Topic: Media Research Center
If there's anything Tim Graham and the Media Research Center hate worse than gays, it's Kennedys. Graham and crew, for instance, have yet to retract its multiple false portrayals of writer Charles Pierce's statements regarding Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick as "ludicrous level of veneration" of Kennedy when, in fact, in full context it was a criticism of Kennedy. The MRC's quote of the year wasn't even from a journalist; it was a blog post from a "Discover magazine deputy web editor... who formerly worked on the New York Times’s Freakonomics blog" that said something about Ted Kennedy the MRC didn't like.
It's in that context that Graham's Nov. 23 NewsBusters post should be viewed. The post is all about Graham's whining that the NBC Nightly News, on the occasion of the 47th anniversaryof John F. Kennedy's death, noted the existence "of yet another book of Kennedy family photos of the 'Camelot' era." Graham was particularly upset that anchor Brian Williams noted that there was a picture of the "incredibly cute John Jr. on a boat in August of ‘63." Graham continued to grouse:
The photos can be very similar to everyone else's family photos, which would hardly be Nightly News material. But the Kennedy family pictures are endlessly fascinating to some people. This adoration of the Kennedys isn't as obviously biased as NBC actually employing a Kennedy as an "objective" reporter for 16 years. Can we plan for Williams showing pictures from the Reagan family when the country celebrates the 100th anniversary of his birth next February 6? Or is Williams just not in as much awe of Reagan? Is he just still the kid who wrote adoring fan mail to LBJ?
John Kennedy died 47 years ago. Ted Kennedy died more than a year ago. Graham seriously needs to get over it.
