Topic: Media Research Center
the Media Research Center's long history of not-so-special "special reports" continues with an Aug. 8 "special report" by Tim Graham and Geoffrey Dickens, "The Media's Obama Miracle," in which they complain about the "the stunning lack of coverage" of certain Obama administration "scandals" in the media (well, only "the morning and evening news shows" on network TV). But really, they're just complaining that the media isn't parroting right-wing anti-Obama talking points.
Graham and Dickens write:
In the first two months of 2002, the Big Three networks reported a stunning 198 stories on the Enron bankruptcy, often tying the fiasco to President Bush. By comparison, since declaring bankruptcy on August 31, 2011, despite a half-billion dollars in federal loans from the Energy Department through Obama donor connections, ABC, CBS, and NBC filed a grand total of 24 stories on Solyndra, and barely connected it to Obama -- even as Obama told ABC he had no regrets, and even as the promise of “green jobs” demonstrably collapsed.
As we pointed out the last time the MRC did this, that's a ridiculous comparison. Enron was a huge company using impenetrable and deceptive accounting methods to obscure massive corruption and market manipulation, and its bankruptcy was the largest in history at the time. Solyndra was a small company making solar panels that fell victim to a change in the market -- a rival method of building the panels suddenly became much cheaper than Solyndra's -- and nobody has accused Solyndra of Enron-level fraud or corruption.
The authors continue with a little conspiracy mongering:
Federal agents twice raided the plants of Gibson Guitar in Tennessee to investigate whether they improperly imported wood from Madagascar and India, but waited for almost a year before settling with the guitar maker for a $300,000 fine. No one found it newsworthy that Gibson’s CEO is a Republican donor, while other guitar makers who weren’t Republicans were not raided by the government over wood imports.
Perhaps that's because the other guitar makers weren't breaking the law. As NPR reports, Gibson continued to import wood from Madagascar despite knowing the risk that it might be improper to do so. In settling the case, Department of Justice officials said that "Gibson has acknowledged that it failed to act on information that the Madagascar ebony it was purchasing may have violated laws intended to limit overharvesting and conserve valuable species." Do Graham and Dickens think Repubicans should be above the law?
As for the rest of Graham and Dickens' so-called Obama "scandals"...
Fast and Furious? A Republican-manufactured attack.
MF Global? Not even Graham and Dickens claim Obama is involved, only that former MF head Jon Corzine was "a major Obama fundraiser."
Reverend Wright? The authors make the mistake of trusting the word of the notoriously unreliable Ed Klein.
That's all they have. Again, nothing special about this "special report."
