An activist with a tea party organization tore into the media in attendance at a Capitol Hill news conference Thursday, blaming the media in part for the recent Obama administration scandals because they weren’t tougher on the president.
“I want all of you to ask the question to yourself, what did you do to help create this environment where the IRS, an agent of government, can operate with such impunity?” Niger Innis, the chief strategist of TheTeaParty.net, said during a press conference with lawmakers about the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups.
Innis said today’s political environment is different than during Watergate because “40 years ago the press actually had an adversarial relationship with the chief executive, Dick Nixon.”
Innis, who is also a spokesman for the Congress on Racial Equality and son of legendary civil rights leader Roy Innis, said things have changed since those days.
“Today, it is quite different,” he said. “Some might say that it’s casual, cordial.”
He criticized the revolving door of reporters leaving the media to work for the Obama administration, and vice versa.
“But, what is perhaps most disgusting is the degree to which many of you in the establishment media have taken your marching orders from the DNC and from other liberal operatives in reference to the tea party,” he said.
The black conservative also slammed the media for their portrayal of tea partiers as racist.
“After the tea party revolution of 2010, many of you consumed, and then projected some of the most vile, unfair things about the tea party,” he said. “That it’s racist, which I find particularly ironic. You had no grounds for perpetuating this mythology about the tea party.”
He added: “We don’t ask for special treatment; we only ask for decency and fairness. Thank you.”