In their effort to draw attention away from the tea party movement which threatens to do tremendous and lasting damage to the Democrats' hope for a socialist state, the New York Times and the Washington Post both ran puff piece stories on a new leftist-oriented grassroots group, Coffee Party USA.But, as so often happens nowadays, these once-proud newspapers were so predisposed to tout the organization that they produced some very sloppy journalism. Or, worse still, they deliberately twisted the facts in order to get the ideological result they wanted.
Either way is shamefully irresponsible.
But then, that's the way of the old guard media: omit the facts that are counter-productive to their cause, use double standards, invent sources, manipulate language, idolize leftists while excoriating conservatives, and otherwise deny reality in order to sway public opinion towards the new order.
The MSM's tasks were a lot easier, however, before an alternative media arose to tell the American citizenry the other side of the story.
As in the case of the Times' and Post's reporting about Coffee Party USA.
For it turns out that the organization is not only far less influential than what these newspapers portrayed, it is anything but the spontaneous, grassroots, "independent of any party" deal that they reported. Indeed, Annabel Park, the filmmaker who directs the organization, is a Democrat activist who has been a potent (and very public) force in the campaigns of Jim Webb and Barack Obama.
For crying out loud, the registrant of the Coffee Party USA web site was, at the time the newspaper stories were written, still listed as Real Virginians for Webb!
These facts were well known to both newspapers...or certainly should have been had the most cursory search been made about her background. But why let the truth stand in the way of a good story?
No, if you're looking for the straight skinny about Coffee Party USA and the convenient blindness of the Times and Post towards it, you've got to zip over to Big Journalism and hear what Frank Ross has to say. It's a good piece of investigative reporting...and very well-written to boot.
