Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck did some serious fanboying over Fosx News' Bret Baier in an April 26 post:
Former FBI Director and new author James Comey has spent the past 12 days on his book tour promoting A Higher Loyalty, the supposed greatness of Comey himself and the lack thereof on the part of President Trump.
However, no prior interview compared to his Thursday hit on the Fox News Channel’s Special Report as host Bret Baier offered a masterfully tough tour de force akin to interviews of yesteryear by the late Tim Russert.
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Comey denied that despite having written a memo exonerating her and emphasized that it’s crucial for investigators to have an idea of where a probe that ended up lasting almost a year.
It was soon after that Baier showed his mettle, telling Comey that “you already knew that she had been telling, whatever you want to say, lies, mistruths about this investigation of what — and how she handled those emails” and played a clip of Comey stating just that in congressional testimony in July 2016.
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What made Baier’s interview successful but damaging for Comey was his short but pointed questions that didn’t come across as attitudinal or snarky. One such moment was when Baier broached the subject of the Steele dossier.
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Baier then held Comey’s feet to the fire over the leak of the Trump Tower meeting between Comey and Trump over the dossier. The FNC host ran through the gambit of possible leakers and Comey denied all of them. Comey added that he made no attempt to find out who did it because the dossier was an “unclassified, public document.”
Without a doubt, the most devastating exchange focused on Comey’s leaking of his memos to friend, former FBI employee, and law professor Daniel Richman. The FNC host marvelously exposed Comey’s refusal to inform lawmakers that Richman was anything but a private citizen and instead a former “FBI special government employee.”
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This was far from the first instance in which Baier grilled high-profile figures in the news. In March and August 2016, he grilled Hillary Clinton during the height of the campaign in ways that put his competitors to shame. He also hammered then-Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon on Mary 25, 2016 in a similar fashion that you can read about here.
That's some serious gushing. Note that Houck doesn't cite any examples of Baier asking tough questions of a Republican or conservative.
Houck also doesn't mention that Baier is also responsible for a fake-news story the MRC heavily promoted just before the 2016 election -- the anonymously sourced claim that Hillary Clinton was facing imminent indictment. The MRC ranted that media outlets who didn't report the story in a manner to its liking were engaging in a "cover-up," and MRC chief Brent Bozell declared that "We will report developments on this continuing cover-up every hour from here on out."
None of those hours, however, were devoted to the fact that the story turned out to be false, and Baier retracted it. The MRC never told its readers the story was bogus.
But then, Houck and the MRC never holds conservatives to the same journalistic and ethical standards it holds reporters who aren't conservative -- and Houck will never praise a "liberal media" reporter for asking tough questions of a conservative the way he gushed over the Baier-Comey interview.
