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Wednesday, November 3, 2021
The Flip-Flop Continues: MRC Still Touting Low Biden Polls After Trashing Low Trump Polls
Topic: Media Research Center

We've documented how the Media Research Center has abruptly decided to promote and trust polls showing President Biden not doing well in them after years of bashing polls showing Donald Trump not doing well as untrustworthy and even manufactured. The MRC hasn't stopped hypocritically hyping those bad Biden polls, proclaiming they demonstrate the imminent end of the Trump presidency. Nicholas Fondacaro huffed in a Sept. 22 post:

Just eight months into his presidency and American people have already had enough of Joe Biden, according to multiple national and state polls from around the country. The President was underwater practically everywhere but the CBS Evening News was the only broadcast network that found it newsworthy during their Wednesday newscasts as also highlighted how Biden was struggling to pass his expensive legislative agenda.

Instead of talking about Biden’s terrible poll numbers, ABC’s World News Tonighttalked about the weather. Meanwhile, NBC Nightly News talked with Al Gore and gushed about how accurate his climate change movie supposedly was and joked that a local lottery winner wasn’t a member of their studio crew.

Scott Whitlock complained on Sept. 29 that a news report didn't make a poll look sufficiently bad:

The Biden presidency continues to crumble and media outlets are doing their best to hide the collapse. ABC commissioned a poll on the Democrat’s job performance, but only allowed a scant 87 seconds to the terrible results on Wednesday. And while the bad news was plentiful in the survey, Good Morning America’s George Stephanopoulos and Terry Moran only picked out one part of the woeful results. 

Stephanopoulos brought up Afghanistan and noted that the botched withdrawal has “taken a toll on the President’s numbers.” Moran agreed: “Our most recent ABC News poll shows that 61 percent of the American people disapprove of his handling of Afghanistan, only 38 percent approve. Those numbers are down with Democrats and independents, of course, Republicans as well.”

Kyle Drennen served up a similar tone in a Oct. 7 post:

On Thursday, ABC’s Good Morning America completely censored a new Quinnipiac poll showing President Biden’s approval rating had plummeted to 38%. NBC’s Today show and CBS Mornings did manage to cover the bad news for the Democrat, but only offered seconds of air time each.  

“Democrats hoping to pass the massive spending plan by the end of October, with President Biden in need of a boost now,” correspondent Garrett Haake noted on NBC, before explaining: “A new poll showing his approval rating dropping to 38%, the lowest level of his presidency yet.” Those remarks only came to 12 seconds.

[...]

These terrible ratings across the board for Biden should be discussed and analyzed by journalists, along with reporting on the reasons for his surge in unpopularity. Instead, the broadcast networks are barely whispering the news (if mentioning it all), perhaps hoping viewers won’t notice. 

We don't recall anyone at athe MRC saying that Trump's continuously low approval ratings "should be discussed and analyzed by journalists." We believe they were opposed to that very idea.

Fondacaro was back the same day with a similar spin:

On Wednesday, Quinnipiac put out a brand new survey that revealed that President Biden had grown even more unpopular as issues that used to hold him up crumbled beneath his feet. But instead of telling their viewers of Biden’s unpopularity, as they would with former President Trump, the broadcast networks’ largely ignored them. Two of the networks dropped their coverage Thursday evening after mentioning it in passing that morning.

Tim Graham dutifully regurgitated all of this in his Oct. 8 podcast, while Whitlock boosted the narrative anew in an Oct. 20 post:

The Joe Biden presidency is collapsing and the networks don’t want you to know about it. Two just-released polls have found the Democrat at record lows. But between the evening newscasts on Tuesday and the morning shows on Wednesday, offered zero coverage of the very bad news for Biden. 

According to Quinnipiac, the President sits at 40 percent approval. It’s even worse for the Grinnell College poll, showing Biden at just 37 percent approval and 50 percent disapproval. Both are respected polling companies and included in the Real Clear Politics Average of polls. (The new numbers can be found here.) 

Again, you wouldn’t know that if you watched ABC, CBS or NBC.

The MRC didn't think Quinnipiac was a "respected" pollster when it attacked a 2019 poll showing five prospective Democrats ahead of Trump for the 2020 election; Fondacaro whined that it was "about a year and a half away from the 2020 general election and months away from the first Democratic primaries, meaning these polls have little predictive validity.

Whilock then used an Oct. 26 post to serve up a meaningless comparison:

The last three months have been nightmarish for Joe Biden’s presidency. In August, his popularity started to plummet, dropping precipitously so that, by late October, some polls had him dipping into the high 30s as Afghanistan, inflation and an inability to accomplish his domestic agenda have altered a once popular president’s fortunes. But in comparison to Donald Trump, ABC, CBS and NBC had almost double the number of mentions of bad polling for the Republican. 

MRC analysts looked at the morning and evening broadcast news programs from August 1, 2021 to October 25, 2021 for Biden vs. August 1, 2017 to October 25 2017 for Trump. While ABC, CBS and NBC mentioned Donald Trump’s unpopularity 37 times, they only noted the rapidly dropping numbers for Biden 19 times.

This despite the fact that Biden’s fall is, by far, the bigger news story of the two. In January of 2017, Trump started as an unpopular President, averaging around 44 percent, according to Real Clear Politics. His numbers largely stayed that way for four years. In January of 2021, Biden began as a popular President, beginning with a 55 percent popularity rating. By near the end of October, his average fell to just 42 percent.

[...]

The Biden presidency is cratering, but network journalists are still in denial, pretending that everything is okay. As the Democrat edges ever closer to constantly being in the 30s, perhaps reality will force ABC, CBS and NBC to stop protecting Biden and start informing the public. 

We don't recall Whitlock or anyone else at the MRC insiting that Trump's consistently low numbers meant that his presidency was "cratering."

Remember: After the 2020 presidential election, Graham ranted that pollsters "are damaging the legitimacy of our democracy, not helping it,' further declaring that election polls were "obviously rigged" and insisting that "It’s hard not to see intentional rigging, not some kind of accidental bias." But the polls suddenly have become accurate now that the show Biden underwater.

The MRC's sudden flip-flop on polls demonstrates who's doing the actual rigging here.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:22 PM EDT
AIM Is Proud Of Its Narrative Being Promoted On Fringe-Right Website
Topic: Accuracy in Media

An Oct. 5 Accuracy in Media item -- under the headline "AIM’s fight against the media bailout is featured in the World Tribune" -- is pretty much what it says it is, a teaser of an article at said website that, in turn, is a rehash of a commentary at the right-wing Daily Signal by AIM president Adam Guillette about how AiM is attacking a proposed provision in the Build Back Better that would include a "$1.3 billion bailout for media organizations." According to Guillette, the bailout is "a way to turn every news outlet in America into a version of NPR." He offered no evidence to back this up that the World Tribune thought was noteworthy; perhaps that's because he offered none in is Daily Signal piece beyond ranting things like "Any pretense of objectivity would be destroyed once the media is on the federal payroll," further ranting that "many local newspapers took advantage of" money from the Payroll Protection Program and asserting that "Bad businesses should be allowed to fail."

Guilllette didn't mention that AIM also took PPP money -- $72,368 that AIM does not have to pay back to the government, thus making it free money. So if Guillette really believes "bad businesses should be allowed to fail," does he agree that AIM should have been allowed to fail since it felt the need to take government largesse? Does he believe that AIM's credibility was damaged (even further than it already has been, anyway) beause it accepted government money?

It's also weird that AiM woul so aggressively promote a rewrite of something at the World Tribune, because it's not exactly known for for journalistic excellence. Media Bias/Fact Check has rated World Tribune "questionable" because  of its "far-right bias (propaganda), and poor sourcing, and misleading science, as well as a lack of ownership transparency." The website was founded as something of a hobby for a former editor for the right-wing Washington Times.

Is a shoddy, hyper-biased website like World Tribune the kind of media world AiM would rather see? It would seem so.


Posted by Terry K. at 5:16 PM EDT
CNS' Loopy Rabbi: Soros Is A Jew You're Allowed To Hate
Topic: CNSNews.com

Loopy far-right rabbi Aryeh Spero was at it again, using an Oct. 22 CNS column to give conservatives a get-out-of-anti-Semitism-free card to explain why George Soros is a Jew right-wingers are allowed to hate:

The charge by Terry McAuliffe’s supporters that his opponent, Glenn Youngkin, is anti-Semitic because he criticized George Soros is preposterous. 

No person is beyond criticism simply because he is a member of a minority community. Mr. Soros actively and openly engages in politics and in influencing state and local governments and is, therefore, a legitimate object of criticism, especially concerning the left-wing policies he’s tried to force on America through his massive underwritings. Thus, this accusation is just another dishonest attempt to win an election by playing the "anti-Semitism card." It is specious chutzpah.

Furthermore, those who point to Soros do so not because he is Jewish but because he is Soros, Soros being the most high- profile and effective opponent today of American traditional values. As is well-documented, he is by far the primary funder of radical leftist candidates and groups vowing to transform America into a transnational entity. Most people don’t even know the ethnic background of George Soros. 

Most ironic and disingenuous is casting Mr. Soros as a symbol of Jewish peoplehood when, in fact, Mr. Soros has spent a lifetime working against Israel’s defense and Jewish survival and needs. He has been proud of his disassociation from the Jewish community. To make him into a Jewish martyr is ludicrous inasmuch as he has spent a lifetime distancing himself from anything identifiably Jewish.

Spero didn't mention that Soros critics have a bad habit of using anti-Semitic stereotypes to attack him (like CNS' parent, the Media Research Center, did in depicting Soros as a "puppet master") or that attacks on Soros tend to be central to anti-Semitic attacks on Jews. That's because Spero cares more about advancing right-wing narratives than about Jewish history.


Posted by Terry K. at 3:30 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, November 3, 2021 3:34 PM EDT
WND Still Defending Ivermectin, This Time Against Anti-COVID Drug That Actually Works
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily just can't stop defending the dubious drug ivermectin, no matter how dishonestly. So when a new antiviral treatment was introduced, Art Moore was first in line to compare it unfavorably to ivermectin in an Oct. 1 article:

The announcement Friday by Merck that it plans to apply for emergency approval of a new experimental oral antiviral treatment for COVID-19 is of particular interest to many physicians who have been hindered or completely blocked from treating their COVID patients off-label with an FDA-approved drug that already is produced by the pharmaceutical giant.

Merck is the producer of ivermectin, which has been shown to be effective in an least 65 controlled studies and 32 randomized controlled trials to fight COVID-19 as a preventative and early- and late-stage treatment. Studies have demonstrated its ability to inhibit the replication of SARS-CoV-2 as well as its strong anti-inflammatory properties.

Yet, as Rep. Louie Gohmert pointed out in a commentary this week, the "government alphabet agencies, the medical industrial complex, and their willing accomplices in the media" have made ivermectin "the latest naughty word which will get you censored on social media and mocked and belittled by late-night 'comedians.'"

Gohmert noted Merck itself has discouraged using ivermectin to treat COVID-19. The Texas lawmaker spotlighted the fact that the cheap and effective ivermectin would directly compete with the new drug it is developing, called molnupiravir. Unlike ivermectin, molnupirvar would be patented, the congressman pointed out, creating the potential "to rake in billions of dollars."

[...]

"In short, there is no humane, logical reason why it should not be widely used to fight against the China Virus should a patient and doctor decide it is appropriate to try in that patient’s case," Gohmert said.

The congressman said "the evil, deadly, coordinated globalist attacks we are currently witnessing on ivermectin will go down in history as a vicious crime against humanity; a grievous public health policy error that can only be explained by following the money."

Moore is misleading here: Since ivermectin has long been an off-patent drug, there are numerous manufacturers of it; Merck does make a version of the drug designed to treat parasitic infections, which COViD is not.

COVID misleader Joel Hirschhorn used his Oct. 4 column to falsely claim that molnupiravir is actually a copy of ivermectin:

The unrelenting opposition to using ivermectin to treat and prevent COVID-19 is stronger than ever. This has resulted from a gigantic increase in demand for IVM by much of the public. Despite big media tirades against the medication, the truth about its effectiveness (together with failure of COVID vaccines) has reached the public through many articles on alternative news websites and truth-tellers on countless podcasts. Ivermectin's success has forced Big Pharma to create expensive copies of it.

[...]

Merck, a maker of IVM, is getting much positive press coverage for its forthcoming prescription oral antiviral (molnupiravir). It is designed to replace IVM, since they cannot make big money from ivermectin. The FDA will soon give molnupiravir emergency use authorization because of the emerging clarity that COVID vaccines do NOT work effectively or safely.

[...]

Clearly, Merck, Pfizer and other vaccine makers are developing their own oral antivirals to directly compete with the cheap and effective IVM. These antivirals, unlike cheap generic IVM, would be patented so expensive pills could be sold worldwide. They will find some ingenious ways to copy IVM but make enough changes to get patents.

In fact, molnupiravir is not an ivermectin copy; it's a completely different formulation. Nevertheless, fellow dubious doc Marilyn Singleton took that lie and ran with it in her Oct. 12 WND column:

Another anti-parasitic medication, ivermectin, has 20 possible mechanisms of action against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, including interrupting viral entry into cells and anti-inflammatory action. Significantly, ivermectin is a protease inhibitor, that is, a substance that blocks proteins that allow viruses to reproduce themselves.

Is it a coincidence that Pfizer's new anti- COVID pill, PF-07321332 is also a protease inhibitor? Notably, Pfizer's drug would have to be given early after the onset COVID symptoms. This is also the recommendation for hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin – a recommendation many studies ignored when dismissing the value of these anti-parasitic medications.

Is it a coincidence that Merck, who distributes ivermectin, is seeking fast-track approval for molnupiravir, an antiviral agent to treat COVID-19? How convenient that the U.S. government will purchase $1.2 billion worth of the yet-to-be-approved drug. And how predictable that vaccine maker Moderna's stock fell 11% after the announcement. Vaccines are yesterday's cash cow. Is it a coincidence that ivermectin costs no more than $100 dollars per treatment course and molnupirivir costs $700 per 10-day course of treatment?

Actually, it's irrelevant that ivermectin and the Pfizer drug are protease inhibitors, and the two drugs, again, have completely different formulations.

But WND has totally bought into the ivermectin propaganda, and like any good propagandist, an enemy is needed so it can be demonized. And so it has one, in the form of an apparently more effective drug.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:21 AM EDT
Tuesday, November 2, 2021
MRC Still Demanding That Local Crime Get National Coverage To Help GOP Candidate
Topic: Media Research Center

We've established that the Media Research Center has been aggressively hyping the alleged sexual assault of a student in a school in Loudoun County, Va., in order to forward right-wing transphobia narrativfes (since the alleged assailant was "a boy in a skirt") and to advance the candidacy of Republican Virginia governor candidate Glenn Youngkin. As the election grew closer, the MRC ramped up the manufactured outrage. Kristine Marsh ranted in an Oct. 24 post that, among other things, complained that Youngkin was being called out for "seizing on" the assault and managed to work in the hoary old bogeyman of George Soros:

Sunday night MSNBC went all out smearing parents in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Loudoun County as domestic terrorists. On Alicia Menendez’s American Voices, the MSNBC host and her far-left guest cruelly painted parents standing up to school boards, including a father whose daughter was allegedly raped by a transgender student on campus because of the schools' liberal policies, as radical rioters who were like the January 6 “insurrectionists.”

[...]

She then introduced her guest, Soros-funded Loudoun County prosecutor Buta Biberaj, who sought jail time for a dad who erupted at a Loudoun County Public Schools board meeting in June over his daughter's alleged rape by a transgender student that the school lied about and covered up. In MSNBC’s twisted logic, the liberal prosecutor was the real victim of this story:

[...]

Biberaj pinned blame on the Sheriff's office. Like MSNBC, she lacked any sympathy for the actual victimized student or her father. 

First: Marsh's wild accusation of a "cover-up" rests on a Fox News story by Sam Dorman -- whom we caught hurling biased gotcha questions in his stint as a CNSNews.com intern, so he's hardly an objective source --  highlighting an email from the school district superintendent to the school board alerting them to the incident; the school board told Fox that the email lacked specific details and the board did not receive further updates on the incident. Some "cover-up," eh?

Second: Does Marsh or anyone else at the MRC care about the  "victimized student" beyond her usefulness as a partisan political tool? Unlikely.

Nicholas Fondacaro cranked out another one of those "the non-right-wing media isn't reporting stories that advance the right-wing agenda" articles in an Oct. 25 item -- and, of course, praising his favorite biased outlets for exploiting it:

In Virginia on Monday, the Smith family announced the Loudoun County Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court had found the “gender-fluid” boy who raped their daughter in a girl’s bathroom guilty. With the second alleged rape making its way through the legal system, the liberal broadcast networks continued their total blackout of the story, including the cover-up by the liberal school board. And before the news broke, the Associated Press tried to cast doubt on the validity of the case.

Instead of reporting on the case many radical leftists claimed wasn’t real (including Barack Obama), ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News all hyped how Washington Democrats were possibly close to a deal on President Biden’s massive spending agenda. They also put Facebook under more scrutiny, and NBC went off on the military coup in Sudan.

Of course, The Daily Wire, the outlet that initially broke the cover-up story, was all over the new developments.

[...]

Fox News Channel, was also the only major TV network to give airtime to the ruling.

Fondacaro -- who lies about many things -- is lying about Obama. He didn't say the incident itself "wasn't real"; according to the right-wing tweet to which he linked, Obama called out "these phony trumped-up culture wars, this fake outrage, the right-wing media's pedals to juice their ratings" surrounding the Virginia election -- which is true, seeing as how Fondacaro and his buddies are paid to do just that.

Fondacaro also falsely accused the Associated Press of suggesting that the assault claim was false because a story called it a "murky case." In fact, it's a murky case because juvenile records are typically sealed and not made public, and the only statements that have been made public about it have come from the father of the alleged victim -- hardly an objective source.

Fondacaro followed up the next day with another story demanding national coverage of a local issue:

The Loudoun County “gender-fluid” rape story was a raging fire the liberal media were desperately pretending wasn’t happening as their candidate for governor Terry McAuliffe (D) was floundering. But on Tuesday, county high school students staged a walkout to protest the liberal school board that tried to cover up the attacks. The walkout and a guilty ruling against the attacker went unmentioned by the broadcast networks.

[...]

While the liberal broadcast networks were trying to keep the damaging story under wraps, Fox News Channel Special Report anchor Bret Baier dove right into it. 

Fondacaro failed in his job as a researcher by refusinbg to tell readers about Fox News' political slant -- if he can tag other networks as "liberal," there's no reason for him not to identify Fox News as "conservative" -- or explaining the channel's motivation in pushing the story in trying to get Youngkin elected.

A couple hours later, Fondacaro was ranting about an even more obscure story the "liberal" networks weren't reporting on:

As NewsBusters has been reporting in recent days, the broadcast networks were going all-in on trying to keep Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s dwindling chances to win the gubernatorial in Virginia alive. But while they take McAuliffe’s side against Republican Glenn Youngkin, they were leaving him completely unvetted. Luckily we had The Daily Wire to investigate the Democrat’s ties to a law firm that fights against rape victims and with which he has taken a paycheck as recently as this election year.

[...]

By ignoring McAuliffe’s ties to this firm, the networks were flaunting just how politically driven they were. Because if he was a Republican, they would be all over it. But they want to keep the Virginia governor's mansion in Democratic hands.

Fondacaro did not describe the Daily Wire as "going all-in on trying to keep Republican Glenn Youngkin's chances to win the gubernatorial in Virginia alive." Perhaps he sould explain the justification for that biased, dishonest writing someday. And while he's at it, he should also explain why he's flaunting just how politically driven he is by wanting to put the Virginia governor's mansion in Democratic hands -- blatant electioneering that may very well be a violation of the MRC's nonprofit tax status.

On Oct. 27, Fondacaro was screeching about how others have pointed out how Republicans (like himself) are politically exploiting a crime:

The liberal TV news blackout of the “gender-fluid” rapes in Loudoun County, Virginia was finally broken Wednesday evening by NBC Nightly News and correspondent Catie Beck. But it was anything but fair as the network took to suggesting the cases and the school district were being exploited by parents as well as the state and national Republican Party as they looked for an upset in the tight race for governor and beyond.

[...]

ABC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC were still holding strong to the blackout. NBC didn't give an explanation to why it took them so long to mention the rapes despite discussing the Virginia election on Sunday and Tuesday.

Fondacaro still has yet to explain why a local crime must be treated as a national story outside of the fact that drawing attention to it might help his preferred candidate get elected. But he's a right-wing hack, not a legitimate "media researcher."


Posted by Terry K. at 9:23 PM EDT
Updated: Sunday, November 21, 2021 6:31 PM EST
Newsmax Concerned Fox News Has Stopped Being Right-Wing Shills
Topic: Newsmax

Newsmax has grown concerned that Fox News seems to not be as interested in being full-time right-wing shills. A Sept. 24 article by Eric Mack complained:

Rudy Giuliani has been banned from appearing on Fox News for several months, and only learned of the "from the top" order on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Son Andrew Giuliani, a New York gubernatorial candidate, has also been banned.

And former NYPD Commsissioner Bernie Kerik, a close adviser to Giuliani, is rarely booked on Fox News, Politico Playbook reports.

Rudy Giuliani and Kerik were prominent New York City leaders on 9/11 as mayor and NYPD commissioner.

Mack didn't mention that Kerik is a close friend of Newsmax -- its Humanix division even published a novel by him -- and that the reason he's no longer a "prominent New York City leader" is because he got busted for corruption, which earned him a prison sentence. Mack then tried to make his employer look good by comparison:

Fox began distancing itself from Giuliani shortly after Trump left office and in the wake of Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against the network. The suit cited Giuliani’s appearances and statements made on Fox in its $1.6 billion defamation case.

Newsmax was also sued by Dominion over its election coverage, but the network continues to have Giuliani, his son, and Kerik on as guests.

Actually, that's not a good look -- but that's the crowd Newsmax is playing to.

Mack also claimed that "A source close to Giuliani tells Newsmax that the former mayor and his circle view their banishment from Fox as part of the network’s strategy to reduce and restrict Trump’s influence in the Republican party." One has to wonder if that's Kerik as well.

Mack tried to generate outrage over another Fox News move in an Oct. 8 article:

The orchestrator of Fox News' early call of Arizona in the last presidential election is coming back to run the network’s decision desk for the 2022 midterms and 2024 elections.

Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott told The Hollywood Reporter that Decision Desk Director Arnon Mishkin will be rehired to be in charge of upcoming election coverage.

Fox stirred outrage from its viewers when it called Arizona just minutes after polls closed on election night 2020, while still failing to call Florida for then-President Donald Trump, even though voting had closed almost two hours earlier.

Mishkin, a longtime Democrat operative who backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and donated to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, quickly drew the ire of the Trump campaign for his Arizona decision.

What Mack doesn't do, however, is admit that Fox News' election night call on Arizona was correct and has been repeatedly proven so. Instead, he whined that the channel was trying to distance itself from Trump and conservatives, even citing the notoriously wrong Dick Morris as proof:

Political experts such as Dick Morris said Fox’s early call for Arizona was an attempt to squelch the view Trump could still win if recounts in states like Wisconsin and Georgia were successful.   

Trump has long pointed to Fox News' Arizona call for Biden as a watershed moment on election night.

Mishkin’s re-hiring appears to fit Fox’s new approach to distance itself from its more conservative base.

[...]

While Fox has kept its conservative, highly-rated show hosts like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, pro-Trump hosts like Lou Dobbs and Trish Regan were given the boot after the election, while news coverage remains led by moderates like anchor Chris Wallace.

Fox News has also sought to keep in the good graces of the Biden administration, with the network’s chief Washington lobbyist, Danny O’Brien, having served previously as Biden’s Senate chief of staff.

Biden publicly acknowledged that his controversial mandatory employee vaccination program is modeled on one Fox News implemented for its staff.

This is all performative, of course. Newsmax is a direct competitor of Fox News, and it stands to gain views if it can portray Fox News as not right-wing enough -- a space that Newsmax has been staking out. Needless to say, Mack didn't disclose that ulterior motive to his readers.


Posted by Terry K. at 5:11 PM EDT
WND's Cashill Demands An LGBT-Hating Chic-fil-A In His Local Airport
Topic: WorldNetDaily

In 2023, after 10 years of broken promises and backroom deals, Kansas City International (KCI) will open a spanking new terminal that few air travelers really wanted.

To get the deal done, airport boosters made all sorts of unseemly concessions to businesses claiming to be women and minority-owned. As happens everywhere, these deals added considerable cost to the final product, but zero value.

Last week, a third partner in the cartel of the "marginalized" that runs America – the LGBTQs – weighed in and proved that its wheels can squeak as loudly as those of its intersectional partners.

[...]

Not at all fluent in Newspeak, these well-meaning souls offended the sensibilities of the most sensitive partner in the rainbow coalition by adding Chick-fil-A to the list of the new terminal's eateries.

Commercially, Chick-fil-A made perfect sense. As documented by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Chick-fil-A has been the nation's best-loved fast food operation for the last seven years running.

Then, too, KCI serves the citizens of two seriously red states – Kansas and Missouri. Each backed Donald Trump by margins of at least 15 points. Then, too, those who fly regularly lean more to the right than those who don't.

Ironically, the only time Chick-fil-A ruffled conservative feathers was when its foundation tried to appease LGBT activists by backing away from helping Christian groups and shifting its focus to the more benign "education, homelessness and hunger."

If conservatives have forgiven Chick-fil-A its wobbliness, progressives forgive nothing. Among the many woke paradoxes is their seeming aversion to "judgmentalism" given that judging others is what they live for.

"For the past six to eight months we've been putting out these inclusivity talking points, about having the most progressive airport in the country, and now we're throwing Chick-fil-A in there," said Justin Short, a spokesman for the local LGBTQ Commission. "You know you can't do both."

[...]

Most disturbing about the exclusion of Chick-fil-A is how promptly and passively the civic leaders of this region accepted the dictates of a few LGBTQ activists. Save for Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and a local Christian newspaper, no one appears to have pushed back.

In Stalin's Soviet Union or Hitler's Germany, ordinary people had reason to stay silent as they watched their fellow citizens endure a series of exclusions until their final, terminal exclusion.

Fear of prison and death can silence almost anyone. Fear of Twitter outrage ought not.

-- Jack Cashill, Sept. 29 WorldNetDaily column


Posted by Terry K. at 11:54 AM EDT
CNS' Border Patrol 'Whip' Freakout Undermined By Columnist Who Endorsed Whipping
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com was quick to run to the defense of the Border Patrol after images surfaced of officers on horseback, with long reins that looked like whips, attempting to round up Haitian migrants.

Melanie Arter wrote on Sept. 22 that "DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday condemned the actions of Border Patrol agents on horseback who were accused of using “whips,” which were actually horse reins, on Haitian migrants trying to cross the Rio Grande River into Del Rio, Texas this week.

A Sept. 23 article by Susan Jones highlighted Rep. Maxine Waters saying she's "unhappy with the cowboys who were running down Haitians and using their reins to whip them. I'm unhappy with the (Biden) administration," but she made sure to add that "Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, says the images of horse patrol agents running down or 'whipping' Haitians look 'very different' from different angles." This was followed by an article from Arter the same day quoting the White House stating that "Border Patrol agents will no longer be using horses" in the area. Another Arter article that day served up the Border Patrol spin, with the aid of Fox News:

Former acting ICE Director Tom Homan said Thursday that the Border Patrol agent accused of whipping Haitian migrants at the border in Del Rio, Texas, “did not whip anybody” and was spinning the horse’s reins to keep people away from the agent and his horse to protect himself.

That’s what he was trained to do, just as New York City police on horseback do crowd control, Homan told Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom.”

[...]

Homan expressed concerns that the investigation will be biased, because the inspector general who is conducting it answers to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who has said he’s insulted by the video of the encounters in question.

In a Sept. 24 article, Jones accused President Biden of serving up "spin" on the issue, which was then followed by her own editorializing spin:

"There will be consequences," promised President Biden on Friday, as he put his own spin on the "chaos" at the overrun southwest border he has never visited.

He was talking about a few horse-mounted Border Patrol agents trying to prevent a group of Haitians from entering the country illegally.

Biden did not send the message that foreigners should not come here illegally; and he did not address criticism that his administration is releasing thousands of these people into the country, thus encouraging more and more people to come here illegally.

The only "chaos" Biden mentioned was the videotaped horse patrol.

Having served up Border Patrol spin about a biased investigation the previous day, Arter served up a Sept. 24 article quoting Mayorkas saying "he’s not concerned about the integrity of the investigation of the horse-mounted Border Patrol officers accused of whipping Haitian migrants at the border in Del Rio, Texas, despite President Joe Biden saying the migrants had been 'strapped.'"

Megan Williams served up the Fox News spin in a Sept. 27 article:

Fox Nation host Lawrence Jones explained that Democrats were comparing the treatment of immigrants at the Southern border to slavery in order to “gaslight black Americans" Sunday on "Life, Liberty & Levin."

Jones described to host Mark Levin how Democrats were continually using a misleading image to suggest falsely that a border patrol agent was whipping a Haitian immigrant, in order to elicit emotional reactions from African-Americans.

[...]

Jones argued Democrats were using this photo and reactions as a smoke screen to divert Americans’ attention away from the crisis at the border.

Unfortunately for the right-wing narrative, CNS blew it up by publishing an Oct. 1 column by Ilana Mercer -- whose main outlet is WorldNetDaily but for some reason CNS decided it needed to add a apartheid-adjacent paleolibertarian to its columnist roster -- offering a full-throated endoresement of the idea of whipping migrants, even citing the Bible to justify it:

Let’s see: Heroic horsemen rode to the rescue at Del Rio, Tex., along the U.S.-Mexico border. Republicans could’ve whipped the open-border Democrat degenerates with a first-principles case for sovereignty and self-defense, the thing Border Patrol horsemen were exercising so instinctively. Instead, the Right chose to beat around the bush, sweating the redundant details: 

“Was it a whip or a rein?”

Who cares, when our border-patrol heroes—the last of the He-Men—were doing the work of the Lord! And, what on earth is wrong with the whip, in this context? 

Did not the Lord teach—in The Book of Proverbs, through his emissaries—that, “He who spares his rod hates his son”? (In Hebrew: "חוםך שבטו שונא בנו") I believe Proverbs has a broader and deeper meaning: Libertine formative figures who fail to teach the young and the lawless right from wrong hate both their disciples and the society upon which they unleash them.

[...]

There is only one winning—and correct—answer, in the case of the whip versus the rein, and it is this:

If it was not a whip, it ought to have been one, and if our Guardian Angel of the border used a rein as a whip—then hooray for him. The End.

It's hard to coherently quibble over whether or not migrants were whipped when you publish a columnist who demands they be whipped.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:02 AM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, November 2, 2021 1:20 AM EDT
Monday, November 1, 2021
MRC Cheerleads GOP Flirting With Disaster By Opposing Debt Ceiling Hike
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's messaging on raising the debt ceiling -- a big thing before a temporary increase was granted in October -- was that Republicans should oppose it because it will keep Democrats from spending more ... never mind that hitting the debt ceiling would keep the government from paying current bills and could damage the economy in the process. Lydia Switzer summed up the talking points in a Sept. 17 post:

The deadline is fast approaching for Congress to approve raising the debt ceiling, and the liberal media is astonished that Republicans will not simply go along with it. The increase, which needs Republican support to pass, is one requirement for the passage of the Biden administration’s exorbitant $3.5 trillion budget plan. Without increasing the debt ceiling, the US government cannot go into further (massive) debt.

On CNN Newsroom on Thursday afternoon, the anchors and guests agreed the Republicans’ lack of support for the Democrats’ excessive spending “could cause…irreparable damage to both the domestic economy but also the international economy.” In short, if Republicans don’t submit to the Democrats’ demands, the Republicans are somehow to blame for the consequences.

[...]

Of course, this patronizing interpretation of the facts suggests that it is the duty of members of Congress, no matter what, to pave the way for trillions of dollars of additional spending and usher in unsustainable debt.

Not only is this viewpoint misguided and fiscally irresponsible, but it also deeply misunderstands the purpose of opposing the debt ceiling increase in the first place: to slow down the juggernaut of national debt. 

Switzer concluded by lecturing: "The Democrats and their supporters in the media have grown accustomed to a pattern of reckless spending. Perhaps this will be a wake-up call to the nature of debt and its consequences." This, of course, memory-holes the fact that the debt increased by $7.8 trillion under a Republican president and Republican-controlled Senate, which we don't recall Switzer or any other MRC employee being particularly upset about.

In a Sept. 21 post, Mark Finkelstein complained that warnings about the debt ceiling were "liberal fear-mongering" and that a CNN guest said that Republicans are "basically happy to let the world burn as long as Democrats take the fault."He then huffed that "Democrats don't actually need any Republican votes to raise the debt limit! They can do it on their own by tying it to their $3.5 trillion 'infrastructure' bill." Technically true, yes, but it means that Republicans are passing the buck instead of taking responsibility for governing (with no mention that Repubicans have their fingers all over that debt as well).

Rich Noyes complained on Sept. 22:

After unprecedented amounts of new federal spending, ostensibly to deal with the COVID crisis (though huge amounts of these emergency funds somehow found their way to congressional pet projects), the Biden administration is now asking Congress to raise the debt ceiling to prevent the calamity of a federal default.

While the media could use the occasion to slam dangerous unrestrained spending, we know from history that they will instead launch vicious attacks on Republicans who are insisting on reform as a condition for their vote for more debt.

Finkelstein returned on Sept. 29 to grumble:

We're all gonna die—and it's all the Republicans' fault! With some slight exaggeration, that was CNN's message this morning regarding Republican reluctance to raise the debt limit. Mugging a petrified look [see screencap] New Day co-host John Berman opened the show by predicting nothing short of "the potential collapse of the U.S. economy," because "Republicans have voted against paying U.S. debts." 

Again, there was no mention of the fact that Republicans played a significant role in running up that debt.

On Sept. 30, Kyle Drennen gushed that "Republican Senator Pat Toomey repeatedly embarrassed leftist CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil by dismantling the anchor’s Democratic Party talking points about raising the nation’s debt limit. The GOP lawmaker called out Dokoupil for pushing 'a partisan political point of view that’s designed to provide cover for the Democrats’ spending.'"But Toomey wasthe one pushing a "partisan political point of view" in the form of MRC-approved talking points. Drennen even falsely declared that it was "disinformation" that raising the debt ceiling allows previously approved spending to be paid for.

The MRC largely shut up about the debt ceiling when the temporary deal was reached, though it weirdly obsessed over the idea that the Treatury could mint a $1 trillion platiunum coin as a workaround. But look for its partisan virtue-signaling to resume when the ceiling approaches again later this year.


Posted by Terry K. at 8:46 PM EDT
NEW ARTICLE: CNS' Afghan Withdrawal Strategy
Topic: CNSNews.com
In reporting on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, CNSNews.com made sure to blame President Biden for everything that went wrong, bash him for his response to a suicide bombing, and deflect all blame from Donald Trump. Read more >>

Posted by Terry K. at 4:05 PM EDT
MRC's Sports Blogger Whines That Anti-LGBT Christian Group Can't Benefit From Sports Anymore
Topic: Media Research Center

Mysterious Media Research Center sports blogger Jay Maxson complained in a Sept. 15 post:

For the last 80 years, Young Life has been introducing adolescents to Jesus Christ and helping them grow in their faith. The Manhattan, Kansas chapter was slated to receive donations from Kansas State University’s Jordy Nelson Legends Classic charity softball game last weekend, but LGBT folks screeched about Young Life being “anti-gay” and that did not happen.  

Nelson used to catch touchdown passes at Kansas State and, as a pro, from the Green Bay Packers’ Aaron Rodgers. Now retired from football, he’s allowed his past softball fundraisers in Wisconsin to give money to Young Life. However, now that LGBT activists have poisoned him against Young Life, the charity pipeline has been shut down. Youtube features a 2014 video verifying the past years of support.

The K-State Football Walk-On Scholarship received donations raised at Sunday’s softball and home run derby benefit. Young Life was cut out of the benefit’s take because it’s a Christian youth group that prohibits LGBT people from taking leadership positions — unless they are celibate. SB Nation Outsports reports Young Life’s biblical standards as if they were a dirty little secret that only leaked out last summer.

Actually, the policy that forbade LGBT people from holding leadership positions was a secret until it leaked out last summer.Maxson didn't explain why it had to be kept a secret that LGBT people weren't really welcome in Young Life; instead he (or she) played victim on the group's behaif: "Once the LGBT activists started raising a ruckus about Young Life, the public university ditched the Christian ministry and started virtue signaling for the LGBT folks." Why is it a bad thing for a university to support an blatantly anti-LGBT group? Maxson never explains.

Maxson followed that with a commercial for Young Life that reads like it was copied-and-pasted from the group's website or maybe Wikipedia:

Young Life is a Christ-centered ministry that presents the good news of the Gospel to kids, helping them grow in their faith so they can serve the Lord. Its volunteer leaders work in communities to provide adventurous, life-changing experiences.

Started in 1941 by a Presbyterian pastor, Young Life has more than 8,000 school chapters, an average weekly attendance of more than 300,000 students and more than 60,000 volunteers. Young Life regards homosexuality as a lifestyle that is "clearly not in accord with God's creation purposes".

Rodgers, Nelson and singer Stevie Nicks are among Young Life's most famous past participants.

Somehow, we suspect that Young Life (and Maxson) aren't actually that proud of Nicks' onetime participation in Young Life, given her rock 'n roll lifestyle.


Posted by Terry K. at 11:07 AM EDT
WND Continues To Spread McCullough's COVID Misinfo
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily has long promoted wild claims about coronavirus and it vaccines by rogue doctor Peter McCullough, and it irresponsibly continues to do so. An anonymous WND writer stated in a Sept. 27 article:

Dr. Peter McCullough, who has become a leading critic of the experimental COVID-19 vaccines, explained in a thorough, nearly 90-minute presentation why he believes the vaccines should be pulled from the market.

As both a researcher and a practicing physician, McCullough has come to the conclusion that most deaths attributed to COVID-19 could be prevented with early treatments that have been suppressed by policymakers.

In a slide for his Aug. 20 presentation – which can be viewed below – he argued the "COVID-19 genetic vaccines have an unfavorable safety profile and are not clinically effective, thus they cannot be generally supported in clinical practice at this time."

McCullough, the editor-in-chief of two medical journals, is a practicing internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist and professor of medicine at the Baylor University School of Medicine in Dallas.

In fact, not only is McCullough no longer affiliated with Baylor -- his history of dubious COVID claims caused the school to fire him -- the school has gotten a restraining order against McCullough to get him to stop claiming that he is. McC ullough's alarmist claims about COVID vaccines have been repeatedly discredited, so there's no reason to trust him on this.

Nevertheless, Art Moore featured McCullough again in an Oct. 7 article:

Warning that the world is "in the middle of a major biological catastrophe," renowned physician and epidemiologist Dr. Peter McCullough charged in a recent address that fraudulent public health officials are pushing experimental "gene-transfer" COVID-19 vaccines that produce the "loaded weapon" of a toxic spike protein.

"I think the reason why everybody's here is we have a sense that something very bad is going on in the world. And I'm here to tell you, I think it is," he said Sept. 24 in a keynote address at the annual fundraiser of the non-profit Michigan for Vaccine Choice, LifeSiteNews reported.

"If you feel tension right now and you feel some emotional distress, and if you feel as if things aren't going right ... I think your perceptions are correct," McCullough said.

"And if your perceptions are correct, now's the time for action."

Moore gave McCullough space to whine about losing jobs in the medical field for spreading misinformation (admitting unlike his anonymous counterpart that McCullough has indeed been fired from Baylor) and frame him as an innocent victim:

Baylor University Medical Center fired him in February. And Texas A&M College of Medicine, Texas Christian University and University of North Texas Health Science Center School of Medicine have cut ties with McCullough, accusing him of spreading misinformation.

"I've been stripped of every title that I've ever had in that institution. I've received a threat letter from the American College of Physicians, [and] a threat letter from the American Board," he said.

All because of his "lawful" participation "in a topic of public importance."

"What we are doing is lawful," he said.

He predicted the eight professional acronyms behind his name "will be progressively erased."

It will happen "because there's powerful forces at work, far more powerful than we can possibly think of, that are influencing anybody who is in a position of authority."

But Moore doesn't detail the accusations of misinformation against McCullough, which makes him a lazy stenographer, not a reporter.A real reporter would have informed readers about the facts regarding McCullough's dangerous claims. Instead, Moore is McCullough's handmaid in spreading disinformation.

Remember: WND thinks you should pay for the privilege of being lied to.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:18 AM EDT
Sunday, October 31, 2021
MRC Demands Coverage Of Va. School Assault Because It Boosts Narratives, Helps GOP Candidate
Topic: Media Research Center

Let's stipulate from the beginning that the Media Research Center doesn't really care about the welfare of a female student who was allegedly sexually assaulted in a bathroom at a school in Loudoun County, Va. -- she's only a tool to be exploited for two reasons. First, the MRC hates transgender people, and the alleged assailant has been repeatedly described as "a boy in a skirt." Second, and more importantly, the MRC is trying to get Republican Glenn Youngkin elected governor of Virginia, and it believes this issue helps him -- after all, it has previously tried to agitate issues in the county schools regarding gender identity and critical race theory.

Nicholas Fondacaro ranted in an Oct. 12 post:

In a bombshell report from The Daily Wire on Tuesday, reporter Luke Rosiak exposed how the controversial Loudoun County School Board (located in the Virginia suburbs of Washington) allegedly covered up the rape of a 14-year-old girl in the girls’ bathroom at the hands of a boy in a skirt just so they could pass a transgender bathroom policy. It was a truly disturbing story that quickly rose to national attention, yet none of the broadcast networks or the liberal cable outlets gave in any airtime.

Fondacaro didn't explain why anyone outside Loudoun County is supposed to care about a very local incident. But he did make it clear how issue is being immediately exploited on the right, giving out gold stars for it in the process: "Fortunately, the Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson gave the story the airtime it deserved and interviewed Rosiak to get more details. And a few hours later, FNC host Laura Ingraham spoke with Scott Smith, the father of the victim. He was beaten and arrested at a school board meeting for trying to bring up what happened to his daughter."

Tim Graham touted the transphobic angle for his Oct. 13 podcast, making it clear that the MRC and other right-wingers want you to believe that all transgender people are sexual predators in training: "This story is a nightmare for the liberals, because it's a real-life allegation when conservatives often complain that letting "gender-fluid" men or "trans women" into bathrooms or locker rooms could make them unsafe for actual women. This is a story they want to cancel, censor, ignore, squelch, or bury six feet under." Fondacaro followed with whining about "day two of the liberal media’s total television blackout," ridiculously calling Faox News "a more serious new [sic] network" because it pounced on this story.

Fondacaro returned on Oct. 14 to complain that the Washington Post's coverage of the story wasn't as transphobic as he demanded:

Late Wednesday night, The Washington Post became the first liberal news outlet to report the disturbing high school rapes going on in Loudoun County, Virginia. Burying it in their “local” section, the paper ignored key aspects of the story that made it a major scandal for liberal policies: the school board tried to cover it up, had the father of a victim arrested for attempting to speaking out, the attacker was “gender-fluid,” and the school board was trying to get a trans bathroom policy passed.

[...]

But at no point in their article did the three journalists think it was important to note the detail that the attacker was a boy who was wearing a skirt and identified as so-called “gender-fluid.” And while they noted that the second attack happened in an “empty classroom,” they failed to inform readers that the first one happened in a girls’ bathroom.

All of these omitted details were laid out by The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak in his bombshell report that blew the lid off the story on Tuesday.

Of course, Fondacaro didn't mention taht the Daily Wire is as transphobic as the MRC is.

You know the MRC is under orders to exploit this issue when Brent Bozell weighs in on it, and he did so in a softball Oct. 14 appearance on Fox Business:

Appearing on Fox Business Network’s Varney & Company Thursday morning, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell denounced the leftist media for refusing to cover two alleged rapes in Loudoun County Virginia high schools directly attributable to the radical transgender bathroom policy pushed by the left-wing school board there. He went through the disturbing timeline that lead up to the shocking alleged crimes.

[...]

He then condemned the left-wing media for steadfastly censoring the story throughout the entire chain of events: “So far, no coverage, no coverage, no coverage by the media that had been all over this issue up until it happened....No coverage whatsoever.”

Bozell apparently didn't explain why this local story warranted national coverage outside of his transphobia and desire to get Youngkin elected.

The same day, Kathleen Krumhansl bizarrely attacked Spanish-language news networks for ignoring the story, even though she could identify no reason why a Spanish-language news network should, behond whining that "Univision goes out of its way to defend transsexuals and the use of non-binary nouns such as (widely rejected) Latinx for continental Latinos as part of its LGBTQ agenda.

Meanwhile, following orders from his boss, MRC executive Tim Graham devoted his Oct. 15 column to summing up the right-wing narrative:

This is a story that any liberal media outlet would want to spike, censor, ignore, squelch, and bury six feet underground. It’s a vivid illustration of what liberals consider a false stereotype. They assume automatically, ideologically, this could never happen -- that a sexual predator would proclaim himself gender-fluid and enter a bathroom or locker room to commit a sex crime.

It’s a right-wing “lie” that suddenly became real.

[...]

The national media are very selective in covering local crimes. Stories of police brutality can quickly become an enormous national cause, but brutality against police is not (unless it was January 6). A horrible abortionist’s malpractice is a local story, but restricting access to abortion anywhere goes national. This shocking assault doesn’t match the LGBTQ “narrative.” In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Bias by omission seems mandatory.

Graham is being disingenuous. The reason why the right-wing scare tactic that transgender people would routinely assault women in bathrooms was considered as "lie" was because no evidence was ever offered that this has happened. And given that all we know about this incident has come from highly biased, transphobic sources, there's a lot we don't know, including about the alleged assailant. But, remember, Graham wants you to believe that all transgender poeple are sexual predators, and they do all their predatory work in public bathrooms.

So important was this issue for the MRC to exploit that Bozell appeared on TV again -- this time on Fox News -- on Oct. 17 to spread the narrative with his buddy Mark Levin:

Appearing on Fox News Channel’s Life, Liberty and Levin Sunday night, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell hammered the leftist media for “aiding and abetting” in the “cover-up” of the devastating impact of radical left-wing policies. Specifically, Bozell detailed the horrific case of a 14-year-old girl being allegedly raped by a male student in a Loudoun County, Virginia high school following the far-left school board implementing a highly controversial transgender bathroom policy.

[...]

Moments later, Bozell denounced the stunning media silence on the story: “What’s the media coverage of the rape? Nothing. What’s the media coverage of the cover-up of the rape to the parents in Loudoun County? Nothing.” He demanded: “Where are the media asking the question, what happened? Does this man’s daughter – has she been raped in this school? Why isn’t anyone talking about this? Why is the school board denying this? No media coverage.”

Naming and shaming the news outlets that refused to cover the terrible consequences of a radical left-wing social agenda, Bozell proclaimed: “What’s the media coverage of this explosive story? Nothing on the networks. Not ABC, NBC, CBS, those 24-hour news network like MSNBC and CNN. Only Fox and The Washington Times and The Washington Post.”

But for all his "naming and shaming," Bozell never explained why media outlets must be forced to dance to the tune of right-wing activists like himself on this issue.He then absurdly claimed that the media are "so in the back pocket with the American Marxist movement." Huh? There's an "American Marxist movement" that is so organized that it has that name?

DFondacaro and Geoffrey Dickens brought in the Youngkin angle in an Oct. 21 post:

All across this country parents are rising up and fighting against leftist policies being forced on them from ultra-liberals in the public school system.

As radio talk show host Mark Levin recently put it, there is a “war against parents and taxpayers by the teachers unions, the educational bureaucracy, school boards, and the Biden administration.” 

Well one of those policies (on transgender bathrooms) may have led to two sexual assaults in Loudoun County, Virginia schools, but you wouldn’t know that if you get your news from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN or MSNBC. 

Despite it now being a key issue in the Virginia Governor’s race between Republican Glenn Youngkin and Democrat Terry McAuliffe, the national news media (outside of outlets like Fox News, OAN and Newsmax) have refused to cover the shocking story.

In short: The MRC wants this story covered because it helps advance right-wing narratives and boosts a certain candidate in Virginia -- not because it's inherently newsworthy outside of the place where it happened.


Posted by Terry K. at 5:32 PM EDT
Updated: Sunday, October 31, 2021 5:32 PM EDT
The Fall Intern Congressman-Pestering Season Has Arrived At CNS
Topic: CNSNews.com

We've noted that CNSNews.com fall intern Megan Williams asking some congressmen with questions about refugees from Afghanistan, but that was just the her initiation into CNS' tradition of pester members of Congress with leading, biased questions designed to forward the "news" organization's right-wing agenda.

That beginning was followed with another leading question: “The federal deficit through the first 11 months of this fiscal year was $2.7 trillion and the federal debt is now $28 trillion. Will the Biden administration do anything to balance the budget?” That came with a follow-up: “Do you believe they will take any action to?” That's a setup designed to let Repubicans virtue-signal about the evils of deficit spending -- and it omits the fact that deficit spending has grown even under a Republican president. Those questions snared the following senators:

Not that all but three of the 12 senators queried are Republicans, which gave ample space for them to virtue-signal. However, both Booker and Casey made sure to point out in their answer how deficits increased under President Trump.

Williams' next round of gotcha was a reprise of a question asked over the summer: "“The ‘Build Back Better Act’ the House Budget Committee approved is 2,465 pages long, will you read the entire bill before you vote on it?” These members of Congress got ambushed with it:

Yes, another biased, Republican-heavy lineup. The next round served up more virtue-signaling opportunities under the qestion "Should Facebook be allowed to restrict speech on its platform?" Here's who got stuck this time:

Williams' boilerplate claims in each article claimed that "Leading up to the 2020 elections, Facebook was placed in the spotlight for its apparent mishandling of information, specifically its push to censor conservative voices on its platform" -- a statement that advances CNS owner Media Research Center's fraudulent narrative about conservatives and only conservatives being "censored" on Facebook and ignores the fact that as a private business, Facebook has the right to run things as it pleases, a privilege conservatives normally grant to other private companies.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:52 PM EDT
Updated: Sunday, October 31, 2021 3:38 PM EDT
Saturday, October 30, 2021
MRC Labors To Keep Va. GOP Governor Candidate Far (But Not Too Far) From Trump
Topic: Media Research Center

In its campaigning for Republican Virginia governor candidate Glenn Youngkin, the Media Research Center has had a bit of a task on its hands: defend him from accusations he's a Trump clone -- for even the MRC understands there's a certain amount of radioactivity that comes from associating with a guy who still refuses to admit he lost the election -- but not not distance him from Trump completely (because despite his denial and derangement, Trump still controls the Republican Party).

Back in May, Kyle Drennen was setting up the frame that "reliable Democratic Party hack Chuck Todd" was "attacking the GOP candidate with talking points that perfectly matched DNC tactics. He spent the entire segment trying to tar Youngkin as a dangerous radical" who had to be "Trumpy" to win the GOP nomination, asserting that it was "hacky" to point that out. Drennen made no effort to debunk anything Todd said, though.

On Sept. 28, Drennen rehashed his attacks on Todd in once again framing the claim that liniking Yoiungkin and Trump is nothing but "Democratic spin" -- but, again, he fails to offer any counterargument that would debunk the claim. If you're spinning a fact as "spin," you're losing.

Kristine Marsh complained in a Sept. 30 post that Youngkin's Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, "has repeatedly accused Youngkin of being the next Trump and the CNN host was happy to bolster that claim," adding that CNN played a "montage of both Republicans speaking out against critical race theory, defunding the police, and the radical left. Wow, how uncanny! Two Republicans speaking on the same hot button issues that hit home with the Republican base!"

In an Oct. 15 post, Curtis Houck defended Youngkin against his clear links to the event beause "Youngkin wasn’t there and slammed the stunt as 'weird and wrong.'" The same day, Tim Graham helped to dig Youngkin out of a controversy in which participants at an event held in support of his campaign pledged allegiance to a flag that was allegedly flown during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot (which Graham himself is now trying to downplay), declaring that MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace was "false" in claiming that Youngkin "is somehow an 'insurrectionist' who 'wouldn’t say' whether he would have voted to certify the 2020 election."

First, Graham misleadingly described the event, calling only "a rally in Virginia featuring Donald Trump where Youngkin was not present" but omitting the fact the rally was for Youngkin's benefit. Second, Graham was forced to admit that Youngkin actually waffled on the question of whether he would have voted to certify the election, apparently hainging his "false" claim on the fact that Youngkin clarified his answer the next day -- which, of course, doesn't erase the original waffling.

In yet another Oct. 15 post -- yes, that makes three, which shows the urgency in which the MRC believed Youngkin's gaffe needed immediate cleanup -- Mark Finkelstein tried to rebut claims that Youngkin hold Trumpian "wlid" and "dangerous" views: "While the Democrats have aerobically tried to tie Youngkin to Trump, Youngkin has run a happy-warrior campaign with a lot of positive TV ads." He followed that a lengthy insistence that Youngkin is no Trumpy extremist:

So what were the "wild and dangerous" views that Geist claimed that Youngkin holds? Kaine exclusively cited Youngkin's focus on election integrity. The segment began with a clip from a Virginia rally in which people pledged allegiance to a flag reportedly used during the January 6th Capitol riot.

However, as Geist himself acknowledged, Youngkin "pretty clearly distanced himself" from the rally, and issued a statement calling it "weird, and wrong, to pledge allegiance to a flag connected to January 6th."  

Kaine also tried to make the case that since Youngkin allegedly "promote[d] the big lie," by "questioning the results of November 2020," he is "responsible for the consequences of the big lie."

But even the Washington Post —which has endorsed McAuliffe—has acknowledged that Youngkin:

    Has said there wasn't widespread fraud in Virginia.
  • Said he would have certified results of the presidential election.
  • Has acknowledged the legitimacy of Biden's election.

So who's lying now, Senator Kaine?

And in any case, is this really the standard that Kaine wants to set: that candidates are responsible for the statements and actions of all of their supporters? Would Kaine and other Dems really want to be held responsible for the actions of BLM, the defund-the-police crowd, the looters and rioters, etc?

But hasn't the MRC been spending the past year and a half portraying any liberal who supports the ideas of racial justice and police reform as official members of Antifa? Also: Like Graham, Finkelsteing censored the fact that Youngkin initially waffled on whether he would certify the election. Finally, Finkelstein conveniently omitted the fact that the Post article he so highly praised also noted that Youngkin has sounded largely like Trump on "election integrity" issues, including having "called for an audit of voting machines to help voters feel confident in elections."

Nicholas Fondacaro made his way back to the MRC's original narrative in an Oct. 24 post, complaining that "the networks adopted the talking points of the McAuliffe campaign as they railed against Youngkin as some kind of Donald Trump mini-me" -- though he, like Drennen before him, failed to explain exactly why Youngkin shouldn't be thought of that way, even after condeding that Trump has endorsed Youngkin.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:41 AM EDT
Updated: Sunday, October 31, 2021 3:45 PM EDT

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