Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is so intent on refusing to acknowledge the humanity of journalists that it mocks and belittles them every time they express concerns about their safety in an era in which the president of the United States denounces them as the "enemy of the people" -- even as it fretted about a Fox News reporter who said she didn't feel safe at a protest outside the Supreme Court.
And it's particularly aggrieved when CNN employees are concerned about their safety. When, for instance, CNN anchor Don Lemon took to the air in January to point out actual death threats called into the network and blamed the anti-media environment encouraged by President Trump (and, truth be told, by the MRC), Randy Hall denounced Lemon for engaging in "a pathetic act of self-sanctimonious behavior," then retorted to political analyst Brian Karem after making a similar observation: "Wait, so Brian, would that mean that you'd agree that James Hodgkinson was inspired by Rachel Maddow and Bernie Sanders to try and murder Republican congressmen in June at a Virginia baseball field?"
Of course, if Hall could show any evidence that Maddow or Sanders ever called Scalise an "enemy of the people," let alone criticized him personally in any form, he might have a point.
The MRC's Curtis Houck (pictured) -- who's currently leading the MRC's war on Jim Acosta and gets a tingle up his leg every time Acosta is heckled while covering a Trump rally -- demonstrated his callousness toward the humanity of journalists who don't work for Fox News in an Aug. 1 post about a discussion between NBC's Katy Tur -- whose concerns about safety at Trump rallies the MRC has dismissed in the past -- and director Rob Reiner about the current hostile environment for journalists in the Trump era. Here's how Houck utterly mocked their concerns in the first paragraph of his post, headlined "Self-Centered Lefties: Katy Tur, Rob Reiner Showcase Why People Hate Hollywood, the Media:
In roughly eight minutes Wednesday afternoon, MSNBC Live host Katy Tur and far-left liberal actor Rob Reiner were able to showcase why the embarrassingly smug behavior of Hollywood and the liberal media has continued to lose them supporters despite their deranged attempts to play the victim card.
That's right: According to Houck, it's apparently "self-centered" and playing "the victim card" for a journalist to be concerned about one's safety. (So, um, Curt, what exactly is a "far-left liberal"? Is that oppose to a far-right liberal?)
Houck sneered that Tur was hosting a "pity party" for journalists -- even though crowds at pro-Trump rallies she covered turned so hostile against her that she needed Secret Service protection to leave arenas -- and complained that she showed a "video of CNN’s Jim Acosta being heckled at a Tuesday night Trump rally" (which, again, Houck is totally down with).In Houck's warped right-wing view, Tur "ranted" and "howed how out of touch she is with the American populace when she seemed exasperated at the notion that, three years after Trump began his candidacy, droves of people still believe that “the media” and Hollywood don’t “represent regular people.” And an MRC postreferencing Reiner wouldn't be complete without derisively calling him "Meathead," demonstrating Houck's inability to separate the actor from a role he hasn't played in 40 years.
Houck probably thinks his callous, name-calling attack is just more of the "sober, substantive appraisals" of media he claims the MRC provides. The fact that he made that claim with a straight face shows us that he doesn't know how wrong he is.
