Topic: Media Research Center
Because Donald Trump is a chronic liar, the Media Research Center must now cast doubt on the existence of facts and denounce all fact-checkers as biased (thus proving Stephen Colbert right yet again).
In their July 20 column, the MRC's Tim Graham and Brent Bozell were upset that the media would dare fact-check reliable right-wing ranter Patricia Smith, whose son died in the Benghazi attack:
PolitiFact put a picture of this angry mother on their home page with the headline "Checking Patricia Smith's claims about Clinton and Benghazi." The suggestion? Smith probably told some whoppers on the floor in Cleveland.
But the article that followed was, to borrow from [the Wall Street Journal's James] Taranto, "mere opinions on matters about which they do not know the facts." PolitiFact creator Bill Adair wrote, "We can't put Smith's claims on the Truth-O-Meter. But here, we'll lay out the case for and against the allegations against Clinton and let readers come to their own conclusion."When the review of what the survivors of the four men lost in Benghazi said was finished, PolitiFact merely threw up its hands, claiming that none of these grieving relatives can really be trusted as reliable providers of fact.
[...]
To Politi-"Fact," Clinton's record of lying about her server doesn't tilt the scales of credibility. In another article on Monday night, the website suggested grieving relatives might have "fuzzy" memories. Adair even suggested that even if Clinton was incorrect, she might not have been lying: "If she did say something about the video, would it have been an intentional lie? It's very possible that this is one of the many conflicting pieces of intelligence that the administration was working with at the time."
Adair claimed no one can really claim Clinton lied: "There simply is not enough concrete information in the public domain for Rubio or anyone to claim as fact that Clinton did or did not lie to the Benghazi families."
Adair and his ilk aren't fact-checking in any way. They're masquerading in fact-checker costumes to engage in shameless speculation, blather and spin favoring democrats.
Yes, how dare the media demand Smith to be bound by facts? All that matters to Graham and Bozell is that she was spewing as much venom as possible at Hillary Clinton -- not whether any actual facts back up her hate.
That's "media research" at the MRC these days.
