St. Augustine Record: Letter to the Editor
By Jason Mauro
Editor: Did you have a reporter at the Tea Party rally last Saturday? I attended the rally with my 15-year-old daughter, at various times throughout the day, because I want to encourage her to investigate perspectives for herself, and not rely on media representations of such events. And what a lesson she got, not only about the Tea Party itself, but about the media.
First, there were never more than 400 people on that field, and that was the peak. Yet the Record's headline on Sunday proclaims that the rally was "Serving Tea for 5,000." Buried within the story was that this 5,000 figure was an estimate by one of the organizers. How could you use that figure in your headline, as though it were objectively derived?
Secondly, there was one black person at the event that I saw, Lloyd Marcus. And he was part of the traveling show, leading line dances of white people, and leading them in satiric songs mocking President Barack Obama.
Yet your reporter interviews him, a performer obviously brought in by the organizers, to suggest that the Tea Party is diverse.
Finally, you accept at face value the organizer's claim that any extreme racist or offensive behavior must be the work of "infiltrators," and yet what I heard on that stage, and saw on those signs, was deeply offensive, including a song about Obama called "The Great Reneger." I trust I don't need to spell out the pun involved in that song.
Please report such events in a detailed and objective way, check your facts, and don't allow editorial cheer-leading to be confused with journalism.
1 comment:
Jason I just knew I could find you here, telling the same tired old lies about the Tea Party Movement.
We must really have you worried!
If Lloyd was the only black American you saw at the rally, in the course of several visits, you really need to se an eye doctor, and take your daughter in for a checkup too!
Bob Honiker (tsalagi)
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