The Media and the Tea Parties

Is it news when thousands of people in all 50 states gather to protest government policy? Not according to the the front pages of the Washington Post or the New York Times. Readers of those paragons of mainstream reporting would have missed the story: the “tea party” rallies were not mentioned. In Washington, D.C., despite temperatures in the 40s and a punishing rain, a thousand demonstrators stood across from the White House on April 15. The next day the front page of the Times featured stories and pictures about public demonstrations in Kabul, Afghanistan – and nothing about the White House protesters.

The snub could very well have been intentional. Fox News had been giving these rallies high-profile coverage for days, so other media organizations no doubt considered them illegitimate. Reporter Susan Roesgen (who had been turned down for a correspondent's position with Fox) “covered” the Chicago tea party for CNN, and was blatantly confrontational with the protesters she interviewed. She challenged a protestor who made a reference to Abraham Lincoln by asking “What does this have to do with taxes?” When the man attempted to explain, she interrupted him. “Did you know that you are eligible for a $400 rebate?" she asked. "Did you know that your state, the state of Lincoln, gets $50 billion from the stimulus? That’s $50 billion for your state.” She closed her report dismissively, commenting “This is clearly not family viewing.”

What Ms. Roesgen and others like her persistently fail to understand is that some American citizens are passionately and sincerely concerned with more than their own narrow self-interest. Suppose the protester she interviewed, who was holding his two-year-old son on his shoulders, was actually eligible for a tax rebate. And suppose his state was actually set to get a big piece of the stimulus money. Isn't it nonetheless possible that such bribes were of no interest to him? Perhaps his support was truly not for sale because he didn't believe his taxes could possibly remain low when the federal government had gone berserk with spending. Perhaps he was disgusted with the entire bailout culture, which represents an ongoing temptation to every irresponsible borrower, every failed car company, and every recklessly spending state to go for broke because the federal government, flush with his tax dollars, said nothing was wrong. Finally, he may be genuinely convinced that the government was incapable of spending the money wisely. Government spending has always been notorious for producing waste, fraud, inefficiency, and corruption on a massive scale.

The tea parties have demonstrated that resistance to big government flourishes in the hearts of many American citizens.

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