global warming,which somehow morphed into 'climate' change.Can you explain why folks with a non science background are qualified to have a strong belief in an intensely technical field.And lately,Newt Minnow's daughter is chastising a Law student who feels there is an intellectual differences (on average) between races.Doesn't that fit my point?
I am watching FoxNews and MSNBC pretty much every evening.
I have never heard any FoxNews commentators or talking point heads even mention names of Maddow, Matthews, Olbermann, Cooper, Sanchez or Shultz. They do not attack them, do not fact check them and do not criticize them. They let viewers do the job and ratings show that it is a correct strategy.
So, your assessment in the article is absolutely correct.
The more who are, the more there are available for more important news. You can think of Faux Noise as a black hole, with mindless moderates dithering around the event horizon. To those, a broad display of the absurdity of the right is more helpful than any exposition on poverty in America.
Oh, concerning news updates: Pakistan and North Korea already have demonstrated they possess nuclear weapons.