Last week we profiled a large swath of the media's coverage of the TEA Parties. Well, for those who wondered: how did Time and Newsweek cover the tea parties? The answer is: Barely. Time's April 27 issue carried less than 100 words up front in the Briefing section. There was a photo of a protester -- in Thailand.
Newsweek's April 27 issue carried this very strange entry in the "Conventional Wisdom Watch" box. Tea parties drew a down arrow, with this text: "Protest high taxes after largest tax cut ever [??] -- and miss 'tea bag' double entendre."
Howard Fineman's column on page 31 was largely devoted to the tea parties, although he was not impressed. Under a small photo of a rally, the caption was "STRANGE BREW: Tea parties won't revive the national party."
Fineman said that as well: "Tea parties, of course, will not revive the national party. So what will? There is no one-stop Republican inner circle with all the answers."
Fineman took in a protest in Louisville, Kentucky (where he used to work as a newspaper reporter) and found "The event I saw was a genuinely grassroots one, spawned on Facebook by a 23-year-old restaurant worker who managed to draw 1,000 folks on a blustery day."
But he also wrote, "The speeches echoed the same apocalyptic themes the GOP will sound in the capital when Congress returns this week: that Obama and the Democrats are on a spending spree that will bankrupt the nation and rob us of all that's left of our freedom."
And Democrats didn't sound "apocalyptic themes" about life under President Bush? Or doesn't it sound exaggerated when you're a liberal reporter for Newsweek?
