Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center executive Tim Graham began his Oct. 19 column by declaring, "Liberals like to think that conservatives are very closed-minded and can’t handle listening to an opposing opinion." He the unironically proves them right by spending the rest of his column ranting about how he can't handle an opposing opinion -- in this case, NPR reporting that right-wing talk radio has divided America:
Liberals like to think that conservatives are very closed-minded and can’t handle listening to an opposing opinion. But whenever "mainstream" journalists start discussing talk radio and how it’s “bad for America,” you can surmise that they often can’t handle the other side.
On September 16, the CBS News show Sunday Morning devoted the whole show to exploring “A Nation Divided.” CBS would like you to think they don’t like division and are not divisive. That’s false.
Fill-in host Ted Koppel began: “Tens of millions of Americans get their political marching orders from the radio.” Now how insulting is that? How divisive is that? Anyone who listens to conservatives on the radio is (to borrow the old Washington Post insult) “poor, uneducated, and easy to command.”
Democracy is supposed to be about persuasion, and you’re not going to persuade someone or unify the country by saying half of us are taking “marching orders” from talk-radio generals. It sounds like CBS liberals are frustrated that their “marching orders” aren’t followed.
The CBS reporter was Jim Axelrod. He's no relation to Democrat strategist David Axelrod, but they sound like brothers. He began with more insults: "35 years after the talk radio revolution, on the air is still often an exercise in off the rails." This, from the Dan Rather Channel that somehow never went off the rails into fake news.
At no point did Graham disprove anything CBS reported. Instead, the rest of his column is filled with whataboutism and personal attacks on the reporters and commentators. He concluded with more whataboutism: "To sum up, CBS journalists think conservative radio is bad for America, but when they compare conservatives to Cambodian communist crackpots who slaughtered about two million people, that’s not divisive. It’s a satchel of sweet reason."
Whataboutism is not "media research." But that's a defining feature of the MRC these days -- and a tacit admission on Graham's part that he cannot logically defend the division and hate his fellow right-wingers spread.
UPDATE: Graham's column is derived from an Oct. 16 post by Kevin Tober complaining about this same segment for having smeared "the greatest radio host of all time, Rush Limbaugh." The cultish hero worship Tober continued to exhibit for Limbaugh got donwright embarrassing:
Axelrod and ["pseudo-historian and talk radio hater" Brian] Rosenwald are obviously jealous of Rush Limbaugh's success. They know that they don't have anyone and never will have anyone who comes close to the influence and popularity that Rush Limbaugh had in American culture and politics.
Their heroes will be forgotten once they're gone. Rush Limbaugh will never be forgotten and his influence lives within every young conservative in media or the conservative movement.
Atlanta conservative radio host Neal Boortz once called Rush Limbaugh the "Babe Ruth of talk radio". With all due respect to Boortz, that is understating Rush's influence. Babe Ruth was the greatest Baseball player of all time, but he didn't invent the sport.
Rush Limbaugh invented nationally syndicated conservative talk radio when nobody thought it would be successful. Not only that but he stayed number one for over 32 years. Ending his long career with his biggest audience ever of over 43 million listeners.
In 32 years nobody will remember who hosted CBS Sunday Morning. You can't say the same about Rush Limbaugh.
Tober's proof that Limbaugh's show had "over 43 million listeners" comes from ... Limbaugh himself. Not exactly an impartial source. And it's sad that Tober thinks a man who maliciously and disgustingly smeared a woman as a "slut" for taking birth control could possibly be considered "great." Then again, the boys at the MRC loved his sick misogyny.
