MRC Offers Tepid Defenses, Whataboutism Of Fox News Over Dominion Scandal Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center was extremely reluctant to weigh in on the scandal revealed through the Dominion lawsuit showing that Fox News lied to its viewers by telling its viewers that the 2020 presidential election was stolen when it knew that it wasn't. Once it finally did -- two weeks after the story broke -- Tim Graham took the tepid approach, tsk-tsking over how the scandal makes right-wing media look (because "liberal media" can cite it as a example) but offering little direct criticism of Fox News itself (MRC employees appear on the channel, after all -- don't want to jeopardize that). After that, though, the MRC started to feel a little more comfortable defending Fox News -- while still contorting itself in doing so. Nicholas Fondacaro took the aggressive approach in a March 8 post by bashing the ladies of "The View" for daring to criticize Fox News:
NewsBusters has repeatedly had to fact-check ABC’s The View for the stream of misinformation they’re constantly pumping out of their cesspool. But according to raging co-host Whoopi Goldberg, the First Amendment doesn’t protect those who “willing lie.” That was the basis of her suggestion that the people who work at Fox News needed to be prosecuted by the Department of Justice for “recruiting” “domestic terrorists.”
“I have a question. I have a question,” Goldberg announced during their collective conniption about Fox News host Tucker Carlson airing January 6 footage. ldquo;How come this is not thought of as being recruiting? How come they’re not thinking about this as radicalizing?” she ominously asked.
Racist Sunny Hostin wanted a little clarification by asking, “Like recruiting domestic terrorists?” Goldberg confirmed the premise: “Why is this not being scrutinized in the way that they scrutinize other things?”
She never explained what those “other things” that got scrutinized were.
Yes, Fondacaro is still libelously labeling Hostin a "racist" because he doesn't understand how metaphors work. When Goldberg argued that "the First Amendment doesn't allow you to willingly lie," he lamely responded; "That’s not to say lying was right, it’s just pointing out there was no such limit on the right to free speech. If so-called 'hate speech' was protected by the First Amendment, why wouldn’t a lie be?" Of course, Fondacaro may find that out soon if Hostin sues him for defamation over his false slander of her as a "racist."
Fondacaro then tried to distract from Fox News by complaining that Hostin aas ":falsely claiming the military was filled with white supremacists, adding: "Now, what was that about lying being illegal?" In fact, military officials have warned of the threat of white supremacism in the ranks.
Mark Finkelstein played whataboutism to distract from more criticism of Fox News in a Marcy 9 post:
To paraphrase Luke 4:23: MSNBC, heal thyself!
On today's Morning Joe, discussing revelations that Fox News people said critical things in private about Donald Trump, but something very different on the air, David Ignatius said:
"You have a sense that Fox is chasing what it imagines its viewers, the public on the right, want to hear. And that's just never a good position."
Yes, Ignatius was talking about Fox News. But upon hearing it, you might have thought Ignatius had Joe Scarborough in mind.
Because if there is one person in cable news who has changed his views, molding them to fit the desires of his liberal audience, corporate suits, and elite social milieu, it is Scarborough.
Curtis Houck spent a March 10 post whining about the coverage:
With disclosure after disclosure of e-mails and text messages from Fox News executives, hosts, and journalists released over the last month as part of a Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) giving Tucker Carlson’s team access to January 6 surveillance, Fox News has been in the headlines and, sure enough, the liberal networks that want to see the network eradicated have spent nearly an hour obsessing over the two so-called scandals.
The MRC looked at the flagship morning, evening, and Sunday morning political talk shows of “the big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC from the February 17 Dominion disclosure through March 10 and found the trio have wasted 57 minutes and 37 seconds being consumed with the happenings of a competitor. For reference, this was 27 times larger than the time they spent on the Twitter Files (two minutes and eight seconds).
Separate out the two stories and they’ve doled out 35 minutes and 28 seconds tut-tutting on FNC’s supposed grave and 18 minutes and 57 seconds smearing Carlson for “press[ing] a series of phony claims” and “spinning a false narrative.”
CBS was well out in front with 23 minutes and 13 seconds across the CBS Evening News, CBS Mornings, and Face the Nation. ABC was second with 18 minutes and 37 seconds on Good Morning America, This Week, and World News Tonight, and then 15 minutes and 47 seconds for Meet the Press, NBC Nightly News, and Today.
Houck didn't regale his readers with tales of how Fox News covered the story so much better -- perhaps because managment has forbidden it to be discussed on the channel (something he didn't disclose to his readers). Instead, he simply repeated a statement from the channel criticizing the lawsuit, then bashed coverage of it again:
As for Dominion, Fox has said the lawsuit poses a genuine threat to free speech and the news media while Dominion argues Fox should pay a price for having aired false claims about their voting machines.
We know which side the liberal media are on in their quest to ensure Fox News ceases to exist and assert control over what Americans learn (and don’t learn) about the world around them.
Houck didn't mention all the attacks Fox News has launched on its competitors over the years -- particularly CNN -- let alone argue that Fox wanted CNN to cease to exist in order to "assert control over what Americans learn (and don’t learn) about the world around them."
Finkelstein returned for a March 11 post that downplayed all that lying-to-its-viewers stuff to manufacture a little outrage at Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell's suggestion that members of the military should perhaps not be permitted to watch Fox News in the wake of the scandal:
Note Swawell's ominous last line, "I don't think we are without complete recourse." Translation: "we have ways of making Fox Newsstop talking!"
Imagine the Biden administration creating a Bureau of Television Truth—Armed Forces Division, with the power to ban shows not to its liking! And as its first commissar, why not . . . Eric Swalwell!
Graham came back for a March 12 post under the headline "Comedy! Leftist Radio Host Asks Jean-Pierre If the FCC Can Pull the 'License' of Fox News." But not only did commentator Dean Obedallah not say that, he explicitly acknowledged that wasn't possible because Fox News is on cable, and Graham even quoted him saying that: "They can lose their license on a network. It doesn’t apply to cable." Graham also huffed:
Rational people can excuse Obeidallah's censorious enthusiasm since he loves stirring the pot with "comedy" like suggesting in 2016 that we exchange Trump with Mexico for the murderous drug lord "El Chapo."
[...]
You're going to find zero enthusiasm at CNN and MSNBC for extending the FCC's authority from broadcast TV to cable TV...not to mention raunchy cable networks. They prefer the leftists just pressure cable companies to drop Fox without the government getting too involved.
Graham refused to criticize Fox News and barely referenced the scandal at all, euphemistically noting only that "the cable news network's communications were revealed in the Dominion defamation lawsuit."
WND's Farah Declares That Likening Politicians To Nazis Is Cool Again Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily regularlyhasa cow whenever someone likens Republicans in general or Donald Trump in particular to Nazis -- even though it spent the entirety of Barack Obama's presidency playing the Nazi card against him. But it appears that WND editor Joseph Farah has decided that it's cool to smear politicians as Nazis again. he wrote in his Feb. 27 column:
What comes to mind when thinking about those who select people based on race.
Democrats? Joe Biden? Adolf Hitler?
Fair comparison?
Yes – you better believe it.
Identity politics is all the same.
Democrats also win the prize on and gender – something that never occurred to the Nazis.
And that is all Tulsi Gabbard did. She told the truth, once again, about Biden and Democrats. Remember, she's a former Democrat and former Democratic presidential candidate.
Last week Gabbard hit out at "identity politics" across the Democratic Party, which she claimed was "proud" to appoint people to federal posts based on their race and gender.
The 41-year-old called the trend "sickening and alarming," claiming it echoed the core principles of Nazism. It is the second time she has compared Biden to the German dictator on the Jesse Watters show on Fox.
[...]
It wasn't a German thing, however. Hitler virtually invented and personified racial hatred and phony religion.
Democrats and Joe Biden are doing the same thing. In fact, they're doing him one better. Not only are they making a mockery of the Constitution, they are making a travesty of God's Word with the fantasy that there are more than only two sexes.
It's time to challenge all of this nonsense before there are any more elections.
Farah didn't explain why the Nazi smear is suddenly permissible again after spending years attacking anyone who did so against a Republican.
Farah played the same card again in his March 15 column:
The Nazis canceled people – in the worst way possible. They left in their wake nothing but ash.
Cancel culture is something we've never really known in the West – in the USA. Not until the rise of Big Tech.
But history repeats itself. And though it hasn't reached the level of Germany's death camps, there are some parallels emerging.
[...]
Today the Democrats are unrepentant. I never expected the lies they would tell, the crimes they would commit.
I thought: "Not in America, the nation I loved."
And what does it have to do with Big Tech? They made it all possible. They are the new authority on all things under the sun – under Big Tech. It's the new Tower of Babel.
When did journalism become so mean? When did liberals become so mean? Honestly. When did they begin seeing the world so bleakly? Their hearts have been hardened to God.
I'll say it again. Big Tech became a combination goose-stepping SS and fascist Brownshirts – the Rat Patrol. Is it time to stop working with them – completely? To pretend they don't exist?
History is repeating itself – with the help of Big Tech. They are all Josef Goebbels.
Actually, the spreaders of disinformation and misinformation are Farah and his WND minions, who have made fake news and conspiracy theories the WND brand and whine loudly whenever they're called out on it. The only person to blame for WND's current predicament is Farah, not the "big tech" folks who decided they no longer want to do business with such a dishonest "news" organization.
MRC Uses Right-Leaning Media Monitor For Another Political Attack On Google Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Joseph Vazquez hyped in a Feb. 28 post:
A new analysis follows MRC Free Speech America’s lead in exposing the enormous left-wing political bias that undergirds Big Tech giant Google.
AllSides — a media solutions company that purports to “expose people to information and ideas from all sides of the political spectrum so they can better understand the world” —released a report Feb. 28 illustrating how Google News “displayed articles from left-wing media sources far more often than sources from the right.”
Specifically, AllSides said that its analysis revealed that a whopping “61% of media outlets presented on Google News’ homepage over a 5-day period were from sources AllSides rates as on the left, with just 3% from outlets on the right.”
“The jig is up,” MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider said in a statement. “It’s no accident when Google News promotes left-leaning outlets twenty times more than right-leaning outlets. Google cannot pretend to be unbiased any longer. Our own research has shown it. AllSides is corroborating it.”
Note that Vazquez parrots AllSides' euphemistic description of it self as a "media solutions company" (twice!). In fact, AllSides is a right-leaning media monitor that the MRC can count on to peddle its anti-media narratives and vice versa -- and that is what's happening here. AllSides is embracing the MRC model of insisting that any non-right-wing media outlet is on the "left," and the main complaint here is that Google News uses too many stories from CNN, as Vazquez rantingly summarized:
AllSides also called out Google News for giving a noticeable preference for leftist propaganda outlet CNN:
[...]
When researching the term “Trump” over a five-day period, the AllSides report showed that “32% of articles were from CNN (Left bias), 20% of articles were from The Guardian (Lean Left).” It continued: “[Six] of the 25 (24%) articles pulled were about Trump’s financials and tax returns, and 6 out of 25 (24%) were about Trump’s potential presidential run in 2024.” For the term “Biden,” AllSides said that “Six of the 25 (24%) articles” were from CNN. In addition, “[f]our (16%) of the articles were from The White House and five (20%) were from Politico (Lean Left).”
But here was the damning part that was true for both the Trump and Biden results: “No Lean Right- or Right-rated outlets were present in these search results”[emphasis added].
But in addition to buying into a biased model, AllSides appears to have messed up its own labeling. In its study, it insisted on calling CNN as "left" even though its own info page on CNN currently describes it merely as "lean left." It also appears that AllSides examined only the purported bias of outlets, not any alleged bias in any individual story, making this a broad-brush attack that doesn't go nearly deep enough to justify the headline findings -- in other words, the kind of so-called study the MRC loves for advancing its right-wing narratives.
Vazquez also claimed that the AllSides study "corresponds directly with MRC Free Speech America’s Oct. 25, 2022 study, which showed that Google buried the campaign websites of Republican senate candidates in hotly contested races while elevating their Democratic opponents." As we documented, the MRC "study" used search terms normal humans do not use, and it did not explain why those search terms should have returned the results it demanded.
This is yet another of the politicalattacks the MRC has launched against Google over the past several months -- and this time it's using AllSides as cover for doing so. And its embrace of AllSides as friendly to its agenda contrasts greatly with its waronNewsGuard for pointing out the relative unreliability of right-wing websites.
NEW ARTICLE -- Classified Docs At CNS: The Double Standard, Part 1 Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com followed the lead (and the agenda) of its Media Research Center parent in helping Donald Trump play victimhood over getting raided by the FBI over classified documents he took. Read more >>
MRC Whitewashes Another 'Twitter Files' House Hearing Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's wavering over Elon Musk has ceased for time being, because there's some agenda-feeding to be done. Autumn Johnson did her part in a March 8 post:
A congressional Interim Staff Report revealed that The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) made apparently “partisan” demands of Twitter owner Elon Musk.
According to the Interim Staff Report released by the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, The FTC sent “over a dozen” letters to Twitter’s legal counsel and made “more than 350 specific demands” for information. The report slammed the FTC for having blatantly abused its power. “[T]he Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is orchestrating an aggressive campaign to harass Twitter,” the report critiqued. “These demands have no basis in the FTC’s statutory mission and appear to be the result of partisan pressure to target Twitter and silence Musk.”
The FTC reportedly asked Twitter to hand over “[e]very single internal communication ‘relating to Elon Musk’ by any Twitter personnel” since he bought the company. Additionally, Twitter was asked to "’[i]dentify all journalists’" who were granted access to the internal files and explain why the company fired Jim Baker, the company’s ex-deputy general counsel and former FBI lawyer.
The Interim Staff Report also accused the FTC of making “partisan” demands with no “rational basis in user privacy. "The timing, scope, and frequency of the FTC’s demands to Twitter suggest a partisan motivation to its action,” the report noted.
[...]
The Interim Staff Report shows exactly the type of damning federal government overreach that the Twitter Files helped expose.
But Johnson is censoring the full story. As an actual news organization reported, the FTC's investigation is part of a 2011 consent decree Twitter signed with the government over protection of user data, and the change in Twitter's ownership did not absolve the company's responsibility in living up to it; an FTC spokesman explained that "Protecting consumers' privacy is exactly what the FTC is supposed to do."
After that came another Republican-led House hearing inspired by the "Twitter files," in which the most interesting revelations included Matt Taibbi laughably pretending that Musk wasn't his source for his "Twitter files" reporting (even though he was using selected internal Twitter files Musk allowed him to peruse), a Democratic congresswoman pointing out Taibbi's self-interest in serving as Musk's stenographer, Taibbi being unsure whether Kayne West's anti-Semitic tweets should have been deleted, and the failure of Taibbi and fellow Musk stenographer Michael Shellenberger to report on Donald Trump pressuring Twitter to censor Chrissy Teigen over that glorious "pussy ass bitch" tweet. But as with the previous House hearing in February, the MRC didn't want its readers to know about anything that didn't conform to the predetermined right-wing narratives. Curtis Houck huffed in a March 10 post:
On Thursday, the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government held a hearing on the bombshell Twitter Files and the implication of the government colluding with Big Tech to censor free speech. The lively hearing featured two of the Twitter Files authors, Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi. And throughout, Democrats tried to demean their work and lambaste the free press as their reporting has reflected poorly on their friends in the federal bureaucracy.
Of course, the major broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC were not interested and ignored the story on their flagship Thursday evening and Friday morning newscasts. Instead, they spend 44 minutes and seven seconds previewing Sunday’s Oscars, otherwise known as Hollywood’s biggest night of self-gratification.
Houck went on to lavishly praise Fox News for adhering to the narrative:
The Fox News Channel’s flagship evening newscast, however, took a different tract as Special Report opened with a three-minute-and-two-second report.
[...]
FNC’s Jesse Watters PrimeTime followed Baier and opened with a brutal, 10-minute-plus breakdown. Watters said the work of the Twitter Files team was “exactly the type of corruption journalists are supposed to air out” and “should be celebrated,” but aren’t since “Democrats aren’t happy” since they “only like a free press if the press works for them.”
[...]
Watters reemphasized that leftists were “caught conspiring with the FBI and Big Tech to censor free speech and freedom of the press and they’re not even denying it,” but instead “accusing the reporters who broke the story of being in it for the money and hounding” and “strangl[ing] them”.
Ironically, he said, these are “the same people who spent years telling us not to bully the media, remember, and how important the free press was to democracy” while their friends in the press “got book deals and Pulitzer Prizes” for “fake collusion” claims.
Catherine Salgado used her own March 10 post to offer her version of the narrative:
Republican lawmakers and self-professed liberal journalist testifiers bashed Big Tech coordination with "weaponized government" while Democrat lawmakers attacked the testifiers at a congressional hearing Thursday.
The House Judiciary Committee held a March 9 hearing on the bombshell Twitter Files, which exposed that the government coordinated with Big Tech and pressured Twitter to censor Americans. “We are here focused on a weaponized government, a whole-of-government approach that has been turned against the American people,” Congressman Matt Gaetz said. Congressman Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Twitter Files journalists and testifiers Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger shared Gatez’s sentiment as they ripped government-Big Tech censorship.
Salgado insisted that anyone who doesn't adhere to the right-wing pro-Musk agenda is opposed to free speech:
House Democrats were less pro-free speech, as expected. In fact, they harassed Taibbi in an attempt to uncover his sources. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) even accused Taibbi of essentially profiteering off his Twitter Files reporting, because his Substack subscriptions greatly increased after he first released The Twitter Files.
“[New Twitter CEO] Elon Musk spoon-fed you his cherry-picked information, which you must have suspected promotes a slanted view point or, at the very least, generates another right-wing conspiracy theory,” Wasserman Schultz sneered condescendingly.
But there is no “conspiracy theory.” Democrats have openly advocated ever harsher censorship and unequivocally demanded only one narrative be allowed online.
Salgado and the rest of the MRC think that holding conservatives accountable for false or hateful speech equals "censorship." Also, she didn't dispute Wasserman Schultz's assertion that Musk fed Taibbi selective and biased information -- and if you're doing that to manufacture a partisan political narrative that would not exist in the presence of fuller information that is currently being hidden (by Musk), you are, in fact, creating a conspiracy theory.
Renata Kiss served up more Musk-fluffing in a a March 13 post:
Twitter owner Elon Musk recently doubled down on his pro-free speech rhetoric, saying free speech cannot be lost because “you don’t get it back.”
Twitter CEO Elon Musk shared his vision for Twitter in an open web forum on Tuesday emphasizing his continued commitment to more open public discourse on the “town square of the internet.”
2:26 “What is the bedrock of a functioning democracy?” he asked. “It has to be free speech and a level playing field. That’s why it’s the First Amendment.” He went on to say that “once you lose freedom of speech, you don’t get it back. So that’s why we must protect it at all costs.”
Musk explained that Twitter isn’t limited to the narrow point of view of legacy media. On the contrary, Twitter empowers the public to choose a narrative for themselves.
Kiss didn't mention that Musk suspended the Twitter accounts of journalists who reported on him, demonstrating that his supposed commitment to "free speech" is little more than lip service.
Johnson returned to do stenography for Musk stenographer Taibbi as he whined about being criticized:
One congressional Democrat seemed unprepared for the response she received after she implied that Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi wasn’t really a journalist.
"This isn't just a matter of what data was given to these so-called journalists before us," House Ranking member Stacey Plaskett (D-VI) said at last week's Twitter Files hearing. Plaskett directed her comments at independent journalists Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger who each testified at the hearing. Taibbi, the first journalist to report on the Twitter Files, immediately responded by reminding Congress of his list of credentials.
"Ranking Member Plaskett, I'm not a so-called journalist," he said during the hearing. "I've won the National Magazine Award, the I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and I've written 10 books, including four New York Times bestsellers." But Taibbi didn’t leave it at that. He responded once again in a Racket News Magazine article Friday.
In his article, Taibbi wrote that Democrats could not care less about free speech and were only concerned with pushing their own agenda.
Again: If Taibbi and Shellenberger are Musk's compliant stooges serving up stenography for him, they are not "independent journalists."
CNS Joins Right-Wing Narrative Campaign To Blame Bank Collapse On ESG Policies Topic: CNSNews.com
Just as its Media Research Center parent did, CNSNews.com sought to exploit the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank by imposing right-wing narratives to blame things that didn't actually happen.
Susan Jones kicked off things with an unusually straightforward story, though she still found a to inject bias with a snarky shot at President Biden, claiming that a statement on the collapse released by the White House was done "in President Joe Biden's name." Then it was narrrative-pushing time, as Jones wrote an article baselessly suggesting that the collapse was caused by the bank following ESG policies (a narrative CNS has been heavilypushing lately):
"Our values guide everything we do," says Silicon Valley Bank's "Environmental, Social and Governance Report" for 2022.
"We start with empathy, take responsibility, speak and act with integrity, embrace diverse perspectives, and keep learning and improving," says the introduction written by (former) SVB President and CEO Greg Becker.
Federal regulators took over the failed bank on Friday, following a run by depositors. The Biden administration says all of SVB's depositors will get their money back, even those who exceed the $250,000 limit for federally insured deposits.
SVB's 66-page ESG report lays out the following social justice initiatives that were important to the bank, which mainly served technology startups:
Jones then hyped that "Vivek Ramaswamy, a 2024 presidential Republican candidate, says he would not bail out Silicon Valley Bank, if it were up to him," for the purported sin of taking ESG into consideration. Later in the day, managing editor Michael W. Chapman gave Ramaswamy -- a right-wing darling CNS' MRC parent helped hype into a presidential run -- his own article to rant (and to further the anti-ESG narrative):
Commenting on the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Vivek Ramaswamy, a highly successful asset management chairman, best selling author, and GOP presidential candidate, said the bank should not be bailed out by the government but should be allowed to fail, "if needed."
Bailing out SVB is nothing more than "crony capitalism," he added, noting that we saw all this happen before with the bank bailouts in 2008.
[...]
The anti-woke money manager also criticized the ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) agenda followed by SVB.
"Silicon Valley Bank just last year made a $5 billion commitment to sustainable finance to ensure a better and more sustainable planet," noted Ramaswamy. "If they had actually sought for a more sustainable balance sheet, they would have better done their job."
Jones returned to gush over partisan commentator and Fox Business host Charles Payne -- whom she laughably described as a "financial journalist" -- weighing in on the bank's collapse:
"First and foremost, for me, that was a bailout of Silicon Valley. Not Silicon Valley Bank -- of Silicon Valley. And everyone needs to be clear on that. This was not a bailout of hard-working Americans with small accounts. This was a bank that only catered, for the most part, to Silicon Valley and their customers.
"So how did Silicon Valley (Bank) get so big? All the money that cascaded into our economy at the beginning of the pandemic helped to spur...over a thousand IPOs (initial public offerings)," Payne said. He said 59 percent of those IPOs were SPACs.
(A SPAC, or Special Purpose Acquisition Company, is one without commercial operations that is formed to raise capital through an IPO for the purpose of acquiring or merging with an existing company).
Payne said 90 percent of the SPACs were "pure crap."
"The others all went out overvalued," he continued.
Jones didn't mention that Donald Trump's social media website Truth Social is linked to a SPAC.
After a couplemore articles tepidly reporting on what non-conservatives had to say, Craig Bannister served up even more anti-ESG ranting from Ramaswamy:
Funding ideological environmental, social and governance (ESG) causes, instead of the most profitable ventures, helped cause last week’s failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) – and most clients don’t even know their retirement account managers are investing in ESG, Republican 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy says.
"Silicon Valley Bank just last year made a $5 billion commitment to sustainable finance to ensure a better and more sustainable planet," Ramaswamy told CNN on Sunday.
"If they had actually sought for a more sustainable balance sheet, they would have better done their job," he noted.
Bannister did not quote Ramaswamy providing any direct evidence of a link between ESG and the bank's collapse.
When questions were raised about a bank deregulation law signed by Trump that may have contributed to the bank's collapse, Melanie Arter contributd a March 14 article featuring a Republican trying to change the subject:
Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.), who serves on the House Financial Services Committee, said Tuesday that the failed Silicon Valley Bank was not because of a failure of banking regulations, and more regulation on regional banks “is not the answer.”
Instead, he said, it was fueled by “overspending by the Democrats, which fueled inflation,” among other things.
“Well, what we need to be doing right now, what we need to be focused on is not assigning premature blame but instead focusing on vigorous oversight of the financial regulators to make sure we prevent systemic risk and restore financial stability,” Barr told Fox Business’ “Mornings with Maria.”
There were a few more articles that, of course, mostly leaned right:
The rest of CNS' coverage of the SVB collapse occurred in the commentary section, which differentiates itself from its "news" division only in the degree of bias allowed.
MRC Sports Blogger Frets That Baseball Isn't Manly Enough Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has a weirdthing about masculinity, and that popped up again in a Feb. 21 post by Jay Maxson fretting that major league baseball has become insufficiently manly:
The rigid walls of toxic masculinity are crumbling before our eyes -- because a major league baseball player for the Boston Red Sox plans to paint his fingernails and toenails before every game this season. First baseman Tristan Casas is helping to change the “stereotypically macho image of MLB players for the better,” according to sensationalist Outsports writer Ken Schultz.
During spring training in Florida, Casas displayed red fingernail polish and white painted toenails. This girly look is “great” for baseball, Schultz declared.:
[...]
This fitting development from the Grapefruit League is an important step in encouraging once-macho big leaguers to freely express their personalities (inner femininity?), making baseball a more compelling and welcoming game, Schultz raved.
Given that Maxson melted down the day before over a minor league baseball player coming out as gay, it's no surprise that the rant about manliness in baseball continued:
By painting his nails, Casas is adding to the legend of softer baseball players like Joc Pederson, who wore a pearl necklace during the Atlanta Braves’ World Series run in 2021. Along with St. Louis hitting coach Turner Ward kissing Lars Nootbar’s cheek last year to celebrate his birthday. These are men who add color to a sport that’s been suffocated by tradition. With the implication it’s been damaged by men acting like men.
These outliers in the manly sport of baseball are helping to generate more inclusion in baseball culture. In fact, Schultz argues that the men cited above made it possible for White Sox minor leaguer Anderson Comas to simultaneously come out of the bullpen and the closet. They’re just being who they really are … and all that jazz, the LGBTABCD narrative goes.
A little thing like red nails makes a bigger statement than one would think, Schultz goes on. Stepping outside “the rigid definition of masculinity” opens a window for inclusion allowing Comas to live out his truths and emboldens allies to affirm him.
Even though no major leaguer has ever come out as an active player, a guy painting his nails is no small feat. It’s another step in the feminization of men. Somehow, this is supposed to make us a better nation.
But Maxson never explains why this matters. If Casas or any other player can perform at the major league level, what does it matter if they paint their nails or even fail to be heterosexual? Could be that Maxson is just a homophobe -- an odd stance for someone whose bio carries a sexually ambiguous first name and no photo so he readers would know what sex he is.
WND's Mercer Hates Modern Music (Especially If Black People Are Involved) Topic: WorldNetDaily
Ilana Mercer's Feb. 23 WorldNetDaily column is headlined "Beethoven & Bach ARE the West, not Cardi B, Kanye, Rihanna." While she didn't explicitly make a point of it in the column itself, it's worth noting that the three musical artists she deemed not "the West" are black -- not surprising for a writer who's very much white nationalist-adjacent. Ultimately, the column is one long while about how she doesn't like popular music:
Symbolically, the decaying Empire unveiled some of its most putrefying, pornographic cultural products in the week in which Burt Bacharach, composer of sublime pop music, departed to the heavens. The beastly bacchanalia unfolded at the 2023 Grammys and the Super Bowel (sic) halftime hump-along, showcasing zero skill, zero imagination, zero talent and zero beauty. Those vaguely familiar with my prose recognize that I'm being charitable.
[...]
The only substantive conservative case to make over the Grammys is that it signifies the complete loss of immutable artistic standards. For while artistic taste is subjective and personal; artistic standards are everywhere and always objective.
Nobody looking at, and listening to, the 2023 Grammys should dare talk about beauty – of melody or movement – harmony (as in consonance and counterpoint), chord progression and a facility with musical instruments, for these were nowhere apparent. Better melodic progression is to be found in "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" and "Three Blind Mice."
Nobody watching these erogenous-zone centered extravaganzas, for which the celebrity Idiocracy clapped like clapped-out whores, should dare conclude anything but this:
The Grammys were about the end of art – about the loss of all meritocratic, objective standards in art.
The true meaning of the West is not to be found in the staged acts of ugly exhibitionists and filthy pornographers who bedeck our cultural and sporting events, the likes of loud, lousy Lizzo, a mountain of meritless flesh, and Sam Smith Sicko –demented degenerates who are all engaged in publicly tolerated indecent exposure and tuneless yelping, that not even the Auto-tune magic software, the "holy grail of recording" technology, can correct.
[...]
Beethoven is the West. It's men like Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Brahms, Bruckner, Debussy, César Franck, Dvorák, Tchaikovsky (a Russian homosexual, whose manly music could never be queered), Elgar, Fauré and more – they embody the West. They and the many young performers furthering their work, the work of the Lord, are examples of the best of the West.
"Ode to Joy," inspired by Friedrich Schiller's eponymous poem, is but the soundbite in Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. Sublime as it is, "Ode to Joy" is the popular tune in a more magnificent whole.
One should not seek out exclusively the Ode of the symphony's finale – the fourth movement – without assimilating the typically ballsy build-up by Beethoven throughout the preceding Allegro (first movement), scherzo (second movement) and Adagio (third).
MUSIC IS MAN. These men, to be precise.
[...]
And that's the West, too. Alas, it has become anathema in Neurotic Nation USA to be stoic and heroic like Beethoven. I shall close with guidance neither fuzzy nor diffuse: Honor Western civilization, not Kanye West: Do it up, parents.
Note that all of the classical composers she names are white, and that of all the musicians whose work she despises, all but one (Sam Smith) are black.
This follows the recent trend of WNDwriters (and others) who have declared their unhappiness with modern art.
MRC Was Really Hoping For An Economic Collapse After Bank Failures Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Resarch Center moved from baselessly blaming "woke" policies for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, as well as another bank, to being disappointed that the banks' failure didn't destroy the economy because the Biden administration intervened to keep the situation from spreading. Catherine Salgado huffed in a March 16 post:
Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary bashed the federal bailout of Silicon Valley Bank depositors.
O’Leary explained his critiques on Fox Business’s Cavuto: Coast to Coast with host Neil Cavuto on Tuesdsay. Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is one of several banks that collapsed last week. O’Leary accused regulators of taking an “isolated incident” and creating a “moral hazard” by applying it as an overall banking concern, guaranteeing deposits above the $250,000 Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. limit. He said when the next bank fails, the federal government should just “let it fail.” O’Leary would later state during a segment hours later on the Fox News Channel's Hannity that SVB was “run by idiots.”
O’Leary told Cavuto he predicted “unintended consequences” from the bailout policy, such as signaling to banks that the Federal Reserve will rescue them no matter what.
A March 27 post by Joseph Vazquez returned to rooting for the economy to collapse over ther bank failures beause it will hurt President Biden:
Economist Peter Schiff blasted the media aversion to acknowledging that the ongoing banking turmoil is in fact a “financial crisis” that could be worse than 2008.
Schiff highlighted America’s record high credit card debt and the failing banks and noted that it wasn’t a coincidence that “both the borrowers and the lenders are broke.” The “reason for that,” said Schiff on the March 21 edition of One America News’ Real America with Dan Ball, “is the Fed. The Fed kept interest rates artificially low for more than a decade, encouraging people to go deeper and deeper into debt and banks to extend” credit to them. Now, Schiff said the Fed’s incessant number of missteps corralled it into a position where it is being “forced” to “raise interest rates, something that was always going to happen.” In turn, the Fed effectively “created another financial crisis,” Schiff analyzed.
Schiff then turned his sights onto the liberal media trying to gaslight people on the real severity of America’s financial situation and deflect away from the horrid memories of 2008. “The media is reluctant to call this a financial crisis. They keep saying it’s a banking crisis. The financial crisis of 2008 was a banking crisis!” According to Schiff, “nobody wants to say what it is because they don’t want to evoke memories and comparisons to 2008.” However, Schiff warned, the collapse of a number of financial institutions like Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank were a “sequel to 2008. And like all sequels, this one’s going to be worse.”
Vazquez spent a March 29 post shockingly not hating George Soros (indirectly, anyway) because a Soros-funded outlet meshed with his talking points:
A major global outlet funded by leftist billionaire George Soros actually published scathing criticism by two economists blasting the Federal Reserve’s role in creating the pretext for the bank failures that rocked U.S. markets.
Project Syndicate, which dubs itself as the “World’s Opinion Page,” published an op-ed by economists Raghuram Rajan and Viral Acharya headlined: “The Fed’s Role in the Bank Failures.” The authors iterated Silicon Valley Bank's (SVB) and Signature Bank's collapse aren't merely linked to the fact that 90 percent of their deposits were “uninsured.” The problem, said Rajan and Acharya, “may be more systemic,” and it involves the Fed’s recklessness. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Apparently Project Syndicate — which has a notorious habit of peddling radical anti-capitalist and eco-extremist views on a global scale — decided to let the truth slip out for once. Soros funded Project Syndicate with at least $1,682,390 between 2018 and 2021 alone.
The authors pointed out that “there is typically a huge increase in uninsured bank deposits whenever the US Federal Reserve engages in quantitative easing [(QE)].” The Fed kept interest rates at near zero and “purchased trillions of Treasury and mortgage bonds” for around two years to artificially stimulate the economy, according to The Hill. This served as the genesis for the inflation crisis that preceded the Fed’s aggressive interest rate hike campaign that would ultimately lead to SVB’s collapse.
Vazquez didn't mention how this op-ed discredits his anti-Soros narrative by proving he (unlike, say. the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com) is interested in promoting a diversity of views.
The next day, Vazquez was compelled to quote another commentator he normally hates because, again, only blind adherence to his narratives matters:
It’s obvious things have gotten bad when President Joe Biden’s talking points are being undercut by one of his most ardent lapdog economists.
Biden took to the press podium March 13 to congratulate himself on his administration’s wild efforts to secure the deposits at Silicon Valley Bank following its historic collapse. Biden attempted to dismiss any notion that what he was pushing was a government bailout. “No losses will be — and this is an important point — no losses will be borne by the taxpayers. Let me repeat that. No losses will be borne by the taxpayers,” Biden claimed.
Not so fast, said New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman, aka Mr. “Transitory” inflation. “[Y]es, they were bailouts,” Krugman rebutted. “I wish the Biden administration weren’t trying to claim otherwise.”
That didn't last, however, beause Krugman debunked the right-wing claim that"wokeness" is what caused SVB to fail:
He then went on a tirade, flailing at some of the criticisms levied at SVB for its failures. One that Krugman couldn’t swallow was the allegation that SVB failed because of its fixation on environmental, social and governance standards (ESG). “[That’s] only marginally less ludicrous than claiming that wokeness somehow causes train derailments,” Krugman scoffed. “S.V.B. didn’t stand out from other banks in its concern for diversity, the environment and so on.”
But Krugman didn’t explain his rebuttal well. Perhaps that’s because he was wildly off the mark — kind of like his inflation calls.
Of course, Vazquez didn't offer any sort of coherent rebuttal; instead, he parroted a Wall Street Journal opinion piece by Kimberly Strassel that quoted the SVB website saying that "We serve those creating positive environmental change" -- which, of course, is proof of nothing. And he even went on to condede that "there were a myriad of factors that played into SVB’s collapse, such as the Federal Reserve’s ridiculous easy money policies." Still, he insisted it was "ludicrous" for Krugman "the ESG component entirely as a legitimate factor" despite, again, offering no evidence of that purported legitimacy.
With Trump Indicted For Real, Newsmax Cranks Up The Freakout Topic: Newsmax
When Donald Trump delcared that his arrest was imminent -- the predicted date turned out to be false -- Newsmax snapped into action, repeatedlyfreakingout over the pronouncement and continuing to host people defending him even though his predicted date had long past, falsely portraying that failed prediction that a New York grand jury investigating him had decided not to charge Trump at all. Still, Mark Schulte wrote a pre-emptive March 29 column attacking Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, claming that his investigation of Trump was "egregiously dishonoring a nationally prominent prosecutor's office."
When a credible media outlet reported on March 30 that the grand jury decided to indict Trump after all, Newsmax snapped into action again to peddle new outrage. Its first story on the development was a wire story, followed by copy-and-pasting Trump's response. Newsmax then hyped Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' declaration that he would fight Trump's extradition to New York for arraignment, but didn't mention that DeSantis has no power to actually do that and is obligated by federal law to not interfere -- and anyway, that was followed by a one-paragraph wire article noting that Trump and the Manhattan district attorney have been in contact to arrange surrender. Then came another wire article dclaiming that some Trump adversaries "fear the first-ever prosecution of a former US president could be a loser that undermines more consequential cases."
That's at least 27 attack articles Newsmax published since the indictment was announced. That's the kind of stenographical Trump-fluffing Newsmax had to convince DirecTV it couldn't do without.
Newsmax also published a March 31 commentary by Garrett Ventry asserting that the indictment of Trump was "un-American" and based on a "faulty legal theory; it represents the latest weaponization of the justice system — against Trump." Newsmax, however, prefaced the column with an editor's note to distance it from the opinion: "The following article has not been authored by an attorney. It does not constitute a legal opinion by Newsmax."
CNS Flip-Flops Over Messing With Books Topic: CNSNews.com
Spencer J. Fairfield began a Feb. 23 CNSNews.com article this way:
In Massachusetts, Superintendent of Abington Public Schools Peter Schafer has allowed a book that discusses sexual activities into public libraries for children. The book, written by author Juno Dawson, is titled “This Book is Gay” and, as reported by Fox News Digital, discusses “orgies, kinks, fetishes, sex apps,” as well as a wide variety of other sexually explicit topics.
Fox News Digital asked Superintendent Shafer if he was “aware that the book discusses the following, among other things: orgies, kinks, fetishes, sex apps, bath house, [a] casual hookup, [and] detailed information on how to have anal sex, as well as other sexual activities.”
“After reading the entire book and understanding it in full context, I decided to put it back in the library,” Shafer responded.
Then, blowing off the idea that the book is suitable when taken in its full context, Fairfield proceeded to take thing from the book out of context:
The book describes the author’s experience with Grindr, saying, “The benefits are obvious: quick, easy, and uncomplicated sex… I’ve met a variety of interesting people… I don’t have a problem with that aspect of it-if people want casual sex, then something like Grindr is a must."
The book also discusses topics of sex meets, sex parties, the “kink community,” and the use of sex toys.
On the topic of sex parties, the book promotes the use of saunas as a legal means of obtaining “some random sex”:
Fairfield didn't expalin why he took small sections of the book out of context when the superintendent explicitly stated that a review of the book's "full context" showed that it belonged in the library. Further, the headline of Fairfield's article falsely portrayed thebook as being only about "Orgies, Kinks, Fetishes, Sex Apps."
CNS is showing a double standard on books. The same day, it published a column by the Heritage Foundation's Jarrett Stepman complaining that books by Roald Dahl were being edited to have offensive elements removed:
You see, in progressive modernity we don’t burn books. Too crass, too simplistic.
Instead, our Inclusion Ambassadors comb through old, cherished texts to alter and remove wrongthink before publication. The past won’t just be erased, it will be rewritten.
[...]
Now, we haven’t quite arrived at the dystopia of George Orwell’s classic novel “1984.” Newspeak isn’t being enforced by the government, yet.
However, this censorship and control of information and thought by a vast array or private corporate entities (with occasional aid from government agencies) is in some way more insidious for the long-term future of free thought. It inures us to tyranny over the mind and allows woke fanatics to get their way without the dramatic step of government prohibition.
This was followed by a March 1 article by managing editor Michael W. Chapman that a book shop in Ukraine was destroying books by Russian authors:
A book shop in Kiev, Ukraine is encouraging people to turn in Russian books to be destroyed -- "recycled" -- and, so far, more than 150,000 volumes have been ground up and pulped, including books by such great Russian writers as Leo Tolstoy, and most likely Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekov, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
In Kyiv, ABC News correspondent Patrick Reevel reported on Feb. 23, "we're at a paper recycling plant here, and the reason we're here is that we're watching hundreds of Russian books about to be pulped."
Chapman didn't explore why Ukrainians were motivated to do this, outside of a passing reference to the "Russia-Ukraine conflict" -- you know, the one in which Russia invaded Ukraine and which CNS tried to blame President Biden for provoking by not being totally opposed to Ukraine joining NATO.
The irony, of course, is that both Stepman and Chapman would ban and pulp "This Book Is Gay" and any other book that notes that L:TBT people exist because it offends their right-wing perspectives.
NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC vs. Google: The Bogus Gmail Battle Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has repeatedly misrepresented the results of a study in order to accuse Gmail of being biased against Republican fund-raising emails -- and it even got Republicans to buy into the manufactured outrage. Read more >>
MRC Desperately Tries To Blame 'Woke' Policies For Collapse Of 2 Banks Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is nothing if not a slave to right-wing narratives, and it slavishly tried to promote them in the wake of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank by trotting out various right-wing bogeymen as the cause and denying that lax bank regulation that grew under Donald Trump had anything to do with it. First up was an easy layup by Joseph Vazquez mocking CNBC's Jim Cramer for promoting SVB stock a month before its failure; that was followed by a March 12 post by Kevin Tober that went into Trump defense mode:
It was only a matter of time before the left-wing propagandists at ABC's This Weekblamed former President Donald Trump for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank which occurred over two years after he left office. During an interview with Virginia Democrat Senator Mark Warner, Raddatz blamed Trump’s regulatory policies for the bank’s collapse and asked Warner if regretted voting for a banking deregulatory bill.
Raddatz started off the discussion by falsely placing blame: “after the financial crisis in 2008, regulations were put into place to make sure banks could weather large losses. Under President Trump, some of those were rolled back.”
“You were 1 of only 17 Democrats who voted for the bill that rolled back some banking rules including for institutions the size of Silicon Valley Bank,” Raddatz asked.
Even Warner disagreed with her and correctly noted that “these mid-sized banks needed some regulatory relief.”
Explaining to the partisan and economically illiterate Raddatz, Warner said “no matter what the capital had been in this bank if you don't get banking 101 straight if you don’t manage your interest rate risks if you've then got a run at $42 billion in a single day,” it’s unprecedented.
Tober then embraced one of those right-wing narratives: "Since the Silicon Valley Bank was more interested in leftwing gender ideology and other woke priorities, they failed to manage their interest rate risk and as a result, collapsed." Tober offered no evidence that this was, in fact, the case; instead, he linked to a tweet by someone from the right-wing website RedState that had an alleged screenshot of a bank official's bio that called herself a first-generation immigrant who sought to "creatte a sense of community for our LGBT+ employees and allies." Is Tober saying that immigrants and LGBTQ+ people are unqualified to work at a bank?
After another Vazquez dunk on Cramer, Renata Kiss peddled the "woke" narrative again in a March 14 post:
California’s woke Silicon Valley Bank went belly up last week, showing the inevitable consequence of ESG policies, according to HomeDepot co-founder Bernard Marcus.
On the March 11 edition of Fox News Cavuto Live, Bernard Marcus, co-founder of The Home Depot, slammed Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) woke practices that led to its recent collapse. “These banks are badly run because everybody is focused on diversity and all of the woke issues and not concentrating on the one thing they should, which is shareholder returns,” said Marcus. “Instead of protecting their shareholders and their employees, they’re more concerned about social policies.”
[...]
When asked if there are more woke banks out there, Marcus said yes adding that, “the system and the administration has pushed many of these banks into [being] more concerned about global warming than they do about shareholder return.”
Despite not offering any evidence whatsoever that being "woke" had any direct role in the bank's collapse, Kiss insisted Marcus was correct: "Marcus is right on point. Just last year, 19 state investigated six U.S. banks for working with the U.N. to deny credit to fossil fuel-related companies. More recently, the Royal Bank of Canada instituted “climate modifier” bonuses for its top executives as part of their ESG agenda." But that doesn't prove Marcus correct on anything either -- it's just an attempt to peddle the anti-ESG agenda currently in vogue at the MRC.
Vazquez angrily returned for another March 14 post, seething that President Biden got credit for keeping the bank failure from morphing into a full-blown financial crisis:
White House propaganda machine Politico wasted no time in trying to cast President Joe Biden as the savior of Silicon Valley startups by praising his ridiculous federal "bailout" plan.
Politico was off to the races in its ridiculous Mar. 13 story headlined: “How Biden saved Silicon Valley startups: Inside the 72 hours that transformed U.S. banking.” The first paragraph made the entire article sound like the plot of a Mission: Impossible script: “On Sunday afternoon, an exhausted group of Biden administration officials gathered to put the finishing touches on a hastily composed plan to stave off a nationwide banking crisis.”
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, according to Politico’s spin, “trigger[ed] a weekend sprint [by Biden officials] to contain the fallout that spanned several agencies and all hours of the day and night.”
[...]
Politico dishonestly attempted to make Biden seem prudent in his scheme to guarantee depositors' funds above the $250,000 limit by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The outlet followed the president’s lead and deflected away from his plan being labeled a “bailout.”
Vazquez didn't explain why it was a bad thing to keep the U.S. financial system from collapsing.
Autumn Johnson complained -- under the overwrought headline "TYRANNY!" -- about the idea that social media could be moderated in order to stop a bank panic that could cause the financial system to collapse:
The U.S. government and leftists of all stripes have set out to silence speech on Big Tech platforms to protect their preferred narrative on a number of issues, and the latest bailout news following recent bank failures is apparently no exception.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) tweeted March 12 that “[a] Democrat Senator essentially asked whether there was a program in place to censor information on social media that could lead to a run on the banks.” As it turns out, there just might be. The cybersecurity branch of the Department of Homeland Security, the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (or CISA), published a report adding financial “misinformation” and “disinformation” in June 2022 to a list of threats that supposedly pose “a significant risk to critical functions” of the federal government that it should act on.
“With every passing day it seems we learn of yet another nefarious way in which Big Tech and government are working to silence Americans,” MRC Free Speech America & MRC Business Director Michael Morris stated. “Over and over again we hear from leftist elites in both the government and private sector how they will protect us from impending doom. But how they will protect Americans, it seems, is often the same, by censoring constitutionally permissible speech online. Simply outrageous.”
Morris didn't explain how disinformation that could collapse the country's financial system could be "constitutionally permissible."
Vazquez came back for take yet another shot at Cramer, this time complaining that government intervention to the the SVB collapse from spreading meant that the economy "is on the cusp of a soft, safe landing."
Executives at Signature bank apparently preferred that their employees attend woke lectures and participate in cringey music videos instead of doing what they were hired to do: banking.
On Tuesday’s edition of his eponymous show, Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson lifted the veil on Signature bank’s woke practices that allegedly contributed to its pathetic downfall during the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) meltdown. “If the central bank handed you trillions of dollars free with no strings attached, you would... virtue signal like it was 2023,” he said. “You would spend hundreds of millions of dollars bragging about what a good person you are. And that, of course, is exactly what they did.”
He showed clips of a woke pronoun lecture put on by the Pride Council’s self-proclaimed “gender-queer, transmasculine person” in December, just months before the bank went under. But that’s not all. The bank also filmed cringe-worthy parody as far back as 2011 to attract potential employees and clients to the company.
As before, no actual evidence was offered to directly link videos made 12 years ago to the bank's collapse. Kiss and Carlson don't seem to understand that repeating partisan narratives is not the same thing as providing hard evidence.
WND Columnist Warns Against Fearmongering -- Then Fearmongers Topic: WorldNetDaily
Larry Tomczak began his Feb. 28 WorldNetDaily column this way:
Red alert! We must not be naïve "evanjellyfish" allowing false narratives, skewed polls and supposedly "scientific" data to mislead us anymore. It's time to expose deceptive propaganda the same way Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did in his 1974 manifesto "Live Not by Lies."
We are regularly facing nonstop narratives intended to frighten and form us into malleable foot soldiers marching in lockstep to the Pied Piper progressives.
In the 1947 book "Nuremberg Diaries," we're told how Hermann Göring, the Nazi architect of Germany's police state, said that "people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders by telling them they're being exposed to danger."
But later in his column, under the subhead "Expose/Expunge," did a bunch of fearmongering:
"Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them" (Eph. 5:11).
"All that's required for tyranny to gain a foothold is for people of conscience to remain silent." –Thomas Jefferson
Who are some of the people and entities that need to be called out for deceiving Americans and actively working to promote radical progressive initiatives to topple traditional America?
• Big government
• Big media
• Big tech
• Big globalist elites (World Health Organization, World Economic Forum)
• Big academia
• Big-name celebrities
• Big companies
They've been used as mouthpieces for malevolent forces trying to convince millions, especially young people, that America is racist and systemically evil; our Founders and heroes were racists whose statues must be torn down; capitalism is bad and based on greed; the time has come for the Constitution to be rewritten, the Electoral College should be abolished and voter ID be outlawed; life does not begin at conception; our criminal justice system is corrupt and must be replaced, recognizing offenders as victims needing counseling, no bail and release from oppressive prisons; police departments have to be defunded; Critical Race Theory and LGBTQ propaganda must be taught in schools; "Death with Dignity" (physician assisted suicide) must be recognized as a basic human right; millennials aren't proud to be Americans; the traditional family and religious values are being discarded; the 2020 election had minimal irregularities; Black and Hispanic Americans believe the U.S. is inherently racist and do not trust whites; religion is rapidly losing its place in America.
Tomczak didn't explain why his fearmongering is somehow pure while everyone else's is evil, instead, he played the religion card: "Here's the deal: We are at a tipping point for a major revival and Third Great Awakening!"
MRC Continued Complaints That Right-Wing 'Censorship' Narrative Is Being Isgnored Outside The Bubble Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center spent a lot of time complaining that February's House hearing inspired by Elon Musk's selectively released "Twitter files" had its preferred narrative of purported pre-Musk Twitter "censorship" of conservatives overshadowed by things like Donald Trump actually trying to use the power of the presidency to atttempt to censor by demanding that Twitter delete a mean tweet from Chrissy Teigen. There were even more examples of that. Tim Graham's Feb. 10 column on the hearing began with a bit of whataboutism:
In the Trump years, CNN oppressively promoted the conspiracy theory of Donald Trump’s “collusion” with the Russian government to get elected in 2016. So they were heartbroken when Robert Mueller’s investigation ended with a negative verdict: “The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
The Mueller investigation's conclusion does not negate that there was plenty of evidence to warrant an investigation in the first place, and maybe Graham should be welcoming the investigation instead of using it to help Trump play victim. Graham then launched into his main grievance:
CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy climbed to the mountaintop of shamelessness in his so-called “Reliable Sources” newsletter on February 8 under the heading “The Collusion Delusion.” Who’s delusional now? House Republicans investigating the role of the Biden campaign and the “intelligence community” in Twitter’s suspension of the New York Post over a Hunter Biden story.
This is not a "news" letter.
Republicans are living in a reality distortion field,” Darcy began. He blustered there was “no real evidence” to support the claim that Twitter bowed to government bureaucrats when they suppressed the Hunter-laptop story and branded it as toxic misinformation. Just forget all the reporting that Twitter executives had weekly meetings with the FBI (which had the laptop in its possession) and engaged in a “tabletop exercise” about “hack-and-leak” operations with the Department of Homeland Security. That’s some thick smoke, if not fire.
Darcy continued: “Republicans were unrelenting in peddling it to the American public. At Wednesday's hearing they showed no regard for misinforming those who turn to them for accurate information, or the fact that they were smearing a private business and its former executives in the process.”
It’s not “smearing” to make the former Twitter chieftains testify. Liberals just don’t like other liberals being on the wrong end of the hardball questions.
As we've pointed out, if the New York Post -- a biased pro-Trump publication -- didn't want its laptop questioned (a story pitched to it by pro-Trump partisans like Rudy Giuliani), it should have immediately provided independent verification of the story that have overcome questions about partisan motivation.
Graham got really angry, though, when Darcy challenged the right-wing "censorship" victrimization narrative:
But probably the most hypocritical passage in this purple prose was about election denial: with this hearing, “Republicans are not so subtly feeding their election-denying base reason to believe that the 2020 election was effectively rigged against Donald Trump.”
Earth to Darcy: what did your network obsess about in the Trump years? We could easily counter with “CNN was not so subtly feeding its election-denying base reason to believe that the 2016 election was effectively rigged against Hillary Clinton.”
Darcy, who believes that Fox News should be de-platformed, then ranted that Fox News recounted “the nonsense coming out of the hearing as if it were a serious affair uncovering considerable wrongdoing. The facts — reality — simply do not matter.”
But it’s Darcy who is pushing the transparently counter-factual narrative that there is no such thing as Big Tech “intentionally and unjustly censoring conservative views,” when the evidence is ubiquitous. MRC Free Speech America’s CensorTrack.org database has reached the milestone of 5,000 verified incidents of conservatives being censored, suspended, and cancelled.
Of course, CensorTrack is not legitimate "media research" -- it's a partisan tool designed to advance a narrative, which means it's not really evidence of anything other than that the MRC can manufacture numbers in service of a narrative. Graham also seems to have forgotten that his employer devised its own conspiracy theory about how the 2020 election was "rigged" against Trump, or that Fox News promoted a false story in 2016 about how Hillary's indictment was imminent (which the MRC also breathlessly hyped without ever telling its readers the truth about it being false). Like the rest of the MRC, Graham is too invested in the narratives and conspiracy theories to ever admit there's actually nothing to them.
Similarly, a Feb. 12 post by Clay Waters complained that a different outlet, this time the New York Times, complained that the right-wing narrative was ignored and the one actual example of censorship that didn't fit the narrative was pointed out:
The New York Times is doing its best to minimize the controversy over Twitter’s squelching of conservative opinion during the Trump-COVID era, as shown by its weird coverage of a House Committee hearing on the social media platform’s biased behavior and pressure from government agencies to push the company to censor conservative speech.
In Thursday’s paper, Luke Broadwater and Kate Conger found “Five Takeaways From the House G.O.P. Hearing With Former Twitter Executives.” But they conveniently skipped over the juicy scene of Republican Rep. Nancy Mace questioning the medical expertise of Twitter executives for limiting the influence of Stanford medical professor Jay Bhattacharya for the sin of questioning COVID lockdowns, instead shaping an anecdote to portray Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez as a heroine.
From the start, it was clear the reporters were only going to talk about the bits that would interest their liberal audience: Less FBI interference, more Chrissy Teigen.
[...]
Their first “takeaway” from the hearing was a silly Twitter spat between President Trump and model Chrissy Teigen, headlined: “Mr. Trump tried to get the model Chrissy Teigen censored for insulting him.” Yet Twitter didn’t delete Teigen’s vulgar tweet, which makes the whole anecdote a bit pointless.
Waters wouldn't have called it "pointless" if a Democratic president tried to do the same thing. Instead, he grumbled that "The piece ended with sympathy for former Twitter executive Yoel Roth, who said he had to sell his home while suffering online threats" without mentioning the fact that Elon Musk maliciously incited those threats.
The Media Research Center was extremely reluctant to weigh in on the scandal revealed through the Dominion lawsuit showing that Fox News lied to its viewers by telling its viewers that the 2020 presidential election was stolen when it knew that it wasn't. Once it finally did -- two weeks after the story broke -- Tim Graham took the tepid approach, tsk-tsking over how the scandal makes right-wing media look (because "liberal media" can cite it as a example) but offering little direct criticism of Fox News itself (MRC employees appear on the channel, after all -- don't want to jeopardize that). After that, though, the MRC started to feel a little more comfortable defending Fox News -- while still contorting itself in doing so. Nicholas Fondacaro took the aggressive approach in a March 8 post by bashing the ladies of "The View" for daring to criticize Fox News:
WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center's Joseph Vazquez hyped in a Feb. 28 
The Media Research Center's 
Just as its 
The Media Research Center has a 
Ilana Mercer's Feb. 23 WorldNetDaily 
The Media Resarch Center moved from 
When Donald Trump delcared that his arrest was imminent -- the predicted date turned out to be false -- Newsmax snapped into action, 
Spencer J. Fairfield began a Feb. 23 CNSNews.com 
The Media Research Center is nothing if not a slave to right-wing narratives, and it slavishly tried to promote them in the wake of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank by trotting out various right-wing bogeymen as the cause and denying that lax bank regulation that grew under Donald Trump had anything to do with it. First up was an 
Larry Tomczak began his Feb. 28 WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center 
