Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell and his Media Research Center have no problem joining Donald Trumpm in the slime in trying to distract attention from Trump's vile misogyny and playing the Clinton Equivocation card.
Having previously whined about the October-surprise nature of the "Access Hollywood" video in which Trump is caught saying incredibly vulgar things, Bozell and Tim Graham hit that again in their Oct. 12 column:
Smelling Trump's blood in the water, the Clinton-enabling press sprang into action. None of them seemed to reflect for 5 seconds about how Trump could be describing Bill Clinton's modus operandi. Trump talked as Clinton did. The press' moral outrage was as phony as Hillary Clinton's. "This is horrific," Clinton shamelessly tweeted. "We cannot allow this man to become president."
The women who were actually harassed by Bill Clinton were never offered any support from Hillary Clinton, or her feminist army in the press.
After reliving the 1990s once again, they rant: "So ask yourself this question: How many times since 1994 have TV interviewers asked Hillary Clinton what she did or didn't do to smear these women? Try and find one occasion. As repugnant as it was, Trump's offense was words. The Clintons' offenses were actions. The cynicism boggles the mind."
Of course, as we all know now, Trump's offense was not just words, making Bozell's column suddenly inoperative. So he went into rage-bot mode to more fully distract, complaining even more about the "Access Hollywood" tape of Trump and seizing on a TMZ report (so apparently celebrity gossip sites are credible sources at the MRC now?) that NBC sat on the tape until just before the Oct. 9 debate for fuller impact:
What NBC has done is a direct threat to the democratic process and evidence of what conservatives have been saying all along. A network that purports to hold itself up as an objective news source while at the same time attempts to fix an election has lost all credibility. NBC must take responsibility, apologize to Donald Trump, and fire whoever was behind the strategic release of this tape. If the rest of the media do not call out NBC for their actions, they are complicit in a cover-up. Until then, I call on fellow conservative leaders to join me in denouncing this network for its hypocrisy and deliberate abandonment of journalistic integrity.
Bozell has not similarly asked why the Trump campaign may very well be colluding with Russian officials to fix the election by releasing the stolen WikiLeaks emails of Clinton campaign officials -- even as his MRC complains the media is not sufficiently covering them.
Meanwhile, Terry Jeffrey, editor in chief of the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com -- which, like a good Trump-loving right-wing outlet, is downplaying Trump's misogyny and gave original coverage only to Trump's defenders -- similarly went into distraction mode with his Oct. 12 column, in which he rehashed the Clinton impeachment trial. Jeffrey didn't mention Trump or Hillary in his column, but his clear implication is that because President Clinton wasn't convicted, there's no basis on which to criticize Trump.
And what was CNS' first original article on the additional claims from women that Trump groped them? An article by by Melanie Hunter -- who wrote the articles downplaying the "Access Hollywood" video -- uncritically noting Trump's insistence that the claims against him are lies.
