Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center continued its conspiratorial ways by blaming the media for reporting unflattering news about Donald Trump in the Oct. 14 column by MRC Brent Bozell and Tim Graham, which asserts the conspiracy is real:
We once scoffed at the suggestion there was some form of a liberal media conspiracy against conservatives. Do liberals meet for breakfast and plan attacks on their ideological foes? Of course not, we'd answer. It's not a conspiracy. It's a mindset wherein what is liberal is good, and what is conservative is in opposition to what is good.
Apparently it was a conspiracy after all. The latest emails emerging from WikiLeaks have brought in the evidence. There is an unquestionable collusion between "objective" journalists and the Clinton campaign. Leaked emails show that her operatives discuss which reporters were the most pliant recyclers of their narratives (they picked Maggie Haberman of The New York Times). But reporter Mark Leibovich — also from the Times — gave Clinton's communications director, Jen Palmieri, veto power over quotes to be included in a Clinton profile in July.
It's not just WikiLeaks that has provided numerous other examples documenting the inseparable nature of the Clinton-media relationship. What TMZ has reported on the Trump tape with the shameless sex banter is far more telling. An article published yesterday by TMZ staff said: "Multiple sources connected with NBC tell us ... top network execs knew about the video long before they publicly said they did, but wanted to hold it because it was too early in the election. The sources say many NBC execs have open disdain for Trump and their plan was to roll out the tape 48 hours before the debate so it would dominate the news cycle leading up to the face-off."
In this election, it's now documented fact that "newsgathering" was not the goal of the architects of our top newspapers and newscasts. Rather, it was victory for the Democrats.
Bozell and Graham also claimed that Trump had "half-joked" that he'd throw Clinton in jail if elected president, whining that "the media bigwigs ranted and wailed that Trump sounded like Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler or a garden-variety tin-pot dictator." But Trump's repeated insistence Clinton should be jailed puts the lie to any claim of a "joke" and shows just how in the tank Bozell and Graham are for Trump.
Another sign of their in-the-tankness: In constructing this purported campaign-media conspiracy, the MRC is deliberately ignoring another one.
In August, Steve Bannon, the leader of Breitbart News, became the CEO of Trump's campaign. Repeat: The head of a media organization went directly from that to becoming the head of a political campaign -- something we are pretty sure never happened with any mainstream media organization. That is, in the flesh, the media-campaign collusion conspiracy that the MRC only imagines is happening in the "liberal media."
But has the MRC complained about it? Nope!
When Bannon's appointment to the Trump campaign was first announced, the MRC complained that Breitbart News was being maligned for its occasional anti-Semitic tendencies and how its incendiary content was accurately labeled as such.It said nothing at the time about the obvious media-campaign collusion.
Nor has it since. In fact, it's whitewashing Bannon's media connection completely. An Oct. 12 post by Graham complains that a Washington Post columnist "unloaded a Two Minutes Hate column on Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon," and he doesn't even acknolwedge Bannon is also the head of a media outlet.
Of course, pointing out right-wing media-campaign collusion, even when it's in plain sight, doesn't serve the MRC's -- or Trump's -- agenda. Feeding Trump's anti-media conspriacy, however, does.
