MRC Pretends Obama Is Giving Away The Internet Topic: Media Research Center
A March 17 Media Research Center item by Scott Whitlock is headlined "Networks Yawn as Obama Administration Gives Away the Internet." Whitlock touts how "Fox News extensively covered this development, but the network morning and evening shows ignored the monumental decision," concluding that "BC, NBC and CBS couldn't be bothered with wondering if giving away the internet is a good idea."
Perhaps that's because Obama is not, in fact, "giving away the internet."
As we noted when GOP operative Brad Blakeman went on a similar tear about it, the plan to transfer ICANN, the body that manages Internet names and addresses, to international control has been in the works since 1998, and it was always the plan that the U.S. would eventually relinquish control over ICANN.
In touting Fox News' coverage of the subject, Whitlock ignores the fact that Fox got it wrong by framing it as Obama "giving away the internet."Whitlock also invokes Mike Huckabee's criticism of Obama's alleged "giving away the Internet" without explaining what expertise, if any (and we're certainly not aware of any), that Huckabee has on the subject.
MRC Promotes Falsehood-Prone Todd Starnes Topic: Media Research Center
Kristine Marsh devotes a March 13 Media Research Center Culture & Media Institute article to promoting the latest book by right-wing Fox News commentator Todd Starnes. Marsh allows Starnes to promote numerous dubious and unsubstantiated claims without any pushback:
In a recent interview, Starnes told the MRC’s Culture and Media Institute, “That is really disturbing for me. There isn’t a Christian influence or even family-friendly influence coming out of Hollywood anymore.” He cited the increasingly anti-Christian Saturday Night Live, which in a single recent episode mocked pro-lifers and the Bible. Another example is ABC’s mercifully cancelled “GCB” (“Good Christian Bitches”). The name says it all.
“God Less” is rife with examples of Christians forced to stand by while gays and other liberals relentlessly push their agenda. The litany is becoming familiar: bakery owners from Colorado and Oregon that refused to bake wedding cakes for same-sex couples; a Christian t-shirt company that would not print shirts for a gay pride rally; a New Mexico wedding photographer that would not give her services to a lesbian wedding; college students across the country who were bullied by their professors to wear “gay pride” apparel or write essays that contradicted their Christian beliefs; and teachers who were punished for signing pro-traditional marriage pledges, not attending pro-gay plays or posting their beliefs on their personal Facebook pages.
[...]
Telling such stories, of course, makes Starnes awfully unpopular in certain circles, “It’s getting to the point that I don’t mind the death threats,” he laughed, “as long as they’re creative.” To him, it’s a matter of preserving the right to speak up. “Sometimes stuff gets to you but its all opinion and everyone has one. That is what I love about America –hearing everyone’s ideas. The Left doesn’t appreciate that. They have this mentality that you can have an opinion as long as that’s my opinion. I know that because I live among them in New York.”
Marsh doesn't mention the real reason Starnes is "awfully unpopular in certain circles": His tales of Christian persecution tend to be overblown, if not outright false. For example, Alan Noble of Patheos has documented a few recent examples of Starnes' so-called reporting being exaggerated to the point of falsehood. Noble points out that "consistently deceives and manipulates facts in order to exaggerate or fabricate incidences of Christian persecution," adding, "For our own good, we need to reject and denounce hucksters like Starnes."
Marsh, it seems, is too busy promoting Starnes' book to contemplate the possibility that he's not the reporter he claims to be.
Bozell Avoids More Questions On Ghostwriting In Latest Fox Appearances Topic: Media Research Center
We've noted that in the week following exposure of the fact that Tim Graham ghostwrote Brent Bozell's syndicated columns, Bozell appeared three times on Fox News and wasn't asked about it once.
Fox keeps its intellectual incuriosity intact with a March 6 appearance by Bozell on Megyn Kelly's show in which he, yes, was not asked about the ghostwriting scandal. You won't hear the MRC crying censorship about this, though.
Bozell did say plenty of other things, however -- like that the nonexistent IRS scandal is "worse than Watergate" and makes Iran-Contra look "piddly" in comparison.
Bozell appeared again on Fox on March 10, coming to the defense of Sharyl Attkisson, who just quit CBS News claiming liberal bias. Bozell went into hyperbole mode here as well, claiming that Benghazi is "more important by factor of 100,000" than Chris Christie's bridge closing scandal. He did not explain how he came up with that number.
But that's just Bozell running his mouth -- which he knows he can do on Fox because he will never be asked challenging or embarassing questions about his own work.
Why is that? Does he have an agreement with Fox that he will never be asked about it? It sure seems that way.
Would Bozell tolerate such evasion of a journalistic scandal if he was a liberal and was making repeated appearances on MSNBC without being asked about it? Doubtful.
Meanwhile ... Topic: Media Research Center
Right Wing Watch wonders why conservatives had a fit over an atheist group at CPAC but appear to be perfectly fine with the white nationalist-linked group ProEnglish having a presence there.
The March 5 column by the two is posted at NewsBusters with both Bozell and Graham credited. But the same column posted at the MRC's "news" operation CNSNews.com once again lists only Bozell as author.
Bozell and Graham's March 7 column similarly carries only Bozell's byline at CNS.
It's coming up on a month ago now that Graham was revealed to have served as Bozell's ghostwriter for years. Not only have Bozell, Graham and the MRC refused to speak about it publicly (despite Bozell making several appearances on Fox News in the following days), the MRC still can't properly credit Graham on all its platforms.
How hard can that possibly be? Very hard, apparently.
MRC Writer Wonders Why An Author Didn't Get Honored At Oscars Topic: Media Research Center
Kristine Marsh devotes a March 3 Media Research Center Culture & Media Institute item to pondering why the late Tom Clancy didn't get honored at the Oscars. This being the MRC, she can only come up with one possible reason:
It’s not surprising that Hollywood ignored Clancy at the Academy Awards though. His pro-military politics certainly didn’t make him a contender for the Hollywood elite. According to CNN’s obituary, Clancy’s books were very popular with the military, so he had access to confidential information that he used as inspiration for plotlines to his stories. However, he was no whistleblower, and was very careful to not put anything in his novels that he thought would endanger the troops or national security.
It couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that Clancy was an author and not directly involved in the movie business. According to IMDb, Clancy had no direct involvement in the movies made from his books beyond providing the original source material, except for serving as an executive producer on "The Sum of All Fears."
Marsh offers no evidence of an author with similar contributions was honored by the Academy. Perhaps that's because she started with an answer and worked back toward the question.
NEW ARTICLE: Bozell vs. CPAC Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center chief has been spending much of the past several years at war with the annual conservative gathering, with his MRC employees caught in the middle. Read more >>
MRC Defends Bill Donohue, Hides His Link to MRC Topic: Media Research Center
Matthew Balan spent a Feb. 27 Media Research Center item being indignant that Catholic League president Bill Donohue was questioned about his stance against same-sex marriage:
On Thursday's New Day, CNN's Chris Cuomo hammered the Catholic League's Bill Donohue for his opposition to same-sex marriage and his support of the now-vetoed SB 1062 in Arizona. Cuomo mouthed the talking points of the social left on LGBT issues: "Why do you want to discriminate against gays? You say, we don't...only the marriages bother us. But that's the same thing, because their right as an individual is to marry."
The anchor even questioned Donohue's Catholicism, for supposedly standing with "these Christians who are more of the extreme...[who] have their own rigid beliefs," and against Pope Francis (or, more specifically, the liberal media's spin about him)[.]
Balan failed to mention -- as the MRC so often does -- that his boss, Brent Bozell, is on the Catholic League's board of advisers.
The video accompanying Balan's post is heavily edited to take Cuomo's comments out of context. Thus, Balan's readers don't get to hear about Donohue denying that love has any role in marriage.
Bozell Using His 'News' Organzation To Forward His Anti-CPAC Agenda Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell has shown he has no problem using his Media Research Center to advance his personal political agenda -- which currently involves attacking CPAC for briefly inviting an atheist group to take part in its annual conservative confab. Now Bozell is using his "news" division, CNSNews.com, to hammer home his animus toward CPAC.
A Feb. 27 CNS article by Barbara Hollingsworth and Michael Chapman features a CPAC board member criticizing the since-rescinded invitation to American Atheists, and trying to get other CPAC board members and sponsors to answer whether CPAC "should insist on an official policy guideline making it clear that groups that are openly hostile to any one of the four major pillars of conservative thought--including traditional values--will not be allowed to participate in future CPACs." The authors couldn't be bothered to contact American Atheists for a comment.
CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey also did his boss' bidding with a blog post quoting William Buckley's "God and Man at Yale" and declaring:
There are Americans today, holding themselves up as conservatives, who argue that one can be both an atheist and a conservative. This is absurd.
There is a God, He made us and all things, and His immutable moral laws apply to all men, in all nations, at all times. These fundamental truths--recognition of which is not confined to any particular religious denomination--were embraced by our Founding Fathers. A social and legal order consistent with these fundamental truths is at the very heart of what modern conservatives seek to conserve.
[...]
Must the modern Conservative Movement be a classroom in which young Americans can be schooled in how to fight and defeat the forces of atheism so manifestly gaining ground in our society today? Of course.
Jeffrey didn't mention the CPAC controversy, but he didn't have to.
Bozell vs. CPAC, Round 3 Topic: Media Research Center
It's that time of year again -- when Brent Bozell picks a fight with CPAC.
This year, Bozell has thrown such a fit at the idea that an atheist group was invited to have a booth at CPAC that he spread his displeasure acrossthe MRCempire:
“The invitation extended by the ACU, Al Cardenas and CPAC to American Atheists to have a booth is more than an attack on conservative principles. It is an attack on God Himself.
“American Atheists is an organization devoted to the hatred of God. How on earth could CPAC, or the ACU and its board of directors, and Al Cardenas condone such an atrocity?
“It makes absolutely no difference to me that CPAC and ACU have backed down and removed the booth. I am sick and tired of these games.
“I will continue to denounce CPAC, ACU and Cardenas. No conservative should have anything to do with this conference. If you do, you are giving oxygen to an organization destroying the conservative movement.”
A couple points here:
What does Bozell's ideological spat have to do with the MRC's declared mission of hunting out media bias?
We thought Bozell didn't believe in censorship -- he has repeatedlyaccusedthemedia of "censorship" for allegedly ignoring things that conformed to his right-wing agenda. Yet here he is, acting as a censor for CPAC. Hypocrisy much?
This is just the latest shenanigan Bozell has engaged in with CPAC:
In 2011, he and the MRC refused to take part in CPAC "because of the continued participation of the homosexual activist organization GOProud." He never bothered to announce this on his own network of websites, though -- he let WorldNetDaily have the scoop.
In 2012, he petulantly withdrew the MRC from CPAC because he wasn't granted a suficiently prominent speaking slot.
Bozell's tantrum paid off because he got his desired speaking slot the following year, which he used to expand his Heathering to the entire Republican Party.
As long as Bozell continues to use the MRC as a cudgel to advance his personal political agenda instead of a tool to help Republicans, this war will continue for some time to come.
MRC Is Still Portraying 'Philomena' As 'Anti-Catholic' Topic: Media Research Center
Scott Whitlock uses a Feb. 20 Media Research Center item to assert that the film "Philomena" is "anti-Catholic," with "harsh anti-Catholic plot points." He then comlains that the film "includes a scene where actor/writer Steve Coogan denounces the 'fucking Catholics.'"
As we pointed out when others at the MRC attacked the film, the woman whose real-life story served as a basis for the film has praised it, calling the film "a testament to good things, not an attack" and pointing out that "despite some of the troubles that befell me as a young girl, I have always maintained a very strong hold on my faith."
That's right -- the woman whose story the film is based on doesn't think the film is anti-Catholic. How can Whitlock claim that it is? Perhaps because he's being paid to do so; after all, he's just parroting the attacks of his boss, Brent Bozell.
Bozell and the MRC adhere to a strictly conservative interpretation of Catholicism that goes after critics and hides the fact that Bozell is on the board of two conservative Catholic groups.
MRC Still Half-Assedly Giving Graham Credit For Bozell's Columns Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center still can't get proper credit for Tim Graham right.
Since Graham was revealed as the ghostwriter of the syndicated columns of his boss, Brent Bozell, the MRC has been struggling to get its act together to properly credit Graham for his work. It still can't.
Bozell's Feb. 21 column gets a Graham credit at NewsBusters but not at CNSNews.com. At the main MRC website, Bozell's Feb. 18 column gets a Graham credit, but the slot it occupies on the website is still designated ror "Brent Bozell Columns," and earlier columns have not gotten a Graham credit.
It's not that difficult, guys. Why are you continuing to screw Graham out of his proper due?
MRC Equivocates Away Ted Nugent's Attack on Obama Topic: Media Research Center
As we learned with Rush Limbaugh, if the Media Research Center ever concedes that something a prominent conservative says is offensive, it will do so only invoking supposedly similar statements by liberals.
And so it goes with Ted Nugent's sliming of President Obama as a "subhuman mongrel."
In a Feb. 18 NewsBusters post, Matt Hadro happily parroted Newt Gingrich's claim of "selective outrage" over Nugent, citing Bill Maher as an example. Yet Hadro is engaging in his own selective outrage since neither he nor any other MRC employee could be moved to mention Nugent's sliming of Obama before this.
Tim Graham made his equivocation clear in a Feb. 19 Newsbusters post: "NY Times Devotes Story to Texas Candidate Embracing Ted Nugent, Barely Noticed Obama Embracing Spike Lee." Graham has to go back to 2005 to find something offensive by Lee, despite the fact that this was seven years to before Obama "embraced" Lee. By contrast, Nugent's "subhuman mongrel" remark came a month before Texas gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott invited Nugent to campaign with him.
Unlike Hadro and Graham (and unlike any MRC employee regarding Limbaugh's three-day tirade of misogyny against Sandra Fluke), Scott Whitlock does use a Feb. 20 MRC item to state that Nugent's remarks "both offensive and disrespectful." But like his colleagues , Whitlock equivocates anyway, using MSNBC host Chris Matthews' statement on Nugent that "you are known by the company you keep" to bring up old statements by other MSNBC hosts:
However, Matthews's "company" includes former colleague and frequent guest Martin Bashir. Bashir famously advocated for someone to defecate on Palin.
Ed Schultz trashed Laura Ingraham as a "slut." On February 18, the similarly tone deaf host complained about conservative vulgarities.
Matthews, Schultz and all the coarse hosts of MSNBC are hardly in a position to judge the company of conservatives. They are the very definition of not practicing what you preach.
And, of course, neither is Whitlock. His co-workers include Brent Bozell, who has committed all manner of offenses, not the least of which is calling Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead": and Matt Philbin, who enthusiastically joined in Limbaugh's sliming of Fluke by calling her a "horizontal laborer" and a "Lincoln Tunnel Hitcher" and viciously insulted his critics.
NEW ARTICLE: Brent Bozell's Pattern of Deception and Disrespect Topic: Media Research Center
The revelation that Bozell's columns have been ghostwritten for years by a subordinate is just the latest example of the Media Research Center chief's outrageous behavior. Read more >>
MRC Manages to Botch Crediting Graham For Bozell's Column Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center may finally be giving belated credit to Tim Graham after he was revealed as Brent Bozell's column ghostwriter, but it lacks something on follow-through.
The version of Bozell's latest column at NewsBusters gets a newly created Bozell & Graham byline, but older columns have not been moved to the new byline.
Meanwhile, the same column at MRC division CNSNews.com carries only Bozell's byline. The column has yet to be posted at the main MRC website, where Bozell remains identified as the sole column writer.
And, no, the MRC has yet to publicly address the ghostwriting controversy, though it would certainly speak up if a member of the hated "liberal media" did the same thing.
A March 17 Media Research Center item by Scott Whitlock is headlined "Networks Yawn as Obama Administration Gives Away the Internet." Whitlock touts how "Fox News extensively covered this development, but the network morning and evening shows ignored the monumental decision," concluding that "BC, NBC and CBS couldn't be bothered with wondering if giving away the internet is a good idea."
Kristine Marsh devotes a March 13 Media Research Center Culture & Media Institute 
We've 
So, you know that problem the Media Research Center has with 
Kristine Marsh devotes a March 3 Media Research Center Culture & Media Institute 
Matthew Balan spent a Feb. 27 Media Research Center 
Brent Bozell has shown he has no problem using his Media Research Center to advance his personal political agenda -- which currently involves 
It's that time of year again -- when Brent Bozell picks a fight with CPAC.
Scott Whitlock uses a Feb. 20 Media Research Center 
The Media Research Center still can't get proper credit for Tim Graham right.
As we learned with 
The Media Research Center may finally be giving belated credit to Tim Graham after he was 
