Nate Silver runs the numbers on press coverage of the Tea Party versus Occupy Wall Street and finds the Tea Party starting at the finish line. Nobody in the mainstream media gave a shit until the pepper spray incident, and then the Brooklyn Bridge protest finally got OWS some serious media attention.
harlana
HA! Shove it, teabaggers!
Wonder what flames of outrage would have ravaged the country had a teabagger been pepper-sprayed. Foxgasms.
Linda Featheringill
Sometimes a little benign neglect is not a bad thing.
But in defense of MSM, while some are just idiots there are others who understand that the Occupy movement is challenging the entire power structure in the US and the world today. They just cannot see how such an effort could be successful and so they just pass over it.
Who can blame them for that?
However, the Occupy movement has shown itself to be surprisingly viable.
Professor
Don’t you know that the police and news media are in the pockets of RICH people. Who do you think pay their salaries?
Linda Featheringill
Speaking of Occupy, this is a video of dancing in the street after the Yom Kippur service held at Occupy nyc.
youtube.com/watch?v=2wUyeFKBl4E&feature=player_embedded
Moving. Beautiful to my aging liberal heart.
cathyx
The OWS movement is involving thousands more people that the tea party movement, yet not as much media coverage. One of those movements supports corporate owned media and the other one doesn’t. Guess which is which?
nancydarling
@Linda Featheringill: For certain BJers out there, (not you Linda), I told you so!
Professor
How many people got pepper sprayed or arrested during the Tea Party protests, even though some were carrying guns?
arguingwithsignposts
@Linda Featheringill: You can label me a concern troll here, but I do wonder what their strategy is for the cold weather to come?
I will be in Chicago this week. Hopefully, I’ll get to buzz downtown to check out the doings there.
Linda Featheringill
@nancydarling: #6
You can taunt me if you want to. :-)
I defended the protesters at first because I have a deep respect for rebellion, anywhere and any time. It took me a while to understand what they were about because I’m an old fogey. And when I did understand, my first reaction was that this was yet another beautiful, lost cause.
I was so surprised when it started spreading!
Southern Beale
It seems we’re all remembering that Gandhi quote today. Just saw a TruthOut story with that as the lede. I closed my own post on the coverage with it.
That means folks need to be readying for a fight. Because we’ve gone from ignore to laugh and now with Bloomberg telling everyone yesterday that the protestors want to kill jobs, I think we’re entering “fight” time.
Linda Featheringill
@arguingwithsignposts: #8
A commenter on dkos suggested a fund to help pay for winter gear, those cover-everything insulated suits. Or perhaps other gear. I haven’t seen anything on dkos about the idea since.
I sent John an email suggesting such a fund, perhaps in cooperation with other online communities. But I haven’t seen anything here about it, either.
debg
Clearly it pays to have Dick Armey and other astroturfers on your side from the get-go!
@Southern Beale, I think you’re right. Man the barricades, everybody!
Jewish Steel
arguingwithsignposts (we car pooled over from another blog) wrote is as it occurred to me. How much has the unseasonably fine weather contributed to the success of OWS?
SiubhanDuinne
@Linda Featheringill:
Okay, I’ll try again. my first comment is out there in the ether somewhere. (Insert obligatory FYWP.)
Linda, thanks so much for posting that video. What a joyful gathering. I have a HUGE smile on my face.
Oh, and I liked the prediction of the guy at the end who said (slight paraphrase): “Fifty years from now, the history books will refer to the Occupy movement as ‘the Ninety-Nine.’ “
beltane
I just found out my ex-husband went over to Zucotti Park to check out the scene and came away very impressed. He’s a non-political, Catholic, white-collar guy in his early 50s so this came as a surprise to me. He says the folks there are angry “at the right people” and he shares their anger. I am shocked.
arguingwithsignposts
I also think it is useful to look at Greece and Spain and the protests in those places. The Greek protests have been going on for months, very large protests, with general strikes, even, and their boneheaded politicians continue to hew to the austerity line being shoved down their throats by the Troika (EC, ECB and IMF). Reports have been that the Greek public has begun to suffer burnout and resignation. Can an entire country fall into a collective depression (psychological) by being beaten down continually?
Spain is in similar straits – many protests, but they fall on deaf ears. Same with the UK and the rest of Europe. Unless a miracle happens here, things will likely have to get a lot worse before the chattering classes really listen to the protesters.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad it’s happening, and I hope it continues to bloom. But this is not Egypt.
cathyx
@Southern Beale: There’s a story floating around by The American Spectator about the author bragging about infiltrating a protest at the Air and Space Museum for the purpose of starting violence, in order to discredit the movement. That is what we can expect to be next.
dailykos.com/story/2011/10/08/1024352/-Conservative-Magazine-Brags-of-its-Agent-Provocateurs-Role-in…
Bill E Pilgrim
And of course it’s apples to oranges since the “Tea Party” was mostly simply FOX News and others doing paid marketing for the Republican Party.
FOX News caught cheerleading and stage managing Tea Party “protest”.
For one thing, any “hits” from FOX that contribute to the red line on that chart are essentially someone counting how many times FOX covered their own manufactured story.
arguingwithsignposts
@Jewish Steel: It has been gorgeous in the midwest, hasn’t it?
SiubhanDuinne
@Jewish Steel:
IIRC, the weather was pretty awful during most of the Wisconsin protests last winter. So I don’t think the prospect of bad weather alone is going to daunt the 99%-ers. But I do like the suggestion (from Linda F?) of showing our support by contributing to a cold-weather-gear fund for the intrepid.
geg6
The liberal lamestream media has had more coverage of True Americans honoring our holy Forefathers than of anti-American hippies who have only vague and completely incomprehensible complaints about job creators? Unpossible!
/sarcasm
Keith
Is OWS bombarding the various MSM outlets with emails/letters complaining about anything and everything derogatory that on-air personalities say about OWS? Seems to me after watching TPers pull this off to great success, that would be the key(along with having a major news channel on their side to whip up the stories)
RossInDetroit
Interesting graph. Note that it shows cumulative news hits, so the slope is the daily hit count. After 3 weeks the TP protests were getting very little daily action (shallow slope). For the last week on the graph the OWS protests have been getting roughly equal attention every day (constant, steep slope).
Now, there’s attention and then there’s attention. I would guess that many more of the stories about the TP were of the positive or neutral nature. OWS stories often are more like “What do these DFHs want, anyway?”
ellenelle
i may well be stating the obvious here, but what is so gobsmacking appalling (to me) about that damn graph is the fact that the teaparty curve was so steep at first, and for quite a long time, remaining above the ows coverage despite the massively lopsided numbers, etc., as if the media were trying to remind people of what a real movement is supposed to look like. ahem.
in other words, it’s a graphic metaphor of the way sarah palin kept upping her media ante every time she was afraid she was not the center of attention on the various tubes.
she certainly learned her grifting skills well from the very media she both scorns and manipulates, and that she needs desperately to exist.
arguingwithsignposts
@RossInDetroit: Very good point. Also, no mention from Nate about the coverage of other, related protests that have sprung up around the country, and the OccupyColleges protests last week.
Villago Delenda Est
OWS: People pissed because there are no economic opportunities.
Teabaggers: People pissed because a Democrat (and a NEAR guy!) is in the Oval Office.
MattF
Bear in mind that the whole Tea Party narrative was generated and promoted by right-wing media– I suspect that mostly explains the difference. I suspect, also, that the lack of an OWS infrastructure has kept the right-wing liars at bay at least until now– but that won’t last.
harlana
@Linda Featheringill:
harlana
and yes, I was naive in that I did not understand how long it would take for us to get here – I gained a better understanding of the civil rights movement and I realized just how incredibly ignorant and idealistic I was. I see some of these people bursting with unfocused zeal, as I was, albeit I was in my 40’s at the time! Better late than never, especially to be chastized for your zeal, learn self-control and gain a better understanding about what it takes for a social movement to really take hold.
harlana
noooobody on the republican side wants to talk about Mitt being a “non-Christian” – woopsie! How are we going to deal with that one? It hasn’t really gone away, has it?
piratedan
well geez, how many of us still believe that we’re operating on a level playing field. The media has been seduced by the dark side, believing that just because they only tell one side of the story that no one is really listening anyways and with their good looks and daddy’s job with the bank its only a matter of time before I get out of this shithole in Tuscaloosa and get the weekend anchor gig in Montgomery and from there anything is possible! Oh, you mean I’m supposed to ask Those People what they think?
cleek
in the US, left wing protests are common; right wing protests are uncommon.
news is about things that are uncommon.
jpe
@Professor: Provided open carry is lawful, why would they be pepper sprayed? Your comment doesn’t make any sense.
Hill Dweller
The Tea Party is/was backed by some very powerful
billionairessociopaths and lobbyists. Conversely, the OWS protests are going up against some very powerful people who have essentially been writing the nation’s economic policy for the last decade or so.Then you also have the MSM’s concerted efforts to over-compensate for any “liberal media” accusations. That leads to a disparity in the coverage of all sorts of subjects.
Compare the Solyndra coverage to the coverage of the corruption in Bush’s Interior Dept.(which cost the country far more money), or the missing billions in Iraq, or the Republicans’ ongoing voter suppression efforts. The disparity is laughable.
Lojasmo
@cleek:
Left wing protests are common in the US?
Fred phelps called. He says you stole his bullshit.
RSA
@ellenelle:
Not really. As @RossInDetroit points out, it’s a cumulative graph. The Tea Party line is steep at the beginning, indicating lots of coverage starting from nothing at all, but it levels off (after a week, or after two weeks, depending on whether you consider a shallow curve important or not) so that each day adds only a small number of new articles. The OWS line only started to move after two weeks, it doesn’t look to be slowing down yet.
Davis X. Machina
@Lojasmo:
Yes. Not of this size, that’s unusual, but common, absolutely.
waratah
@Linda Featheringill: I have been developing a soft spot for the drummers, now I have to add this. Thank you.
Calming Influence
Of all the things the liberal media suck at, they suck the worst at being liberal.
Lojasmo
@Davis X. Machina:
It seems to be that the phelpsians and anti woman abortion crazies are more demonstrably present than the Lefties.
chrome agnomen
@cleek:
depends how you want to define ‘protest’. the right bitches about everything, it seems, and gets plenty of press. but if you’re talking about organized protest, i agree.
Auguste
@jpe:
Free assembly is lawful, too.
Valenciennes
@RSA: Did it not level off for the tea party because the events themselves had stopped happening in that three-week span?
Samara Morgan
tomorrow is October 10.
are you raiding with us mixie?
you already missed out on OpBart.
vox populi, vox anon
Samara Morgan
@piratedan:
the media has been seduced by the PAYING side, sline.
bob h
One thing OWS has going for it is that its participants are younger and more attractive. Instead of unappetizing, overweight Baby boomers, we have good-looking, scantily clad women.
mrG
Ok, count me among those who thought they were watching a beautiful lost cause, but it isn’t just the mainstream media who snub the OWS, it is also blogs like this! Yes, I know they are there, yes, I know there are thousands of them, I know the police are proud to say they arrested thousands on the bridge, I know some have been corralled and pepper sprayed, but what I don’t know is what do they expect will happen!
What is it they are waiting to hear? What will make them say ok, fair enough, and they all go home again. In England we know it was just pent-up frustration with the media not reporting their plight and one more police-custody death was the last straw, but there’s a resounding nothing being said about what the OWS people are expecting as an outcome, yet great detail on the Mic Call! method of saying it!
So what’s up? Can someone tell me what would put an instant yet amicable end to this? Do they just want a piece of the action? (ie, if “let into the club” they’d gleefully play the other side of the fence) Or are they expecting something like the fall of Pinochet?