LIARS: MRC Pushes Facebook 'Censorship' Narrative -- While Bragging About How Popular Its Facebook Content Is Topic: Media Research Center
We'vedocumentedhow the Media Research Center's narrative that Facebook loves to "censor" conservatives and only conservatives is bogus, given how much Facebook has reached out to conservatives -- including Mark Zuckerberg having secret dinners with Brent Bozell -- in an attempt to stop the attacks. Indeed, the evidence that Facebook gives conservatives a more-than-fair shake continues to pile up:
Facebook posts from pages promoting content far-right screamer Alex Jonesand his Infowars operation urging a violent response in advance of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot (despite Jones himself being banned from Facebook) got more than a million interactions.
Facebook has been pushing content from right-winger Ben Shapiro on users who have previously shown no interest in him or related content despite his Daily Wire breaking Facebook rules by using purportedly unrelated pages to promote its content, reportedly out of fear Shapiro will whine about being "shadowbanned" if he faces any restrictions.
Yet the MRC's false narrative has continued, pushing every example of a conservative being "censored" (even if they are actually far-right extremists). A few recent examples:
But the MRC is lying to you about conservative "censorship." How do we know? Because not only does the MRC use Facebook, it brags about how well it's working. On April 6, the MRC sent out an email tellings its readers about how essential a tool Facebook is (overenthusiastic bold and colored type in original):
We have big news that brings immense insight to conservatives who believe in spreading the messages of freedom.
The news?
Last week, the MRC was second only to NewsMax for interactions on social media.
The insight? This information informs us that we’re having an effect INSIDE the arenas of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more, and it will be wise to continue spreading the word on traditional social media—even as conservatives join great new alternatives.
A recent study by CrowdTangle, a social media analytics app that Facebook recently purchased, shows that the Media Research Center (which includes brands such as MRCTV, NewsBusters, and CNSNews) had 2.13 MILLION interactions last week alone!
This is a testament to the devotion, hard work, and principles of those who help gather all this important conservative information and who share it.
The information is spread through you, your family, your friends, your neighbors, co-workers, and clients. Hour after hour, day after day, the signal of freedom propagates across Big Tech, thanks to all who continue to maintain their voices on those sometimes difficult “social media” platforms.
[...]
As long as we can have this kind of impact within the lair of the left, we can win new friends, gain allies, and spread information to millions.
It’s fundamental. The MRC wants you to know how much we appreciate your principled efforts to defend freedom and truth. This news about the power of that impact offers us a key tactical reminder that we should not retreat into an echo chamber, but, instead, keep participating in the conversation!
Keep spreading the word, even in what we might think are hostile environments. Being present is half the battle. The other half is making sure your voice is heard.
Remember: “The MRC Effect” is clear. Your work, your news—your principles—are being seen.
Keep it up, and keep spreading the word—on ALL the platforms!
The email also includes a link to a video -- hosted on Facebook, natch -- that tells people howto keep MRC content in their Facebook newsfeed. Still, it laughably insisted, "we know that Facebook and other media platforms are censoring the right."
Lying to people to push a false narrative is clearly a key part of "the MRC effect."
CNS Offers Negative Coverage Of Another Biden Speech Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com penchant for negative, nitpicky and cherry-picked coverage of President Biden continued with a speech he have in Georgia the day after his address to Congress (which received the same treatment). The big news, as far as Susan Jones was concerned, was Biden misspeaking:
"End detention now! End detention now!" cried protesters who interrupted President Joe Biden's speech in Duluth, Georgia on Thursday.
"Abolish ICE," they shouted, holding up a large orange banner that read, "communities not cages." Biden could not read the banner because it faced the crowd.
Biden, distracted, paused several times to listen to the protesters. He also responded to them:
"I agree with you. I'm working on it, man. Give me another five days," Biden told them. "Folks, y'all know what they're talking about. There should be no private prisons, period. None, period. That's what they're talking about. And private detention centers. They should not exist. And we are working to close all of them."
Jones went on to complain that "his administration ordered ICE and Border agents to change their language as it relates to illegal aliens" -- which, of course, CNS framed as "censorship"; an April 19 article by Craig Bannister summarized in the headline: "Biden Censors ICE, CBP Vocabulary; Bans Words Like ‘Alien’ and ‘Immigrant Assimilation’." Bannister further complained that the new terms suggest that, instead of expecting illegal aliens to 'assimilate' to U.S. laws and culture, American society must change in order to “integrate” and accommodate the newcomers."
After saying hello to the crowd, Joe veered into an (unscripted) wife joke:
"Well, I'm ready to go home, because she never says that to me at home. I was--this was worth the trip, hearing that. I am Jill's husband. It's obvious to everybody. I never get introduced as 'she's my wife.' I'm her husband. And, you know, I'm proud to be..."
Shortly after he started speaking, Biden was interrupted by -- and distracted by -- protesters screaming, "End detention now! Abolish private detention centers!" He tried to mollify them by agreeing with the need to get rid of private prisons.
Jones went on to whine that "Biden then launched into a recitation of his jobs program, his intention to halve child poverty through new tax credits and social programs, his climate change agenda, and his intention to raise taxes on the rich for the benefit of the poor -- and so much more. Biden made the same points he outlined in Wednesday night's speech to a sparsely populated, well-masked, joint session of Congress."
"I'm looking for my mask. I'm in trouble," President Joe Biden explained to a drive-in rally in Duluth, Georgia on Thursday when he remained at the podium after ending his speech and after introducing Georgia's two senators.
Democrat Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock waited awkwardly behind the president, as he scrambled to find his mask.
Nope, it wasn't in his speech folder. No, it hadn't fallen to the floor. Where could it be?
First Lady Jill Biden walked over to help her husband look, as the music ("Your love keeps lifting me higher") played on.
In a remarkable moment, Biden, helped by Jill, finally found his mask -- whipped it out of his pocket -- just as the song reached the line, "I'm so glad I finally found you."
Watch the video. It's funny.
Jones only thinks it's "funny" because it gives her an opportunity to depict Biden as a doddering old man -- something she would never have done of Trump despite his similar mock-worthy behavior.
MRC Defends Joe Rogan's Vaccine Misinformation Topic: Media Research Center
If podcaster Joe Rogan is not an actual right-winger, he's definitely right-wing-adjacent -- which is good enough for the Media Research Center. Last year, after Rogan moved his "massively popular" show to Spotify, the MRC's Alexander Hall highlighted criticism of him for the right-wing guests he has had, including Alex Jones, Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes and an anti-transgender author. But Hall also touted how Rogan interviewd more mainstream right-wingers like Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson. In Jnauary, Christian Toto gushed over Rogan's "refreshing take on Big Tech censorship," which basically came down to being opposed to banning Donald Trump from social media for his legacy of incitement. And in March, P.J. Gladnick defended Rogan from accusations of being a right-wing host -- hey, Bernie Sanders was once a guest!
So when Rogan started peddling misinformation about the coronavirus vaccine, the MRC rushed to his defense over this "hot take." Kayla Sargent wrote in an April 28 post:
Intellectual Dark Web member and podcast host Joe Rogan, once again, appears to have angered the left with recent comments on the COVID-19 vaccine in his podcast,The Joe Rogan Experience.
Some on the left, however, seemed to not only be displeased with Rogan’s COVID-19 commentary, but also with the fact that Spotify has not taken action in response to the episode. Spotify holds an exclusive contract with Rogan.
During the podcast, Rogan said: “I think, for the most part, it’s safe to get vaccinated. I do. I do. But if you’re like 21-years-old, and you say to me, ‘Should I get vaccinated?’ I’ll go ‘no.’” He continued: “If you're a healthy person, and you're exercising all the time, and you're young, and you’re eating well, like, I don't think you need to worry about this.”
Of course, the left panicked over the fact that Rogan dared to question the vaccine in any capacity.
Sargent went on to cite Dr. Anthony Fauci -- who is definitely not part of "the left" -- criticizing Rogan's advice.But Fauci wasn't alone: a group of doctors denounced Rogan's misinformation, pointing out that "Rogan demonstrates that he lacks a simple, fundamental understanding about how infectious diseases — including Covid-19 — spread," adding that "While scientists and doctors are generally more trusted, competing messages like Rogan's can be confusing and affect people's behaviors with regard to their health."
The MRC has yet to mention that Rogan later tried to clarify his misinformation, denying that he's an anti-vaxxer but still (falsely) insisting that young, health ypeople don't need the vaccine.
Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a domestic terrorist group, that has done more to factually harm and promote the regressive rejection of modernity than the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) did in an 86-year period, and that includes being responsible for the deaths of black people. From 1882 to 1968, there were 3,446 blacks lynched in America by the Democrat-controlled terrorist group.
BLM exists to extort massive sums of money and blackmail corporate America into doing the bidding of the rabid, demonic hordes holding elected office and the satanic demigods existing in the political shadow world, who fund and dictate the actions of BLM et al.
Nothing BLM has done or will do benefits anyone apart from its leadership and the godless entities responsible for the terrorist organization's existence.
[...]
At no time in American history have white supremacists burned down and/or instigated the burning down of entire neighborhoods in America. But BLM has fomented racist animosity toward law enforcement and entire police departments, which led to the destruction of neighborhoods in New York, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Texas, California, Missouri, Maryland and numerous other cities nationally, even spreading the spores of their malcontent to cities around the world.
-- Mychal Massie, April 19 WorldNetDaily column (who is apparently unware of Tulsa)
Many of the hyphenated-folks are celebrating as if they just won the lottery, because former Police Officer Derek Chauvin received what was a fait accompli.
Appearing as a guest on a West Coast talk show the day after the guilty verdict was rendered, I said: "Mr. Chauvin was always going to be found guilty." Mr. Chauvin's fate was sealed from the moment Floyd breathed the last breath of his shockingly wasted life. But, I digress.
Maybe one of these preening children of Belial would care to explain why they are celebrating Mr. Chauvin's conviction? What good does his conviction do them? Is Mr. Chauvin's conviction going to put food on their tables? Is his conviction going to rebuild the neighborhoods they burned to the ground, the stores that they looted or even put a table in the ashes of the slums they once called home so they can put food on it, assuming they had food?
[...]
At the time of his death, Floyd's body was all dope. In what community in America are heroin, fentanyl, methamphetamine and morphine legal? These aren't recreational pharmaceuticals people use when they're just chillin' around the house breaking open 40s and watching "Low-Bron" James dribble.
These are death-inducing drugs, and the neighborhoods where they're purchased and manufactured are cesspools of uninterrupted generational violence.
Streets are being renamed after this person, a 6-foot-6, 245-pound pariah when he was alive. Schools are being renamed after him; statues and monuments are in the works. Practically every wall in the ghetto has Floyd's likeness on it.
But, what about the people he molested and assaulted? What about his contribution to moral decay and the villainous example he lived? What about the pregnant woman whose apartment he staked out and then led others in breaking into? Do these smiling people who are happy because Mr. Chauvin was convicted give a rat's tail how that woman feels today? What about her nightmares caused by having a loaded gun with hammer cocked, pushed into her pregnant belly and told unless she gave him her money he was going to shoot her baby? Has anyone asked her what she thinks? Are we to conclude that his other seven convictions should be ignored? What kind of responsible role model fathers a half-dozen children all from different women, not marrying any of them? Should we conclude he wasn't a reprobate father because the women could have killed the babies?
Floyd is just another example of godless commonality and evil his kind embody.
The Republican Party is dishonest, spineless and without question deceitful on every quantifiable level; but that notwithstanding, the Democratic Party is the most existential proof that evil exists, since the serpent entered the Garden.
The singular difference between the political constructs is: Republicans try to hide/deny they are wicked; while Democrats are brazenly unapologetic and demonstrative in making it clear their evil is without bottom. They are indeed the progeny of Satan. Following in the footprints of the devil himself, everything they represent is evil and anti-God. This is a fact that goes unaddressed. Even more condemnable is the fact that it goes unaddressed by the Christian church. But I digress.
The depth of Erebusic duplicity openly displayed by Democrats is beyond belief. They lie and embrace duplicitous double standards with impunity.
[...]
But their standards of propriety and their condemnation of morals don't extend to the likes of Biden's so-called assistant secretary for health, Richard Levine. Levine is praised for being a transgendered whatever. In reality he is a selfish individual suffering from a mental illness that has him convinced he's a woman. This motivated him to abandon his natural family and seek an environment where his sexual dysphoria perversion could be openly practiced – the only requirement being that he convince people to call him Rachel.
Specific to that is more evidence of the depth of Democrats' embracing of anti-God agendas. They use threat of law to assure someone like Richard Levine be referred to as a "she" and called by his assumed female name.
There was a time witches were burned at the stake to the joyous applause of the villagers, because doing same was one specific avenue of ridding the village and the surrounding countryside of their evil. Today witches (and no I didn't misspell the word) are celebrated by factions only marginally less demonic than the malefic witch, herself. Take, for example, the Obama woman.
Obama may not exhibit the oft-mentioned eccrine bromhidrosis of Hillary Clinton; but the woman is grotesquely more unattractive in appearance and much less accomplished. However, she is able to play the skin-color and "white people out to get me" card. And play it she does – at every opportunity, especially in situations she is able to co-opt and prostitute skin-color animus that undermines civility and promotes a toxic environment for law enforcement.
[...]
Obama spread it on thick, saying: "But every time they get in the car by themselves, I worry about what assumption is being made by somebody who doesn't know everything about them – the fact that they are good students and polite girls, but maybe their playing their music a little loud. Maybe somebody sees the back of their head and makes an assumption."
She was conveying the message that white people, and white police officers specifically, are waiting on every corner to kill blacks. I would say she's confusing V.F.W.s and police departments with the Planned Parenthood industrialized extermination centers strategically located in the ghettos.
Even by her low standards of propriety, this performance was a disgrace. The circus atmosphere and the unchallenged claims are typical of a Gayle King interview. I guess something could be said for her not wallowing around on the floor, doing pushups and jumping jacks, as she once did to the perverse pleasure of lesbian Ellen DeGeneres.
MRC Psaki-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Watch Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck clearly thinks that Jen Psaki's White House press briefings are nothing more than an show for his amusement -- an opinion we're pretty sure he never offered about the press brieefings of his old crush, Kayleigh McEnany. Thus, we're treated to things like a May 4 post headlined "The Psaki Show Is Back":
The White House press briefing returned on Tuesday following a week-long hiatus and, with plenty to talk about, Fox News’s Kristin Fisher burst out of the gate and asked Press Secretary Jen Psaki whether teachers unions hold sway over CDC recommendations for school reopenings as well as what the White House thinks Americans should be allowed to do once vaccinated.
[...]
Though there hadn’t been an episode of the Psaki show in a week, it was the same old, same old with Psaki providing next to nothing [.]
If there's nothing of interest but the "same old, same old," why does Houck continue writing these posts? Because they're not about the actual content -- his goal is to trash Psaki at every opportunity and gush over the hostile questioning of right-wing Fox News reporters like Fisher and Peter Doocy.
Perhaps Houck took his own advice, for he didn't cover briefings for the next few days. His next post was on May 10, which began with a shot at Fisher suggesting that she's a traitor to the right-wing ideological cause by leaving Fox News for CNN -- which Houck hates with a psychotic passion -- but his man-crush Doocy was on the job in her stead to push right-wing talking points:
With Kristin Fisher having left to join the evil empire, Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy soldiered on during Monday’s briefing and found success in repeatedly questioning Press Secretary Jen Psaki over the fallout from Friday’s jobs report and whether increased unemployment benefits are keeping people from wanting to rejoin the labor force.
Doocy pointed to the fact that “employment only rose about 266,000 jobs in April out 7.4 million or so jobs openings” before asking whether the Biden administration knows “that people are just choosing not to apply for jobs because the extra unemployment benefits are so good.”
Psaki insisted Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and the rest of Team Biden had “looked at the data” and they insist things were going swimmingly with unemployment having nothing to do with the increased welfare state.
Instead, she blamed a lack of affordable childcare, “the need” for more employers to pay workers “a livable, working wage,” the number of vaccinations when the jobs numbers were put together, and yes, schools still being closed.
That would be stem from the preferences of the teachers unions, so if only that was a group the White House could have influence over and not the other way around.
Doocy came prepared for this kind of answer, so he shot back: “But Bank of America economists, who are cited in a Bloomberg story say, anybody making less than $32,000 a year is better off financially just taking unemployment so is the White House creating an incentive just to stay home?”
Psaki hit back that it’s not the belief of “the majority of economists, internally and externally of the White House” and instead defending the increased payouts due to the “very difficult economic downturn.”
Psaki's actually right, but the MRC is not paying Houck to say she's ever right about anything. His job is to push right-wing narratives regardless of their accuracy, bash Psaki and lionize Doocy.
Farah Marks WND's 24th Anniversary With Recounting Of Its Biggest Lies And Bias Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily recently marked its 24th anniversary, and editor Joseph Farah used that occasion to go down memory lane touting WND's alleged "accomplishments." He wrote:
One of the proudest moments for me was our sustained coverage of the Terri Schiavo case. WND was the only news outlet that covered the saga of this young, disabled woman, who was eventually starved to death by court order, for two years before it became, for a short time, the biggest story in the world. I am convinced that without that coverage, few would even know the name Terri Schiavo today. She might have died in obscurity, and the great debate over the sanctity of life that her sacrifice inspired might have been limited to local backwater courtrooms.
Now, we've been following WND's journey for much of that time, and we know when Farah is BSing you. We documented how WND's coverage of the Terri Schiavo story washighlybiased, effectively serving as the PR agent for her family while repeatedly suggesting that her husband murdered her, first witih the brain injury that left her in a persistent vegetative state and then going through the legal process to have her life support cut off after years of no change in her condition. A book by a WND reporter on the case perpetuated much of that unfair and defamatory bias.
Farah continued:
More recently, WND set the standard – and is still doing so – in coverage of the killing of another innocent: Miriam Carey, a young black dental hygienist from Connecticut who was gunned down by Secret Service and Capitol Police on the streets of Washington for making a wrong turn near the White House. WND did the kind of journalism in this case that inspired me to become a reporter, to devote my life to news, to feel like I had the best job in the world. This case isn't over – and won't be – until the cover-up is fully exposed and her family receives justice.
Actually, WND was using the Carey story to attack President Obama. Farah caresnothing about Carey the person, only Carey the anti-Obama cudgel.
Farah added:
I can't forget WND's dogged pursuit of Barack Obama's eligibility issue, culminating in its book "Where's the Birth Certificate?" going to No. 1 at Amazon, forcing the White House to retrieve what it claimed was the legitimate document from Hawaii a day later. The pursuit of this story, it should be recalled, got Donald Trump involved in arguably his first major controversial political act.
This was a turning point for the nation!
Why would Farah think that his operation's eight-year promotion of a lie was such an accomplishment? That, more than anything, is responsible for the current financially challenged state of WND. And if Farah was so proud of turning Trump into a birther, why did it downplay Trump's birtherism before the 2016 election?
Of course, Farah will never admit his history of shoddy journalism has brought WND to the brink; instead, he complained that "Google, Facebook and Amazon had their way with us." He concluded by tying a predicted WND renaissance with that of Trump:
We're down but not out. I see a renaissance on the horizon. Trump will be back after being cheated out of reelection.
At 67, I'm not a kid any more. But I'm giving WND my all for the time I have. Pray for us. Pray for Donald Trump, who has proven to be the only man capable of taking on the Tech Tyrants. Join with us. Support us. We're not through. We're still here. We plan on ushering in better times for America!
Make America Great Again, indeed – in the name of God!
It's unlikely that anyone would agree with Farah that the lies he and WND have spread over the past 24 years have made anyone great again, let alone America.
Job growth was slower than expected during April, so CNSNews.com was eager to use the occasion to yet again, in Susan Jones' main story, tout how much better the economy was under Trump pre-pandemic:
Friday's jobs report reflects a reopening economy that still has a long way to go to match its Trump-era strength.
Contrary to bullish expectations, the unemployment rate actually ticked up a tenth of a point to 6.1 percent in April, and the economy added 266,000 jobs, far fewer than the 770,000 (revised) added in March and the 536,000 added in February.
Notably, the number of employed Americans increased in April for the 12th consecutive month since the economy tanked under COVID pressure in April 2020. Last month, BLS said 151,176,000 Americans were employed. That is 318,000 more than in March, and 1,145,000 more than when Joe Biden took office in January.
But the number of unemployed American also increased (+102,000) to 9,812,000 last month, boosting the unemployment rate slightly.
Jones concluded by huffing, "President Joe Biden will speak about today's jobs report later on this Friday, no doubt taking another opportunity to promote his American Jobs Plan."
Terry Jeffrey served up his usual sidebar complaint about government jobs, grousing this time that "Federal, state and local governments in the United States increased their employment by a combined 48,000 workers in April." But he knew who to blame; the article was illustrated with a picture of Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi bumping elbows, as if to (falsely) suggest they were celebrating more govenrment unemployment. Jeffrey tried to distort numbers further by comparing them to 20-eary-old numbers: "Even with the significant decline in government employment that occurred when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, government employment is still up 1,020,000 in this century, rising from 20,571,000 in January 2000 to the current 21,591,000."
MRC Serves As The Babylon Bee's PR Division Yet Again Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center loves to play defense for satire site Babylon Bee whenever anyone points out that right-wingers have a bad habit of promoting its articles as actual news (which says a lot about the "satire" it publishes that it's so unrecognizable as such to its target audience). It's also serving as the Bee's PR arm.
In an April 24 post, Autumn Johnson parroted the Bee's criticism of Facebook for having "penalized" a post "making fun of leftist rioters and looters," ominously adding, "This is not the first time that Facebook has targeted The Babylon Bee."
The Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon told Fox News he was considering taking legal action against The New York Times after it labeled the satirical news site “misinformation.”
Babylon Bee has an established history as a popular satirical website, and Dillon said the company was considering serious action: "We are contemplating and discussing with our counsel what the next move should be. Should we sue them or not? And that's an open question." Dillon suggested that the “misinformation” label could pose a serious threat to his website. “They put this stuff out there and if they can get it to stick, then then we have no platform remaining,” he said. “There's not going to be anybody who wants to host our stuff. ... It’s an effort to try and cancel us."
Dillon also claimed that liberals question whether The Babylon Bee’s content qualifies as satire: "These liberal media outlets and personalities have tried to create this narrative about us where we're not actually a satire site, but a disinformation site and where we're putting out fake news on purpose to mislead people.”
This is in regard to a Times article that the MRC's Clay Waters lashed out against in March. Both Pariseau and Dillon apparently forgot to mention the main issue: that right-wingers -- even Donald Trump and Ted Cruz -- tweet the alleged satire at the Babylon Bee as realnews.
The same day, Heather Moon attacked a study of who shares fake political news (turns out Republicans do, a lot), complaining that it listed the Bee as fake news: "Listing satire and comedy as 'fake news' is ludicrous." But if those Repubicans are sharing Bee articles as news, does that not make it fake news?
On April 29, the MRC posted an "explainer video" purporting to blame social media operations for the fact that the Bee's readership has trouble telling news and satire apart, and it includes a whopper fairly early: "The Bee's comedy is clear to literally everyone, except the censorship bigots who work for social media companies." As proven above, that is literally a lie. The rest of the video is just rehashes of the MRC's previous pro-Bee defense work. In short, it didn't explain much, since it completely censored the main point of contention.
NEW ARTICLE -- Out There, Exhibit 77: Denial of Reality Attack, Immigrant Crime Division Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Brad Wilmouth clings to another lost cause: the right-wing narrative that illegal immigrants commit more crime, despite all the evidence indicating otherwise. Read more >>
CNS Offered Biased Coverage of Biden's Speech to Congress Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com served up the biased coverage of President Biden's speech to Congress that anyone with a pulse was expecting -- cherry-picking moments it could portray in a negative light for its right-wing audience whiile failing to cover the speech as a whole.
Things started off with a biased complaint from Patrick Goodenough, who grumbled that Nancy Pelosi was nicer in introducing Biden than she was ayear earlier in introducing then-President Trump:
What a difference a year makes.
As she introduced President Joe Biden ahead of his address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not hide her enthusiasm.
“Members of Congress,” she said, in muffled tones through her mask. “I have the high privilege and distinct honor to present to you the president of the United States.”
Moments beforehand, Biden had handed her a copy of his speech, and the two met eyes over their masks, with Biden briefly raising one hand. When Biden finished his address, they bumped elbows.
Almost 15 months earlier, as Pelosi introduced President Trump for what would be his last State of the Union address, she said simply, “Members of Congress, the president of the United States.”
CNS then launched into a series of articles target various aspects of Biden's speech:
By contrast, Susan Jones was quite reverential to Rep. Tim Scott's Republican response to Biden, oddly highlight his response to things in Biden's speech that CNS never covered:
Shortly after President Joe Biden urged Americans to seize the opportunity "to root out systemic racism that plagues America," Sen. Tim Scott -- a black man who has experienced discrimination firsthand -- rejected the claim that this is a racist country:
"Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country," Scott said in his response to Biden's speech.
[...]
Scott said he has experienced the pain of discrimination, including from "progressives" who disagree with his conservative views:
"I know what it feels like to be pulled over for no reason. To be followed around a store while I'm shopping...I've also experienced a different kind of intolerance.
"I get called "Uncle Tom" and the N-word -- by "progressives"! By liberals! Just last week, a national newspaper suggested my family's poverty was actually privilege because a relative owned land generations before my time. Believe me, I know firsthand our healing is not finished."
(Indeed, "Uncle Tim" began trending on Twitter Wednesday night as Sen. Scott spoke.)
To add insult to bias, Jones contributed an article on former President Trump's reaction to Biden's speech, putting his sneer that "Nancy's mask was the biggest mask I think I've ever seen" right in the headline. She rehashed a good part of that article in a follow-up piece on Pelosi explaining why members of Congress wore masks.
When a masked President Joe Biden entered the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday to deliver his address to a limited number of senators and congressmen—as the video below shows--he fist-pumped the bare knuckles of at least eight people.
Then he patted Chief Justice John Roberts on the arm.
As he then gave his speech—with Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker Nancy Pelosi conspicuously wearing masks behind him--Biden repeatedly put his hand to his face.
Sometimes he wiped his open mouth. Sometimes he rubbed the base of his nose. Then he wiped his eye.
On the way out of the chamber, he had skin-to-skin contact with multiple members—including one who held his fist in her hand and another who shook his hand.
He did this at an event where many members of Congress were denied entry into the chamber in order to avoid the risk of spreading COVID-19.
This is what CNS deemed to be more important than a comprehensive, objective overview of Biden's speech.
Another week, another round of embarrassing corrections from major news media outlets. The Washington Post, The New York Times and NBCNews.com, among others, were forced to retreat on stories saying that Rudy Giuliani was warned by the FBI over Russian disinformation.
[...]
The Washington Post claims “democracy dies in darkness.” Accountability dies with a small update at the bottom of a website few will ever check again.
Of course, correcting the record is accountability, a concept the MRC is unfamiliar with. We would remind Whitlock that his employer has yet to tell its readers that the Fox News story just before the 2016 presidential election that Hillary Clinton's indictment was imminent was false, even as Fox News itself retracted the story.
For all of Whitlock's taking media to task for running a correction, he -- as well as the rest of the MRC refused to give right-wing media outlets the same mocking treatment for the embarrassing corrections they had to make at around the same time. We've already documented how the MRC stealth-edited a post to obscure the fact that Fox News reporter Peter Doocy used a White House press briefing to promote a bogus story from sister organization the New York Post falsely claiming that theBiden White House was giving copies of Kamala Harris' children's book to undotumented immigrant children.
The MRC wasn't done dowmplaying it, though. MRC executive Tim Graham complained in his April 30 column that "On Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, Trevor Noah mocked the fake news of Kamala Harris’s kiddie book being handed out to migrant children as combining 'immigration, socialism, and reading, the three worst things in the world!'"-- but he didn't tell readers that the "fake news" came from a fellow right-wing media outlet.
That wasn't the only right-wing media screw-up that the MRC would downplay. Fox News had to correct a graphihc that falsely claimed the Biden would mandate that Americans cut 90 percent of meat from their diets, limit consumption to four pounds per year and one hamburger per month. Pretty embarrassing, right? Not according to the MRC, which -- again -- was more mad that the mistakes were called out.
In an April 28 post, Kristine Marsh complained that on an episode of "The View,": "Whoopi Goldberg started off by playing a highlight reel of Republicans discussing a debunked New York Post story alleging minors at a border facility were given Kamala Harris’s book, as well as Fox News issuing an apology for a misleading graphic about the Biden administration wanting to limit meat consumption for climate change. That spurred condescending lectures from the liberal co-hosts about media bias and fake news on the right."
The same day, Curtis Houck whined that MSNBC's Joy Reid "reveled in recent corrections from News Corp-owned outlets despite multiple recent ethical and factual failures from MSNBC and fellow Comcast-owned network NBC," adding, "Reid set the table with the retracted Fox News stories about meat consumption and Vice President Harris’s children’s book at a detention center (and the fact that Tucker Carlson has a show) to argue FNC is a bastion of fake news filled with people who think the coronavirus was never real and the election was stolen."
Graham kept up the whataboutism in a May 8 post, insisting that despite the falseness of the Fox News story, liberals still thinik it's a good idea to eat less meat:
Liberals are having it both ways right now. It's nuts to suggest Joe Biden has a plan to take away your meat. But the eco-lefties really want to limit everyone's meat intake, especially beef. On Saturday night's All Things Considered, NPR host Michel Martin brought on New York Timescolumnist and food writer Mark Bittman for an interview headlined "Food World Ramps Up The War On Meat."
Martin began by explaining "It was falsely suggested multiple times on Fox News and by some Republican members of Congress that President Biden's climate plan will limit red meat eating in order to curb greenhouse gas emissions." But that doesn't mean the left isn't eager for a meat limit.
Graham concluded by complaining that the NPR segment "only considered interviewing leftists who don't like meat-eaters. The meat-lovers didn't get a rebuttal." Graham offered no evidence that any of the people in the segment were "leftists" beyond their saying eating less meat is not a bad idea (which isn't a"leftist" viewpoint).
Former President Donald Trump ripped into Michigan and Wisconsin for not investigating what he claimed was a late vote dump in both states for Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
His comments came Friday on his new online platform he set up to communicate with his followers. While blasting the two states, he also referred the 2020 presidential election as "fraudulent."
Writing "From The Desk of Donald J. Trump," he said: "At 6:31 in the morning on November 4th, a dump of 149,772 votes came in to the State of Michigan. Biden received 96% of those votes and the State miraculously went to him. Has the Michigan State Senate started their review of the Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020 yet, or are they about to start? If not, they should be run out of office. Likewise, at 3:42 in the morning, a dump of 143,379 votes came in to the state of Wisconsin, also miraculously, given to Biden. Where did these "votes" come from? Both were State Election changing events, and that is on top of the other corruption without even including the fact that neither state got Legislative approval, which is required under the United States Constitution."
What Rodack didn't report: Trump is wrong. As was reported months ago, the purported "vote dump" in Wisconsin was simply the recording of votes in heavily Democratic Milwaukee County. The Michigan "vote dump" claim is similarly old and bogus; the number comes from old metadata that was later corrected in the vote verification process.
Newsmax is again privileging false claims by pro-Trump activists (and Trump himself), just as it did with atatcks on election-tech company Dominion -- which, of course, Newsmax has had to walk back to settle defamation lawsuits. You'd think that would have taught Newsmax to tell both sides of the story.
CNS Embraces Dubious Kerry-Iran-Israel Story Topic: CNSNews.com
Just like its Media Research Center parent, CNSNews.com has embraced the dubious claim that former secretary of state and current climate envoy John Kerry leaked information to Iran about Israeli military strikes against Iranian facilities in Syria.
An April 27 article by Patrick Goodenough surprisingly led with Kerry's denial that he had any such conversation with the Iranian foreign minister, whose conversations were leaked, as well as the likelihood that the attacks were likely already public knowledge -- but also made space for Republican attacks on Kerry. Two days later, Goodenough wrote an article that focused on the Iranian response to the leaked audio, in which he also highlighted that "In the U.S., the most explosive aspect of the leaked recording has been Zarif’s claim that Kerry had informed him about covert Israeli military strikes against Iranian targets in Syria." Goodenough noted Kerry's denial but not the fact that the State Department said the Israeli strikes were already public knowledge.
Despite the story not really going anywhere, Goodenough was determined not to give up on it. In an April 30 article, he effectively took the side of an enemy of the United States by trying to undermine Kerry's defense:
But Kerry dismissed the claim as “unequivocally false,” and the State Department defended him by saying the issue of Israeli operation in Syria was public knowledge at the time, thus implying Kerry was not telling Zarif anything he would not already have known.
However, if Zarif is to be believed, he did not know about the attacks before Kerry enlightened him.
[...]
The first time Israel publicly acknowledged that it had carried out secretive operations against Iranian interests in Syria – with the number 200 mentioned – was in September 2018.
As reported earlier, it’s unclear exactly when the Kerry-Zarif conversation took place – if indeed it did – and, if it did, whether it was during a face-to-face meeting or in some other form of communication.
Kerry has acknowledged having met with Zarif several times between the time he left the State Department (January 2017) and the time President Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal (May 2018). Their last known meeting, in New York in April 2018, took place five months before Israel’s public admission.
Goodenough went on to claim that this so-called scandal is "being called 'Zarifgate," -- but he doesn't say who, exactly, is calling it that -- and touted how Republican senators are demanding an investigation into Kerry's purported "transactional diplomacy," though the" transaction" was never identified.
Falsehood-Prone WND Goes After Other Media Outlets For Fixing False Claims Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh declared in a May 3 WorldNetDaily article:
Several major legacy media organizations have been burned by their "sources," and have been forced to retract their claims that former New York mayor and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was warned by the FBI about a "Russian disinformation" campaign against him.
[...]
When legacy media outlets New York Times, Washington Post and NBC reported on the raid, they said that the FBI had "warned him about being targeted by a Russian influence operation."
However, all three now have retracted that claim, according to Fox.
The Times said, "An earlier version of this article misstated whether Rudolph W. Giuliani received a formal warning from the F.B.I. about Russian disinformation. Mr. Giuliani did not receive such a so-called defensive briefing."
The Post's was similar, and NBC said, its original report "was based on a source familiar with the matter, but a second source now says the briefing was only prepared for Giuliani and not delivered to him, in part over concerns it might complicate the criminal investigation of Giuliani."
They all said their reporters wrote up the claims based on information provided by "anonymous sources."
Does Unruh need to be reminded of how many times WND has been burned by sources peddling false information, resulting in the need to make corrections? We can go back to 2008, in which it settled a defamation lawsuit for falsely accusing a Tennessee car dealer of selling drugs in an attempt to smear Al Gore, but earlier this year WND was appending corrections to some articles just a few months ago that peddled false claims about election fraud and coronavirus (though certainly not all of the bogus articles it published).
WND has been burned plenty of times -- or it already knew the claims were false but published them anyway -- yet it has the temerity to take other media outlets to task for correcting the factual record, something WND is generally loath to do.
MRC Pays Trump's Pollster For Another Anti-Biden Poll Topic: Media Research Center
One of the components of the Media Research Center's election-fraud conspiracy theory was a poll it conducted claiming that some people who not have voted for Joe Biden if they knew about the Hunter Biden controversy -- but it has censored the fact that the company that did the poll, McLaughlin & Associates, worked for Donald Trump's re-election campaign, putting the poll's objectivity into question and raising questions of conflicts of interest (not to mention McLaughlin's notoriousunreliability). But that's the kind of bias the MRC prefers, so it sent some more money McLaughlin's way, as detailed in an anonymously written April 26 item:
As Joe Biden nears his 100th day in office, a new poll conducted for the Media Research Center by McLaughlin & Associates finds a plurality of voters say the news media have given the President an easier ride than his predecessors.
The public’s perception of a pro-Biden bias is confirmed by a recent MRC study which found broadcast evening news coverage of the new President has been more positive than negative (59% positive vs. 41% negative). By contrast, our analysis of the same time period in 2017 found 89% negative coverage of President Trump, vs. just 11% positive.
The poll of 1,000 people who voted in last fall’s general election was conducted from April 8 to April 12. When asked if they thought the news media has been easier or harder on Joe Biden, or if Biden has been treated about the same as other Presidents, voters by a more than three-to-one margin saw the media as going easy on Biden.
Nearly half (45.3%) said the media had been “easier on Joe Biden,” compared to just 13.8% who said the media had been “harder on Joe Biden.” Just over a third (34.7%) said they thought the media had treated Biden about the same as other Presidents, while 6.2% said they didn’t know.
Again, the MRC hid from readers McLaughlin's partisan record and dubious reliability. On the other hand, McLaughlin did produce the result the MRC paid it for, so appears that narrative once again trumps facts.
That makes for great campaign oppo research. But legitimate "media research"? Not so much.
Speaking of biased polls, an April 27 item by Joseph Vazquez touted:
A newly released poll revealed that Americans aren’t putting up with big business unleashing faux outrage at states attempting to protect their electoral processes.
Rasmussen Reports released a survey of 1,000 American adults showing that 37 percent of Americans were less likely to purchase Coca-Cola products. Rasmussen said that the results were due to the company’s liberal political stance against Georgia’s recent law protecting voter integrity. In addition, the survey found that Americans opposed major businesses attempting to influence politics “[b]y more than a 3-to-1 margin.” Perhaps Coca-Cola and others should learn that leftist virtue-signaling doesn’t necessarily pay dividends.
Vazquez isn't going to tell you that Rasmussen has a notorious conservative skew, or that what he and Rasmussen call "voter integrity" -- the preferred right-wing terminology for Republican-pushed election law changes -- most people would call voter suppression.
We've documented how the Media Research Center's narrative that Facebook loves to "censor" conservatives and only conservatives is bogus, given how much Facebook has reached out to conservatives -- including Mark Zuckerberg having secret dinners with Brent Bozell -- in an attempt to stop the attacks. Indeed, the evidence that Facebook gives conservatives a more-than-fair shake continues to pile up:
CNSNews.com penchant for negative, nitpicky and cherry-picked coverage of President Biden continued with a speech he have in Georgia the day after his address to Congress (
If podcaster Joe Rogan is not an actual right-winger, he's definitely right-wing-adjacent -- which is good enough for the Media Research Center. Last year, after Rogan moved his "massively popular" show to Spotify, the MRC's Alexander Hall 
Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a domestic terrorist group, that has done more to factually harm and promote the regressive rejection of modernity than the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) did in an 86-year period, and that includes being responsible for the deaths of black people. From 1882 to 1968, there were 3,446 blacks lynched in America by the Democrat-controlled terrorist group.
The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck clearly thinks that Jen Psaki's White House press briefings are nothing more than an show for his amusement -- an opinion we're pretty sure he never offered about the press brieefings of his old crush, Kayleigh McEnany. Thus, we're treated to things like a May 4 
WorldNetDaily recently marked its 24th anniversary, and editor Joseph Farah used that occasion to 
Job growth was slower than expected during April, so CNSNews.com was eager to use the occasion to 
The Media Research Center 
CNSNews.com served up the biased coverage of President Biden's speech to Congress that anyone with a pulse was expecting -- cherry-picking moments it could portray in a negative light for its right-wing audience whiile failing to cover the speech as a whole.
Scott Whitlock declared in a May 3 
Jeffrey Rodack wrote in a May 7 Newsmax 
Just like its 
Bob Unruh declared in a May 3 WorldNetDaily 
One of the components of the Media Research Center's 
