LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS -- TOWARD CONSERVATIVES

Just wanna suggest that it doesn't have to be national news every time a hundred idiots decide to gather outside a state house.

— Brendan Halpin (@bhalpin) April 17, 2020

He's right. Check out the lede of a story that appeared last night at The Washington Post:

More than a dozen protesters gathered near the governor’s mansion in Baton Rouge Friday calling for Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) to suspend measures designed to stop the spread of the coronavirus so people can go back to work.

Really? "More than a dozen" people show up to gripe and that's a news story? Sorry -- "more than a dozen" people isn't a protest, it's a small social gathering. It's not news.

The Post story links to a local news report that says a whopping seventeen people showed up. Here they are -- and yes, they appear to be all white, in the majority-black city of Baton Rouge.

Protesters at the Louisiana Governor’s Mansion Friday demand an immediate end to restrictions that have closed businesses, schools and churches to stem community spread of COVID-19. #lagov pic.twitter.com/uz9OFKfdRK

— Mark Ballard (@MarkBallardCnb) April 17, 2020

In the clip, these folks call themselves "real Americans" -- even though polling has shown nationwide support for an even more extensive shutdown that we've had, and even though Louisiana voters approve of Governor Edwards's approach to the virus by a 68% to 16% margin. It doesn't matter -- when the "liberal" media sees angry Caucasian right-wingers, it automatically regards them as The Genuine Voice Of The People.

I'll grant that the elite media might have liberal biases on some issues. The right has a point when it says that the sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden has received a lot less coverage than the one against Brett Kavanaugh (though the multiple allegations against Donald Trump haven't been covered thoroughly either, and I imagine that we'll have saturation coverage of the Biden allegation precisely when the right wants it, which is next fall).

But when the press wants to take the the pulse of the populace, it believes that a representative sample of "real Americans" is overwhelmingly white, blue-collar, and rural. The press is giving saturation coverage to mostly tiny anti-lockdown demonstrations out of the same impulse that, pre-coronavirus, inspired big-city reporters to venture into rural diners every few weeks so we could be reassured that, yes, Trump supporters still support Trump.

The GOP hacks and plutocrats who are ginning up these demonstrations know that the media will fall for them, the same way Bugs Bunny knows that Elmer Fudd will fall for all his schemes, even the schemes that are just like the ones Fudd fell for in the previous cartoons. On this at least, the press never learns. The right knows that, and is taking full advantage.