Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Brad Wilmouth writes in a July 15 post:
On Friday's MSNBC Live, host Craig Melvin denied that the dominant news media have a liberal bias after Republican Congressman Dave Brat started hitting him with reports that over 96 percent of journalists who made political donations chose Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. A bit later, Melvin denied biased reporting as he declared, "Even if that bias did exist -- which, I mean, Dave, it doesn't -- even if it did --" Brat zinged him: "If it exists? Now, you got to come clean with me on that one."At about 1:32 p.m. ET, after the MSNBC host began the interview by asking the Virginia Republican about Donald Trump Jr.'s emails and Russia collusion, Brat began complaining about the media's history of going soft on Democrats, and tied in their tendency to donate overwhelmingly to the liberal side. Brat:
No one gets to play the innocent here. Hillary raised $2 billion in the Hillary foundation from foreign money, and CNN and all the biggies never found anything on that. The Washington Post is great on Watergate, but they missed Clintongate altogether. Why is that? Well, maybe it's because 97 percent of the donations from mainstream (media) folks go to the Democrat party. Gee, I wonder if that could, you know, influence the news at all.The congressman was apparently referring to an October 2016 finding by the Center for Public Integrity that more than 96 percent of journalists who gave large amounts money to presidential candidates that year had given to Clinton.
But that poll has been discredited because of its dishonesty. As we've documented, CPI's definition of "journalist" is so broad it includes people who haven't worked in journalism for years as well as TV talking heads like Larry King who aren't getting paid to be journalists. Most of the working journalists in hard news that CPI cites as making political donations are employed by small local papers, not large national media organizations that generally prohibit reporters from making poltiical donations.
That the MRC remains dedicated to promoting such a dishonest "study" tells you a lot about the lack of quality in the MRC's work.
