NEW ARTICLE: Beyond The Benghazi Bungle
Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center gave Lara Logan a pass after she botched her "60 Minutes" story on a fake Benghazi witness. Now Logan is back, falling for Antifa hoaxes -- and the MRC is totally cool with that as well. Read more >>

CNS Doesn't Like Alan Dershowitz Anymore
Topic: CNSNews.com

Remember several months ago, when attorney Alan Dershowitz was the toast of CNSNews.com for his legal opinions on the impeachment of President Trump that just happened to fit CNS' pro-Trump narrative? Well, that's apparently over with, now that Dersh has expressed an opinion that no longer aligns with CNS' views.

Dershowitz has opined that the government could, if it wanted to, force people to get a coronavirus vaccine because protecting Americans falls under governmental power and "I don't believe you have a right to be Typhoid Mary and spread" coronavirus. That clearly did not go over well at CNS, which published a May 22 op-ed in response by Wesley Smith of the right-wing creationist Discovery Institute:

Government cannot just pass any law it wants because there is a health emergency. So, here’s a question that must be answered in assessing Dershowitz’s claim of a broad power of the government in the current circumstance: Is the COVID-19 pandemic such a “great danger” that it would be “reasonable” to secure “the safety of the general public” for the government to force everyone in the country to be vaccinated?

It seems to me that the answer must be no.

Smith then complained that 1905 Supreme Court ruling in Jacobson v. Massachusetts that Dershowitz was invoking in defense of his decision -- fringe-right anti-vaxxer doc Jane Orient has also cited the case in arguing against complusory vaccination against a measles outbreak -- focused on smallpox, not coronavirus:

Context matters. The Jacobson case dealt with smallpox, one of the deadliest diseases known to man, with a 30 percent mortality rate and scarring afflicting the majority of survivors. COVID-19 comes nowhere close to being that deadly. Those at material risk of death from COVID-19—still a lower risk than smallpox—are the elderly and people with serious comorbidities. Children and healthy adults do not face a dire peril. Almost all recover from the illness and some don’t experience serious symptoms of any kind.

Third, since we can identify the minority most at risk from COVID-19, is it reasonable to force everyone in the country to be vaccinated? Absolutely not. The government can deploy far less intrusive means to shield such people with limited quarantine orders and locking down nursing homes, as two examples.

[...]

Our leaders are, of course, free to use persuasive means to convince us to be inoculated should a vaccine be perfected. But in this particular circumstance and given the exigencies of this specific disease, it can’t force us. And the government, Dershowitz’s opinion notwithstanding, certainly doesn’t have “the power to literally take you to a doctor’s office and plunge a needle into your arm.”

Interestingly, CNS did not report on Dershowitz's original comments.

Scott Lively's Obama Derangement (Among Other Things)
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Isn't it interesting that Black Lives Matter and Antifa anarchists launched a national campaign of mayhem and rioting at the start of the weekly news cycle in which the fully exculpatory Michael Flynn transcripts were finally released to the public? The trigger, was, of course, the outrageous and possibly deliberate George Floyd killing, conveniently carried out in full public view and captured on video for instantaneous social media virality. I predicted on April 22 that the elites would orchestrate a new crisis as soon as it looked like America would regain her equilibrium, and it seems this may be it, or at least the first salvo in a new campaign of chaos.

The main purpose of the rioting, as was true of the now-waning COVID-19 Plandemic, is to spread fear. Fear is what keeps a sizable portion of the American people "sheltered-in-place," and that phenomenon of social destabilization is the key to preventing economic recovery. An orchestrated economic depression is, of course, the cornerstone of the elites' plan for taking down President Trump (which I again predict will fail).

That's what this season of Psy-Ops, with all its disinformation, propaganda and political intrigue, has always been about from its very beginning, when Barack Obama first began to realize that Trump could actually beat Hillary, thanks to the sabotage of the HRC campaign and the DNC by Bernie zealot Seth Rich, the Wikileaker whistleblower who was (I opine) murdered in broad daylight for that act of treachery.

The timing of the rioting, and his immediate, highly inflammatory public statement, betrays the hand of Barack Obama behind it all. I predicted that also in my WND column of Jan. 3, 2017. I compared Obama's actions between the Trump election and inauguration to Hitler's sabotage of France's Cherbourg harbor just after D-Day in WWII. I then noted that Obama had taken the highly irregular step of setting up his own post-presidency political base in Washington, D.C. I closed with this prediction: "I have no doubt that Obama is planning his own Battle of Bloody Gulch [Hitler's Cherbourg counter-offensive after the Americans had taken the city and began pushing east toward Germany] but one which he assumes he will win. Megalomaniacs cannot surrender graciously. Backed by armies of social justice warriors on the streets and in the hardened leftist bunkers of media, academia and big-money foundations, Obama will fight like a cornered rat to protect his legacy and it's underlying ideology. Be certain of it, and never stop fighting until freedom has been restored."

-- Scott Lively, June 1 WorldNetDaily column

MRC Uses Trump's Crappy Pollster For A Poll Reaffirming Its Agenda
Topic: Media Research Center

How closely is the Media Research Center working with President Trump's re-election campaign? It's now using Trump's pollster. From an anonymously written June 9 post:

The Media Research Center (MRC) in coordination with McLaughlin & Associates on Tuesday released the findings of a new poll examining likely voters’ attitudes toward media coverage of the coronavirus shutdown and President Trump.

The poll found that 60% of likely voters, both liberal and conservative, believed some members of the media would like to see the shutdown drag on so that it hurts President Trump's chances of reelection in November. Of those polled, 85% of self-identified conservatives and 41% of self-identified liberals agreed with the above statement.

“This is just more evidence of how at odds the American liberal media are with the American public,” said MRC President Brent Bozell.

All the MRC is doing here is confirming how its messaging -- in this case, the narrative that the non-Fox News media hate Trump -- is holding up. Given that 85 percent of conservatives buy this, the MRC is doing a fine job of preaching to the converted.

As it happens, the day before this press release was posted, McLaughlin & Associates issued a memo on behalf of the Trump campaign claiming that polls showing Trump losing are "skewed," adding, "Let’s prove them wrong again." This was followed by a letter from Trump's campaign demanding that CNN retract a poll it didn't like. CNN responded by noting that "this is the first time in its 40-year history that CNN had been threatened with legal action because an American politician or campaign did not like CNN's polling results."

The MRC is certainly not going to tell you that McLaughlin is considered to be among the worst political pollsters. Most notoriously, in 2014 a McLaughlin poll for then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor showed him up by 34 points two weeks before a Republican primary against his opponent Dave Brat; Brat ended up defeating Cantor by 11 points.

This is who the MRC and Trump are partnering with to advance their agenda. No wonder they seem a bit jittery about things.

CNS Unemployment Coverage Distortion Watch
Topic: CNSNews.com

As it did the previous month, CNSNews.com did what it could to prepare readers for even worse unemployment numbers. A May 18 article by managing editor Michael W. Chapman highlighted a prediction that the unemployment rate could reach 25 percent, near Great Depression rates. So when the actual May numbers were released, even Susan Jones was surprised that the rate actually dropped from the previous month:

The jobs/employment report issued today by the Labor Department reflects what was happening in mid-May, and while it remains a grim picture, there are signs of improvement in every category as Americans straggle back to work.

The number of employed Americans increased by 3,839,000 in May to 137,242,000 -- far short of the record 158,803,000 set in December, but a move in the right direction.

The last time this number hovered at the 137M level was in 2000-2003.

At the same time, the number of unemployed Americans dropped by 2,093,000 to 20,985,000 in May, resulting in a lower unemployment rate than last month -- 13.3 percent in May versus 14.7 percent in April.

Even with those numbers, Jones still felt the need to distort numbers. Note the weasel words here: "The jobless rates for teenagers (29.9 percent), Blacks (16.8 percent), and Asians (15.0 percent) showed little change over the month." In fact, the rates for blacks and Asians rose.

CNS also served up the usual sidebars on Hispanic unemployment (declined) and  government jobs (the lowest level in 19 years). It didn't, however, tell readers what the "real unemployment rate" was, even though that U-6 rate (21.2 percent) is much higher than it was under the Obama administration, a time when CNS regularly reported it.

CNS also hasn't told its readers about a statistical aberration that should have made the rate even higher. Due to a misclassification error, the May rate should actually be about three points higher. Buyt that would make things look even worse for President Trump, and CNS is not in the business of making things look worse for Trump.

MRC Tries To Keep CNN Conspiracy Theory Alive
Topic: Media Research Center

Curtis Houck began his June 9 Media Research Center post this way:

Try not to laugh or feel the urge to destroy your electronic devices after reading these quotes. On Tuesday, the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) announced their 2020 award winners, which included the insanely partisan Yamiche Alcindor of taxpayer-funded PBS, the liberal hacks at CNN, and The New York Times. 

That's right -- it's yet another MRC meltdown over journalists getting awards (though the only electronic devices in danger of getting destroyed are the ones in arm's length of Houck). Thus, we have the usual pained, unhinged exclamations from Houck like "What were the judges smoking?" But the really unhinged thing Houck wrote was this:

In the “Merriman Smith Memorial Award for Excellence in Presidential News Coverage under Deadline Pressure for Broadcast” category, WHCA handed first place to Jeffrey Zucker’s CNN for being parked outside Roger Stone’s Florida home on January 25, 2019 as FBI agents arrived before dawn to arrest him.

CNN has long denied being tipped off and insisted it came from a pure hunch. But no matter what they’ve said and will continue to say, the episode will always leave people skeptical.

That, of course, is the conspiracy theory -- promoted heavily by the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com -- that  CNN happened to be on hand to film Stone's arrest because it was tipped off, possibly by special counsel Robert Mueller himself. Houck himself pushed it back in the day, refusing to believe CNN's claim it followed the story closely enough that it could prepare for an arrest.

Despite the fact that absolutely no evidence whatsoever has surfaced to contradict CNN's explanation, Houck is still embracing the conspiracy theory and insisting there's reason for people to be "skeptical." Of course, "people" in this case means unhinged, irrational CNN-haters like Houck who are paid to hate CNN.

The headline on Houck's piece indicates that he believes any journalist who's not a right-wingher to be a "liberal hack." But his insistence on clinging to a never-proven conspiracy solely because he hates CNN that much demonstrates what a right-wing hack he is.

CNS Presents Discredited Criminal Adulterer As An Expert on Antifa
Topic: CNSNews.com

Dinesh D'Souza is an convicted criminal (albeit a pardoned one) and adulterer who gets beaten down regularly on Twitter for the numerous false claims he makes about American history. No, naturally, CNSNews.com has decided to present him as an expert.

In a June 2 item, CNS managing editor Michael W. Chapman did just that:

While discussing Antifa's role in the riots and looting in U.S. cities, conservative scholar and best selling author Dinesh D'Souza said the organization is the "true descendant" of radical left socialist paramilitary groups, such as Mussolini's Black Shirts and Hitler's Brown Shirts.

He added that Antifa has melded its Marxism with "identity politics," such as "racial" or "gender" grievance, and this has produced a "kind of identity socialism."

When asked about Antifa on The Ingraham Angle on Monday night, D'Souza said, "I think Antifa is the true descendant of the socialist regimes of 100 years ago – Mussolini’s Black Shirts, Hitler’s Brown Shirts. These are paramilitary that these socialist leaders needed in order to achieve political objectives that couldn't be achieved any other way."

Note the error in that last paragraph, in which D'Souza described Hitler and Mussolini as "socialist leaders." In fact, Hitler was not a socialist, and neither was Mussolini's fascist regime. Note that Chapman gave a pass to D'Souza's falsehood.

Further, as has since been proven, Antifa has had only a very small role in the "riots and looting" in the wake  of the death of George Floyd, and at least some of that violence is actually the work of right-wing extremists.

Also note that Chapman made no mention of D'Souza's history of criminality, adultery and getting stuff wrong. Instead, he laughably described D'Souza as a "conservative scholar" and touting him as "the author of numerous books."

WND Touts Even More Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories
Topic: WorldNetDaily

It should surprise nobody that WorldNetDaily has continued to spread conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic. Let's take a look at some of the latest ones.

Michael Schisler wrote in a May 27 column:

What we are witnessing is a resurrection of the Vietnam War era media practice of broadcasting body counts on a daily basis. But now it's being done with a few twists designed to drive a radical left-wing agenda. During the Vietnam War, the media broadcast daily body counts to terrorize the enemy. Today they broadcast daily body counts in order to terrorize Americans.

While the typical American seeks solid information concerning the safety of reopening our businesses and schools, the liberal media feed us unqualified raw body counts. They are fully aware that raw body counts with absolutely no qualifying information terrorizes the American populace, which is exactly why they are doing it. They see that trafficking in fear porn has worked.

The same day, Jim Breslo contributed a column in which he accuses federal scientists Anthony Fauci and Robert Redfield of "exaggerating the seriousness of COVID-19," citing "Michael Fumento, author of 'The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS' and former AIDS analyst for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights." Fumento's book was dismissed by actual scientists when it came out in 1990as being ignorant of AIDS research. In it, Fumento dismissed the impact of coronavirus, decalring that it "clearly is one that almost exclusively kills the elderly."

Meanwhile, WND was pushing conspiracy theories in its sparsely read Whistleblower magazine. Its April issue complained that America's response to the coronavirus pandemic was threatened by "the de facto alliance between an increasingly far-left Democratic Party and establishment news media both pathologically obsessed with destroying the elected president of the United States by any means possible – including weaponizing a genuine mega-crisis." WND seems to have forgotten it was pathologically obsessed with destroying an elected president of the United States by any means possible, including spreading lies and conspiracy theories.

In the May issue, titled "DRUNK WITH POWER," WND asserted that "more and more politicians across the nation are suddenly acting like full-blown dictators" in trying to stop or slow the spread of coronavirus -- though it doesn't mention the word "coronavirus" until the ninth paragraph of its preview.WND also ranted:

There appears to be no limit to either the dictatorial tendencies of many Democrat politicians – or to their hypocrisy. Former President Barack Obama was photographed golfing on a Virginia golf course 40 miles from his Washington, D.C. home, while his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, was busy recording a robocall sternly urging all D.C. residents “to stay home except if you need essential healthcare, essential food or supplies, or to go to your essential job.” 

As we pointed out when CNSNews.com brought this up, it's nothing more than a cheap, lazy gotcha -- golf courses in Virginia were open at the time. In other words, WND remains as pathologically obsessed with Obama as ever.

MRC Loses It Over The Fact That Opening Economy Means More People Die of Coronavirus
Topic: Media Research Center

Back when the coronavirus pandemic got into full swing, the Media Research Center had meltdowns over people wanting to protect abortion rights -- even though it defended a man who advocated letting elderly people die of coronavirus in order to save the economy. Since then, the MRC has been pushing another argument under in the same neighborhood.

For months, the MRC has been whining about people who claim that Trump allies who demand that lockdowns and stay-at-home orders end immediately in order to save the economy are putting people's lives in danger. It was so obsessed over this, in fact, that it devoted an April 21 post to compiling 16 examples, with Geoffrey Dickens huffing, "Liberal journalists and hosts exhibited little sympathy for protestors wanting to go back to work as they belittled them as zombies and a 'doomsday cult.' The President and conservatives that shared their concerns were derided as 'reckless and “dangerous.'" Nicholas Fondacaro ranted with his usual hateful bile and unprofessional name-calling in a May 12 post:

In arguably his most toxic diatribe to date, CNN host Chris “Fredo” Cuomo ended Tuesday’s Cuomo PrimeTime by lashing out at Fox News in the vilest of ways: Falsely declaring that they were totally fine with 10,000 more Americans dying from the coronavirus.

“But right now, the American family is in a period of dysfunction, we're estranged and acting strangely. 10,000 more Americans could die by August because so many places are relaxing social distancing? What happened to no man left behind? Now it's 10,000 is okay,” Cuomo asked, in a “closing argument” he draped under the veil of Mother’s Day.

Joseph Vazquez similarly grumbled in a May 21 post that New York Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman was issuing  "disgusting shots at President Donald Trump, Republicans, and ordinary Americans for wanting to reopen the economy: by claiming that "thousands of Americans may be about to die for the Dow," further complaining that "Krugman encouraged readers to speculate about the potential 'blowback — especially, by the way, among senior citizens — if an attempt to restart the economy leads to a new wave of infections.'"

MRC official Tim Graham, meanwhile, served up his own take on this in a May 18 post complaining that writer Molly Jong-Fast wrote an item about Fox News host advocating the roemoval of lockdowns under the headline "Laura Ingraham Wants Your Grandmother to Die." Graham huffed in response: "This has all the nuance and finesse an article headlined “Molly Jong-Fast Wants You to Commit Suicide From Sheltering in Place.” Or "Molly Jong-Fast Wants You to Be Unemployed for the Rest of Your Life." When Jong-Fast pointed out that conservatives advocating the ending of lockdowns are going against science, Graham declared: "That's not right. The conservative media is saying Democrats are claiming to be Science, but what happens when their favorite models and projections do not come true? They haven't been humble about admitting a hypothestis failed  -- like science lovers should."

But Graham and the rest of his science-questioning MRC minions don't want to question the possibility that the lockdowns saved lives and stopped out-of-control spreading of the virus. One study found that lockdowns slowed the infection rate in the U.S. and saved millions of lives worldwide. And it's indisputable that opening up business to restart the economy while there's still a significant risk of coronavirus spread will, indeed, needlessly cost lives if precautions aren't being taken. And, indeed, that's what's happening worldwide.

It's difficult to enjoy economic freedom if you're dead from something that could otherwise be avoidable. The MRC doesn't seem to understand that.

CNS Touted Geraldo's False Claim That Impeachment Distracted Trump From Coronavirus
Topic: CNSNews.com

There was so much pro-Trump stenography and so many bogus claims in CNSNews.com's coverage of the coronavirus pandemic that a couple slipped though the cracks and are worth backing up a bit to note. Like this, in which Craig Bannister wrote in an April 1 post:

Democrats, like Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), who distracted the nation from the coronavirus outbreak threat by leading a media-hyped “faux quest” to remove President Donald Trump from office via impeachment, must ask themselves if the harm they caused was worth their political gain, pundit and commentator Geraldo Rivera said Wednesday.

River tweeted that impeachment-crazed Democrats must eventually face up to how their impeachment media circus distracted the country from preparing for and combating the deadly coronavirus outbreak:

[...]

On Tuesday, Rivera tweeted a timeline of how Democrats’ impeachment efforts coincided with the coronavirus outbreak:

• “House Dems led by @RepAdamSchiff Impeached @realDonaldTrump on Dec18-as #coronavirus got #Wuhan foothold.”

• “Senate trial Jan16th to 31st-same day @POTUS imposed #ChinaTravelBan.”
• “Trump Acquitted Feb 5^th”

“Was Trump distracted by Impeachment? Yes! So were you & I & #WaPo #NYTimes et al,” Rivera concluded.

But Bannister failed to tell his readers that the day before, Trump explicitly said that he wasn't distracted by impeachment and would not have reacted any differently to the emerging coronavirus pandemic if he hadn't been impeached.

Then again, fact-checking at CNS isn't important when the goal is to either make Trump look good or his critics look bad.

MRC's Double Standard On Presidential Coloring Books
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Gabriel Hays was in full hateful-snark mode in a May 8 item:

The timing couldn’t be any better for a sexy-themed adult coloring book featuring former vice president and current 2020 Democrat nominee Joe Biden, right? Actually, don’t answer that.

Unfortunately, it’s not a joke.

The real (and very disturbing) news is that there’s a new adult-themed coloring book titled “Hot Cup of Joe” featuring a buff Joe Biden that will be coming out on June 16, 2020.

 [...]

Sadly, this abomination exists. What might be even more disturbing than the book’s cover illustration, which depicts an “in-shape” Joe Biden wearing a tight T-shirt, aviator sunglasses, and holding a cup of joe (get it?) while standing in an old-school diner, is the book’s creepy tagline.

[...]

Conservative reactions were a mix of disgust and humor.

If you thought Joe Biden was a hard candidate to take seriously, this dials it up a notch.

So having a coloring book dedicated to you makes you a less serious presidential candidate? Don't tell Hays about all the creepy coloring books dedicated to President Trump.

Like this one, for instance, which ridiculously portrays an impossibly buff Trump as Superman, among other scenarios. It's describwd this way:

Acclaimed artist Tim Foley offers colorists thirty-one black-and-white illustrations featuring the classic Donald smirk and that unmistakable (albeit magnificent) blonde swoop. Foley has transposed Trump into classic scenes from history. Whether it’s placing his face on George Washington crossing the Delaware or superimposing it on Mount Rushmore, Foley masterfully incorporates the outspoken Republican nominee, Apprentice star, and New York real estate tycoon into a wide array of famous historical scenes and paintings for you to color. Additionally, Foley portrays the magnate at famous events such as the signing of the Constitution, Muhammad Ali knocking out Sonny Liston, and Superman lifting up a car in his initial comic book appearance.

There are more.But Hays obviously loves Trump too much to snark about them, making his Biden piece nothing but a mean-spirited cheap shot -- you know, the standard MRC output these days.

WND's Brown Still Pretending He Doesn't Hate Gay People
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily columnist Michael Brown loves to pretend he doesn't hate the LGBT community, even while he's expressing that hate -- then gets mad when said hate gets called out. He's been hypocritally flip-flopping again.

In a May 1 column, he lectured CNN anchor Anderson Cooper for raising his newborn son, born through a surrogate, with his ex-partner and without a mot her: "Anderson, a boy deserves his mother, yet if I understand your plan correctly, your son will not be raised together by her and by you. That's what saddens me the most." As usual, he went into I-really-don't-hate-gay-people mode:

To be clear, I don't believe that you simply chose to be gay one day. I don't believe that any more than I "chose" to be straight.

[...]

In many ways, you are private person, and I'm not trying to intrude in your life. And you may simply write me off as a hateful gay basher.

But it is love that compels me to write. What is best for Wyatt Morgan Cooper?

A few days later, Brown was raging against critics who called him a homophobe for that Cooper column and also pointed out his history of linking homosexuality to pedophilia. He denied he was doing so, then tried to justify what was effectively the same comparison:

As for my article, my point was simple. I was comparing "an illogical justification of homosexuality that can just as easily be used to justify pedophilia," namely, that is must be right because someone is born that way.

I also wrote, "What about those who, to the core of their being, struggle with pride? Or anger? Or greed? Or jealousy? What does this prove? It proves that we are a fallen, broken race in need of a Savior. And what about the claims of a violent gene or a selfish gene or an obesity gene?

"Do we therefore celebrate violence, selfishness or obesity, if, in fact, they are genetic? Or, if we have these alleged genetic tendencies, do we work harder to overcome them?"

My purpose was to illustrate how the "born that way" argument for homosexuality is self-defeating, opening the door to all kinds of counter-arguments, including the argument that pedophiles can claim to be born that way.

Brown then justified his support for conversion therapy as having "simply stated my support for the rights of those with unwanted same-sex attraction to receive professional counseling if they desire. That's it."

As the saying goes: If you're explaining, you're losing.

Needless to say, Brown went on to demonstrate his anti-gauy bona fides once again in a May 27 column attacking Pixar for making an animated short featuring a gay lead character, meaning that Disney, which owns Pixar is coming for your children:

To be sure, this is just a 9-minute film, but there's not much of a leap from 9 minutes to 90 minutes.

You might say, "You need to chill! What's the big deal? This is not some full-length release. Plus you can't expect Pixar to quote the Bible."

Well, if it's so insignificant why are gay activists so excited about the film? And why is Disney Streaming, where the film was released, touting it so highly? 

 [...]

The fact is that gay activists have long recognized the importance of influencing children, even if they were doing it with (in their minds) the purest of intentions. In other words, they would say they don't want other kids to struggle the way they did when they were growing up. Or they want other kids to be more tolerant and accepting. Or they want to break down the gender binary, since not everyone fits into it.

Whatever the motivation might be, gay activists have certainly been targeting your children for many years now, from sex-ed curricula in the schools to drag queen reading hours in the libraries, and from Hollywood to social media platforms and beyond.

[...]

Yet here we are, almost 10 years later, and many LGBTQ activists still shy away from admitting that they are trying to indoctrinate or recruit our children. Really?

Brtown never explains why gays must be hated in the way he chooses to do so, or that people must feel that being gay is a bad thing.

MRC Pretends To Care About CBS
Topic: Media Research Center

Randy Hall worked up some crocodile tears in a May 29 NewsBusters post:

CBS is in trouble. The network -- including its news and entertainment divisions -- has faced many financial hurdles over the past few years, which eventually led to a merger with the Viacom media conglomerate last December. Even though that combination gave the company access to more resources, the business has still had to deal with financial hardships, which led to a round of restructuring and layoffs on Tuesday.

According to The Wrap, this includes "veteran White House reporter Mark Knoller, Pentagon reporter Cami McCormick and correspondent Dean Reynolds,” among others.

How do we know that Hall's sympathy for one of the MRC's favorite targets is fake? He went on to forward the idea that "other, more highly paid journalists, could have sacrificed for their fellow journalists."

Hall's post might lead you to think that the MRC genuinely cares about the plight of CBS and its employees. It doesn't. Remember that the MRC's goal is to destroy all media that isn't sufficiently right-wing. Remember how gleeful it was when Norah O'Donnell's tenure as CBS Evening News anchor generated low-ish ratings.

The MRC hates CBS so much, it expressed joy over technical difficulties. Nicholas Fondacaro devoted an entire May 19 post to crowing about the "latest embarrassment" in which the Evening News couldn't be broadcastdue to technical issues, going on to mock the technical problem as "painfully ironic" because CBS promotes the newscast as "one voice you can turn to."

This isn't "media research" -- this is a hateful attack for partisan reasons.

CNS Columnist Pushes Bogus Story Of Rolex Store Looting
Topic: CNSNews.com

Howard Husock of the right-wing Manhattan Institute began his June 3 CNSNews.com column (originally published at the institute's City Journal) this way:

Monday night, the looting of New York moved on to the luxury-brand flagships of Manhattan’s Soho and Midtown.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo correctly noted that looters were simply taking this moment to steal, to smash, and grab a Rolex. It may seem self-evident why looters prefer luxury, but it’s still worth pondering.

That basic premise, it turns out, isn't true. As GQ documented, there isn't a Rolex store per se in Soho -- there is a store that is an authorized Rolex dealer -- and would-be looters couldn't "smash and grab a Rolex" because the store had been closed for weeks because of the coronavirus pandemic and any inventory that hadn't been removed previously was stored in a safe, not lying around. A New York Post story pushing the narrative that the store had been looted "2.4 million in Rolexes" were taken is simply not true.

Nevertheless, Husock had his hook on which to do a column, however bogus it may be. Thus he used that to condescending lecture about "why looters like Rolexes," in which he claims that "looters understand the intangibles of brand as status because the people they envy are also seduced by such charms" and that "looters have absorbed the message that such baubles can be confused with actual accomplishment, can substitute for a purposeful life built in small steps, a family nurtured, a child looked after."

Bernie Sanders got blamed as well, for pointing out that the "ultra-rich" have built their fortunes in no small part on the backs of those poorer than them, and that "this logic, filtered down to the street, forgives looting as sticking it to the man."

McCorvey Film Makes MRC's Anti-Abortion Activists Unhappy
Topic: Media Research Center

Last month, a documentary was released about Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff in the Roe v. Wade case in which the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a right to abortion. In it, she claims that she became an anti-abortion activist in the 1990s because she was paid to do so. Needless to say, that shook a lot of people in the anti-abortion movement -- like those at the Media Research Center.

Alexa Moutevelis wrote in a May 21 post, before the film was released:

The week, a new documentary alleges that Norma McCorvey, aka “Jane Roe” in Roe v. Wade, claimed she was paid to convert to the pro-life position in a “deathbed confession.” Those who knew her in the pro-life movement are skeptical and said she always seemed sincere in her beliefs, pointing to two decades' worth of McCorvey’s pro-life activism as proof. The documentary isn’t even out yet (AKA Jane Roe will be released by FX on Friday) but still pro-abortion activists pounced on the news to indict the entire pro-life movement and Christian right.

She went on to complain that "pro-abortion feminazi" Amanda Marcotte "said [McCorvey's] original pro-life conversion was met with skepticism from pro-aborts."In fact, Marcotte did not use the term "pro-abort" anywhwere in her piece; that's a derogatory term anti-abortion activists like Moutevelis use to attack those who support abortion rights.

Moutevelis then dismissed McCorvey's statements to stay on message: "Whatever McCorvey's true feelings, the fact remains, abortion is not medical care, it's the intentional destruction of human life. We don't need to pay anyone to believe that, embryology textbooks will do just fine."

The same day -- again, before the film was released -- Kyle Drennen complained that ABC "hyped" the bombshell claim from McCorvey, going on to attack correspondent Deborah Roberts: "At no point in the segment did Roberts speak to pro-life activists who worked with McCorvey for years or the Catholic priest who helped guide her conversion to the Church and conducted her funeral, all of whom cast doubt on how the documentary portrayed her." That despite the fact that none of them had seen the film.

The MRC finally got around to reviewing the film in a May 29 post by Rebecca Downs, who predictably panned it because it doesn't advance her narrative, then attacked its makers: "Live Action News pointed out that the documentary was heavily edited. The producers of the film also have pro-abortion ties." We remember when the MRC defended editing when anti-abortion activists tried to run a sting operation on Planned Parenthood, to the point where Tim Graham and Brent Bozell declared that "all video is edited."

Downs tried to spin things by insisting that the it was actually the "abortion movement" that used McCorvey, not her side, with gaslighting asides that "It’s actually the abortion movement doing the exploiting and betraying women." She concluded by huffing: "Nowhere are the lies from the abortion movement fully examined; pro-lifers are the bad guys. The takeaway of the documentary ought to be how misleading and one-sided the abortion industry is, only further propagated by the pro-abortion media."

Stated like someone who has to keep the narrative going no matter what.