MRC's Graham Bizarrely Imagines CNN's Stelter Has A 'Head Wound' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham has a clear case of Brian Stelter Derangement Syndrome, as demonstrated by his rantings about Stelter's new book on Fox News that are heavy on personal attacks and light on critical analysis. Graham took that to another level in an Aug. 31 post:
If something demonstrates the hilarity of Brian Stelter’s CNN hootenanny – bizarrely titled Reliable Sources -- it’s airing a seven-minute segment insisting President Trump is a fascist like Adolf Hitler, and at the end, asking the question “How can fact-checkers break through at this point?” Exactly.
Down in the Stelter Fallout Shelter, America is forever on the brink of an American Holocaust, or at least until the Democrats are back in the White House. His most ridiculous guest on Sunday was Yale professor Jason Stanley, a Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren donor.
As per usual, there's no attempt at analysis of Stanley's claims, only outrage that they were made and sniping at Stelter for having Stanley as a guest.
But the bizarre thing is the headline Graham put on his post: "Stelter's Reliable Head Wound." What does that even mean? There's no reference to head wounds anywhere in his piece. Is Graham saying that Stelter's purported liberalism is the result of a head injury of some kind?
Graham concluded his piece by ranting: "Dear Brian: Do NOT try to tell us CNN presents 'Facts First.' This is, plain and simple, a smear." Apparently, only Graham is allowed to smear people with bizarre accusations of head injuries.
WND Columnist Joins Race-Baiting Over White Child Killed By Black Man Topic: WorldNetDaily
The right-wing obsession over the death of Cannon Hinnant, a white 5-year-old, allegedly caused by a black neighbor has so obsessed right-wng media that even the Media Research Center felt the need to weigh in. Meanwhile, WorldNetDaily -- no stranger to race-baiting -- weighed in as well, in the form of an Aug. 21 column by Barbara Simpson, who's mad that we can't blame all black people for this, despite the fact that no motive has yet been released and even the boy's parents have said race was not an issue:
It's an incident that's made for headlines and screams for justice.
Except this is 2020, and that's not the way things are because of one issue – race.
The little boy was white, and the man who shot him is black. There is no doubt who did it – the issue so far is why he did it. His parents speculate their son was high on drugs at the time.
So far, there are no reports of problems between the two families, and in fact, there is the report that Sessoms had dinner at the Hinnant house the night before.
While the legal wheels turn to investigate the case, the fact remains that the killing of Cannon Hinnant in North Carolina has been virtually ignored by media – broadcast and print. My local newspaper has not printed one word about it, nor have most print outlets, and as for broadcast, forget it. It's been almost totally ignored.
What is there about this case that would lead media to ignore the horror of such an unprovoked murder? Do you think it has anything to do with race that media are afraid to report the deliberate killing of a white child by an adult black man?
[...]
Mainstream media are ignoring the horror of this case, and it seems to me the issue IS race. I have no doubt that had the races been reversed, and a black child was killed that way by an adult white man, it would have been, and would continue to be, headline news. This is a sad reflection on what has happened in this country as media take sides on racial issues, and "Whitey is always guilty."
Simpson conveniently omits the fact that there is no issue of injustice here, as there has been with other cases. Nobody is seriously defending the accused killer. But she's off to the races, blaming Black Lives Matter even though the group has absolutely no involvement here:
Never forget the name "Cannon Hinnant" – the little white child sacrificed on the altar of Black Lives Matter. His life didn't matter because he was the wrong color, and the media ignored his death for that reason, although they will never admit it.
It will be interesting to see what happens with the killer, how he is charged and what kind of "justice" he ultimately faces.
I'm not expecting much.
Given that Simpson likes to fearmonger about black unrest, we weren't expecting much from her.
Is Kyle Rittenhouse's Lawyer the MRC's Own Michael Avenatti? Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center just loved to spew outrage at Michael Avenatti, onetime lawyer for Stormy Daniels, the porn star to whom President Trump paid hush money to cover up their alleged affair, for doing a lot of TV, and it cheered when he got in trouble with other extralegal shenanigans, while still complaining that his misdeeds didn't get the media coverage it demanded.
But do right-wingers have their own Avenatti? Nicholas Fondacaro harrumphed dramatically in a Sept. 1 post:
With the liberal media claiming 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse was a “murderer” who shot “unarmed” “protesters” in a supposed rampage through Kenosha, Wisconsin last Tuesday, someone had to set the record straight. And in a Monday appearance on Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, Rittenhouse’s lawyer, John Pierce blew up their lies and smears with evidence backed up by a New York Times visual investigation” and with video widely accessible online.
Making the case for how “this is 100 percent self-defense,” Pierce started where many on the liberal media vaguely reference: how his client was running for his life from a mob of leftist radicals who wanted to kill him, before any shots were fired.
After noting that Rittenhouse had helped to clean up graffiti earlier in the day and was asked to help protect a local business (and was not part of militia as the media initially lied about), Pierce detailed how a moving of the police line left his client stranded and subject the villainous hands of the rioters:
[...]
As the segment came to a close, both Carlson and Pierce sat dumbfounded as to why Rittenhouse was charged with a crime while the rioters destroying the city were getting off Scot-free. Both of them deduced that what was happening to the country was “sickening.”
But Fondacaro has censored the fact that Pierce has his own legal problems. The Daily Beast reported that Pierce and the law firm he founded "are mired in millions of dollars of debt, while a payday-lender-style loan to cover his own expenses prompted him to take a leave of absence. As Pierce’s firm totters around him, he appears to be using Rittenhouse’s legal defense to give himself a new persona as a trash-talking, right-wing firebrand." At the same time, according to the Beast, "Pierce began to behave erratically toward his ex-wife, according to records of text messages filed in a Los Angeles child-custody case. In those messages, Pierce allegedly made references to the Apocalypse" and "allegedly taunted his ex-wife over politics."
His record raised the possibility that the money Pierce was soliciting for Rittenhouse's defense through his #FightBack Foundation might be misused. Pierce has since resigned from the defense fund.
A co-founder of that fund is L. Lin Wood, the QAnon-sympathetic lawyer for Nick Sandmann, on whose behalf he filed numerous nuisance lawsuits against media outlets for needlessly huge damages, for which the MRC joined Wood in touting settlements with the outlets as victories even though it's entirely likely that the confidential settlements gained them little more than a token amount to go away.
Fondacaro is demonstrating the old MRC double standard of holding media outlets to standards it has no intention of following for itself.
Michelle Malkin has been moving steadily to the right-wing, white nationalist fringe as CNSNews.com continues to publish her column and promote her stunts. Her Aug. 26 column, published by CNS, was a screed against Black Lives Matter fitting for her white nationalist leanings. She eventually reached back to attack previous cases of black people getting attacked:
The Trayvon Martin hoax, as exposed by investigative documentarian Joel Gilbert, was built on an astonishing key prosecution witness switch-a-roo involving Martin's real girlfriend, Brittany Diamond Eugene (who was on the phone with Martin before he assaulted George Zimmerman) and a ridiculous impostor, Rachael Jeantel, who was barely literate and apparently manipulated into coached testimony by none other than Benjamin Crump.
Gilbert's partner on the "Trayvon Hoax" film is WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill, who published a book-length hit job on Trayvon Martin and is best known for peddling numerous conspiracy theories that tend to blow up spectacularly (i.e., portraying murderer James Kopp and Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph as innocent victims).
There is absolutely no reason to take at face value anything put out by Gilbert and Cashill. The fact that Malkin is doing so tells you just how far around the bend she's gone.
MRC Cheers Sports Operation Run By Right-Wing Woman-Hater Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's favorite sports website is the right-wing Outkick the Coverage, now known just as Outkick. In June, Matt Philbin cheered how commentator Jason Whitlock moved there from Fox Sports (how far-right do you have to be to think that a Fox-run operation is not conservative enough for you?) and touted how "Whitlock and partners Clay Travis and Sam Savage want to turn "Outkick.com into a powerful media platform, a national distiller of truth, humor and fun." In july, the mysterious Jay Maxson promoted Whitlock declaring that "LeBron James and Colin Kaepernick are 'useful idiots,' a reference to Vladimir Lenin's strategy of spreading communist propaganda through uninformed people who don't fully comprehend the agenda."
The MRC loves Outkick cofounder Clay Travis as well. for example, in 2016, then-sports blogger Dylan Gwinn gushed at how Travis "let the knowledge bombs fall" in a defense of police, and and Maxson wrote in 2017 on how Travis declared that Colin Kaepernick "gets a ton of press only because left-wing media are using him to advance their own political beliefs."
When the Washington Post did a profile of Travis and Outkick that was not sufficiently laudatory, the MRC rushed to their defense with not one but two posts by Philbin. In the first, he got mad that the Post pointed out Travis' polarizing right-wing political views, and the second was devoted to rehashing Travis' own attack on the Post "hit piece."
The MRC, however, is not going to tell you about Travis' sleazy past. As Media Matters documented:
In 2008, Travis -- credited alongside “the deadly hippos” -- wrote Man: The Book, an effort at “satire” that instructed men to “Be A Man” and includes in the Amazon description, “If it gets you into bed with a girl, it isn’t a lie.”
In the “satirical” book, Travis instructs men to go to hospitals to hit on rape victims, “dash” a woman’s head “on the fireplace,” refer to a wife or girlfriend as a “cockmitten,” murder a woman’s cat in front of her and feed it to your dog, and says, “If you remember nothing else from this book, make this phrase your credo: All women are sluts.”
[...]
In May, Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James reported that a racial slur had been spray-painted on his Los Angeles home, reporting the incident to the Los Angeles Police Department with a photograph of the vandalism. Travis alleged that James, one of the highest-paid athletes in the world, staged the incident in order to build up goodwill prior to the 2017 NBA finals.
So Travis is not just a woman-hater, he's a bit racist too. This is who the MRC thinks is a credible conservative to promote.
CNS' Spin On Bannon Arrest: Trump Fired Him! Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman had a certain spin he wanted to push in an Aug. 20 article on the arrest of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon:
Former Counselor to the President Steve Bannon -- who was fired by President Trump in August 2017 -- was charged today, along with three other people, for allegedly defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors through an "online crowdfunding campaign known as 'We Build the Wall' that raised more than $25 million," said the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York in a press release.
[...]
Bannon served at the White House from Jan. 20, 2017 to Aug. 18, 2017.
In a statement on Aug. 18, 2017, then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve’s last day."
The New York Times reported that same day, "Mr. Trump had recently grown weary of Mr. Bannon, complaining to other advisers that he believed his chief strategist had been leaking information to reporters and was taking too much credit for the president’s successes. The situation had become untenable long before Friday, according to advisers close to Mr. Trump who had been urging the president to remove Mr. Bannon; in turn, people close to Mr. Bannon also were urging him to step down."
While Chapman was eager to disassociate Bannon from Trump, he hid the full extent of their association: Bannon was the CEO of Trump's 2016 presidnetial campaign before advising Trump in the White House. As we documented, CNS appeared to be following the White House's orders in throwing Bannon under the bus in early 2018 after it was reported that he cooperated with a book critical of Trump.
Chapman also failed to tell his reader that the "news" operation he manages promoted the apparently fraudulent wall campaign Bannon worked for. In an May 2019 article, Craig Bannister touted how the organization "has built the country’s first border wall on private land" and "was founded by a veteran and is dependent on private donations to fund its wall construction projects." The veteran is Brian Kolfage, who also faces fraud charges.
And in a July 2019 article, Bannister parroted a call from his boss, the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell, demanding that Facebook "live up to its own standards when it comes to standing up to violent and extremist groups like Antifa." Among the "conservative leaders" Bannister uoted was WorldNetDaily's David Kupelian, who complained that Facebook "shut down two Facebook pages managed by triple-amputee Iraq War vet Brian Kolfage." In fact, Facebook took down Kolfage's pages as part of the removal of hundreds of pages believed to be fake accounts designed to drive traffic to related websites.
Chapman's article was simply more pro-Trump damage control by a "news" organization that's already quitefamiliar with that kind of work.
NEW ARTICLE: Loving The Fringe To Own the Libs Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center embraces and mainstreams crazy conspiracy theories like QAnon and extremist candidates because they can be shoehorned into its pet narrative of social media conspiring against conservatives. Read more >>
WND's Massie Is Still Trying To Slut-Shame Kamala Harris Topic: WorldNetDaily
When Kamala Harris was running for the Democratic presidential nomination, WorldNetDaily columnist Mychal Massie smeared her as a literal whore because she had an affair with powerful California politician Willie Brown, who helped jump-start Harris' political career (while staying silent about Donald Trump's numerous marital infidelities, not to mention his paying hush money to a porn star). Now that Harris is Joe Biden's vice presidential candidate, Massie is back to smear her anew in an Aug. 15 column:
Democrats were like a cancerous mutation of skin rot even when they were almost palatable. Today they've metamorphosed into something far more damaging, i.e., a pernicious cabal of double standards.
I offer into evidence the now darling Democratic devil doll Kamala Harris, whom one can observe as giving credibility to the character played by Julia Roberts next to Richard Gere sans "Pretty" preceding "Woman" in the title. In brief, a woman of low morals, or in the case of Harris a woman of zero morals, can gain political standing by trading adult favors with married political power brokers.
Democrats are quick to attack as racist anyone who dares speak the truth about Harris. And, the truth is: Harris is an immoral, conscienceless individual who wears the stench of moral turpitude as a tiara of accomplishment.
Her political rise is not based upon talent, brilliance or compelling personal accomplishment. It's based upon her malleability of morals with Willie Brown, arguably one of the most powerful political figures in the history of California politics. Brown also remains allegedly one of the most underhanded and dishonest politicians in the history of California.
But the incogitant dilettantes representing themselves as Democrats, who are in reality the very definition of poseur, feign insult and squeal racism when the unflattering truths are revealed about Harris.
The rest of Massie's column is just ranting about Harris' support for abortion rights and how she supposedly isn't a real Black person because her father was from Jamaica and her mother is "Asian-Indian."
Hilariously, the end of Massie's column features this blurb: "Order Mychal Massie's new book, "I Feel the Presence of the Lord," a collection of devotions intended to encourage the reader to seek and see the Lord in every aspect of life." Is Massie feeling the presence of the Lord when he viciously spews hate at women?
Hypocrisy: MRC Hated Pelosi's 'Enemy' Rhetoric, But Cheered Trump's Topic: Media Research Center
NewsBusters blogger Randy Hall ranted in an Aug. 25 post: under the headline "Hack Journalists Yawn at Pelosi’s Vile ‘Enemies of the State’ Comment":
Just hours after the GOP kicked off its 2020 convention on Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi came out swinging while calling President Trump and his fellow Republicans “enemies of the state.”
Journalists simply yawned at the California Democrat’s remark even though they had provided considerable coverage regarding comments from Trump and Congressional Republicans when he used the term “enemy of the American people” to describe the press in 2017.
Hall forgot to mention that his fellow NewsBusters at the Media Research Center didn't just yawn at Trump's "enemy of the people" rhetoric -- they actively cheered it.
We documented how the MRC mocked journalists as self-centered elites for being concerned about their safety after Trump denounced the media as the "enemy of the people" and suggested they deserved to be harassed. Tim Graham handwaved the term as "harsh" but deserved.
Indeed, Hall himself had no problem with labeling the media as the "enemy" in a 2018 post -- in fact, he wasn't all that bothered when CNN personalities stated they had recevied death threats as a result of Trump demonizing them, instead playing whataboutism by insisting that "James Hodgkinson was inspired by Rachel Maddow and Bernie Sanders to try and murder Republican congressmen in June at a Virginia baseball field."
Of course, Hall simply doesn't have the guts to remain consistent and accuse his fellow NewsBusters of being "hacks" or denounce smearing the media as "enemies" as "vile." That's the MRC double standard at work.
CNS Does Damage Control On Allegations That Trump Disrepects The Troops Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com is all too familiar with having to do damage control for President Trump. But that's its job, so it must continue to give up all pretense of being a fair and balanced "news" operation to do so.
So when an Atlantic article accused Trump of disrespecting the troops, the first thing it did is call on Patrick Goodenough to play up Trump's denial and his attacks on the Atlantic for reporting it:
President Trump on Thursday night hit back at an article alleging that he called fallen American soldiers “losers” and “suckers,” saying the magazine’s anonymous sources – if they “really exist” – were “low-lives” and “liars.”
Those behind the article in The Atlantic, he charged, were trying to “influence a presidential election” which, he said, “we’re going to win, and they’re going crazy.”
Speaking at Joint Base Andrews after returning from a campaign event in western Pennsylvania, Trump called the article “a disgrace.”
“And I would be willing to swear on anything that I never said that about our fallen heroes. There is nobody that respects them more.”
“So I just think it’s a horrible, horrible thing,” Trump said of the article in what he called a “never-Trumper magazine,” adding that a great evening had been turned into “frankly a very sad evening, when I see a statement like that.”
That was followed by an article by Melanie Arter stating how Joe Biden "seized on" the Atlantic report,"which President Donald Trump denies to be true."
The damage control kept coming; Sept. 8 article by Arter bashing the Atlantic's use of anonymous sources , featuring former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel saying that those making the allegations shouldn't hide behind anonymity, joined by a second one featuring a governor claiming that Trump has been “extremely respectful” in regard to the military. Both men appeared on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," whose name Arter spelled wrong in both articles.
Arter cranked even more spin from another Sunday show, in an article stating that "VA Secretary Robert Wilkie told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that President Donald Trump should be judged by his actions, and those actions 'have been beneficial for veterans all across this country in ways that we have not seen since the end of World War II.'"
For good measure, CNS also published a column by a guty from down the hall -- Tim Graham of the Media Research Center -- denouncing the Atlantic as a "hyperpartisan outlet."There was no mention of the fact that CNS and the MRC are even more hyperpartisan outlets, and if the Atlantic shouldn't be trusted because of that, neither should CNS.
MRC Mainstreams Another Right-Wing Extremist Topic: Media Research Center
CNSNews.com stopped talking about Georgia Republican congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene after it was revealed she's an avid believer in fringe QAnon conspiracy theories with a historyof posting extremist racist and anti-Semitic videos on Facebook. CNS' parent organization, the Media Rseearch Center, wants you to think that she's a completely normal conservative -- or at least try to change the subject when it can't do so.
In a July 20 post, Duncan Schroeder responded to a CNN commentator pointing out Greene's QAnon and extremist affinities with a blast of whataboutism: "CNN has promoted multiple 'nonsense' conspiracy theories about Trump including the Russia pee tape, Russia collusion, and the abuse of power allegations which resulted in his impeachment." In an Aug. 15 post, Clay Waters conceded in passing that Greene is a "QAnon acolyte," but he was more angry that the New York Times portrayed QAnon as an outgrowth of the right-wing Tea Party movement.
Alexander Hall, however, went for normalization by portraying Greene in a Sept. 8 post as just another conservative who is being " censored" by social media:
The U.S. House candidate for Georgia’s 14th district appears to have been locked out of her Twitter account after posting about potential voter fraud in her home state.
Founder and Co-Chairman of Students for Trump Ryan Fournier accused Twitter of censoring a congressional candidate. “BREAKING: Twitter has locked Georgia 14’s next Congresswoman @mtgreenee out of her account!” Fournier wrote on the morning of September 8. He then declared, “Censorship must end! Go follow Marjorie!” Twitter did not respond to inquiry to confirm her lockout, and if so, why it had occurred. At least one post from U.S. House candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene had seemingly been removed from the platform and replaced with the caption “This Tweet is no longer available because it violated the Twitter Rules. Learn more.”
On her Twitter account, she described her views: “Christian, Wife, Mom, Small Business Owner, Proud American, 100% Pro-Life, Pro-Gun, Pro-Trump, #MAGA.” Greene shared a story claiming that 1,000 Georgians had voted twice in the state’s primary on June 9 as her last post before going silent.
Hall censored the fact that Greene has a history of racism, anti-Semitism and QAnon affiliations.
The MRC loves to mainstream fringe ideologies like QAnon and fringe candidates like Greene and Laura Loomer to further their victimization narrative by social media against conservatives, while hiding the true nature of their extremism.
Newsmax's Ruddy Rushes To Defend Trump Over Allegations of Soldier-Bashing Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax CEO and Trump buddy Christopher Ruddy was sufficiently worried about the fallout for an Atlantic story citing numerous (anonymous) sources who claimed that President Trump had disparaged American troops that Ruddy dedicated his Sept. 5 column -- his first in five months -- to a defense of his friend.
Ruddy began by declaring, "Don't believe anything the Atlantic tells you about President Trump," then went into a lengthy story about Trump called him and said how much he loved the photo of Trump shaking the hand of wounded veteran Michael Verdado that appeared on the cover of an issue of Newsmax's magazine. he fooled that by complaining further about the Atlantic piece:
So, when the Atlantic story made sensational allegations about the President — alleging he claimed fallen American servicemen were "suckers" and "losers" — I was surprised.
[...]
If Donald Trump disliked being seen around amputees, why was he so glad Newsmax published a photo of him with a double amputee on the cover of our magazine?
And why was he so interested in Verardo's story that he thought it was important to share with me?
The answers to these questions are clear to anyone who knows Donald Trump.
The President deeply respects and honors the incredible sacrifice people like Sgt. Verardo have made on behalf of the United States.
[...]
So you can believe the Atlantic — and outlets like Fox News and the Washington Post that have "confirmed" the original claims — or you can believe a number of top Trump aides, from supporters like Sarah Huckabee Sanders to detractors like John Bolton, all of whom say the President never made such comments in France or anywhere else.
Frankly, you don't need to believe any of them.
Just believe what Sgt. Verardo says.
Ruddy concluded with an excerpt of an article Verardo wrote praising Trump.
Given that Ruddy is such a Trump sycophant that his previous column before this, at the end of March, falsely gushed that "Trump has remained focused and level-headed" through the coronavirus pandemic and "defers to the experts at his task force’s daily press briefings, and has kept the nation informed without being panicked," maybe we shouldn't believe anything Ruddy says either.
WND's Brown Insists 'Say Their Names' BLM Activists Are Engaging In Witchcraft Topic: WorldNetDaily
We are not making this up. Michael Brown wrote in his Sept. 2 WorldNetDailiy column:
Is it true that leaders of the BLM movement, including one of the cofounders, are calling on the spirits of the dead? That they claim to receive spiritual power from the deceased? That they talk with these spirits and even give them names? The answer to all these questions is yes. This is now an open secret.
[...]
I documented this phenomenon in my book, "Jezebel's War with America," also arguing that many of the major trends in our society could be traced back to this "Jezebelic" spirit. These include the rise of pornography; the shout your abortion movement; radical feminism; the emasculating of men; the war on gender; the rise of witchcraft and sorcery; and the silencing of the prophetic voice of the church.
With the rise of the BLM movement, we have further evidence of this Jezebelic influence, as the cofounders are all radical feminists, with two of the three identifying as queer. (Please note that I use the initials BLM to distinguish this Marxist-based movement from the important affirmation that black lives do matter.)
We can now trace this demonic influence one step further, with the open, unapologetic statements of two key BLM leaders. I'm speaking about BLM cofounder Patrisse Cullors and professor Melina Abdullah, chair of the department of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, and a co-founder of the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter.
[...]
"'George Floyd. Asé. Philandro Castille. Asé. Andrew Joseph. Asé. Michael Brown. Asé. Eric Garner. Asé. Harriet Tubman. Asé. Malcom X. Asé. Martin Luther King. Asé.'
"As each name is recited, Dr. Abdullah poured libations on the ground as the group of over 100 chanted 'Asé,' a Yoruba term often used by practitioners of Ifa, a faith and divination system that originated in West Africa, in return. This ritual, Dr. Abdullah explained, is a form of worship."
Yes, this helps fuel the fires of the BLM movement: worship of the dead; calling on the dead; asking the spirits of the dead to empower the living today.
[...]
Let the reader be aware. Fully aware. Calling on the spirits of the dead is a practice you want to avoid at all costs – for your own soul's sake.
Should the reader also be aware that maybe Brown is hopped up on goofballs for pushing this claim?
We'll let Wonkette respond to this (which, in turn, is a response to Brown's complaint that he was being mocked in social media for making this claim):
Making up weird shit about other people is a crappy thing to do. There's nothing wrong with people practicing witchcraft, of course, but it's clear that Michael Brown is not talking about actual witches or pagans doing witchy stuff, he's talking about some imaginary evangelical version of "witchcraft" that no one on earth actually practices. Also, Christians regularly call on the spirits of the dead for stuff. Jesus? Dead. St. Anthony? Also dead. Gotta feel bad for him though. Guy spends his life as a saint, probably never gets laid, figures out how to talk to fish or whatever, and does he get to relax in his afterlife? No, he does not. He's gotta spend eternity going around finding your aunt's car keys. That just doesn't seem fair. But I digress.
MRC Goes On Hateful Tirades Against Brian Stelter's Fox-Bashing Book Topic: Media Research Center
Among CNN personalities, the Media Research Center's abject and irrational hatred of media reporter Brian Stelter is surpassed only by that for Jim Acosta. It bizarrely and dismissively likes to refer to Stelter as a "media janitor" for purportedly defending the media too hard and -- more importantly -- being a critic of Fox News' rampant bias and role as the state-TV outlet for President Trump; Tim Graham whined in July that Stelter and his "Reliable Sources" show spent too much time focusing on Fox News and conservative media. So when Stelter wrote a book about Fox News, the MRC was ready to attack its mere existence as well as its author (not that anyone at the MRC could be bothered to actually read the book).
On Aug. 22, Graham conspiratorially declared that Stelter promoting his book on the show of MSNBC host Rachel Maddow meant there was an anti-Fox "tag team of hate":
CNN and MSNBC will form a tag team to try and take down Fox News Channel. On Friday night, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow bizarrely claimed she wasn't into "cable news wars," and then devoted almost 17 minutes of her show to promoting Hoax, the new Fox-bashing book by CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter. She lovingly read long passages for more than nine minutes, and then after an ad break, interviewed Stelter for seven and a half minutes.
Rather than rebutting anything Stelter said, Graham complained that "Stelter's full-time job seems to be ripping into Trump and Fox as insane and dangerous to America."
Two days later, Scott Whitlock grumbled that "hack" Stelter "appeared on another liberal cable channel, MSNBC, on Monday night to plus his new book bashing Fox News" where he said that "One third of the country is disconnected from the normal news system" and into the "conspiratorial extreme place" Fox News has become. Like Graham, Whitlock didn't rebut any claim Stelter made, instead complaining about Stelter's use of anonymous sources.
In an Aug. 25 post, Alex Christy responded to Stelter's claim that "No president has had access to a megaphone like this" the way Trump uses Fox News by effectively "program[ming] the network himself" by regularly "choos[ing] to call in, take over for an hour, you know, rant and rave" by spouting lame whataboutism from the MRC's playbook: "A president like Obama had a plethora of liberal media options, not just one channel." Christy didn't mention that Obama never called up any media outlet to "rant and rave" for an hour the way Trump does on Fox News.
Meanwhile -- as he is with Acosta -- the MRC's cheerleader of irrational hate of Stelter at the MRC is Curtis Houck. He pounded out a massive screed childishly gloating how Fox News' media show gets better ratings than Stelter's:
On Sunday’s Reliable Sources, CNN charlatan, far-left hack, and Fox News-stalker Brian Stelter spent three segments hawking his now-released bookHoax, which appears to serve as an extension of his visceral hatred for Fox News Channel and painting it as an existential threat to not only the free press, but America itself.
However, when it comes to the ratings for last Sunday's show, viewers couldn’t care any less. According to Nielsen Media Research, FNC’s MediaBuzz trounced Reliable Sources by 30 percent in the 25-54 demographic and 67 percent in total viewers. That, folks, was what one would call a blowout.
Sad!
Low ratings are a very on-brand trait for a citizen of Zuckerville, along with the fact that he’s enjoyed his litany of interviews on both CNN and fellow liberal network MSNBC.
Houck's unprofessionalism continued, cheering how Stelter is "the man Greg Gutfeld has dubbed America’s hairless hall monitor," with an added shot at "sidekick" Oliver Darcy as "conservative media’s Benedict Arnold." Houck spends an unseemly amount of time attacking Darcy for leaving the right-wing media bubble to work for CNN.
An Aug. 27 post summed up an episode of Graham's new podcast bashing Stelter's book:
It's selling like hotcakes in the feverish world of Trump haters. Stelter is selling it on his own network, as well as on MSNBC shows, and a 43-minute interview on National Public Radio. Tim takes on the notion that relies so heavily on anonymous sources inside Fox. Why should we trust sources like this in a book by a CNN host ripping into Fox?
Graham won't admit, of course, that by his same standard, nobody should trust the MRC's ripping into Stelter. In the podcast itself, Graham whined that his and Brent Bozell's pro-Trump, anti-media book didn't merit a 43-minute interview on NPR and that he didn't trust Stelter's anonymous sources (he didn't mention that he and the MRC do trust anonymous sources when it suits their purposes).
Graham served up more juvenile Stelter-hating antics in a Sept. 1 post, gloating that during a Stelter appearance on C-SPAN, "Callers were mostly hostile, including a guy who was cut off for calling Stelter "Humpty Dumpty" -- a favorite Hannity nickname," before further complaining that Stelter "lamented conservatives have been "radicalized" by "media-bashing." By NewsBusters! It makes us sound like al-Qaeda." He then added:
The LOL moment of the hour -- the time I probably scared our cats -- was when a Texas caller smartly challenged Stelter's multitudinous anonymous sources in his book, and then asked "How did CNN spiral down to the absolute level of Trump hate that they are?"
We doubt Graham will ever acknowledge the MRC's spiral down to the absolute level of Stelter-hate he's displaying here.
Graham served up even more juvenile antics in a Sept. 6 post sneering at "Brian Stelter's Candy Land tour of puffball interviews promoting his Fox-trashing book Hoax." When Stelter said he work at Fox News only if he were given a hour to fact-check things, Graham erupted:
That's hilarious. As if Stelter's Sunday hour of Trump-trashing, with guests who suggest Trump is going to kill more people than Hitler, Stalin, and Mao combined? That's the FACT show?
Stelter clearly is still trying to imply the expired Shepard Smith hour, the hour of trashing everyone else at Fox, an hour of CNN-echoing rebuttal. That's "all about fact-checking."
Graham and the MRC hateSmith for refusing to be a right-wing Trump-bot like the other Fox employees.
Journalistic Malpractice: CNS' Jones Deliberately Gets DNC's Name Wrong Topic: CNSNews.com
Journalists are supposed to be able to get basic facts straight, such as names. That's apparently not a requirement for being a journalist at CNSNews.com. Susan Jones is such a biased reporter that she deliberately misspelled the name of the Democratic National Convention across numerous CNS stories.
It is standard Republican and conservative practice to use "Democrat" instead of "Democratic" when referring to the Democratic Party and Democratic politicians. The point is simply to be jerks by corrupting the name. Jones is a conservative partisan masquerading as a "journalist," as demonstratedby her flying in the face of facts by referring to the Democratic National Convention as the "Democrat National Convention" during her week of DNC-related coverage.
And not just in one story -- we counted 13 stories from Jones' DNC coverage in which she deliberately got the name wrong:
If you get a name wrong across 13 articles, that's not a typo -- that's deliberately getting a name wrong. It's also maliciously incompetent reporting.
By contrast, Jones' CNS colleague, Melanie Arter, may be a slavish pro-Trump stenographer, but she got the name right in her DNC-relatedarticles that week.
How does Jones still have a job despite demonstrating such deliberate incompetence? One has to wonder.
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham has a clear case of Brian Stelter Derangement Syndrome, as demonstrated by his rantings about Stelter's new book on Fox News that are heavy on personal attacks and light on critical analysis. Graham took that to another level in an Aug. 31 post:
The right-wing obsession over the death of Cannon Hinnant, a white 5-year-old, allegedly caused by a black neighbor has so obsessed right-wng media that even the Media Research Center 
The Media Research Center just loved to 
Michelle Malkin has been moving steadily to the right-wing, white nationalist fringe as CNSNews.com 
The Media Research Center's favorite sports website is the right-wing Outkick the Coverage, now known just as Outkick. In June, Matt Philbin 
CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman had a certain spin he wanted to push in an Aug. 20 
When Kamala Harris was running for the Democratic presidential nomination, WorldNetDaily columnist Mychal Massie 
NewsBusters blogger Randy Hall ranted in an Aug. 25 
CNSNews.com is 
CNSNews.com 
Newsmax CEO and Trump buddy Christopher Ruddy was sufficiently worried about the fallout for an Atlantic 
We are not making this up. Michael Brown wrote in his Sept. 2 WorldNetDailiy 
Among CNN personalities, the Media Research Center's abject and irrational hatred of media reporter Brian Stelter is surpassed only by that for 
Journalists are supposed to be able to get basic facts straight, such as names. That's apparently not a requirement for being a journalist at CNSNews.com. Susan Jones is such a biased reporter that she deliberately misspelled the name of the Democratic National Convention across numerous CNS stories. 
