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Tuesday’s Media Reality Check documenting the broadcast networks’ incredible double standard on protests — how reporters zeroed in on inflammatory signs to try and discredit the Tea Party while ignoring similar or worse signs at the left-wing union protests in Wisconsin — garnered national media attention.
On Tuesday evening, nationally-syndicated radio host Mark Levin cited the study as proving how the media “are a disgrace, absolute disgrace. You did everything you could to trash the Tea Party movement, and you do everything you can right now to protect the vulgarity and poison of the Left and the thugs in Madison, Wisconsin.” (Full transcript and audio link below.)
On Thursday night, during the “Grapevine” segment of FNC’s Special Report, anchor Bret Baier led off with MRC’s study:
Conservatives are alleging a double standard of media coverage of the labor protests. Signs have shown up in Wisconsin likening Republican Governor Scott Walker to Adolf Hitler and showing a target over his face with the slogan “Don’t Retreat, Reload.” The Media Research Center analyzed all news stories on CBS, ABC and NBC from last Thursday to Monday. It found eight of the 53 stories on the Wisconsin protest showed one or more of the questionable signs, but none elicited a remark from network journalists. However, MRC points out, in past months Tea Party signs were repeatedly denounced by the networks as uncivil.
The study was also cited by onetime CBS correspondent Bernard Goldberg (now a frequent media critic) in his latest column, “ The Lamestreams Strike Again — This Time in Madison,” and was published on the Wall Street Journal’s OpinionJournal.com page on Friday morning.
Towards the end of the first hour of his Tuesday radio program, Mark Levin used the MRC study, which was also posted on our NewsBusters blog, to tee up a segment on the national media’s “disgusting bias.” The audio is posted on MarkLevinShow.com (starts at 34:20); here’s the relevant transcript:
You know, over at NewsBusters, Rich Noyes points out the incredible media double standard, the incredible media double standard in the treatment of the NEA and the AFSCME and SEIU unions in Wisconsin, and the Tea Party rallies. And it is disgusting.
But it’s also useful, because the people have turned on the statist media. That’s what I called it in Liberty and Tyranny


