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One of the more tiresome mantras of leftist media coverage is Trump allegedly paging through his “authoritarian playbook.” The media have their own protest playbook, as you could tell when leftists organized another mass protest titled “No Kings,” as if we’ve ever had a king.
The network newscasts slobbered all over this Saturday event, using very similar language. “Millions” took to the streets! A “massive” turnout to oppose “what they call creeping authoritarianism.” They sound like they’re reading a press release. “More than 2,700 rallies in all 50 states,” as “organizers estimate seven million people” turned out.
All these newscasts carried no ideological labels — no “liberal,” no “leftist,” no “progressive,” and no whisper of extremism. You can tell from the crazy signs, like “Impeach Trump Again,” and “Impeach, Remove, Convict, Repeat,” that these are some furious radical lefties.
The networks with Saturday night newscasts — CBS, NBC, PBS, and NPR — aired 17 minutes and 51 seconds of mostly positive, “mostly peaceful” coverage (not counting the gushy headlines chatter at the beginning). By contrast, January’s “March for Life” protest drew only 50 seconds, and that’s in part because NBC and NPR aired nothing.
This 18-to-1 number is an undercount … once you acknowledge that these networks kept celebrating these Saturday protests into Monday.
Even the comedians were involved. NBC late-night comedian Seth Meyers boasted: “I can’t help but compare the size of the ‘No Kings’ rallies to the size of the right-wing Tea Party protests back in 2009, which were much smaller but commanded an obsessive amount of media attention.”
This is false. A Media Research Center study by Rich Noyes in 2010 found very limited coverage in 2009, not an obsession. ABC, CBS, and NBC aired six reports on the April 15, 2009, “Tax Day” protests; just one report on the July 4 rallies; and six full reports on the Sept. 12 rally on Capitol Hill. By comparison, the Nation of Islam’s “Million Man March” in 1995 was featured in 21 evening news stories on just the night of that march — more than the Tea Party received in all of 2009.
Then consider the hostile tone that conservative protesters inevitably receive. In April 2009, ABC reporter Dan Harris passed along that “critics on the Left say this is not a real grassroots phenomenon at all, that it’s actually largely orchestrated by people fronting for corporate interests.” Inform people now that leftist billionaires like George Soros funded the vaunted “No Kings” organizers, and you’re a conspiracy theorist.
Overall, reporters suggested the Tea Party movement reflected a fringe or dangerous quality. Dan Harris was at it again on ABC in September 2009: They “waved signs likening President Obama to Hitler and the devil. … Some prominent Obama supporters are now saying that it paints a picture of an opposition driven, in part, by a refusal to accept a black President.”
The networks refuse to acknowledge any fringy or dangerous talk at the “No Kings” events. On X, you could see a man was captured on video yelling into a bullhorn that ICE agents should be killed: “You gotta grab a gun, we gotta turn around the guns on this fascist system. These ICE agents gotta get shot and wiped out. … The same machinery that’s on full display right there has to get wiped out.”
These networks aired happy press releases and left any negative or hate-filled video clips out. Some mentioned House Speaker Mike Johnson predicting it would be a “Hate America rally” — just so they could quote protesters earnestly professing their patriotism.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at http://www.creators.com.
