Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has always been hypocritial about Tara Reade, the woman who accused Joe Biden of sexual misconduct nearly 30 years ago. As we've pointed out, the MRC cares nothing about her as a person -- her only usefulness is as a cudgel to attack Biden on behalf of President Trump, even as it denigrated a woman who accused Trump of rape.
The dishonesty and the double standard continued in a June 29 post by Bill D'Agostino:
While liberal TV news outlets have fallen all over themselves in a rush to disapprove of anything involving Donald Trump, they’ve kept their airwaves largely free of any negative stories about his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden. In fact, it’s been more than a month since ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC or NBC have even mentioned the accusations of Tara Reade, a former Biden staffer who alleges that he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s.
MRC analysts have looked at all broadcast and cable news coverage since the charges against Biden first surfaced on March 25. After a brief amount of coverage in April and May, and despite corroboration of Reade’s account, all of these networks dropped the story entirely.
But D'Agostino censored news that countered his narrative that Reade is credible: Politico looked into Reade's background and found a history of manipulative and deceitful behavior, and a PBS report that interviewed 74 former Biden staffers, many of whom disputed Reade's accusation based on their experiences with Biden.The only place you'll find these pieces referenced at the MRC is in a May 15 post by Tim Graham, who dismissed the Politico article as a "hit piece" and the PBS investigation with whataboutism, complaining that "Clarence Thomas's co-workers showed overwhelming support for Thomas and rejected Anita Hill's claims, but that didn't slow down the media's I Believe Anita boosters." At no point did Graham dispute the accuracy of either piece.
The day after Dagostino's "study," Scott Whitlock served up a post with the whining headline "In May, Hypocrite John Oliver PROMISED to Return to Tara Reade. He LIED." The whining continued:
It’s been eight weeks since HBO host John Oliver allowed a pathetic 26 seconds to the Tara Reade sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden. On the May 3 show, the HBO host promised her story would be “ fully investigated” and “I am sure that we will talk more about this as the story unfolds.”
He hasn’t returned to it. In the seven shows that have aired since, ZERO seconds were devoted to Reade and her claim of forcible penetration by the then-Democratic senator.
While D'Agostino and Whitlock were clutching their pearls over purported lack of coverage of the Reade story, they and their MRC coworkers were actively censoring the latest tales of sexual harassment at Fox News -- something they have lots of practice with, given how often Fox News personalities have been accused of untoward behavior.
On July 1, Fox News announced it had fired pro-Trump correspondent and anchor Ed Henry after a complaint of sexual harassment against him. This follows a 2016 suspension by Fox News following news of an extramarital affair. Not even a history of denouncing Henry as not sufficiently down with the Fox News agenda for the offense of asking non-softball questions to MRC sacred cow Mark Levin didn't even draw out the MRC gloating we know so well.
then, on July 20, two women -- a former Fox News producer and a once-frequent guest on the channel -- sued Fox News and hosts including Henry, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Howard Kurtz, accusing them of sexual harassment and gender discrimination. One woman even accused Henry of raping her.
This story too has been completely censored. The only mention of it we could find was on Brent Bozell's Twitter account, where he huffed: "I know Sean, Tucker and Howie. They are all honorable men. This stinks to high heaven. I don't believe a word of it."
In other words, he's doing what Graham complained PBS did in using people's personal experience as a n excuse to dismiss the complaint. And he's certainly not giving these women the benefit of the doubt his organization is giving Tara Reade.
It's as if the MRC's treatment of sexual harassment allegations depends entirely on the employer or political agenda of the accused.
