Topic: Media Research Center
Following its blitz of coverage of his appearance at a congressional hearing -- while also trying to clean up after an anti-Semitic remark he made -- the Media Research Center continued to work to portray Robert Kennedy Jr. as a victim of "censorship" (even though all social media is doing is responding to his false anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories). Luis Cornelio used a July 24 post to dishonestly frame correcting false information as "election interference" while praising Fox News for sticking to the right-wing narrative about what was "eclipsed" in the hearing:
Democrats are already scavenging for ways to use Big Tech to interfere with the 2024 presidential election, one lawmaker warned.
Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) had some strong words against Big Tech’s censorship of free speech during a Friday interview on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom. Buck raised the alarm that Democrats are pushing to censor Robert F. Kennedy Jr. because of the challenge he poses to the Biden regime amid the 2024 nomination process. “Obviously, they are censoring him because he is a threat to Joe Biden,” Buck said of Kennedy’s appearance during a hearing before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on Thursday.
Buck didn’t mince his words in reaction to Democrat members of Congress and their reactions to the hearing. “There is a little irony that they’re having a hearing on censorship and trying to censor a witness,” Buck said. “Obviously, they are censoring the witness because he is a threat to Joe Biden. He’s polling somewhere in the 15 to 20% range. That scares Democrats that someone is going to pull votes away from Joe Biden and challenge him.”
Fox News Co-Host Dana Perino brought up the eclipsed but intended subject of the hearing – Big Tech censorship. “The fighting and argumentation between the Democrats and RJF Jr. yesterday sort of overshadowed the big picture about the hearing, which is this question about Big Tech and censorship,” Perino told Buck, before asking, “Do you think there are changes afoot when it comes to how the government is going to react and interact with these companies?”
Cornelio didn't ask why a Republican congressman and a right-wing "news" channel are so concerned about allowing a Democrat to be able to day whatever he wants.
We've noted how the MRC's Gabriela Pariseau bestowed even more victimhood on Kennedy through one of those selective "Twitter files" releases. Cornelio played the victmhood card for Kennedy again in a July 31 post:
YouTube’s election interference couldn’t be any more clear, as it continues to censor President Joe Biden’s primary challenger.
YouTube decided to yet again remove a video interview of Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, citing an alleged violation of its “Community Guidelines.”
The 48-minute interview, conducted by O’Keefe Media Group CEO James O’Keefe, delved into topics contentious to the approved narrative of the Biden regime, including COVID-19, the First Amendment and the collusion between Big Tech and the federal government to assault free speech.
O’Keefe, often a subject of Big Tech censorship himself, took to Twitter to condemn the news.
“YouTube removed this video for ‘medical misinformation,’” O’Keefe said on July 28, before sharing the full video on Twitter. “Thankfully, you can still watch it here on the public square.” In a separate tweet addressed to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, O’Keefe asked, “Tell me where in the video it hurt you @nealmohan.” O’Keefe additionally shared the interview, titled “Lawsuits, Anthony Fauci, Fear, FBI, Becoming Commander-in-Chief and more!” on Rumble, a video-hosting platform that opposes draconian censorship.
Cornelio leaned hard into the whole victimhood thing:
RFK Jr. also called out the un-American nature of the censorship assault. “Americans know, you know, innately that we're not supposed to that the government is not supposed to censor us,” the Democratic candidate for president added. “[Y]et we put up with it we said, ‘Okay those guys are scaring us and we need to shut them up. The Constitution doesn't have a pandemic exception. The First Amendment doesn't have a pandemic exception.”
YouTube’s latest assault against Robert F. Kennedy comes a week and a half after RFK Jr. testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government to detail the harrowing experience of facing constant censorship led by the federal government.
According to MRC Free Speech America’s exclusive CensorTrack database, YouTube has targeted RKF Jr. nine times since he first announced his bid for the Democratic nomination for president in 2024.
Cornelio failed to detail the statements Kennedy made that were deemed "medical misinformation," nor did he inform his readers that Kennedy has made numerous false and misleading claims about COVID and its vaccines. Cornelio also failed to explain why his employer is so aggressively defending a Democratic presidential candidate or why he has an entry in its biased CensorTrack database, which is all about manufacturing dubious data to portray right-wingers as victims of "censorship."
Catherine Salgado went Godwin on one of the groups who call out Kennedy's misinformation in an Aug. 7 post touting how right-wing Rep. Jim Jordan is targeting the Center for Countering Digital Hate for alleged "potential censorship collusion with the federal government": "Jordan specifically zeroed in on CCDH’s COVID-19-era report on 'The Disinformation Dozen,' which led to censorship of users like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that CCDH labeled as prominent 'anti-vaxxers.' Media Research Center founder L. Brent Bozell previously called CCDH 'digital brownshirts.'" Salgado identified no false claim about Kennedy made in the CCDH report.
An Aug. 18 post by Autumn Johnson similarly smeared the CCDH as "digital brownshirts," again complaining that the group's list of COVID misinformers included "notably Democratic Party Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a history of questioning the efficacy of vaccines." She too failed to mention that Kennedy also has a history of spreading falsehoods and misinformation.
Tom Olohan gushed over Kennedy spouting right-wing narratives on a right-wing channel in an Aug. 29 post, while added a talking point he didn't repeat:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. laid into three massive corporations for pushing a key element of the American Dream out of reach for many American families.
During an August 27 interview with Newsmax host Eric Bolling, presidential candidate RFK Jr. went after the ESG-friendly giants for making it more difficult and expensive for Americans and families to own a home. “These three giant companies, BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard, they own 88% of the S&P 500, there’s something wrong with that,” he said. “And they’ve now targeted single-family homes, so the reason you’re seeing these homes go off the charts in price.”
After naming the predatory behemoths, RFK Jr. broke down how it happens. “So many people that you know and I know have had the experience that they're about to put an offer in on the home or they put one in, somebody who swoops in with a cash offer and takes it away from them and they try to figure out who it is and it's an LLC,” the Democrat [sic] presidential candidate added. “Well those LLCs are ultimately owned by those three big companies, and you know they're on trajectory now to own 60% of the single family homes in this country by 2030.”
[...]
While these three corporations have certainly made it more difficult for young families to own homes, they are also infamous for pushing environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing on Americans and American companies. RFK Jr. is only the latest politician to sound the alarm, following testimony from public officials before Congress.
Jeffrey Lord spent his Sept. 16 column trying to manufacture a conspiracy theory that the Biden administration is ordering media outlets to cover Kennedy negatively:
The issue here is not “is RFK Jr. beating Biden.” No, the issue here is, as long as it is issuing commands to media on how to cover the anti-Biden GOP impeachment inquiry - is the Biden White House quietly issuing a command to the same Biden-protecting media? Sending the message that they need to rev up negative coverage of Biden rival and critic RFK Jr.?
In fact, Kennedy recently said this to Fox’s Martha McCallum:
It is surreal. My polling numbers are better than Ron DeSantis and/or any other candidate except for Biden and Trump. But I’m you know, even when they talk about me on the DNC channels, on CNN and MSNBC, they always refer to me, my first name as a longshot candidate, whereas everybody else has a candidacy that is taken seriously.
[...]
In other words? Already the liberal media is instinctively expanding its Biden-protecting coverage from the typical anti-GOP coverage and extending it to include Biden’s only opponent (so far) with any standing. Democrat Marianne Williamson, unlike RFK in single digits, doesn’t yet appear to count here.
The obvious question is: if the Biden White House is issuing marching orders to the media in terms of its coverage of the GOP impeachment inquiry - are they similarly issuing marching orders to the same media on how to cover RFK Jr? Or even simply whispering those RFK marching orders quietly, without the formal letter?
It wouldn’t surprise. But it is curious indeed that RFK Jr.’s coverage in places like the lefty Washington Post and New York Times treats RFK as some sort of right-wing prank and Covid crank and that coverage from what Kennedy calls “the DNC channels, on CNN and MSNBC” isn’t much better.
Hmmm.
Lord doesn't ask why Kennedy is running to the right-wing Fox News -- which would explain the "right-wing prank" part -- or explain why he is so upset that media outlets are reporting the truth that Kennedy is, in fact, a "Covid crank."
