Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has long been triggered by Michael Avenatti, lawyer to Stormy Daniels, mostly because he helped expose the fact that President Trump paid off Daniels to keep their alleged affair from hurting his presidential campaign, to the point that it can't stop calling him a "creepy porn lawyer" because the collective MRC mind is apparently 11 years old.
Well, Avenatti has found himself in a spot of legal trouble, and the MRC is triggered again. After Avenatti was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence, the MRC's Nicholas Fondacaro was immediatedly demanding wall-to-wall coverage on all news channels and was outraged when that didn't happen:
At 5:45 p.m. Eastern Time Wednesday, TMZ first broke the news that Democratic lawyer and 2020 presidential hopeful Michael Avenatti was arrested by Los Angeles police on domestic violence charges. Despite the fact that Avenatti granted them over 200 combined appearances on their networks, both CNN and MSNBC downplayed the charges. MSNBC brushed over it while CNN spent part of the time correcting TMZ and touting people who claimed Avenatti wouldn’t hurt anyone.
As Fondacaro later admitted in his post, one of those "people" vouching for Avenatti was his ex-wife, which you'd think would elevate her above Fondacaro's suggestion that those defending Avenatti are just random people.Bizarrely, Fondacaro was even more outraged that one outlet pointed out that TMZ got key details wrong:
Disturbingly, CNN spent an additional one minute and one second correcting the TMZ article (despite TMZ’s own corrections) and touting a statement from Avenatti’s ex-wife who said he wouldn’t hurt anyone. “This is Lisa Avenatti and when I spoke with her on the phone … she also said that he is somebody who wouldn't ever hit anyone,” [CNN correspondent MJ] Lee professed.
“Also, just a key sentence here from that statement,” Lee added. “‘My client states that there has never been domestic violence in her relationship with Michael and that she has never known Michael to be physically violent toward anyone.’”
Only at the MRC would someone find it "disturbing" to get facts straight.
The next day, Scott Whitlock complained that two cable TV morning shows "managed a total of 67 seconds on the felony abuse arrest charges against Michael Avenatti. This is despite their previous fascination with the porn lawyer and Democratic antagonist to President Trump." Another Whitlock post grumbled that the New York Times "buried [Avenatti's] domestic abuse accusations on page A-22 of the paper."
When there was a new development in Avenatti's case a few days later, Fondacaro demanded blanket coverage of that too:
After being arrested on felony domestic violence charges last week, there was a new chapter in the saga of Michael Avenatti’s alleged abuse late Monday night when news broke that New York actress Mareli Miniutti had filed a domestic violence restraining order against him. Both CNN and MSNBC couldn’t be bothered to mention the development on air that night.
Fondacaro vaguely alluded to the fact that TMZ originally got the story wrong: "This was the first time we were able to put a face to the original felony domestic violence charges. Prior to Monday, it was thought that Avenatti’s ex-wife was the one who made the claims. She denied it was her and praised her former husband as a non-violence person, much to the relief of the liberal media who touted her defense." He didn't mention his outrage that TMZ's story had to be corrected.
A day after Fondacaro's post appeared, prosecutors announced that they would not pursue felony domestic violence charges against Avenatti -- which tells us that the MRC's obsession with this story has been overblown. Neither Fondacaro nor anyone else at the MRC found that development to be newsworthy.
