Tea Party blasts media coverage of protests and alleged racist hurls

Steinhauser said the Washington Post “has been atrocious in its coverage, they didn’t even show a picture of the crowd, they barely mentioned we had a protest at all.” But he described a double standard of how anti-war group International Answer, who held a march in Washington on Saturday too, “gets a pass for being organized by a communist front group.”

“Talk about an extremist that organizes an anti-war march where probably a lot of people in the anti-march are not communists, but the organizers of the event are extremists,” he said.

“Not a word from MSNBC, not a word from the Washington Post,” he said.

Stein at Huffington Post declined to comment on the argument that some outlets are only interested in writing stories that make Tea Partiers look racist. Requests for comment by The Post and the Baltimore Examiner were not immediately returned.

The coverage isn’t surprising, other activists say. The linking of the movement to racism, they say, is a ploy they say they’ve seen time and time again by the left to alienate those who may be drawn to the movement.

“It is an effective strategy to marginalize the Tea Party movement,” explained Luke Livingston, who produced a Tea Party documentary film popular among activists and screened at gatherings. “They want to keep the general public out and portray as a bunch of maniacs.”

The filmmaker, who said he’s traveled the country filming numerous Tea Party events, said, “if it was a racist movement it would be very evident. You wouldn’t have to go around trying to find it.”

“I’ve been documenting the Tea Party movement, and I’ve been observing it. And I’ve been more of an observer than participant. And I have not seen it. I have not seen it,” he said.

Race figures prominently into Livingston’s documentary: One character he profiles is a black activist who talks about the difficulty of being a minority in the movement that is no doubt mostly white.

He said activists are “frustrated” with the constant accusations of racism, pointing to one scene in his film where a group of medical doctors opposed to the health-care bill meet with black Democratic Rep. John Conyers.

“I think they’re frustrated,” he said of Tea Party activists. “Just like those doctors frustrated with Conyers … Here are these doctors trying to get on stage and all of sudden Conyers gets frustrated and just says, ‘Ah Republicans aren’t going to vote because they’re all racist and want the first black President to fail.’”

After the hundreds of stories about the weekend allegations, conservative publisher Andrew Breitbart is one activist who finds the allegations to be dubious. “This is the Youtube, Flip Cam, iPhone, Blackberry age where everybody has media — especially the media. This was the place in the United States on Saturday. There was no chance that something of consequence was going to happen that wasn’t recorded for all of mankind to witness,” Breitbart said.

*UPDATE: Stein at Huffington Post emailed to say he didn’t ask Clyburn the apology question, but another reporter did and he merely reported it. A previous version of this story said he personally asked the question.

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