Topic: Media Research Center
Randy Hall fretted in an Aug. 29 NewsBusters post:
Even as the Democrats inveigh against President Trump's rudeness to media outlets, Beto O'Rourke's campaign ejected a prominent Breitbart senior editor from a campaign event at a "historically black college" in South Carolina on Tuesday. As if Beto doesn’t have enough to worry about as he craters in the polls, now he can't handle one non-cheerleader in his press entourage.
According to an article written for Politico by national political correspondent David Siders, the campaign acknowledged the following day that it had “booted” Pollak and criticized Breitbart News in the process.
But if an ejected reporter failed to be a pro-Trump cheerleader, the MRC is totally cool with it.
We've previously documented the MRC's war on CNN correspondent Jim Acosta for failing to be subservient to Trump, cheering his brief eviction from the White House press corps.But he's not the only White House reporter whose suspension the MRC has championed.
Playboy correspondent Brian Karem's White House press pass was suspended in July following a kerfuffle between him and former White House aide Sebastian Gorka at the White House's social media summit (which the MRC was a part of) that escalated after Karem snarked that "this is a group who are eager for demonic possession."
Curtis Houck declared Karem to be a "clown" who was "seemingly challenging Gorka to a fight" by inviting Gorka to have a "long conversation" (perhaps Houck can show us how exactly that translates into a fight challenge). Houck insisted that Karem was the one who was "mak[ing] a scene" and "act[ing] like an immature teenager" when the video shows that Gorka was being the belligerent one.He concluded by sneering, "My goodness journalists are so insufferable." And Gorka isn't?
hief MRC partisan snarker Tim Graham weighed in with an Aug. 4 post cheering that Karem's House press pass had been suspended, further complaining that Playboy tweeted about the incident "like they're a First Amendment giant instead of a naked-girly magazine," adding that "It's a chance to remind everyone that Karem is another screeching egotist that CNN pretends is a worthy representative of journalism." (Again: And Gorka isn't a screeching egotist?)
When a judge ordered Karem's press pass to be restored, Houck predictably didn't take it well, again blaming Karem for the "meltdown and near scuffle" with Gorka and asserted that the "juvenile" Karem is "the bronze medalist in carnival barking" behind Acosta and April Ryan. Houck's hatred for journalists who refuse to cozy up to Trump was all too apparent, sneering that "Cloaking onself in the First Amendment is perhaps one of the things the press does better than, well, actually doing their jobs" and that Karem is "a detestable insult ... to the idea of journalism" for being critical of another Houck-beloved Republican, Mitch McConnell.
Of course, if Houck really wants to see detestable insults to the idea of journalism, he need only look down the hall at the Trump sycophants at the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com.
