Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Kyle Drennen grouses in a May 4 post:
After MSNBC spent four hours on Thursday breathlessly promoting what turned out to be a false story that federal investigators had been “wiretapping” President Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen for months, NBC’s Today show on Friday only managed 41 seconds of air time to correct the phony bombshell.
First: This is a strange complaint to make given that the original claim never appeared on the "Today" show and, indeed, was made on a completely different channel. "Today" was not obligated to correct reporting that was never made on the show.
Second: We would remind Drennen that his employer breathlessly promoted a false story by Fox News before the 2016 election claiming that an indictment of Hillary Clinton was imminent -- so much so that 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, though, were devoted to telling MRC readers that Fox News retracted the story.
If the MRC can't be bothered to tell its readers that a story it heavily promoted has been retracted, it has no moral authority whatsoever to demand that a TV show retract a story that it never aired.
