ABC, NBC Chide Unemployed Protesters as ‘AsrtoTurf’ ‘Not Reflected’ in Polls

Nicholas Fondacaro | April 19, 2020
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***To read the full blog, please check out the complete post on NewsBusters***

As media elitists, their jobs were safe and they could easily work from home. But during their Sunday morning newscasts, ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Sunday Today, chided and cast aside the unemployed Americans taking to the streets as state stay-at-home orders left them in financial ruin. ABC even suggested their angry protests could be “AstroTurf” movements designed to embarrass Democrats, and NBC dismissed them because they were “not reflected” in the polls.

After first portraying Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as the voice of reason on keeping things shutdown indefinitely, NBC correspondent Kathy Park noted that “there's growing pressure in other parts of the country for people who want to get back to work and they're protesting to make happen.”

Showing how the protests were a nationwide occurrence, Park reported that “Hundreds pack the sidewalk in Milwaukee as they protested a stay-at-home order extended through May 26th. In Maryland, a rally of cars clogged streets of Annapolis as they demanded an end to the shutdown.”

But she tossed them aside by saying they were not reflected in the polls. “These raw emotions are not reflected in a new Pew Research poll showing two-thirds of Americans are concerned the restrictions will be lifted too quickly,” she declared.

Logic would tell you that that’s because a majority weren’t hit particularly hard by the economic downturn and lost their jobs. With some estimated figures suggesting the unemployment rate was somewhere in the teens, they should be listened to in some way. Yet, on ABC, they did a lot to throw these hurting people away.

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