Topic: Media Research Center
As we've documented, the MRC protected Trump from the torrent of falsehoods he spouted on a regular basis by attacking the fact-checkers who caught him as biased. Brent Bozell and Tim Graham's post-election column for the Media Research Center couldn't be more proud that facts no longer matter, [playing the false equivalence card by insisting without evbidence that Trump and Hillary Clinton lied equally: Trump can be careless with facts, and resistant to media shaming. But for these fact-checkers to claim Clinton is far more honest is preposterous. PolitiFact awarded its "Pants on Fire" tag to Trump 57 times to Clinton's seven. Likewise, Washington Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler reported that "Trump earned significant more four-Pinocchio ratings than Clinton — 59 to 7, and "The numbers don't lie."
Well, yes, they do. Just ask the parents of the brave men murdered in Benghazi if Clinton lies. Ask the FBI — even Director Comey, who exonerated her. Ask those who held hearings in the House and Senate and listened to her testimony. Ask those who have investigated the Clinton Foundation. They and so many others will speak to her endless lies. But not so the "fact checkers."
It is a given that the default position for the media elite is to rate liberal politicians "True" and conservatives of every faction "False." Take the vice presidential candidates on the PolitiFact "Truth-o-Meter" in this campaign. Tim Kaine was rated "True" or "Mostly True" 26 times, and Mike Pence drew those positive ratings only 8 times. Pence was "False" or "Mostly False" 18 times, and Kaine drew those marks only 11 times. Since Sept. 1, conservatives and Republicans have been scolded as "Pants on Fire" 28 times (fully 14 of those tags were for Trump). Liberals and Democrats? Only four (and only one for Clinton). That's a 7-to-1 tilt, and an obscene 14-to-1 tilt for the presidential candidates.
Bozell and Graham offer refuse to admit the possibility that Trump and Pence were called out for more falsehoods than their Democratic counterparts becaues they told more falsehoods. They don't prove otherwise.
In other words, they're simply throwing more shade at fact-checkers instead of criticizing their falsehood prone candidate. They conclude:
It's time to fact-check the fact checkers. In fact, it's already been done. According to a recent Rasmussen poll, just 29 percent of likely voters trust media fact-checking of the candidates, while 62 percent believed the media "skew the facts to help candidates they support."
Don't you just love the American people? They have awarded on big, fat "Pants on Fire" to the entire national news media for their fact-checking arrogance and plain old dishonesty. And that's a fact.
Bozell and Graham don't mention that Rasmussen has a pretty unambiguous conservative bias -- even Nate Silver thinks so -- or that Rasmussen Reports founder Scott Rasmussen is an occasional columnist at the MRC's NewsBusters blog -- a place Bozell would not allow him to write at were he not a conservative.
Those are facts, and Bozell and Graham are dishonest and arrogant to hide that from their readers. But then, have they ever not been?
