Topic: Media Research Center
In an April 25 NewsBusters post, MRC Latino's Daniel Garza rants that a segment on the TV channel Fusion on "the dirty business of campaign contributions" was "a fabrication of totally biased political propaganda." In addition to failing to identify a single "fabrication" in the segment, let alone offer a direct one of even one word from it -- he didn't even bother to embed a video of the segment in his item -- Garza responded with his own fabrication of totally biased political propaganda.'
That would be the ol' reflexive defense of the Koch brothers:
The reality is that the Koch Brothers don’t even rank in the top 50 when it comes to political donors in the United States. Moreover, Republican candidate Ted Cruz has made fighting political cronyism a pillar of his campaign, but you would never know it by viewing the fast-talking, morally narcissistic host of the video.
Garza's source for this is a 2014 article by the conservative Washington Examiner, based on data from OpenSecrets.org. But as others have noted, that list counts only direct contributions to parties and candidates and excludes money given to "politically active dark money groups, like Americans for Prosperity, a group linked to the Koch brothers." And in 2012, one-fourth of the $274 million given to dark-money groups came from the Koch brothers.
As the New Republic's Jonathan Cohn pointed out, unregulated, indirect financing of conservative political organizations is the main way the Kochs influence politics.
There are basically no facts here, just Garza ranting about "George Soros and the millions and millions he and his network of allies put into politics" and "Hillary Clinton getting paid ridiculous and scandalous amounts of money to give speeches for big banks." That's "media reserach" at the MRC, folks.
