Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham is growing as unhinged as he claims the rest of the media is. He begins a July 14 post about whether Fox News' John Roberts should have defended CNN's Jim Acosta (a key target in the MRC's anti-media war) after President Trump and declaring that Fox News is "real news," began this way:
CNN has branded itself as savagely, incessantly anti-Trump, as well as savagely, incessantly anti-Fox News. So why on Earth do they expect that when the president mocks CNN at a press conference, "unity" demands that Fox defend CNN in the moment of the insult?
This is especially true of Brian Stelter, whose boss Jeff Zucker has ordered the network's attack on Fox as "state-run TV." But then, Stelter is shameless enough to tell Kellyanne Conway to her face "I'm not on a side of an aisle."
Graham, notably, doesn't deny that Fox News is so pro-Trump that it is esseially "state-run TV" -- then again, ridiculously pro-Trump is how Graham and the MRC want the media to act. He followed that with an even more scattershot attack on CNN:
When other media outlets have defended Fox is normally a question of access, as in pool events. It wasn't expected that other reporters would defend Fox in front of President Obama. Fox's questions to Obama didn't have Jim Acosta's angry and desperate tone, and Obama didn't normally attack reporters during press conferences.
Jake Tapper is really not the person who should fuss about letting insults go on TV. He famously let Nancy Pelosi suggest Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch was a bad choice "if you breathe air, drink water, eat food, take medicine." In another town hall after the Parkland school shooting, allowed an obnoxious child to compare Sen. Marco Rubio to Nikolas Cruz, who shot 17 people dead.
Jim Acosta isn't more honorable than Gorsuch or Rubio.
Finally, Graham huffed at the idea that there should be, in Stelter's words, "unity" among media outlets "when a president insults your competitors and then calls on you instead":
"Unity." Liberal media are routinely unified in attacking Fox as not a real-news network. CNN defends Acosta even when he says Trump's fake-news insults are dangerous because "people around the country" who "don’t have all their faculties in some cases — their elevator might not hit all floors."
This is not the first time the MRC has mocked Acosta for being concerned about his safety as a journalist when Trump -- and the MRC -- have singled him out as a target.
By the way, Graham and the MRC have no record of how many insults Fox News personalities have hurled at CNN. Perhaps he should do that before complaining further about things CNN personalities have said about Fox News.
