Topic: Media Research Center
Like its now-defunct "news" division CNSNews.com, the Media Research Center had a meltdown over President Biden's trip to Ireland and that people said nice things about it. Mark Finkelstein went on a rager against MSNBC's Joe Scarborough saying nice things in an April 14 post headlined "Gag Me With A Shamrock!":
Joe Scarborough has degenerated from hard-core conservative member of Newt's 1994 revolution into shameless Democrat sycophant.
Scarborough's obsequious new persona was on full display on today's Morning Joe. Reporting from Ireland on Pres. Biden's trip there, Scarborough's spiel was one long gush. It sounded so servile that even paid Biden flack Karine Jean-Pierre might have balked at reading it from her binder.
Scarborough summarily dismissed Biden's gasp-worthy gaffe, in which he confused the New Zealand rugby team with the the Black and Tans, which the New York Post describes as " the nickname for members of the notoriously brutal Royal Irish Constabulary, who were enlisted by the British to fight against Irish Republicans and committed atrocities against civilians during the Irish War of Independence."
Instead, Scarborough gave a relentlessly upbeat take on Biden's trip, displaying a number of positive newspaper headlines, including the 'Biden Joy' one seen in the screencap. Biden received "a joyous welcome to Parliament yesterday. And in fact, the front page story here, it said Biden's happiness and enthusiasm was so infectious because it was obviously so sincere."
Later that day, Curtis Houck grumbled in a post headlined "Try Not to Puke in Reading This State-Run Propaganda of WashPost on Biden in Ireland":
Posted Thursday afternoon for Friday’s print edition on page A-12, Washington Post White House reporter Tyler Pager was joined by colleague and chief Biden apple polisher Matt Viser in a syrupy propaganda piece on President Biden’s unofficial vacation to Ireland that sounded like it was originally written in North Korean state media for a trip taken by Kim Jong-un to a missile launch.
Pager and Viser must have had weak knees in crafting the headline and subhead “Biden, the American president, seems awfully at home in Ireland; Biden this week has repeatedly wondered how anyone could leave the Emerald Isle.”
With takes like this, how are we supposed to consistently (if ever) take their journalism seriously?
With overractions like this, how are we supposed to take the MRC seriously? Indeed, Houck melted down further over a comment Biden made about ... football:
Fact-checkers weren’t present when Pager and Viser passed along Biden criticizing “the safety of one of the United States’ most popular sports” in American football “and praised one of Ireland’s” in rugby, which also involves men running towards each other and at full speed. While the kinds of injuries in U.S. football are more severe, one rugby blog concluded it’s “more dangerous…in the sense that a player is more likely to get hurt while playing.”
We don't recall Houck demanding that Donald Trump be fact-checked to this level -- in fact, the MRC hated it when Trump was fact-checked at all.
And it wouldn't be the MRC if Tim Graham didn't try to play whataboutism, and he did just that for his April 14 podcast:
President Biden's trip to his ancestral homeland of Ireland spurred a festive round of positive coverage from the networks and newspapers like The Washington Post. They didn't ask questions about why Hunter Biden accompanied his father on the trip. This kind of gush is obviously not something the national media did when President Trump visited Ireland in 2019.
Reporters skipped over a series of gaffes -- Biden putting Jesse Helms in South Carolina, ending a speech with "Let's go lick the world," and mixing up the All Blacks rugby team with the Black and Tans, a brutal police force the British used against the Irish. NBC's Lester Holt and Peter Alexander showed happy Irish folks waving American flags and played a series of less confused Biden video clips from what Holt called a "landmark" trip.
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough told everyone to ignore the gaffes, and held up positive headlines in Irish newspapers, like one saying "BIDEN JOY."
All this reminds us of Mitt Romney's trip abroad in July of 2012, where the networks held up headlines from London reading "MITT THE TWIT." NBC's Peter Alexander did it, and so did CBS reporter Jan Crawford. She said "Can you see it? 'Mitt the Twit.' That's not the type of headline you want." But it was definitely the headline CBS and NBC wanted!
[...]
The same Washington Post that poured sugar on Biden's Ireland trip poured acid on Romney in 2012. Reporter Philip Rucker announced on behalf of all journalists that Romney would never measure up the grandeur that was the Barack Obama European Rock Star Tour of 2008: “For any candidate on a foreign trip, the margin for error is small, with every misstep magnified, fairly or not — especially so for Romney, whose visit is drawing inevitable comparisons to Barack Obama’s largely successful foreign tour as a candidate in 2008.”
NBC also celebrated Obama's trips to Ireland in 2009 (with Al Roker) and 2011 (with Norah O'Donnell), highlighting his obscure Irish roots.
Man, Graham sure knows how to hold a grudge, no matter how unreasonable.
