Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center first tried to distract from a gun massacre at a Nashville by hyping the shooter's alleged transgender identity. Then it falsely framed an anti-gun protest at the Tennessee capitol building followig the massacre as an "insurrection" (though nobody was arrested and nobody was trying to overthrow the government). Tim Graham invoked all of this in his April 7 podcast:
When leftist agitators storm state capitols, you can’t use those words. Leftist media won’t use labels for their own kind, and they won’t use “storm” for a left-wing disturbance inside a state capitol building, unless someone is shot by police. Two black legislators in Tennessee became instant media heroes when the Republican House majority expelled them for creating a disturbance on the House floor and violating House rules.
On NPR, Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep was upset when the Republican leader of the Tennessee House of Republicans compared the screaming and shoving matches with the January 6 riot. No policeman shot a protester in Tennessee's state capitol. But Inskeep grew snarky and minimized the Nashville circus to “three lawmakers talked out of turn.” That sounds a lot like comparing January 6 to a Capitol tourist trip.
The scrum did help the liberal media try to change the subject from a transgender shooter murdering six at a Christian school. The words "transgender" and "Christian" are being dropped out of the narrative.
From there, the MRC's main focus of complaint was that the two expelled legislators got attention. An April 8 post by Alex Christy complained that one outlet noted that the two expelled legislators were black:
NBC Today hosts Peter Alexander and Kristen Welker welcomed recently expelled Tennessee State Rep. Justin Jones on to the Saturday show by putting the ball on the tee for him to routinely denounce Republicans as racist for his role in shutting down legislative proceedings with a bullhorn.
[...]
Ideally, Welker would also have asked how the minority party shutting things down constitutes democracy because after Jones doubled down on the race card, he laughably claimed what he did was “good trouble” and “First Amendment activity.”
Neither Welker no Alexander followed up by challenging that absurdity, how holding people accountable for their actions is racist, or with any meaningful distinction between the actions of three representatives, instead choosing to move onto gun control.
The "meaningful distinction" Christy claims exists is that, according to the link he supplied, the lawmaker who wasn't expelled didn't make use of a bullhorn. Of course, the meaningful distiction that everybody noted was that the non-expelled lawmaker was white, while the two expelled ones were black.
Another April 8 post, by Kathleen Krumhansl (also in Spanish), claimed that a Spanish-language news anchor told "the truth" about the expulsion of the lawmakers after the demonstration because of areference to "incitement of violence very similar to what happened during the January 6th assault on the Capitol." But she didn't cite an example of any lawmaker issuing any "incitement of violence."
Kevin Tober spent an April 9 post being upset that one of the expelled lawmakers appeared on TV:
On ABC’s This Week, co-moderator Jon Karl invited Justin Pearson, one of the expelled former Democrat Tennessee representatives on the program to let him play the victim because he was held accountable for his actions. Opening the program on Easter Sunday, Karl still insisted on lying on this holy day.
Karl claimed the “two young black lawmakers [were] expelled from the state house of representatives after they took a stand on gun violence.” As NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham noted on Twitter earlier on Sunday in response to Karl’s comments, it was like claiming “January 6 being ‘a stand for Trump's victory.’ You're moving the goalposts on shooting up a Christian school.”
Introducing the disgraced radical former representative, Karl asked the leading question: “You have spoken with great passion on the issue of gun violence. And I was wondering if you can tell us. I know you lost a classmate of yours to gun violence shortly before you were sworn in as a representative, what can you tell us about how that motivates you?”
This led Pearson to tell his sob story about experiencing so-called “gun violence” and how “over two thousand cars have gotten broken into” in his city. Which ironically is another reason why more Americans should be allowed to own firearms.
Tober whined again later in the day:
ABC's Good Morning America kicked off their Easter Sunday broadcast by hyping so-called "growing community outrage" over the two insurrectionist Democrat Tennessee state representatives who were expelled for whipping up a mob on the House floor. Not only did Good Morning America parrot the Democrat Party line on this controversy, but they barely aired any opposition from Republicans. The only soundbite played was a brief clip of Tennessee Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton from his interview on Fox News Channel's morning show Fox & Friends.
Nicholas Fondacaro repeated the bogus "insurrection" narrative again in an April 10 post:
Judging from the liberal media’s behavior, insurrections are good when leftists carry them out. That’s the gist of the tone shared by the broadcast networks on Monday as ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, and NBC’s Today celebrated the likely return of former Democratic state Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson after they led a violent and disruptive takeover of the Tennessee State Capitol two weeks ago.
Fondacaro's evidence the protest was "violent" was a link to an earlier post of his in which he embedded a tweet from a reporter who stated that "This was a peaceful protest" and cited only "shoving" by protesters. Nevertheless, he presented the falsehood again in another post that day, laughably calling the protest a"violent insurrection" and dismissing the expelled legislators as "disruptive and disrespectful Democrats"who "have a history of disruptions and got insulting with their defense speeches before the vote," while the media was "smearing the Tennessee GOP with false claims of racism."
Tober raged that one of the ousted legislators was reinstated by other officials in another April 10 post:
On Monday night's CBS Evening News, senior national correspondent Mark Strassmann stuck his finger in the eyes of Tennessee Republicans who voted to oust two of the three attempted insurrectionist Democrat legislators. The obnoxious gloating came after one of the misbehaved Democrats, Justin Jones, was reinstated by the Nashville council.
Suddenly interrupting a legislative session is a good thing, according to CBS. Anything goes so long as it's in pursuit of the Democrat Party's [sic] radical anti-American agenda.
Tober doesn't seem to realize that deliberately getting the name of the Democratic Party makes people want to take him less seriously as a credible "media researcher."
Graham did something similar in his April 10 podcast, huffing that "the networks continue to bathe the Bullhorn Justins -- radical black Democrat [sic] legislators Justin Jones and Justin Pearson -- in glory for being expelled by the Republicans in the Tennessee House of Representatives. They completely downplayed the screaming on the House floor about "no action, no peace," making it sound like the Republicans would expel them just for gentle protesting. The goal remained to make Americans forget that a crazed transgender 'man' shot and killed six inside a Christian school."
The shooter being transgender is the only thing that Graham wants his right-wing listeners to take away from all this -- certainly not that guns are a problem.
