Wednesday, October 27, 2010

More Evidence that the Tea Party is Coaching the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

I wrote a while ago about how St. Louis Post-Dispatch Political Editor Christopher Ave invited Dana Loesch to coach journalists in how they should cover the tea party. This strategy appears to be paying off quite well for the tea party, as they've gotten the Post-Dispatch to edit embarrassing tweets from Lt. Peter Kinder out of their stories. But even more importantly, the Post-Dispatch is flatly refusing to cover stories that seem to me to be obviously relevant political material. Here's a small sample of some of the questions reporter Jake Wagman refuses to ask about the tea party and the Right:

  • Wagman won't ask what tea party and American Majority employee John Burns' role was in James O'Keefe's plan to sexually humiliate a CNN reporter, despite the fact that Burns was among a small group of people included in the planning emails, as reported by CNN.
  • Wagman won't ask who is funding the tea party's office, billboards, and Get Out the Vote operation, even though the tea party could only raise $1,000 from local membership in previous campaigns.
  • And now Wagman, while writing an 800-word press release for the Ed Martin/Tea Party campaign, won't ask Ed Martin the simple question, "what did you know about allegations of sexual abuse in the church?"

  • The Post-Dispatch is going out of its way to pander to the tea party. But they are doing so at the expense of alienating liberal and moderates. You know, the people who actual read newspapers.

    1 comment:

    1. Were Jake Wagman's charges dropped? That could have bearing on how the Tea Party is "handled".

      ReplyDelete