MSM Coverage of Tea Party Protests: Blueprint for a Smear

Latest developments in the slandering of the Tea Party Movement: Hack Flack Div.

Was there collusion among the MSM narrative in labeling the Tea Party protesters as “racists”? Could be. Doug Ross contributes some interesting discoveries in “Tale of Two Time-Stamps.”

[ABOVE: Meeting of "journalists" involved in "covering" the Tea Party protests?]

The latest developments in the ongoing investigation in the smear and slander campaign against the Tea Party protesters at the health care rally in Washington a few weeks ago.

* Doug Ross [Tale of Two Time-Stamps...] did some bang-up work following up on the timeline first provided by Jack Cashill, American Thinker.

Cashill first.

I asked because at 4:51 that same day, McClatchy reporter William Douglas posted an article on the McClatchy website with the inflammatory headline, “Tea party protesters scream ‘ni–er’ at black congressman.”

In other words, Douglas, with an attributed assist from James Rosen, managed to interview representatives John Lewis, Emanuel Cleaver, and Barney Frank, compose an 800-word article, and have it edited and formatted for posting within a 90-minute window.

During that same 90 minutes, Douglas would have received and incorporated a press release from Emanuel Cleaver, making the easily disproved claim that he had “been spat upon and that Capitol Police had arrested his assailant.”

Ross noticed something about the time-stamps.

But the Huffington Post’s article, by Sam Stein, wasn’t published until 4:56pm, five minutes after Douglas’ article was posted on the web. This mistake would seem to point to wanton collusion between the two authors as they hastily worked to market the smears.

…and much more.

Mike Seibel, who edited the Douglas piece cordially responded to Ross’ article and provided screenshots of the McClatchy CMS (content management system).

Still, questions remain. Ross presented four of them.

1. How is it that an inflammatory word like ni–er wasn’t redacted, especially when the story was unconfirmed?
2. Now that more than a dozen videos have emerged of the walks, with none showing the use of a racial epithet, how is that a retraction was never issued for this story?
3. Does it strike you as odd that McClatchy’s Nico Pitney re-tweeted an inflammatory HuffPo headline within one minute, apparently without even reading the accusation?
4. Does anyone wonder what’s going with HuffPo’s CMS when the story says it was “First Posted: 03-20-10 04:56 PM” (see above for screen-shot), yet tweet links started occurring 45 minutes before that timestamp?

Though there were literally hundreds of video cams and other recording devices rolling at the time, there remains no evidence this event ever occurred. Andrew Breitbart has offered $100,000 for proof that any racial slurs were shouted at the Congressmen at the Tea Party protest. Two weeks later, there are no takers.

Gateway Pundit has a nice recap to date, including the following.

UPDATE: The lies are unraveling… Black Dem Rep. Emanuel Cleaver who said he was spit on now says others are making the claim up on his behalf.

What’s apparent is that this whole “incident” was a set-up. What’s also apparent is that the Mainstream press was either an accomplice–or a dupe.

After the Mainstream press’ disgraceful performance during Election 2008–blacking out news of John Edward affair; the NY Times McCain smear job with no evidence; the LA Times’ suppression of the Obama-Khalidi video; the non-reporting of Obama’s socialist New Party membership; and more–this continues their march to the bottom.

Loss of integrity and ethics happened long ago.

Oblivion is next.

The talking heads where the business decisions are made at Big Media confuse the symptom–the Internet–for the disease. News consumers turn to the Internet because they can’t find and/or don’t trust the news product coming from the Progressive Liberal media.

It’s a sad state of affairs when a writer has to put scare quotes around the word “journalist” whenever it pertains to employees of the Mainstream Media.

Increasingly, that’s where we’re at.

by Mondo Frazier
image: FanPop