In 2010, when a Democratic Congressman claimed a tea party activist called him a racial epithet, the media coverage was incessant.
Andrew Breitbart offered a cash reward for anyone who could prove the incident took place. As far as I know, the reward was never collected.
So if the mere allegation that a tea party protester said something crude to a Congressman was newsworthy, you might assume that video evidence of a union protester attacking someone would be newsworthy, right?
Wrong.
As TheDC’s Vince Coglianese reported,
[A]n analysis by the conservative Media Research Center released Wednesday showed that Tuesday’s ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts all ignored the attacks, only referring to the protests as “boisterous.”
…
“None of them mentioned the attack on Crowder or showed the videos of that attack and the thugs tearing down a[n Americans for Prosperity] tent with people in it, both widely available on the Internet hours before the evening news show broadcast,” MRC’s Dan Gainor wrote in an op-ed on Wednesday. “No network quoted Teamsters head Jimmy Hoffa predicting ‘civil war‘ between lawmakers and union members.”
This isn’t an original statement, but just imagine what the media coverage would be like if there were video of a tea party protester punching a liberal.
UPDATE: What do I think would happen if the situations were reversed?
1. The mainstream media would play the video incessantly.
2. Conservatives would condemn the violence.
3. The attack would be used to reinforce a larger negative narrative about the mean and angry GOP.
UPDATE: I spoke about this topic on Fox & Friends:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGEF4qA1X5o