Grading the mainstream corporate media

Well, the test results are in. Friday, marches were held across the country to urge President Obama administration to adhere to his campaign promise to reform immigration policy in America, and the marches were forecast to draw attendees comparable on a nationwide level to those ludicrous, hate-filled "tea parties" on April 15. As I suggested, the mainstream corporate media had a chance this weekend to demonstrate just how "fair and balanced" they (allegedly) are by covering these "liberal" marches to an extent equivalent to how they drooled all over themselves promoting and reporting from the "conservative" tea parties.

So, how'd they do? Well, about as well as one would expect from a "Fourth Estate" that is securely suckling at the teat of the Republican Party.

That's not to say there was no coverage at all. Here in America's Wang™, for example, one of the state's leading newspapers, the Orlando Sentinel, took the bold step of publishing an Associated Press pool piece about the marches ... although to their credit there also was an article about the Orlando march that drew about 125, well below the estimated 20,000 who attended in 2006.

Meanwhile, the Naples Daily News provided local coverage of a march in Immokalee that, like the aforementioned AP article, focused less on the message of the marches than on the supposed cause for their "disappointing" attendance: the swine flu scare.

And although organizers didn’t expect to see numbers quite like those of the 2006 marches, they were disappointed when just over 100 people attended the Immokalee event.

The event’s timing was not the best, organizers admitted, as health officials tried to clamp down on a swine flu epidemic.

For most rally organizers, swine flu was secondary to promoting immigration reform, including pathways to citizenship for an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants who have renewed hope buoyed by Barack Obama in the White House and a Democratic-controlled Congress.

But the swine flu scare took a toll, Hernandez said, especially when a second case was confirmed in Lee County.

“I think that the people got scared,” Hernandez said after the event adding that she would have cancelled the event had she known of the second case earlier in the day.

Attendance of over 100 in Immokalee, 2,000 in Washington, D.C., and similar crowds elsewhere (2,000 in Chicago, a "large" but undefined gathering in Milwaukee, about 1,000 in San Jose, even 400 in Greeley, Colo.) might suggest -- even in light of the lower numbers allegedly due to the swine flu scare -- that this was a major undertaking whose total attendance rivaled estimates of the national "tea party" turnout. But, naturally, other than a handful of patronizing articles about how fewer people marched this year than in the past (due in part, it was supposed, not so much to swine flu as to fears of arrest and deportation or "lost hope" in the immigration-reform movement), the media chose to ignore it.

Heckuva job, mainstream corporate media. Thanks for reminding us once again how much you're in the pocket of the right wing in this country.