MRC Is Mad The Media Accurately Quoted Trump's Vulgarity
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Tim Graham huffs in a Jan. 15 post (bolding is his):

In the contest for Most Offended News Network after President Trump reportedly referred to African nations as “s***hole” countries, CNN wins hands down. NewsBusters staff combed through CNN transcripts on Nexis for the S-hole word in the 24 hours of January 12 – the first full day after The Washington Post reported the controversy – and found CNN staffers and CNN guests uncorked the profanity 195 times in one day.

That doesn't count Saturday, Sunday or Monday. They could be headed for 1,000 by now. It also doesn't count the amount of time they put the S-word on screen (sometimes twice, as you can see on Cuomo's temporary prime time show.)

Compare that to Fox News Channel. Their curse count was zero. FNC told staff and guests not to say it.

Missing from Graham's post: any criticism of Trump for saying the vulgar word in the first place, let alone any criticism of him for saying it about certain African countries. If Trump hadn't said it, CNN would not have needed to report it, and Fox News would not have to devise a way to dance around it.

In short, Graham is complaining that CNN reported Trump's word accurately.

In a companion piece at the MRC's "news" division, Craig Bannister touts how Republican Rep. Lamar Smith regurgitated Graham's post on the House floor, additionally complaining that "There was a time when the media would show some respect for family values. But no more." Bannister gives no indication that Smith also criticized Trump for saying the word in the first place or the context in which he said it, so we must assume that he did not.

MRC Hires Right-Wing Ranter Allen West As 'Senior Fellow'
Topic: Media Research Center

From a Jan. 11 Media Research Center press release:

The Media Research Center (MRC) announced on Thursday that prominent conservative Lieutenant Colonel Allen B. West, USA, Ret. has been named a Senior Fellow at the MRC to support its mission to expose and neutralize liberal media bias.

In addition to his 22 years in the United States Army, Lt. Colonel West’s extensive career includes representing Florida’s 22nd District in the 112th United States Congress and serving as Executive Director to the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas, TX. He is a Fox News contributor, Townhall.com contributing columnist, and member of the NRA’s Board of Directors.

Media Research Center President Brent Bozell issued the following statement Thursday welcoming Colonel Allen West to the MRC team:

“I am thrilled to have Colonel West working with our team here at the Media Research Center. Like many of us, he has witnessed the liberal media’s hypocrisy and bias first hand. West brings an extremely knowledgeable and unique perspective that will serve the MRC and our supporters well. We are incredibly fortunate to have a respected conservative like Colonel West fighting alongside us. I am very eager to begin working with him.”

Statement by LTC Allen B. West, USA, Ret.:

I’ve long admired the work of Brent Bozell and the MRC. This is personal for me. The news media have a clear leftist agenda which stands in direct conflict with the values conservatives cherish most and which I fought to protect. I’m thrilled to be part of the MRC and its vital mission to expose the liberal media’s radical agenda.

Note that the only experience the MRC cites for West in the relevent area of media criticism is that, in Bozell's words, "he has witnessed the liberal media’s hypocrisy and bias first hand." In reality, this means West is mad that the media accurately reported the anti-liberal, anti-media, anti-Muslim and other various and sundry crazy things he says. And he has said a lot of them. (Remember when West bizarrely attacked President Obama as a "usurper" and a "charlatan"?)

You might remember that West was one of the members of Accuracy in Media's little "Citizen's Commission on Benghazi" kangaroo court, best known for having Wayne Simmons -- an actual charlatan and fraud who invented an entire CIA career that got him on Fox News as a commentator -- as a fellow member than for any of the dubious conclusions it reached. We noticed that didn't make the MRC's bio for West.

The same day the MRC made this announcement, its "news" division CNSNews.com published a lengthy column by West in which he ranted that "The left has an all-out assault to undermine and delegitimize the Judeo-Christian faith heritage and God the Creator in that faith heritage," spurred by a right-wing media report that an "elite liberal arts college" is hosting a class on "queering the Bible." The headline of the column sets the tone: "Who’s Gonna Stand Up, Denounce This Crap…Only Me?"

Putting political screeds before relevant experience? Sounds like West will fit in just fine at the MRC.

MRC Is Weirdly Sensitive About Idea That Reagan Had Alzheimer's Symptoms While President
Topic: Media Research Center

Last fall, the Media Research Center had a weird little freakout over the idea that Ronald Reagan might have been suffering from symptoms of Alzheimer's disease while president, calling anyone who would raise the issue "deranged" -- even though Reagan's son, Ron Reagan Jr., has said he observed possible early signs of the disease in his father.

The MRC continues to be bizarrely sensitive about the issue, however. Curtis Houck put the word "disgusting" in the headline of his Jan. 8 post attacking a couple of people on MSNBC for talking about it:

Continuing the liberal media’s insistence that they can diagnose someone as mentally or physically ill, Monday’s Deadline: White House on MSNBC featured detestable liberal Republicans Nicolle Wallace and David Jolly asserting that Ronald Reagan had Alzheimer’s while president to the point that he may have been unfit for office.

[...]

Wallace used the late Michael Deaver (and YouTube videos) as her main sources for claims Reagan having Alzheimer’s while in office, wondering to Jolly if Trump knew about Reagan while tweeting over the weekend: “I don't know if the President doesn't know, has never heard Michael Deavers — the late Michael Deaver post-White House really heartfelt, really honest, really frank articulations of what it was like to see Ronald Reagan age.”

“I wondered today, rereading Donald Trump's tweets about Reagan, if he knew that Ronald Reagan was suspected to have had the early signs of Alzheimer's during his second term as President,” she concluded.

[...]

Bill O’Reilly made this claim in his much-maligned book Killing Reagan and it drew widespread condemnation. At the time, George Will penned an absolutely scathing takedown on the book, including the portions about Regan having Alzheimer’s while in office.

Reagan biographer Craig Shirley trashed the book as “garbage” and “total B.S.” for peddling such views. Reagan library executive director John Heubusch said the book was “a disservice to history.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Lee Edwards addressed Reagan’s health in reviewing a Shirley book, writing in 2015 that Reagan “had no serious health problems before his Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 1994.”

When Reagan’s son Ron alleged the same in 2011, his half-brother Michael denied the claim by arguing that Ron “was an embarrassment to his father when he was alive and today he became an embarrassment to his mother.”

Houck didn't mention that all of those deniers are Reagan hagiographers who have a vested interest in bending history to obscure the idea that Reagan might have had health problems while in office. And Michael Reagan insulting his half-brother is evidence of absolutely nothing.

Then, in a Jan. 12 post, Kyle Drennen attacked CBS' Dr. John LaPook for accurately stating that "there are questions about whether Ronald Reagan had symptoms of Alzheimer’s while in office." Drennen retorted: "The claim about Reagan has been repeatedly dispelled by experts of his presidency. George Will denounced the notion as 'slander' in a 2015 Washington Post column. Reagan biographer Craig Shirley called it 'total B.S.'" Like Houck, Drennen didn't admit that Will and Shirley are Reagan hagiographers.

'Barf': MRC Researchers Get Even More Unprofessional
Topic: Media Research Center

There's always been a streak of unprofessionalism running through the Media Research Center -- remember when MRC chief Brent Bozell called President Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead"? -- most recently reveling in the personal issues of people it hates.

That snide unprofessionalism pops up again in a Jan. 3 post by the MRC's Scott Whitlock in which he rants about the new movie "The Post" for being positive about the power of journalism. The headline on his post actually starts out with the word "Barf."

Yep, crude insults are a surefire way to argue a point about "media bias."

Whitlock doesn't do much in the way of fact-checking in his post -- indeed, he challenges none of the history in "The Post" movie -- but does a bit of lame whataboutism in whining that ">there's no film exposing actions such as Barack Obama spying on Fox News reporter James Rosen or how the ex-president derailed a government effort to stop Hezbollah’s trafficking of cocaine. But, then, Obama is a Democrat."

Whitlock also whined that "there are almost NO Republicans in The Post and the film is mostly a conversation between the left and the center-left." As if it mattered what political persuasion one was during the Pentagon Papers incident, which is what "The Post" is about.

The "barf" comment, besides being unprofessional, shows just how little the MRC cares for the media, and its desire to silence any voice that does not spout pro-Trump talking points 24-7.

MRC's Double Standard on Salacious Books of Questionable Accuracy About The White House
Topic: Media Research Center

Unsurprisingly, the Media Research Center has gone ballistic over Michael Wolff's sensational book on the Trump White House, particularly focused on trying to discredit the book:

• Tim Graham highlighted a claim that Wolff made up quotes in the book.
• Scott Whitlock got angry when one TV host said that "Even if not all of it is true, the spirit of the book is," harrumphing, "And how much untruth is too much for the journalist?"
• Kyle Drennen dismissed Wolff's book as "salacious and unverified."
• Nicholas Fondacaro served up the requisite irrelevant, extremely narrowly defined coverage comparison, grousing that  TV network news "found more interest in Wolff’s palace intrigue that the Iranian people’s struggle for freedom." (The MRC has already praised the Trump toadies at "Fox & Friends" for catering to Trump's agenda by hyping the Iran protests.)
• Drennen also highlighted a TV host he claimed "questioned [Wolff's] credibility," asserting that "Wolff has a long history of getting facts wrong or even making things up."
• Fondacaro also complained about an ABC segment in which "Clinton lackey George Stephanopoulos led a largely liberal panel in fawning over the book even as he speculated that only ‘50 percent’ of the book was actually true."
• MRC chief Brent Bozell groused that the media was, in the words of an anonymous MRC public-relations writer, "totally ignoring the books’s blatant falsehoods."
• Chris Reeves asserted that the book commits "basic factual errors."
• Drennen once again proclaimed the book to be "unsubstantiated," adding "When even harsh Trump critics like Colbert are unwilling to accept Wolff’s book as fact, perhaps it’s time for it to be labeled as fiction."
• Curtis Houck insisted that the book is "error-laden."

But when a right-wing author penned about about a Democratic president it knew had factual issues, the MRC demanded media coverage of it.

In May 2012, the MRC published a NewsBusters post by Jill Stanek outlining factual errors in Edward Klein's book "The Amateur," that was heavily reliant on anonymous sources to bash the Obama White House. Stanek wrote that Klein's depiction of Obama's vote on an anti-abortion law when he was a Illinois state senator "was wrong on just about every point," adding that "I’ve been reading his book and find it quite interesting but wonder how much of it is accurate, if this was any indication."

But six days later, NewsBusters' Randy Hall demanded that the media cover Klein's book anyway:

Democratic political operatives have been furious in their denunciations of author Ed Klein and his new book The Amateur, a biography of President Obama which relies heavily (although not entirely) on anonymous sources to paint a highly unflattering picture of its subject.

That is to be expected but surely Klein’s tales might make for good television. Supposedly, journalists care primarily about a good story more than anything else. And Klein’s book certainly has them, including secret feuds between First Lady Michelle Obama and TV billionaire Oprah Winfrey as well as tales of former president Bill Clinton privately bashing Barack Obama as an “amateur.” Unfortunately for Klein, however, he is being almost totally ignored by the elite media.

[...]

Given that we don’t know who Klein’s sources were on some of his more sensational accusations, it’s tough to vouch for his credibility. On the other hand, given their previous love of repeating anonymous allegations against Republicans, the TV networks and other elite American media ought to at the very least examine and report on Klein’s allegations against President Obama. That, or stop reporting on such charges altogether.

Except that Klein destroyed his credibility a long time ago, to the extent that even top conservatives disregard his work. If nothing else, Wolff has a better track record for accuracy.

MRC: Why Can't Everyone Cover News Like 'Fox & Friends'?
Topic: Media Research Center

We know which morning TV show ex-Media Research Center researcher and current NewsBusters blogger Brad Wilmouth likes to watch:

Monday morning's newscasts made a stark illustration of how much importance FNC places in the issue of human rights in Iran in contrast with the broadcast networks and CNN as Fox and Friends managed to spend five times as much time on the anti-government protests as ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN all combined that morning.

CNN's New Day -- which was mostly pre-recorded due to the holiday but included live portions -- gave viewers three briefs which only totaled one and a half minutes, and barely scratched the surface of the weekend's events that turned deadly for about a dozen protesters.

[...]

NBC's Today show on Monday did not mention the Iran protests at all, and none of the briefs from CNN, ABC, or CBS on Monday morning gave any indication that Iranian government forces have a history of cracking down violently on protesters.

By contrast, Fox and Friends devoted four segments to Iran on Monday, totaling about 14 and a half minutes. Liberal attorney Alan Dershowitz, conservative activist John Bolton, and conservative commentator Michelle Malkin all appeared as guests and discussed Iran.

Dershowitz notably praised President Donald Trump's handling of Iran in contrast with President Barack Obama, and suggested Trump deserves credit for inspiring protests against the Iranian government. Malkin complained that the media have blamed the protests on economic issues like unemployment rather than the authoritarian nature of the government.

Wilmouth omits a couple things. First, he doesn't mention that "Fox & Friends" basically plays to an audience of one: President Trump. It reports what he wants to hear -- usually flattering things about him and his administration -- and he tweets about what he sees. "Fox & Friends" knew that focusing on the Iran protests would be good for the president's agenda, so that's what it did.

Second, while Wilmouth mentions "liberal attorney Alan Dershowitz" in an apparent attempt to show that "Fox & Friends" is trying to live up to its "fair and balanced" logo -- never mind that even other MRC writers concede that the show "presents a friendly viewpoint toward the Trump administration" -- is as pro-Trump as anyone else who appears on the show, making him the newest Fox News Democrat.

By demanding that the media act more like "Fox & Friends," Wilmouth is demanding that the media be pro-Trump toadies. You know, just like the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com.

MRC Revels In Personal Problems of People It Hates
Topic: Media Research Center

The professionalism of the Media Research Center has been on a downward slide for a while. It slides even lower in a couple of NewsBusters post that take unseemly glee in the personal problems of a couple longtime targets.

Corinne Weaver is obsessed with playing politics as she cheers the resignation of the president of ESPN for substance-abuse issues:

The scandal-plagued sports network ESPN is suffering another blow -- the resignation of its left-wing president.

John Skipper, described in The Washington Post as a “gangly, Southern hippie,” announced his decision to resign as president of ESPN and co-chairman of Disney Media Networks on Monday, December 18. He cited a “substance addiction” as the main reason for his resignation. In his statement, he wrote: “I have come to this public disclosure with embarrassment, trepidation and a feeling of having let others I care down.”

Named president of ESPN in 2012, Skipper helped to usher in the dark ages of ESPN, with significant drops in ratings and subscribers. At least partial credit goes to the increasingly partisan approaches made by ESPN’s bloggers and journalists, as well as the network’s own decisions. Some of these include the decision to give Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner the Arthur Ashe Courage Award in 2015, letting an employee go for being conservative, and allowing one of its radio hosts, Tony Kornheiser, question whether or not the Tea Party movement was similar to ISIS.  

P.J. Gladnick was similarly schadenfreude-filled in a post headlined "Net Neutrality Obsessed Reporter Arrested for Drunken Rampage, recounting how "On the same day that net neutrality was repealed, a net neutrality obsessed reporter for the New York Daily News was arrested for going on a drunken rampage at a hospital." He snarkily added: "So did [Aaron] Showalter's despair over the repeal of net neutrality drive him to drink? One thing is certain, he's obsessed with the issue."

Neither Weaver nor Gladnick express any concern  for thehealth and well-being of Skipper or Showalter as they deal with personal issues -- so much for compassionate conservativism. Instead, it's cheering their downfall.

Then again, this is an organization that tried to capitalize on the death of Peter Jennings by touting how its archives were "packed with documentation of liberal bias" from him, so classlessness on such issues isn't exactly new.

MRC's Graham Whines That Trump Is Being Fact-Checked
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Tim Graham complains in a Dec. 22 post (bolding his):

The least surprising thing about PolitiFact’s 2017 "Lie of the Year" is that it’s uttered by Donald Trump. Their biggest lie was “Russian election interference is a ‘made-up story.’” We’ll get to whether PolitiFact is quoting Trump in context in a minute.

But first, a quick study of that 2017 “Truth-O-Meter” reveals that once again, PolitiFact showed far more aggression in evaluating Trump’s statements than any prominent Democrat. The “independent fact checkers” singled out Trump for 140 evaluations, and 95 of them (68 percent) were Mostly False, False, and Pants on Fire. Just 19 (13.5 percent) were Half True, and 26 (18.5 percent) were Mostly True or True.

Now compare that 140 evaluations to the leading Democrats: Sen. Bernie Sanders (10 verdicts), Sen. Charles Schumer (eight) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (seven). Between them, they were evaluated as True or Mostly True on 11 occasions, False or Mostly False on nine occasions, and Half True on five.

Barack Obama in 2017 drew two Mostly Trues and one half True. Elizabeth Warren? One Mostly True. Kamala Harris? One Mostly True and one True.

Graham seems to have missed the relevant fact that Trump is president and all these other people are not. He also does not back up his suggestion that there should be balance in evaluation of statements by Trump and by Democrats -- perhaps because he knows that Trump is a singularly mendacious man.

While Graham whines that PolitiFact evaluated 140 Trump statements, that's a drop in the bucket; the Washington Post found that Trump made at least 1,950 false or misleading statements last year. So PolitiFact's evaluation proportion ratio seems to reflect real life.

Still, Graham whines: "In other words, PolitiFact ends up looking like the rest of the 'independent' liberal media. Republicans are hounded as routine liars, while the Democrats are much more likely to be handed the Mostly True." This is just more of the MRC's war on fact-checking because those fact-checkers expose Trump's lies for what they are.

MRC Tries to Defend Fox News As A News Outlet
Topic: Media Research Center

We've shown that the Media Research Center has a Fox News-shaped blind spot when it comes to things it does that it criticizes other media outlets for doing. When it comes to Fox News' reputation as a right-wing opinion machine that's light on the news part, the MRC will rush to the defense of the channel that serves as the premier media outlet for its talking heads.

So when CNN's Brian Stelter questioned whether Fox News is actually news, the MRC's Alex Xenos was quick to retort in a Dec. 19 post, insisting that Fox News really does news, except for the stuff that's not, and that CNN is the real problem here:

Everybody understands that Fox & Friends presents a friendly viewpoint toward the Trump administration. Meanwhile, CNN still acts as if they are the arbiter of news as they fret over the President’s Diet Coke consumption and how he's a bully for taking an extra scoop of ice cream.

The point is that it's CNN's hypocrisy here that's troubling (not to mention that Fox News does excellent journalistic work and covers stories that the major broadcast networks refuse to even consider).

Sean Hannity is not a journalist. He is a pundit and admits to being one. Fox & Friends has had their reputation of being a right-of-center news program for years while Special Report will never be confused with Hardball or The Ingraham Angle. To Stelter's credit, he admitted as much regarding Shepard Smith and Special Report host Bret Baier. Using the former two examples to blugeon Fox News as an illegitimate news source is dishonest.

Actually, Hannity has claimed to be a journalist when it suits him to do so. And if "CNN's hypocrisy" is really the issue here, why is Xenos devoting so much time to defending Fox News' purported journalistic bona fides and dismissing its obvious right-wing bias as something "everybody understands" and, thus, something that doesn't need to be discussed?

MRC's 'Media Research' on NBC's Tur Mostly Just Personal Attacks
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has had it in for NBC reporter Katy Tur for some time, and it may have inspired attacks on her by Donald Trump that threatened her safety. That hostility has not abated.

A Dec. 19 post by Curtis Houck carries the hyperbolic headline "Grab Your Popcorn: Katy Tur Gets Annihilated by Dave Brat in Tax Policy Debate."But there's little actual annihilation going on; Brat simply disagrees with her. Houck is condescending to Tur throughout his post, ranting about her purported "smug factor" and mocking her status as a "MSNBC host extraordinaire" who's supposedly an idiot because she "grew up in a family of journalists." Perhaps Houck needs to be reminded that petty personal attacks on someoneyou don't like are not "media research."

Just as condescending and spiteful was Houck's MSNBC colleague Chris Reeves, whose Dec. 27 post ridiculously called Tur an "uber-liberal partisan" (what is an "uber-liberal"? Reeves never defines the term) and ranted that she was "fomenting political tribalism by promoting rank partisan propaganda" and is "a repeat offender when it comes to pure, unadulterated liberal lunacy."

One purported example of this, according to Reeves, is that Tur recently, and accurately, pointed out that President Trump has not held a full solo press conference since February. This, needless to say, sent the MRC into spin mode. Tim Graham retorted, "Trump has held a series of press conferences this year, but most of them have come with foreign leaders, and only two American reporters and two foreign reporters are allowed to ask a question. That’s a fraction of a press conference, perhaps, but it’s wrong to say he 'hasn’t had a press conference.'" Reeves joined in: "In reality, Trump’s last press conference was on October 16th, and the President regularly answers press questions in informal sessions on the White House lawn. This hardly constitutes a “laughable” fear of the press, as Tur characterized it." But that presser was an impromptu one, held in the White House Rose Garden with Sen. Mitch McConnell -- again, not the formal, planned press conference Tur was talking about.

Again: Personal attacks do not qualify as "media research" -- except, apparently, at the MRC.

The MRC's 'Soros-Funded Journalism' Fail
Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has long been obsessed with George Soros as some kind of liberal string-puller through his funding of allegedly liberal groups (despite the fact that the MRC has a string-pulling moneybags benefactor in the form of the Mercers). We see this again in Aly Nielsen's Dec. 13 post, in which she writes:

Soros-funded journalism is coming to seven states in 2018, thanks to ProPublica. The liberal journalism nonprofit announced on Dec. 9 it had chosen journalists in Louisiana, West Virginia, Oregon, New Mexico, Indiana, Illinois and Florida to receive year-long stipends to pursue ProPublica-approved investigations.

Nielsen's article is accompanied by a chart of dubious origin -- no source is given, but it's apparently taken from the MRC's apparently dormant "Buying Bias" website, which claims to track "the funding sources behind non-profit journalism" and where a version of Nielsen's post first appeared in October -- purporting to show donors to ProPublica over an unspecified period of time, but unfortunately for Nielsen's "Soros-funded journalism" angle, it shows that Soros' Open Society Foundation donated only $737,411, while five other foundations donated more than $1 million, and the biggest donor, the Sandler Foundation, utterly dwarfed OSF's conrtibutions with a whopping #44 million donation.

Yet, even though Soros' foundation donated less than 1/33 of the money of ProPublica's biggest donor,  Nielsen's headline claim is "Soros-funded journalism."

The MRC has done this before. For example, a 2013 post about ProPublica calls it a "Soros-funded news operation," and Nielsen herself did it again last January, using a similar chart that curiously omitted the Sandler Foundation's donations -- presumably to not undermine her Soros-bashing argument.

Nielsen also huffed that "ProPublica has a history of liberal alliances and reporting," but she cited random, cherry-picked examples and offered no comprehensive research on ProPublica's coverage.

MRC Writers Attack Mueller Probe As Biased, Ignore Ken Starr's Partisanship
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center just hates it when conservative media bias is called out. And they're really put out that the right-wing media's attacks on Robert Mueller's investigation into Trump-Russia links are being exposed for what they are.

In a Dec. 15 post, the MRC's Curtis Houck responded to CNN's Wolf Blitzer and "rabble rouser" Jim Acosta calling out those right-wing attacks by insisting that they're just asking questions and aren't trying to discredit the FBI at all:

What’s interesting was that the pair seemed to give zero thought to the possibility that this matter should be thoroughly examined in both the interest of transparency and the benefit of the investigation. 

One prevailing thought in the media has been if the President has nothing to hide, then he should be more cooperative with the Special Counsel. Using that logic, the same should be expected of the FBI when it comes to snuffing out claims of political bias. Most reasonable people should and do believe that the FBI (and CIA) are among the country's most cherished institutions. Simple questions don't harm that credibility.

The other tidbit is how the media have defended the Mueller probe to the ends of the earth, but did the opposite with the Ken Starr investigation into the Clintons. My colleague Rich Noyes published a fascinating story that showcased the press’s viciousness roughly two decades ago when the subject of a special counsel investigation was a Democratic President. 

And, indeed, Noyes did whine four days earlier:

In stark contrast to their supportive coverage of Mueller, the media’s treatment of Starr in the 1990s was savage. Almost as soon as he was named — and long before the Lewinsky story broke — Clinton-friendly journalists tried to discredit him as an unfair partisan.

[...]

The media’s Starr-as-partisan mantra was merely the first step. At the same time Bill Clinton was running for re-election in 1996, Starr was putting his ex-business partners, James and Susan McDougal, on trial for fraud uncovered during the Whitewater investigation. Again, Clinton’s friends in the press raced to innoculate the President from the damaging scandal.

[...]

It is, of course, impossible to imagine one of today’s journalists scolding Robert Mueller for distracting President Trump from important national business, or suggesting his investigation has become a partisan mission to destroy a President whom the Washington Establishment has never liked.

The double standard is obvious to anyone who will look.

That double standard is even more obvious at the MRC. Starr actually was the partisan the MRC insists Mueller is. As Joe Conason -- who covered the many bogus Clinton "scandals" in the 1990s -- explains, Starr "had served as solicitor general under President George H.W. Bush, who considered him for a Supreme Court nomination; he had raised funds for Republican candidates; he had served as a stalwart of the Federalist Society, the high-powered organization of right-wing Republican lawyers; and he had nearly run for the U.S. Senate in the 1994 Virginia Republican primary." He also provided legal advice to a conservative women's group in support of the Paula Jones lawsuit against Clinton. Starr was placed as independent counsel by Republican-appointed judges apparently upset that the original counsel, Robert Fiske, was going to clear Clinton in the Whitewater alleged scandal, Conason adds.

Needless to say, neither Houck nor Noyes mentioned that fears about Starr's partisan affiliations -- none of which, by the way, can be found with Mueller -- were well-founded. Neither did the MRC's Tim Graham and Brent Bozell, who whined in their Dec. 13 column that "among the 15 Mueller lawyers, nine are Democratic donors — several of whom contributed to Clinton's 2016 campaign" and complained that "Back then, anti-Kenneth Starr commentary wasn't 'shocking.' It was mandatory."

Just as it is currently mandatory for MRC writers to issue anti-Mueller commentary.

MRC's Persistent Fox News-Shaped Blind Spot on Sexual Harassment
Topic: Media Research Center

We've repeatedly highlighted the Media Research Center's Fox News-shaped blind spot on the issue of sexual harassment -- harping on allegations everywhere else but ignoring the ones at the MRC's favorite TV channel. And they keep piling up.

Tim Graham and Brent Bozell's Dec. 20 column highlights the "stunning announcements and admissions about the serious alleged sexual misbehavior of Harvey Weinstein and others." "Others" is the closest Graham and Bozell get to referencing the scandals at Fox News.

Graham and Bozell spend the rest of their column parsing the definition of sexual harassment. At first, it seems incongruous that they're giving  something of a pass to certain allegations against hated enemies like Chris Matthews ("he's a pig, not a harasser") and Matt Lauer (regarding a woman who had an affair with Lauer she now says was an abuse of power (italics theirs): "You were a 24-year-old woman. Act your age. If he's a scoundrel, so are you").

The reason becomes clear later in their column: They're trying to set up a defense against allegations made against Donald Trump. Here's how they attack one Trump accuser:

Speaking of makeup artists, Jill Harth filed a sexual harassment suit against Donald Trump in 1997 and renewed her allegations in the fall of 2016. John Solomon at The Hill reports that she repeatedly sent Trump gushing emails during his presidential campaign offering to do his makeup and even testify about how wonderfully he treated women. "I also want to put it out there that I would be willing to say at a rally or somewhere how DJT helped me with my self-confidence and all positive things about how he is with women to counter any potential negativity that may come out at some point in the campaign," she wrote.

(We're not watching CNN rushing to the president's defense.)

Then there's the old notion of cashing in on allegations. Solomon added that Harth's lawyer, Lisa Bloom, "eventually started a GoFundMe.com fundraising effort to help Harth and located a donor that paid off Harth's mortgage on her Queens apartment in New York City."

Imagine that.

Yes, imagine that. It's as if Graham and Bozell hae forgotten that Clinton accuser Kathleen Willey also tried to crowdfund paying off her mortgage. And for all we know, Willey may have found a donor to actually do so: Donald Trump.

The blind spot was even more obvious in Jeffrey Lord's Dec. 23 NewsBusters column, in which he served up a lengthy list of how "across the media landscape one player after another fell" by, among other things, "having let loose their private sexual demons on unsuspecting colleagues or others." Curiously missing from that list: anyone from Fox News.

That Fox News-shaped blind spot hasn't shrunk a bit.

MRC Wrongly Calls Wash. Post Reporter 'Liberal'
Topic: Media Research Center

Ex-Media Research Center researcher Brad Wilmouth huffs in a Dec. 15 NewsBusters post:

Some liberal journalists just can't get the notion out of their minds that George Wallace was a Republican, even though the former segregationist governor of Alabama was a lifelong Democrat. On Friday's Washington Week on PBS, host Robert Costa -- also a Washington Postreporter -- suggested that Wallace was a part of the Republican party's "past" as he recalled that some black voters in Alabama are worried about the direction the GOP is taking. Costa:

I spoke to a lot of African-American voters when I was down there, Jeff, and they said that they're worried that the Republican Party -- broadly speaking -- is turning back to its past. They cited the former governor of Alabama, George Wallace, a segregationist, and they say, in Roy Moore -- sometimes even in President Trump -- they hear echoes of a past that makes them uncomfortable.

Not one of the four panel members jumped in to correct the suggestion that Wallace was ever a Republican as CNN's Jeff Zeleny, CBS's Nancy Cordes, NBC's Kristen Welker, and Vice News's Shawna Thomas got their turns to speak.

In fact, Costa is not a "liberal journalist." He came to the Washington Post from National Review, and the MRC regarded his work so well at the time that a 2013 NewsBusters post celebrated Costa's hiring by crediting Post owner Jeff Bezos for "encouraging his staff to think outside the box" by hiring someone from "a right-leaning publication."

How quickly the MRC forgets that Costa was once their guy.

Further, Wilmouth's freaking out about the mere suggestion that Wallace was a Republican seems rather silly given that both Wallace and Trump share certain traits in exploiting peope's fears and promoting racially tinged populism.

MRC Indignant NY Times Reporter Keeps Job Despite Harassment Claims, Silent On Fox Host Doing The Same
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck waxes indignant in a Dec. 20 post:

The New York Times decided that it would not fire Glenn Thrush following an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, citing “dozens of interviews with people both inside and outside the newsroom” and that Thrush will seek workplace “training” to supplement his “counseling and substance abuse rehabilitation.”

The befuddling decision by executive editor Dean Baquet came exactly one month after Vox.com detailed disturbing claims of sexual misbehavior by Thrush from his tenure at Politico. The paper suspended Thrush that same day while MSNBC took him off the airwaves (where he’s a political analyst).

Baquet announced in a memo that Thrush will remain at The Times despite losing his title as one of the paper’s White House correspondents and moved to “a new beat upon his return.” In other words, Al Franken should consider sending his resume over when he leaves the Senate on January 2. Who knows, maybe Charlie Rose should do that too.

This is a good time to remind people that, as we've noted, the MRC has been completely silent about someone else who still has a job despite being accused of sexual harassment: Charles Payne, a host on Fox Business and a commentator on Fox News. Like Thrush, Payne was suspended after the allegations surfaced and, like Thrush, was allowed to return to his job a couple months later -- though, unlike Thrush, he appears to have suffered no penalty in the process.

Also unlike Thrush, Payne is currently being sued over allegations of sexual assault and defamation by Scottie Nell Hughes, a female former Fox News commentator who says he coerced her into having sexual relationship with him and that her appearances on Fox News were drastically curtailed after the relationship ended.

A search of NewsBusters' archive shows that MRC chief Brent Bozell has appeared as a guest on Payne-hosted shows on Fox Business five times since the beginning of 2016, while the MRC's Rich Noyes has appeared once. We've also noted that the last mention of Hughes at NewsBusters was back in December 2016, which seems to back up Hughes' stated inability to make a living as a pundit after being blackballed from Fox.

Consider this just another Fox News-shaped blind spot at the MRC.