Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has been getting a lot of mileage out of the revelation that ABC's George Stephanopoulos donated $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation; one fundraising email declared Stephanopoulos "corrupt" while begging for money. As Paul Waldman at the Washington Post pointed out, Stephanopoulos' conflict of interest plays into conservatives' anti-media agenda, and that "From now through next November, conservatives will claim that every story that reflects poorly on Hillary Clinton is just accurate reporting, while every story that reflects well on her (or poorly on Republicans) demonstrates the media’s pernicious liberal pro-Clinton bias."
To do all that, of course, the MRC has to studiously ignore all the times that Fox News personalities advocated for causes they had personal or financial connections to, as well as all the conservatives who have donated to the Clinton Foundation, like Newsmax's Christopher Ruddy.
The MRC's anti-Stephanopoulos propaganda campaign extends to its "news"division, where a a May 15 article by Susan Jones quotes Peter Schweizer, author of an anti-Hillary attack book, wanting a do-over on his interview with Stephanopoulos. Jones claimed that during the interview, "Stephanopoulos repeatedly questioned the accuracy of 'Clinton Cash,' insisted that there was no evidence of criminality on the part of the Clintons, and suggested that Schweizer was conducting a partisan attack."
But as we noted, Schweizer admitted during his interview with Stephanopoulos that he had no evidence to back up the allegations in his book.
Jones doesn't mention that the accuracy of Schweizer's book has been justifiably question because it does, in fact, contain numerous errors -- more than 20, according to one count. The fact that several of those inaccurate claims have been corrected or deleted in an e-book version would seem to be an admission of guilt on that count.
Further, Schweizer is on record as apparently lying about his purported bipartisanship. After Schweizer claimed that he was working on something about the finances of Jeb Bush, his publisher denied that any book by Schweizer about Bush similar to "Clinton Cash" was in the offing. Further, the think tank Schweizer runs, the Government Accountability Institute, has funding ties with the Koch brothers and right-wing billionaire Robert Mercer, who you might remember as the sugar daddy financing the increasingly quixotic campaigns by Oregon right-winger Art Robinson for Peter DeFazio's congressional seat (the other main booster of which has been WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian).
So, yeah, Schweizer is an inaccurate reporter driven by partisanship. But the MRC doesn't want you to know that.
