Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center executive Tim Graham has a case of David Folkenflik Derangement Syndrome -- repeatedly attacking the NPR media reporter for reporting on Fox News, though he never criticizes Fox News' media reporters for obsessing over competing outlets like CNN and rarely reporting bad news about their own employer. Graham turned his ire toward Folkenflik again in an Aug. 27 post complaining that Folkenflik noted the revamped CNN streaming operation, which the MRC mercilessly mocked when it originally launched last year as CNN+, then got shut down shortly afterward when new owners took over the company:
We shouldn't be surprised that the Fox News debate this week led inevitably to story number 45 and story number 46 for NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik on Fox News this year.
And we shouldn't be surprised he talked loosely about Donald Trump as a felon: "And think of the other big story today -- Donald Trump is being processed for, you know, felonies in Fulton County, Ga., over trying to block the due election proceeds in the state of Georgia." Is that the way he would discuss a Democrat being indicted?
What's still surprising somehow is that Folkenflik can report on CNN and just sound like a publicist for CNN, and not a skeptical reporter. On Friday night's badly named All Things Considered, the subject was CNN Max, a new streaming effort that looks a lot like CNN+, which was unceremoniously dumped by Warner Bros. Discovery just a few weeks after it began.
Of cousre, Graham couldn't stop whining that Folkenflik referenced Fox News:
Folkenflik can't stop talking about Fox's very expensive settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, but what about CNN's finances or CNN's struggling ratings? This is where NPR is doing more advertising than reporting. CNN's own media reporter Oliver Darcy was more candid about the parent company's finances!
Graham has never accused Fox News media reporters like Joseph Wulfsohn and Brian Flood of being candid about their employer, nor does he accuse them of being CNN-haters or criticize them for being obsessed with CNN the way he claims Folkenflik is obsessed with Fox News.
