Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has the outrage machine cranked up again.
A June 26 NewsBusters post by Tim Graham touts how "Fox News host Megyn Kelly led with a 'vicious' stunt pulled on Instagram by an official with the Spanish-language network Univision – a network that plans to host a presidential debate next year. Alberto Ciurana, the network’s president of programming and content posted an image of Donald Trump next to Charleston racist mass murderer Dylann Roof." The next day, MRC chief Brent Bozell cranked out a press release declaring that it's "unfathomable" that Univision could be "comparing a candidate for President to a cold-blooded murderer without consequences" and demanded that"Univision must remove Ciurana from his current position immediately and salvage what credibility it has left" and that "If he cannot apologize, and Univision will not discipline, the GOP should cancel its planned presidential debate on that network."
The MRC plays down the fact that nobody at Univision itself had no role in the image; the executive in question posted it to his personal Instagram.
We also remember that the MRC had a much different view on defamatory comparisons when the person being compared is a Democratic president.
IN a March 2013 NewsBusters post, Howard Portnoy thought that comparions of President Obama to the character of Satan as portrayed in a miniseries was absolutely hilarious:
The devil, you say. Actually, the devil, they say. Sunday night’s episode of the hit series “The Bible” on the History Channel featured an appearance by Satan, who as, depicted, looked familiar to many viewers. Feel free to judge for yourself. Spoiler alert: Barack Obama is the one on the right.
Bozell's buddy, Rush Limbaugh, found it hilarious as well, as WorldNetDaily documented at the time:
Rush Limbaugh held up a photo of the actor Monday afternoon on his famous “Dittocam” to show viewers that the Satan character was “a dead ringer” for Obama.
“Folks, it is uncanny,” Limbaugh noted, before quipping, “In light of that picture … the question that sprang to everybody’s mind is: if Satan had a son, would he look like the guy [in the White House]?”
Kelly has a bit of employer hypocrisy to deal with as well: Fellow Fox News host Bill O'Reilly devoted a segment to the comparison, and he wasn't terribly outraged at all.
Not a shred of outrage to be found at the MRC at the time. This makes its current outrage over the Trump-Roof picture to be more than a little hypocritical.
