Topic: Media Research Center
CRTV host Gavin McInnes is the founder of the Proud Boys, a misogynist, violence-prone group (no matter what Jesse Lee Peterson says). He's so notorious that the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Review agree on his odious allure. McInnes is a piece of work, as you might imagine; he spouts racist rhetoric even as he insists he can't be a white supremacist because he's married to a woman of color. And Facebook and Instagram just shut down pages affiliated with McInnes and the Proud Boys because of their racist images and incitements to violence.
All of this, one would think, might get the notice of the Media Research Center. It's overly sensitive to right-wingers facing issues with social media networks -- remember, it had a sad over the alt-right Twitter clone Gab getting removed from some app stores. (It just had another sad over Gab being taken offline after it was revealed that the man who shot up a Pittsburgh synagogue, killing 11, spouted his anti-Semitic hate on Gab.)
But we found only five references to McInnes on NewsBusters, the MRC's main content outlet. Two are columns by Michelle Malkin, who like McInnes is a CRTV employee. The third is a 2015 piece by Tim Graham quoting a McInnes tweet about drawing Mohammed.
The other two, though, are pieces by Corinne Weaver -- who also wrote the above-referenced pieces about Gab -- on Sept. 25 and Oct. 4, both of which complain that an antifa-adjacent group "doxxed" McInnes by posting his phone number on Twitter. The earlier post described McInnes as "the founder of Vice Media and host of a show on the Conservative Review," while the second didn't describe him at all. Weaver didn't mention McInnes' link to Proud Boys violence, or that the group mocked McInnes in the "doxxing" by asking people to "tell him you love white genocide."
A piece on MRCTV on the "doxxing" of McInnes did include the mocking message, but writer Nick Kangadis benignly described McInnes only as a "fiery Conservative Review commentator and host" and excluded his links to the violent Proud Boys and rushing to his defense: "McInnes may say some controversial things at times, but at least he tells it like it is. His brand of political analysis might not be for everyone, but that’s not an excuse to essentially dox him and open him up for more constant harassment." Kangadis didn't explain how advocating violence is "telling it like it is."
Why is the MRC giving the obviously offensive McInnes the kid-glove treatement? Perhaps because of who employs him. CRTV is part of Conservative Review, which was founded by right-wing radio host Mark Levin, who also serves as its editor-in-chief. Yes, the same Mark Levin who's a friend of the MRC and chief Brent Bozell, whose "news" division CNSNews.com published more than 100 articles about him in the first nine months of 2018 alone.
So, no, the MRC isn't going to criticize McInnes and and make Bozell's buddy sad.
P.S. McInnes isn't the only dubious right-winger employed at Levin's CRTV; it recently hired Eric Bolling, the former Fox News host who left the channel last year following allegations that he sexually harassed Fox News colleagues. And, no, the MRC has never mentioned those allegations.
