Posted on 07/02/2010 7:59:17 AM PDT by Artemis Webb
Per copyright restrictions Link Only
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I'm mildly shocked.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews_spec/20100701/pl_ynews_spec/ynews_spec_pl3005
We need to flood the comment section with our point of view. The Obots are having a field day spreading the marxist talking points.
GO get em FReepers!
A decent article, but some bias shows through. Take this assertion by USA Today:
“They are overwhelmingly white and Anglo, although a scattering of Hispanics, Asian-Americans and African-Americans combine to make up almost one-fourth of their ranks.”
OK, almost 25% of the Tea Party is downplayed by the reporters as a “scattering.” According to demographic stats from wikipedia (which USA Today apparently could not find) the overall US demographics show:
12.4% of US is African American
15% of US is Hispanic
4.4% of US is Asian
So that’s 31.8%. Sure, larger than 25%, but not by that much. Would USA Today describe overall US demographics as having a “smidgeon” of minorities with 31%?
I am shocked too. An objective summary with some VERY interesting numbers. I note the significant percentage of Republicans who do NOT identify with the tea party, which confirms a number of things.
The numbers demonstrate a momentum that should scare the hell out of the business as usual, welfare state minded drones out there.
What is the Tea Party? The Tea Party is the newest target of the (LD/SM) liberal dem / smear machine...
From the late 70's through the 80's I would refer to Republicans like that as "Lowell Weicker Republicans". I honestly thought that the old school of Republican thought was on it's death bed and that when the likes of Weiker and Nelson Rockefeller died out that would be it for the moderate/left wing of the party.
The concept of the GOP as a Big Tent has got to go. This is not to say that anybody who is a moderate is bad or evil. It is simply apparent that if the GOP wants to both differentiate themselves from the Democrats and gain some moral high ground they have to exorcise the moderate/left from their ranks.
You're right, gothmog - their bias is showing. Also, if liberals can't destroy the movement, they'll try to neutralize it by saying it's "neither left or right"... neuter it. Wait to see how many of our natural leaders will be "exposed" by the MSM. They might not have been able to find out any information about Obama when he was running but they'll damn sure be able to find any parking tickets against a Tea Party leader...
Does USA Ptooey bother to reflect on the ethnic backgrounds of La Raza members?
Initially, I agreed with you that it was not the kind of reporting I am used to seeing from the MSM.
Then, because I was so skeptical that such an article could exist, I went back and read it again and find it is biased and that is additionally unfortunate because it can pass itself off as ‘fair’, IMHO.
I actually believe that there is alot of strategy behind the bias. I believe the article is intentionally written for people who skim stories in a rush based on the positioning of biased text which tends to be located at the heads of paragraphs. People who don’t read well (much of our country unfortunately) as well as those who don’t have time to read through the entire article twice (or even once) will read only enough of a sentence to get the intent - the believe they see where the writer is going and stop reading.
Paragraph One may be accurate in that Tea Partiers are frustrated but it may also be used to diminish the legitimacy of the group by implying its emotion based, not reason based like other parties.
Paragraph two states that the percentage (3 out of 10 survey participants) of Tea Partiers is equivalent to the percentage of Republicans in this country - why? Where are the percentages for Dems and Indies? I think this comparison is part of the tilt which is further enhanced by the writers assertion that many Tea Partiers don’t know what their ‘allegiance’ means. I think this is touching on the meme that ‘Republicans are ignorant’ and adding ‘Tea Partiers are ignorant’ so some readers will again conflate the two groups. The left NEEDS to convince the populace that there really isn’t a difference between the two groups. Instead - why not explore the fact that Tea Partiers are new and do not have a national convention, choose not to divide their power by fleshing out an entire platform but instead are focusing on key issues. No - that would ruin the ‘narrative’.
Therefore paragraph 3 starts by quoting a Tea Party supporter saying that he supports the Tea Party but doesn’t know what they stand for. People skimming the article thus far are getting the picture that there’s a blind following out there that is equal in size the the Repubs and that maybe they don’t know what they are supporting. The left’s meme has long been that many of the people who make up the Repub party are ‘voting against their own best interests’ and his quote helps that perception along. The man interviewed goes on to say (but the weak or skimming readers have already moved on to the next paragraph header) that the group supports lower taxes and less government - all the things he supports. I think the writer of the article choose that man’s quote with care and uses it to portray Tea Partiers as incoherent.
Paragraph 4 quotes another Tea Party supporter as being concerned with illegal immigration and the bailout.
Paragraph 5 says that USA Today used national polls and ‘did’ additional interviews to get a picture of the Tea Party which makes it sound like “we wondered so we looked at data and collected information” which sets the reader up for objectivity when I believe the resulting article arose from the ‘we believe and therefore we constructed our story with information that would support our belief’. I believe the assertions in paragraph 5 are a false, pro-active alibi to deflect skeptics.
The first sentence of Paragraph 6 says that evaluating the data for Tea Party supporters causes a portrait of conservatives to emerge. (And Here I believe the skimmers have moved on because the article has already been implying conservatives/tea partiers are one and the same) I think using the term ‘emerge’ is meant to imply ‘hey we only report the data and if something emerges from it, so be it’. (posing as passive investigators)
Gothmog already noted that elsewhere in the article, USA Today dismisses fully 25% of their sample, made of minorities, as a scattering. Also - as they are trying to confuse/conflate Republicans and Tea Partiers in the minds of prospective voters approaching Nov, are they suggesting that 25% of the Republican party or of conservatives are minorities too? This paragraph supports the assertion that Tea Partiers have a similar portrait to Republicans based on gender (slightly more males), age ( a bit older) and marital status (tend to be married) when compared with the population as a whole. (wouldn’t a slightly older cohort have a higher population of marrieds when compared with a younger cohort anyway?) Aren’t those three attributes kinda...I dunno...GENERIC markers for conservatives? Should we maybe portray Dems as Ron Paulians based on gender, marital status, and age? It notes that residents of the South and West are most likely to endorse the Tea Party. I wonder what that statement means? It looks like maybe they are implying that 45% are Tea Partiers but I think they would say so if that were true. They offer percentages for Midwest (28%) and East (27%) but what happened to the North? Just curious. They don’t mention religion, education, or income or military service etc. But - after all, their effort to conflate Republicans/Conservatives with Tea Partiers started back in paragraph 2.
The first sentence in paragraph 7 says that tea partiers are ‘overwhelmingly’ white anglo saxon with just a scattering of ( and here the skimmers and poor readers move on to the next paragraph because they get where this paragraph (and article) is going; Tea Partiers = white anglo conservative Republicans) But if one reads the awkward, long sentence one learns that the ‘scattering’ of minorities is actually 25%. Long sentences tend to have a higher reading level/difficulty than short ones. The first sentence of this article is short and has an estimated reading level of grade 9. The sentence about the ‘scattering’ of 25% minorities has an estimated reading level of grade 16 (college). Look at that long awkward sentence - false impression in the front, actual contradictory at the very end of the sentence. Why wouldn’t an editor (I used to be one) break that sentence in two to manage reading level difficulty or to help clarity or aesthetics? Was the ‘inconvenient’ sentence written for skimmers or poor readers?
How much farther would a person who has skimmed or struggled to read this far into the article continue to read? Would they feel they have the basic idea behind the article and believe it was factually based?
If anyone is still reading this post they get a prize (just don’t know what kind)
I don’t think every sentence or paragraph of the article is biased but I see alot of bias in it. However, I completely missed it the first time - except for a faint tingling of my Spidey Sense. I’ll end here with the challenge...what is wrong with the way the sentence about violent rhetoric is written?
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