Topic: Media Research Center
It's a sign of how desperate it is to get President Trump re-elected -- and of how seriously it takes its role as the media arm of the Trump campaign -- that the Media Research Center has referenced Hunter Biden in a whopping 150 NewsBusters posts (as of this writing) since Oct. 14, when the New York Post published its dubious story agout the contents of his alleged laptops. The MRC really needs this story to be true to advance its agenda -- not unlike the Tara Reade story -- so it's been doing what it can to advance the story by all means necessary. Let's look at a few samples.
On of th first things it did was to deny the story was Russian disinformation, despite the murkiness about how these laptops and their alleged content came to light. Kyle Drennen gushed over the "bombshell" story, then whined that some media outlets "rushed to play defense for the Democratic nominee by claiming the reporting was part of a 'disinformation campaign' or declaring it 'false' without evidence." Drennen then huffed, "Given the number of supposed 'bombshells' the left-wing press reported on throughout its promotion of the Russian collusion conspiracy theory that were either wildly misleading or completely untrue, you would think reporters would at least investigate the story about Biden." Nicholas Fondacaro similarly complained that non-right-wing media outlets were "arguing, without evidence, that the information was stolen from Hunter Biden by the Russians to tilt the election."
Tim Graham tried to play down the obvious political hit-job angle with the story coming from the pro-Trump New York Post and Rudy Giuliani by playing whataboutism: "When the [Washington] Post – owned by leftist media tycoon Jeff Bezos – reports against Trump, it often fails to acknowledge its sources might have an axe to grind. They all have an axe-grinding party.
When Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe -- who has previously released Russian disinformation to help Trump -- declared without evidence that the Hunter Biden story wasn't Russian disinformatio, the MRC treated this as if it came directly from God. Fondacaro proclaimed that Ratcliffe "shot down" the media's "fictitious claims," tjen did so again under the headline "DOJ, FBI Destroy Media’s Lie Hunter Scandal Is Russian Disinformation," citing reporting from, yes, Fox News, which Murdoch owns alongside the New York Post. Bill D'Agostino loved this storyline so much he made a video attempting to foward it:
For almost a week, liberal cable and broadcast networks have ignored the FBI saying it has “nothing to add” to DNI Ratcliffe’s assessment that the alleged Hunter Biden laptop is not part of a Russian disinformation campaign. Despite these statements from both Ratcliffe and the FBI, TV journalists continued to warn viewers that the entire story looks like a Russian intelligence op.
[...]
As election day draws near, the pro-Biden media have grown even more shameless in protecting their candidate. Evidently their latest defense is to conceal the intelligence community’s own assessment from voters and dismiss the entire scandal as Russian propaganda.
Like the others, D'Agostino gives us no reason anyone should trust at face value a clearly politicized DNI and FBI.
And just a couple weeks after the MRC lectured the media for questioning Trump's mental health, Tim Graham bashed NPR for caring about Hunter Biden's mental health by noting that he has a history of drug issues and the right-wing media's vicious attacks on him could cause him "shame and isolation." Graham whined "So Hunter Biden's behavior is not a 'character defect,' but attacking him is," adding, "So the Trumps are so cruel, they make the fathers of dead addicts cry." Graham then tried to sic his readers on NPR reporter Brian Mann: "Perhaps the taxpayers who fund this emotional propaganda should contact NPR public editor Kelly McBride about the potential conflict of putting a reporter who's lost family members to addiction on a politically sensitive story like this right before an election -- especially if he leaves out all of the other elements of the Hunter Biden story." Graham made no mention of the conflict of interest at the New York Post and Giuliani supporting Trumpt while trying to personally destroy the son of Trump's opponent.
The MRC, of course, also did its usual so-called studies complaining that the non-Fox News media wasn't covering the story enough. It conveniently ignored how much coverage Fox News did devote to it, which was a lot.
