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Saturday, August 28, 2010

Glenn Beck's rally and the media

Today, Glenn Beck is hosting a rally in Washington that is billed as one to restore honor in America. It has been advertised as a non-partisan rally, whose date and location were not picked to grab the mantle of Martin Luther King jr. Nevertheless, the coverage from the main stream media has been relentlessly negative.

I decided to look in on the coverage this morning. On CNN, they were openly indredulous while speaking of Beck's claim that this was non-political. When coverage from the reporters on site said that neither Beck nor Sarah Palin spoke about politics, the anchor seemed visibly disappointed. There were interviews with people in the crowd who agreed that the rally was non-political. Again, the reporter seemed disappointed. Eventually, the reporter got to the point of saying that he had heard two men earlier in the day say that they were hoping to win in November. That was the big news; the reference to November from two people in the enormous crowd "obviously" was to the elections, so the rally actually was "political". In other words, CNN tried very hard to have the rally meet their preconceived notions of what it was, and this was all they could come up with.

Over at MSNBC, the coverage was what you expect. Most of it consisted of interviews with rally opponents. Since MSNBC seems to be all DNC talking points, all the time, this is not surprising. Nevertheless, it would have been nice to hear at least a portion of what was being said at the rally so that we could make up our own mind about it rather than simply having it used as a backdrop for talking heads regurgitating talking points.

I did not bother to watch the FNC coverage since I assume that Beck would get special treatment as an FNC host.

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