Topic: Media Research Center
Alex Christy's main job at the Media Research Center is to complain that late-night TV isn't right-wing enough. this meams that, in addition to be a comedy cop, he's also complaining about the guests who appear on the shows. So when late-night hosts departed their shows in recent months, Christy was quick to churn out posts complaining their guests were somehow too liberal. When Trevor Noah left "The Daily Show," Christy had his complaints ready for a Dec. 9 post:
During his seven-year tenure as host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, Trevor Noah brought a reliably liberal bias to the program, a NewsBusters study has found.
MRC analysts found that from when Noah began hosting The Daily Show on September 28, 2015 through his final show on December 8, 2022, Noah had on 159 partisan guests including 109 unique individuals. Of these 159 guests, 137, or 86.16 percent, were Democrats or in some way affiliated with the Democratic Party.
When James Corden's late-night show ended, Christy had a very similar complaint ready:
During his eight-year stint as host of CBS’s The Late Late Show, James Corden could be counted on to use the show to advance the electoral interests of the Democratic Party, a NewsBusters study has found.
MRC analysts found that from March 23, 2015, through April 27, 2023, Corden had on 26 partisan guests including 17 unique individuals, 100 percent of whom were Democrats or in some way affiliated with the Democratic Party. At CBS, Stephen Colbert is far more aggressive in booking Democrat politicians, but Corden has a "perfect record."
The most memorable of these softball sessions was Nancy Pelosi’s April 2020 appearance where Corden fell in love with her freezer full of expensive ice cream. It ended with him asking Pelosi about her opinions of individual Republicans, holding up their pictures. He ended with a picture of Darth Vader, and Pelosi quipped “Even the party has gone beyond Darth Vader.” Corden shot back: “Darth Vader? I thought it was Dick Cheney!”
The British transplant would also give solemn monologues trashing America for a lack of gun control, declaring the country to be "one of the most backward places in the world,” and on abortion, declaring Dobbs to be "the biggest rollback of human rights in modern U.S. history."
It's worth noting that the MRC dishonestly plays both sides of the fence here: It has a history of encouraging conservatives to not appear on shows deemed too "liberal," then attacking those very same shows for not having conservatives on.
When the late-night shows shut down production due to the writers' strike, Christy had another guest count in a May 19 post under the headline "Good Riddance":
With the Writers Guild of America going on strike, it is likely that America has seen the last of the first half of 2023’s late night comedy shows. Whether America wants them to return is an open question as 95 percent of their 2023 guests have been liberal, a NewsBusters study has documented.
MRC analysts found that from January 3 through May 1 (the last night of shows before the strike ended production of new episodes), liberal guests outnumbered conservative guests by 77 to 4.
The study looked at the daily six late night comedy shows: ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and The Late Late Show with James Corden (up through its April 27 termination), and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. FNC's Gutfeld! was not included.
That's right -- Christy once again excluded Gutfeld's show from scrutiny, even though his job is presumably to evaluate all late-night snows. That's presumably because he doesn't want to be caught demonstrating the fact that Gutfeld is at least as biased to the right as he claims the other shows are to the left.
Christy also laughably whined that "Zero guests from Fox News appeared on any of the programs" -- though he identified no person associated with another network who ever appeared on Fox News.He also put "comedy" in scare quotes in the headline of his post because he has decided that these comedians are making fun of right-wingers like him, they cannot possibly be funny. That makes him a good right-wing activist, but a poor judge of comedy.
