Around the Hoop

Big Media keeps blowing off Occupy Wall Street

While the Occupy Wall Street protests pick up steam from coast to coast, they're getting the Ron Paul treatment.

If there is anything Big Media fears more than Paul's anti-war agenda, it may be an anti-corporate one.

Check out this ThinkProgress video compilation revealing Big Media's general "disdain" for Occupy Wall Street:

Despite the fact that The New York Times and many in the mainstream media didn't begin covering the protests until it became too difficult to ignore, it is a big story. Police are beating demonstrators, spraying them with tear gas, and arresting 99 Percenters by the dozen. The movement has caught the attention and even won the sympathy of Fed Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who Congress on Tuesday asked what all the ruckus was about in the streets.

"I think people are quite unhappy with the state of the economy and what's happening," Bernanke told Congress. "They blame, with some justification, the problems in the financial sector for getting us into this mess. And they're dissatisfied with the policy response here in Washington. And at some level, I can't blame them."

As it resists to report that there is something happening here, Big Media asks: What are they even protesting?

Cable TV exile Keith Olbermann answered in resounding fashion as he blasted his ex-colleagues in a scathing indictment in which he declared media is "too corrupt or too dense to understand anything more complicated than whether the blond is missing or the verdict is guilty," adding that "precocious ninth-graders" are "passing for TV anchor newsmen these days." Olbermann then read what he said was the first official statement from the protesters.

In an Aspen Ideas-inspired discussion sponsored by the Aspen Institute and Atlantic magazine at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., Vice President Joe Biden likened the Occupy Wall Street movement to the tea party, saying both stem from middle-class frustration with the government's cozy financial relationship with corporate America.

“What is the core of that protest, and why is it increasing in terms of the people it is attracting? The core is that the bargain has been breached with the American people. The core is that the American people do not think the system is fair or on the level. That is the core of what you are seeing on Wall Street," he said. "Look guys the bargain is not on the level anymore in the minds of the vast majority of the American (people). The middle class has been screwed."

Biden noted the public outrage over Bank of America's announcement that it will soon impose a $5 fee for consumers to use their debit cards — a trend widely expected to sweep through the financial industry.

"The American people know... the reason the CEO of the Bank of America" is still in business is because "the guy making $50,000 bucks bailed him out. Bailed him out," Biden said today. Bank of America is "incredibly tone deaf at a minimum. At a maximum, they are not, they are not, paying their fair share of the bargain here.

"And middle class people are getting screwed," Biden said.