Yesterday, 4,300+ people rallied in Kiener Plaza against corporate greed and the recent attacks against working people by the right wing. We know that when the tea party attracted crowds of 1/2 or even 1/10th that size, they would reliably get the equivalent of front page coverage from the local media. However, for this rally for the basic rights of working Americans, many of the news outlets barely made a peep.
Before getting into that, however, I want to focus on some good coverage. Jo Mannies at the Beacon did a nice job covering the union rally and the story was featured on the Beacon's front page. KSDK had a report about it during their 5 and 10 O'clock broadcasts. And KMOX and the St. Louis Business Journal both covered this important story. Charles Jaco was at the event so I'm guessing that he will talk about it for one of his special reports, but Fox 2 News did not provide regular coverage.
But the two outlets I really want to focus my ire on are KMOV and the Post-Dispatch. As we have seen, KMOV has had a string of pathetic right-wing coverage in recent weeks, which really is nothing new for them. In the past, they breathlessly reported on rallies where the tea party only had 700 people present. If the tea party had gotten 4,000 people to this rally, you know they would have been all over it. Instead, they completely ignored a rally of 4,300 union members on an issue that's related to a national story. And they ignored it at a time where a battle for the very soul of America is taking place, with the right wing trying to destroy the last group capable of pushing back against corporate power grabs.
And the Post-Dispatch ignoring this story? Ahhh, where do I start? Perhaps Post-Dispatch political director Christopher Ave needs to meet with some union members just like he invited Dana Loesch to coach him on how to cover the tea party. Of course, we don't need to ask how the Post-Dispatch owners feel about workers: they quite clearly do not care at all about them, to the point where they're willing to break written agreements and drop health care coverage for people with cancer in order to save a few pennies.
Apparently, the corporate media is not neutral in this dispute over whether corporations should be able to run completely rampant over everyone else. They have lost their last vestiges of objectivity.
Fortunately, we have awesome bloggers like Hotflash at Show Me Progress who can provide real coverage.
100 Covert Operations by the US, Per Jeffrey Sachs
10 hours ago
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When the Wisconsin strikes started in mid February, activist Marilyn Morton called the Post to complain that they had NO coverage about it and was told that the Post focuses on local news. I wrote about that incident (http://blog.showmeprogress.com/diary/5691/wisconsin-strikes-who-knew). It's pitiful enough that the paper founded by Joseph Pulitzer is so inadequate in its coverage of national and world news, but at least if they plan to focus on local news, then by god let them DO it. A rally 4300 strong is news.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is they'll drop the ball again today with the union rallies. The Post-Dispatch has become a tabloid in the line of the New York Post. Stltoday is nothing but fluff and murders. Very little meaningful content to be found.
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