MRC's Bozell, Trump Jr. Use Facebook Live to Bash Facebook Topic: Media Research Center
The Facebook-hating Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell got to have his Nov. 12 chat with Donald Trump Jr. on, yes, Facebook Live. The only segment that the MRC highlighted to promote the chat was about a segment in which the two bashed Facebook.
Corinne Weaver wrote in a Nov. 13 NewsBusters post:
Donald Trump Jr. warned of the large liberal influence that Big Tech companies such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have on elections in an exclusive interview with Media Research Center president and founder, L. Brent Bozell.
Trump Jr. hammered Big Tech. He said that the companiesy should be “reined in” before 2020 becomes a “dry run for suppression” of free speech on social media platforms. Bozell said, “When you have got a social media industry world” that is “shutting down the pro-life movement,” and “the NRA and the pro-gun movement, systematically, that is a real threat.” Trump Jr. agreed, and added that Silicon Valley’s “leftist” problem was the real issue behind the tech companies.
“In the case of Mark Zuckerberg,” explained Bozell, the Facebook CEO believed that “we have to be the market of free ideas. But at a secondary level, they could care less about what happens to our company.” Trump Jr. asserted, “I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg is a conservative ... but I don’t believe he’s got full control of that ship.” He went on to say that “tens of thousands of employees” all believe the Silicon Valley “leftist” think.
He’s not alone in that view. Facebook engineer Brian Amerige said that tech employees “attack anyone who presents a view that appears to be in opposition to left-leaning ideology.”
Weaver didn't mention that Amerige has said that Republicans and conservatives interpreted his message all wrong, as Wired reported:
Amerige says his biggest fear and annoyance was the fact that his comments “were going to be used as a weapon for legislating or regulating the company." "I left the company because I think this is such an important issue, and they're headed in the wrong direction," he says, "but I would defend Facebook’s right to screw this up until the very end."
Weaver also omitted one crucial fact from her post: The Trump Jr.-Bozell chat took place without issue on Facebook Live. Once more, the MRC's failing narrative that Facebook discriminates against conservatives has been undercut.
Tim Graham's Meltdown Over Impeachment Hearing Coverage Ignores Technology Leaps Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is weirdly obsessed with how the Trump impeachment hearings are being covered. the MRC's Tim Graham tried a pre-emptive attack on the coverage in a Nov. 13 post:
The networks are planning live coverage of the House Democrats attempting to impeach President Trump over a phone call to the president of Ukraine. This is a very partisan exercise, but the very partisan networks always paint these as momentous turning points of history that are somehow nonpartisan.
One of the most obvious ways our television “news” divisions demonstrate their bias is by deciding which news events deserve live coverage, canceling out their regular programming. At least, it’s obvious on the days when it happens. But it’s sneaky when you try to compare it to how they covered other breaking-news events that don’t line up with the Democrat agenda.
Five years ago, the networks skipped any live coverage of the first hearings into the government failure to protect the consulate in Benghazi.
Graham seems not to have noticed that the Benghazi hearings weren't impeachment hearings.
This was followed by a rant showing his bizarre hatred for PBS:
Watergate analogies abound. So it’s not surprising that longtime PBS omnipresence Bill Moyers took out an ad in The New York Times insisting that for “the sake of the nation,” PBS replay the impeachment hearings in prime time, just as PBS did in 1973. “Disrupting its programming for a few weeks is a small price to pay for helping preserve the republic.”
The fate of democracy and the fate of the Democrats are synonymous.
PBS – funded in part by the involuntary contributions of taxpayers, including conservatives – is supposed to “preserve the Republic”... when Republicans are in the White House. It ran Watergate day and night, it ran Iran-Contra live in 1987. But at this point in 1998, Moyers was silent. As the commercial networks all aired the President's videotaped perjury about Monica Lewinsky before the grand jury, PBS ran its kiddie shows. PBS took the same hands-off approach with Congress held hearings in the summer of 1997 into the Clinton-Gore campaign accepting a pile of contributions from foreign donors for their re-election campaign. That kind of foreign interference in our elections was positively sleep-inducing.
But now, PBS will air this Adam Schiff impeachment crusade live, alongside everyone else. Moyers thinks it’s insufficient that PBS World, a digital channel carried by 157 public television stations representing about 64 percent of U.S. TV households, will replay the testimony in prime time. They won’t go Full Watergate.
Graham seems not to have noticed something else: The advent of cable TV between Nixon and Clinton -- particularly public affairs channel C-SPAN -- meant that PBS didn't have to broadcast the Clinton hearings live. The cable news networks and C-SPAN aired the hearings live, while the broadcast networks would show live coverage of any votes.
Graham also ignores the technological leap between the Clinton hearings and now, spcifically the switch to digital television. Most public TV broadcast stations have a number of digital subchannels (like PBS World, which Graham referenced) that can be used to air impeachment hearings, and PBS appears not to have mandated that the hearings run on a public TV station's main channel, since its announcement of live coverage was also accompanied by a note to "check local listings for coverage in your area."
Graham concluded by huffing:
The one thing that’s guaranteed about these live impeachment hearings is that the incessant network-news drumbeat against Donald Trump will continue to be more than 90 percent negative, as it has been for years. If that hasn’t made a dent in Trump’s standing with his backers up until now, it’s hard to see how all this live coverage is going make much of a difference.
[...]
It wasn’t, because the Left never stops trying to end this presidency prematurely. Even if at this point, it seems more designed as a strategy to end it the usual way, at election time.
As we've documented, the MRC's methodology for determining "negative" coverage is a bogus, highly biased mess. We also don't remember Graham being concerned about nefarious forces trying to "prematurely" end a presidency when that president was Clinton.
MRC Writer Gets Triggered By Drag Queen At Impeachment Hearing Topic: Media Research Center
Last month, we detailed how a Media Research Center writer had such a freakout over a drag queen that the LGBT-haters at WorldNetDaily approvingly repeated it. It's a new month, so it must be time for another drag queen freakout.
Doing the honors this time is Gabriel Hays, last seen here getting triggered about an actor expressing a political opinion he didn't like. Hays devoted an entire Nov. 13 post to being unhappy that a drag queen was in the audience at an impeachment hearing:
If you want a concise distillation of how serious the left’s impeachment attempts are on this first official day of hearings, look at the Drag Queen journalists on the ground at Capitol Hill. Just try to tell yourself — without wincing — that this is a “sad” and oh-so-serious day for democracy, as Nancy Pelosi puts it.
It sure says a lot about the Democratic party when drag queens have become their shock troopers.
Pissi Myles, as he likes to call himself (please Lord, we hope that doesn’t mean what we think it means), apparently fancies himself a journalist with a valid interest in covering impeachment politics. It’s a nice reminder of just how much of a circus the Dems’ attempt at removing Trump is, with freaks like Pissi Myles being the enthusiastic rent-a-clowns.
As much as Hays is desperate to like Myles to the Democrats to further his employer's narrative that the impeachment hearings are not serious, he offers no evidence that Myles has any connection whatsoever to the Democratic Party that would have given him special permission to attend the hearing.
But Hays was truly horrified by Myles' mere presence, apparently unclear on the concept of what a drag queen is:
The accompanying images were about as horrifying as one could imagine. Pissi, a clearly overweight male, was wearing an offensively red, way-too-short dress, sparkly red heels, and a curly blonde wig so ostentatious that Honey Boo Boo would have fainted on sight.
The most outlandish part of it all was that Miss Myles had her reporting rig all set up and ready to go. She was holding her phone with an extension arm, had her headphones in, and was giving viewers an up close and personal account of the morning’s proceedings.
Hays concluded by sneering: "It’s a shame to even say it, but If [Adam] Schiff and his drag queen soldiers beat Trump, then maybe he doesn’t deserve to win." Again, Hays offered no evidence that Schiff or any other Democrat had anything to do with Myles' presence.
Some might call Hays' narrative fake news. Also, anti-LGBT hate, which Hays is also prone to.
MRC Tries To Delegitimize Impeachment By Claiming It Has Low Ratings (Compared To The O.J. Trial) Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has a new way of downplaying the impeachment hearings against President Trump: highlight their allegedly low ratings.
In a Nov. 14 post, Kristine Marsh touted how an appearance by Donald Trump on ABC's "The View" got better ratings than ABC's coverage of the impeachment hearings:
If ratings are any indicator of Americans’ interest in impeachment, Democrats are in big trouble. Viewership for yesterday’s impeachment hearings are out, and reveal that between the three major broadcast networks, ABC led ratings, with just 2 million total viewers (Fox News Channel was the most viewed network, with 2.9 million watching.)
But just 6 days before on came to political talk show, The View.
Deadline reportedhis interview on November 7th was the highest rated for the show in over six months:
[...]
While taking shots at Trump, even the liberal entertainment source had to admit, “The showdown went viral, and now it seems even old-school viewers were watching en masse.”
Marsh then sneered: "To get some perspective, the ratings ABC got Wednesday, were lower than the lowest rated daytime soap opera on television, Days of Our Lives, averaged on NBC. Those numbers were so concerning for the network they fired the entire cast and put the show on an indefinite hiatus this past week." Actually, the article to which Marsh linked stated that production of the show is so far ahead of schedule that the normal holiday hiatus came earlier this year; the soap hasn't been canceled and episodes are still airing.
Rich Noyes then picked up the talking point, huffing on Nov. 18 that the impeachment hearings must suck because (we're not making this up) O.J. Simpson's trial got much higher ratings:
Americans aren’t exactly obsessed with the Democrats’ impeachment hearings, it seems. Friday’s second day of live, wall-to-wall coverage drew an average of 12.7 million viewers on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC and the Fox News Channel combined.
That’s down from a relatively tepid 13.1 million for Day 1 of testimony on Wednesday.
In comparison, an actual news event that definitely captured Americans’ imagination — the verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial — drew 150 million viewers (nearly twelve times as many) back in 1995.
[...]
That suggests 95 percent (about 241.3 million) were doing something else on Friday besides watching these hearings.
And I’ll bet most of them were having more fun.
Noyes isn't going to tell you that the hearings still got more viewers than pretty much every prime-time network TV show that isn't a football game.
The TV ratings took another dive on Tuesday morning for Day 3 of the Democrats’ impeachment hearings, with only 11.4 million tuning in to ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC and the Fox News Channel for the testimony of Lt. Col. Alex Vindman and an aide to Vice President Mike Pence, Jennifer Williams.
But according to early Nielsen Media Research, the combined audience for those networks grew to 13 million for the afternoon/early evening session featuring the first two witnesses sought by the Republican minority, former U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker and ex-NSC aide Tim Morrison.
Last Wednesday, 13.1 million watched the first day of testimony, while 12.7 million tuned in for Day 2 on Friday.
[...]
Of course, with an estimated 254 million adults living in the United States, nearly everyone was doing something else on Tuesday besides watching these hearings.
Noyes didn't mention that many of those adults have jobs they must be at during the day that prevent them from watching daytime hearings. It's also likely millions more Americans watched the hearings online, which wouldn't have been measured in the TV ratings Noyes and Marsh focused on.
Tim Graham and Brent Bozell piled on as well with, yes, another ancient O.J. ratings comparison:
Rep. Adam Schiff's Democratic impeachment hearings are under way — airing live all over the dial — and the liberals are quite upset that America couldn't care less.
NBC News spurred rage on Twitter for daring to admit online that the first two witnesses "lacked the pizzazz necessary to capture public attention."
[...]
In June 1994, 95 million people were transfixed by a low-speed police chase of O.J. Simpson in his white Ford Bronco through the streets and freeways of Los Angeles. "An estimated 150 million viewers watched Simpson's 1995 acquittal after standing trial for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman," reports the Los Angeles Times. A full 92% of Americans ignored this impeachment spectacle.
When CNN's Brian Stelter dared to make the point that in the internet age, young people watch online while old people watch TV, Graham and Bozell decided to mock instead of offering a cogent response:
All this left CNN's Brian Stelter sputtering that the dismal ratings are a "woefully incomplete" picture of the viewership. The vast majority of those who watched the impeachment hearings on television were over the age of 55. But Stelter tried to argue that younger viewers "were more likely to stream it and/or soak up the info like sponges." Or maybe the millennials were too busy playing "Pokemon" or texting in the middle of busy streets while motorists debated the ethics of running them over.
The two concluded by writing that "the liberals were actually interested in democracy, they would let the elected president finish his term, and try to defeat him at the polls, instead of trying to ruin him before there's any chance for reelection." Funny, we don't remember the folks at the MRC being concerned about whether President Clinton would finish his term as they agitated from his impeachment.
P.S. None of these MRC writers explained why these purportedly low ratings for the impeachment hearings means, as they are suggesting, that the evidence being presented is somehow illegitimate. Would they support Trump's impeachment if the ratings were higher?
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:47 PM EST
Updated: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 12:28 AM EST
MRC Goes Into Freakout Mode Over Disney's New Streaming Service Topic: Media Research Center
For some reason, the Media Research Center decided it needed to feel triggered by ... a streaming video service. We'll concede it's arguably not just another streaming service -- it's Disney+, the new service from Disney. Still, the freakout mode was nothing short of strange.
The first attack came from Lindsey Kornick, decrying the "progressive" leanings of the service's very meta series-long take on "High School Musical," which appears to mostly involve having too many gay or possibly characters (which is to say, any gay characters at all):
We’ll start with Nini. After the break-up, she gets motivated to reinvent herself by auditioning for a lead for the first time. She’s nervous at first but still has the support of her active grandmother and her two moms. They only appear in one scene in order to establish that Nini has lesbian moms. It’s on par with everything else in 2019, which means there’s nothing natural about it.
Nini’s also joined by her best friend Kourtney (Dara Reneé) who encourages her to move on from Ricky. In addition to being the sassy black friend, she’s also a self-proclaimed “feminist” who’s looking to promote “intersectional” values. That’s at least three liberal stereotypes in one character. At least she hasn’t acted on any of those values, yet.
And this wouldn’t be a high school theater department without the effeminate male co-star. This show actually has two.
Kornick conlcuded by whining that the show is "basically Glee with a smaller budget."
Then under the nasty headline "ABC Whores Out News for Disney+ Push," Scott Whitlock complained that Disney-owned ABC used "Good Morning America" to promote the new service. Does that mean we can call the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, "whores" because it frequentlypromotes the activities of the MRC and its boss, Brent Bozell, under the guise of "news"?
This was followed by Alexa Moutevelis grousing that "political correctness" made Disney cut a song filled with painfully outdated Asian stereotypes from the service's version of the animated movie "Lady and the Tramp." Tim Graham and Brent Bozell did much the same thing in a column huffing about "'Experts' from the enlightened side of the tracks ... unscrolling their grievances about how the Disney film catalogue is full of racism, sexism, and loathsome bigotry of all sorts," unironically adding, "These people just hate -- everything."
Finally, Matt Philbin decided that "diversity pimps" were responsible for Disney warning viewers about "racist or otherwise offensive elements" in some of the older films and shows on the service, ranting about activists who want more.
That's a lot of digital ink about someone's streaming service that not only is nobody is forced to watch, one must pay for the privilege of doing so.
Actor's Opinion on Brexit Triggers MRC Writer Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Gabriel Hays unleashed a snide, condescending Nov. 11 rant:
Legendary British actor Patrick Stewart had a bit of a Benedict Arnold moment the other day during French Comic-Con, telling the French audience that he’s “embarrassed” his countrymen voted for Brexit and that he’d much rather be in the EU with them. And here we thought an Englishmen would rather be drawn and quartered than side with the French.
Stewart, who clearly can’t respect the decision of his fellow citizens in their pursuit of an independent Great Britain, essentially hopped the Channel to vent his frustrations to his preferred countrymen; the horde of French folks who don’t care what European bureaucracy rules over them so long as they get their precious Star Trek comics, food and a blankie.
[...]
Geez talk about pandering to your audience.
Stewart continued, virtue-signalling about his appearance at the “Let Us Be Heard” Brexit protest in London in October. Stewart along with activist/Live Aid! founder Bob Geldoff, London Mayor Sadiq Khan and thousands of protesters marched to Parliament Square to vote against Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s latest Brexit deal. Stewart claimed, “I want you to know that more than half of the population of the United Kingdom wants to stay in the European Union.”
Whatever you say, Mr. Stewart. If only that had been the case when 52% of the British people voted “leave” on that fateful June day in 2016.
It appears Hays is another MRC staffer whose job it is to feel triggered when a celebrity expresses a political opinion he doesn't like.
Looks like he needs to retreat to the safe space of the MRC's "news" division, which though that Ringo Starr's opinion on Brexit was so newsworthy that it did an article on it two years after he said it. Of course, Ringo's opinion was the conservatively correct one, so Hays has nothing to fear.
MRC on Politicians Insulting Reporters: Compare and Contrast Topic: Media Research Center
Pelosi Disses Sinclair Reporter James Rosen as 'Mr. Republican Talking Points'
Joe Concha at The Hill reported House Speaker Nancy Pelosi brought her egotistical swagger to a press conference on Thursday, dissing reporter James Rosen of Sinclair as "Mr. Republican Talking Points" and then bragging about how she has more experience on intelligence matters than anyone else in Congress.
Rosen pointed out how Rep. Adam Schiff told Republicans on Wednesday he would be protecting the anonymity of the Ukraine whistleblower and asked "I wonder if you could explain to the American people why the legal rights of the whistleblower should prevail in this political setting over those of President Trump, who should ordinarily enjoy a right to confront his accuser?"
[...]
Don't go looking for the usual scolds of Trump's fighting with reporters (such as CNN's Brian Stelter) to say anything about this exchange, on Twitter or on TV.
(By the way, Tim, James Rosen's question did, in fact, invoke a Republican talking point.)
Rep. Mark Meadows TORCHES Reporters During Impeachment Presser
While Wednesday’s impeachment hearing was in a brief recess during the 12:00 p.m. ET hour, Republican Congressman Mark Meadows conducted a press conference with Capitol Hill reporters and called them out for their biased questions in real time. He repeatedly corrected the record as the journalists made misleading assertions about the hearing in an attempt to boost the partisan impeachment proceedings against President Trump.
“Congressman, how can you say that this was all hearsay when these two highly respected officials say they heard the exact same thing from everyone in the President’s inner circle?,” CBS’s Nancy Cordes shouted at Meadows. The North Carolina representative pushed back: “Well, I can say that it’s hearsay because that’s the testimony that I just came out from listening. So if you’d been listening, the American people have been listening, they said, ‘Well, I believe,’ ‘I thought I heard,’ ‘This was what was conveyed to me.’”
[...]
If the media are going pick fights with Republican members of Congress like Meadows, they better show up armed with facts and not just Democratic talking points.
MRC Bogus Study Watch Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's signature work of "media research" is a study purporting to gauge how "negative" coverage of conservatives and their causes in the "liberal media" whose methodology is so shoddy and narrowly constructed that it seems to have been devised to create a preordained result. And the MRC was sure to trot it out again as it works to defend President Trump over the ongoing impeachment inquiry.
MRC analysts have reviewed all coverage of President Trump and his administration on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts since 2017. Following the beginning of the impeachment inquiry on September 24, this coverage has been even more hostile than normal: Out of 684 evaluative comments included in these broadcasts, a whopping 96 percent have been negative, vs. a meager four percent that have been positive.
As we've repeatedlypointed out, this study, like earlier ones in this genre, 1) focuses only on a tiny sliver of news -- the evening newscasts on the three networks -- and suggests it's indicative of all media; 2) pretends there was never any neutral coverage of Trump by explicitly rejecting neutral coverage in favor of dishonestly tallying only "explicitly evaluative statements"; 3) fails to take into account the stories themselves and whether negative coverage is deserved or admit that negative coverage is the most accurate way to cover a given story; and 4) fails to provide the raw data or the actual statements it evaluated so its work could be evaluated by others.
What the MRC measured cannot be extrapolated into an evaluation of coverage across the entire broadcast meda -- it excluded cable news, and the MRC never does these kinds of studies on the work of Fox News -- it can't even be extrapolated into an accurate evaluation of the coverage on the three networks since, again, it cherry-picks "explicitly evaluative statements" and ignores all other coverage.
Noyes went on to complain about specific subjects about which Trump received especially "negative" coverage -- impeachment, of couse, as wellas Trump's withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, about which he groused that "journalists routinely framed it as “abandoning” an ally (the Syrian Kurds) in the fight against ISIS."
But fair and accurate reserach isn't what this report is about; using those dubious numbers to get attention from Fox News empire is. Thus, MRC chief was granted twoappearances on Fox Business -- to push those bogus numbers, which he talked about only as "coverage" and the narrowly tailored, cherry-picked numbers from selected sources they are in reality, falsely asserting at one point, "Almost 100 percent of the media coverage is against Donald Trump." Similarly, the MRC's Nicholas Fondacaro referenced the study's finding of "96 percent negative coverage" without the numerous qualifiers that would have made that statement accurate, as did Joseph Vazquez in a later MRC post.
Needless to say, Bozell and Tim Graham devoted their Nov. 13 column to the findings, lying that the numbers reflected the "tone of overall coverage" when it did nothing of the sort; they too omitted a complete listing of the study's bogus methodology.
The latest version of this stock study shows once again that at the MRC, the facts aren't important -- the narrative is.
UPDATE: Speaking of perpetuating the narrative, the MRC's "news" division CNSNews.com contributed to it by devoting an article to a glowing review of the study by the MRC's favorite right-wing radio host, Mark Levin, who absurdly gushed that the the MRC is "a solid organization, come hell or high water." Did the MRC pay Levin to say that?
MRC Defends The Honor Of A Politically Motivated Investigation Topic: Media Research Center
A while back, Attorney General Robert Barr assigned U.S. attorney John Durham with the quest of investigating the origins of the investigation that resulted the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to look in to possible Russian collusion with the Trump presidential campaign among other possible crimes -- part of the Republican conspiracy theory machine, complete with blatantly obvious political motivation. But the Media Research Center wants you to believe it's all on the up and up and totally not politically motivated.
It is a common refrain on MSNBC in the age of Trump that nobody is above law and to raise questions about investigations into high ranking officials is damaging to our institutions, unless of course that investigations is looking into alleged misconduct during the Obama years, then it is the investigation that is the threat to institutions. Such, was the argument that Andrea Mitchell made on her Monday show alongside former Obama officials Wendy Sherman and Ned Price in a segment that also torched plenty of strawmen in an attempt to described John Durham's investigation into the origins of the Russia probe.
Christy then pointed out that the investigation has the Fox News stamp of approval, since that channel's Bret Baier reported that "John Durham [is] expanding his investigation, the timeline, getting more federal agents, more resources. He then defended Durham's honor insisted the probe was necessary:
Durham, a prosecutor respected by both Republicans and Democrats alike, is not looking into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election, just about everybody accepts that they did. What Durham is looking into is whether the investigation into an opposition campaign, that eventually led to a special counsel, was justified. Considering that despite years of work, the only indictments that came out of the Mueller probe were either procedural crimes or pre-dated the campaign and that the country was forced to spend two years talking about such salacious and discredited things as "pee tapes," wanting to know if any corners were cut by anti-Trump partisans such as John Brennan and Jim Clapper is perfectly reasonable.
Christy didn't mention that the conservative-lauded Whitewater investigation into President Clinton during the 1990s found no wrongdoing by the Clintons regarding titular land deal, and it wasn't until the investigation moved far afield from its origins that Clinton was busted for lying about sex.
A few days later, Mitchell dismissed the Durham probe again, and this time Kyle Drennen was on board for the lecture and Fox News shout-out:
On her 12:00 p.m. ET hour on Friday, MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell derisively dismissed the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia probe as a politically motivated inquiry that was “elevating what had been widely denounced as a conspiracy theory.”
[...]
During the panel discussion that followed, Mitchell teed up a clip of former Justice Department official David Laufman accusing the investigation into the Russia probe of having a “political taint.” She then seized on his assertion as she also took a jab at Fox News: “...the whole question that David Laufman raised last night about the taint on this because of all the politics involved and all the conspiracy theories that have been promulgated by one network and by the President.”
It’s pretty stunning that Mitchell would have the audacity to attack Fox, since journalists there have been properly covering the investigation, while she and her liberal media colleagues have either been ignoring the story or downplaying it. In fact, FNC’s Special Report anchor Bret Baier has called out other news organizations for refusing to cover the expanding inquiry into how the Russia investigation began.
[...]
Obviously if the origins of the Russia probe were “universally-accepted” there would be no need for an investigation.
The same day, a column by Jeffrey Lord attacked MSNBC's Rachel Maddow for calling Durham's probe "embarrassing":
This, mind you, from the MSNBC conspiracy-theorist-in-chief who has spent the last two years insisting on the Trump-Russia collusion fairy tale. Now, confronted with the real possibility of criminal wrongdoing by the Obama administration and the use of the FBI, CIA and Department of Justice to target an Obama/Clinton political opponent - Donald Trump - Maddow gulps and, but of course, accuses the Trump Justice Department falsely of doing exactly what the Obama Justice Department actually may have done.
[...]
It is safe to say that we are in for a series of “breaking news bombshells”, and that based on their performance thus far, the Trump-hating media will be out there frantically trying to discredit them. Not to mention, as those stories out of theTimes and MSNBC indicate, will Attorney General Barr and U.S. Attorney Durham now be dragged through the mud and slimed with charges of doing what in fact Obama officials appear, to have actually done.
Best advice?
Buy the popcorn and settle in.
The MRC is as invested in this probe the way it loved to claim liberals were invested in the Mueller investigation.
MRC on Impeachment: Body Counts And Stopwatches Topic: Media Research Center
Conservatives have to distract from the impeachment inquiry of President Trump. That must mean it's time for the Media Research Center to count things.
The MRC was ON IT back in September by counting the number of times that media outlets discussing possible impeachable offenses by Trump used the word "impeachment":
Yet, apparently, counting the number of times a certain word is used is somehow not an obsession.
Scott Whitlock turned in that old MRC staple, the stopwatch count, in a strategically boldfaced Oct. 1 post:
In just ten days (September 20 through September 30) the broadcast networks overwhelmed their evening and morning shows with more than 7 hoursof coverage devoted to a whistleblower’s complaintabout President Donald Trump’s phone call with Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the ensuing calls for impeachment.
Only 46 minutes of that coverage referenced Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden’s sweetheart dealwith a Ukranian company. Even when networks mentioned Trump’s concern about Hunter benefiting from his father’s status as Vice President, they were quick to dismiss the allegations with the refrain: “no evidence of any wrongdoing.”
Jump ahead to this month, and the MRC's Nicholas Fondacaro went into full Depiction-Equals-Approval Fallacy mode -- in an echo of its insistence that the "liberal media" is acting as stenographers for Democrats, a claim that reads like the MRC is taking stenography from the Trump White House -- baselessly portraying news reports noting that Nancy Pelosi had decided to call Trump's quid pro quo to Ukraine "bribery" as an endorsement of the term and of Trump's impeachment in general:
At a Thursday press conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) essentially authorized the use of the word “bribery” to describe President Trump’s phone call with the president of Ukraine. The broadcast networks gushed about her use of the word and showed their approval by roundly noting that bribery was an impeachable offense explicitly laid out in the Constitution.
[...]
Perhaps “bribery” should be added to the list of shared talking points between the media and Democratic Party.
Kyle Drennen followed up with a body-count piece, headlined "Nets Follow Pelosi Marching Orders: ‘Bribery’ Mentioned 43 Times." He insisted that every singhle mention of the word -- no, really, "all of it" -- was "designed to boost the impeachment crusade against Trump." He also claimed that "journalists seem to be just as eager as partisan Demcorats to throw around the serious criminal charge without any substantiation," even though the quid pro quo Trump is alleged to have engaged in with Ukraine is a form of bribery.
MRC's Houck Has Yet Another Acosta Derangement Meltdown Topic: Media Research Center
It's been a while since Media Research Center writer Curtis Houck had one of his epic Acosta Derangement Sydrome meltowns, in which CNN correspondent Jim Acosta get hammered with all manner of histrionic, juvenile insults. But Houck has been triggered once more.
Houck kicked off a Nov. 4 post by declaring that Acosta is "absurdly vainglorious" in the headline. That condescending, sneering tone kept up throughout his piece:
As first noticed by our friend Ryan Saavedra at the Daily Wire, CNN chief White House correspondent and egotistical high-horseman Jim Acosta gave an interview last week to the Canadian outlet TVO and their show The Agenda to promote his narcissistic book, The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America.
The half-hour interview crammed in as many displays of snobbish cliches attacking his critics as possible.
[...]
Acosta began by refuting the notion that journalists are “not referees” (despite what Chuck Todd claims and they aren’t there to “just report the news, but defend the truth.”
Yuck. Here again, was another example of a journalist wrapping themselves in the First Amendment as if it only applies to the press instead of everyone.
He then unwound a long diatribe worshipping at the feet of CBS’s Walter Cronkite and his famed Vietnam commentary (click “expand”):
[...]
Here would be some fun questions to ask: So are you then arguing for a government of, by, and for the news media? Or, what about a government in which journalists determine what the people can and can’t do with their lives? And how about you just run yourself?
After defending the coverage Trump received after Charlottesville and Helsinki, Acosta flaunted himself by stating, while people might not like journalists, they should get over it because “our job as journalists is to give the American people not just the news, but the truth and the hard truths and the ugly truths.”
He also claimed that journalists face “a tricky balancing act” in their reporting because he and his comrades been “slammed” by “folks on the left”for not sufficiently calling Trump a liar.
Poor, poor Jim.
Houck concluded by huffing that "There’s far, far more nonsense from throughout the 31-minute YouTube clip, so please be sure to check out the transcript below." It seems even Houck is becoming as bored with his mindless Acost-bashing as the rest of us.
MRC Can't Quite Deal With Nicolle Wallace's Insult of Fox News Host Topic: Media Research Center
MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace insulted a Fox News host, and the Media Research Center isn't quite sure how to handle it.
In an Oct. 29 post, Scott Whitlock wrote that Wallace "lashed out at Fox News host Laura Ingraham, calling her “chickenshit.” Weirdly, Whitlock did not explain exactly why Wallace hurled the insult at Ingraham, noting only that "Wallace played a clip of Ingraham talking about Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who is testifying in front of the impeachment probe. The MSNBC host attacked Ingraham and her guests Alan Dershowitz and John Yoo for criticizing him." In fact -- according to the transcript of their words that Whitlock did not note anywhere else in his article -- Yoo suggested Vindman was committing "espionage" in his work as a U.S. national security official advising on Ukrainian matters, and Ingraham claimed that Vindman was working "against the President's interests," failing to note that Vindman was working to advance the country's interests.
Whitlock seemed to suggest Wallace had a point, stating that "Vindman has an inspirational life story and has devotedly served his country." But since it's not the MRC's job to agree that any criticism of Fox News is justified, Whitlock went on to attack Wallace by recounting past statements he didn't like: "Wallace is in no position to offer moral judgments. She had to apologize in August after falsely accusing Trump of 'talking about exterminating Latinos.' She has also joked about 'punching' the President and wondered if the Trump women are 'dead inside.'" He then provided a link to an earlier MRC "montage of Wallace’s bizarre, unhinged hate."
Despite a brief bit of clarity on Whitlock's part, it's clear that the MRC will ignore that use Wallace's comment as another way to attack her. In a Nov. 14 post, Kristine Marsh wrote about an appearance by Wallace on Stephen Colbert's late-night show. Showing the intolerance for conservatives who have left the fold that the MRC is known for, Marsh complained that Wallace "has been trying her hardest to prove her allegiance to Democrats by trashing the party she used to work for, at every opportunity she gets. Marsh further complained: "Colbert, who also used to pretend he was a Republican on TV, began by playing the clip of Wallace calling Ingraham and guest John Yoo, “chickensh**.” The audience cheered loudly at her crude quip, while Wallace grinned and put her hands in front of her face as if she was embarrassed by what she said. A pleased Colbert looked on approvingly, and asked if she came on the show to clear things up. Wallace admitted she was only sorry because she got caught swearing in front of her kids."
Of course, Marsh declined to provide the context of Wallace "chickenshit" remark -- probably so she similarly wouldn't have to concede that maybe she had a point.
MRC's Graham Cuts Out The Middleman In Pushing Pro-Trump Propaganda Topic: Media Research Center
We've noted how the Media Research Center is a leader is promoting pro-Trump talking points on the impeachment process, even as it (rather lamely and hypocritically) attacks the "liberal media" for allegedly promoting Democratic talking points on impeachment (a complaint that its itself a pro-Trump talking point). It seems the MRC is looking to cut out the middleman of laundering those talking points in its house style and just resorting to pushing them directly.
Democrat presidential front-runner Joe Biden granted an interview to PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff for Friday night's program. The Trump campaign sent around an e-mail decrying "Two Big Lies" in the interview.
Let's not be optimistic that the "independent fact-checkers" like PolitiFact will evaluate these. PolitiFact just gave Biden a "Mostly True" for stating he was one of the poorest senators and poorest vice presidents (that's a comparison of high-income people). PolitiFact acknowledged the Bidens reported making $15 million in 2017-2018.
Graham did try to frame thing as a fact-check he claims other fact-checking orgs don't do, but at no point does Graham closely examing the Trump propganda he's repeating.
One of the things Graham says the Trump campaign apparently claimed was a "big lie" (Graham doesn't supply the email in question, so it's unclear what the exact claim is) was when Biden said he "didn't know" his son Hunter was on the board of the Ukranian company Burisma:
Biden confirmed on CBS's 60 Minutes that he told his son Hunter "I sure hope to hell you know what you’re doing" after learning he'd joined Burisma, and said "What I meant by that is, I hope you've thought this through." Biden claiming that he never discussed business with family members is very hard to believe, especially because foreign companies would hire Biden's relatives as a way of gaining influence with Biden.
So Graham is simply speculating that Joe Biden is lying when he said he"never discussed business with family membersm," saying only that it's "very hard to believe" without providing any evidence it's true.
Graham used to complain about "stenographers" in the media -- now he is one.
MRC Plays Victim On Twitter's Political Ad Ban Topic: Media Research Center
With the conservative war against Facebook failing, it was time for the Media Research Center to redirect its social-media-hates-conservatives narrative to a different company.
In an Oct. 30 post, Alexander Hall attacked Twitter for discontinuing all political advertising on its platform, claiming it kowtowed to a "media crusade to try and push all social media platforms to censor political advertisement in a blatant media attack on President Donald Trump," adding that "The timing of this policy change comes amidst the backlash against Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg from liberals like Sen. Elizabeth Warren and the liberal media for the free speech decision on political ads and allowing outlets like Breitbart to be among Facebook’s curated news sources."
The next day, MRC chief Brent Bozell bizarrely -- though not unexpectedly, since the narrative must be perpetuated -- claimed that the real victims of the Twitter ad ban are, yes, conservatives:
To pretend Twitter is taking the moral high ground in banning political ads is laughable. Twitter sees the backlash Facebook has received for embracing free speech in advertising and with this ban, hopes to force their hand into doing the same.
A key reason organizations and individuals buy ads is to promote an issue that they cannot get covered by conventional means. We have seen how the social media giants have used their content policies to suppress conservative speech. Because of this, liberal messaging dominates Twitter and by restricting ads, Twitter can further limit the ability of conservatives to get their message heard.
By including ‘issue ads’ in this ban, Twitter has given itself the power to draw the lines on what is and is not ‘political.’ Make no mistake, this is not an easily defined space and with Twitter’s history of liberal activism, conservatives should be very concerned.
We missed the part where Twitter said only conservative political ads would be banned. Liberal views would presumably also be affected as well.
So did Jeffrey Lord, who echoed Bozell in a Nov. 2 post by insisting that the ad ban "isn’t about anything other than silencing conservatives," adding, "What [Twitter CEO Jack] Dorsey is really about is silencing conservatives, so that the liberal media — social media and all the rest — can put out their modern day equivalents of that old LBJ 'Daisy' commercial out there and, in Dorsey’s own phrase again, “influence votes to affect the lives of millions.” With the liberal media, as was done in 1964, doing the Democrats work for them."
Bozell and Tim Graham used their Nov. 6 column to rail against the ad ban, at first graciously agreeing to "stipulate from the outset that Twitter should have that right to do so, as should CBS, Comedy Central and the Disney Channel" but then playing the victim card, ranting that "we have seen how the social media giants have used their content policies to suppress conservative speech. By restricting ads, Twitter can further limit the ability of conservatives to get their message heard." The two then conjured up anti-conservative conspiracies: "And with Twitter's history of liberal activism, conservatives should be very concerned. Candidate X will be automatically banned, but what leftist groups will wiggle into that paid space as a nonpartisan "public interest group"?
Graham and Bozell then do the un-conservative thing of pushing for more government regulation of media by contradicting their opening statement that Twitter had a right to ban ads:
Broadcast television networks must, as a matter of law, carry federal candidates' ads. As a matter of policy, we think this regulation is obnoxious and should be removed. Twitter has an even greater reach — and, we believe, influence — than TV. So if the feds force broadcasters to carry candidates, why not apply the same rules to Twitter? They should drop the antiquated broadcast requirements.
Again: The narrative must be perpetuated, even if it means trampling conservative principles to do so.
MRC Tries to Portray GOP Sit-In Stunt As Something Other Than A Stunt Topic: Media Research Center
When Republican members of Congress barged into a closed hearing room with the goal of disrputing a Democratic-led closed-door impeachment inquiry, the Media Research Center was quick to cheer it -- and to defend it against charges it was nothing more than a stunt.
Nicholas Fondacaro framed criticism of the stunt as "an attempt to force House Democrats to hold public hearings for their impeachment investigation" and that those in the "liberal media" who criticized it "were appalled by the idea of transparency for Democrats." Fondacaro also played whataboutism, complaining that "The networks used to be all for dramatic sit-ins that disrupted the business of Congress. But in those days it was to support the Democrats." He linked to a 2016 post of his about a House Democrat sit-in to protest the Republican stalling of gun-control legisation, about which he huffed, "Many are calling their actions a publicity stunt, and they seem to be right." Fondacaro did not cite an example of the "many" who allegedly said that.
Fondacaro rehashed his particular narrative in another post:
Calling for transparency in the impeachment investigation of President Trump, several House Republicans stormed the conference room being used for the hearing and staged an old-fashion sit-in. Transparency was apparently something only demanded of Republicans because the liberal media spent Wednesday decrying the GOP tactic.
[...]
It’s interesting what CNN was willing to denounce as a publicity stunt because they fell in love with congressional sit-ins when Democrats were obstructing business for gun control.
It's also interesting that Fondacaro is so desperate to reframe this is something other than a publicity stunt, but he can sure throw around that word when Democrats do it.
In a separate post, Fondacaro expressed his support for the stunt as a way to protest "the shady way House Democrats were conducting their partisan impeachment crusade," the complaing that networks "ignored and minimized their efforts."
Other MRC writers served up something similar:
Kristine Marsh wondered why a commentator who argued that the Republicans should be "criminally investigated" -- not out of line, since the GOP stunt did violate House rules, at the very least -- "didn’t recommend the same harsh punishment for Democrats, who’ve done similar 'stunts.'"
Brad Wilmouth decided that to point out this was a stunt was to be "negative."
Tim Graham took particular offense to one commentator who said "This looked like a Klan group assembled outside a jail trying to get the sheriff to let them in so they could deliver justice to somebody who was inside," fretting that the comment was "mudslinging sleaze." Somebody tell Graham that his boss once likened President Obama to a "skinny ghetto crackhead."
Nobody at the MRC is actually denying this was a stunt; they just don't want it called that.
The Facebook-hating Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell got to have his Nov. 12 chat with Donald Trump Jr. on, yes, Facebook Live. The only segment that the MRC highlighted to promote the chat was about a segment in which the two bashed Facebook.
The Media Research Center is 
Last month, we 
The Media Research Center has a new way of downplaying the impeachment hearings against President Trump: highlight their allegedly low ratings.
For some reason, the Media Research Center decided it needed to feel triggered by ... a streaming video service. We'll concede it's arguably not just another streaming service -- it's Disney+, the new service from Disney. Still, the freakout mode was nothing short of strange.
The Media Research Center's Gabriel Hays unleashed a snide, condescending Nov. 11 
Pelosi Disses Sinclair Reporter James Rosen as 'Mr. Republican Talking Points'
The Media Research Center's signature work of "media research" is a study purporting to gauge how "negative" coverage of conservatives and their causes in the "liberal media" whose methodology is so shoddy and narrowly constructed that it seems to have been devised to create a preordained result. And the MRC was sure to trot it out again as it works to defend President Trump over the ongoing impeachment inquiry.
A while back, Attorney General Robert Barr assigned U.S. attorney John Durham with the quest of investigating the origins of the investigation that resulted the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to look in to possible Russian collusion with the Trump presidential campaign among other possible crimes -- part of the 
Conservatives have to distract from the impeachment inquiry of President Trump. That must mean it's time for the Media Research Center to count things.
It's been a while since Media Research Center writer Curtis Houck had one of his 
MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace insulted a Fox News host, and the Media Research Center isn't quite sure how to handle it.
With the conservative war against Facebook 
When Republican members of Congress barged into a closed hearing room with the goal of disrputing a Democratic-led closed-door impeachment inquiry, the Media Research Center was quick to cheer it -- and to defend it against charges it was nothing more than a stunt.
