MRC Mad That Cop Shows Mirror Current Events
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center spent a good part of November complaining that scripted network TV shows that focus on police have taken the summer's events regarding racial justice and policing into consideration.

Elise Ehrhard devoted a Nov. 11 post to ranting about one show's treatment of the issue:

This fall's network television line-up of cop shows has begun and that means endless lecturing of the Black Lives Matter narrative. Audiences are being hectored that police officers are inherently racist towards black men and nothing has changed in the U.S. since Jim Crow.

Hollywood has been beating this drum for many years now, from shows with officers shooting innocent black people to cops covering up killings of innocent unarmed black suspects, but they vowed a renewed focus after the death of George Floyd. 

The latest installment in the "cops are inherently racist and always will be" genre was the season 4 premiere episode of CBS's S.W.A.T, titled "3 Seventeen Year Olds," on November 11. The premiere was set on the anniversary of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. 

Since 1992, major reforms have taken place in the Los Angeles Police Department that have led to substantive improvements. Even corporate media sites like CNN have written pieces acknowledging that the LAPD had "what Harvard researchers would later call one of the most ambitious attempts at police reform ever attempted in an American city."

But you would know absolutely none of that from the conclusion of S.W.A.T.

Karen Townsend complained in a Nov. 12 post: "The eighth season of NBC’s Chicago P.D.began airing on November 11. From the beginning of the first episode, titled 'Fighting Ghosts,' it is obvious that the groundwork is being laid for an ongoing conflict between police reformists and those who want to protect racist, corrupt cops." She then attacked theshow for "portraying the police as racists and always the ones in the wrong." Given that the previous time the MRC devoted a post to the show was 2017 (when it complained about an episode regarding illegal immigrants), we're pretty sure it does not "always" portray police as "in the wrong."

The same day, Lindsay Kornick groused about another cop show reflecting current events in an episode based on the notorious Central Park dog walker story, with added racial profiling. "No, this wouldn’t have happened if people didn’t assume every cop was an evil racist. More importantly, this wouldn’t have happened if networks weren’t so desperate to appeal to BLM activists that they claim the characters in a show over twenty years old are now racist," Kornick huffed.

Ehrhard hate-watched "S.W.A.T." again for a Nov. 25 post, which featured "another BLM storyline, with a discussion of the movement to defund the police," further huffing that the storyline "only fuels the dangerous police abolitionist mentality that is causing the greater loss of life in our country.

Even non-cop shows were not immune from the MRC's lashing out. Ehrhard devoted a Nov. 16 post to grumbling about the "woke legal drama" "All Rise" for "repeating the Black Lives Matter narrative," declaring, "This is the poison Hollywood pushes on our culture to sow constant racial division."

The MRC had to work to find a show that reflected its pro-police, anti-racial justice narrative. But Kornick did, and gushed all over it in a Dec. 5 post:

Despite an occasional dip into political correctness, CBS’s Blue Bloods usually takes the rare stance in defending the police in media. Thankfully, the latest episode continues that trend with the show standing up against the charge of “systemic racism” in the NYPD at the height of anti-copaganda. Christmas season is truly the time for miracles.

[...]

It shouldn’t be so bold that a TV police officer would defend his own profession, but after Chicago P.D. and Law & Order: SVU both surrendered to the anti-cop narrative, Frank Reagan is clearly the exception not the rule for cops in 2020 television. Let’s hope he can continue to be exceptional the rest of this season as well.

Not surprising coming from a "media research" outfit that sought to demonize all Black Lives Matter supporters as Antifa terrorists.

WND Columnist Misleads About Masks
Topic: WorldNetDaily

It's been a while since we checked in on how WorldNetDaily columnists are misleading about coronavirus. Our focus this time is on a Dec. 1 column by Barry Shaw, who begiins but writing:

Around the world there is a manic mask mandate on steroids. But do masks stop the spread of COVID-19?

The answer depends on who you ask. That's science for you. It's precociously contrarian at a time you want definitive answers.

If you had followed the American experts, from the Centers for Disease Control to Dr. Anthony Fauci, you would have seen a 180-degree swing in statements about masks. And yet, despite the bold certainty of both that masks prevent the spread of COVID-19, there are studies that cast doubt on that certainty.

A Danish mask study, a 4,800-person randomized trial that took place in the spring and early summer, found little statistical difference in infection rates between a group that wore masks and a group that didn't.

Ultimately, 42 of 2,393 people (1.8%) in the mask group and 53 of 2,470 (2.1%) in the no-mask group became infected.

Actually, the study authors have said the study's results "should not be used to conclude that a recommendation for everyone to wear masks in the community would not be effective in reducing SARS-CoV-2 infections, because the trial did not test the role of masks in source control of SARS-CoV-2 infection," and an accompanying editorial pointed out that the study "does not disprove the effectiveness of widespread mask wearing."

Dr. Christine Laine, editor-in-chief of the Annals of Internal Medicine, said masks "are not a magic bullet."

"There are people who say, 'I'm fine, I'm wearing a mask.' They need to realize they are not invulnerable to infection," she said.

But Laine also pointed out that the Danish study was inconclusive. From there, Shaw moved onto another favorite right-wing narrative:

Sweden is a country that defied both mask-wearing and lockdowns.

Anders Tegnell, chief epidemiologist for the Swedish public health authority, has relied heavily on the public adopting a strategy of herd immunity to allow them to build up antibodies. Although admitting that the use of masks could be considered when visiting busy and confined places, he has been against mass mask mandates.

"The evidence is weak," he told Science magazine. "Countries that have masks are not doing the best right now. It is very dangerous to try to believe that masks are a silver bullet."

Swedish authorities actively discouraged people from wearing face masks which, they said, would spread panic, are often worn the wrong way and can provide a false sense of safety.

In Sweden, they took active steps to prevent fear from influencing their open society to the extent that individuals, particularly medical professionals, were punished for wearing a mask.

And what's been happening in Sweden lately? Coronavirus cases have hit record levels, prompting folks to rethink the whole discouraging-masks thing.

Shaw then descended into the usual right-wing anti-Fauci and pro-hydroxychloroquine rants:

Fauci, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, said about Remdesivir on April 29: "Remdesivir has a clear-cut significant positive effect in diminishing time to recovery for patients with COVID-19. This will be the standard of care. A drug that can block this virus."

We can trust science, can't we? Well, apparently we can't.

A month later, Dr. Peter Breggin released a report titled "Fauci's Remdesivir: Inadequate to Treat COVID-19 and Potentially Lethal." His opening statement read, "We have found that Remdesivir is a failed antiviral drug that will probably do more harm than good for many coronavirus patients."

As Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, a New York state physician who has treated thousands of COVID-19 patients, told me in August: "For early stage COVID-19 patients Hydroxychloroquine is much safer than Remdesivir. Remdesivir causes dangerous cardiovascular problems such as atrial fibrillation (6%), hypotension (8%), and cardiac arrest (1%). Remdesivir also causes hepatic toxicity (23%), kidney damage (19%), and serious lung damage (10%) such as ARDS."

So whose science are we supposed to follow? Certainly not that of Dr. Fauci.

Breggin's article on remdesivir was published on his own website in May and has apparently never been peer-reviewed. Actual scientists doing actual research, meanwhile, have found some benefits for remdesivir in treating coronavirus. Zelenko, of course, is the doctor whose unverified claims about hydroxychloroquine WND has previously promoted.

Shaw concluded by scaremongering about a coronavirus vaccine: "Are there long-term side effects? Nobody knows."

CNS Unemployment Coverage Distortion Watch
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com's efforts to spin November's unemployment numbers began early, with a Dec. 1 article by Melanie Arter that "More than half of the 22 million jobs lost in March and April due to COVID-19 shutdowns have been regained, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell told the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee on Tuesday." Arter uncritically repeated Powell's claims that the Federal Reserve Board took "forceful actions to provide relief and stability, to ensure that the recovery will be as strong as possible, and to limit lasting damage to the economy."

When the numbers for November came out a few days later and looked, well, not very good for CNS' pro-Trump purposes, Susan Jones started off with an unusually downbeat main story:

As COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths rise in this country, the nation's labor force awaits mass vaccination. In the meantime, some states are now ordering another round of business shutdowns, a burden that falls heavily on bars, restaurants and other small businesses that have had to lay off workers.

The monthly jobs report issued today shows a less robust improvement than we've seen in recent months.

The Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics says the economy added 245,000 jobs in November, the smallest number since April.

And after six straight months of post-pandemic employment gains, the number of employed people in this country dropped by 74,000, to 149,732,000 in November.

Jones even had to concede that while the unemployment rate dropped, it was because people dropped out of the labor force.

The number of manufacturing jobs -- the focus of editor in chief Terry Jeffrey's usual sidebar -- showed anemic growth, so much so that Jeffrey didn't outright state what that number was and instead touted how "The United States has added 764,000 manufacturing jobs since jobs in that sector hit a pandemic-era low in April of this year." Craig Bannister's sidebar was the only that that was upbeat, proclaiming that "The unemployment rate for Hispanics and Latinos improved for the seventh consecutive month in November as the nation’s businesses continued reopening from the coronavirus-prompted shutdown."

But that clearly wasn't enough pro-Trump rah-rah for CNS. That would seem to explain Jeffrey's cherry-picking follow-up article desperately spinning the numbers by comparing them to, um, Obama's first term:

The 6.7 percent unemployment rate that the United States had in November was lower than the unemployment rate for any month during President Barack Obama’s first four years in office, according to the data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In fact, the unemployment rate never dropped below 7.7 percent in Obama’s first term in office, and was climbing upward as that term came to an end.

In January 2013, when Obama was inaugurated for his second term, the unemployment rate was 8.0 percent.

[...]

In September 2012, as Obama’s first term approached an end, the unemployment rate finally fell below 8 percent, hitting 7.8 percent.

But then by January 2013, it had risen again to 8.0 percent.  By the end of 2013, the first year of Obama’s second term, it had dropped to 6.7 percent—the rate it saw in November of this year during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jeffrey failed to acknowledge that there is a huge difference between a major recession and a pandemic-driven shutdown.

NEW ARTICLE: The MRC’s Ongoing Facebook Deception
Topic: Media Research Center
Facebook is dominated by conservative-leaning posts and it has given a pass to President Trump and his supporters who broke its rules, but the Media Research Center is still peddling the lie that the platform uniquely discriminates against conservatives. Read more >>

Convicted Felon Kerik Pushing Election Fraud Claims At Newsmax
Topic: Newsmax

Dick Morris is not the only dubious figure pushing never-proven election fraud claims at Newsmax. Eric Mack writes in a  Dec. 2 article:

Those denying the evidence of voter fraud -- and not the witnesses brought forth by the Trump campaign legal team -- might be the ones lying to Americans, former NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik said Wednesday evening on Newsmax TV.

"If they lie in these affidavits, there's a five-year penalty to go to prison: Nobody's lying," Kerik said on Wednesday's installment of "Stinchfield," from outside a Michigan oversight hearing. "They're not lying. They're not making this stuff up. This is evidence.

"And for the attorney general or anybody else to say they haven't seen any evidence of voter fraud, then they're not looking."

Kerik, a seasoned law enforcement leader, is tasked with collecting the evidence for the legal team and told host Grant Stinchfield it is "frustrating" that local enforcement, the FBI, and the Justice Department are not acting on the sworn evidence.

"We're not getting any traction with law enforcement, that I can tell you, and it's frustrating," Kerik said. "When you listen to this evidence, you listen to these witnesses who have sworn affidavits under the penalty of perjury as a felony, you have to think to yourself, 'I hear them.'

"I know the FBI and the Department of Justice have to be watching this."

State election laws are being flouted and violated, negligently and maybey even criminally, according to Kerik.

Mack leaves out a couple things: Kerik is a convicted felon who spent four years in prison on tax fraud and perjury charges whose image Newsmax tried to rehabilitate before prison and hs been continuing to do after prison (it book division even published a novel he wrote). Kerik was pardoned by Trump earlier this year, which -- on top of being a buddy of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who was New York City mayor when he was police chief -- may be why he's so invested in pretending Trump's election-fraud fictions are fact.

That's what's hiding behind Mack's delcaration that Kerik is a "seasoned law enforcement leader."

Lying Scammers At WND Unhappy About Being Called Lying Scammers
Topic: WorldNetDaily

The snowflakes at WorldNetDaily still can't take criticism. When Media Matters (disclosure: we used to work there) called out right-wing operatives and media figures for trying to raise money off of President Trump's never-proven claims of election fraud, WND was offended to find itself on the list. First, an anonymously written WND article complained:

“Right-wing media figures” – from Candace Owens to Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton to Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe to WND’s David Kupelian – “are lying about the election being stolen to grift their followers for money.”

Or at least that’s how the far-left, Soros-funded organization Media Matters headlines its story accusing prominent conservatives of “scamming” their audiences.

WND did not counter the lying-scammer accusation outside of excerpting a fundraising letter from managing editor David Kupelian, but it did respond with, yes another money beg: "EDITOR’S NOTE: If, contrary to Media Matters, which is generously funded by leftwing activist billionaire George Soros, readers believe the Democrats really have been engaged in a multifaceted campaign to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump, and would like to help assure that a truthful, fearless, God-honoring free press survives this tumultuous year to inform good Americans for years to come, please make a donation now."

The next day, Kupelian sent out an email to WND's mailing list in which -- after copying-and-pasting the above WND article -- he ranted further:

Here’s an idea: If you believe the Democrats really have been engaged in a multifaceted campaign to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump, and would like to help assure that a truthful, fearless, God-honoring free press survives this insane and tumultuous year, to inform good Americans for years to come, please make a donation today. You many not be able to send millions our way as Soros does to Media Matters and others on the left, but even a small amount helps a lot.

After all, while we’re all waiting to find out the truth about Smartmatic and Dominion voting technology – attorney Sidney Powell having now filed her “release the Kraken” lawsuits – we should keep in mind exactly who led us all into today’s terrible, multifaceted mess: A mess of lies regarding COVID-19, lies about President Trump from the Russia collusion hoax to the Ukraine impeachment hoax, lies about Joe Biden – lies about virtually every aspect of today’s political, cultural, medical and historical reality.

That would be America’s shockingly dishonest, fraudulent and corrupt news media.

Only today’s Pravda-like press could have enabled someone like Joe Biden – disintegrating mentally, always wrong, lying continually, spectacularly corrupt – to become the Democratic presidential candidate and very possibly president.

One thing is for sure: No matter how this election disaster ends, the media landscape will be forever changed. Most so-called “mainstream journalists” have demonstrated they are no better and no different than Pravda, the pretend “newspaper of record” in the former Soviet Union that was actually just a craven, lying, servile propaganda mill for that totalitarian regime’s ruling elite.

Thus, whatever the future holds after this election, Americans are going to need, more than ever before, a moral, courageous and TRUTHFUL “free press” to help everyone navigate what promises to be a tumultuous, dangerous and unpredictable era ahead.

WorldNetDaily fully intends to remain a key part of America’s truth-proclaiming free press in the days, months and years to come. Indeed, our motto since 1997 – long before most of the rest of the online media pack even existed – has been “A Free Press for a Free People.”

A "shockingly dishonest, fraudulent and corrupt news media"? Kupelian is projecting, because WND is all of those things, as we've documented every time Kupelian gets on his hypocritical high horse. And we haven't even gotten to the scammy ersatz bitcoin giveway WND did as a donor enticement, the promoters of which have since been arrested.

Kupelian's description of Biden as "disintegrating mentally, always wrong, lying continually, spectacularly corrupt" is a similar projection, since all of those terms can more accurately describe Trump. Not that Kupelian and WND will tell you that, of course, despite Kupelian's decidedly inaccurate insistence that "we dare to publish the truth, something increasingly forbidden in today’s media culture."

Kupelian lied further in his conclusion: "The bottom line is, if you want honest, truthful, hard-hitting news reporting by veteran journalists who honor God, America and the Constitution, please help us out now, so we can be there for you, come what may." "Honest" and "truthful" are the last words that ome to mind when anyone thinks of WND.

MRC's Double Standard on Softball Interviews
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center loves to complain that President-elect Biden gets asked "softball" questions in media interviews:

• Kyle Drennen complained on Nov. 10: "During his first press conference as President-Elect on Tuesday, Joe Biden made sure to only take a few questions from reporters he knew would toss him softballs. Almost all of the questions were designed to tee up the Democrat to slam President Trump for not having conceded the race, despite votes still being counted in multiple states."
• Curtis Houck whined on Nov. 16, linking back to Drennen's post: "Just as they did on November 10 in his first post-election press conference, liberal journalists played the role of lap dogs for Joe Biden, giving him free reign to attack President Trump and nudge him to the left on the coronavirus pandemic and the economy."
• Joseph Vazquez declared on Nov. 19: "The Hill opinion columnist Joe Concha nuked the “marshmallow media” for consistently lobbing “T-ball” questions at former Vice President Joe Biden in the relatively few press conferences he’s held since clinching the Democratic nomination."
• Houck followed up the same day: "If anyone was hoping the third time would be the charm for consistently constructive or tough questions at a post-election Joe Biden press conference, Thursday illustrated that such a hope was a fool’s errand. Over the course of the 15-minute availability, the Biden team had the former vice president receive questions from only four reporters with three of them offering softballs."

Needless to say, that concern about softball interviews of politicians doesn't apply when the politician being interviewed is a Republican -- or Donald Trump. When Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo interviewed Trump and was so utterly softball that she offered no pushback to his false claims of election fraud, the MRC wasn't happy when that was pointed out.

Joseph Norris took the whataboutism route in a Dec. 1 article:

On Sunday, Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo interviewed President Trump for most of her Sunday Morning Futures program about his challenges to the election results in multiple states. This caused an eruption of outrage hours later on CNN’s Reliable Sources, that Bartiromo would give the president softball questioning on such a controversial issue. 

The president’s lawyers haven’t been winning in court, and as always, CNN attempted to discredit the competition to maximum effect. CNN host Brian Stelter said Bartiromo was "not a journalist at all." He summarized: "Fundamentally, that is what this is about, destroying trust in the election system. It’s about delegitimizing Biden's presidency."

Wow. No irony, at all. Given the leftist media’s four-year war on the President, and CNN’s own history with the Russia coverage, it is not Fox News that is destroying trust in our election system. CNN's been doing that for years.

[...]

It is laughable that Stelter and his guests are accusing Fox News of being partisan hacks and spreading misinformation given their recent history. Stelter hypocritically lamented Bartiromo’s “fall”: “it's sad that a journalist like Bartiromo, who had a storied career, is now not a journalist at all. She is now on there just teeing up the President to lie to the viewers.”

Carpenter piled on: “ This is propaganda. If the RNC, if the Trump campaign produced a commercial, Brian, it would be more constrained by the truth to go on the airwaves than what transpired that hour.” This coming from the network that literally ran chunks of a Michelle Obama "closing argument" for Biden and called it a "news" show.

When Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about Bartiromo's obsequiousness, Curtis Houck didn't take it well:

Late Monday on ABC, viewers saw the latest instance of a liberal double standard as, if the comment below had been leveled against a female journalist, politician, or spouse would have fetched wall-to-wall condemnations. During his eponymous show’s monologue, host Jimmy Kimmel quipped that the “always-sycophantic” FBN and FNC host Maria Bartiromo had been “auditioning for the position of” President Donald Trump’s fourth wife.

[...]

Ah, yes. Let’s boil down a woman who’s been a business anchor, correspondent, and host for over 25 years (and currently the host of the most-watched business news program), and the daughter of working-class parents to a housewife.

Imagine if a Fox News comedian said this about, say, Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris or a journalist like Dana Bash or Norah O’Donnell. The silence would be deafening.

Houck seems to have forgotten that he (as NewsBusters managing editor) and his employer sought to justify smearing Harris as a "hoe" because she once was romantically involved with a prominent politician.

Pro-Trump Newsmax Hires Trump's Pollster For A Pro-Trump Poll
Topic: Newsmax

An unbylined Nov. 26 Newsmax article states:

More than two-thirds of the nation says it is fair for President Donald Trump to ask for a recount in key states, according to a new Newsmax/McLaughlin & Associates poll released Thursday.

Sixty-seven percent of likely voters backed Trump's recounts where the vote margins in his race with Joe Biden were 1% or closer, which applies to states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona.

Despite the close contests, 65% of Americans say the election will ultimately be decided honestly. But fully a third of all voters, 35%, said that there was significant fraud.

"This seems to be a very disturbing and high number for the country that always prided itself to be the world's leading democracy," pollster John McLaughlin said. "The highest level of fraud concerns are among Trump voters at 70% and Republicans at 65%."

What Newsmax didn't tell you, just like the Media Research Center didn't: McLaughlin & Associates was the pollster for Trump's campaign, meaning it has a certain bias and conflict of interest in conducting polls that support narrative pushed by the Trump campaign.

Additionally, Trump has been giving Newsmax's TV operation lots of attention of late, meaning that it's entirely likely that Newsmax did this poll as a way to garner even more attention from Trump -- with, hopefully, the resulting eyeballs of right-wing viewers that will watch its channel.

In short: This just screams "stunt" and "lack of credibility." There's no real reason to trust this poll.

CNS Sends Interns To Pester Members of Congress With Anti-Trans Gotcha Question
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com has long been obsessed with hating transgendered people, particularly the idea that a boy who identifies as a girl might be allowed to use girls' locker rooms and restrooms -- and that President-elect Joe Biden supports transgender rights. For instance:

• In an August column, editor in chief Terry Jeffrey mocked Republican John Kasich for saying his conscience led him to support Biden, sneering: "Under Biden's rule, a human being who God and nature made male will be allowed to play girls sports and use the female bathrooms and locker rooms. But Kasich's 'conscience' is driving him to support this candidate."
• Another August article highlighted that Kamala Harris, Biden's running mate, "co-sponsored the Equality Act, a bill that would require schools to allow biological male athletes who identify as transgender to play on female sports teams and use female locker rooms and showers."
  
• An unbylined Oct. 28 article (but apparently posted by Jeffrey, according to CNS' search engine) warned that "Biden is promising that on his first day as president he will order schools to let biological males, who consider themselves female, to have 'access to sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms in accordance with their gender identity.'"
• On Nov. 9, Jeffrey declared that "Joe Biden also supports letting biological males who are 'transgender' claim to be females on government identity documents—and to play on girls’ sports teams and use girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms," suggesting that Biden wasn't a true Catholic for supporting this.
• In his Nov. 18 column, Jeffrey listed among the purportedly "evil" things Biden will dois "force public schools to treat biological males as females and biological females as males," adding that "Under Biden's plan, an 18-year-old boy who says he is a girl can play on the girls' field hockey team and use the girls' locker room."

Now, Jeffrey is forcing CNS' fall interns to act out his biased anti-trans agenda. As it likes to do, CNS regularly sends its interns to Capitol Hill to pester members of Congress with gotcha questionsdesigned to push its right-wing narratives. This is summed up in a Dec. 1 article:

When asked about Joe Biden’s intent to order public schools to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams of their choice, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said that he does not think Biden “has the power” to force such a unilateral change and that he would “like to hear from the schools.” 

Graham also said he did not know if it was a good idea or not to allow transgender “women” (biological males) to play on real women’s sports teams and use their locker rooms.

At the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, CNS News asked Senator Graham, “Joe Biden said that on his first day of office he will mandate through Title 9 that all sports teams, locker rooms should be open to transgender students according to their gender identity. Do you think he has the power to unilaterally do this at all federally funded schools and do you agree with this?”

“No, I don’t think he has the power,” Graham said, “and I don’t know if that's a good idea or not, I’d like to hear from the schools.”

From there, the CNS gotcha-question conga line continued, with overly long headlines to push the narrative:

• Schumer Agrees With Biden's Plan to Let Transgenders Play Girls' Sports and Use Girls' Bathrooms and Locker Rooms
• Paul: Biden Plan to Let Males Compete in Girls' Sports Among 'Dumbest Ideas Ever to Inhabit the Brain of a Politician'
• Pelosi Says ‘Yes’ to Biden Plan to Order Schools to Let Transgenders Play on Girls’ Teams and Use Their Locker Rooms
• Rubio: 'There's a Lot of Problems' With Biden's Policy of Letting Transgenders Play Girls' Sports and Use Girls' Locker Rooms
• Hawley: Biden Plan to Force Schools to Let Transgenders Play Girls' Sports, Use Their Locker Rooms, 'Startling Revelation of Where His Mind is At'
• McCarthy Doesn't Say If He Agrees With Biden on Forcing Schools to Let Transgenders Use Girls' Locker Rooms
• Ted Cruz: 'If We See a Biden Administration, We Will See Them Abusing Their Power on a Daily Basis'

All of the articles -- yes, it pestered eight members of Congress with this question -- copy-and-paste Biden's policy; most of the articles added pictures of what it claims are transgender athletes with "woman" and "female" in scare quotes to describe them.

With transphobic Jeffrey at the helm, CNS will keep spreading anti-trans hatred and use it as a cudgel to bash Biden.

MRC Touts Blogger Pushing Falsehoods About Voter Fraud
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Joseph Vazquez thinks he got a big "EXCLUSIVE" scoop in a Nov. 23 post:

Big Data Poll Director Richard Baris slammed both Big Tech and the liberal media after being silenced by Twitter for speaking out about voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Baris was blocked from his Twitter account earlier this month for sharing research pointing to the possibility of voter fraud. He said his wife Laura and his polling firm were also blocked from their respective accounts as well. Baris’s account has since been restored.

In a new interview with MRC Business, Baris warned about the interference of Big Tech and the liberal media into the 2020 election by hoodwinking the American people into believing that there’s no evidence of voter and election fraud. His main message to the press trying to black out the issue: “Media should stop lying to the American people about the reality of both voter and election fraud. There are examples of both in every election. ” Baris continued: “The question this year has never been whether there was fraud, but rather how widespread it was and whether it was enough to impact the outcome of the election in any of these critical battleground states.”

Of course, Vazquez isn't going to tell you that Baris has been pushing falsehoods about alleged election fraud. Most notoriously, Baris has claimed that 132,000 voters in Fulton County, Ga., had been flagged as possibly ineligible, a claim Fulton County officials have called "false and baseless."

Baris has also claimed that "Joe Biden underperformed Hillary Clinton in every major metro area around the country, save for Milwaukee, Detroit, Atlanta and Philadelphia" -- which is also false.

Vazquez was not about to tell that part of the story, of course -- he had a victim narrative to peddle. And he was certainly not going to connect the dots and point out that one reason Twitter might have suspended his account was his peddling of false claims, which runs against Twitter's terms of service. Vazquez then wrote:

Just the News founder John Solomon released a report today arguing that “a mountain of evidence has been amassed in private lawsuits alleging there was, in fact, significant and widespread voting misconduct.” In Baris’s view, “the states in question essentially used Covid-19 as a predicate to put a moratorium on election integrity laws, including long-standing established laws and verification procedures.”

In fact, one reporter who looked into Solomon's claims found him to be "profoundly misleading" and the claims he makes left out information that discredits them. Vazquez also failed to mention that Solomon's overall work is suspect because of his shady dealings with Russian and Ukranian sources to launch thinly sourced smear campaigns against critics of President Trump.

In short: There is no reason Vazquez had to give an "EXCLUSIVE" interview to a dishonest writer who is seeking to perpetuate the fraud that the election was stolen from Trump -- unless perpetuating that fraud is the MRC's current editorial policy.

CNS Touts Extremist GOP Candidates, Hides Their Extremism
Topic: CNSNews.com

Last summer, we documented how CNSNews.com touted then-Republican House candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene's pro-gun fanaticism while hiding the fact that not only is Greene a fan of the QAnon conspiracy theory, she spouted racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in videos she posted on Facebook. CNS stopped promoting Greene when that information became public. But now that Greene won her House race and will become a member of Congress, CNS feels it can start promoting her again -- while still censoring her extremism.

In a Nov. 20 article, Melanie Arter promtoed an appearance by Greene on Fox Business:

When asked what her priorities will be when she takes office, Congresswoman-Elect Marjorie Greene (R-Ga.) said Friday that she wants to fight back against Big Tech’s censorship of conservatives and end abortion, because she believes it’s “completely evil” and taxpayer dollars shouldn’t have to pay for it.

“I absolutely support President Trump 100 percent, and he inspired me to run. I got frustrated throughout his presidency watching Big Tech censor conservatives, so I’ll be fighting back on that, because everyone has the freedom of speech,” Greene said in an interview with Fox Business’s “Mornings with Maria Bartiromo.” “You know if my 17-year-old son can run across porn on Twitter, then I believe our conservative voices should be able he to be heard and not censored,” she added.

Arter made sure not to mention Greene's love of QAnon or her hateful Facebook videos.

But Greene is not the only extreme GOP candidate CNS is trying to mainstream. Managing editor Michael W. Chapman wrote in a Nov. 24 article:

Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert, who was elected to Congress on Nov. 3, reportedly has asked what the rules are to carry a gun on Capitol Hill and in her congressional office. 

Boebert, 33, is from a largely conservative district in western Colorado. She is a defender of the Second Amendment and operates a restaurant called Shooters Grill, in Rifle, Colorado. She is sometimes seen sporting a Glock pistol on her hip.

[...]

Incoming House Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) supports Boebert on the gun issue.

Like Arter, Chapman was also censoring information from his reader: Boebert, like Greene, has been a follower of QAnon.

That's not all. In articles on Nov. 5 and Nov. 18, Susan Jones listed both Greene and Boebert among newly elected "pro-life Republican women" in Congress without disclosing their QAnon extremism.

And on Nov. 12, Lucy Collins reported that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was asked "about two new members who were subject to controversy and ties to QAnon" but refused to identify them as Greene and Boebert.Collinsuncrfitically reported McCarthy's statement that "both of them have denounced QAnon," which is not true; while Boebert has since tried to distance herself from QAnon, Greene has not.

WND's Farah Resurfaces To Cheer Trump's Unproven Election Fraud Claims
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily's obsession with pushing conspiracy theories about election fraud is so deep, Joseph Farah is taking a break from recovering from a stroke to weigh in.

In his Nov. 30 column, Farah served up "6 reasons I'm not giving up on Trump," the first of which is a Trump talking point: "Trump won a landslide of votes legally cast by the end of "Election Day." Then came the as-yet-undetermined number of mail-in votes that were not authorized by state legislatures were arguably postmarked after Election Day and may not have been signed by certified voters.

By reasons 3 and 4, however, Farah is mostly copying-and-pasting unproven claims by Trump and whining that the Justice Department won't investigate, while also declaring that "There are paths to absolutely secure, free and fair elections in America – including, just to cite one example, blockchain technology." His final reason is simply a Trump ad: "It may be our only chance to preserve the nation from a massive mistake – changing horses in midstream, after an amazing first term, a mistake that could be irrevocable."

Remember that before his 2019 stroke, Farah was embarassing himself by acting like a ridiculous Trump fanboy.

Farah spent his Dec. 9 column cheering the Texas lawsuit filed in the Supreme Court that would "invalidate 62 Electoral College votes of four battleground states and have them awarded to Trump because of fraud." It's mostly another copy-and-paste, this time from the legal filing and statements by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Farah concluded by declaring: "This could well be our last chance to root out the obvious stench that has been left behind in the 2020 election."

Of course, that Texas lawsuit was swiftly rejected by the Supreme Court, showing that once again Farah is betting on the wrong horse.

MRC's Graham Peddles More Bogus Attacks On Fact-Checkers
Topic: Media Research Center

Tim Graham's main job at the Media Research Center is to whine that President Trump gets fact-checked more than Democrats, while studioiusly ignoring the inconvenient fact that Trump tells more lies than most Democrats (or even most Democrats combined). The whining continued in a Nov. 25 MRC podcast, where Graham ranted:

I always put air quotes around the notion of independent fact-checkers. It's really important to understand that most of the people who do fact-checking are liberal journalists working for liberal outfits. So the fact-checker at the Washington Post, under the motto "Democracy Dies in Darkness," is going to be a fact-checker who counts Trump lies and doesn't count Democrat lies. So the other day, when some liberal Hollywood celebrity -- like Barbra Steisand, I think in this case -- said Trump's lied 22,000 times, and you ask, where would the get a stat like that? The Washington Post fact-checker. And now, of course, liberals always mangle this number, because if they say there are 22,000 lies, that's not accurate, because the way they do it at the Washington Post is to say Trump has committed or uttered 22,000 false or misleading statements. So misleading statements and lies are not the same thing.

At lot of times, for example, that the Washington Post loves to do is Trump will say this is the best economy for black Americans ever and they'll say -- or the best unemployment for black Americans ever [sic], and they will say, well, the federal government didn't start measure black unemployment until 1972, therefore you're lying, or therefore it's a misleading statement. So there's a lot of times -- we all understand Donald Trump loves to exaggerate, you know, make things sound as good as they possibly can, but it's not a lie to say it was a good economy for minorities. This is where you say, again, the fact-checkers seem on a lot of occasions to be accomplishing things that just line up so neatly with the Democratic agenda.

In fact, the Post did not cite the fact that black unemployment statistics weren't kept until 1972 as a reason Trump's statement is misleading (or at least the sole reason; it did note times in which other  government statistics claiming black unemployment was lower in 1953). Rather, it points out Trump does not deserve the amount of credit he is taking because it was (pre-pandemic) the continuation of a black unemployment rate drop that started in 2010.

In short: Graham is once again complaining that Trump is being fact-checked at all.

Graham then read from his and Brent Bozell's pro-Trump, anti-media book "Unmasked," huffing about how PolitiFact "gets large grants from liberal foundations like the Ford Foundation -- which is the biggest, most massive, most leftist foundations out there -- the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the leftist Craig Newmark Foundation." He then declared, "This is one of the reasons we got into the sort of 'fact-checking of fact-checkers' project we do here at NewsBusters. Because when you use categories like true, mostly true, false, mostly false, pants on fire lie, it has that image or proclamation of some sort of great, scientific statement. And I think we've discovered over the years there isn't science, there's a lot of opinion."

Graham went on to deny the fact-checking parity he has been effectively demanding for years: "Liberals can argue they shouldn't have to observe some quota in which everyone gets an equally true and false rating. We understand that -- we don't expect you to give Donald Trump an equally true and false rating. But wewould expect to smome extent that you wouldapply the same standards to Republicans and Democrats, and they have a really bad habit of not doing that." This from the guy who wants you to think Democrats are all liars and Trump merely "exaggerates" and "makes things sound as good as they possibly can" and that shouldn't he held accountable for it. And, of course, he went on to rant about Trump and conservatives were rated as liars much more often than Democrats as liberals. So, yes, Graham absolutely expects and demands fact-checking parity.

Continuing to read from his book (which is certainly a surefire way to fill out a half-hour of podcast time), Graham also complained that PolitiFact fact-checked Hillary Clinton's camapaign memoir and didn't find anything false in it, and "that includes blaming the news media for her loss (they were 91 percent anti-Trump)." In fact, "the media" -- as defined by the MRC's extremely narrow description of "explicitly evaluative statements" on theevening newscasts of CBS, NBC and ABC -- was anti-Hillary, and Graham and the MRC knew it. As we documented, the MRC found in the same 2016 "study" that claimed a 91 percent negative rating for Trump that "the media" was 79 percent negative against Hillary. But it downplayed those results in order to push the "media hates Trump" narrative.

Graham also denied that he and that MRC are trying to destroy fact-checking, citing a call from what he derisively called "the dopes at Snopes" worried that the MRC's anti-fact-checking jihad meant, in his words, that "we were going to declare all of, you know, every fact-check is a fraud, or that there is no such notion or facts or truth. You know, I think part of the problem here is that we disagree on what facts are sometimes, and there's so many times that on these matters of evaluation that liberals confuse their own opinions with the facts." Of course, Graham will never admit that he's doing the exact same thing.

Graham ultimately huffed of the Washington Post's Pinocchio ratings system: "I think we can all predict there's not going to be a lot of four-Pinocchio ratings for Biden. The Washington Post is not going to count how many thousands of lies or false statements that Biden's committed. Which only underlines this whole project was to make a rhetorical point and to score the other side's rhetoric was full of lies." hethen argued that political rhethoric should not be judged as true or false and that only "obviously false or tremendously misleading" statements should be held to account.

Again: All this whining from Graham is because Trump keeps being exposed as a serial spreader of falsehoods and misinformation, and not only doesn't he think Trump should ever face any consequences for that, he doesn't want Trump's lies to taint the rest of the right-wing media. So fact-checkers must be brought down.

CNS Promoted 'Unmasking' Claims -- But Was Silent When They Were Debunked
Topic: CNSNews.com

As part of its being a loyal pro-Trump media outlet, CNSNews.com uncritically promoted claims from President Trump and his supporters that the process of "unmasking" -- the process of revealing what U.S. person is being communicated with by a foreigner who is being monitored by U.S. intelligence -- was a bad thing and used as a political weapon against Trump:

• A February 2018 article touted how "Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit today seeking all documents involving former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power who reportedly sought to unmask more than 260 Americans in that election year.
• A May 2018 item quoted a Mark Levin rant: "How about unmasking? How about unmasking of individuals in Trump world and leaking their names to the media?"
• A July 2018 column by Tim Graham and Brent Bozell complained that "Obama intelligence officials were spying on the Trump campaign in 2016, unmasking identities in a search for dirt to bury him. "
• In a December 2018 article, Susan Jones wrote of Michael Flynn that "Flynn's defenders note that he was the victim of illegal surveillance and unmasking by members of the Obama administration, but so far, no one in that orbit has been held accountable."

In May, Jones wrote about how then-acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grennell would be releasing "the names of the Obama administration officials who requested the unmasking of people being surveilled by FISA warrants," adding, "As Ken Starr noted, the unmasking isn't the problem: 'The key is, who leaked the classified information? ...That is the crime. That's the very serious crime.'" The day after that article was published, Jones wrote another one quoting Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham demanding, ""The question for us as a Congress is, did the Obama administration use unmasking as a political weapon? That's the question that I want to answer."

That was followed by an article by Melanie Arter doing stenography for Trump: "Former Vice President Joe Biden can’t say he knew nothing about the unmasking of Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn if he was one of the unmaskers, President Donald Trump said Wednesday. Biden was one of several Obama administration officials whose name appears on the declassified list of officials who requested the unmasking. Also listed are former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper."

CNS cranked out more unmasking-related articles in the following days:

• Jones again touted how Former Vice President Joe Biden was among the many Obama administration officials who requested the unmasking of an American citizen who turned out to be Gen. Michael Flynn," adding that Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz called this "bad news for Joe Biden ahead."
• Jones stated that "Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) says Congress must investigate the "simply stunning" revelation that the Obama administration apparently interfered with the transition of power to the legitimately elected Trump administration," adding as she did in her previous article, "There is nothing illegal about unmasking names. But leaking those names, which is what happened to Flynn, is illegal."
• Jones then reported that "Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told CNN's John Berman on Thursday he doesn't remember why he requested the unmasking of a name that turned out to be that of incoming National Security Director Michael Flynn."
• In yet another article, Jones wrote, "Recently released documents show that 16 Obama administration officials requested to know the name of the American citizen who was mentioned anonymously in foreign intelligence reports. That unmasked person turned out to be incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, whose name was leaked to a Washington Post columnist."
• Jones then complained that "there was no follow-up" from an interviewer after Biden denied knowledge of an investigation into Flynn, adding that "Biden's name appears on the long list of Obama administration officials who requested the unmasking of an American citizen who turned out to be Michael Flynn. 

But a few days after that flurry of articles, it was revealed that Flynn's name was never masked in regard to his phone call with the Russian ambassador, meaning talk of it being "unmasked" is moot, and that talk of "unmasking" regarding Flynn likely didn't involve that conversation. Jones and CNS censored news of that finding.

Neverthesss, CNS had apparently decided that "unmasking" was a thing -- probably because the Trump White House decreed that it was. Jones excitedly wrote in a May 28 article:

U.S. Attorney John Durham, as part of his investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia case, has been looking into the issue of unmasking.

But now, U.S. Attorney General William Barr has ordered a separate review, Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec told Fox News's Sean Hannity Wednesday night[.]

This was followed by Arter writing that "Former Deputy Assistant General Rod Rosenstein was either complicit in wrongdoing in signing off on the FISA applications that led to the surveillance and eventual unmasking of former National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn or Rosenstein’s performance of his duties 'was grossly negligent,' Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Wednesday."

On June 12, Graham complained: "When it broke that Biden, in his last days as vice president, joined a list of other Obama officials requesting the 'unmasking' of an American who turned out to be incoming Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn — which led to a smear about the former Army major general being a Russian pawn — the story drew merely 62 seconds of coverage: 55 seconds on ABC, 7 seconds on CBS, and none on NBC. Voters who rely on these cynics for 'news' wouldn't even understand the Big Picture: that Team Obama improperly spied on the Trump campaign and was still trying to ruin Trump's presidency during the transition."

Needless to say, Jones, Arter and Graham all failed to tell their readers that Flynn's name was never masked.

Finally, CNS' agitation got the results it was looking for, as detailed in a July 28 article by Arter:

Attorney General Bill Barr told the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that he has named U.S Attorney John Bash to investigate the issue of unmasking.

At the oversight hearing, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asked, “Thirty-eight people unmasked Michael Flynn's name, 48 times in a two-month time frame. Several people at the Treasury Department unmasked Michael Flynn's name. Is this an issue that Mr. Durham is looking into?”

“I’ve asked another U.S. attorney to look into the issue of unmasking, because of the high number of unmaskings, and some that do not readily appear to have been in the line of normal business,” Barr said.

And that's pretty much the last any CNS reader heard of the alleged unmasking "scandal." Why? Because that investigation turned out to be a bust. As an actual news outlet reported on Oct. 13:

The federal prosecutor appointed by Attorney General William P. Barr to review whether Obama-era officials improperly requested the identities of individuals whose names were redacted in intelligence documents has completed his work without finding any substantive wrongdoing, according to people familiar with the matter.

The revelation that U.S. Attorney John Bash, who left the department last week, had concluded his review without criminal charges or any public report will rankle President Trump at a moment when he is particularly upset at the Justice Department. The department has so far declined to release the results of Bash’s work, though people familiar with his findings say they would likely disappoint conservatives who have tried to paint the “unmasking” of names — a common practice in government to help understand classified documents — as a political conspiracy.

[...]

Bash’s team was focused not just on unmasking, but also on whether Obama-era officials provided information to reporters, according to people familiar with the probe, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive investigation. But the findings ultimately turned over to Barr fell short of what Trump and others might have hoped, and the attorney general’s office elected not to release them publicly, the people familiar with the matter said. 

You will not be surprised to learn that CNS devoted no article to the unmasking probe being a failure, let alone question why Barr refused to publicly release the report. In fact, the only mention of the probe's failure at CNS in the two months since it was first reported (by others) came in passing in an Oct. 22 article by Arter, buried deep in a transcript in which CNN host Chris Cuomo noted that "the DOJ passed on its latest investigation in terms of bringing any charges about unmasking."

This is the state of "news" at CNSNews.com.

MRC's Fondacaro Parrots Fox News In Hypocritically Crying Hypocrisy
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center loves to complain about the "revolving door" of media people who go to work inside Democratic administrations -- but they get really snippy when it's pointed out that it's even more of an issue with Fox News employees who worked for the Trump administration. This time, in a Nov. 24 post, Nicholas Fondacaro lets a Fox News host do all the hypocritical handwaving:

With President-elect Biden stocking up on staff to fill his cabinet, we’re already starting to see the revolving door between politics and the liberal media begin to turn again. Fox News Channel media analyst and host of Media Buzz, Howard Kurtz was on the case Tuesday night as he pointed out the men and women of The Swamp who were leaving the CNN and MSNBC payrolls to go work for Biden. Of course, he also pointed out the hypocrisy of how Fox News was criticized with President Trump.

“As Joe Biden starts to staff his administration, the revolving door between media and politics is spinning once again,” Kurtz reported at the top of the Special Report segment.

[...]

After noting that President Obama had hired over two dozen journalists for his administration (the NewsBusters count had it at 30), Kurtz pointed out the liberal media’s hypocrisy. “That musical chairs tradition is widely viewed as routine, but Fox News drew criticism for those who moved between the network on the Trump administration, including John Bolton, Heather Nauert, Bill Shine, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders,” he said.

So the MRC came up with 30 people across the entire non-right-wing media of numerous outlets over an eight-year presidency. By contrast, 21 employees from just a single company, Fox News, worked for the Trump administration -- which doesn't even count Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle not just becoming Donald Trump Jr.'s girlfriend but vociferously campaigning for Trump's re-election. Despite the apples-and-oranges comparison, Fondacaro rushed to join Kurtz in hypocritically screaming "hypocrisy!" cheering how "Kurtz called out CNN’s Trump attacker turned Secretary of State nominee Tony Blinken":

That hypocrisy largely came from the likes of CNN. In the summer of 2018, Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter pontificated about how there had “never” been a “love story” like Trump and Fox News. “Fox and Trump, Trump and Fox. You know they're close. But do you realize just how close” he declared at the time. “[T]his kind of relationship has never existed between a U.S. president and a TV network. It. Is. Unprecedented.” Meanwhile, CNN had already failed to inform viewers of Blinken’s change of position.

And in March of 2018, Anderson Cooper did an entire segment complaining: “It's a presidency that was essentially born on reality TV, and now the lines between reality and TV may be blurring even further.” He was saying that because Trump had taken Larry Kudlow from CNBC to be the director of the United States National Economic Council.

In that 2018 post, Fondacaro played the same hypocrisy card, falsely pretending that Trump's obsession with a single media outlet, and vice versa is exactly the same thing as people from numerous companies choosing to work for a Democratic administration, whining that it was "totally false" for Stelter to point out "the handful of Fox News people Trump had hired and suggested that Fox News was “propp[ing] up” the Trump presidency as if without them it would collapse."

When Stelter brought up Guilfoyle dating Trump Jr., Fondacaro went into whataboutism mode:

While Stelter tried to make their dating sound out of the ordinary, the liberal media was actually married into the Obama administration.

According to The Washington Post, “CNN’s deputy Washington bureau chief, Virginia Moseley, is married to Tom Nides,” who was Hillary Clinton’s deputy secretary of state. ABC reporter Claire Shipman was actually married to then-White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, so where were the concerns about all of ABC being tainted by their marriage? There’s a lot more where those came from.

Of course, there's a difference between being married to the deputy secretary of state -- a non-political job -- and being the girlfriend of the president's son and trading on her Fox News fame in actively campaigning for Trump, which Fondacaro offered no evidence Moseley ever did. (Deputy news bureau chiefs don't have that kind of fame, something that apparently escaped Fondadcaro.) Also, ABC was not "tainted" by Shipman's marriage to Carney because Shipman stopped covering politics when Carney, a former journalist, became press secretary.

Fondacaro closed his post by huffing, "It’s only a matter of time before the Biden administration started to hire the “journalists” that covered him and helped to prop up his campaign." But neither of the two people he named immediately prior to that -- Stelter and Cooper -- have indicated they will leave their CNN positions to work for Biden.

Fondacaro is so deep into his hypocrisy (and his deliberate lies) that he can't see how ridiculous he looks.