Massaging the news for the masses

Media shape their protest reporting to fit a preconceived plot

Liberal press bias has been so stark and the lying by omission so blatant that it’s time to take stock again. Here are some examples culled from the “mainstream media,” a term conditioned with quote marks because the media are seriously out of step with America’s mainstream.

Comparing Occupy Wall Street to the Tea Party: On Oct. 22, the Washington Post ran a front-page story trying to show that OWS protesters have much in common with Tea Partyers. Sample: “They start out with different views about the role of government, but in interviews and online discussions they repeatedly share many of the same frustrations, as well as a classically American passion for fixing the system.” Why, they are practically co-belligerents, like the Boy Scouts teaming up with the Hell’s Angels.

The reporter even managed to find a Minnesota woman who attended Tea Party rallies but now identifies with the OWS and says the Tea Party is “becoming the religious wing of the Republican Party.” Open anti-religious bigotry? No problem.

What was missing in the story? How about the fact that violence is absent from Tea Party rallies? Also, that Tea Party members work within the system, urge lawmakers to follow the Constitution and the rule of law, clean up after their events and leave the police with little to do?

So far, Tea Party members have not staged a “human microphone” like the one in New York’s Zuccotti Park, where a crowd repeated mantras that included, “You can have sex with animals.” You probably didn’t see that on NBC or CBS.

Here are a few more things you don’t find at Tea Party rallies but that would be reported widely if you did:

• Mobs blocking the streets and interfering with commuters.
• Signs and banners emblazoned with obscenities.
• Signs suggesting violence against authorities and businessmen.
• Endorsements from both the Nazi Party and the Communist Party.
• Signs blaming “the Jews” for all things bad.
• Reports of sexual assaults on teenage girls and, in the case of Occupy Glasgow, Scotland, a gang rape.
• Rock-throwing.
• Street people being confused with activists.
• Sex acts and bathroom functions performed in view of others.
• Legions of graying, ponytailed men.
• Adoption of a “no snitch rule” against telling police about lawbreaking

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