The tea party coverage that wasn't ~ By Joseph Farah

By Joseph Farah Posted: July 05, 2009 11:23 pm Eastern © 2009 I don't like to spend time criticizing my colleagues. I prefer using my news agency to do the job they fail to do. But sometimes, their failings are so mindboggling, I just can't help but point it out. Such is the case with this past weekend's tea party coverage. First of all, it isn't often that hundreds of thousands of ordinary, hardworking Americans put aside their holiday plans to spend a few precious downtime hours grilling hamburgers with family members and friends to get out into the streets to protest the actions of their federal government. In fact, I can't think of one other instance in my lifetime. So the Independence Day tea party was an extraordinary event to begin with. Everyone knew there would be about 2,000 rallies around the country – that we could count. There were probably far more. Everyone knew that these demonstrations would attract between 50 people at the low end and 5,000 to 10,000 at the high end. The times were set. The date was set – a predictably slow news day on a holiday weekend. Yet, to my utter amazement, having been in the news business for more than 30 years, not one news organization – broadcast, print or Internet – bothered to put together what we call a "roundup" of these local stories to give the events some national context. Not even the Associated Press, the largest news-gathering organization in the world, one paid specifically by newspapers to perform this function, given that it is a non-profit cooperative of the newspaper industry and therefore having rights to all the copy produced by its members, bothered to put together a roundup story – even as late as 24 hours after all the tea parties were finished. [CONTINUE READING]