Hello, I’m Charlotte Bellis, and you’re watching Newsy.com.
We’re taking a look at the ways media are handling coverage of U.S. tax day tea party protests. Here’s ABC, FOX News, and MSNBC:
“Kill the tax man/ Outraged Americans take to the street, but is the outrage misguided?” (ABC News)
“It was about spending, was about earmarks, all the things Republicans don’t like about Obama.” -FOX News
“Let the teabagging begin.” -Keith Olbermann
FOX News criticizes a live CNN report:
“I think you get the general tenor of this, they’re anti-government anti-CNN since this is highly promoted by right wing conservative network FOX.” -CNN reporter
“She thought he was there because of taxes but it’s about the right to be there and Washington, DC has been going crazy.” (FOX and Friends)
MSNBC also squared off with FOX News over coverage of the tea parties…
“Watch actual propaganda in the making at 12:10 Pacific says dailykosttv ‘Cavuto: Any estimates on how many people are here? No, we’re trying to the get… Gotta be 5,000. Oh at least.’ Olbermann: Nine minutes later on the air, cue the corrupt fabrication of the news. ‘Cavuto: They were expecting at least five thousand here, it’s gotta be easily double if not triple that.’ Olbermann: That fraud ought to be in jail.” -Keith Olbermann
Bill O’Reilly accuses MSNBC of unfair coverage…
“I mean these gutter-snipes have been doing this for years. (/wipe) The people are as vicious as has ever been seen on American television ever, and that’s all they have. They make the shock jocks, they are the shock jocks. That’s where they took it from, and NBC is paying them.” -Bill O'Reilly
But just what were these tea parties protesting against?
“It looked like just ordinary people who’ve had it up to here with the government thinking they’ve got a blank check to spend a bunch of doe. They showed up.” (FOX News)
While CBS notes, “The big debate… has been over what they really represent: An organic movement genuinely built on anger, or a more cynical and partisan effort by the Republican party to score points against the Obama administration.” (CBS)
On MSNBC’s Hardball Mike Barnacle suggests government spending has been on the rise long before the Obama administration, and asks tea party protestors, “Why now?”
“It started last year… some Republicans lost their way. Previous administration started this bailout nonsense. But it’s been boiling up in people and they’re sick and tired of it. It just happens to have boiled up under a Democratic administration.” (MSNBC)
What do you think of the coverage of the tea party protests? Are these protests a big deal or not?
