With the faulty reporting on the OWS movement by the mainstream media out in the open, do you think the same thing could have happened to the Tea Party Movement?
Seems like every time I see something in the mainstream media about Occupy Wallstreet, the information is incomplete at best or downright false at the worst. However, the only reason (that I know of) that this is so apparent is that social media has so much verifiable information about OWS that it’s fairly easy to see where the mainstream media is failing on their coverage.
My question is whether or not this happened to the Tea Party movement when that started up, and they did not have the media backing or the know-how with social media to make sure that their message was properly broadcasted.
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
12 Answers
The original Tea Party organizers actually knew quite a bit about how to use social media and the like, as it started out as an exercise in astroturfing. That said, the media still didn’t have all the facts before covering it. The media’s real bias, after all, is neither liberal nor conservative but rather “faster, cheaper, more sensational.” So yes, I think both movements have been ill-served by the contemporary state of journalism.
Please note: I am not saying that all Tea Partiers are engaged in astroturfing. I believe that there are many sincere Tea Partiers who are more or less independent of the movement’s origins.
It seems to me you may have simply paid more attention to the OWS movement as when the Tea Party movement was in it’s prime, it had all the media attention and then some. OWS’s biggest problem is lack of a unified purpose and goals. It all started out with a flash mob mentality to simply occupy Wall Street and once they did there came the collective “now what”?? I don’t think that it helped their cause that the founders of the movement are a group of professional rabble rousers from Canada who started this simply to make a little money of their own.
They were so out of touch with why they were really there that in mid October they actually had to form a Demands Working Group to identify and present a formal statement of specific actions they would ask local and federal governments to adopt. Plus add in throngs of people there just to party and enjoy free food it became an event that was hard to take seriously and the media simply responded accordingly.
@Cruiser And yet, its power is spreading and more coverage is taking it seriously now.
@janbb The Tea Party generally makes less of a scene. They don’t camp, they typically clean up after themselves, and they generally aren’t much of a burden on their cities. OWS, not so much. As a result of this and their communication incongruence, OWS has failed to get much good publicity.
@Nullo I find that to be a major overstatement. Few things make as much of a scene as loaded guns, for instance. Still, I don’t find the movements to be all that different.
There are both Tea Party and OWS rallies going on in my city right now, and they behave in almost exactly the same ways. They’ve applied for all of the same permits, and they’re even for a lot of the same things (it’s fun what you can learn by asking question of each groups representatives). The Tea Partiers here are camping, as are the OWS protesters. Both clean up after themselves, and neither are really getting in anyone’s way.
This is one experience in one city, but it at least shows that any blanket generalization will be demonstrably too hasty.
I wouldn’t trust the pain-stream media as far as I could throw them. Abrasive idiots like Kieth Olberman make me want to re-introduce things like drawing & quartering!
@CaptainHarley I find pretty much all contemporary political discourse to be rather disappointing.
Honestly? I don’t like either of them. Then again, I don’t like Olberman and the others of his ilk either! Heh!
Answer this question 
Composing members:
0
