Topic: Media Research Center
For the past year, the Media Research Center has pushed its own version of Donald Trump's Big Lie that hed actually won last year's presidential election: It claimed that pre-election polls showing Joe Biden ahead of Trump were made up, and it commissioned a poll from McLaughlin & Associates -- the pollster who worked for Trump -- claiming that Trump might have won had more people known about obscure Hunter Biden scandals that right-wingers have been obsessed about. The MRC was even selling bumper stickers stating "Biden Won ... And Pigs Fly" and "Roses Are Blue. Pigs Fly. And Biden Won" (until we busted them on it; it's still selling one stating "Biden 'Won' Because The Media Lied").
The MRC is still clinging to that lie, and it called in Trump's pollster again to push it, as detailed in an Oct. 27 item by Alexander Hall:
A new poll commissioned by MRC with McLaughlin & Associates shows 51.8 percent of voters blame Big Tech for “election interference” in the 2020 presidential election.
The Post uncovered emails indicating that then-candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, “pursued lucrative deals involving China’s largest private energy company — including one that he said would be ‘interesting for me and my family.’” The story hit shortly before the 2020 election and Twitter and Facebook both took action against the Post China bombshell much like they had for a similar Hunter Biden scandal involving dealings in Ukraine. The Post account was censored, sharing the story was restricted and Twitter suspended users for even sharing the story.
Americans’ reactions to the social media censorship were part of the National Omnibus survey of 1,000 voters, and the findings spoke volumes. When asked “Do you believe Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites' censoring of the now-confirmed Hunter Biden email story constitutes election interference?” 51.8 percent responded, “Yes.” Just 32.2 percent responded, “No” — nearly a 20 percent difference. An additional 15.9 percent said they didn’t know.
Nearly half of the respondents — 49.2 percent — also said it wasn’t “appropriate for Facebook and Twitter to block this story about Joe Biden from being seen by their users before the election.”
There were other interesting findings in the poll. Some American voters appear to have bought the media’s storyline at the time that the since-confirmed Hunter Biden story was the result of Russian disinformation.
Actually, the Hunter Biden laptop story has exactly not been "confirmed." Right-wing media in September pounced on a Politico report in September about a book on the Bidens claiming only that an anonymous "person who had independent access to Hunter Biden’s emails" and other anonymous people received emails found on the laptop, though Politico also pointed out that "While the leak contains genuine files, it remains possible that fake material has been slipped in."That's hardly convincing confirmation, and it comes nearly a year after the New York Post's original report, and it certainly doesn't disprove that the story was Russian disinformation.
Hall is also being dishonest in suggesting that Twitter and Facebook block the story because made Biden look bad; in fact, the story was blocked because it was apparently hacked material of dubious origin. And there were many other reasons to distrust the story, as the Columbia Journalism Review summarized: "the owner of the repair shop contradicted himself multiple times, and also referenced conspiracy theories in an interview; the emails made their way to the Post via some questionable sources—former Trump advisor Steve Bannon and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani; and the Post story was co-written by a former producer on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program, in her first published article for the newspaper."
Hall didn't tell his readers any of that, of course -- no need to confuse readers with the facts. He also failed to disclose that McLaughlin was Trump's pollster, a fact that raises questions about the poll's objectivity. We know the poll was misleading and skewed because the Hunter Biden questions parroted the right-wing narrative by declaring in a question that that "Politico recently confirmed the authenticity of the Hunter Biden emails" and the narrative that "Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites' censoring of the now- confirmed Hunter Biden email story."
In other words, there's still no reason to treat the MRC's Big Lie seriously. That, of course, doesn't mean the MRC will stop telling it. You know what they say about big lies -- tell 'em often enough and people start believing them.
