Part 10 (2/2)

CHAPTER 4.

1. ”Report: 'Fair and Balanced' Fox News Aggressively Promotes 'Tea Party' Protests,” Media Matters for America, April 8, 2009.

2. Alex Isenstadt, ”Town Halls Gone Wild,” Politico, July 31, 2009. A Politico editor later bragged that his site had ”been the first to establish the 'town halls gone wild' meme ...,” according to Greg Marx, ”An Oversteeped Tea Party?” Columbia Journalism Review, April 22, 2010.

3. Dan Eggen and Philip Rucker, ”Loose Network of Activists Drives Reform Opposition,” Was.h.i.+ngton Post, Sunday, August 16, 2009.

4. Paul Steinhauser, ”Retreat for New Lawmakers to Emphasize Tea Party Goals,” CNN Political Ticker, November 11, 2010. For more accurate coverage of the retreat, see Amy Gardner, ”FreedomWorks gathers GOP lawmakers to refocus on tea party goals,” Was.h.i.+ngton Post, November 12, 2010.

5. Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Cappella, Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

6. Michael Schudson, Discovering The News: A Social History Of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1981).

7. That conservatives dominate the talk radio format is agreed upon by both liberals and conservatives. John Halpin, James Heidbreder, Mark Lloyd, Paul Woodhull, Ben Scott, Josh Silver, S. Derek Turner. ”The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio,” Center for American Progress, June 20, 2007. Warner Todd Huston, ”Top 100 Radio Host List, Dominated By Conservatives-Rush #1,” NewsBusters, February 13, 2008.

8. See, for instance, Seth Ackerman, ”The Most Biased Name in News,” Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, July/August 2001. Available at /2009/09/30/fox-news-dominates-3q-200_n_304260.html as of March 14, 2011.

11. ”News Audiences Increasingly Politicized,” Pew Center for the People and the Press, June 8, 2004.

12. Paul Fahri, ”Limbaugh's Audience Size? It's Largely Up in the Air,” Was.h.i.+ngton Post, March 7, 2009.

13. ”Limbaugh holds onto his niche: conservative men,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, February 3, 2009.

14. Ibid.

15. Michael Schneider, ”TV viewers' average age hits 50,” Variety, June 29, 2008; Michael Wolff, ”Rush Limbaugh: The Man Who Ate the GOP,” Vanity Fair, May 2009.

16. Danny Shea, ”Fox News Audience Just 1.38% Black,” Huffington Post, July 26, 2010, available at /2010/07/26/fox-news-audience-just-13_n_659800.html as of March 14, 2011.

17. Peter Dreier and Christopher R. Martin, ”How ACORN Was Framed: Political Controversy and Media Agenda Setting.” Perspectives on Politics 8(03): 761792 (2010).

18. Markus Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy: How Media Choice Increases Inequality in Political Involvement and Polarizes Elections. 1st ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

19. ”Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, May 4, 2011. Available at people-press.org/2011/05/04/section-3-demographics-and-news-sources/ as of May 14, 2011.

20. Charles S. Taber and Milton Lodge, ”Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs.” American Journal of Political Science 50(3): 755769 (2006).

21. David Barstow, ”Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on the Right,” New York Times, February 16, 2010.

22. Paul Lazersfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet, The People's Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944).

23. Not just right-wing outlets, but also reporters at Huffington Post and Politico picked up the story via Drudge. So influential is the Drudge Report that these articles were actually covering the fact that Drudge was giving prominence to Santelli's performance on CNBC as much as the video itself. Jason Linkins, ”Rick Santelli's Revolution: CNBC Reporter Freaks Out, Wants to Be Che Guevara,” Huffington Post, February 19, 2009. Michael Calderone, ”CNBC's Santelli fires up traders,” Politico, February 19, 2009.

24. Mich.e.l.le Malkin had earlier sent a tray of pulled pork to feed the dozens of attendees at one of the first anti-Stimulus protests in Seattle, weeks before the term Tea Party gained national currency. Mich.e.l.le Malkin, ”Gimme, gimme, gimme: More scenes from the anti-Obama ent.i.tlement backlash,” Mich.e.l.le Malkin blog, February 19, 2009. Available at mich.e.l.lemalkin.com/2009/02/19/gimme-gimme-gimme-more-scenes-from-the-anti-obama-backlash/ as of May 11, 2011.

25. Video of this speech was available at video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2121564008630451568# as of May 12, 2011.

26. Video of this speech comes from Mike Gallagher's YouTube feed, and is captioned, ”Mike appeared at a Tea Party in Greenville, SC sponsored by his radio affiliate News Radio WORD where more than 1000 people attended this very spirited event in the upstate of South Carolina.” Available at /watch?v=jDrqlOMAFd4&;feature=related as of May 21, 2011.

27. ”Backlash Against Those Suffering From Mortgages They Can't Afford,” CNN Newsroom, March 5, 2009.

28. Greta Van Susteren, Fox on the Record with Greta Van Susteren, February 27, 2009. Glenn Beck, Beck, March 18, 2009.

29. Newt Gingrich, Fox on the Record with Greta Van Susteren, March 27, 2009.

30. Glenn Beck, Beck, April 7, 2009.

31. Sean Hannity, Fox Hannity, April 7, 2009.

32. Sean Hannity, Fox Hannity, April 8, 2009. Glenn Beck, Beck, April 8, 2009.

33. Glenn Beck and Arthur Laffer, Beck, April 13, 2009.

34. ”Hosting the Party: Fox aired at least 20 segments, 73 promos on ”tea party” protests-in just 8 days,” Media Matters, April 15, 2009. Available at: mediamatters.org/research/200904150033?f=h_latest as of March 21, 2011.

35. Glenn Beck, Beck, April 6, 2009.

36. In the graphs below, peak CNN coverage of Tea Party activity is actually slightly higher than Fox News coverage; the may be due in part to the slightly more limited transcripts provided by Fox News compared to CNN. Three regular Fox News shows are not included in the transcripts available by either Lexis Nexis or Factiva: ”Huckabee.” ”Fox and Friends Weekend,” and ”Red Eye with Greg Gutman.”

37. Vanessa Williamson, Theda Skocpol, and John Coggin, ”The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism,” Perspectives on Politics 9 (1) (March 2011).

38. In the first two years of the Tea Party, both Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly actually referred to the Tea Party on more shows than Glenn Beck did. Moreover, fully half of the over 1800 transcripts referring to the Tea Party were not hosted by any of these top names.

39. The 9/12 Project was launched on-air on Beck's March 13th, 2009, show on Fox-about two weeks after the first tea parties were held.

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