Study: Media Significantly Exaggerate Racism at Tea Party Rallies
Not that we needed a study to tell us this, but according to one conducted by a UCLA grad student, media coverage of Tea Party rallies has dramatically overrepresented the presence of racist or other offensive signs there.
According to the Washington Post, which laudably reported on the study today, UCLA grad student Emily Ekins found that "media coverage of tea party rallies over the past year have focused so heavily on the more controversial signs that it has contributed to the perception that such content dominates the tea party movement more than it actually does."
Ekins, who, it should be noted, is a former intern at the libertarian Cato Institute, actually attended the September 12 rally (imagine that) and kept a tally of the types of signs she saw there:
Ekins photographed about 250 signs, and more than half of those she saw reflected a "limited government ethos," she found - touching on such topics as the role of government, liberty, taxes, spending, deficit and concern about socialism. Examples ranged from the simple message "$top the $pending" scrawled in black-marker block letters to more elaborate drawings of bar charts, stop signs and one poster with the slogan "Socialism is Legal Theft" and a stick-figure socialist pointing a gun at the head of a taxpayer.
There were uglier messages, too - including "Obama Bin Lyin' - Impeach Now" and "Somewhere in Kenya a Village is Missing its Idiot." But Ekins's analysis showed that only about a quarter of all signs reflected direct anger with Obama. Only 5 percent of the total mentioned the president's race or religion, and slightly more than 1 percent questioned his American citizenship.
Ekins's conclusion is not that the racially charged messages are unimportant but that media coverage of tea party rallies over the past year have focused so heavily on the more controversial signs that it has contributed to the perception that such content dominates the tea party movement more than it actually does.
"Really this is an issue of salience," Ekins said. "Just because a couple of percentage points of signs have those messages doesn't mean the other people don't share those views, but it doesn't mean they do, either. But when 25 percent of the coverage is devoted to those signs, it suggests that this is the issue that 25 percent of people think is so important that they're going to put it on a sign, when it's actually only a couple of people."
- Lachlan Markay's blog
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Comments
Kiss that degree goodbye...
Submitted by crimsonspark on Thu, 10/14/2010 - 4:39pm.
How much do you want to bet that her professor will flunk her for not toeing the line and parroting liberal talking points.
"Only 5 percent of the total
Submitted by ckc1227 on Thu, 10/14/2010 - 5:08pm.
"Only 5 percent of the total mentioned the president's race or religion, and slightly more than 1 percent questioned his American citizenship."
Ok, but what percentage were actually racist? Mentioning race and religion, and questioning his citizenship doesn't necessarily equal racism. It may be stupid(or not), but that doesn't make it racist.
This had to be studied?
Submitted by LibertyAtStake on Thu, 10/14/2010 - 8:47pm.
All I did was talk to the people.
http://libertyatstake.blogspot.com/
"Because the Only Good Progressive is a Failed Progressive"
He's failing for sure.
Submitted by hbnolikeee on Fri, 10/15/2010 - 12:06am.
Listen, where you are, you cannot deal in truth. You can only either fabricate or illustrate the PARTY policies and lie about your opposition or there WILL be consequences, yah?
Racism, schmasim
Submitted by gfrrman on Fri, 10/15/2010 - 2:18am.
The definition is so bastardized that it has no meaning. "You know when you are winning an argument with a liberal when they start calling you names and THEN they call you a racist". Selah!!
"Socialists eventually run out of other peoples' money"..Margaret Thatcher
Liberals refuse to believe it
Submitted by MadRat on Fri, 10/15/2010 - 3:23am.
I saw this article on Fark.com (it was given the "Cool" tag). Already guessing the results I check the comments http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl As I'm sure you can also guess, the Conservative members of Fark felt vindicated and the Leftist members were completely unwilling to believe it.
Eh
Submitted by Mestilf on Fri, 10/15/2010 - 3:31am.
This seems like the most obvious thing in the world to me. The media sensationalizes everything, of course they're going to blow whatever they can out of proportion. Does this mean that none of that stuff happened though? Nope. Just means the media covered it more than anything else. There are crazy people in EVERY major political group, so in that sense, I don't blame the Tea party for the racists who show up at their rallies. At the same time though, I'm not going to pretend that makes the Tea Party any more of a legitimate political organization. When you have people like the Koch Bros. bankrolling rallies it's hard to take them seriously as "grassroots". Racist? No. Grassroots? No. Reactionary and ill informed? Probably. A legitimate voting faction? Yeah.
It is the---
Submitted by matthewdean on Fri, 10/15/2010 - 5:20am.
TEA Party, you Progressive Putz.
Your bio says you "try harder".
Better kick it up a notch, you are lagging.
MD
Who cares?
Submitted by Mestilf on Fri, 10/15/2010 - 6:34am.
Really? You had to try that hard to find something to be pissy about? Guess what MD. I don't care. Neither does the writer for the main article we're discussing, hell they didn't even bother capitalizing the "t" a few times. Go whine to someone else.
And by the way, hurr hurr, my profile says I "try hard", get it right! Omg!
/sarcasm
Aw gee, Misfit---
Submitted by matthewdean on Sat, 10/16/2010 - 12:17am.
I can't double check that bio of yours--
Access denied.
Haw.
Note: no sarcasm intended.
MD
Get ready
Submitted by okiehawk44 on Fri, 10/15/2010 - 7:00am.
The media will call this student a racist -- just wait for it.
BTW--being called African because you're ancestors were from Africa doesn't necessarily mean you are black -- that's racist in and of itself. So whites from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) or from Kenya or South Africa have to be black to be real? Are they real Africans if they are only half black? What about the Arabs in Libya? See how stupid this whole thing is? If you are a black French citizen then you are a Frenchman but if you are a white Kenyan citizen you are a European? Something wrong here and racist.
Nobody is bankrolling the TEA Party rallies
Submitted by joinamerica on Fri, 10/15/2010 - 9:31am.
If there is one thing you know about the TEA Party, it is that it is a true grass roots organization. George Soros did fund and start moveon.org to help his great friends, the Clintons during their Lewinsky "crisis". The Koch brothers might be helping conservatives and Republicans around the country, but the TEA Party movement belongs to its members, period.
Leftists have a tough time understanding this, because to them, everything is about organizing, and identity politics, race, unions, pro-abortionists, radical environmentalists. Groups of people who they pander to and who they use to divide America up into voting blocks that they can rely upon, and to whom they reliably pay huge payoffs to, using our tax dollars of course, once elected.
You know all of those bogus ads saturating our airwaves right this minute? 88 MILLION dollars brought to you by the unions who wrote the check to help the Democrats this elections season. They gave 300 MILLION in 2008, and it is estimated, Soros funneled 200 MILLION, much of it illegal, into getting Obama elected in 2008.
But tough for them, because they cannot match the many millions of Americans who have one thing in common, a love for freedom, democracy, capitalism and the American way. You know, the system that has kept us safe for 200 years and built the finest country in the history of civilzation.
No ones bankroll the tea party?
Submitted by Mestilf on Fri, 10/15/2010 - 1:25pm.
I could find more examples but I'll go to the easiest one first.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?curren...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEedCMnYi0s
Koch Bro's have been bankrolling Tea party events for awhile now, they even admit to it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/13/tea-party-billionaire-koch-b...
(That article includes a video of David Koch talking about how much AFP's grown since he started it. )
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