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Press Coverage of Townhall Protests Not the Same as Protests in 2002

A FoxNews.com piece by Bill Sammon provides an enlightening analysis of press coverage of the current townhall protests and protests in the run-up to the Iraq War in 2002.

“News outlets that are focusing on the incendiary rhetoric of conservatives outside President Obama’s town hall meeting Tuesday ignored the incendiary rhetoric — and even violence — of liberals outside an appearance by former President George W. Bush in 2002,” Sammon says in his article.

He details that protesters of the Iraq War in one instance bullied a wheelchair-bound grandfather with multiple sclerosis, slashed car tires, had altercations with police officers and brandished signs with incendiary rhetoric.

But Sammon notes the mainstream media did not report this protest as “increasingly ugly scenes of partisan screaming matches, scuffles, threats and even arrests,” as The New York Times did in a recent article about those at the townhall meetings regarding health care reform.

Tags: incendiary rhetoric, mainstream media, townhall meeting