ABCNews.com Reporter Shills for Civil Rights Leader Who Sees Nativism and Ethno-centrism in Tea Party

Reporter Devin Dwyer’s May 25 ABCNews.com profile of Andrew Young reported the civil rights leader’s derisive remarks against the Tea Party without giving the movement a chance to defend itself.

Despite the liberal activist’s claim that “ethno-centrism runs so deep in America” and that the Tea Party is “motivated by a nativism,” at no point in the piece did Dwyer include a response to the charges.

Instead, Dwyer devoted the rest of the piece to praising the “civil rights legend” for his myriad achievements.

“Young, who has spent a lifetime fighting to change American society for the better, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his decades-long career in public service, which included working as an aide to Martin Luther King Jr., serving as a Democratic congressman from Georgia, and later becoming U.N. ambassador and mayor of Atlanta,” gushed Dwyer.

Later in the piece, with the Tea Party still left unspoken for, Dwyer lauded Young’s new book, “Walk in My Shoes,” which extols the virtues of a liberal vision of “social justice.”

“Interwoven with anecdotes about love and faith, politics and policy, Young mentors the 25-year-old JPMorgan investment banker [Kabir] Sehgal on the importance of making money–a lot of it–to create sustainable solutions for ‘environmental preservation, ending poverty, feeding the planet and healing the sick,’”raved Dwyer.

With three paragraphs devoted to tearing down the Tea Party movement and the rest spent uncritically boosting Young’s liberalism, Dwyer’s piece crosses the line from being a sympathetic profile piece to an outright advertisement for Young’s latest book.

--Alex Fitzsimmons is a News Analysis intern at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.