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Is CNN Really ‘Pimping’ Tea Party Express Bus Tour?

by Tommy Christopher | 10:12 am, April 4th, 2010

» 15 comments

When I saw this post at liberal blog Crooks and Liars alleging that CNN is “pimping” the “Great American Tea Party Express PR and Propaganda Tour,” I thought perhaps I had stumbled onto an explanation for all the Erick Erickson-related craziness this week. First, CNN hires the incendiary Redstate blogger, then they hit the road with the Tea Party Express? Is this a bid to peel off some Fox News viewers?

Upon closer inspection, however, it appears that while the effect of CNN’s coverage may be to promote the Tea Party Express, that’s not the intent. I think CNN is looking for another kind of gold in them thar Tea Party hills.

C&L’s Karoli makes an excellent case that CNN is giving the Tea Party Express Tour a disproportionate amount of attention, and an inflated sense of the “movement’s” size and intensity:

Since the kickoff of the TeaParty Express Tour, CNN has embedded a small press corps in their custom-painted “CNN Express” press bus for the sole purpose of following teabaggers around the country , reporting 3-4 times daily on the activities of the corporate-funded, RNC-connected Tea Party Express.

This clip from Wednesday boggled my mind. You can see how few there are at this rally, but watch as Ali Velshi and Ed Lavandera turn it into a “movement”.

In one short clip, we have two reporters apologizing for low turnouts, promising more, and watching for it to grow as it gets closer to “Washington, DC”.

She’s got a point, here. This tour is drawing smaller crowds than the aftermath of a chili cookoff. It’s fair to ask “Is this news?” Obviously, the Tea Party movement is now a legitimate story, but are the embedded news crew and the bus justified? I’ll get to that in a minute.

Karoli goes on to criticize CNN for not digging into the tour’s organizers, but that’s much more a function of TV news’ birdbath-shallow modus operandi than any desire to cover up for the Tea Party. Besides, such details get in the way of the real prize: This lady.

Visuals like this woman, holding a stuffed monkey and a sign that says “Send Obuma Back to Kenya” are the nuggets of gold that CNN gets to dig out of its Tea Party embeds, while still playing that “down the middle” role that Campbell Brown is so fond of.

The picture comes from this report about Tea Party diversity, and while the script plays it down the middle, the visuals are incongruous with the “some say/others say” style of reporting.

They miss a real opportunity here, and that’s a shame. Tea Party coverage from other networks either paints the events as Klan rallies, or gatherings of persecuted patriots. CNN has the event organizer saying he thinks the movement is “incredibly diverse,” and that he won’t reach out to black voters because they’ll come flocking as soon as they get around to reading their pocket Constitution. On its face, this is more tone deaf than the first day of American Idol auditions. Doesn’t this guy think it might help if they politely asked the birther lady to put her stuffed monkey away?

At this point, though, the monkey lady benefits the Tea Party more than she hurts it. The movement has always depended more on loudness than volume, and the persecution by the “lamestream media” over “isolated incidents” like this only steels the movement’s resolve. It’s like money in the bank.

Perhaps more damning to CNN is their implication that “disgruntled Democrats” are gravitating toward the Tea Party movement. The basis for this claim is some anecdotal bs that’s completely undermined by their own poll, which found only 4% of Tea Partiers self-identifying as Democrats with a 3% margin of error. Hell, McCain pulled more Democrats than that.

Again, the motivation for this is to keep the story interesting, I think, and not to necessarily shill for the Tea Party. As reporter after reporter has told me, if there’s a bias in the mainstream media, it’s in the direction of laziness.

CNN, Crooks and Liars, Erick Erickson, Karoli, Tea Party, Tea Party Express, Tommy Christopher

Puter Boi

In a related story…former MSNBC “journalist” , David Shuster, was seen donning his new bus driver uniform and climbing into the driver’s seat on the Tea party Express bus.

Word has it that Shuster really really needs the work.

Best of luck, David!

This has been Puter Boi reporting from my basement…..
Moderate

When Anderson Cooper made fun of the Tea Party as being “Teabaggers”, CNN lost a lot of viewers. CNN is now trying to get a lot of those viewers back, for their continued existence they need to do something. The far left seems to have lost interest in politics.
http://www.anonymousfinch.com AnonymousFinch

If you want to do a story about the media giving a “movement” a disproportionate amount of attention, how about all those fanciful stories about the “coffee party” “movement”? When I read the New York Times piece about the “coffee party,” I thought it was a spoof from The Onion.
http://www.anonymousfinch.com AnonymousFinch

Moderate is right. All this talk about hate, invective, incivility in public discourse, etc., yet large portions of the mainstream media find it perfectly acceptable (nay, downright funny) to defame a political movement by referring to its adherents by the use of a profane sexual term. Can anyone imagine if Fox did that to a liberal group?
valkyrie101

finch,
I doubt if even 10% of the population knows, or even suspects that a “tea bagger” is a derrogatory term. In any event, if you are going to be known as the tea party, some people, whether they know better or not, with visions of those thousands of hanging tea bags on the hats of tea partiers, and all the other tea bag hoopla that the tea party uses, will say that tea party adherents are tea baggers.

The so called “coffee party”, as far as media attention goes, were given simply a cup of coffee. While FOX, departing from even the dubious suggestion that it is “fair and balanced”, has spent literally hundreds if not thousands of hours actively promoting the tea party.
writer

Sure, Beck promoted the tea parties. But thousands of people showing up to protest is news. It’s just that all the other networks chose to downplay it, which made Fox’s coverage stand out more. Unless the other networks could point out a derogatory picture of Obama or that most in the crowd were white (and therefore automatically racist) the tea parties got little coverage. Good thing most tea partiers were white, though. That ‘pimping’ term used above would be an outrage otherwise.
Caryson

When all these pundits talk about “Tea Parties,” they look like Obama who can only say what appears on a Teleprompter written by somebody else. Not much thought there.

Last year I was curious about the what these Tea Party people were up to, so I went to one. I was astonished!

I met Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and every other group you can think of! The over riding concern was the expansion of government, government debt, bailouts, taxes and the economy.

I asked several people if they had ever been to a political event before and the answer was a resounding: NO

All the negative hype is from the Left Wing MSM trying to double down on their chosen leader.

As for CNN, who cares what they say. They have no viewers.
Moderate

Nancy Pelosi says the tea party coalition shares some common ground with Democrats, such as their dislike of special interests in Washington. She cited public disdain for the recent Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance that allows companies and unions to spend freely on ads that promote or target particular candidates by name.
Earlier she described the grass roots effort as ‘Astro-Turf’. She accused the participants of exhibiting manufactured rage. I guess she now sees them as a serious threat.
sueNaustin

“The basis for this claim is some anecdotal bs that’s completely undermined by their own poll, which found only 4% of Tea Partiers self-identifying as Democrats with a 3% margin of error.”

I don’t know a single Democrat who goes to these Tea Parties. If I went to one, and someone told me they were a Democrat, I would suspect them of being a liar, and trying to get on air or in print.

They have a black person, Kevin Jackson (?), who goes from party to party, and is now making money off of it. The Tea Party is not a diverse movement. Do they have to be diverse? No, of course not. Just stop saying certain groups of people are a part of it when they’re not.
valkyrie101

A couple months ago there was an immigration rights demonstration in DC with 200K people and FOX did not cover it. But if a tea party event has even a couple thousand people FOX goes all out. Why? Fox’s viewers like the tea party, and generally do not like immigrants. Those same viewers get off on non-stop Jeremiah Wright videos too. So FOX knows who butters their bread and simply appeals to those wants. But that is not the same thing as fair and balanced. Frankly, I have no problem with that. Why not give your viewers what they want? But again, don’t confuse that with any notion of fair and balanced.
writer

Was there a study showing that Fox viewers don’t like immigrants?
MooseOfReason

Considering how 88% of black voters voted for John Kerry in 2004 (according to CNN’s election results), it wouldn’t be surprising that there aren’t a lot of black people at a tea party rally, if that’s true.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html
http://www.sailrabbits.com Magister

I think that with the average, non-political American, the Tea Party is still largely undefined and perhaps the attendance at these “Express” events are somewhat dependent upon where they’re held.

For example, when I was putting together my update about Constance McMillen’s “prom”, I saw where the bus had stopped in Tupelo and that an estimated 1500 had attended. I’m not sure who did the counting and based on the pictures, the estimate may have been on the high side, but even if you discount those who drove-up from Tampa, there were still quite a few people at a rally in a city of 36,000 and the pre-press said that eight Congressional candidates were slated to speak.

IOW: Whether or not the Tea Party itself has an direct effect, a large crowd gathered in Tupelo yesterday to hear most of the challengers to their Democratic incumbent speak.

Note for anyone too lazy to click: The pre-press said that three Republicans, three Independents, one Constitution and one Reform had accepted the Tea Party’s invitation, while an Independent and the Libertarian had accepted, pre-press. (and the post-event article doesn’t list any of those who spoke)
http://www.sailrabbits.com Magister

Whoops – that last para should’ve said the Libertarian and singled-out Independent hadn’t accepted the invitation to speak, by the time the pre-event article was published. 8 challengers spoke, two didn’t and one assumes that the Democratic incumbent was keeping a low profile that day or whatever they were doing was ignored.
NORBIT

Note the snide ‘teabagger’ moniker routinely used by the INDOCTRINATED, UNEVOLVED Left!….Oh, how clever; Bill Maher wanna-be’s!……….To the PETRIFIED MINDS OF LIBERALS: Evolution is a terrible thing to waste!! LOL!!!