Larry Conners Claims KMOV is Keeping the White Man Down

So first Larry Conners claimed that President Obama was "jetting around" too much and "going on all these vacations."  Now Conners says in a complaint that he, Larry Conners, was discriminated against for being a white male:

Since his firing, his attorneys have filed a formal discrimination complaint with the Missouri Human Rights Commission alleging that his bosses terminated him in retaliation for a dispute he had with the station in 2010 regarding his salary. In that legal battle, Conners writes in the complaint, he had alleged that KMOV was unfairly paying him less than his co-prime anchor, Vickie Newton, "an African-American female; I claimed that I received less compensation than Newtown because of my race and gender."

Hmmm.

Update: Shockingly, a judge did not agree with Conners' claim that he was being discriminated against for being a middle-aged white guy (see update of the post):

"The arbitration process was confidential and private and we honored that," Pimentel says. "But in light of Mr. Conners' election not to, we believe it's appropriate to point out that after a full two days of arbitration, the arbiter found no merit whatsoever to Larry's claims and ruled in favor of KMOV on all counts."

Double hmmm.

Update #2: For clarity, I should note that Conners' current complaint is that KMOV discriminated against him because of age and "retaliation."  But in his complaint, he noted that he previously had formally complained about race and gender discrimination at KMOV (basically he thought he should get paid more), while conveniently forgetting to mention that the arbiter found his claim meritless. As in: without any merit.

Important Facts About the Larry Conners Fiasco (Mostly) Ignored By the Media

So, if you recall, back in September Larry Conners did a silly interview for KMOV where he asked President Obama if he takes too many vacation days. The interview was ridiculous because (1) it showed that Conners was completely out of touch with issues that actually matter and (2) Conners conveniently left out the fact that Obama had taken about 1/3 as many vacation days as Bush and 1/2 as many as Reagan at similar points in their presidencies.

More recently, Conners was fired after using his KMOV Facebook page to absurdly suggest, without a shred of evidence, that he was targeted by the IRS for his "tough interview" with Obama.  In his original post, Conners conveniently left out the fact that his tax issues with the IRS predated the interview, and later claimed he meant to say that the IRS cancelled his repayment plan after the interview.  He never updated his Facebook or Twitter accounts with the truth, though he did record a statement for KMOV.

Unfortunately, media reports during the Larry Conners Sympathy Tour have been leaving out a couple key facts that are telling about the amount of "integrity" of his actions.  First, Conners did not only use his KMOV facebook account to "ask questions" about the interview. He also used his KMOV "News 4" Twitter account to push the story to right-wing bloggers.  Here's how he described himself on Twitter before deleting his old account:

And here's a screenshot of him tweeting the story to right-wing bloggers (at the bottom of the tweet:):

You might recall the Daily Caller from their amazing display of "journalistic integrity" while reporting a completely invented story about a Democratic Senator visiting underage prostitutes in Haiti.  Instapundit is right-wing blogger Glenn Reynolds, and Red Alert is a blog for "young conservatives." (Conners also tweeted the story to Breitbart.com and to one of their former employees. Yes, I have screen shots)

This completely undermines Conner's claim that he was innocently "asking questions."  He did not tweet the story to neutral or liberal outlets.  He was clearly trolling for publicity from far right wing blogs, and was happy to throw them red meat he knew would be used to claim that the President was targeting him.  This is not responsible journalism.

Now, to be fair to Conners, he has targeted his tweets at right wing blogs before, probably because he doesn't really put that much effort into pretending to be unbiased.  But given that he's done it before, and KMOV knows that he's done it before, he might very well be right that KMOV encourages him to engage in this type of trolling.  I don't really care to defend KMOV and wouldn't be surprised at all if they told him in the past to try to target right-wing blogs; however, I do think it's important not to pretend that Conners was engaging in responsible journalism. He was pushing a story he knew would be used to attack President Obama (while, by the way, further eroding people's trust in the government).

Second, and even more importantly, Conners could not even answer a question from Charles Jaco about what reason the IRS gave for canceling the payment plan.  You can watch the interview here (the relevant bit starts at 2:12):


Transcript of the relevant portion:

Jaco: Did they tell you why they cancelled the monthly plan?
Conners: I was paying everything on time and continued to do so...
Jaco: And they didn't tell you anything...?
Conners: I leave that to my tax attorney. I don't know what any of the background is, other than the fact that it was pulled from us....Charles, since 1980 I haven't even done my taxes. I leave that to folks who are a lot smarter than me.

In other words, Conners can't even answer when asked what reason the IRS gave for canceling his plan, because he hasn't done his taxes in 30 years! Conners was willing to suggest that the IRS was "hammering" him for political reasons without even being engaged enough to know what the IRS's stated reason was! This is the height of journalistic irresponsibility.  It's the equivalent of a journalist saying on air, "I got a parking ticket the other day.  I didn't actually look at it to see what it was for, but I'm positive it's retaliation from the Mayor!"

Finally, also in the Jaco interview, Conners says that KMOV "supposedly" sent him social media guidelines but he doesn't remember looking at them.  Hmmm, I wonder whose responsibility that is?

Obviously, journalists have a reason to be sympathetic to one of their own and to protect themselves from bosses who probably don't know much about journalism, even if "their own" in this case is a guy like Larry Conners who was perfectly willing to cross picket lines while fellow news employees were striking (especially ironic now that Conners is now citing collective bargaining).  However, given that this story has important implications for what it means to do quality journalism, they need to take care to report all of the relevant facts, even those that clearly undermine his claims. Conners engaged in epically irresponsible "journalism," and whether or not he deserved to be fired, no one should pretend for a second that he was acting with journalistic integrity.

KMOV's Relentless Smear Campaign Against the 99% Movement

KMOV already has a horrible track record of ideological axe-grinding on behalf of the 1%. They've ignored 4,300 person rallies against corporate greed while hyping 700 person tea party rallies as evidence of a "populist uprising." They've run numerous hit pieces on the recipients of food stamps, while ignoring the actual causes of our country's financial troubles. And they regularly take cheap shots at local universities with lazy and petty "reports" that sound like they came straight from the mouth of Rush Limbaugh. In short, it's basically impossible at this point to regard KMOV as a trustworthy source of information, since it's clear that prefer to push their own confused beliefs on viewers while posing as "objective journalists."

With this in mind, it really should be no surprise that KMOV would openly display their bias against the members of the 99% movement who protest the status quo that KMOV desperately strives to protect. Nevertheless, the consistency of their skewed reporting on this issue has been a sight to behold. Some recent examples:

As already reported on this blog, KMOV reporter Craig Cheatham decided to use his coverage of the arrests last Friday as an opportunity to make "smelly hippy" jokes.

In the courtroom on Tuesday, KMOV reporter Mark Synder's story was dripping with sarcasm and derision:

Both Mills and the next occupy witness, Chrissie Brooks made it clear occupying Keiner 24 hours a day IS their political expression. If they can't do that, their free speech is being violated.

This brought approval from a dozen or so occupiers in the gallery. I know this because some held their hands up wiggling their fingers. That's the sign for, "we agree, we have consensus." I learned that on the Colbert Report.

Brooks provided another memorable moment when the attorney for the city asked her about occupiers trying to get a permit from the city to be in Keiner 24 hours a day indefinitely. She couldn't get one.

The attorney for the city asked her, "Were you told your political message was the reason you were denied a permit?"

Brooks answered, "No," then added, "but it felt like it."

And reporter Maggie Crane said that if you were stuck in traffic on Thursday on the MLK bridge, you should "blame" Occupy STL:
But what really took the cake was Marc Cox's tea party hit job on Occupy St. Louis yesterday, perfectly symbolic of the disrespect KMOV regularly shows for people who are outside of the establishment they lazily cater to.

KMOV has updated their story at bit since the original hack job, but I took a screen shot of the original story:

The real story is that a homeless man who was not a regular member of the Occupy encampment followed a woman into a tent and groped her breast. The police were called right away and the man was arrested. So it seems to me like (1) this story offers zero support for the tea party narrative that the actual occupiers are violent criminals and (2) offers very little support for the idea that the encampments are particularly dangerous places.

But this is not the impression you would get from watching KMOX's original coverage. Unlike KSDK, they did not report that the assaulter was a homeless man who was not part of the movement. Now, it's worth noting, there are several homeless people who are active and contributing members of the encampment, so just because someone is homeless does not mean that they're not part of the group. But the key distinction here is that the guy was not an active participant in the group, but rather was someone who just came by for the resources that the occupiers provide.

Second, in a complete violation of the rules of basic journalism, the reporter Mark Cox did not even bother to get a quote from a member of Occupy St. Louis. He just posted his smear piece and only later wrote a new story that included quotes from the occupiers, which as it happened provided the important context that the assaulter was not a part of the actual movement.

And finally, KMOV included a video of tea partier Gary Wiegart looking like Nosferatu, claiming that this incident proved that the darn hippies should have been immediately kicked out of Kiener Plaza.

"I vant to suck your blood. Also: white people are oppressed!"

KMOV in the original story referred to Wiegart only as a police officer, and only later noted that he's actually a registered lobbyist for the St. Louis Tea Party. In fact, Wiegert has a long history of extremism and conspiracy theories; he was the guy who invented the race-baiting conspiracy theory that Republican House Speaker Steve Tilley was in league with the New Black Panther Party because Tilley supported local control.

Just imagine if this were a story about a different institution. If an alleged sexual assault had taken place at a Bank of America, and a liberal activist made a video claiming that this proved that Bank of America creates an environment that encourages sexual assault, can you envision KMOV, under any circumstances, pushing this story without even asking Bank of America for a comment or doing basic research into the person making the claim? Of course not. They would never do it; they reserve their scorn and derision for people they think can't fight back.

What's worse, after KMOV wrote up this pathetic excuse for journalism, they then, from their main news Twitter feed, begged right-wing activist Dana Loesch to promote it for them:
Reporter Mark Cox then appeared on Loesch's radio show, and pretty clearly indicated that he didn't believe the Occupiers:


When I criticized KMOV on Twitter, they couldn't defend the fact that they didn't get quotes from Occupy St. Louis, nor that they were directly lobbying a right-wing activist to push their hatchet piece. But they did hilariously claim that their reporter had "uncovered" the story (actually, all he did was write down the tea party spin) and informed me that the Occupy St. Louis folks were welcome to try to track down the reporter if they wanted to be represented in his hit job on them.


So, in addition to an already horrible track record, we have three KMOTea reporters who made snide, condescending comments about Occupy St. Louis, and now an absolutely pathetically lazy smear piece by Marc Cox. This is not a case a "few bad apples" or careless mistakes; it pretty clearly represents a culture of bias and ideological axe-grinding at KMOTea. Why would anyone trust them as a news source?

St. Louis Journalists Take Cheap Shots at Occupy STL

Just another day for the "liberal" media.

Craig Cheatham, reporter at KMOV:


And David Sheets, an editor at the Post-Dispatch:



To be fair, Sheets is a sports editor, so a bias (if there really is one) wouldn't exactly signal the ruin of the republic. Nevertheless, it's worth noting.

h/t to @Taunia_Adams, @jeffreed and @Trianglman for catching the Sheets tweets.

KMOX's Sloppy Hit Piece on OccupySTL

As I've already mentioned, the right-wing fantasy that OccupySTL is trying to "disrupt" the World Series is false, and quite obviously false to anyone who bothers to actually read the comment thread the tea party selectively edited. Sadly, however, Rush Limbaugh's host station KMOX couldn't resist pushing this lame smear.

Just like the most unhinged bloggers on the right, KMOX failed to provide any context to the piece by pointing out that the actual OccupySTL representatives were openly discouraging the idea of any disruption.

And they managed to write the entire story without even so much as asking anyone at OccupySTL what their plans were.

Horrible "journalism."

In fact, as I'm writing this, the devious plans of OccupySTL have been revealed: they're hosting a, gasp, VIEWING PARTY for the World Series!!!

Why We Need to Build Our Own Media, Part 3,362,489

The mainstream media has been thoroughly embarrassing themselves and tipping their hand with their coverage of the massive people's movement to stop right-wing extremists' attempts to cripple working families. There were numerous examples of this fact in the past week. First, the Sunday talk show circuit was stacked in favor of the Republican perspective on the fight going on in Wisconsin. Second, the mainstream networks gave very little coverage to 100,000 people rallying in Madison, Wisconsin yesterday in the snow! Compare that to the basically round-the-clock coverage of tea party rallies with less people.

And here in Missouri, we have an AP story about competing rallies that at least correctly points out that there were more people present in support of unions than those opposed. They put the numbers at 300 union supporters and 200 people who hate workers (my words, obviously, not the APs). However, the AP story incorrectly claimed that the pro-union rally was organized by unions. The rally was actually organized by MoveOn.org while the big unions like the AFL-CIO, SEIU, and others held events in St. Louis and Kansas City. It's mind-boggling to me that the AP would get this wrong, since it indicates that they didn't even speak with the MoveOn organizer or with the labor unions. How can they be fairly reporting on these issues if they're not even speaking to the pro-labor organizers, to the point where they don't even know who organized the rallies?

Do I think the mainstream media has a right-wing bias? Not necessarily. They might have a right-wing bias, or they might have a "insider conventional wisdom" bias that is completely disconnected with reality. But either way, it's absolutely not acceptable and does anything but lead to an informed public. Progressives need to build our own vehicles to get the facts out, because the mainstream media is failing at the job.

By the way, that's exactly why a group of bloggers formed ForwardSTL, an aggregator designed to highlight progressive thought in the St. Louis region.

Update: Michael Bersin at Show Me Progress posted some photos of the rally. They show that the AP also badly overestimated the crowd size of the tea party attendance. It looks like about 50 people to me, tops. What a horrible hack job by the AP.

Sometimes It Sucks To Be Right: NPR Panders to Loesch

A couple weeks ago, when Dana Loesch called for NPR to be defunded, I tweeted the following:

And, like clockwork, NPR proved me right today, including a sound bite from Loesch in their story about "tea party clout:"


This is just the latest in a series of spineless moves from the media that provide an incentive for the tea party to trash them as much as possible. These outlets are putting themselves out of business by empowering people who want to destroy them.

Updated-Loesch At Center of New Smear Campaign Against Media

Dana Loesch, the new editor of Big Journalism, has been pushing a story claiming that reporters in Alaska were "conspiring" against Sarah Palin endorsed Senate candidate Joe Miller. Palin claimed that the media were "corrupt bastards" while talking about the tapes.

However, the tapes themselves are largely incoherent and seem to be obviously devoid of context that would allow someone to know exactly what they were talking about. Here's the transcript of the tapes:


Audio KTVA -

Unsurprisingly, given Loesch and Andrew Breitbart's history, the story they are pushing appears to be false. Greg Sargent of the Washington Post posted a response from the general manager of KTVA, the media outlet accused of trying to "sabotage" Miller:

It's unfortunate that this recording has happened. It's unfortunate because it does not accurately reflect the journalistic standards of our newsroom and the garbled context will no doubt leave more questions than answers. The Miller campaign's analysis of the recording is incorrect in many material ways ranging from personnel involved in the conversation, the interpretation of conversation snippets and the reported transcript of the perceived garbled conversation.

"While the recording is real, the allegations are untrue. The recording was the result of a cell phone not being hung up after a call was placed to Randy DeSoto, Joe Miller campaign spokesperson, Thursday afternoon to discuss Joe Miller's appearance on that evening's newscast. That phone call was placed near the end of a coverage planning meeting in our newsroom regarding that evening's Miller rally in downtown Anchorage. The group of KTVA news personnel was reviewing potential "what-if" scenarios, discussing the likelihood of events at the rally and how KTVA might logistically disseminate any breaking news.

"The perception that this garbled, out of context recording may leave is unfortunate, but to allege that our staff was discussing or planning to create or fabricate stories regarding candidate Miller is absurd. The complete conversation was about what others might be able to do to cause disruption within the Miller campaign, not what KTVA could do."

Sargent also added:

The full audio is only on the cell phone of Miller's campaign manager. Will the campaign release it? Also: Who edited the audio that Big Journalism posted?

In fact, even a Fox News reporter told Megyn Kelly that they had reviewed KTVAs record and could find no evidence of any bias against Joe Miller.

Naturally, Breitbart and Loesch don't care and are still busy ranting on Twitter about how biased the media is. In fact, Breitbart's gone completely off the deep end:

“George Soros, in his plane, a private jet, a global warming jet, flew and dropped money on Alaska on a series of left-wing bloggers and infested it, the Alaska media, with an anti-reformist agenda,” Breitbart said. “The Republican Party up there is corrupt, the media up there is corrupt, the Democratic Party up there is corrupt and George Soros has helped to sully it. This is why Sarah Palin had to step down – because they were trying to assault her using fake journalism in order to assassinate her character because they saw that she was a threat, a huge potential juggernaut.”

Anyway, just goes to show that Loesch and Breitbart will shriek and attack any news outlet without any shed of genuine evidence because that fits with their narrative and their agenda. Yet somehow, outlets like the Post-Dispatch, in spite of all available evidence, naively think that by pandering to people like Loesch they will someone win some respect from them.

Update: Media Matters nails it. If Breitbart and Loesch had the slightest concern for the truth, why wouldn't they have contacted KTVA before pushing their stories?

Smoking Bans Puritan or Liberal?

"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to
deny rights-- Judge Vaughn Walker

The two quotes above express very different perspectives. They are not exclusive of each other but they are different. I wonder which of these we base our smoking bans on.

Well smoke does reach my nose and goes even pass my nose. So Judge Holmes limits of licentiousness definitely apply. I myself am a non smoker who suffers frequent infections when exposed to a lot of cigarette smoke. So I benefit greatly from the trend to restrict the rights of smokers. (I am sure some of you balk at that phrase 'restrict the rights' but that is most certainly what we are doing.

Does moral disapproval come into play? We liberals are generally well educated and we value our health so we know that everyone should stop smoking.Sanctimony, disapproval and censure are valuable tools in any society but should that go one step further to using police powers when the state may not have a clear interest?

This began with non smoking sections in restaurants and I was thrilled. That is freedom to associate. It was a choice to not inhale someone else's smoke. Were smokers inconvenienced? Yes, they were they now experienced longer waits but in balance the market had spoken and the smokers inconvenience was minimal. Of course things progressed. There became non smoking restaurants which was great. Non smokers could vote in the market place about their preference.

Then it became policy at nearly every work place that no one could smoke. No matter what the weather smokers were forced to huddle in groups near the doors. The doorways reaked and non smokers complained and smokers were moved away from the shelter of the doorways. I attended UMSL in the 80's and I thought the professors hot boxing cigarettes in the wind and cold was demeaning. Later UMSL prohibited smoking anywhere on campus and then smoking in a car on the campus.

Returning students at Washington University will discover that there is now no where on campus where they may smoke.Orange paint lines on the sidewalk delineate where University property ends and the city begins. The diverse student body from Europe, South America and Asia is going to be very unhappy. Assistance will be provided to the staff but only in the form of counseling nothing medical to address their addiction. A Washington University staffer told me she is paying $1500 a month for prescription drugs. (I am unsure as to whether smoking cessation will be offered to students)

In my mind we have crossed far past my nose and into pure persecution of a minority.

Perhaps I am incorrect and this is based entirely on health out comes. After all all liberals support prohibition of alcohol and marijuana. It is fair to say that marijuana smoking is illegal on campus but why can I buy a beer? I believe it can be demonstrated that alcohol is detrimental to ones health. My guess is that the political alliance has not yet formed to persecute drinkers.

Soon bars and restaurants in St. Louis will be forced to be non smoking. Clearly this is a violation of the owners Fifth Amendment property rights but it is justified on health concerns. The protection is said to be for the employees but even employees will no longer be able to smoke on the job. In fact these smokers will go outside and their will be a corresponding loss of man hours. The rights of the employers and the employees have both been subordinated to the right of the vocal political majority.

In answer to my question this is a puritanical movement which has aligned the religious right and sanctimonious liberals. A powerful pairing.

This is not a legal argument. I do not even possess the tools to make a legal argument.However as a liberal I believe my actions are open to self review. Like any adherent of any philosophy I believe I must question my consistency. I have and now I am asking you all to contemplate your own consistency.I also ask that you please explain why my conclusion is incorrect.

Update: Beat the Tea Party Now Has More Donors Than Stop the Prop, But Still Short on Total Cash

An update on my Beat the Tea Party Birthday Fundraising Challange: as of today, there have been 26 wonderful donors to my birthday cause Missouri Jobs with Justice, one more than the tea party's Stop the Prop campaign that the local media tried to portray as a huge political movement:

I guess that means, according to St. Louis media standards, that my birthday is now a "major grassroots uprising." I eagerly await my invitation to speak on KMOX.

But those of you who read the recent poll showing that tea partiers were wealthier than the general population will not be surprised to find out that despite my lead in donors, I'm still behind in the total amount of cash. I've raised $628 so far compared to the $750 they got from their smaller base of support. But YOU can change all of that by going here and donating a small amount! As an added bonus, I'll note that Jobs with Justice will be sure to use the money strategically to work for economic justice, whereas the tea party apparently spent all of their money on Nutella and mustache trimming supplies.

One final thought; 14 days after the vote on Proposition A, the Stop the Prop group has yet to update their website or email their alleged supporters. Just one more sign that this was never a serious campaign, and that our local media is way too eager to promote the narrative that the tea party is a major political force without bothering to do any investigative work.

KMOV Now Openly Entertaining Conspiracy Theories?

Check out the beginning of this KMOV story on the Tax Day Tea Party rally:


Reporter Matt Sczesny said:

The Tax Day Tea Party was loud and it was crowded, but there was little trouble out here, especially from so called "infiltrators" that organizers had feared would try to embarrass the tea party rally. In fact, organizers say, only two people showed up, one of them wearing a swastika.

Ummm, wow. Where to begin? Sczesny presents the story in a way that implies that the two people were "infiltrators." This is in reference to the tea party's belief that "leftist infiltrators" were going to crash their St. Louis rally, after some guy in Portland said he was starting a "Crash the Tea Party" group. Of course, there's no indication that the group exists in St. Louis, and the tea party didn't provide any evidence for the claim that the two people were "leftists." In fact, Adam Sharp's video makes it clear that the guy was a member of the white supremacist organization Council of Conservative Citizens. Funny that while Gateway Pundit was ranting about this, he forgot to mention that he's linked to race-baiting videos on the Council of Conservative Citizens stories in the past. Kudos to the tea party for asking a white supremacist to leave their rally, but it's ridiculous for them to claim without any evidence whatsoever that this was a "Democrat plant," and it's shameful that the news media is willing to pass on that spin.

One additional fail for KMOV: they say that "thousands" gathered for the tea party rally. Yeah, except that police estimated 500 -700 (props to the Beacons' Jo Mannies for getting a real estimate).

In brighter news, KSDK at least provided some relevant context for their story on the tea party:

A new CBS News/New York Times poll finds 18 percent of Americans now say they support the tea party movement.

What if Prop A Had Failed?

No, I'm not talking about the fact that Metro would have been forced to cut services or that people across the region would not be able to get to work. Rather, I'm asking about what the political narrative would have been if Proposition A had failed, even by only a few hundred votes. I think we all know what the narrative would have been. It would have been a complete, unadulterated, nonstop freak-out by the local media about what a "political force" the St. Louis Tea Party is, and how Democrats better watch out or they're going to be slaughtered in November. The groundwork for this narrative was already laid in Jo Mannies article explaining that the Tea Party saw Prop A as a test of their organizing ability, and there's not much doubt in my mind that the media would have been sure to have given the tea party credit for the win whether or not they demonstrated any ability to actually organize (BTW, they didn't).

So if the tea party would have gotten credit for a Prop A defeat, isn't it natural to think that they should also be criticized when Prop A was successful despite their opposition? Maybe you could argue that Prop A had institutional advantages, and so would have been favored to win. Fine. But Prop A didn't just win: it won in a massive landslide. 63 % of St. Louis County Voters voted in favor of a sales tax increase, and only 37% voted against. There is no realistic scenario in which the tea party could have done a worse job in influencing the vote. Nevertheless, our local media still refuses to state the obvious.

Consider Jo Mannies' recent piece, which joins Jake Wagman in largely providing cover for the loss. I had emailed Jo mentioning that the tea party was only able to raise $750 in their campaign to raise $10,000, which is indicative of zero ability to organize in a way that can influence local elections. I have no idea if she read my message, but I know the way in which she reported the money was spun in a way as positive as possible for the Tea Party. As she has done in several articles, she allows Gina Loudon to define the narrative:

Another month and $10,000, said Loudon, the St. Louis Tea Party might have had a good chance of defeating Proposition A. "But not with only $900 against their $1.5 million," she added.

No mention from Mannies of the point that the reason the tea party only had $900 is because they were unable to raise more than $900, despite having access to local blogs, local radio, and national blogs, which they repeatedly used to ask for money. No one gives congressional candidates any breaks for not being able to raise money, so why should the tea party be allowed off the hook when it was precisely because of their own failures that they didn't have money?

This, unfortunately, is not the only place in which Mannies gives Gina Loudon free reign to define the narrative. Consider this passage:

Gina Loudon (right), one of the local Tea Party's leaders, believes that critics are focusing on that defeat for a reason. "We are so well aware that people are trying to divide us," she said. "They wouldn't be pointing a finger at us if they didn't fear us."

Nice. Framing the debate in a way that dismisses all criticism as 'fear." This would be fine if it was their opinion balanced against a critic, but there were no quotes from critics: just a long article that gave Loudon, Carl Bearden, and Bill Hennessy a platform to spin the events however they want.

As I've said in related contexts, I think the inherent unwillingness of the local media to move away from their pre-established narratives not only does a disservice to readers but also creates an atmosphere of zero accountability for the tea party. They can say "this next election is a test of our ability" on absolutely everything because they know that the local media will report favorably if they win, and give them a pass if they lose. Is it because the local media are all secretly tea party sympathizers? I don't think so: I think the reasons are much more complicated than that and have a lot to do with personal relationships. But whatever the reasons are, the local media is failing to fairly report on local events. If the tea party is taking credit for an election, they should be held to their word. If Prop A had failed, they would have been given credit. But Prop A won in a landslide, and their role in that should also be acknowledged.

BTW, I'm raising money for a good cause to showcase the local media's hype of the completely unimpressive efforts from the tea party Prop A opposition. Please click here to pitch in, or here to read more.

The Beat the Tea Party Fundraising Challenge!

As I did in 2009, I have been planning on using my upcoming birthday as a way to raise money for a good cause. However, this year I thought up a twist that I believe makes the project especially fun and important. My plan is to raise more money for a good cause ($751) than the Tea Party Prop A opposition, from a larger number of contributers (25), and to end with a pro-transit rally with more people (30) than the tea party ever got to attend an anti-Prop A rally. This is partly just a fun way to motivate people to donate to a good cause, but I think it also can help to raise awareness of just how misguided the media coverage of this issue was. If that's all you need to know, please click here to donate to my favorite local group, Missouri Jobs with Justice. If you'd like to know more, please read on.

First of all, Missouri Jobs with Justice is an amazing group. They do not just fight against symptoms, but work to address the structural problems that lead to economic injustice in our society. They led the effort to raise the Missouri minimum wage back in 2006 and have defended it from right-wing attack in the state legislature every year since. They stopped Ward Connerly from even being able to get enough signatures to get an anti-Affirmative Action initiative on the ballot. They helped coordinate the Missouri push for health care reform. And they've trained thousands of people to organize for social change. Any money that goes to Missouri JwJ will be used strategically and thoughtfully to fight for a more just society. I should note that I'm a student/youth co-chair for Jobs with Justice, but I don't get any money from them. In fact, I spend my money to be a sustainer for the organization because I believe so much in their mission.

Second, I've detailed extensively in the last week how the St. Louis media created an anti-Proposition A narrative based entirely on their exaggeration of the influence of the St. Louis Tea Party, and then started using this artificial narrative to predict that Prop A would fail. If it weren't for the hard work of a lot of people and the power of social media, it's very likely that this media narrative could have caused Proposition A to lose.

The local media presented the tea party's John Burns as a sort of folksy hero who went "toe-to-toe" with Chesterfield Mayor John Nations, portrayed the anti-Prop A group as an active movement, and described the tea party opposition as "spirited." Yet they failed to do basic fact checking on the litany of false claims coming from John Burns and the tea party. With the exception of the Riverfront Times, they failed to discuss John Burns' history of unethical activism tactics, including his accusing Washington University of fraud and attempting to sabotage an LGBT rally (these tactics turned out to be relevant as Burns and Gina Loudon tried a similar stunt on election day). They never once used any metric to evaluate the scope or organization of the opposition, and instead took the tea party's word that this was a massive movement backed up by intelligent arguments. John Nations Op-Ed showed the shallowness and falsehood of the tea party arguments, and the massive Prop A win of 63 - 37 showed the shallowness of the tea party's "organization." Yet even now, the media is still all-too-happy to go along with the Tea Party spin of what happened.

Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident, but in fact is part of a pattern of the St. Louis media exaggerating Tea Party influence, failing to fact check tea party claims, and providing cover for extremist behavior. Recently, we saw the St. Louis media (with the exception of Chad Garrison and Jake Wagman) cover up the fact that the tea party burned pictures of Representative Carnahan at a anti-health care rally. They failed to report on the tea party carrying a coffin to the home of Carnahan for three days until the national media outlet Politico covered it. In fact, in almost every possible instance, they've gone out of their way to present tea party arguments to look as reasonable as possible even while the same people they're interviewing are writing absurd and inflammatory things on their blogs. They have also accepted without any critical thought or search-for-supporting-evidence exaggerated claims about the success of things like the Tea Party buycotts, and have even passed on numbers for tea party rallies that are larger than the holding capacity of the space they were held at! And all of this for a group that has openly stated their desire to put the mainstream media out of business!

So I'm asking you to get twice the bang for your buck. First of all, you can donate to a group that has a proven track record of efficiently using resources to work for a better world. Second, you can send a powerful message about the absurdity of our local media's pandering to the St. Louis Tea Party. I'm not a well-connected operative; I'm just a graduate student who's been in St. Louis a little more than four years. But I'm confident that I can raise more money from a larger group of people, and put together a larger gathering than the Tea Party prop A opposition that caused a media frenzy. We don't need to just talk about how absurd the media coverage of the tea party is: now we can prove it!

It's time to shift the narrative back to reality. Please click here to donate.

Update: found this very nice exception to my media analysis written by KMOX's Mike Kelly.

More on the Massive St. Louis Tea Party Failure

Jake Wagman at the Post-Dispatch had a Political Fix post yesterday titled, "Passage of Metro transit tax fuels second guessing in Tea Party." Though I'm glad the story was written, leave it to the St. Louis media, who I've already criticized extensively for their tea party leaning coverage of the Prop A debate, to write a post questioning tea party organizing ability that relies enitirely on the testimony of members of the tea party! Thus, even when failing about as badly as possible, the tea party is given an exclusive platform to offer their spin on what happened. And, even worse, Wagman apparently buys it, inexplicably suggesting that the reason they did so badly was the general problem of voter apathy on elections that don't feature statewide or national candidates. He also apparently eats up their story that the whole reason Prop A won is because proponents spent, "hundreds of thousands of dollars."

But a closer look at some actual metrics shows just how wrongheaded the Wagman/Tea Party analysis is. First of all, check out the following list of local people who Tweeted pro-Prop A messages using the hash tag #propA :

@michael_ohare @FeteSociety @AllisonEBruns @keegan_hamilton @cshevlin @katberger11 @hetoldmeanyway @TriceDIVA @sarahescully @BetsyReznicek @chandlerful @nicejenny83 @urbanreviewstl @chamberjule @JRTappenden @Andrea_TheNerd @ryanwitt @lisarokusek @pwhoward @smcnally @loganalexander @yatesamanda @BillikenARon @iwhisperer @ContraYogini @bchao524 @PatrickRShaw @Kismatt @Mika_Tey @Trap_Jesus @sbolen @chriskingstl @MARTIN_CASAS @HilaryPerkins @markjzinn @simonyost @lindseyberger @jlangum @stlshellebelle @noelweichbrodt @ahawkcollinger @inmywardrobe @coreysmale @readingmachine @JustinEllis @elsicomoro @astx813 @Ericstl6 @DustinBoppAIA @daveElf @rhapsodynbloom @stlcolleen @docstar42 RT @edreggi @AndreaRenee87 @wecanchangeit @triadchiro_drj @tammyvent @deandrean @AdamHouston @ganeshaxi @MisterTubbs @michaeltomko @jpjernigan @slackadjuster @JonSimons @brynarc @deaconseps @innov8ion @drphist @maryb2004 @ehoffp @b_wiley @GoldenSombrero @peggy_adams @ecoabsence @lolololori @Sutcliff @katzpotter @andrewjfaulkner @toby1319 @neutralized @allyrulzno1 @trianglman @gracewoodard @stlcolleen @bkauling @threefourteen @stldotage @jenniferwhatnot @YoungDemsSTL @jesh1223 @milphy @russwhite59 @CraigMayhem @Patricialicious @GatewayStreets @fischooler @ajgmets @CMT_STL @thebizkramer @markedwards @STLTransitPlan @sethteel @STLTransit @Patricialicious @urbanSTL @jenniferwhatnot @Stllegend @Rencelas @u2acro

Now check out the number of anti-Prop A tweets using the hash tag #stoptheprop :

@whennessy @24thstate @stlteaparty @stlurbanspice @StLouisRE @bellez8 @stix1972 @Jimi971 @morecord @BetterTransit

Notice any difference? Apparently some people didn't. But the clear reality is that there was an absolutely huge enthusiasm gap between supporters and opponents of Proposition A, with supporters vocally expressing their enthusiasm (Worth noting: Jo Mannies of the Beacon acknowledged the supportive Tweets in an election day article). This wasn't because Advance St. Louis was paying people $5 a tweet; it's because the people of St. Louis want a good public transportation system! Any analysis that ignores this enthusiasm gap is woefully deficient.

Second, the tea party has been continuously whining that they were outspent. But the reality is that they were incapable of raising money for their extreme position on this issue. They sent out a message to all of their supporters calling for a "money bomb" to raise $10,000. They had the support of Dana Loesch, who has 8,500 followers on Twtter and her own 2-4 PM radio show. Gateway Pundit, who gets nearly 1.5 million unique visitors a month, put out a direct appeal for John Burns money bomb. Yet despite the ability to reach a huge audience, at the end of the day, they were only able to raise $750 from 25 people:

This is a puny number for a county-wide election and does not show any ability to organize. In fact, I'm quite confident that I would be able to raise more money than this for a similar cause. Yet far be it from the creators of the media narrative to look for the demonstration of actual organizing ability, fundraising ability, or even arguments that aren't' completely dishonest when they decide how important the tea party is. They have their "Tea Party = Political Juggernaut" narrative, and they're sticking with it, no matter what voters or the facts say.

Despite Media Hype, The St. Louis Tea Party Has No Clue How to Organize

Proposition A, the ballot initiative to restore and expand public transportation in the St. Louis region via a 1/2 of 1% sales tax, won a landslide victory yesterday. Many, many people in the media were predicting throughout the week that the initiative would fail. Despite the fact that the opposition to the initiative showed absolutely no signs of organization, and despite the fact that polls showed that a majority of people in St. Louis County supported the initiative, the St. Louis media apparatus created their own narrative based on their "gut feelings" of what St. Louis County is like, and then started to believe the narrative that they in fact created.

For example, yesterday, Jake Wagman wrote that critics of Prop A had offered "a spirited opposition." Here's what I replied in the comments:

Spirited opposition? Really? The Stop the Prop group tried to raise $10,000 and only raised $750. The largest rally they’ve had was 25 people. The only sense in which they’ve been “spirited” is that they’re good at getting media attention, but that’s just because of the local media’s willingness to give equal time to right wing opposition, no matter how coherent that opposition actually is.

I think the election vindicated my comment. The St. Louis Tea Party never had to produce any people or any money in opposition to Prop A in order for the local media apparatus to treat them like a large movement making good faith arguments. In fact, yesterday, Charlie Brennan and the Beacon were willing to push a hoax by John Burns and Gina Loudon where they claimed that Chesterfield Mayor John Nations was oppressing them. The only thing the tea party did well during this whole campaign was get published in media venue after media venue, and get more airtime on local radio than the people who support Proposition A, largely because KMOX hosts Brennan and Reardon were wholly opposed to the initiative.

On some level, I can understand the media going out of their way to give the anti-Prop A group a chance to express their opposition. But in large part the media completely failed to fact-check the ridiculous and often blatantly false claims made by the tea party opposition. Furthermore, it's not cool for the media to then believe their own echo chamber so much that they start announcing that Prop A will lose before the election based on nothing more than their own gut feelings. I think the excellent ground game is what ultimately won the election for Proposition A, but if we didn't have a really strong pro Prop A presence on social media like Twitter and Facebook, my guess is that the "it's going to lose" media narrative would have spun out of control and probably determined the election by causing transit advocates to give up hope.

So much for the media, but how badly did the Tea Party lose this campaign? Pretty amazingly badly. They put their full weight against it. The official St. Louis Tea Party site railed against it. Dana Loesch came out against it on her blog and on her radio show. Gateway Pundit, one of the most read political blogs in the country, wrote against it and regularly gave a platform to John Burns. Furthermore, as I tweeted yesterday, and as Clark at Show Me Progress wrote about in more detail, the St. Louis Tea Party loudly announced on multiple occasions that their opposition to Prop A was going to be a demonstration of their organizing ability. And they were right. Proposition demonstrated clearly that the St. Louis Tea Party doesn't have a clue how to organize.

First of all, consider this: Proposition A won with 63 % of the vote and 37% opposed. Can anyone honestly imagine a bill for a new tax getting less than 37% in St. Louis County in the current economic climate? I certainly can't. And this strongly suggests that the Tea Party, despite all of their bluster and media attention, did not affect the vote in any significant way. Unless, of course, the absurdity of their opposition actually increased the the winning percentage.

Only yesterday, the Tea Party was claiming that they were going to win. Now, they're whining about how they were outspent. Unfortunately for them, they undermined their own whining a few days ago when they said, "nearly every transit tax in the region has been defeated despite similar funding imbalances." According to their own view then, this means that they must have been an especially bad opposition. Furthermore, the tea party attempted to raise $10,000, but their position was so extreme they could only raise $750, probably from all of the usual suspects! So the fact that they didn't have any money wasn't the cause of them losing; it was a symptom of the real reason they lost: they took a position that was so extreme that no one (other than the media) could take them seriously.

Clark cleverly referred to the Tea Party opposition as the Underpants Gnome plan. For those who aren't familiar, the underpants gnomes' plan to make money in a South Park episode was the following: "1. Steal underpants. 2. ?? 3. Profit!" The Tea Party plan was just about as inane. They seemed to literally believe that just blogging, tweeting, and milking their right wing radio connections was sufficient to convince the public to vote for a crazy position. They spent last Saturday driving around St. Charles County (which didn't vote on Prop A) in trucks with anti Prop A messages scribbled on them. Twice. Their election day plan was to stand on street corners with signs. They literally are completely clueless about how to win elections. And just to clarify, unlike Dana "literally stomping on the constitution," Loesch, I do in fact understand the meaning of "literally."

One last thought: Clark also reference that this is the group former Matt Blunt Chief of Staff Ed Martin is counting on to win in November. In fact, Ed Martin signed up for the Drive Around St. Charles with Anti-Prop A Signs facebook event along with only 19 other people:

As far as I know, Ed Martin did not actually make it out to the event. But can anyone doubt that Martin, the ultimate political opportunist, would have been trumpeting up and down how everyone hates taxes if Proposition A had failed? Martin is trying to run as a St. Louis Tea Party candidate. But Proposition A has shown just how far away from normal people's views of good government the Tea Party really is.

St. Louis Media Still Asking the Wrong Questions

About a week ago I wrote a post claiming that the TV local media is enabling extremist antics from the local Tea Party by allowing them to act as crazy as they want at their rallies and on their blogs while going out of their way to present them as reasonable in news reports. One might think after a week of "coffingate" that this is starting to change, but I have to say that the coverage has been almost universally disappointing.

First of all, the St. Louis media (with the exceptions of Chad Garrison and Jake Wagman) did not really report on coffingate until an article appeared on Politico. At that point, all three TV stations picked up the story. But it's not like the information about what happened was hidden, and I think it speaks poorly of St. Louis when the local media doesn't recognize an interesting story themselves and instead only covers it after it was reported by a national outlet. Furthermore, the TV news reporting all left out relevant context to the story, such as the fact that photos of Russ Carnahan were burned the day before while the tea party chanted "death to the dictator."

Worst of all, in my mind, is the fact that after at least four days of reports on this issue by TV, newspaper, and radio outlets, the Tea Party has still not been asked to explain why they went to Congressman Carnahan's home. As I mentioned in a previous post, they had already said a prayer outside Carnahan's office, so what was the further message being sent from going to his house other than, "we know where you live?" Just another example of how there's zero accountability for the St. Louis Tea Party when the media allows them to say and do anything without bothering to ask questions.

KTRS Hires Stalker as Political Analyst

I don't know how desperate a radio station or morning show would have to be to hire a member of the fringe St. Louis Tea Party as a "political analyst," but I do know that the decision is guaranteed to produce embarrassing results. The latest example of the St. Louis media's institutionalized rightward tilt (with exceptions and caveats) is the fact that the McGraw Milhaven show has right-wing extremist and tea party organizer Gina Loudon on once a week to provide "political analysis."

So let's check out the embarrassing, disingenuous political theater that constitutes Gina Loudon's political experience. Yesterday, one day after setting images of Russ Carnahan on fire while saying, "this is the smell of tyranny burning" (cheered on by Ed Martin), the St. Louis Tea Party brought a coffin to Carnahan's office. Was the coffin for people who died or are suffering, like say the thousands of soldiers who died in Iraq? No, it wasn't. In fact, the coffin wasn't for any real people. It was for people that the Tea Party imagines will die under "Obamacare" because they don't understand the bill. But this was too ridiculous even for them, so they later changed the message to say that the coffin represented the death of freedom.

But here's the really disturbing behavior. The Tea Party, with Gina Loudon and her husband John Loudon, then carried the coffin to Russ Carnahan's house. This, combined with the fact that there's been multiple acts of violence committed by tea party extremists around the country, racial and homophobic slurs shouted by tea party crowds, the burning of Carnahan's photo, and Bill Hennessy's claim that the Tea Party has no moral or legal obligations to the government, pretty clearly is intended to send a dark message of intimidation and suggest the threat of violence. They're telling Representative Carnahan, "not only are we willing to kick and burn images of you to try to drum up extremist rage in the mob, but we know where you live!" And near the front of the pack was Gina Loudon:
(Gina Loudon is right behind Bill Hennessy).

How could a radio station possibly think it's OK to have a "political analyst" who's willing to literally stalk members of congress? What form of analysis will Loudon provide this week? A detailed report on the contents she found in Representative Carnahan's dumpster? An analysis of what his discarded shoes smell like? Listing the times of day that he leaves his curtains open? Loudon's behavior is absurd and dangerous, and KTRS's willingness to give her a microphone to promote Glenn Beck style misinformation makes them complicit in this.

How the St. Louis TV News Provides Cover for Tea Party Extremism

Yesterday, as seen in this video, the St. Louis Tea Party burned photos of Congressman Russ Carnahan and encouraged four-year-old children to throw shoes at the picture. These acts of extremism were not the actions of a few "bad apples." They were encouraged by the very people who organized the event, the co-founders of the St. Louis Tea Party Dana Loesch and Bill Hennessy. A couple days ago, Bill Hennessy claimed that the Tea Party no longer had any moral or legal obligations to the country. Yet if you watched the local TV news, you wouldn't know any of this. Instead, all you would have heard is that a group of people with concerns about their country were trying to make their voices heard.

While the national media had the awareness to report on yesterday's extreme actions from the Tea Party such as calling a civil rights leader a "n****r," calling Representative Barney Frank a "*f****t", spitting on Representative Cleaver, and throwing a brick through the window of Representative Louis Slaughter, look at what we got from our local TV stations. At the event where the Carnahan photo was burned, KTVI (Fox 2 News) coverage started off with this ridiculously bad rhyme: "Though it seems too late. Though a win for the other side seems eminent, they will not be deterred. They come a long way, they go a long way, to make their voices heard." The rest of the report was full of quotes that did not explain any of the tea party's extreme views, but simply claimed that participants were "fed up with politicians," (something which everyone feels at some point but is not really relevant to this discussion given that there are politicians on both sides of the issue). The headline of Teresa Woodard's story claimed that "Misouri Voters" rallied against the health care bill, not that the St. Louis Tea Party rallied against the bill.

The coverage of the St. Louis protest from KSDK was better. Jeff Small balanced the tea party quotes with points from Carnahan's spokesperson, rather than presenting all of the tea party stuff in one block as Fox did. He also got a substantive part of Hennessy's view on the subject on camera: the absurd claim that passing health care legislation is "illegal." However, there still was no mention of the tea party burning photos of Russ Carnahan and throwing shoes as part of their protest.

This is not an isolated case, but in fact is part of a disturbing pattern in the St. Louis TV News industry of going out of their way to portray the Tea Party as positively as possible. No TV station has ever asked Hennessy to explain why he claimed that Obama was trying to turn our children into Nazi snitches. Instead, they present him as an "aw shucks" average guy concerned about our country. Last Year, Hennessy and Dana Loesch suggested that Democrats sent a "high level operative" to St. Louis to "incite a riot," causing fellow tea partier Jim Durbin to creep around in the bushes to take pictures because he spotted a black man in a tuxedo. Yet Loesch and Hennessy are repeatedly treated as serious political commentators. Loesch, in fact, was interviewed by KMOX on her thoughts about climate change. Jim Hoft, who has linked to white supremacist sites in the past, was recently asked for his thoughts on the Coffee Party. Even more recently, after claiming that Obama was going to indoctrinate our children, Hennessy was given a sit down in a TV news station to discuss Obama's visit.

The problem is that the St. Louis TV News (with the notable exception of Charles Jaco) is creating an atmosphere of zero accountability for the Tea Party. The St. Louis Tea Party can literally say or do anything they want at their rallies, because they know that the local TV news will only present quotes that portray them as positively as possible. If the Tea Party held a rally where the participants held signs that said, "bomb congress," the local TV would run a story about how "some citizens" are concerned with higher taxes. In other words, the media allows them to say whatever they want, no matter how extreme, and then turn around and craft a positive message for the public in their interviews.

This has the effect of keeping the general population completely uninformed. If you only watched the local TV news, you wouldn't know anything about the actual extremist views of the Tea Party. All you'd hear is that there are some people fed up with politicians who think that the government is too big. This is a serious problem, because the tea party is now going out of their way to encourage anger and the threat of violence, and in fact are successfully getting some of their members to commit acts of violence. If the St. Louis media is not willing to educate people about this, then it's up to us. We have to make sure to share, whether via email, Twitter, or Facebook, the actions of this group so that people have a realistic assessment of what the movement is all about.

Update: Please call the news desks of Fox 2 News (314-213-7831) and KSDK (314-444-5126) and tell them that they need to inform the public about extreme tea party actions like burning photos of Russ Carnahan.

KMOX Publicizes Protests from the Right, but not the Left

KMOX, which is competing with 97.1 to be the official media outlet of the "grassroots" tea party, wrote an article today giving advance publicity to the St. Louis Tea Party's rallies in St. Charles and St. Louis in conjunction with President Obama's visit. But they unsurprisingly failed to mention that there would be groups on the left rallying for a public option and for a clean energy bill. Boy, it sure makes it a lot easier to be a grassroots movement when you have your own corporate radio stations!

Another interesting item from the article: Bill Hennessy of the Tea Party claims that, "the real answer to America's health care dilemma is to convince people to adopt healthier lifestyles." I can see that he's given some serious thought to this issue. We can always count on KMOX to give airtime to Bill Hennessy's gut feelings while ignoring those damn dirty hippies with their "data analysis," and "citations of actual statistics."

Case Study: KMOX Shows How Not to Report the News

I've been meaning to write about this for a while, but some recent developments make it especially relevant. I'd like to use a example from KMOX to illustrate what I think is irresponsible journalism and a lesson in how the local tea party is willing to manipulate the local media. This story, in my mind, provides some interesting context for the controversy surrounding KMOX's coverage of St. Louis County Executive Charlies Dooley.

The example revolves around the case of Kenneth Gladney, a case I've discussed in detail on this blog. In addition to suggesting that the case involved a massive conspiracy which includes everyone from President Obama to Health Care for America Now director Magarida Jorge to the local dogcatcher, the local tea party is also convinced that the St. Louis County government delayed charges in the case due to partisan interference.

Now, anyone who follows this blog will know that the tea party alleging some massive Democrat/SEIU conspiracy is hardly a newsworthy event. However, if you'd like to be charitable, I suppose you could say that given that this particular case was highly charged and revolved around an important political issue, it was worthy of being covered by the local news in one of your typical "tea party outraged about X" stories. And if KMOX's Kevin Killeen had simply written one story about the issue, I wouldn't have thought much about it.

But Killeen didn't write just one story. He wrote four stories. In fact, he basically wrote the same story over and over again spaced apart by a few days. And in doing so, he consistently used the following formula for this stories: "Suggestion of conspriacy by County Counselor. County Counselor denies charge."

To get a little more specific, here are the stories.

The first, from November 18, was titled "Still No Charges in Town Hall Protestor Assault" and ended with County Counselor Patricia Reddington saying the incidence "hasn't been swept under a rug."

Six days later, Killeen then wrote a story titled "Victims family questions delay in town hall assault case." That story quoted Gladney's brother Keith saying "I think someone's either slow dragging or they're buying time for some reason...They're giving him enough time for... basically for this whole case that slipped through the cracks" and again ends with Reddington's same quote.

Six days after that, after already reporting on the charges filed and Gladney's reaction, Killeen was back again with, "Tea Party boiling-mad about charges filed in beating case." In this story, Killeen dives full bore into the conspiracy theories, quoting Republican politician/tea partier John Loudon as saying the following: "I think these Service Employees Union people went in there and committed the assault, because they felt that the system, the partisan political system, would protect them...And I think the partisan political system appears to be protecting them." Once again, the only "balance" of the story is Reddington's quote about the case not being swept under a rug.

So here we have a reporter reporting the exact same story three times, separated by exactly six days each time. It doesn't take a psychology degree to know that if you play a story on the news enough times that roughly follows the format "Person A accused of malfeasance. Person A denies. Person A accused of malfeasance. Person A denies. Person A accused of malfeasance. Person A denies," some listeners will eventually start to believe that Person A was up to something sketchy even if no evidence was ever provided. So Killeen's reporting appeared to be deliberately designed to either pressure the county counselor or to make the county government look bad. Furthermore, every one of the four stories Killeen produced featured a picture of Kenneth Gladney in a wheelchair, a prop so ridiculous (since Gladney was seen walking around after the original fight) that it earned Gladney an Ass Clown of the Week award from Riverfront Times readers.

So what is the moral of this story? In my opinion, it's hardly news when people make wild accusations they stand to gain from, especially when those accusations are not supported by any evidence. But more importantly, when a supposedly unbiased reporter brings up the same accusations over and over again with no supporting evidence, that raises some serious red flags about the objectivity of the reporting. Also worth noting: I sent Killeen an email raising questions about the tea party story, and he never bothered to correct any of his reporting or to respond.

Given this background, I find the current controversy about KMOX' coverage of Charlie Dooley extremely interesting. First, on Feb. 19, the same Kevin Killeen reported that "unnamed sources" said that there was a federal investigation of people "with connections to the County Executive's Office" and that the charges went " all the way up the elevator". The next day, Killeen wrote another story claiming that Dooley had "ducked" questions about the probe. Killeen provided no new evidence beyond his previous "unnamed sources." After Dooley responded forcefully at a County Council meeting, Killeen again filed a new story relying entirely on "a growing number of independent sources." Finally, the FBI explicitly stated that Dooley was not being investigated. Killeen responded by stated that he stood by his original stories, that he never said explicitly that Dooley was the target of the investigation, and that he still heard from "multiple sources" that there's an investigation of whether campaign money influenced the selection of vendors.

As should be obvious, these "unnamed sources" have no accountability. They literally can say whatever they want and if it turns out to be false they will not suffer any consequences. This is the same type of strategy the Bush administration used to great effect to influence public opinion about Iraq.

A more important question is would there be any consequences for Killeen if it turns out there's not an investigation? Given that he's already shown a propensity to go after the county government with no supporting evidence, could he just blame any bad information on his sources? My guess is that now that Dooley responded forcefully and the FBI commented, there's a lot riding on what we find out about any potential investigations. It will be very interesting to see how things pan out.