Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has decided that -- despite much evidence to the contrary -- Chris Matthews has a "left-wing skew" and perhaps should not be the moderator of an upcoming Republican debate.
In an Oct. 5 post, Ken Shepherd claimed that, as a recent example of purported "left-wing skew," Matthews "seethed" that "The Bush administration has "finally been caught in their criminality." But how is that bias, given that members of the administration have, in fact, been caught in criminality? That's just a statement of fact.
Shepherd also instructed his readers to check the NewsBusters archives for "a compendium of Matthews bias." But as we've detailed, those archives contain numerous posts by Mark Finkelstein taking Matthews out of context and making him look more biased than the facts support.
The MRC's Rich Noyes then appeared on Fox News' "The Big Story with John Gibson" to further push the meme that Matthews' statement of fact is somehow biased. Gibson got the quote wrong, falsely asserting that Matthews "just called our President a criminal." Noyes made no effort to correct Gibson. (These are the folks, mind you, who have bashed Media Matters for taking Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh out of context. Apparently, accused liberals don't deverve the privilege of being accurately quoted.)
Adhering to the template, Noyes appeared solo, and the MRC was not described as conservative. Noyes claimed without evidence that NBC is "going to just drop any pretense that they're a fair and balanced network. They're going to cater to a left-wing crowd."
UPDATE: An Oct. 6 NewsBusters post by Brent Baker serves up more purportedly damning evidence of Matthews' bias: Liberals attended his party! The horror!
