Topic: Media Research Center
There is much more Media Research Center defense of Florid Gov. Ron DeSantis of his sniping at high school students for wearing a mask at an event of his than we first documented.
Alex Christy used a March 4 post to note that DeSantis' sniping was "a perfectly reasonable thing to say given the COVID situation" -- dismissing mask-wearing as "performative stunts that have no impact on COVID transmission," which is factually false -- then complained that NBC's Seth Meyers wondered of DeSantis, "How much of a dick do you have to be to yell at a bunch of high school students who are just trying to be safe?"
Tim Graham devoted his March 4 podcast to defending DeSantis and ranting about news coverage of it, insisting he was "Mark Levin boilover" mode and admitting that even his wife thought DeSantis went too far, and argued that DeSantis' "disgusted tone is the right choice politically."Graham was still whining about in his March 8 column, rehashing much of what he ranted about in his podcast:
In the annals of TV networks manufacturing scandals, one of the lamest examples was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis telling high school students at an event of his that “you do not have to wear those masks. I mean, please take them off. Honestly, it’s not doing anything, and we’ve got to stop this COVID theater.”
NBC Nightly News tried to make this a story for not just one night, but two. It’s lame because it came after everyone took off their masks for the State of the Union address, after the “nonpartisan” Centers for Disease Control ruled against mask mandates just a few days before President Biden’s big speech.
Graham then complained that NBC talked to a parent who criticized DeSantis:
Then there was an outraged parent: Dawn Marshall, who is immunocompromised, was furious at DeSantis. “I almost jumped out of my skin. I was really appalled. He took away my authority. He put my child at risk. He put me at risk because my child comes home to me.”
As if DeSantis isn’t vaccinated? Notice how, suddenly, the rights of parents over their children matters, while networks like NBC have been ignoring or decrying those benighted and dangerous parents abusing school boards with their complaints about COVID masking, critical race theory, and LGBT indoctrination.
Parent complaints are good…when they’re against Republicans. NBC’s Miguel Almaguer concluded by tagging DeSantis: “While he won't wear a mask, tonight he is the face of controversy.”
TV news manufacturers play the “controversy” card in a very tilted way.
Of course, Graham and his MRC have worked long an hard to gin up critical race theory and "LGBT indoctrination" into "controversies," so his complaint about that rings more than a little hollow.
Scott Whitlock tried to slam the door on the story by playing whataboutism in a March 8 post, whining about the "breathless hyping of a non-story" and complaining that "the NBC and CBS morning and evening shows devoted three minutes to a relatively minor DeSantis exchange with teenagers" while ignoringstories more friendly to Whitlock's right-wing narratives like Hunter Biden and, yes, critical race theory.Never mind, of course, that he does not explain why Hunter and CRT should not be dismissed as a "non-story."
The MRC defends DeSantis a lot.
