Thursday, March 31, 2011

Post-Dispatch Covers 200 Person Tea Party in Washington D.C.

Three weeks after the St. Louis Post-Dispatch provided no coverage of a 4,300 person rally in support of unions in St. Louis and offered an incredibly lame excuse for doing so, they have now posted an AP article on their website about a puny tea party rally in Washington D.C.

According to reporters at the event, only about 200 people showed up. In D.C.! Think about that: if the American Society of Left-Handed Ninjas held a rally in D.C., they could probably get at least 400 people! Yet the Post-Dispatch gives coverage to this pathetic P.R. stunt while ignoring a 4,300+ person rally in their backyard.

Shameful.

Update: Also worth noting is the misleading framing in the AP article about the tea party, which claimed that their popularity has remained the same since the elections. Actually, if you look at the monthly CNN polls, you'll see that the tea party's unfavorables have increased dramatically since November, even as the 30% fringe supporters number stays the same (the same %, by the way, as the birthers and people who think the moon is made of swiss cheese).

Update #2: The Post-Dispatch Weatherbird suggests that AP articles automatically feed into the site:

It would be a little strange to me if there was no selection process whatsoever for which articles appear on their national news section, but perhaps this is accurate. However, this clearly would not be a good excuse for them deciding to run the story in the print edition tomorrow.

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