Elijah's Corner: our youth's perspective

Written by Peg Dunmire on July 06, 2010, 09:31 AM

When I first met with her, she seemed a vibrant, go-getter and appeared as someone hungry to make positive changes in the system. I was soon briefed for my first Tea Party mission, to scan the web for articles that had publicized a false rumor intended to hurt the movement. Apparently a number of newspapers and blogs had not been fact-checking their information concerning the party. The rotten fruit heard on the grapevine was that Dunmire’s opponent, Democrat Alan Grayson, was lending a hand in funding the party to split the Republican vote, increasing his chances of maintaining his place in office. This would strongly suggest that the tea party is nothing but a political pawn.
Even I’m not naive enough to think the press is completely accurate in every detail it presents to the public, but I was shocked at how many articles presented the false story. Tens of local newspapers and a few national ones reported on the “connection between Grayson and the Tea Party” including, Sunshine News, Salon News, The Washington Post, Orlando Sentinel, The Daily Beast, CQ Politics, and many others; most without even giving mention to the fact that Dunmire has affirmed she is the sponsor, and Grayson has issued a statement saying he has given nothing to the movement.
I had done work on my own school newspaper and yearbook, and well know that fact-checking is an essential part of the journalism process, and failure to do so usually results in embarrassment or punishment, being either getting an F, or being suspended from the program. It’s like cheating. These writers and bloggers don’t appear to be receiving their F’s, or even apologizing, this is probably because they don’t view the third party TEA movement to be substantial and feel free to disrespect it by slacking a bit. However, In recent polls, the results show that Dunmire has around 20% of the public’s support thus far, a pretty significant figure, and definitely justifying the Tea party is deserving of better news coverage.
If someone wanted to find news and information concerning the party, they’d very likely go online and explore the articles available. Yet with so many publicizing the same rumor, even if that someone researched well, they’d probably come to the conclusion that the rumors must be true; because most people, don’t have the intimacy with the campaign that I have recently acquired and couldn't know when the wool is being pulled over their eyes.
I believe that the TEA party is a much needed addition to our politics. Peg Dunmire wants to do some cleaning up by taking steps to get the country out of debt after all the splurging and spending out of its means. Some say that even my grandchildren will still have the task of digging America out of the hole that this last generation made. I would like to see changes made that are not operated out of greed or agendas that aren’t in the publics best interest; that is what the TEA party promises, and since the right and left sides have been so disappointing for so long, I say they are much welcomed and deserve our attention.

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