More evidence of media bias

By Ray Robison

Bernard Goldberg, renowned author and commentator on media bias (based on his 20 years as a journalist) once wrote:

"Bias in the media isn't just about what they cover; it's also about what they don't cover. Sherlock Holmes once solved a particularly thorny crime using as his key piece of evidence the dog that didn't bark. It's the same with the news media. What they don't make noise about also tells us a lot about their preconceived notions and their biases."

Well surely Bernie must be feeling vindicated this day. For if there is ever a perfect example of the silence of the media dogs it is in the story of Tina Richards. I recently wrote here about the mother of a Marine and her efforts to meet with Democrats to urge them to end the war.

Her tactics were not unlike Cindy Sheehan but instead aimed at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi whereas Sheehan focused her PR effort on President Bush. I wrote that first article as much to bench mark media reporting as to provide the content. I wanted all to note that Pelosi has her own Sheehan and let's see were the media goes with it by way of comparison.

The result of my little experiment surprised even me, with my calloused eye towards the state of American journalism. Here is what is going on.

It appears Tina Richards has been released from the big-house after being arrested for her sit-in at the Speaker's office and is continuing her activism. If you follow the desperately scant media reports on her you can find Richards' own website.

There she posts her thoughts in writing and video. Currently, Richards is organizing a political action called "Swarm on Congress". It doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure out that this is basically an assault on the mechanisms of government to call attention to her cause. You might think a planned congressional sit-in by an aggrieved military mother might qualify as news as it did in Sheehan's case.

How wrong you are!

I used Google News to check for references to Richards swarm (do it yourself "swarm on congress"). As of the night of May 8^th, 2007 there are two, just two media reports -neither of them from big-media - about what Tina Richards has organized for the week following Mother's Day. Cindy Sheehan by comparison went down to the middle of Texas and parked herself in a patch of scrub grass next to a huge ranch and it was world news (even the name "Camp Casey" has entered our common lexicon thanks to media reinforcement). Richards and her supporters will park themselves in the halls and offices of the center of our democracy and the media response is, well....cough....cough.

The difference between Sheehan and Richards? One went after a Republican which pleases the liberal media bias, the other after a Democrat which must be covered up, lest the Democrats look bad. How much more obvious can it be that the American media is now hardly more than the propaganda wing of the Democratic Party?