Topic: Media Research Center
Among CNN personalities, the Media Research Center's abject and irrational hatred of media reporter Brian Stelter is surpassed only by that for Jim Acosta. It bizarrely and dismissively likes to refer to Stelter as a "media janitor" for purportedly defending the media too hard and -- more importantly -- being a critic of Fox News' rampant bias and role as the state-TV outlet for President Trump; Tim Graham whined in July that Stelter and his "Reliable Sources" show spent too much time focusing on Fox News and conservative media. So when Stelter wrote a book about Fox News, the MRC was ready to attack its mere existence as well as its author (not that anyone at the MRC could be bothered to actually read the book).
On Aug. 22, Graham conspiratorially declared that Stelter promoting his book on the show of MSNBC host Rachel Maddow meant there was an anti-Fox "tag team of hate":
CNN and MSNBC will form a tag team to try and take down Fox News Channel. On Friday night, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow bizarrely claimed she wasn't into "cable news wars," and then devoted almost 17 minutes of her show to promoting Hoax, the new Fox-bashing book by CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter. She lovingly read long passages for more than nine minutes, and then after an ad break, interviewed Stelter for seven and a half minutes.
Rather than rebutting anything Stelter said, Graham complained that "Stelter's full-time job seems to be ripping into Trump and Fox as insane and dangerous to America."
Two days later, Scott Whitlock grumbled that "hack" Stelter "appeared on another liberal cable channel, MSNBC, on Monday night to plus his new book bashing Fox News" where he said that "One third of the country is disconnected from the normal news system" and into the "conspiratorial extreme place" Fox News has become. Like Graham, Whitlock didn't rebut any claim Stelter made, instead complaining about Stelter's use of anonymous sources.
In an Aug. 25 post, Alex Christy responded to Stelter's claim that "No president has had access to a megaphone like this" the way Trump uses Fox News by effectively "program[ming] the network himself" by regularly "choos[ing] to call in, take over for an hour, you know, rant and rave" by spouting lame whataboutism from the MRC's playbook: "A president like Obama had a plethora of liberal media options, not just one channel." Christy didn't mention that Obama never called up any media outlet to "rant and rave" for an hour the way Trump does on Fox News.
Meanwhile -- as he is with Acosta -- the MRC's cheerleader of irrational hate of Stelter at the MRC is Curtis Houck. He pounded out a massive screed childishly gloating how Fox News' media show gets better ratings than Stelter's:
On Sunday’s Reliable Sources, CNN charlatan, far-left hack, and Fox News-stalker Brian Stelter spent three segments hawking his now-released book Hoax, which appears to serve as an extension of his visceral hatred for Fox News Channel and painting it as an existential threat to not only the free press, but America itself.
However, when it comes to the ratings for last Sunday's show, viewers couldn’t care any less. According to Nielsen Media Research, FNC’s MediaBuzz trounced Reliable Sources by 30 percent in the 25-54 demographic and 67 percent in total viewers. That, folks, was what one would call a blowout.
Sad!
Low ratings are a very on-brand trait for a citizen of Zuckerville, along with the fact that he’s enjoyed his litany of interviews on both CNN and fellow liberal network MSNBC.
Houck's unprofessionalism continued, cheering how Stelter is "the man Greg Gutfeld has dubbed America’s hairless hall monitor," with an added shot at "sidekick" Oliver Darcy as "conservative media’s Benedict Arnold." Houck spends an unseemly amount of time attacking Darcy for leaving the right-wing media bubble to work for CNN.
An Aug. 27 post summed up an episode of Graham's new podcast bashing Stelter's book:
It's selling like hotcakes in the feverish world of Trump haters. Stelter is selling it on his own network, as well as on MSNBC shows, and a 43-minute interview on National Public Radio. Tim takes on the notion that relies so heavily on anonymous sources inside Fox. Why should we trust sources like this in a book by a CNN host ripping into Fox?
Graham won't admit, of course, that by his same standard, nobody should trust the MRC's ripping into Stelter. In the podcast itself, Graham whined that his and Brent Bozell's pro-Trump, anti-media book didn't merit a 43-minute interview on NPR and that he didn't trust Stelter's anonymous sources (he didn't mention that he and the MRC do trust anonymous sources when it suits their purposes).
Graham served up more juvenile Stelter-hating antics in a Sept. 1 post, gloating that during a Stelter appearance on C-SPAN, "Callers were mostly hostile, including a guy who was cut off for calling Stelter "Humpty Dumpty" -- a favorite Hannity nickname," before further complaining that Stelter "lamented conservatives have been "radicalized" by "media-bashing." By NewsBusters! It makes us sound like al-Qaeda." He then added:
The LOL moment of the hour -- the time I probably scared our cats -- was when a Texas caller smartly challenged Stelter's multitudinous anonymous sources in his book, and then asked "How did CNN spiral down to the absolute level of Trump hate that they are?"
We doubt Graham will ever acknowledge the MRC's spiral down to the absolute level of Stelter-hate he's displaying here.
Graham served up even more juvenile antics in a Sept. 6 post sneering at "Brian Stelter's Candy Land tour of puffball interviews promoting his Fox-trashing book Hoax." When Stelter said he work at Fox News only if he were given a hour to fact-check things, Graham erupted:
That's hilarious. As if Stelter's Sunday hour of Trump-trashing, with guests who suggest Trump is going to kill more people than Hitler, Stalin, and Mao combined? That's the FACT show?
Stelter clearly is still trying to imply the expired Shepard Smith hour, the hour of trashing everyone else at Fox, an hour of CNN-echoing rebuttal. That's "all about fact-checking."
Graham and the MRC hate Smith for refusing to be a right-wing Trump-bot like the other Fox employees.
