Corporate Media's Anti-Worker Slant

What did the corporate media all have in common last week? The manner in which they reported on the protests  taking place in Wisconsin.  As events have unfolded, the singular theme in the media's (television and print) coverage of these events have been attempts to generally attack and question the  motives of the public workers who are spearheading these protests.  Meanwhile, they have generally portrayed Governor Scott Walker's position as one of  reason and necessity to balance the state's budget.

What is constantly missing from the discussions about Wisconsin's fiscal situation is the option to slightly increase taxes on upper income earners in the state as a way to close some of that budget shortfall. That option is never a part of the mainstream media's discussions, whether they are covering Gov. Walker or any number of other Republican Governors who are attempting to balance budgets on the backs of the working class in states like Ohio, New Jersey, Indiana, and Illinois.   Why?

Terms like "sacrifice" in the media and in Republican circles have come to mean "everyone except the wealthy." To avert situations like what we are witnessing in Wisconsin, all citizens should be asked to  take part in the "sacrifice" equation instead of just some.

Another problem was the resistance to covering the events in Wisconsin. It took several days before all of the mainstream news networks decided to cover these protests. With the exception of MSNBC's Ed Schultz, there was no other coverage initially. Yet, the Tea Party can show up with a crowd of 500 and every camera and correspondent is on air live with a mic interviewing the protesters. There were estimates from yesterday's crowd of around 60,000 protesters. There have been reports from actual participants that only a handful (a few thousand) were protesters in support of Governor Walker. Yet the majority of mainstream news networks portrayed the event as if the pro-Walker participants (50 thousand or more) were equal in number as the anti-Walker participants. Why?

On another note, the Sunday Morning News Show today continued to follow the pattern of down-playing the events in Wisconsin by not having schedule guests on to talk about the events. Fox News was the only show that had a guest on directly involved with the protest and of course that guess was Governor Walker himself. And he appeared, of course, unchallenged. The networks could not manage to book a representative of one of the local public sector unions there? Why is that if the media is constantly branded as "liberal" from the right?

Ed Schultz discussed the lack of media coverage with radio talk show host Joe Madison the other evening. Watch.