Frequently I’m reminded when watching TV news or reading the nation’s remaining newspapers of an old line about trees falling in the forest.  If there isn’t anyone available to hear it happen does it make a sound?  When we reach high summer we’re going to be seeing once great brand names in news tumbling on a weekly basis.  The case may not be much better for some large alphabet brand names in TV news. 

Witness a few paragraphs today from Mark Steyn.  Mr. Steyn makes no claim to objectivity.  He’s an opinion columnist and Monday morning I found at The Washington Times website a review he wrote about last week’s tea party coverage.  Steyn takes issue when he clearly spots bias.

Asked about the tea parties, President Obama responded that he was not aware of them. As Marie Antoinette said, “Let them drink Lapsang Souchong.” His Imperial Majesty at Barackingham Palace having declined to acknowledge the tea parties, his courtiers at the Globe and elsewhere fell into line. Talk-show host Michael Graham spoke to one attendee at the 2009 Boston tea party who remarked of the press embargo: “If Obama had been the King of England, the Globe wouldn’t have covered the American Revolution.”

The American media, having run their own business into the ground, are certainly qualified to run everybody else’s into the same abyss. That is why they have decided that hundreds of thousands of citizens protesting taxes and out-of-control spending and government vaporization of Americans’ wealth and their children’s future is no story. Nothing to see here. As Nancy Pelosi says, it’s AstroTurf - fake grass roots, not the real thing.

Besides, what are these whiners so uptight about? CNN’s Miss Roesgen interviewed a guy in the crowd and asked why he was there:

“Because,” said the tea partier, “I hear a president say that he believed in what Lincoln stood for. Lincoln’s primary thing was he believed that people had the right to liberty, and had the right. . . .”

But Miss Roesgen had heard enough: “What does this have to do with your taxes? Do you realize that you’re eligible for a $400 credit?”

Had the tea party animal been as angry as these angry white men are supposed to be, he would have said, “Oh, push off, you condescending tick. Taxes are a liberty issue. I don’t want a $400 ‘credit’ for agreeing to live my life in government-approved ways.” Had he been of a more literary bent, he might have adapted Sir Thomas More’s line from “A Man for All Seasons”: “Why, Susan, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world… but for a $400 tax credit?”

Steyn writes The Boston Globe didn’t even cover the Boson area tea parties, which did have a historic and local “angle”.  We should mention as an investment the paper isn’t worth the price of today’s copy. 

During the “historic” coverage of the 2008 election campaign there were content analyses of television news.  One of the great surprises for the folks at the old alphabet networks was a determination FOX had the year’s most balanced coverage.  So how is it we keep hearing from counterparts FOX is manipulating the stupid into demonstrating for lower taxes when the obvious is old media continues to skew what you hear and see?  Or what’s left of old media. 

Instead of soul-searching the old guard has a sinister plan in place for maintaining an effort to deceive.  The Fairness Doctrine.  I suppose unemployed newspaper editors believe they’ll be taking my seat at the microphone.  They, along with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, will be the arbiters of fairness.  Or a Fairness Board comprised of Marxist academics and Democrat Party campaign workers will make “case-by-case” decisions.  When you consider there are more than two points of view, and we’re talking dozens, the result will be government sanctioned pabulum.  Quite appropriate for the nanny state and its indebted children. 

Oh, and I sent a note to the CNN reporter mentioned by Steyn.  Before you can fill out the message board you must check a circle.  Are your comments positive or negative?  Guess which get deep sixed?

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