Tea Party vs. US Social Forum

When it comes to covering activist gatherings, corporate media have established clear standards: Numbers don't count nearly as much as politics do. Last fall, when tens of thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists and their allies marched on Washington in a grassroots rally for equality, media gave it far less coverage than the similarly sized, largely corporate-funded Tea Party protest in Washington just a month earlier (Extra!, 12/09). So it came as little surprise that the Tea Party Convention this February would get more coverage than the June U.S. Social Forum, five days of strategizing, organizing and activism inspired by the World Social Forum launched in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2001. What was a little shocking, though, was just how stark the difference was. The Social Forum, in Detroit, drew an estimated 15,000"20,000 progressive activists from around the country, while the Tea Party Convention in Nashville hosted a meager 600 attendees. Two activist gatherings striving for political and social change, one at least 25 times larger than the other"but the smaller one got all the media coverage. Across 10 major national outlets in the two weeks surrounding each event, the Tea Party got 177 mentions to the Social Forum's three. (Per participant, the Tea Party got 1,500 times as many mentions.) It was almost a total blackout for the USSF. Aside from local coverage, the only corporate media mentions found in the Nexis database came from Glenn Beck (Fox News, 6/29/10, 6/30/10)"warning viewers about "socialists and communists coming out of the woodwork to co-opt the youth and spread a dangerous disease""and Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman, a guest on John King's CNN show (6/30/10).