Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has always been hypocritical in demanding that the media follow standards that it refuses to enforce on its own operations. One prime example of that is the use of context: The MRC loves to criticizing others for omitting it but it regularly fails to provide conext when not doing so suits its right-wing agenda.
One key part of the MRC's agenda these days is denigrating last weekend's Women's March on Washington for daring to be critical of President Trump. One way ity's doing that is taking one particular remark Madonna made at the march out of context. You know the one.
Nicholas Fondacaro set the stage in a Jan. 22 post:
If Ashley Judd’s R-rated rant comparing President Donald Trump’s team to the Nazis wasn’t insane enough, loony Madonna admitted to wanting to kill the newly inaugurated president of United States. “Yes, I am angry. Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House,” she proclaimed to the hundreds of thousands of march attendees in Washington, DC on Saturday. But yet, she started her address declaring, “Welcome to the revolution of love!”
Tellingly, Fondacaro waited until the seventh paragraph to include the full context of that "blowing up the White House" 'comment:
Yes, I am angry. Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House. But I know that this won't change anything. We cannot fall into despair. As the poet, W. H. Auden once wrote on the eve of World War II, “we must love one another or die.”
But Fondacaro immediately followed that by taking Madonna out of context again: "Trump’s inauguration has really taken the radical leftist off their hinges and exposed their violent nature. Between descriptions of Trump as the secessionist South from ABC’s Matthew Dowd, to comparisons to Nazis’ and gas chambers, and now the blowing-up of the White House they have really escalated things very quickly in just two days."
Unsurprisingly, that would be the last time thte MRC would put Madonna's words in their proper, accurate context:
- Another post by Fondacaro ripped her out of context again, complaining that the media didn't report "Madonna’s fantasy of 'blowing up the White House.'"
- Fondacaro then did it one more time, again concocting "Madonna’s fantasy about 'blowing up the White House.'"
- A Jan. 25 MRC post by Geoffrey Dickens on "the worst attacks on President Trump" falsely claimed that "Madonna threatened: 'I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.'"
- Rich Noyes took it even farther by claiming about "Madonna seeming to suggest assassination: 'I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.'"
- Thomas A. Glessner huffed that "Aging pop singer Madonna showed up as a speaker and stated that she had considered blowing up the White House."
It's much easier for the MRC to lie to its readers and portray Madonna as a mad bomber and wannabe presidential assassin than to tell the truth.
(Photo: Associated Press via New York Daily News)
