Topic: Media Research Center
We've documented how the Media Research Center loves Simon Ateba, an obscure right-wing reporter for his own Africa-baesd media outlet, becuase he's their kind of jerk -- he loves to make a spectacle of himself during White House press briefings under Biden -- and even trying to liken him to CNN reporter Jim Acosta, whom the MRC repeatedly attacked for his attempts to get answers from the Trump White House. This happened again in Tim Graham's July 28 podcast:
The New York Times and The Washington Post really demonstrated a double standard this month on confrontational White House reporters. CNN's screaming Jim Acosta was a heroic screamer in the briefing room, while screaming African reporter Simon Ateba should sit down and shut up.
Managing editor Curtis Houck -- our chronicler and video-tweeter of the White House Briefing -- joins the show to talk about press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and the White House Correspondents Assocation taking a very hostile pose toward Ateba.
Graham and guest Curtis Houck, the MRC's designated hater of White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, cited examples of non-right-wing media praise for Acosta and compared them against criticism of Ateba. But then they oddly distance themselves from Ateba. Graham insisted that "he's not a hero to us," while Houck added:
You notice in a lot of these stories, the conservative media worships him and all these -- and they provide examples. NewsBusters is not included because, I mean -- you can go ahead and boo us, you can ratio us, but I think I've been pretty consistent on Twitter and you have as well in your columns that Simon Ateba is a gadfly, he's a carnival barker, like, you don't even know what Today News Africa is. It's like a complete ripoff of New York Post. There's nothing about how or where his site is funded, so there's a lot of questions about, you know, his site, like, what is the point of it? ... But the point is, though, that he did actual reporting in Africa, so that's admirable [crosstalk] But in terms of his U.S. career, I feel very strongly that -- you know, people are saying, well, he's being ignored, he's the only one who's punching back. We'll talk about this more as the show goes on, but that's not the way you go about this.
Houck went on to tout how right-wing reporters like Fox News' Peter Doocy (whose political affiliations he did not acknowlege) are allegedly able to "prosecute" the press secretary "without the snark and the condescension." He then insisted that "we should be consistent, we should be honest about this" -- despite the fact that Houck's criticism of Ateba had never made it into a NewsBusters post until now.
Throughout all this, though, neither Graham nor Houck cited any examples of Acosta that are directly parallel to anything Ateba has done -- they simply rehashed their old grievances that Acosta asked questions the Trump White House didn't like, and they certainly didn't accuse right-wing reporterslike Doocy, Steven Nelson and Philip Wegmann of having any sort of polical bias they the way they accused Acosta of being; instead, Graham praised them for their questions being "politely stated."
The complainets continued. Graham and Houck grumbled that some Trump-era reporters that the MRC hated went on to other things -- "everybody screaming like Acosta got a gig," Graham huffed -- but don't expect them to comment negatively (if they comment at all) should Doocy or Wegmann get, say, their own Fox News show as a reward for their anti-Biden reporting.
