What if the Tea Party Occupied Wall Street?

[G_j]

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4405
Action Alert

What if the Tea Party Occupied Wall Street?
Corporate media skip anti-corporate protests

9/23/11

In an action called Occupy Wall Street, thousands of activists took to the streets of Lower Manhattan on September 17.

The protests are continuing, with demonstrators camped out on the Financial District's Liberty Street in support of U.S. democratization and against corporate domination of politics (Adbusters, 9/19/11).

But you wouldn't know much about any of this from the corporate media--outlets that seem much more interested in protests of the Tea Party variety.

The anti-corporate protests have been lightly covered in the hometown New York Times: One piece (9/18/11) largely about how the police blocked access to Wall Street, and one photo (9/22/11) with the caption "Wall Street Protest Whirls On."

The protests have been treated with brief mentions on CNN, like this one from host Wolf Blitzer (9/19/11): "Protests here in New York on Wall Street entering a third day. Should New Yorkers be worried at all about what's going on?"

From the ABC, CBS and NBC network news, we could find nothing at all in the Nexis news database. On the PBS NewsHour (9/19/11), the protests got a brief reference, tacked on to the end of the stock market report:

Away from the trading floor, some 200 protesters marched for a third day, charging the financial system favors corporations. At least six people were arrested.

Some voices in the media have noted the lack of coverage. On the Rachel Maddow Show (MSNBC, 9/19/11), Michael Moore said, "People are down on Wall Street right now, holding a sit-in and a camp-in down there--virtually no news about this protest."

At the top of his Current TV show (9/21/11), Keith Olberman said:

So five days of clogging downtown Manhattan, protesting corporate control of the economy, and you haven't heard a word about it on the news?

He later remarked, "If that's a Tea Party protest in front of Wall Street about Ben Bernanke...it's the lead story on every network newscast."

The media preference for Tea Party gatherings over progressive activism is well-documented. A September 2009 Tea Party rally in Washington, D.C., garnered far more coverage than a similar gay rights rally the following month (Extra!, 12/09). Thousands of activists at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit in June 2010 did not merit anywhere near the coverage accorded to 600 attendees at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville (Extra!, 9/10). The One Nation Working Together rally (10/2/10) brought thousands to Washington-- but little media attention (FAIR Media Advisory, 10/6/10).

And even the size of a given Tea Party gathering does not seem to much matter. When about 200 Tea Partiers gathered in Washington earlier this year (FAIR Blog, 4/1/11), an account in Slate (3/31/11) noted, "There was at least one reporter for every three or four activists."

The answer to the problem of non-coverage would seem to be simple: If the people occupying Wall Street want more media attention, they should just call themselves Tea Party activists.

ACTION:
Ask the nightly newscasts why they have decided to give little to no coverage to the Occupy Wall Street protests-- especially given their interest in Tea Party demonstrations.


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_________________________________

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/99_percenters_occupy_wall_street_20110920/?ln

Posted on Sep 20, 2011


99 Percenters Occupy Wall Street


By Amy Goodman

If 2,000 tea party activists descended on Wall Street, you would probably have an equal number of reporters there covering them. Yet 2,000 people did occupy Wall Street on Saturday. They weren’t carrying the banner of the tea party, the Gadsden flag with its coiled snake and the threat “Don’t Tread on Me.” Yet their message was clear: “We are the 99 percent that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1 percent.” They were there, mostly young, protesting the virtually unregulated speculation of Wall Street that caused the global financial meltdown.

One of New York’s better-known billionaires, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, commented on the protests: “You have a lot of kids graduating college, can’t find jobs. That’s what happened in Cairo. That’s what happened in Madrid. You don’t want those kinds of riots here.” Riots? Is that really what the Arab Spring and the European protests are about?

Perhaps to the chagrin of Mayor Bloomberg, that is exactly what inspired many who occupied Wall Street. In its most recent communique, the Wall Street protest umbrella group said: “On Saturday we held a general assembly, two thousand strong. ... By 8 p.m. on Monday we still held the plaza, despite constant police presence. ... We are building the world that we want to see, based on human need and sustainability, not corporate greed.”

Speaking of the tea party, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has caused a continuous fracas in the Republican presidential debates with his declaration that the U.S.’ revered Social Security system is a “Ponzi scheme.” Charles Ponzi was the con artist who swindled thousands in 1920 with a fraudulent promise for high returns on investments. A typical Ponzi scheme involves taking money from investors, then paying them off with money taken from new investors, rather than paying them from actual earnings. Social Security is actually solvent, with a trust fund of more than $2.6 trillion. The real Ponzi scheme threatening the U.S. public is the voracious greed of Wall Street banks.

..more..

[tularetom]

1. Solution is very simple - just call themselves Wall Street Tea Party

There are dozens of "tea party" organizations. These protesters should dream up some name for their organization with the words "tea party" in it and all liberal media organizations will jump backwards through their own assholes to cover their protests.

[liberal N proud]

2. It would be 24/7 wall to wall for sure.

[corkhead]

3. 3 teabaggers meet at an Orlando Denny's and CNN reports it.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/21/tea-party-group-form-their-own-super-committee/?eref=ib_politicalticker

[mod mom]

11. exactly. They serve the corporation's agenda so they get coverage.

We witnessed MSM ignoring activists in 2000, 2004 and of course the anti-war movement, but the teabaggers are a different story.

[ClassWarrior]

4. But they wouldn't. The Tea Party was invented to vent the aggression against Wall Street...

...in another direction, i.e., at liberals.

I think the suggestion at post #1 would be a brilliant guerilla move against the media.

NGU.

[banned from Kos]

5. Total Fail -- the story refers to this as an "anti-corporate" protest

If so very few will ever care.


"Anti-corruption" is good but Americans will never respond to the former.

[dkf]

7. No apparently it's become a Troy Davis protest.

[G_j]

8. it is what it is

a protest against the power of Wall Street

[ixion]

6. it would never happen... the tea bagger handlers (*snicker*)

would never allow it.

[piratefish08]

9. they have for 10 years. we used to call them bankers and traders.

[gratuitous]

10. Oh please

You expect the major media outlets to trek all the way out to - what is it - Wall Street in some far-flung locale to cover a bunch of hippie malcontents yammering incoherently for 10 minutes about some unfocused rage du minuit? It's too small, too far away, too complicated, and too removed from the concerns of normal Americans. Now, let's get back to the breathless coverage of the real threat to our democracy that every citizen everywhere can identify with, the unconscionable raising of fees for private jets! To the barricades, O oppressed masses!