Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is so obsessed with Joe Biden's history of being a little too grabby in public with women -- a story that has already been thourghly covered by the media -- that it's outraged that it's not mentioned every single time Biden appears in the media.
MRC bigwigs Tim Graham and Brent Bozell set the whining tone in their April 2 column:
The Democrat-media complex has suddenly decided that Joe Biden has a creepiness problem. Why now? Why not when he was Vice President for eight years? Does anyone remember the allegedly fierce White House press corps pelting the press secretary with questions, asking when Obama would tell his understudy to stop putting his hands on women – and little girls, too – and putting his face uncomfortably close to theirs?
They then descend into a paranoid rant about how the "Democrat-media complex" want Biden out of the way because he's purportedly not liberal enough.
By the time Biden actually announced his candidacy for president, though, the MRC's whining had reframed to demanding that Biden's grabbiness wasn't being sufficiently reported to conform to its right-wing agenda -- which is to say, being reported all the time.
An April 23 post by Geoffrey Dickens complained that "liberal journalists have rushed to the defense of Biden’s grabbiness," as well as "laughing off or completely burying most of his numerous gaffes."
On April 25, Scott Whitlock griped that "CBS This Morning on Thursday covered the launch of Joe Biden without ever mentioning any of his gaffes, including his habit of being grabby with women," proclaiming this to be a "scandal."
The same day, Dickens huffed that TV networks devoted a "tiny (1 minutes, 52 seconds) amount of time ... to the former Vice President’s grabbiness in their coverage of his campaign’s official launch." He further complained that "Even when reporters briefly mentioned Biden’s female problems, they couched it in the most favorable terms."
Dickens -- who has apparently been named the MRC's Biden obsessive -- griped in yet another post, in which the word "scandal" was again used:
The Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks have cleared the path of any nagging stories about Joe Biden’s grabby hands – having all but wiped clean the stories of women complaining about their uncomfortable encounters with the former VP.
In just three days of coverage (Tuesday evening through Friday morning) the broadcast evening and morning shows have devoted a hefty 47 minutes, 4 seconds of combined coverage to Biden’s official entrance into the 2020 race. But they could only find 2 minutes, 21 seconds of time to spend on Biden’s roaming hands.
In terms of total coverage NBC news has led the way with 19 minutes, 27 seconds spent on the Biden announcement, with just a skimpy 56 seconds on complaints from women. ABC has spent 16 minutes, 37 seconds on the Democratic frontrunner’s entry but only 50 seconds on Biden being overly-friendly with women. CBS offered 10 minutes, 58 seconds to the Biden launch and just a meager 35 seconds on the former Senator’s touchy-feely ways.
Dickens appears to be more obsessed with Biden's hands than Biden is.
