Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has a business relationship with Mark Levin, in which they promote each other. They both remind us of this once again, even as they fail to disclose this relationship to their respective readers and listeners.
On March 5, CNSNews.com blogger Craig Bannister touted how "Levin Uses Liberal Media’s OWN WORDS as 'Evidence' Obama Spied on Trump." (Though we doubt Levin spoke with the boldface and underlines and all-caps Bannister generously ascribes to him.) Except, well, that's not exactly what happened; Levin is desperately trying to pump up intelligence agencies' alleged monitoring of the Trump campaign's links to Russia into something he can maliciously speculate about but can't prove: that Obama personally ordered it or, at the very least, knew about it at the time.
When CNN's Brian Stelter had the temerity to point out that Levin's conflation did not constitute actual evidence that Obama personally had Trump Tower wiretapped, as President Trump claimed in a tweet, Bannister was there to dutifully transcribe Levin's open-letter rant to Stelter sneering that he was being "thoroughly dishonest" for reporting the truth. A NewsBusters post pretty much did the same thing.
When ABC's Brian Ross called Levin "a conspiracy-loving talk show host" for pushing his conflated claims, the MRC complained about that too -- never mind that it's something he kinda does.
The MRC then gave even more space to Levin's rants on the subject.
Then Levin posted all these MRC links, and a couple more, to his Facebook page, under the headline "The week that was with our friends at MRC..."
Cross-promotion at its finest. How about behaving somewhat ethically for once and disclose that y'all are paying each other for this?
