Topic: Media Research Center
Like WorldNetDaily, the Trump supporters at the Media Research Center were loath to to acknowledge Donald Trump's taped vile misogyny. NewsBusters, which surrently serves as the front door to much of the MRC's content, didn't acknowledge it until more than a day after the remarks were made public -- and then only in a post by Matthew Balan complaining that "purported excerpts from some of Hillary Clinton's speeches to corporate audiences" didn't get as much news coverage.
And on cue, Rich Noyes trotted out an article complaining that "ABC, CBS and NBC offered relentless coverage of the just-disclosed audio of Donald Trump in 2005 talking about his attempted sexual conquests" while there was comparitively scant coverage of Clinton's "hacked e-mails" with the purported speech excerpts. Noyes didn't explain why he thought the two vastly different stories deserved the exact same amount of media coverage, but he did have a snazzy bar graph:
That really happened -- the guy who was president grabbing them by the p****?! That it did -- and his name was Bill Clinton. By bizarre coincidence, he's married to the Democrats' nominee for president, Trump's opponent. And it was Hillary Clinton who led the pushback to destroy the reputations of women who accused her husband of grabbing them wherever and whenever the impulse seized him. One of the women was named Monica Lewinsky and she now devotes her life to a crusade against bullying. And back in the '90s, it was the Clintons and their hacks who bullied her the worst.
Curtis Houck tried to muddy the issue with the patented MRC "The liberal media reported on X but completely ignored [thing the MRC wants covered to advance its partisan agenda]" in a post complaining about the lack of coverage of some obscure Clinton campaign aide tweeting an F-bomb at Trump. Curiously, Houck censored all mention of the fact that said obscure aide apologized for his "inappropriate" language shortly afterwards.
But leave it to MRC chief Brent Bozell to simultaneously join Trump in the gutter and go on a conspiracy theory tear. In another friendly appearance on Fox Business, Bozell rants about the excess of coverage of Trump's remarks by echoing Trump and going there on 20-year-old tales about Bioll Clinton's sex life:
BOZELL: If you're going to object, let's object this way. We did a little bit of analysis, and what is more important: whatever Donald Trump said, which is disgusting, or the allegation, the eminently believable allegation, that Bill Clinton raped Juanita Broaddrick and Hillary Clinton subsequently threatened Juanita Broaddrick?
You cannot argue Donald Trump is more important, yet in 17 years, you did not get as much coverage of Juanita Broaddrick as you got on Donald Trump in 48 hours. Here's another one, here's another number -- you're going to like this one. 103 minutes given about Donald Trump this weekend. How much time was given to Paula Jones when she filed a lawsuit that said that the President of the United States took his pants down in front of her and told her to kiss it? 103 minutes on Donald Trump, 16 seconds, Paula Jones.
That little tidbit came from the end of Noyes' comparative-coverage item. The Jones coverage Bozell and Noyes is from February 1994 -- 22 years ago, making this the ultimate apples-and-oranges comparison. Tim Graham helpfully repeats the complaint in a post issued after Bozell's appearance, in which he also touches on his longtime obsession with potraying Anita Hill as a liar about Clarence Thomas and that she made her accusations only to advance her career: "Why was there no outburst of outrage [about Jones in 1994] from the same media which made the unsubstantiated Anita Hill a heroine in 1991 and turned sexual harassment into a grave political sin?"
The conspiracy theory came when Bozell asserted that NBC was sitting on the Trump tape to damage Trump just before the election:
BOZELL: It's an insult to the intelligence to suggest that they just found this. This is October surprise time, and this won't be last one. There will be more that will come out of it, and for them to say they just came across this when this has been in the record, when they've had access to it since the very beginning, really is an insulting statement. No, they've had it, they did it deliberately, the timing was deliberate, and this is -- by the way, I expected this, this was going to happen, and more will come out.
Bozell doesn't mention that, as the Washington Post explained, NBC's entertainment division, producer of "Access Hollywood," the show where Trump's remarks were uncovered, is separate from its news division. While NBC hasn't said when its news division first found out about the Trump clip, the news division did say it was in the midst of vetting the clip when a tipster alerted a Post reporter to its existence, which then forced NBC to release it.
Bozell's reference of more vulgar things from Trump to come out is an apparent reference to more off-color things Trump has allegedly said in outtakes from the NBC show "The Apprentice." But NBC doesn't own the rights to the show, which was produced by prolific reality TV producer Mark Burnett. He's married to Roma Downey, bets know for her acting role on conservative-fave show "Touched By an Angel," and they run a production company that specializes in religious-themed films. The MRC has defended Burnett and Downey and even touted the religious background of the actor who played Jesus in one Burnett-Downey production.
Variety reports that Burnett has been curiously silent about Trump throughout the campaign and notes that standard employment contracts for his shows include a $5 million fine for leaking material about them.
So, no, there does not appear to be a NBC-led conspiracy to destroy Trump. That won't keep Bozell from continuing to claim there is, however.
