Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Matt Philbin got all huffy in a June 16 post:
The left’s fit of insensate rage keeps turning this way and that, smashing whatever comes to hand -- a statue here, a corporate exec there. Professional sports have been thoroughly politicized, and now the destruction is coming to big-time college football. Because somebody doesn’t like a T-shirt.
According to Sports Illustrated, somebody at a website covering Oklahoma State University sports posted a picture of Cowboys head football coach Mike Gundy on a fishing trip “wearing a t-shirt promoting the conservative news network One America News. Shortly after that, the Cowboys All-American running back Chuba Hubbard came out,” and mau-maued the program.
"I will not stand for this," wrote Hubbard on Twitter. "This is completely insensitive to everything going on in society, and it is unacceptable. I will not be doing anything with Oklahoma State until things CHANGE."
NCAA players are apparently just like other coddled college kids, only more so. As we all know, until things change means until any political opinion I don’t like has been purged from OSU football -- maybe OSU Athletics. And why not a 100-square-mile zone around the campus?
And, of course, Hubbard is getting support from the millionaire malcontents in the NFL.
Philbin benignly framed OAN as merely "conservative" when, in fact, it tends to traffic in right-wing, pro-Trump conspiracy theories.
But Philbin waited until the second-to-last paragraph of his 12-paragraph item to fully disclose why he was running to OAN's (and Gundy's) defense:
OAN’s opinion shows have, you know, opinion (several Media Research Center staffers, including the author, regularly appear on them). But it’s a news network. Hubbard and his supporters care nothing for the facts. They’re feeding their outrage.
Philbin certainly didn't care enough about the fact to tell readers exactly how far-right OAN is.
Jonas Wells further the MRC's defense of OAN the next day, again underselling its far-right agenda: "OAN does tend to emphasize the 'straight news reporting' that much of the mainstream media, on both sides of the aisle, tend to forget about. In an interview done with [OAN anchor Liz] Wheeler, she addressed the format of OAN, and how there are merely three hours of commentary, versus 21 hours of straight news."
Wells offered no proof of this. He also -- in an item describing someone's "mistakes" in criticizing Gundy and OAN -- made the mistake of failing to disclose the MRC's conflict of interest in defending OAN.
Then, in a June 19 post, mysterious sports blogger Jay Maxson called on right-leaning sports pundit Jason Whitlock trying to play whataboutism to handwave OAN's extremism:
Whitlock said he had gotten tweets accusing OAN of peddling "dangerous, irresponsible and racially divisive conspiracy theories." He turns it around on the left-stream media and asks, "Isn’t that what cable news networks do?"
Whitlock looked up the definitions of "conspiracy theory" to make sure he understood it correctly and found this explanation: "A belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for a circumstance or event."
Maxson then gave Whitlock free rein to rant that the non-right-wing-media portrayals of Colin Kaepernick and Black Lives Matter are based on conspiracy theories. Whitlock then huffed: "Are we sure OAN is the lone media outlet propagating dangerous, irresponsible and racially divisive conspiracy theories? Or are these theories the lifeblood of the modern mainstream media?"
It seems Whitlock has joined Maxson as being so far right that right-wing conspiracy theories are normal and mainstream media are the purveyors of conspiracy theories. (Oh, and Maxson failed to disclose that MRC employees regularly appear on OAN.)
