So, the media kind of dropped the ball in not covering these tea parties, huh?

Most of the mainstream media fell down on the job, ignoring the growing movement or mocking it as a bunch of wingnuts.

The New York Times has run zero stories (the only mention was Times columnist Paul Krugman taking a brief swipe at the parties.) The Washington Post has done zip until today, with a story on two planned D.C. parties on Page B-4. The Chicago Tribune ran a 300-word story and an item on postal workers mistaking tea for a hazardous substance. The Los Angeles Times did a 500-word piece on a small protest in Hermosa Beach and has a media piece today. The Boston Globe, published in the city famed for the original tea party, nothing. CNN ran its first news story on the protests Monday (followed by a piece by me on the coverage). MSNBC’s coverage had consisted of Rachel Maddow and Ana Marie Cox mocking the “teabagging” until Chris Matthews held a more serious debate on Monday…

“There’s something dispiriting, though not surprising, in watching the conservative movement’s favorite news outlet shamelessly promote a political happening, while simultaneously claiming its coverage will be ‘fair and balanced,'” says James Rainey in the L.A. Times. “That said, some liberal media voices seem just as intent on squelching the protesters before they’ve shoveled a single bag of Lipton into a single pond.”