I may be the only columnist left in America who hasn't written a piece on why so many Americans are angry. It's a slam-dunk column topic, a chance to fill the space quickly while venting one's own anger with pithy descriptions of the problems we're facing and the people we feel are responsible.
The only question I can see about the anger is why it surprises anybody.
Face it, most people would like to believe there's some cosmic justice in the world. It's an age-old instinct: Think back to the Bible, where people ask Jesus, in effect, "Is it because of this man's sin or the sin of his parents that he was born blind?" If the man's blindness is seen as punishment for sin instead of an accident of birth, the people around him can feel less afraid that it will happen to them.
Today we think less in terms of God's punishment for sin and more in terms of natural consequences that could have been foreseen and avoided. "People lose their jobs because they're lazy or incompetent; I'm smart, I'm hardworking and I've got 20 years of seniority, so it won't happen to me." "When seniors live in poverty, it's because they didn't save enough for their retirement. I put the maximum in my 401(k) every month, so it will never happen to me." "The biggest cause of bankruptcy is high medical bills. I've got health insurance, so it will never happen to me."
Now we look around us and see that doing the right thing doesn't protect us, and people who blatantly did the wrong thing are being rewarded. Of course we're scared -- and angry.
The Tea Parties are just the tip of the iceberg -- a group of people with one view of what's wrong and who's responsible -- but the Tea Parties are what will get more and more of the anger directed toward the media if we don't wade in and explain some things about news coverage. Like it's not a machine where every time you put in a rally with 5,000 people, a 15-inch story comes out.
There is no absolute standard of "newsworthy" as in "this story is newsworthy and that one isn't," nor is there a given amount of coverage a given event deserves. It's a matter of allocating resources, which for most news outlets these days are getting scarcer. In deciding what to cover and where to run it, we look at what else is happening that day, how much staff we have and how much space (or air time) is available.
The original nationwide Tea Party got tons of coverage from everybody for a number of reasons. The protesters weren't the usual suspects, the tea bags were eye-catching, the protests took place at state capitols on a weekday during the legislative session (i.e., when capitol reporters were available to cover them) and, most important, it took place on Tax Day. We newsies all need a Tax Day story because taxes affect everybody, but after all these years it's hard to think of a fresh angle. Plus, Tax Day is usually a slow news day because so many people are holed up at home doing arithmetic instead of outside causing trouble.
So, although the significance of the Tea Party may have been related to how many people showed up, the expression of taxpayer anger and all the other factors the pundits weighed in on, the reason it got the coverage it did was that -- for all the reasons cited in the above paragraph and possibly a few others I've overlooked -- it was the answer to a newsman's prayer.
Subsequent Tea Parties haven't received anything like that kind of coverage, and they're not likely to. With the same gimmick and virtually the same message ("We're still angry"), the Tea Party protesters are now among the usual suspects rallying at the Capitol. These groups are legion, from teachers and state workers to abortion foes and people with an interest in a particular bill, and most of these gatherings don't get much coverage -- it's just the rally du jour, good for a story if there's not much else going on or if a local lawmaker is sponsoring the bill involved.
Then, the last Tea Party took place on a Sunday, when most of us have skeleton crews. We had one reporter and a double fatality auto accident. I wasn't on desk that day, but I would have made the same choice.
By the same token, the reason so many other kinds of rallies before and since the Tax Day Tea Party haven't been given that kind of coverage isn't that we agreed with the Tea Partiers and not with you.
It may have been accidental that all the factors lined up for super coverage of the Tax Day Tea Party, but it seems to me more likely that some media-savvy individual or group planned it for maximum impact -- and succeeded. With that kind of creativity available, the Tea Partiers could go on to great things.
Or their next effort could be wiped off Page 1 by a massive tornado. You never know -- and until the time comes, neither do we.
Linda Henley 366-3530 citydesk@normantranscript.com
