Topic: Media Research Center
We documented above how the Media Research Center's "news" division was so determined to protect President Trump from a ruling by the Government Accountability Office that Trump violated the law in withholding aid to Ukraine that editor in chief Terry Jeffrey dredged up an -eight-year-old story about the GAO ruling against President Obama in an effort to divert attention from it. The MRC itself served up its own desperate spin away from the GAO report.
Joseph Vazquez thinks he has the magic bullet in a Jan. 21 post: The GAO can't possibly be nonpartisan because its employees are represenbted by a" liberal" union! (bolding in original)
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said Jan. 16 that President Donald Trump broke the law when he withheld aid from Ukraine. The union for that “independent, nonpartisan” agency naturally supports Democrats. Just don’t expect the media to tell you about it.
The GAO calls itself an “independent, nonpartisan” congressional agency. Liberal outlets, continuing the media-driven impeachment crusade, gave full credence to the GAO’s self-proclaimed “nonpartisan” status.
The GAO Employees Organization and its bureaucrats are currently represented by the International Federation of Professionals and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), AFL-CIO & CLC, a labor union that represents workers in both the U.S. and Canada. Here’s the problem: IFPTE’s political action committee gave 100 percent of its political contributions ($36,250) to Democratic candidates in 2016, 89 percent of its political contributions ($61,950) to Democratic candidates in 2018, and currently 75 percent of its political contributions ($26,900) to Democratic candidates for the 2020 electoral cycle.
The GAO Employees Organization, “the union and professional association” of GAO bureaucrats, stated in its website that it “is an affiliate of IFPTE, designated as IFPTE Local 1921, named after the year GAO was created.”
If your credibility as an agency hinges on you being “independent, nonpartisan,” why do your bureaucrats choose to be represented by a union that’s overtly partisan? Moreover, why are liberal media outlets ignoring this?
Um, because it's bogus and irrelevant? How about the fact that by citing an instance in which the GAO criticized Obama, CNS' Jeffrey blew up this dumb talking point?
How about the fact that the MRC itself has approvingly cited GAO studies during the Obama years in which, weirdly, the employees union was not mentioned? For example:
- In July 2014, Matthew Balan complained that "The Big Three networks' morning and evening newscasts have yet to cover the Government Accountability Office's investigation of ObamaCare's sign-up process that uncovered that fraudulent documents were able to procure federal health plans and subsidies."
- An October 2014 post touted how anti-abortion advocates "criticized taxpayer funding of abortion through ObamaCare, as brought to light in a new GAO report."
- And in July 2015, Scott Whitlock grumbled that "CBS and NBC on Thursday skipped the revelation that ObamaCare is particularly vulnerable to scams. Only ABC's Good Morning America covered the Government Accountability Office's fraud investigation and the two-hour show only allowed a scant 17 seconds on the topic."
Needless to say, Vazquez offered no evidence that the GAO's methodology in arriving at its Trump ruling was any different than in rulings his employer previously touted. Instead he baselessly ranted that the union connection made the GAO "partisanly-suspect."
Weird how the GAO suddenly became highly partisan and non-credible at the MRC the second it announced a ruling that criticized a president it has sworn to defend at all costs. It's as if the MRC is driven by political expediency instead of core principles of fact and logic.
