Okay, so I’m about ten days late on this entry to the blog – my apologies. The topic of this entry is the tea party events that took place on April 15th as a sign of disgust with the increasing number of taxes that Americans are being asked to pay. I didn’t attend any of these tea parties (even though one was taking place literally one block away from my office), but I did watch the coverage on the news and I engaged in a lot of post-party reading on the internet.
Of all the reports that struck me, the one that made me go wide-eyed the most was the one of the woman from CNN who claimed that she was being harassed at the tea party which was anti-tax and, “anti-CNN.” Anti-CNN? Really? If you watch the video, you’ll notice that this woman was being rude and arrogant to the people in the crowd – not letting them finish answers to her questions and cutting them off. Frankly, she was being an all-around asshole. The term “self-important bitch” comes to mind when I watch the video. And for those of you who suggest that she had every right to berate the guy with the anti-Obama sign remember two things. First, she’s a journalist and what she believes is best saved for an op-ed, not a news report. Second, this same woman attended a parade a few years ago held by those on the far left of the political spectrum and laughed and condoned an image of President George W. Bush as Adolf Hitler.
Fair and balanced? Definitely not so on CNN.
As she was saying this I couldn’t help but think of that episode of Family Guy where Peter secedes from the union and founds the country of Petoria. At one point during the episode, Tom Tucker is reporting live from the scene and starts saying how bad it was and how it was a full-out war between the United States and Petoria…then the camera pans towards him and you see him making the gunfire noises with plastic bubble paper and rocket noises with a slide whistle! It seems that the fictional Tom Tucker and the real world “reporter” from CNN went to the same journalism school!
Anyway, the Constitution Party came out with an e-mail to those on its e-mail list saying the following:
We suggest you now send your emails to CNN Executive Vice President Ken Jautz : ken.jautz@cnn.com and Philip Kent, the Chairman and CEO of CNN: phil.kent@turner.com
Let Susan’s boss know you’re not going to let off the hook a left-wing activist with a mic who was denouncing a legitimate and honest political movement by hard working Americans. Remind the CNN honchos that there were close to one million attendees at the tea parties.
Now, I normally don’t go putting up these types of e-mails on this blog, but I think that this particular message has some resounding value. It’s really ridiculous that CNN would put such a biased, arrogant report on the air. I was one of the many people who moved away from FOX News’ coverage of the Presidential campaign and over to CNN because they just had better coverage this year. However, now that I see such blatant bias, I really can’t stick with CNN as my “flip to” channel. It’s back to FOX News for me – where, believe it or not, they are much more “fair and balanced” than the dummies at CNN.
And let’s not forget about Janeane Garofalo going on Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show and saying that all those who attended those protests, as well as Republicans and conservatives, are right winged racist rednecks. The media has completely ignored that, to no surprise.
Excellent, excellent point, Martin. Garofalo is one of the most hate-filled people in all of Hollywood (along with Bill Maher) and, frankly, she’s getting tiresome. It was funny a few years ago when she went on O’Reilly’s show and went toe-to-toe with him, but her fifteen minutes have been over forever.
And if anyone from FOX is reading this – what the hell were you thinking casting her on 24?!
Living in Canada and getting both Canadian and American news networks, I feel pretty safe in saying that the best chance you have of seeing balanced American news coverage is watching some of our networks here. It’s not perfect, but what is? At least getting the news from the CBC or even CTV the news coverage tries to be more about the news of the day and less about the personalities presenting it and the spin they want to put on it.
What’s up, Steve? I’m not even sure if I get those channels down here in New Jersey. I find that my best bet at getting the entire news story is to bounce around from the New York Times website, FOXNews.com, CNN.com, and then my local news websites. It’s exhausting, though, and it takes up too much time in my day so chances are that I’ll eventually settle on briefly running through the Times, FOXNews.com, and then one of my local papers.
My experience in the States has taught me that we get a lot more American stations on our cable up here than you get Canadian ones down there. Come to think of it you might not get any at all.
I generally get my hard news from the CBC’s RSS, plus my local newspaper’s websites. I try to catch the local news when I can, but it’s sometimes hard to watch since it can get so mindbogglingly stupid at times. there are other sources of info too of course, but those are the major ones.