Wall Street protests

CBS's Chris Wragge spotlighted a millionaire's bid to raise taxes on the rich on Thursday's Early Show, all the while omitting that his guest is a big money donor to liberal candidates like Al Franken and to Moveon.org. Wragge didn't bring on any opponents of higher taxes, nor did he play sound bites from them. Instead, he played three clips from proponents, including former Clinton aide Robert Reich.

Wragge and co-anchor Erica Hill trumpeted the "so-called patriotic millionaires [who] are begging Congress to raise their taxes" as they teased the segment three different times before it began. Hill did mention once that "they also spoke with a critic who said if they want to pay more, then they should make a contribution on their own, instead of raising taxes on all millionaires."

During the height of the Tea Party protests, the liberal media sought to hype any hint that the movement may turn violent against Democrats in general and President Obama in particular.

For example, Hardball's Chris Matthews famously blew up in August 2009 at a libertarian protester who legally carried a gun to a presidential townhall meeting in New Hampshire, suggesting it was wildly inappropriate "given the violent history of this country with regard to presidents and assassinations."

So it should be interesting to see what attention, if any, the mainstream media pays to Occupy San Diego honoring suspected White House shooter and likely Occupy DC participant Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez (see video below the page break):

"[A]s Occupy Wall Street embarks on a day of action across New York City that's being echoed by protests around the U.S. and the world, Bloomberg may yet question whether he should have let Zuccotti be," Time magazine's Ishaan Tharoor noted in a November 17 "Global Spin" blog post at the magazine's website.

Tharoor has previously romanticized the OWS movement, and today's post, "The Whole World Watches Again: Occupy Wall Street Fights Back," was no deviation from that pattern, with Tharoor acting more as a press agent -- or at least an apologist -- for the Zuccotti Park squatters than as an objective journalist (emphases mine):

Updated [11:02 ET]: More analysis added.

As reports started coming out on Wednesday on the search for White House shooting suspect Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, one common detail was mentioned, including in The New York Times: "Late on Friday, the police searched the Occupy DC protest camp...after reports that the suspect might have spent time there." NBC, ABC, and CBS left that fact out of their evening and morning coverage of his arrest.

All three network evening news programs made the Wednesday afternoon arrest of Ortega-Hernandez their lead story. NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams proclaimed: "Shots fired at the White House, prompting an urgent manhunt for the gunman, now under arrest amid questions about his motive." ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer declared: "Caught. The man accused of tiring an AK-47 at the White House, apprehended." On CBS's Evening News, anchor Scott Pelley reported: "Bullets strike the White House. Bob Orr on the man in custody."

Five weeks ago, Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center's Culture & Media Institute thoroughly documented (at NewsBusters; at MRC) how "two separate news unions, including the newspaper guild, the recognized union for many print and online journalists, and the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) are fully behind the radical message of Occupy Wall Street."

Now that the Occupy encampments are largely being put out of their disease-infested, crime-plagued misery by big-city mayors finally recovering a tiny bit of their sanity, a visit to the home page of The Newspaper Guild, which, as Dan noted, is part of the CWA (Communications Workers of America) and represents workers at the Associated Press and many individual publications, indicates that they are fully behind what the Occupiers hope is the next stage of their disorderly incoherence. The graphic currently at the top of the guild's home page, which is the same as the one currently found in an entry at OWS's main site, follows the jump:

By noon on Wednesday, CNN had already hosted a Wall Street protester and a leftist "community organizer" to talk about the Occupy Wall Street movement. Anchor Suzanne Malveaux then interviewed Van Jones, former Obama-appointee and Marxist, and told him he'd make a "good spokesperson" for the Occupy movement.

Van Jones, was Obama's green jobs czar before he was booted for a petition he had signed in 2004 demanding investigations into links Bush may have had to the 9/11 attacks. Jones, along with CNN's other guests, supported Occupy Wall Street. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

CNN guest and "community organizer" Sally Kohn compared the Occupy Wall Street movement to the Boston Tea Party on Wednesday's American Morning. When asked about "fair criticisms" of the movement as one possessing criminal elements, Kohn responded that the Boston Tea Party was viewed as a criminal element in its day, but was vindicated by history.

"So, first, you know, when early Americans were throwing boxes of tea from private corporations into the Boston Harbor, they were initially labeled as criminal elements, too," sounded Kohn. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

New York Times Public Editor Arthur Brisbane devoted his Sunday Review column on the future of the paper's coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement (it ran before Mayor Mike Bloomberg ousted the OWSers from Zuccotti Park). Brisbane also quoted Executive Editor Jill Abramson sounding sympathetic to Occupy’s goals, promising to produce more stories on the group’s signature cause of income inequality.

Now that Democratic mayors have turned on the Occupy Wall Street crowd, several media outlets have adopted a more critical tone, highlighting crime and squalor at such protests. A front-page Washington Post story on Wednesday wondered, "Is this an occupation or an infestation?"

(Although the paper didn't get to the public defecation and rapes until A4.) On Tuesday's World News, reporter Dan Harris interrogated protesters, pointing out that Occupy Oakland has cost the cash-strapped city $2.4 million. He grilled the crowd, wondering, "These protests cost taxpayers a lot of money for police, sanitation. How is that good for the 99 percent?"

At the Associated Press this afternoon, White House Correspondent Ben Feller relayed the essence of a statement by Obama administration spokesman Jay Carney about how the President believes that, in Feller's words, "it's up to New York and other municipalities to decide how much force to use in dealing with Occupy Wall Street demonstrations." Feller failed to mention both the President's previous endorsement of the goals of the Occupy protesters, and his inexcusable silence as the encampments have devolved into disease-infested swamps of criminal and antisocial behavior. How convenient.

Most of Feller's brief report follows:

CNN's Poppy Harlow asked an Occupy Wall Street protester on Tuesday if the movement was "at that scale" of the civil rights movement, and if the cause was "as important" as civil rights.

In turn, the occupier answered that the Wall Street protests are "much grander" than the civil rights movement. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

On Tuesday afternoon's Newsroom, CNN ran a positive segment on Occupy D.C. at Freedom Plaza and touted the protest's "rules and regulations." In what could have passed for an advertisement for the protest, anchor Brooke Baldwin held up to the camera the protest's application for prospective occupiers, remarking "how about that?" over its stipulations.

Baldwin noted in the beginning that "you might not have heard too much about Occupy D.C. And as it turned out, that protest is a lot different than a number of others." CNN then interviewed a number of protesters innocently labeled either "organizer" or "protester." [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

Former New York Times freelance reporter Natasha Lennard, who contributed to the paper’s reporting on Occupy Wall Street, then participated in a left-wing panel discussion of OWS tactics with protest participants and supporters, broke the chains of "objectivity" for good in a rather refreshing article posted Tuesday morning at left-wing Salon Magazine: “Why I quit the mainstream media – Journalism must break the chains of objectivity and report truth -- and the Occupy movement led me to do just that.” (Lennard has previously contributed to Salon.) She agreed with the "right-wing firebrands" who said "I have no place in the mainstream media."

Blogger John at Verum Serum has unmasked yet another instance where initial claims by "leaders" at an Occupy site claiming non-involvement with crime fell apart after a short while. Even worse, after his post went up, a subsequent report on the same incident a few hours later scrubbed the truth to again make Occupiers appear not culpable .

After the jump, readers will see the initial and then revised stories about what happened at Occupy Orlando on Monday, each via Local TV station "News 13."

Multiple times on Tuesday, CNN touted a musician who quietly played a song about Occupy Wall Street at an APEC dinner attended by President Obama and other world leaders.

Hawaiian musician Makana performed in the background during Saturday's APEC dinner and wore a t-shirt that read "Occupy With Aloha." He sang softly and repeated the song over and over that was a tribute to Occupy Wall Street protesters. "We'll occupy the streets, we'll occupy the courts," Makana sang in a brief clip provided by CNN. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

According to Rick Hampson in what is apparently an analysis piece in Monday's USA Today, the Occupy movement has a violent "fringe," which constitutes just a "fraction" of those involved.

Well, he's right about it being a "fraction," except that said fraction is a lot larger than he apparently believes. The USAT writer also attempts to perpetuate the Occupy Oakland myth that its November 2 "non-violent 'general strike'" was absolutely peaceful until "some masked anarchists broke off from the main protest." Here is some of Hampson's harrumphing:

Treasured friend of the Media Research Center's and NewsBusters favorite Ann Coulter did an absolutely scintillating telephone interview with us on Thursday.

The primary topics of discussion were the media's coverage of the Herman Cain sexual harassment allegations as well as how they've been reporting Occupy Wall Street protests around the country (video follows with transcript):

Oh how your humble correspondent has yearned for his own Marshall McLuhan moment. You might remember that scene from the movie "Annie Hall" when some pompous blowhard on a theater line pontificated about the thoughts of the author of "the medium is the message." An irritated Woody Allen then pulled out McLuhan himself to harshly rebuke the guy.

Well, now I get that opportunity with comics  artist and writer Frank Miller severely criticizing the Occupy Wall Street protests. First let us look at Stephen Kelly of the UK Guardian speculating that Batman could become a hero for the OWS movement:

I went to the Associated Press last night to see what the self-described Essential Global News Network would have to say about the murder which took place in Oakland on Thursday afternoon "near" that city's increasingly disgusting and dangerous "Occupy" camp.

Here's what I found, as written by Terry Collins (the report has since been updated and its 7:07 a.m. today version is saved here, but the paragraph which follows was also present last night; bolds are mine throughout this post):

On Friday, both NBC's Today and CBS's The Early Show offered news briefs on two deadly shooting incidents at two separate Occupy Wall Street protests Thursday night, while ABC's Good Morning America failed to make any mention of the deaths.

On Today, news anchor Natalie Morales reported: "Occupy Wall Street protests turned deadly overnight in two cities. In Oakland, California, Police are investigating a gun fight that left one man dead....And in Burlington, Vermont, a 35-year-old war veteran apparently shot himself..." On The Early Show, news anchor Terrell Brown noted: "In Oakland, California last night, a man was shot and killed just outside the anti-Wall Street demonstrations....A Wall Street protester committed suicide in Burlington, Vermont yesterday."

"To passerby" the Occupy D.C. protest at McPherson Square "is a jumble of tents and blue tarps," but to the Washington Post's Philip Kennicott, the Occupiers "have 'activated' the urban core," with "a living exercise in do-it-yourself (or DIY) urbanism, a trendy movement that strives to engage ordinary people in a hands-on approach to shaping and claiming public space."

And that's just the tip of the iceberg as Kennicott and his comrades commandeered 3.5 pages of the Style section to puff up the left-wing squatters' camp.

"A Square Gets Hip: In Gen. McPherson's park, the Occupy D.C. encampment improvises a vibrant urbanism," reads the headline on the front page of today's Style section. In a cutesy tip-of-the-hat to the Occupiers, the Style section's header is emblazoned with a red-lettered "OCCUPIED" tag to render today's section as "Occupied Style."

Elaine Quijano continued CBS's consistently glowing coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement on Wednesday's Early Show by spotlighting how two-thirds of Crosby, Stills, and Nash gave a concert for the protesters in New York City. Quijano played 12 clips from the concert and from the demonstrators, without once mentioning the growing examples of violence involving the left-leaning movement [audio clips available here; video below the jump].

Anchor Chris Wragge introduced the correspondent's report by noting only in passing how "anti-Wall Street protesters around the country are under growing pressure to go home...critics in several cities are saying they're just becoming a public nuisance." Co-anchor Erica Hill added that "here in New York City, demonstrators say they are in it, though, for the long haul- yes, even with winter coming. Correspondent Elaine Quijano takes a look at what the future holds for the protests."

New York Times labor beat reporter Steven Greenhouse took to the front of Wednesday’s Business Day to tout increased Big Labor involvement in the leftist Occupy Wall Street camp-out, “Standing Arm in Arm – Occupy Movement Inspires Unions to Embrace Bold Tactics.” Greenhouse employed his standard pro-labor promotional tone:

The New York Times is belatedly starting to commit actual journalism on what’s actually happening at the Occupy Wall Street camp-out in Zuccotti Park. Cara Buckley and Matt Flegenheimer reported for Wednesday's Metro section: “At Scene of Wall St. Protest, Rising Concerns About Crime,” mostly abandons the chirpy promotionalism that has infected the paper’s coverage of OWS, catching up to what local rival the New York Post has been doing every day.

A New York Times editorial Saturday, “Occupying the National Debate,” continued the paper’s promotion of the left-wing sit-in now stretching into its second month. Apparently the movement, such as it is, is spreading to Europe (as if the European left need inspiration to take to the streets), while dismissing protester violence in Oakland as not representative of the entire movement (a benefit of the doubt the Times never extended to the Tea Party).

Talking to liberal author Michael Lewis on Monday's Rock Center on NBC about the Greek financial crisis, anchor Brian Williams wondered: "...what's the one thing you want to shout from the mountaintops, a message that is in all of your books that people aren't hearing, aren't paying attention to?"

Lewis called for an end to big banks: "...we still have at the center of our life these massive banks that are too big to fail. And they should've been broken up three years ago....why we are sitting here today...with these institutions that basically have us at their mercy...is beyond me." He then concluded: "So what I would shout from the rooftops is, get out into the streets with the Occupy Wall Street movement and protest."