Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center set the narrative with the first Democratic presidential debate: Do a pre-attack of the media folks who will ask the questions, then attack the questions after the debate as brimming with "liberal bias" even though it can't be bothered to identify exactly how it came to that conclusion.
For the last Democratic presidential debate on CNN, the MRC's target was moderator Don Lemon. In a July 30 post, Geoffrey Dickens dismissed Lemon as a "Democrat-adoring, Trump-despising, black hole conspiracy theorist" whopurportedly "hates rank-and-file Trump supporters" and is prone to "incendiary and obnoxious outbursts."
After the debate, Dickens declared that he "called it" and insisted that Lemon used the debate "to relentlessly promote lefty policies and politicians, and launch invectives against Donald Trump and his supporters," gloating that "The bias was so bad from Lemon last night, even President Trump noticed, slamming the CNN Tonight host." Dickens claimed that a Lemon question noting that "President Trump is pursuing a reelection strategy based in part, on racial division" was based in "rage against Trump" -- but he didn't dispute the accuracy of the statement. Dickens also included a list of "Lemon’s most obnoxious questions from the left," but he provided no methodology as to how he reached that conclusion.
After the debate's second night, Dickens struck again, complaining that Lemon "used his questions to pontificate on Trump’s 'racism' – as if the Democratic candidates wouldn’t have done that anyway." Again, Dickens added a Lemon-bashing Trump tweet to round things out. And, again, Dickens declined to offer evidence that Lemon was wrong about Trump's racism.
At least this time we were spared a "study" devoid of methodology and raw data purporting to designate how many debate questions were "liberal."
Meanwhile, at the MRC's "news" division CNSNews.com, the attacks on Lemon continued with an article by Melanie Arter touting a Trump tweet calling Lemon "the dumbest man in television."
"Media research," folks!
