Oppo Research: MRC Helps Ga. GOP Senate Candidate By Attacking Opponent Topic: Media Research Center
Just like it did with the Trump campaign, the Media Research Center got its marching orders from Republican leadership: Go on the attack against Raphael Warnock, the Democratic candidate in one of the two Georgia Senate runoff races. And Warnock was very much targeted: A search of the NewsBusters archive found a whopping 46 articles that referenced Warnock between the Nov. 3 election and press time, compared with 35 articles referencing Jon Ossoff, the Democratic candidate in the other Georgia runoff race.
The MRC got started early with making misleading and nit-picky attacks on Warnock. That was followed by a Dec. 9 post by Gabriel Hays parroting "serious conservatives and Christians" bashing Warnockfor not hating abortion enough:
If there was one thing that could make it obvious that Democrat Senate candidate Raphael Warnock is a terrible choice for U.S. Senator, it would be one of his most recent tweets proclaiming himself a pro-choice Christian. Talk about living with cognitive dissonance.
First off, supporting the killing of unborn babies is a non-starter, as is openly admitting you’re a hypocrite by saying you’re Christian and then saying you ignore fundamental parts of Christian teaching.
Warnock, a Baptist “pastor” and radical, pro-BLM, pro-abortion leftist vying for one of two U.S. Senate seats in the upcoming Georgia run-off elections, went afoul of conservatives on Twitter in recent days by declaring himself to be proudly pro-choice and Christian.
(This echoed in part a Nov. 20 column by Tim Graham whining that conservatives were being called out for attacking Warnock's religion but tended to cry discrimination when liberals criticized the extreme religious views of their fellow conservatives.)
On Dec. 17, Kristine Marsh tried to make a big deal out of saying that Fidel Castro's legacy as Cuban dictator is "complex" as most people's legacies are, and that Castro spoke at a church 25 years ago where Warnock was youth pastor (though there's no evidence Warnock played any role in the visit).
The perpetually ragey Nicholas Fondacaro thought he had the key to destroying Warnock's campaign in a Dec. 22 post:
Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Raphael Warnock apparently got an early piece of coal in his stocking on Christmas week. According to police body camera footage exclusively aired on Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight on Tuesday, the radical leftist pastor was accused by his ex-wife of running over her foot with his car as she tried to stop him from driving off with their kids, last March.
The video was stunning and featured Warnock himself talking with the responding Atlanta police officer, but will any of the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, or NBC) share it with their viewers on Wednesday?
[...]
The incident raised deep concerns and questions about his temperament and actions that needed to be probed by the media. Unfortunately, the press was more interested in helping Democrats win control of the Senate no matter who the candidates were.
Fondacaro buried the fact that officers on scene found no apparent injury on the ex's foot and that Warnock was never charged. And his complaint is doubly ironic given that neither Fondacaro nor anyone else at the MRC told their readers that the Staten Island bar owner they lionized for standing up to purportedly draconian coronavirus lockdown restrictions actually did run over someone with his car: a sheriff's deputy. Nevertheless, Fondacaro returned the next day to rant that non-right-wing networks didn't cover the minor dispute.
Then -- as if he was on the payroll as opposition researcher for Warnock's Republican opponent, Kelly Loeffler -- Fondacaro served up another Warnock attack on Dec. 28:
Even with new reporting from the Washington Free Beacon out Monday that detailed how, in 2002, a then 12-year-old boy was abused at a church camp overseen by future Senate Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock, CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront continued to be a staunch defender. Instead of reporting on the account of abuse victim Anthony Washington, senior national correspondent Kyung Lah defended Warnock’s radical sermons from Republican “attacks.”
Throughout the 2020 election cycle, numerous videos had surfaced of Warnock preaching radical leftist ideology from his pulpit. And as National Review published in mid-November, it was off the wall stuff. Warnock accused Israel of being like “apartheid South Africa,” described Israelis as “birds of prey” in a letter, and gave a speech praising Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s “God damn America” sermon.
[...]
And according to a Maryland state trooper investigating the abuse claims, Warnock was arrested for trying to obstruct justice by interfering with the questioning of camp counselors. Though, the charge was later dropped.
The story has been a key Loeffler campaign talking point, hence Fondacaro's glomming onto it. He censored the fact that law enforcement found Warnock to be "very helpful" with the investigation into the camp, blaming miscommunication for the arrest; Warnock said he interrupted a law enforcement interview of a counselor to make sure the counselor had legal representation.
Despite the fact he censored key exculpatory aspects of the story that interfered with his narrative, Fondacaro hypocritically lectured: "If CNN was going to do a report defending Warnock’s time as a church official, then they needed to take responsibility and report on his abusive camp. In this instance, the situation wasn’t political at all. It was about his time overseeing a camp that abused children and his alleged attempt to obstruct justice."
The next day, Joseph Vazquez served up his own attack on Warnock, invoking all the key right-wing buzzwords:
Outsiders are funding nearly the entire cost of Georgia’s Democrat Senate candidates Jon Ossoff’s and Rev. Raphael Warnock’s campaigns, a new report said.
This is the same Fidel Castro-sympathizing Warnock who referred to himself as a “pro-choice pastor,” and the same Ossoff who has ties to Communist China. Warnock, in particular, had also disparaged service in the U.S. military, telling church parishioners in 2011, “America, nobody can serve God and the military.” Oh, and let’s not forget that Warnock also has a record of spewing anti-Semitic hate at Israel.
Of the $100 million each that the two leftist candidates have hauled in the last two months, “95 percent of that money is coming from outside of the Peach State,” according to the New York Post. The biggest financial backers reportedly are based in “the Democratic strongholds of New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.”
Again, this was a hypocritical attack. Vazquez was silent on the source of Loeffler's donations, and there was a reason: She and her fellow GOP Senate runoff candidate, David Perdue, received 92 percent of donations from out of state, nuch of it from, yes, California, Texas and Florida.
Are all these explicitly political attacks in line with the MRC's nonprofit status, which forbids explicit political activity? One has to wonder.
Newsmax Columnist Calls Biden A 'Manchurian President' Topic: Newsmax
Calling someone a "Manchurian candidate" has been a reliable form of attack by right-wingers against political candidates they don't like. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and even John McCain have been portrayed as one. Right-wing lawyer Michael Dorstewitz, in his Dec. 14 Newsmax column, is now arguing that Joe Biden is one:
Life imitates art. "The Manchurian Candidate" was a 1962 political thriller that depicted an American soldier who was captured during the Korean War. He was brainwashed to later assassinate a political figure as part of an international Communist conspiracy.
In this case former Vice President Joe Biden wasn't brainwashed — he's a willing participant. And the assassination isn't of a political figure but of the United States.
Biden will most certainly reverse the Trump administration's policy of holding the Chinese Communist Party responsible for its past misdeeds, either by underestimating the threat that China presents, or out of a desire for monetary gain. He'll allow China to increase its influence on the United States and would permit manufacturing to migrate back to China, taking American jobs with it.
[...]
Today, the Electoral College meets to officially elect the president. Biden is expected to receive 306 votes; Trump, 232.
Assuming that holds until the January 20 Inauguration Day, the Manchurian President will be sleeping in White House that night.
That's not the only attack Dorstewitz has launched against Biden. In his Dec. 23 column, he attacked Biden's religious faith:
But it’s one thing to spend an hour in church once a week. It’s another thing altogether to actually live your faith, and with Biden, it’s all showboating. In reality, Biden’s neither honorable nor devout.
Biden has aligned with his party’s stance on abortion for decades, notwithstanding the church’s belief that life begins at conception, and destroying that life is murder. He at least supported the Hyde Amendment for decades, which in most cases prevents public funds from being used to pay for abortions.
But that fell by the wayside last year when he realized he had to fall in line if he had any hope of winning the Democratic presidential nomination. A desire for power trumped adherence to his faith.
Dorstewitz even brought up petty, nearly 50-year-old attacks on how Biden met his wife, Jill, first advanced by her bitter first husband and later promoted by the Media Research Center.
If Joe Biden has his way, the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms could be nearly legislated out of existence.
And that would have the blessing of the Communist Party of China.
The New York Post’s Nels Frye observed back in March that President Xi Jinping and the People’s Republic of China were rooting for former Vice President Joe Biden to emerge victorious in November’s general election.
WND Defends The Honor Of the Proud Boys -- Again Topic: WorldNetDaily
Back in October, WorldNetDaily responded to presidential debate remarks about whether the far-right thugs in the Proud Boys are white supremacists by pointing out that national leader of the group, Enrique Tarrio, is "a black-Hispanic American" who denies any white supremacist motives. Not only is that not true, there is a Proud Boys faction that is quite proud to be white supremacist and anti-Semitic.
Nevertheless, WND felt the need to defend the honor of the Proud Boys once again. In a Nov. 20 article, Matt Keener wrote about how he "talked with Enrique Tarrio – the Afro-Cuban leader of Proud Boys – on camera about how his group became a lightning rod in the 2020 election" during a trip to the Million MAGA March:
Aside from that, if your only familiarity with the group is Chris Wallace and Joe Biden teaming up to ask the president to condemn white supremacy yet again, specifically the Proud Boys, during the first debate, then there is one thing that immediately comes to your attention when you see this "white supremacist" group.
There are quite a few people of color in their ranks.
Indeed, as I approached Tarrio, he was joking around, apparently drinking a beer and hugging a fellow group member who is black.
I spoke with Tarrio on camera about how on earth the Proud Boys came to be a focal point of this year's election.
Keener gave Tarrio a pass in letting him handwave the group's history of violence:
Tarrio pulls no punches when asked about how the Proud Boys are portrayed or if they are misunderstood.
"We're not this violent f–ing group of guys – we're not. Can we be violent?" he asks rhetorically. "Absolutely so. Are we good at self-defense? Yes sir. But we don't – we had 250 Proud Boys on the streets today. But they didn't board up businesses because we came into town. They're boarding up businesses when the left are the ones that get together."
Tarrio explained how he handles the perception or claims they are a white supremacist or hate group.
"I'm not concerned about the people that hate us or call us white supremacists. I really don't give a s–t about them. All right? Because they're not reasonable. So I don't try to reason with them. I don't try to argue with them. I avoid them," he says, before adding, "The people that don't know who we are – or somebody that thinks that we're something but isn't 100% sure? Those people I reach out to. Because we're not a white supremacist group."
What Keener isn't going to tell you is that the Proud Boys are, indeed, a violence-driven group. Since then, Tarrio admitted to burning a Black Lives Matter banner he stole from a church during a December march, and he falsely claimed he was invited to the White House (turns out he just took the regular public tour).
All this stuff was interspersed with rants from Keener like this:
You can call yourself "woke," but if you are canceling, censoring, eliminating, or assaulting someone based on who they voted for, you are misguided. It is you who is the oppressor.
You can call the Proud Boys white supremacist, but the leader of the group and several members are black and brown. I saw them with my own eyes.
The media manipulate and lie to you.
Look around. Use your eyes.
The emperor has no clothes.
And no one wants to say it.
Keener has a bright future as a WND columnist ... if WND survives that long, anyway.
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC Division Of The Trump Campaign, Part 1 Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center was such a devoted Trump apologist and promoter, it may as well have been on the payroll. Read more >>
What Is The MRC Trying To Hide In Its War On 'Big Tech'? Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center huffed in a Dec. 18 press release:
MRC President L. Brent Bozell denounces Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFPF) for aiding Big Tech companies in their fight to suppress and restrict conservative content. AFPF filed a lawsuit, following a FOIA request, for communications between the Department of Commerce and conservatives working to stop Big Tech from unjustly censoring conservative content. The Media Research Center, Bozell, and MRC VP Dan Gainor were all specifically named.
"AFPF backed off naming groups and leaders after strong pushback for their efforts, but what is done is done. The Koch machine has shown its true colors,” said Bozell. “Koch and AFP should do the honest thing and disclose their agenda. Koch also launched a multi-million dollar venture with George Soros.
“Section 230 must be reformed to stop the abuse of conservatives by Big Tech. That’s our position. It’s the essence of free speech and free enterprise. The Koch machine believes in neither. They’re supporting massive monopolies while also snooping about to read others’ private emails. What they’re doing smells to high heaven. They should just admit they’re doing the bidding of Big Tech, and we’ll all know where they stand,” Bozell concluded.
Weird how Bozell and the MRC are suddenly concerned about the content of "private emails" when it spent years salivating over Hillary Clinton's leaked private emails and Peter Strzok's private texts. If the MRC did nothing wrong and all of its lobbying to change Section 230 was above board, it shouldn't be bothered by anyone's "snooping." What are Bozell, Gainor and the MRC trying to hide?
Also: The AFPF's original FOIA request was made back in September. Why did the MRC wait three months to complain about it? Presumably because there was an article in the Washington Times two days before Bozell's rant noting that the AFPF filed a full lawsuit against the Commerce Department becuase it wouldn't release those emails.
Also curious is that the MRC is specifically lashing out a prominent funder of conservative causes. this is likely driven by the fact that it doesn't get much funding from Koch-related foundations -- just $15,000 in recent years, according to one count. It linked to another reason: a July 2019 MRC post complaining that Charles Koch is cooperating with hated liberal boogeyman George Soroson something called the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, the creation of which was driven in part by U.S. emphasis on military force over diplomacy and "the foreign policy establishment is ill-equipped to interpret what was happening, particularly the foreign policy of Donald Trump." Writer Joseph Vazquez -- the MRC's designated Soros fearmongerer -- rehashed that "An MRC Special Report proved that 'In just 10 years, Soros has given more than $550 million to liberal organizations in the United States. And that's really just a beginning. That total represents about 27 percent of the $2 billion given out by the American branches of his Open Society Foundations from 2000 to 2009.'" Besides, the MRC has its own right-wing funders in the form of the Mercer family.
As the old saying goes: If you have nothing to hide, you hide nothing. The MRC is very much acting like it has something to hide. It had noproblem with the release of Hillary Clinton's emails or Strzok's texts, so it should have no problem with the release of its own emails for the purposes of full transparency on an issue in which it is heavily involved.
CNS Columnist: Blacks, Hispanics Don't Deserve Early Access to COVID-19 Vaccine Topic: CNSNews.com
Hans Bader complained in a Dec. 10 CNSNews.com column:
The Department of Veterans Affairs is going to give priority to black and Hispanic veterans over white and Asian veterans when administering the vaccine for COVID-19. This racial preference is unconstitutional.
The VA is doing this because it thinks blacks and Hispanics are at greater risk. But these minorities are not inherently at greater risk of contracting the virus. There is nothing special about their genes that puts them in danger. It is just that their jobs, neighborhoods, and backgrounds tend to put them in more frequent contact with people who already carry COVID-19. So it is those characteristics -- not race -- that the VA can legally consider in handing out the vaccine to veterans. As the Supreme Court explained in Bartlett v. Strickland (2009), the government is supposed to use race only as a "last resort." That's true even when it has a better reason for using race than the VA has -- like addressing a history of past governmental discrimination against a minority group.
Yes, Bader is really arguing that. But at no point does he offer evidence that blacks and Hispanics are "not inherently at greater risk of contracting the virus" despite the fact that it's indisputably true that Blacks and Hispanics have risk factors that lead to them catching and dying from COVID-19.
Bader went into denial on this point, dismissing it all as societal, saying it's effectively their fault that they're more exposed to catching it:
But generally speaking, the fact that a group has been disproportionately affected is not a reason for giving the group a racial preference, even if the disproportionate impact is from a government policy -- rather than, as is the case for most black and Hispanic people who have contracted COVID, from societal factors that put them into more frequent contact with COVID carriers.
The Supreme Court has ruled that "societal discrimination" against a minority group is not a valid reason for giving priority to members of that group. (See Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co. (1989)). So even if black and Hispanic people experience discrimination that shunts them into lower-paying jobs with increased risk of catching the coronavirus, that wouldn't be reason enough for the VA to give them a racial preference.
[...]
So the fact that "some groups of people have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19" is not a reason to give such groups priority in access to the vaccine, based on their race.
The VA may argue that it is OK to consider veterans' race because it is only doing so as one of several factors, such as age and existing health problems. But giving a racial preference is presumptively unconstitutional, even when race is just one of many factors being used by a government agency and there are special reasons for it to prize racial diversity.
Curiously, Bader doesn't offer a plan to reduce the way Blacks and Hispanics are "disproportionately affected" by coronavirus, despite his framing as merely a societal problem; he simply rants that they don't deserve to cut the line in front of him. Not exactly the smartest hill for him to choose to die on.
Rich Noyes' False Conflation Station Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Rich Noyes writes in a Dec. 11 post:
Every four years since 2000, the online opinion site Slate lets readers see how their staff has voted in the presidential election. It’s a commendable exercise in transparency, especially in a profession where many journalists invariably promote liberal politicians and liberal viewpoints, only to deny their work is influenced by their opinions.
This year, the survey found, not a single Slate staffer voted for President Trump, even though more than 74,200,000 other Americans did — a record haul for a Republican nominee. That compares with 56 staffers who said they voted for Joe Biden (98%), one who picked Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins (2%), and one intern who as of November 2 still hadn’t made up her mind between Hawkins and Biden.
Four years ago, the staff poll showed a similar tilt: 59 votes (97%) for Democrat Hillary Clinton, one for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, one write-in vote for independent candidate Evan McMullin, and none for Donald Trump.
The question is whether Slate is indicative of the broader liberal media establishment.
Stop right there. Noyes already identified Slate as an "opinion site" -- meaning writers are permitted to put their opinions in writing -- so it's irrelevant and misleading to compare it with the "liberal media establishment," which is more focused on news and, despite Noyes' mocking, you are allowed to hold personal political opinions that do not necessarily show themselves in reporting.
But Noyes is determined to falsely conflate the two:
Looking at their coverage, it’s hard to imagine anyone at the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC or any of the broadcast networks voting for Trump, ever. And let’s not forget that Joe Biden won 93% of this year’s newspaper endorsements, vs. just seven percent for Trump.
We can also compare Slate’s tally with surveys of journalists conducted by a variety of scholars and organizations over the past several decades. While some surveyed elite journalists, and others looked at a wider sample that included small-town newspapers, these polls invariably found a massive gap between the media and the public.
Ah, yes, the journalist surveys. The most notorious of these that the MRC has touted over the years was one that found 89 percent of reporters covering the federal government voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. We wrote about this study 20 years ago, and it was highly flawed and skewed; conservative journals were largely excluded, national outlets were a small percentage of respondents, and the bulk were actually from regional newspapers who are focused on covering issues for their local readers and not catering to a national audience.
Aas for Noyes' complaint that "not a single Slate staffer voted for President Trump, even though more than 74,200,000 other Americans did": We can assume that no MRC employee (including those who work for its "news" division, CNSNews.com) voted for Biden though more than 81 million other Americans did -- a record haul for any presidential candidate. Doesn't that mean the MRC is as out of touch as Noyes wants you to believe Slate is?
Of course, Noyes will never hold its employees to the same standard it holds Slate -- nor will he release an official tally of how he and his fellow MRC employees voted. The MRC is strictly a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do type of operation.
Patrice Lewis began her Dec. 11 WorldNetDaily column by stating, "I'm going to be quoting a lot of sources in this column rather than writing much original content. That's because there are so many others saying things better than I can." Unfortunately, most of those sources are fringe-right conspiracy websites ranting about the coronavirus pandemic and asserting that all the chaos surrounding it has been planned, because this is the conclusion she came to:
Make no mistake, we're in the throes of an orchestrated economic collapse. Orchestrated. Got that? Orchestrated. It's not about controlling a virus; it's about controlling people. Even Rush Limbaugh is calling this a "plandemic."
One person commented: "I remember thinking when the lockdowns started – don't they know this is going to destroy the economy? And then reality hit me, and I knew that this is their end game and that it's all been planned."
[...]
"Science," in other words, usually means whatever a political tyrant wants it to mean. We all know Trump rallies are "superspreader" events, but BLM or Antifa protests or Biden celebrations are fine, just fine.
Lewis then described the economic fallout for her business: "Our wholesale woodcraft business that has supported us for nearly 30 years absolutely tanked during 2020. Thirty years of building up a business, and now it's gone." After citing a few more fringe people, Lewis concluded: "OK, my rant is over. But the economic misery for millions of people continues. Folks, the pain isn't worth the cost."
Strangely, Lewis never identifies who specifically is behind this conspiracy beyond a shadowy "they."
Tim Graham's Double Standard On October Surprises Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham spent his Dec. 11 column whining that the right-wing hit job on Hunter Biden -- which the MRC has gleefully embraced -- was dismissed outside the right-wing media bubble as nothing more than a dirt-digging expedition:
Hunter Biden only survives "difficult challenges" and "emerges stronger" through the energetic strangling of his lobbying scandals by the mainstream media.
[...]
Add the spin in The New York Times' front-page headline the Sunday before Election Day: "Foiled Once, Giuliani's Team Peddles More Dirt." There were three photographs in the story: one of President Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani, one of former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, and one of Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui. The story focused much more on their machinations than on Hunter's.
One could just as easily demonize the daily output of The Times in a similar way by referencing The Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger in a headline: "Foiled in 2016, Sulzberger's Team Peddles More Dirt on the Trumps."
Our media elite pretend that they're all for the free and democratic exchange of information, and for holding powerful people accountable. But the suppressed Hunter Biden scandal story underlines that they have been shaming anti-Democratic narratives by engaging in character assassination of the conservative media.
This is all projection, of course -- what he's accusing the "liberal media" of doing on Hunter Biden is exactly what the MRC did for Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign.
While Graham complained that the Times pointed out how strategists close to Trump conspired with the New York Post to push the Hunter Biden story, things were much different when a tape of Trump disparaging women was released during the 2016 election. Graham's boss, Brent Bozell, rushed to Trump's defense by attacking NBC (which produced "Access Hollywood," the show where Trump made the off-the-record remarks) for allegedly sitting on the Trump tape and that "the timing was deliberate" for its release.
Graham himself worked to dismiss the story, complaining about "the ongoing obsession with women charging Donald Trump with sexual harassment." Graham and Bozell huffed in a column, "They say it was a recent discovery. No media October Surprise there, no siree," then changed the subject to the womanizing of Bill Clinton, who was not running in 2016.Graham also complained: "NBC and other liberal networks are politically savvy enough to know cynics will not believe you when you claim you suddenly discovered something touted as a political silver bullet with just a few weeks to go in the campaign. But that’s what they’re claiming."
Bozell later ranted, "What NBC has done is a direct threat to the democratic process and evidence of what conservatives have been saying all along. A network that purports to hold itself up as an objective news source while at the same time attempts to fix an election has lost all credibility. NBC must take responsibility, apologize to Donald Trump, and fire whoever was behind the strategic release of this tape."
Graham has never complained about the manufacted October-surprise aspect of the Hunter Biden, despite the fact that it had been floating around right-wing circles for over a year before the Post agreed to publish it. Graham and Bozell will not be calling for the New York Post to take responsibility, apologize to the Bidens and fire whoever was involved in the reporting of the story (though the lead reporter was embararassed enough by the story that he wouldn't put his byline on it).
Graham is nothing but a rank hypocrite. He will always give right-wing media a pass on things he attacks the "liberal media" for doing.
CNS Heathers Fox's Wallace Over "President-Elect" Term, Mask-Wearing Topic: CNSNews.com
Fox News host Chris Wallace has been a target of Heathering by the Media Research Center over the past year for lacking total obsequience to President Trump. Now the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, has gotten in on it. Patrick Goodenough complained in a Dec. 6 article:
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace took issue with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar during an interview Sunday for referring to “Vice President Joe Biden,” making the point three times that he should use the term “president-elect.”
Wallace also took the opportunity to criticize President Trump for an early lack of enthusiasm about mask wearing.
“If President Trump had worn a mask then and urged everyone to wear a mask then, back in April, the way Joe Biden is right now, wouldn’t we be in much better shape?” he asked.
Goodenough was quick to make an excuse for the latter -- "The World Health Organization (WHO) itself advised against mass mask wearing until June" -- but after complaining that Wallace "chided" Azar "for the third time" over the "president-elect" statement, he seemed to suggest Wallace wasn't totally wrong on the historyof the term:
Biden is the projected president-elect until the U.S. Congress on January 6 formally counts the electoral votes cast by the electoral college on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December – Dec. 14 in 2020.
The term “president-elect” has traditionally been used, informally, much earlier in the process. Trump changed his Twitter bio to “president elect” on November 9, 2016 – a day after the election – after media projected his electoral college victory.
Biden changed the beginning portion of his Twitter bio from “Senator, Vice President, 2020 candidate for President of the United States” to “President-elect” on November 7, on the day when CNN, followed by other outlets, projected that he would win Pennsylvania, and with it the presidency. Compared to the significant legal disputes in 2020, there were relatively minor disputes and recall counts in 2016.
Goodenough then went after Wallace for allegedly misleading about mask-wearing after he aired clips noting Trump's early callousness toward the practice, going on to nit-pick: "The two clips aired by Wallace gave the misleading impression that CDC Director Robert Redfield had announced the new mask wearing advice on April 3, with Trump then reacting to it. In fact, it was Trump who made the announcement, at a briefing of the White House coronavirus taskforce. The comment from Redfield in the clip played by Wallace, came an hour and two minutes later."
Goodenough then defended Trump's failure to wear a mask by citing evolving WHO guidance:
While critics stress the need to “follow the science” on mask wearing, the WHO itself advised against the general practice until June, arguing that it would encourage a false sense of security and deprive health staff treating COVID-19 patients of badly needed personal protective equipment.
Medical advice around the world on dealing with the novel coronavirus was evolving over time, as experts learned more about how the respiratory pathogen spread. Trump and his supporters are frequently accused of politicizing mask wearing; in fairness, people on both sides have done so.
[...]
Only on June 5 did WHO start advising – “in light of evolving evidence” – that people should be encouraged to wear masks “where there is widespread transmission and physical distancing is difficult, such as on public transport, in shops or in other confined or crowded environments.”
And even then, the global health agency noted, “At the present time, the widespread use of masks by healthy people in the community setting is not yet supported by high quality or direct scientific evidence and there are potential benefits and harms to consider.”
At the end of his article, Goodenough linked to an October article which he nit-picked Biden for saying he was wearing masks "from March on" when experts and "the science" advised it, huffing that "In fact public health authorities in the U.S. only issued guidance recommending mask wearing in public on April 3, and the World Health Organization (WHO) held off on doing so until early June" and following that with a lengthy "timeline of the evolving public health advice on mask wearing."
Goodenough has policed the accuracy of Biden's statements much more closely than he has Trump's.
Just accept it. Hillary Clinton and her daughter are never going away. In fact, Clinton-produced home entertainment is coming to a TV near you, courtesy of Apple.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, both Hillary and her daughter Chelsea are turning their latest book into an upcoming Apple TV+ docu-series. We guess the mother-daughter duo saw the bonkers cash that the Obama family earned in their Netflix deal and wanted a taste.
The Book of Gutsy Women, the non-fiction work co-authored by the Clinton ladies which tells the individual stories of the influential and trailblazing women in history, received a “straight-to-series” order from the billion dollar tech company’s streaming service. Not only is their book getting the Hollywood treatment, but both Chelsea and Hillary are set to host and executive produce the series.
Written in 2019, Gutsy Women includes stories of such powerful feminists like Harriet Tubman and Greta Thunberg. Though THR hasn’t confirmed which famous ladies profiled in the book will be featured in the series, the fact that we may get to see the tantrum-prone, eco nut Swedish child number among the company of actual heroes like Tubman is pretty vapid and depressing, and shows how seriously Rodham takes women’s issues. About as seriously as she takes Bill Clinton’s assault victims.
Of course -- and we apologize for reminding you -- Hillary Rodham is no stranger to the documentary world. Earlier this year, Hulu, a Disney-owned company, produced an eponymous docu-series on the failed 2016 presidential candidate’s life, which Newsbusters Executive Editor Tim Graham described as feeling like the “same Clinton-campaign claptrap from 1992, with the same childhood and college pals, and the same gush about how brilliant and promising she always was.”
In that supposed review in March, Graham also pulled the old MRC trick of noting Republicans who refused to take part in the making of the series, followed by criticism of the series for not having enough Hillary-bashing Republicans in it. Graham went on to assert that the program was "four hours of whining and victimhood," even though whining and victimhood is the MRC's editorial model.
Hays concluded by whining that "you might never escape the Obama/Clinton propaganda matrix now that they’re cutting deals with entertainment programming." That would obviously conflict with the right-wing propaganda matrix Hays and the MRC are pushing.
WND Columnist Botches Economic History Topic: WorldNetDaily
Brent Smith wrote in his Dec. 4 WorldNetDaily column:
First, you may be thinking, what do I mean a third depression? So let me rephrase it. We have had only one depression that we all know of, the Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 through the late 1930s. I'll discuss the other one later.
I fear that if all goes the way it could, with Biden as president and the Democrats taking the Senate, we will likely experience a third. And this one may be our worst.
I'm sure we've heard how the great President Franklin Roosevelt (he was a bad dude) ushered us out of the Great Depression by developing all those wonderful programs and spending all that money (we call it stimulus today).
But everything most have heard of FDR was a load of crap. It was Roosevelt's policies that pushed us from a depression into a Great Depression, not the other way around, but I digress.
Well, that's incredibly counterfactual. The Great Depression was at its worst at the time Roosevelt took office; while there was a recession in 1937-38, it was not as severe as conditions were in 1933, and it waslargely the result of FDR giving in to Republicans and shutting down economy-boosting federal aid before the economy could adequately sustain itself.
But Smith wasn't done misinforming on economic history:
Surprise! There was another, but because progressives write the history books, you may know little, if anything about it. It was the depression of 1920.
In 1920, thanks to the policies of the other progressive president, Woodrow Wilson, America's unemployment rate skyrocketed to 20%. Gross National Product had declined by 17%. It was a disaster.
[...]
What America did in 1920 was to elect fiscally responsible adults, who took the reins in March of 1921 and made the hard decisions that most politicians would never have the courage to do.
The newly elected Warren G. Harding-Calvin Coolidge administration cut the federal government’s budget almost in half within two years.
[...]
Taxes were cut for everyone. Even the Federal Reserve was remarkably restrained as it sat on its hands and, thankfully, did almost nothing.
And things were truly awful, but for only about a year.
But rather than whine and cry as many do today, Americans did what Americans do, or at least used to do. They took their medicine, endured the economic hardship, and just six months later, by August 1921, the unemployment rate had dropped from 20% to 6.7%.
Harding died suddenly in 1923, and his vice president, the Great Calvin Coolidge, continued the programs. By the end of that year, the unemployment rate was down to 2.4%, an 88% drop.
Actually, that depression was mainly driven by the end of World War I and the Spanish flu pandemic, as well as bad Federal Reserve monetary policy. Further, as that Wikipedia article on the depression from whcih Smith apparently cribbed his claims noted, there are two sets of unemployment figures for those years -- numbers for the 1920s were not collected the same way they are today -- and Smith close the more dramatic of the two, the Lebergott numbers; one researcher argued that "Lebergott's labor force numbers are too high in recessions and too low in booms." A second set, the Romer numbers, stated that unemployment peaked at 8.7 percent in 1921 and decreased to 4.8 percent in 1923 -- which don't illustrate Smith's column quite as dramatically. That federal budget cut was almost entirely driven by the end of World War I; outside that, the federal budget continued to grow under Harding and Coolidge.
Of course, Smith wouldn't be a WND columnist in good standing if he didn't fail basic research.
CNS Attacks Buttigieg After Biden Nominates Him As Transportation Secretary Topic: CNSNews.com
When Pete Buttigieg ran for president earlier this year, CNSNews.com regularly attacked him with an emphasis on gay-bashing. Now that President-elect Joe Biden intends to nominate Buttigieg as his transportation secretary, CNS went on the attack again -- and, again, with a side of gay-bashing.
CNS bizarrely felt the need to flood the zone regarding Buttigieg's nomination, with a whopping five articles in two days:
The first, anonymously written article first quoted Nancy Pelosi calling the nomination historic, then making sure to add, "Buttigieg, a homosexual, is married to Chasten Buttigieg." The article is irrelevantly illustrated by picture of Buttigieg kissing Chasten.
The second, by Susan Jones, made a point of noting that Buttigieg has "no particular credentials in the transportation industry" and portrayed Buttigieg stating that "I proposed to my husband Chasten in an airport terminal" as his claim to transportation expertise. The article also included a picture of Buttigieg and his spouse, which it at least somewhat germane to the article's content.
The third, also by Jones, dismissed Biden's call for a "railroad revolution" during his Buttigieg announcementas a "back-to-the-future comment" and once again claimed that Buttigieg "didn't have any solid transportation credentials to highlight."
The fourth, by Craig Bannister, omitted Buttigieg's first name while scaremongering that "The man apparent President-Elect Joe Biden wants to head up the Department of Transportation has repeatedly called for a tax on carbon, which would result in an increase in the cost of gasoline at the fuel pump. And, carbon is just one of the things Buttigieg has said he wants to tax."
The fifth, by managing editor Michael W. Chapman, combines his usual gay-bashing with implicit criticism of a liberal Catholic priest who praised Buttigieg's nomination:
Although former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is a practicing homosexual "married" to another man, influential Catholic priest Rev. James Martin, SJ, praised him and congratulated President-elect Joe Biden for picking the "openly gay" Buttigieg to be the next Secretary of Transportation.
[...]
Engaging in homosexual practices and being in a same-sex "marriage" are contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church. Promoting or supporting such actions are also contrary to church teachings.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, Fr. Martin "suggested in November that religious liberty claims by Catholic adoption agencies who refused to place children with homosexual couples was 'a cover for homophobia.'"
The article isillustrated with a shot of a Time magazine cover featuring Buttigieg with his spouse.
Four days later, on Dec. 21, Jones did an article about a Fox News appearance by Buttigieg, making sure to assert once again that "as a former mayor, Buttigieg has no particular experience in transportation or infrastructure."
CNS wasn't done going after Buttigieg after the initial announcement, though. An anonmously written Dec. 29 article was devoted to noting that "sent out a tweet on December 26, wishing people a 'joyful and meaningful Kwanzaa,'" for the sole apparent purpose of using a picture of Buttigieg hugging his spouse. The anonymous writer did not elaborate on the purpose of using that irrelevant picture with this article.
MRC's Graham Chortles Over NY Times Goof, Censors Goofs At Fox News Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham gloated in a Dec. 18 post:
The New York Times has a massive egg on its face as a prize-winning audio series has collapsed under a weight of falsehoods. David Rutz of Fox News reported their 12-part series “Caliphate” heavily relied on a serial fabulist who claimed to have been a member of the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist organization. Reporter Rukmini Callimachi drew a Pulitzer Prize finalist citation and brought the newspaper its first Peabody audio award.
[...]
This whole fiasco is an embarrassment for a paper whose motto is "The truth is more important now than ever."
Meanwhile, Graham -- and the rest of the MRC -- has censored controversies regarding its favorite TV channel, Fox News from just the past month or so.
In late November, it was announced that Fox News had settled a lawsuit filed by the family of Seth Rich -- which reportedly involves paying the Rich family a seven-figure settlement -- over a false story it published on its website pushing the conspiracy theory that Rich, a Democratic staffer who was murdered in 2016, was killed because he leaked Democratic emails to WikiLeaks. The MRC barely mentioned the lawsuit at all, spending more time complaining that Fox News was being held accountable for pushing Seth Rich conspiracy theories.
In November 2017, Curtis Houck whined, "When some on the right pushed the Seth Rich conspiracy theories, numerous voices unfairly attacked conservative media writ large." But he ignored the fact that the largest conservative media outlet -- Fox News -- was doing exactly that, and the MRC didn't exactly distance itself from that, let alone criticize Fox News for doing so. Similarly, Alex Christy complained in a March 2019 post that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough "would not admit that one can be criticize both Seth Rich conspiracy peddlers and Russia-gate hustlers" -- but Christy didn't admit that his employer wasn't that organization.
Also getting censored at the MRC was any mention of Fox News' abrupt walkback of the election-fraud conspiracy theories it had peddled for more than a month that focused on electronic voting systems from Dominion and Smartmatic, prompted by a lawsuit threat from Smartmatic. This was followed by a similar lawsuit threat from Dominion.
Being loyal Trump sycophants, the MRC had no problem with nudging those bogus conspiracy theories forward:
On Nov. 16, Alexander Hall complained that Trump was "censored" on Twitter for "sharing a clip discussing how Dominion voting machines could be hacked."
He complained again three days later that a Twitter user hiding behind a fake name for "censored" for tweeting a video on how "Detroit Dominion IT worker describes exactly how poll workers inflated Biden vote tallies."
On Nov. 21, Jeffrey Lord suggested that the fact that Dominion had "lawyered up" and backed out of a biased hearing on purported election fraud in Pennsylvania was evidence of nefarious doings by the company.
On Nov. 23, Kayla Sargent uncritically repeated Trump-adjacent lawyer Sidney Powell's claim that the election was "stolen by massive fraud through Dominion and Smartmatic" while complaining that Twitter briefly suspended her account.
The MRC wasn't exactly a profile in courage in going along with bogus conspiracies -- and doubly so in censoring those who pointed out the bogusness. Of course, there's likely a good reason Graham didn't want to note that Fox News has been caught doing the same things he was lashing out at the Times for doing: Reporting the full truth might mean that MRC talking heads never appear on their favorite news channel again.
CNS Editor's Tortured Analogy To Attack Forgiving College Tuition Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey began his Dec. 9 column in a weird way that still conforms to his right-wing politics:
Jim and Jill were born a little more than a year apart to the same unmarried mother in Southern California.
Jim was adopted by a working-class family in the San Fernando Valley, where the father made his living as an auto mechanic and the mother as a maid.
Jill was adopted by an upper-middle-class family in Pasadena, where the father was a lawyer and the mother stayed home.
Yes, the "unmarried mother" gave her children up for adoption. This is the last we hear of the birth mother from Jeffrey, so we don't know if he has any other humiliation or punishment for her for giving birth to children outside of marriage.
To briefly summarize where he's going with this: Jim grew up and followed his adoptive father as an auto mechanic, while Jill was a good enough student to get admitted to Harvard but not good enough to earn a scholarship, but went anyway even though she could have saved money by going to a state school. She took out student loans for that and law school, while Jim was just scraping by.
We're now to the point of the story where Jeffrey intones, "Then Joe Biden was elected president." And this turns into a rant against reducing student loan debt. And here's where Jeffrey's tortured analogy goes south:
So, federal student loans caused money to flow as follows: Jim worked as an auto mechanic and, along with millions of other hardworking non-college-educated Americans, paid federal taxes. The federal government took some of that money and sent it to Harvard and other colleges in the form of student loans. The government attributed these loans to people like Jill — the sister Jim did not know — as payment for their tuition.
The first winner in this exchange: Harvard.
The second winner: Jill, who got a Harvard degree — albeit while running up $24,000 in debt.
[...]
Can a college graduate — whose median household income is $51,456 more than a high school graduate's — afford to pay off $24,000 (or even $50,000) in student loans?
Or should an auto mechanic pay taxes — and interest on an increased federal debt — so Joe Biden can forgive a Harvard graduate's student loans?
But Jeffrey offers no evidence that forgiving student debt would increase the taxes of his hypothetical auto mechanic. In fact, it has no immediate effect on the national debt, and would merely add on to the debt down the road.
This also shows us where CNS' coverage of federal deficit issues will be going for the next four years. After four years of refusing to blame Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate for running up the deficit (or, when they were blamed, putting equal blame on Democrats even though that's not how that works), Jeffrey and CNS will resume blaming Democrats by name, the way they did when Barack Obama was president.
Just like it did with the Trump campaign, the Media Research Center got its marching orders from Republican leadership: Go on the attack against Raphael Warnock, the Democratic candidate in one of the two Georgia Senate runoff races. And Warnock was very much targeted: A search of the NewsBusters archive found a whopping 46 articles that referenced Warnock between the Nov. 3 election and press time, compared with 35 articles referencing Jon Ossoff, the Democratic candidate in the other Georgia runoff race. 
Calling someone a "Manchurian candidate" has been a reliable form of attack by right-wingers against political candidates they don't like. 
Back in October, WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center huffed in a Dec. 18 
Hans Bader complained in a Dec. 10 CNSNews.com 
The Media Research Center's Rich Noyes writes in a Dec. 11 
Patrice Lewis began her Dec. 11 WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham spent his Dec. 11 
Fox News host Chris Wallace has been a 
As with 
Brent Smith wrote in his Dec. 4 WorldNetDaily 
When Pete Buttigieg ran for president earlier this year, CNSNews.com 
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham gloated in a Dec. 18 
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey began his Dec. 9 
