MRC Blogger: Transgenders Getting Murdered Is No Biggie Topic: Media Research Center
Karen Townsend's Feb. 2 MRC NewsBusters post is yet another complaint that gays are on TV -- or in her words, how the TV show "The Fosters" has "continued with its deliberate promotion of liberal Hollywood’s aggressive LGBT agenda through the use of young people.
Townsend took particular offense to a transgender character on the show saying that "People literally get killed for being trans," because she thinks it's really nothing for anyone, trans people included, to worry about:
Getting killed for being trans is a horrifying thought for any transgender and their allies, however the risk is severely overblown and an already vulnerable population is being needlessly terrified with such worries. While, certainly, there have been people who were killed for being transgender, people are killed for pretty much every reason imaginable. The number of transgender murders is exceptionally low, with only 21 in all of 2015 (with various motives). A recent study claimed that there are 1.4 million transgender people in the United States, so that's a murder rate of 1 per every 66,667 trans people. Compare that to the national murder rate in 2015: 15,696 total murders in a country of 320 million people equates to 1 per every 20,387 Americans.
Interesting that Townend things transgenders being murdered is only an issue for transgenders "and their allies." Also interesting how Townsend feels the need to minimize the issue of violence against transgenders which, despite Townsend's claims, is very much on the increase, as is the rate of transgender suicide.
But there aren't that many of them so it's OK, right, Karen?
This is pretty much what we've come to expect from the anti-gay Media Research Center.
No, MRC, WaPo Didn't Concede That Liberal Media Bias Has 'Documentary Backing' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Scott Whitlock declared in a Jan. 27 post that "In an online column about the mainstream media, The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple on Friday conceded that claims of liberal media bias have 'documentary backing.'"
No, he didn't.
In his Jan. 27 column, Wemple was actually talking about liberal identification among journalists, not bias:
The characterization of mainstream media newsrooms as left-leaning hives indeed has documentary backing. Some of the research is narrow and entertaining: In 1990, for example, Washington City Paper — then under the leadership of current Politico media critic Jack Shafer — found that Tony Kornheiser, then a sports columnist for The Washington Post, was the only registered Republican among a sampling of 49 top editors, reporters and columnists at the newspaper. And Kornheiser was a RINO. “I don’t think the Republican Party would claim me,” Kornheiser told reporter Christy Wise, adding that he and his wife had registered with different parties so that they could receive mailings from both sides. Upon further reflection, he deemed his party affiliation a “mistake.”
The Pew Research Center in 2004 undertook a nationwide survey of 547 local and national reporters, editors and executives. The result? Thirty-four percent of national press identified as liberal, as opposed to 7 percent conservative (“moderate” was the largest category). Liberal identification among national press types had shot up from 22 percent in 1995.
Liberal identification by journalists does not necessarily equal liberal media bias, no matter how much the MRC is paid to claim otherwise. Liberal journalists working for a mainstream publication are arguably more likely than a conservative journalist working for a conservative media outlet to be fair and balanced (see: the MRC's Trump-fluffing "news" division CNSNews.com), and you will never see the conservatives who demand that mainstream outlets skew right allow liberals to write at conservative outlets (CNS has no liberal columnists).
Wemple quotes the MRC's Tim Graham claiming that young conservative journalists want to work at mainstream outlets but aren't getting interviewed: "They’re there for the interviewing and not just the 20-somethings." But Graham provides no evidence that "mainstream" outlets are refusing to interview conservatives based on identification alone; it's more likely that conservative journalists have shown no interest in being fair and balanced.
That's uniroinically followed by Graham throwing shade at conservative writers who actually did get jobs at the Post:
He cites the trajectory of journalists such as Bob Costa and Jonathan Martin, both of whom once worked for the conservative National Review and are now at The Washington Post and New York Times, respectively. But does that mean they’re both conservatives?
Not necessarily, responds Graham. “Let me be blunt, though,” he continues. “Any reporter who is willing to blog for the National Review without vomiting is at least somebody in whom conservatives vest hope. We are so hungry for a foothold.”
It's that kind of ideologically driven logic that makes Graham a terrible media critic.
MRC's Bozell Can't Deal With Media Mentions of Catholic Scandals Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell has a long history of downplaying and deflecting from the history of sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. He does it again in his Jan. 20 column with Tim Graham, in which he complains about what he considers insufficient coverage of a female teacher who had an affair with a 13-year-old student:
One could guess that reverse sexism plays a role: An adult woman abusing a boy seems more acceptable than a grown man molesting a young girl. One could also guess that adding an abortion to the sinister plot made it less interesting to liberal journalists.
These are the same networks that will not stop covering and lecturing about the child sexual abuse — real and alleged and untrue — by Catholic priests, even after the church created new systems to vet not only priests but also even church volunteers who deal with children in parish life.
How about newspapers? The New York Times never loses interest in advocating against the Catholic Church on this issue. But on Alexandria Vera in Houston? Nothing. The Washington Psot, whose editor Marty Baron was painted as a crusading captain of the church-busting team at the Boston Globe in the Oscar-winning movie "Spotlight"? It never made the actual paper but drew two blog posts over the last six months that barely surpassed 1,000 words between them.
[...]
Child sexual abuse in secular schools doesn't seem to inspire liberal journalists, which underlines that on this absorbing subject, as on many others, what's "news" depends on perspective, and in the American media, it is both liberal and libertine.
Bozell and Graham ignore the key difference in these cases. The above case he cites -- as well as the Mary Kay Letourneau case -- are isolated, independent cases and are not representative of a larger pattern.
By contrast, the Catholic abuse cases were marked by systematic cover-ups in which diocesean officials tended to move offenders from one parish to another, covered up the abuse and didn't admit the abuse to parishoners until decades after the fact.
In November 2015, Graham railed against the film "Spotlight," which is based on how systematic cover-ups of sexual abuse in the Catholic diocese of Boston was uncovered by reporters, whining abaout "contrary facts" the film omitted.
By contrast to Bozell and Graham's sensitivity about the mere mention of Catholic sex abuse scandals, the MRC has a weird fixation on Chappaquiddick even though that was more than half a century ago.
MRC Writer Hates 'Pure Genius' For Not Hating LGBT People, Like He Does Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center contributing writer Justin Ashford really, really hates that there are LGBT characters on the CBS show "Pure Genius."
Oh, he liked the show at first -- when it conformed to the MRC's right-wing dogma. The premiere episode centered on a woman with cancer who refused treatment because she was pregnant. Ashford gushed over the "self-sacrificing love [the character] showed for her unborn daughter" and how that "shows just how powerful pro-lifers really are."
But Ashford soon changed his tune. In December, he complained that the show "followed the liberal Hollywood PC script by adding a transgender character" to one episode. He ranted: "The most alarming thing about this is [the transgender character] claimed to identify as a woman at age six – clearly trying to push the envelope of gender identification at such a young age. A six-year old is still learning to read and write. How the heck does one know their “identity” then? And yet this is what liberals are pushing on kids."
Ashford ranted further, "The Human Rights Campaign reports that only 18 states consider transgender a protected class in the workplace, but it’s their goal to run roughshod over religious freedom and commonsense to make it all 50. " He doesn't explain how protecting the rights of transgenders interferes with "religious freedom." He concludes: "Such a shame as this show started with an actual conservative approach. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out Hollywood has their own agenda, and they want to ensure we all comply. No thanks."
On Jan. 2, Ashford whined that the latest episode included "a gay ex-prostitute, a lesbian outing and a transgender actor/actress portraying a Christian!" He huffed: "What’s next for Pure Genius? Possibly cancellation. We can only hope the liberal Hollywood LGBT agenda dies with it."
Well, no surprise, CBS’s Pure Genius again reminds us that pushing the LGBT agenda is vital to their concept of entertainment. This time, we see two gay dads with a son.
[...]
If this were on TV ten or even five years ago, it would be anything but normal. But hey, these are the times we’re living in. Thanks to Hollywood, the only abnormal folks are those deplorables who still support the traditional family.
That's Ashford and the MRC for you: Anyone who doesn't agree with them, or look like them, is "abnormal" and must be held to scorn and ridicule.
MRC Takes Madonna Out of Context to Smear Women's March Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has always been hypocritical in demanding that the media follow standards that it refuses to enforce on its own operations. One prime example of that is the use of context: The MRC loves to criticizing others for omitting it but it regularly fails to provide conext when not doing so suits its right-wing agenda.
One key part of the MRC's agenda these days is denigrating last weekend's Women's March on Washington for daring to be critical of President Trump. One way ity's doing that is taking one particular remark Madonna made at the march out of context. You know the one.
Nicholas Fondacaro set the stage in a Jan. 22 post:
If Ashley Judd’s R-rated rant comparing President Donald Trump’s team to the Nazis wasn’t insane enough, loony Madonna admitted to wanting to kill the newly inaugurated president of United States. “Yes, I am angry. Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House,” she proclaimed to the hundreds of thousands of march attendees in Washington, DC on Saturday. But yet, she started her address declaring, “Welcome to the revolution of love!”
Tellingly, Fondacaro waited until the seventh paragraph to include the full context of that "blowing up the White House" 'comment:
Yes, I am angry. Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House. But I know that this won't change anything. We cannot fall into despair. As the poet, W. H. Auden once wrote on the eve of World War II, “we must love one another or die.”
But Fondacaro immediately followed that by taking Madonna out of context again: "Trump’s inauguration has really taken the radical leftist off their hinges and exposed their violent nature. Between descriptions of Trump as the secessionist South from ABC’s Matthew Dowd, to comparisons to Nazis’ and gas chambers, and now the blowing-up of the White House they have really escalated things very quickly in just two days."
Unsurprisingly, that would be the last time thte MRC would put Madonna's words in their proper, accurate context:
Another post by Fondacaro ripped her out of context again, complaining that the media didn't report "Madonna’s fantasy of 'blowing up the White House.'"
Fondacaro then did it one more time, again concocting "Madonna’s fantasy about 'blowing up the White House.'"
A Jan. 25 MRC post by Geoffrey Dickens on "the worst attacks on President Trump" falsely claimed that "Madonna threatened: 'I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.'"
Rich Noyes took it even farther by claiming about "Madonna seeming to suggest assassination: 'I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.'"
Thomas A. Glessner huffed that "Aging pop singer Madonna showed up as a speaker and stated that she had considered blowing up the White House."
It's much easier for the MRC to lie to its readers and portray Madonna as a mad bomber and wannabe presidential assassin than to tell the truth.
MRC Complains NY Times Reported Accurately on Trump's Ethics Issues Topic: Media Research Center
Clay Waters beings his Jan. 20 Media Research Center post by ranting:
As if trying to poison the Potomac water for the new president on his first day in office, the New York Times Inauguration Day off-lead story tried to wrong-foot Trump the moment he takes his hand off the Bible: “With an Oath, Complications In Hotel Lease – Ethical ‘Minefield’ for the President-Elect” by Eric Lipton and Susanne Craig.
The jump-page headline read, “At Trump Hotel in Washington, Champagne Toasts in an Ethical ‘Minefield.’” The online teaser was blunt: “From the moment he is sworn in, Mr. Trump may be in violation of a lease with the federal government.”
At no point does Waters dispute the accuracy of the article -- only that it makes Trump look bad.
Waters punts on the idea of defending Trump against violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, farming that out to the right-wing Weekly Standard, where writer Edwin Williamson spins that Trump is exempt from the clause and divesting all financial conflicts is just so hard. And how hard is Williamson spinning all this? This hard:
Trump, however, is going further than the emoluments clause would require, in order to avoid a problem the media has drummed up -- foreign officials will try to curry favor by staying at Trump hotels. Trump has committed all profits on rooms rented by foreign officials to be paid to the U.S. Treasury. Thus, he has taken all profits out of staying at Trump hotels.
Williamson does not provide any reason Trump's words should be trusted, especially given that he notes no evidence that Trump is making the mechanism that will supposedly divert those profits with any sort of transparency.
We suspect neither Waters nor Williamson took President Obama's word for anything, yet they think we should ignore Trump's lengthy trail of falsehoods and take whatever he says at face value.
MRC to CNN's Stelter: Darn Right We'll Play Along With Trump's Lies Topic: Media Research Center
On the Jan. 22 edition of CNN's "Reliable Sources," host Brian Stelter criticized the blatant lies White House press secretary Sean Spicer told about inauguration crowd sizes, questioning if this sort of "gaslighting" and dennial of reality is what we should expect from the White House press office and the Trump administration as a whole. Stelter added: "Will conservative media outlets play along with Trump’s lies? Will they claim he is telling the truth or will conservative outlets respect their readers enough to call BS on BS?"
The Media Research Center's Nicholas Fondacaro answerrf Stelter in a post the same day. He claimed Stelter "issued his arguably most dire/bonkers warning about the president yet," "showed nothing but contempt for the president," and "vigorously tried to sow the seeds of doubt" about Trump's veracity. Fondcaro dismissed concerns about the demonstrable falsehoods coming from Spicer as nothing but "talk of crowd sizes."
Fondacaro then launched a full-on rant attacking Stelter for daring to question the conservative media's response to Trump:
If Stelter wants to “call BS on BS” then let’s get right to it. He claims that Trump cannot be trusted, to tell the truth, and present real facts. But Stelter was nowhere to be seen when Obama’s State Department was caught editing official video of a press conference, on someone’s order. They removed questions posed by Fox News’ James Rosen that exposed that the department lied about being in negotiations for the Iran deal. If that isn’t something out of George Orwell’s 1984, I don’t know what is.
The real “BS” that needs to be called out is the media’s, there is a reason their approval ratings are in the toilet. Were ABC and NBC telling “the truth when it really hurts” Sunday morning when they omitted the loony ramblings of Ashley Judd and Madonna’s fantasy about “blowing up the White House?” Both of those networks also failed to cover any of ObamaCare’s failures for the first eight months of 2016.
When it comes to telling the truth, Stelter is on very unstable terrain, let’s review.
On air in October, he openly blamed Trump’s ‘overheated’ rhetoric for the firebombing of a GOP county headquarters in North Carolina. When there are cold hard facts reported that he doesn’t care for he discredits them, like he did to Associated Press when they exposed how Clinton Foundation donors received special access. Or how about when Stelter himself pushed dubious claims of Islamophobia by a YouTube prankster? There’s a lot more where that came from.
For a journalist fixated on the media regaining the trust of the public, he doesn't appear to be helping very much.
So, Fondacaro's answer to Stelter is: No, the MRC -- which includes "news" division CNSNews.com -- does not respect its readers and will not call BS on BS. It will play along with Trump's lies, because that's what the Mercers are funding the MRC to do.
Fake News: MRC Falsely Portrays End-of-Life Counseling As 'Death Panels' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Matthew Balan complained in a Jan. 12 post that NPR's "All Things Considered" "played up the long-term effect of the anti-ObamaCare "death panel" talking point and labeled this phrase 'fake news.'" Balan then perpetuated that fake news:
[Host Don] Gonyea first noted that the "death panel" phrase was "coined" by Sarah Palin in a 2009 post on Facebook, where the former Alaska governor "imagined her elderly parents or her child with Down syndrome standing — quote, 'in front of Obama's death panel and being denied care.'" He continued with soundbites from talk show host Rush Limbaugh and Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, who "echoed Palin's dire warnings." However, he never explained the specific proposal in ObamaCare that these anti-ObamaCare talking heads were decrying.
Los Angeles Times correspondent Noam Levey reported in a July 8, 2015 article that the Obama administration has "revived a proposal to reimburse physicians for talking with their Medicare patients about how patients want to be cared for as they near death." Levey disclosed that this "new regulation threatens to revive the 'death panel' campaign that Republicans successfully used to demonize the federal health law as it was being debated." So, the concept that NPR deemed as "fake news" is, in fact, a real thing.
But even the conservative National Review points out that "Paid end-of-life counseling and advance planning are not 'death panels.'" Wesley J. Smith continues, debunking longtime right-wing health care misinformer Betsy McCaughey:
To accept McCaughey’s prescription, one would have to believe that doctors don’t give a fig about their patients and greedily drool over the prospect of the unwanted and unproductive being pushed into the grave. That’s simply not true.
More, one would have to accept the premise that hospice is not humane, but avaricious and abusive. There are horror stories, to be sure, but so many more examples of beneficence and hope in hospice. Irresponsibly trashing hospice can cause real harm to individuals and push society toward accepting assisted suicide!
Besides, advance-care planning is important, and people should not wait until seriously ill or at admission into a hospital.
There is a way to ensure that an advance directive doesn’t become a death panel. Don’t sign a “living will” that gives doctors or bean counters decision-making power.
Rather, prepare a durable power of attorney for health care in which you decide who gets to make choices for you when you can’t.
We've shown how the MRC refuses to have a serious conversation about fake news. Now it's creating some.
MRC Laughably Declares MSNBC To Be 'State Run TV,' Forgets Fox News Under Bush Topic: Media Research Center
A Jan. 17 Media Research Center post by Scott Whitlock complains that "Disgraced journalist Brian Williams on Monday offered up a glowing documentary on Barack Obama that censored the President’s numerous scandals and controversies." While Whitlock curiously buries the name of the network the special appears on -- MSNBC -- his headline declares it to be "State Run TV."
Whitlock ignores that by his same definition -- overly positive coverage of a sitting president -- Fox News was "state run TV" during the Bush administration. Fox News was granted numerous exclusive opportunities to hurl softball questions at President Bush, including touting of his alleged legacy and, yes, a TV special dedicated to fawning over "his extraordinarily consequential tenure."
And given how hard Fox News fought both on camera and behind the scenes to get Donald Trump elected president, it's all but certain that it will resume its role as "state run TV."
But Whitlock and the MRC will never call Fox News that, of course -- it doesn't want to do anything that would put its frequent appearances on the channel (and sister channel Fox Business) in jeopardy.
Bozell's MRC Bashed Hillary's Lack of Pressers, Now Hopes Trump Never Holds Another One Topic: Media Research Center
For much of the 2016 campaign, the Media Research Center -- despite a nonprofit tax status that prohibits it from explicit involvement in politics -- repeatedlyattackedHillaryClinton for notholding a press conference at sufficient intervals during her presidential campaign, huffed that the questions weren't anti-Hillary enough when she did hold one, and even complained when an NPR media critic said she "may have a point" when there are other ways to hear from a candidate.
Flash forward to after the election, and the MRC is hypocritically cheering how Trump is showing new ways to hear from a candidate.
MRC chief Brent Bozell celebrated how the media is "being neutered" and "neutralized" because "Donald Trump will go around them, not talk to them," adding: "Look, he has got 25 million Twitter followers and Facebook fans. He can converse directly with them. And if the media cover his posts, his tweets, they have got to cover what he said. That allows him to control the conversation."
MRC VP Dan Gainor touted how Trump "doesn’t need the media, he is the media."
Gainor later promoted Trump's "Twitter presidency," claiming that "I think the American public like the fact that he is speaking directly -- you know, typos and all."
Funny, Hillary never got love from the MRC for going around the media.
And after all the demands for Hillary to hold a presser, the MRC would be hypocritically happy if Trump never held another one.
In a tantrum following Buzzfeed's publication of an unverified dossier of salacious information about Trump, Bozell ranted that Trump is right to not hold pressers:
Any media outlet that does not produce a news story that declares BuzzFeed’s story fake news is giving aid and comfort to fake news and furthering its proliferation. This fiasco is exactly why the media’s ratings are in the toilet. It’s exactly why Donald Trump said the election was rigged and it’s also why Donald Trump hasn’t done many press conferences. BuzzFeed should stick to cat gifs for the foreseeable future until they figure out how to do journalism. And President-elect Trump shouldn't conduct any more press conferences unless and until the 'news' media start treating him fairly.
Actually, "unverified" does not equal "fake news." Remember, the claim of a Bill Clinton affair was unverified at the time the Drudge Report touted it.
Besides, Bozell doesn't want the media to give "fair" treatment -- he wants the media to be Trump's lapdogs, to uncritically report whatever he says and ignore any impropriety or scandal. You know, like how Bozell's "news" outlet, CNSNews.com, covered Trump during the campaign.
Bozell made this crystal clear when he declared in a Jan. 18 appearance on Fox News division Fox Business -- the preferred MRC outlet because it gives Bozell the uncritical coverage he demands the media give Trump -- that reporters are "enemies" of Trump:
These are people who are constantly against him. There is no semblance of objectivity going on. ... They are there as a hostile entity and if they’re going to be that hostile to him, the President-elect has the right, I think, to say, 'I'm not going to stand there, by you people who have no vestige of objectivity. I'm going to pick and choose who I want there.'
Bozell's view of the media has always been a partisan caricature designed to raise money and create a sense of victimhood among conservatives. The only "improvement" he has ever sought is the creation of more right-wing media bias. No wonder he flip-flopped to get behind Trump, who hates the media for not being right-wing stenographers as much as he does.
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Film Promotion Division Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center and its CNS "news" division don't just bash films they don't like, they relentlessly plug the ones they do like -- read: conform to the MRC's right-wing agenda -- then censors their failure at the box office. Read more >>
MRC Tries to Downplay GOP Effort to Gut Ethics Panel Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Reserach Center did its best to spin away congressional Republicans' attempt in the new Congress to gut an independent House ethics panel.
Kyle Drennen downplayed the whole thing, insisting that Republicans had merely "dared to make bureaucratic changes" to the panel, and he was more upset that the media reported on it. Then he tried to change the subject: "While the media were eager to hype fears that Republicans would not be held accountable for corruption, the press repeatedly looked the other way when elected Democrats were embroiled in scandal in recent years. A 2014 Media Research Center study listed numerous examples of Democratic corruption swept under the rug by the networks."
Nicholas Fondacaro not only repeated Drennan's Democrat-blaming distraction, he took the media to task for reporting that even Donald Trump thought gutting the ethics panel was a bad idea:
The liberal Big Three networks finally found a use for President-elect Donald Trump, and it’s to smear Republican members of Congress. The same networks who blacked-out unethical Democrats were up in arms Tuesday after the House GOP attempted to reform the Office of Congressional Ethics, but after it’s retraction they credited the president-elect. “The best-laid plans of Republicans armed with a head of steam and an ambitious to-do list went off the rails this opening day of the new Congress after a tweet from Donald Trump,” announced Anchor Lester Holt on NBC Nightly News.
Fondacaro also complained that media reports made an "insinuation that the GOP’s actions were to allow themselves to act unethically." But he doesn't explain what he thinks is the correct way to interpret the GOP attempt to gut thte ethics office.
After the House GOP reversed its attempt to gut the ethics office, Drennen returned to complain that "all three network morning shows delighted in the GOP reversing course on the issue and satisfyingly proclaimed that the minor controversy had tarnished the first day of the 115th Congress."
Note that Drennen downgraded the controversy even further, from "bureaucratic changes" to a "minor controversy."
MRC Throws Shade At Megyn Kelly for Leaving Fox News Topic: Media Research Center
Megyn Kelly is leaving the Fox News for NBC -- and that means she's now a target of the Media Research Center.
You might recall that the MRC wouldn't defend Kelly in the face of Donald Trump's sexist attacks on her after her tough questioning of him during Republican presidential debates, yet neither would it criticize her or take Trump's bait about Fox News being biased -- Brent Bozell and Co. were more interested in preserving its seat at the Fox News table (read: TV appearances). It even gave a platform to Kelly to claim against all evidence that Fox News is "fair and balanced."
But now that Kelly has left the protection of Fox News employment, the MRC is letting her know she's on the hit list.
The MRC's first reaction to Kelly's new job was a post by Tim Graham already writing her off as a liberal:
How much will Kelly have to shift to the middle or even the left to fit in at NBC News? The last nightly host to leave Fox was Paula Zahn, and she quickly became a liberal cog at CNN like every other host. A similar right-to-left pattern happened with former Fox & Friends hosts Kiran Chetry and Alisyn Camerota.
Graham doesn't consider the possibility that Kelly was forced to shift to the right to work at Fox News and might simply become an actual fair-and-balanced anchor.
On Twitter, meanwhile, Graham sneered: "I first started thinking 'Yeah, Megyn Kelly's de-Foxifying' at the NY Times Book Review interview on her book choices on November 13."
In a Jan. 6 post, Graham got mad that a NPR host pointed out Kelly's long history of offensive out of touch comments about minorities," like her insistence that Santa Claus is white, declaring it to be "Fox-hating leftist commentary." He then described the Twitter argument he had with NPR media critic David Folkenflik (as he is wont to do), this time over Folkenflik's claim that Kelly is "desperately hoping to get away from ideology" by going to NBC and engaging in soft-focus interviews like "the model of Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, a Charlie Rose at CBS."
Kyle Drennen then complained that NBC's "Today" show "welcomed Kelly with an online article recalling her six 'finest moments' during her tenure at FNC. Strangely, those moments focus exclusively on Kelly taking on Republicans – not a single instance was featured of her going after liberal guests," further huffing that none of them included "Kelly’s routine hammering of the press over its blatant liberal bias throughout the 2016 campaign."
Geoffrey Dickens, meanwhile, lamented that Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple "reminded his readers of FNC’s controversies," including Trump's sexism toward Kelly, reminding us again that protecting Fox News is Job 1 at the MRC.
At MRCTV, Craig Bannister groused that "NBC has earned a reputation for journalistic bias and baloney that might be hard for even Kelly to overcome."
The hardest shot came in a Jan. 5 CNSNews.com column by Leesa K. Donner, an ex-journalist who now writes for the far-right American Thinker, headlined "It’s All About Me: The Cult of Megyn Kelly." While denying that her column was "a hit piece on Ms. Kelly," it reads like one anyway; she declares that "Ms. Kelly’s stardom as a “journalist” is emblematic of a serious problem within the broadcast journalism industry that has metastasized into an Ebola-style plague across the airwaves," that of broadcast journalism becoming "a vehicle for self-discovery" and "a sick cult of personality." Donner concludes:
So, perhaps an Oprah slot on daytime TV across from the soap operas is precisely where Ms. Kelly belongs. Any which way you look at it, the mainstream broadcast news industry should reflect upon this little sideshow with Kelly and learn that when you feed the hungry monster of ego, sometimes you find you can get eaten by the very monster you have created.
You can be assured that CNS would not have publichsed the column had Kelly decided to stay at Fox News. But she's out of that bubble, which means she's now fair game for the boys at the MRC.
MRC Writer Pushes 'Fungible' Canard About Planned Parenthood Funding Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has been asserting a common -- and dubious -- argument against federal funding for Planned Parenthood to get around the inconvenient (for conservatives) fact that federal funding for Planned Parenthood is prohibited from paying for abortions and there's no evidence Planned Parenthood has broken that prohibition.
Katie Yoder asserts in a Jan. 6 post that "government money is fungible, which means Planned Parenthood could offset costs with public funds to free up other resources for abortion." Yoder repeated her assertion again in a Jan. 10 post, saying that "while the Hyde Amendment stipulates that federal funding, with a few exceptions, cannot be used for abortion, government funds are fungible. This means Planned Parenthood could offset costs with public funds to free up other resources for abortion."
As proof of this claim, Yoder links back to a post she and Sarah Stites wrote in October in which they made this claim:
Although the Hyde Amendment stipulates that this money cannot be used for abortion (with a few exceptions), government funds are fungible. This means Planned Parenthood could offset costs with public funds to free up other resources for abortion. As an analogy, which Stites and Yoder illustrate, imagine giving your teen $20 to use specifically for gas. Although he can’t buy beer with that $20, he can now use his own $20 to purchase alcohol since the gas was covered by you.
First, that argument is ridiculous on its face, since because a teenager is not legally permitted to buy beer -- the drinking age is 21.
Second, Yoder and Stites are wrong about the entire fungibility issue. As Slate explains:
Republicans who tout the "money is fungible" line want you to imagine that Planned Parenthood draws on one big pot of government money for all its services. But since medical services are billed and funded individually, that's not actually how this works. For instance, if subsidies that discount contraception disappear, the price of contraception goes up, but the price of abortion will stay the same.
We know this because recent experience shows it. A few years ago, the price of some birth control pills at Planned Parenthood and other family planning clinics suddenly skyrocketed, because drug companies jacked up the price they charged non-profits for the pills. Faced with growing expenses to provide contraception, clinics charged more for contraception, often seeing costs soar to two or three times what they were before. But during this same time, the price for an abortion stayed the same. That is because, despite the endless repetition of "money is fungible," it is not. You cannot cut off subsidies and discounts for contraception in hopes that will drive up the price of abortion. It might make abortion more common, because women will have a harder time obtaining contraception, but it won't make it any pricier.
This argument makes some sense, but it also has dangerous implications. If you accept this premise, there’s almost no limit to what we could consider “government funding” or “government support.” Would a federal employee, whose salary is paid by the government, be violating the Hyde Amendment if she spends some of that money to obtain an abortion? Would she be using “government funds” to “keep the lights on” at Planned Parenthood if she donates to the organization?
And what about other government programs that have funding restrictions? Should we ban Safeway from accepting food stamps as long as it sells wine — because food stamps aren’t allowed to pay for wine, but accepting food stamps gives Safeway extra revenue and helps it “keep the lights on” to sell wine to other customers?
But fungibility is too entrenched of an argument for people like Yoder to simply abandon it. So expect her and others to keep pushing this highly dubious claim.
MRC Asks: 'Can Speculation Be Defined as News?' It Is At The MRC Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham and Brent Bozell began thair Jan. 4 column this way:
At the dawn of 2017, let us offer a philosophical question for the news media. If the scourge of the new year is "fake news," should we not concede that it's not news to speculate about what will happen after a news event? The problem is, without speculation about the future — whether immediate or distant — cable news channels and radio news outlets would surely enter a crisis about how to fill 24 hours a day, and newspapers would struggle to fill their pages.
True. But if Graham and Bozell are really concerned about speculation being presented as news, the "news" division of the MRC, CNSNews.com, would be prohibited in engaging in it.
For example, just two days after Graham and Bozell's column appeared, CNS published a "news" article by Patrick Goodenough declaring, "Gohmert: Promoting a ‘Two-State Solution’ Could Bring God’s Judgment." In it, Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert is quoting as saying that expressing support for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians means one is "advocating what Joel 3 say will bring judgment down upon our nation for trying to partition Israel."
So, is biblical speculation exempted from Graham and Bozell's anti-speculation wrath? We're confused.
Karen Townsend's Feb. 2 MRC NewsBusters post is yet another complaint that gays are on TV -- or in her words, how the TV show "The Fosters" has "continued with its deliberate promotion of liberal Hollywood’s aggressive LGBT agenda through the use of young people.
The Media Research Center's Scott Whitlock declared in a Jan. 27 
Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell has a 
Media Research Center contributing writer Justin Ashford really, really hates that there are LGBT characters on the CBS show "Pure Genius."
The Media Research Center has always been hypocritical in demanding that the media follow standards that it refuses to enforce on its own operations. One prime example of that is 
Clay Waters beings his Jan. 20 Media Research Center 
On the Jan. 22 edition of CNN's "Reliable Sources," host Brian Stelter criticized the blatant lies White House press secretary Sean Spicer told about inauguration crowd sizes, questioning if this sort of "gaslighting" and dennial of reality is what we should expect from the White House press office and the Trump administration as a whole. Stelter added: "Will conservative media outlets play along with Trump’s lies? Will they claim he is telling the truth or will conservative outlets respect their readers enough to call BS on BS?"
The Media Research Center's Matthew Balan complained in a Jan. 12 
A Jan. 17 Media Research Center 
The Media Reserach Center did its best to spin away congressional Republicans' attempt in the new Congress to gut an independent House ethics panel.
Megyn Kelly is leaving the Fox News for NBC -- and that means she's now a target of the Media Research Center.
The Media Research Center has been asserting a common -- and dubious -- argument against federal funding for Planned Parenthood to get around the inconvenient (for conservatives) fact that federal funding for Planned Parenthood is prohibited from paying for abortions and there's no evidence Planned Parenthood has broken that prohibition.
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham and Brent Bozell began thair Jan. 4 
