Topic: Media Research Center
Remember: The mission of the Media Research Center these day is to protect President Trump from media criticism. Another example of that is this bit of "media research" in a Feb. 28 post by Bill D'Agostino:
During national emergencies such as natural disasters or outbreaks of disease, the news media can serve as a valuable source of information for the public. Yet when it came to their coverage of the coronavirus on Thursday, CNN largely put their Trump-bashing agenda ahead of that important role.
MRC analysts identified 44 guest interviews on CNN between 6:00 am and 11:59 pm EST on February 27, 2020. Out of 136 questions that hosts asked about the epidemic, 82 (60%) invited guests – even medical specialists – to criticize the Trump administration’s handling of the epidemic. Questions asked of CNN-affiliated reporters and analysts were not included in this total.
Hosts often pressured guests who were reluctant to attack the administration.
[...]
It’s bad enough when Democrats and Republicans politicize national emergencies, but for the self-ordained Facts First Network to do the same is nothing short of outrageous. This isn’t what journalists are supposed to do during a national health crisis. How bad must the epidemic get for CNN to stop taking what even Democrats network have called “cheap shots?”
Absent from D'Agostino's alleged analysis -- as it is from pretty much all MRC "studies" -- is a list of those 136 questions and how they were classified so readers can judge for themselves how "negative" or "cheap" they are. D'Agostino repeated only two questions in his post.
D'Agostino also appears to have failed to consider context -- that Trump does, in fact, deserve criticism of his administration's response to the outbreak. Perhaps that's because the apparebnly official policy at the MRC is that Trump does nothing wrong and all criticism of him is "liberal."
The MRC's "media research" is hard to take seriously when it's so utterly biased.
