Politico's Calderone Has a Woefully Bad Memory When It Comes to TEA Parties and 'MSM' Bias
By Seton Motley | February 08, 2010 | 09:51
UPDATE II: Politico Executive Editor and Co-Founder Jim VandeHei on Monday appeared on Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor to defend the indefensible (video at right; audio here).
UPDATE (below the fold): Calderone responds to us in electronic print.
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The Politico's Michael Calderone on Sunday wrote the following headline and first paragraph. With what would appear to have been a straight face.
Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon bashed the media's coverage of the tea party movement with unsubstantiated claims of bias during a panel on "Fox News Sunday."
"Unsubstantiated claims" of media bias against the TEA Party movement? Really? Seriously?
It may be time for Calderone to move off the media beat. He clearly hasn't been paying attention to major details of a major story for nearly a year.
I would offer he could be moved to Obituaries, but that too would entail coverage of the "MSM."
How has Calderone missed completely the now nearly ubiquitous presence of the sexually-explicit, derogatory term used by members of the "MSM" to describe the participants in said Movement? The in-person attacks on Party participants by the likes of CNN's Susan Roesgen (now no longer with the firm)? The over-arching denigrating words and deeds by people throughout the "MSM?"
There is so much "MSM" anti-TEA Party venom to substantiate Sammon's assertion, one hardly knows where to begin. So we will simply list, with links and dates, documentation aplenty below.
(Cursory glance result: 52 NB stories.)
We hope Calderone avails himself hereof, and repents. In writing. Today.
CNN's Anderson Cooper: 'It's Hard to Talk When You're Tea-Bagging'
04/15/2009CNN's Crowley: NY 23's Hoffman the Choice of 'Tea Bag Partyers'?
11/02/2009Newsweek's Gross Confronted on 'Teabagging' Schtick
04/15/2009PBS Talks of GOP Takeovers -- and Their Eventual Ruin by 'Tea Baggers'
01/28/2010Taxpayer-Funded Immaturity: NPR Teaches Readers 'To Speak Tea Bag'
01/04/2010Shuster's 'Teabagging' Double Entendres: 'You're Going to Need a Dick Armey'
04/14/2009Rachel Maddow Shows Video of Man Being Teabagged in Gay Bar
12/05/2009MSNBC’s David Shuster Tweets His Attacks on ‘Teabaggers’ and Their ‘Teabag Leader’
01/21/2010MSNBC: The Place for Low-Brow 'Teabag' Humor
04/14/2009Olbermann: Scott Brown's A 'Homophobic, Racist, Teabagging Supporter of Violence Against Women'
01/18/2010Olbermann Renews 'Teabagging' Attack on Scott Brown, Cuts His Victory Speech
01/20/2010Influential NY Times Editor Calls Anti-Tax Protesters 'Tea-Baggers'
10/02/2009NJ.Com Reporter Uses Offensively Childish Term 'Teabagger' 7 Times in Story
11/01/2009Hartford Courant Reporter Uses Pejorative 'Tea-Bagger' Term in Story
09/13/2009MSNBC: Talk Radio and Tea Party Protests ‘Push Boundaries of Decency’
07/17/2009Chicago Trib's Page Claims 'Teabagger' Label 'Asked For'; Calls Fox News Arm of GOP
12/28/2009Matthews: Every 'Teabagger' is White, 'What's That About?'
01/05/2010Maddow: Tea Party Conventioneers Are Racists In White Hoods
02/06/2010Ad for Chris Matthews Special Derides Tea Party Protesters Who Are ‘Threatened’ by Black President
01/15/2010Garofalo: Led by Limbaugh, 'Tea-Baggers' a 'White Power Movement' Motivated by 'Racism'
10/03/2009Garofalo: Tea Party Goers Are Racists Who Hate Black President
04/16/2009Garofalo Attacks Tea Partiers Again: 'Racist Backward Motherf**kers'
08/01/2009Ed Schultz: Tea Partiers Are 'Ignorant' 'Hateful' 'Wingnuts'
01/06/2010NPR's Totenberg Dismisses Tea Parties as 'Cockamamie'
04/17/2009
Matthews Admits to 'Power' of Fox News in Rise of 'Crazy' Tea Partiers
12/16/2009
CNN Correspondent Claims Tea Parties 'Anti-Government,' 'Anti-CNN'
04/15/2009
Tea Parties? What Tea Parties? Predictably, Established Media Coverage of Tea Party Protests Is Sparse
03/08/2009
No 'Tea Party' in NY Times, But Room for Leftist 'Bus Tour' of AIG Homes
03/23/2009
NY Times Finally Marks Anti-Spending Tea Party...With Merciless Mockery
04/07/2009
Gay-Friendly Protest Coverage of NY Times in Sharp Contrast to Sour 9-12 Rally Treatment
10/12/2009
WaPo Skipped Tea Party Protests, But Gives Big Play to...Opponents of Male Circumcision?
04/01/2009
Washington Post Home Page Buries Massive 9-12 Rally in Teeny-Weeny Type
09/13/2009
Chicago Tribune Ignores Thousands at Tea Party Express Protest
09/08/2009
NBC's Chuck Todd Says Tea Parties Haven't 'Caught On'
04/15/2009
ABC, CBS and NBC Try to Discredit 'Tea Party' Protests
04/16/2009
CNN Questions 'Rationality' of Tea Parties, Hints They're 'Out of Step'
04/16/2009
NY Times Says Tea Parties 'More About Group Therapy' and Anger Than Solutions
04/16/2009
CNN’s Begala: Tea Party Goers ‘Wimpy, Whiny, Weasels Who Don’t Love Their Country’
04/20/2009
Seattle P-I Greets Visitors with Criticism of Tea Parties
04/16/2009
Summary of the April 15 TEA Parties Media Coverage
04/22/2009
NBC, CNN and MSNBC All Assign Communist LaRouche's Obama-Hitler Poster to Conservatives, Limbaugh
08/12/2009
CBS Joins NBC, CNN & MSNBC in Mis-Ascribing Leftist LaRouche's Poster to Conservatives
08/13/2009
CNN Zeroes-In on 'Dark Undercurrent' of Tea Parties
09/14/2009
NYT's Mark Leibovich Mines Florida Tea Party for Paranoia, Racism Anecdotes
01/07/2010
Newsweek’s Meacham Scoffs ‘Tea Party Would Disagree if You Served Coffee,’ Insists Obama ‘Centrist’
01/26/2010CNN Covers July 4 Tea Parties, But Anchor Hopes 'They'll Clear Out of the Way' for Fireworks
07/06/2009Predictable: MSNBC’s Shuster, Newsweek’s Gross Belittle and Misconstrue Tea Party Efforts
04/11/2009Time Disparages Tea Party as Impotent; Smears Palin's ‘Anti-Intellectual Drivel' as ‘Anti-American'
02/07/2010DMN's Slater Lumps Tea Party Protesters With Holocaust Museum, Tiller Shootings
06/10/2009Stephen Moore Challenges Matthews to Attend Tea Party, Chris Retorts: 'Stay In Your Box!'
04/13/2009
Mister Calderone, grab your pen and commence to correcting.
UPDATE: According to NBer Rush Fan, Calderone published the following addendum to his original article:
UPDATE 2: "NewsBusters isn't happy.
Seton Motley writes that I should be cast off the media beat because I don't agree that the MSM, as a whole, "hates" the tea party movement, and said that Sammon made "unsubstantiated" claims of bias. Motley then provides a laundry list of examples to support his case.
While I agree that Olbermann, Garofalo and partisan commentators on his list have been over-the-top here, I'm more interested in reporting of the tea party movement. There are some links to reported stories, too.
But does the coverage, whether from CNN or Politico or the New York Times at this weekend's convention, show such hatred? Was it biased? Was the New Yorker's 7,000-plus-word piece on the movement a hateful rant?
I have no problem with Motley, or Media Matters, or whoever, criticizing MSM coverage. I just don't agree with Sammon that the media "hates" tea party movement."
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