MRC Cheers Musk Allowing More Hate And Lies On Twitter (Well, X) Topic: Media Research Center
There was a lot of unfavorable news regarding Elon Musk and Twitter (well, X) in recent weeks:
Musk rushed to the defense of credibly accused rapist, sexual assaulter and groomer Russell Brand.
In yet another attack on George Soros, Musk spread the racist right-wing "great replacement theory," which posits that nefarious interests (i.e., Soros and Democrats) want to replace white people in the U.S. with non-white immigrants.
He helped incite harassment and death threats on a Las Vegas neswpaper and its journalists by falsely accusing the paper of hiding that the death of a bicycle rider killed after being hit by a car was intentionally caused.
He smeared tech journalist Kara Swisher, blaming her for the disastrous performance of Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino in an interview at a Swisher-hosted tech conference.
Musk was sued for defamation by a man whom he falsely described as a federal agent posing as a neo-Nazi (the man is actually Jewish).
Rather than tell its readers about any of this -- even though it too has defended Russell Brand and has insisted that replacement theory isn't racist or a conspiracy theory -- the Media Research Center instead was annoyed that Musk wasn't letting anti-trans hate spread on Twitter even more than it already does. After vicious homophobe Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok complained that her hate wasn't spreading, Musk was compelled to respond, as Tom Olohan stated in an Sept. 28 post:
After the woman behind Libs of TikTok uncovered inexplicable censorship of content on the X platform, owner Elon Musk promised to look into it.
Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik wrote in a post on Thursday that X (formerly known as Twitter) would not run ads on posts that contained words such as “Gr**m*er”, “Dr*g qu**n”, “In*0c**ce/in*0ce*t”, “Tr*ns” and even “Am*n”, but would run ads on her posts if she self-censored. Later that day, X owner Musk mentioned her by name and promised to cut that list down to size. Musk said in a video, “There’s a list, I think, Chaya Raichik was pointing out. Like, the system, you know, and I have looked at this list. And some of the terms on the list, I’m like, ‘Look, if that’s a bad word, I clearly need to look up, ge Urban Dictionary or something,’ you know, because that one I didn’t realize was a bad word. So that list needs to be trimmed. That’s the, sort of, not safe for advertising list.”
[...]
Immediately preceding these remarks, Musk strongly suggested that much of the current censorship that occurs on his platform is a holdover from the past Twitter regime that is being eradicated. “We do lots of dumb things, but these dumb things, you know, as the saying goes, ‘One should not attribute to malice that which easily can be explained by incompetence,’” Musk added before discussing demonetization. “We do lots of foolish things, but, and we want to fix that. And a bunch of these foolish things have been in place for a decade, you know, and I can’t fix them all at once. And we are fixing them.”
Noting that both Elon Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino have embraced the expression “freedom of speech, not of reach,” MRC Vice President Dan Schneider challenged Musk to go further, “How about instead of trimming the list of unacceptable words, you just protect all constitutionally-protected speech?”
Olohan added that "Previously, Musk has reversed the platform's bans on 'deadnaming' and 'misgendering' two leftist words used to describe telling the truth about 'transgender' individuals." If Ohohan is putting "transgender" in scare quotes, he clearly doesn't care about truth.
Because Musk cares so much about gaining the approval of right-wing haters and extremists, he acquiesced to Raichik's demands, which Olohan gushed over in a post the next day:
After promising to take action against demonetized terms on his platform, X owner Elon Musk ended censorship of several key words the next day.
Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik posted on Sept. 29 that seven out of ten of the demonetized words she discovered on a day prior no longer triggered post demonetization. Words like drag queen, groomer, innocence, innocent, LGBTQ, police, non-binary and Amen no longer result in post demonetization, but trans and ugly will, noted Raichik. However, Musk promised Friday to end the demonetization of tweets with the word(s): trans, transgender and ugly.
Musk, who thanked Raichik for flagging the censorship, addressed the censorship issue in his posts and during a discussion hosted by The Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro, where he said that the list of demonetized terms found by Raichik should be “trimmed.” He also suggested that these shadowbanned words were an example of “foolish things” from the past that his employees were in the process of fixing.
In an article published Thursday evening, Raichik discussed her discovery and broke down why the terms were demonetized. Raichik pointed out that drag queen, groomer, innocence, and innocent were likely demonetized to disincentivize conservative organizing against gender theory in schools and children at drag queen events.
Or, you know, it could be about disincentivizing vicious and irrational right-wing hatred of anyone who's not a heterosexual. Olohan and Raichik don't seem to consider that possibility.
In another Sept. 29 post, Luis Cornelio cheered how Musk opened the door to even more election misinformation on Twitter by firing much of its election integrity team, under the sneering headline "Bye Felicia!":
X owner Elon Musk announced he was doing away with part of his platform’s infamous “election integrity” team—sort of.
According to The Information on Sept. 27, the social media platform reportedly ousted five anti-free speech activists from its contentious election integrity team. Musk took to Twitter to react to the reports, confirming that the individuals were “gone.”
Among those affected by the purge was notorious disinformation chief Aaron Rodericks who came under fire last month in mid-August for undermining Musk’s promise to protect free speech.
Cornelio didn't explain how lies and disinformation equaled "free speech." Instead, he whined that Yaccarino "chimed in to dispel rumors that the company was completely getting rid of the group, effectively dousing pro-free speech advocates with a bucket of cold water":
Yaccarino warned that the best of their election integrity — whatever that means — is yet to come. “It’s an issue we take very seriously,” she claimed while speaking at a conference hosted by leftist outlet Vox. “And contrary to the comments that were made, there is a robust and growing team at X that is wrapping their arms around election integrity.”
The election integrity faction at X first came under scrutiny after political commentator Kristen Ruby found that X — under Rodericks’ oversight — sought to hire new disinformation experts, marking what Foundation For Freedom Online executive director Mike Benz described as a “new crop of censorship shills.”
Again, Cornelio wouldn't explain how trying to stop lies and misinformation is "censorship." Does he think lies and misinformation must never be fact-checked or criticized?
WND's Massie Defends His Death Wish Against Fauci Topic: WorldNetDaily
Mychal Massie spent his Sept. 11 WorldNetDaily column whining that Twitter (well, X) suspended him for expressing a death with for Anthony Fauci:
How am I supposed to stand beside Elon Musk in his fight against online censorship, when X (formerly Twitter) is guilty of doing the same thing, if not worse?
My X account was suspended a couple days ago for daring to use what those sissies consider violent speech. What did I say, you ask? I said, "Fauci needs to get the electric chair" – and it caused a bowel secretion in their tortured worthless lives that was consistent with encopresis.
[...]
I've said it many times: I say what I mean and I mean what I say – and I don't apologize, especially to an entity I have virtually no respect for in the first place. There's nothing under this sun that could cause me to lament their actions. In fact, if they're smart enough to read sign language, they'll understand that the positioning of my thumb to the tip of my nose isn't a field sobriety test for alcohol consumption. Since I am a teetotaler.
Saying Anthony Fauci deserves the electric chair is me being extremely generous in my call for him to be punished. The death penalty is too good for him. He deserves the eternal agony of hell for knowingly and intentionally causing pain, faking data, fear mongering, censorship, and knowingly destroying lives and careers. All while he paves the way for his cronies to get richer.
Just because Massie claims to mean what he says doesn't mean that his death wish for Fauci is any less offensive.
Massie then tried to lay out his evidence that Fauci deserves to be executed -- but his first example involved right-wing anti-vaxxer Megyn Kelly claiming that a COVID vaccine gave her an autoimmune disease, though she has offered no evidence to back up the claim. Massie continued his anti-Fauci rant:
Fauci knowingly misled the public and outright lied to We the People about COVID and about the jab.
He knowingly lied about medications that had been safely prescribed and purchased over the counter for decades. Medications that were free of side effects. He knowingly lied, placing literally millions of lives at risk forcing the nonsensical fraud of face masks.
He lied about gain-of-function research at Wuhan Institute of Virology and his participation. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has made criminal referral of Fauci to the Department of Justice.
Miscarriages among women in the military rose exponentially, specifically because of Fauci's pushing mandated injection of the deadly toxins. I spoke with a young woman I know who developed life-threatening blood clots literally days after receiving the jab. Never in the history of sports have we seen so many superbly conditioned athletes dropping dead, having heart attacks, blood clots and the sudden onslaught of other autoimmune diseases. I personally know several persons who almost immediately developed nerve issues in their feet and ankle area, within weeks of receiving the jab. There are valid claims of married couples developing critical issues from normal marital relations, because one received the jab and the other did not.
Lots of misinformation to unpack here. Massie is alluding to a study allegedly claiming that masks don't work, which the editor of the medical journal where the study was published said was not what the study actually concluded. His claim that the vaccine caused a spike in miscarriages is similarly bogus. We've alreadydocumented how WND has promoted the baseless conspiracy theory that the on-field collapse NFL player Damar Hamlin and other athletes was caused by the vaccine. Massie's statement about "medications that had been safely prescribed and purchased over the counter for decades" is presumably a reference to hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, which still lack legitimate evidence that they are effective in treating or preventing COVID. We're not sure what Massie is referring to when talking about the vaccine disrupting "normal marital relations," but one study found that it did not increase the risk of erectile dysfunciton.
Massie concluded by likening the COVID vaccines to Agent Orange:
Not one thing dissuades me that these things are barely the tip of the iceberg. I was among the early analysts warning the government cannot be trusted and the idea of forcing a fake vaccine on the public, that excluded the elected, was a clarion call to avoid the jabs at all cost. Based on the history of the government's involvement in Tuskegee, secretly spraying Agent Orange on entire communities without their knowledge and the aerial spraying of the deadly Agent Orange compound into the entire ecosystem including fruits and vegetables, CIA experiments in New York City subway systems and the LSD experiments on prison inmates and persons confined to mental hospitals, don't believe anything they tell you.
You're darn right Facui [sic] deserves the electric chair, and if that offends the fairies and trolls at X, it's too bad. I don't give a rip.
Perhaps not, but law enforcement authorities do. It's also a sign of Massie's insecurity and sociopathy that he can't handle criticism, as evidenced by his lashing out at the folks at X who sensibly held him accountable for his violent death wish as "fairies and trolls."
Ironically, a few days after Massie's column was published, an article by WND's Bob Unruh complained that "an MSNBC columnist has set a new standard with his death wish" for Donald Trump by declaring that he "must die in prison." Talk about a double standard.
MRC's Graham Has Another Flare-Up Of Folkenflik Derangement Syndrome Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center executive Tim Graham has a case of David FolkenflikDerangementSyndrome -- repeatedly attacking the NPR media reporter for reporting on Fox News, though he never criticizes Fox News' media reporters for obsessing over competing outlets like CNN and rarely reporting bad news about their own employer. Graham turned his ire toward Folkenflik again in an Aug. 27 post complaining that Folkenflik noted the revamped CNN streaming operation, which the MRC mercilessly mocked when it originally launched last year as CNN+, then got shut down shortly afterward when new owners took over the company:
We shouldn't be surprised that the Fox News debate this week led inevitably to story number 45 and story number 46 for NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik on Fox News this year.
And we shouldn't be surprised he talked loosely about Donald Trump as a felon: "And think of the other big story today -- Donald Trump is being processed for, you know, felonies in Fulton County, Ga., over trying to block the due election proceeds in the state of Georgia." Is that the way he would discuss a Democrat being indicted?
What's still surprising somehow is that Folkenflik can report on CNN and just sound like a publicist for CNN, and not a skeptical reporter. On Friday night's badly named All Things Considered, the subject was CNN Max, a new streaming effort that looks a lot like CNN+, which was unceremoniously dumped by Warner Bros. Discovery just a few weeks after it began.
Of cousre, Graham couldn't stop whining that Folkenflik referenced Fox News:
Folkenflik can't stop talking about Fox's very expensive settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, but what about CNN's finances or CNN's struggling ratings? This is where NPR is doing more advertising than reporting. CNN's own media reporter Oliver Darcy was more candid about the parent company's finances!
Graham has never accused Fox News media reporters like Joseph Wulfsohn and Brian Flood of being candid about their employer, nor does he accuse them of being CNN-haters or criticize them for being obsessed with CNN the way he claims Folkenflik is obsessed with Fox News.
WND Defense Of Trump Backer Long On Dubious Talking Points, Short On Facts Topic: WorldNetDaily
You know there's cleanup that needs to be done when WorldNetDaily starts an article touting the supposed credentials of the person they're promoting. And that's how Bob Unruh started a Sept. 4 article:
A recognized expert in civil liberties, Harvey Silverglate, who, among other accomplishments, co-founded the prominent Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, has issued a warning to the nation about the fallout from the war Joe Biden and Democrats are waging against President Donald Trump.
Unruh didn't mention that FIRE mostly cares about "Individual Rights and Expression" only when they involve right-wingers like Silverglate. Unruh then shifted to repeating tired, discredited talking points about Trump:
Those leftists, of course, have orchestrated, so far, four criminal cases against Trump. They have turned misdemeanor business record keeping offenses into felonies. They have determined the First Amendment didn't protect Trump's comments about the 2020 election. They have said he turned criminal by keeping documents from his presidency, even though Mike Pence and Joe Biden, in their posts as vice president, are facing no charges for doing the same thing. And they are making telephone calls and holding meetings illegal in their "conspiracy" case in Georgia.
These events all follow the conspiracy theory created by Hillary Clinton and others in the 2016 election that falsely claimed Trump campaign links to Russia. Then there were the multiple attempts by Nancy Pelosi to impeach Trump and remove him from office, based on no evidence.
It wasn't a "conspiracy theory" that the 2016 Trump campaign met dozens of times with Russian operatives, or that then-campaign manager Paul Manafort gave internal polling data to another Russian operative. And as we've already noted, Unruh is lying by claiming that Trump is being prosecuted in Georgia for "making telephone calls and holding meetings."
Unruh did effectively admit how far-right Silverglate is by noting that he "now is working in defense of John Eastman, a lawyer who has represented Trump," then complained that "Georgia is targeting him with a criminal prosecution over his representation, and California is targeting him with a bar complaint." Unruh then uncritically repeated Silverglate's defense of Trump:
Silverglate said, of the Biden-run DOJ, "I am appalled that the Department of Justice — under a Democratic administration — appalled that they have done this to the leading Republican candidate for the presidency prior to the Republican National Convention. There is a statute of limitations that is quite lengthy and they could have waited. Common decency, common sense and propriety would have had them wait until after the nomination because if Trump got the nomination, then they should wait until after the election."
He continued, "I consider that what the Department of Justice is doing here to be candidate suppression. That's not their job. So the timing is appallingly bad judgment and I believe done in bad faith to keep him from being the Republican nominee for president.
"They realize Biden is a very weak candidate. If Biden had any common sense, he would have just said he was not running for a second term. That would have opened up the field to some excellent Democratic — younger Democratic candidates. So on top of everything else, this is an attempt to kind of fix the election for Biden. It is appalling in every single way."
What Silverglate is effectively arguing, of course, that that Trump be held above the law and never fel the consequences for the crimes he appears to have committed, portraying that being a declared political candidateis insurance against having to face responsibility for his actions. He also offered no evidence to back up his assertion that Trump's prosecutions are being orchestrated by Biden in order to kneecap a political opponent.
Unruh then returned to talking-point land, repeating his falsehood about the Georgia prosecution being about "making phone calls and holding meetings":
A leftist Georgia prosecutor has created a case including 41 charges that Trump and 18 others allegedly conspired in a criminal enterprise when they had doubts about the election, and raised them while seeking answers. Their offenses included making phone calls and holding meetings.
Further, he confirmed that at that time, he had "lots of evidence of fraud" in the election.
Legacy media immediately added its opinion that, "there is no evidence of far-reaching election fraud in the 2020 election."
However, what is known is that the election was under undue influence from the $400 million plus that Mark Zuckerberg handed out to election officials who often used it to recruit voters from Democrat districts.
Unruh is lying about the Zuckerberg money as well; we've also pointed outthe truth (which Unruh doesn't seem to be interested in) that money from a Zuckerberg-funded noprofit was made available to government election offices across the country to help them conduct the 2020 elections, affected by the COVID pandemic, but there is no evidence of political favoritism in how the money was distributed or spent. While some of that money was used by governments for get-out-the-vote efforts, it's not illegal to encourage people to vote, despite what Unruh wants you to think.
MRC's Jean-Pierre-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Watch, COVID Edition Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's chief Doocy-fluffer, Curtis Houck, spent his writeup of the Sept. 21 White House press briefing complaining that press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to take a question from his beloved Peter Doocy, but cheered that Doocy's biased Fox News colleagues stepped in to perpetrate their employer's narratives:
The Biden border crisis has reared its ugly head in the last week and brought more misery and ruin to border towns, including Eagle Pass, Texas. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre offered clownish spin Thursday afternoon that President Biden “has taken...historic action” to “fix this issue” and, not surprisingly, she received not only some hardballs from select reporters, but a searing fact-check afterward on the Fox News Channel by correspondent Bill Melugin.
Melugin’s colleague Peter Doocy tried to wade in on the questioning, but he was suddenly shut down when he tried to push back on Jean-Pierre.
[...]
>Doocy interjected as Jean-Pierre mumbled along, so the latter suddenly changed her mind about wanting to let Doocy speak and muzzled him (click “expand”):
[...]
After two decent question from Dallas Morning News’s Todd Gillman, Doocy’s Fox colleague Edward Lawrence seemed to pick up on what Doocy had tried to ask, which was “how many people coming into this country illegally is enough for President Biden”to truly stop the flow.
We don't recall Houck ever accusing a press secretary for a Republican administration of having "muzzled" a reporter at a briefing. Instead, Houck hyped how Meligin "called out her disrespectful behavior toward Doocy, especially because he had 'an important question.'” Yes, Melugin would consider any question that feeds into his employer's anti-Biden bias to be "important."
Houck was still whining about Jean-Pierre shutting down Doocy even as he acknowledged that she took a question from him the following day:
A day after the ever-inept White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre bizarrely called onFox’s Peter Doocy and then almost immediately moved on when he was visibly unamused by her spin on the border crisis, Jean-Pierre only somewhat owned up to her nonsense Friday and let Doocy press her on the latest flare-up in Texas.
“I know — I know your — your dad had some thoughts about our back-and-forth yesterday, so maybe we sh — we should try this again,” Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy sounded off hours earlier.
Peter stuck to his guns, saying he had the “same question as yesterday”: This time, Jean-Pierre answered while Doocy didn’t interject (likely so as not to again result in her pitching a hissy fit). Jean-Pierre played Baghdad Bob, arguing Biden “put forth a comprehensive immigration reform” on his first day in office that’s “desperately needed for this country,” but Congress has refused to acquiesce.
[...]
Doocy wrapped with the latest Biden gaffe ignored by the liberal media: “[A]t a fundraiser this week, President Biden told donors about how Charlottesville inspired his campaign. And then, according to the pool, a few minutes later, he told the story again, nearly word for word. What’s up with that?”
Houck would not be treating this exchange the same way if Doocy worked foer a "liberal media" outlet and Jean-Pierre worked for a Republican.
As befits the MRC's whining about COVID coming back being discussed in the media, Houck complained that COVID-related questions were raised at the Sept. 25 briefing, under the headline "We Don't Care":
As the liberal media hawk the latest COVID-19 booster shot and begin their latest fear-mongering campaign ahead of the holidays, the Associated Press’s Will Weissert served as the standard bearer during Monday’s White House press briefing as he opened the Q&A for the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre by fretting that President Biden didn’t get his umpteenth booster in public.
“Why did the White House choose to have the President take his — his latest COVID booster out of public view? Isn’t this a time when, you know, given the promotion of boosters and how important they are that the public might want to see the President have one,”he asked.
Three words (plus two) for Weissert: No one cares (except liberals).
it's a sign of how politicized right-wingers like Houck and the MRC have made COVID that he insists that a disease that has killed millions is not only something anyone should care about but also that those who do care about it must be mocked for doing so.
Column Needed Two Disclaimers For Newsmax To Fully Distance Itself From It Topic: Newsmax
You know a column will be a doozy when the publisher attaches not one but two disclaimers to it -- and that's what Newsmax did to Larry Provost's Sept. 1 column. As is standard with columns that push COVID conspiracy theories, Newsmax topped it with a statement that "The following column has been authored by a non-clinician." and indeed Provost started with the baseless conspiratorial claim that "Coinciding with election season '24 gearing up, warnings of COVID are appearing again." After offering some lip serviced to the severity of the pandemic, he started throwing in more dubious claims:
No reasonable person the severity [sic] of the pandemic; the number of patients flooding hospitals and mortality rates well beyond "normal."
Scores of bodies filling up morgues and refrigeration trucks attest to this grim reality.
The pandemic was real regardless of its origins (China), whether masks (were or are) effective in slowing it (most were not, nor worn properly), or the lie that getting the vaccine would serve as a "guarantee" to stop the pandemic. It didn't.
The virus became endemic: from people getting it and building up antibodies, and those eventually taking a vaccine for it.
Even at age 65, less than 1% of those who contracted the coronavirus died from it.
Provost then complained that churches and schools didn't reopen quickly enough for his purposes":
Yet, the church sadly bought into the politicization of COVID-19: by teachers unions (the same organizations trying to cancel out the words "mother" and "father" in schools) and others who had a personal stake in keeping lockdowns going.
The church could have set an example for the rest of the nation by getting back to normal as quickly as possible, at least for the sake of kids; for psychological and economic reasons and for the reason of staying in faith, while keeping Scripture close by.
The church as a whole, frankly, failed to say "enough is enough," and then reopen as before, at least for the sake of its younger congregants.
[...]
Children actually largely knew they would not die from the virus, yet they were forced to suffer psychologically from not being in school and not being in their places of worship.
More so, many children may have wondered: why be a part of an institution tacitly supportive the garbage laid upon them by other institutions: teacher unions, and goverment-oriented concerns?
We suspect most children were not engaging in anti-institutional rants that dovetail with Provost's right-wing activism. And by complaining that schools and churches didn't reopen quickly, Provost is, in fact, questioning the severity of the pandemic. From there, Provost moved on to grouse that churches being closed to in-perspon worship meant lost opportunities to indoctrinate children:
Children missed out on the preaching, teaching, fellowship (all variants of the Word of God), as well as the freedom Jesus offers from sinful lives, fallen homes, and our broken world.
As children were zonking-out through online learning and no social interaction, the one place where they should have been interacting (much more than the public school system) was in fact at a place of worship.
Our houses of worship were, and still are, the original "school" in our great nation.
It is there there children have learned about Jesus and his unconditional love for all of us.
Jesus suffered so we would not, so we would learn and stay in faith; to "be not afraid."
Provost closed by arguing:
In Christendom, the church (along with the family) is God’s institution for the organization of humanity, far ahead of anything Caesar could accomplish or mandate.
Hopefully, the church, and all of us, will well-remember this.
Will we choose man or God?
Provost's rant earned him another disclaimer at the end of the column, stating that "Views in the preceding column are those of the author and not any government agency."
Time For Another Dishonest MRC Coverage 'Study' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Rich Noyes had a new "study" to promote in an Aug. 21 post:
Going into this week’s GOP presidential debate, broadcast evening news coverage of the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination has overwhelmingly been dominated by former President Donald Trump, with the remaining GOP candidates garnering just a tiny fraction of the attention given to the frontrunner.
The vast majority of Trump’s coverage (90%) has been negative, and heavily focused on the legal allegations made against him by Democratic prosecutors and the Biden Justice Department. But the networks’ coverage of Trump’s top GOP opponent, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was nearly as bad (78% negative), suggesting a media hostility that extends beyond Trump himself to other Republican candidates and their conservative policy positions.
But Noyes has done nothing more than serve up just another of the kind of skewed "studies" it has done in previous years, with the same discrediting problems:
The study focuses only on a tiny sliver of news -- the evening newscasts on the three networks -- and falsely suggests it's indicative of all media, even as it ignores the highly GOP-friendly Fox News, which the MRC considers the gold standard for how media should be covering politics (with a right-wing bias).
It pretends there was never any neutral coverage of Trump and Republicans. Indeed, the study explicitly rejects neutral coverage -- even though that's arguable the bulk of news coverage -- dishonestly counting only "clearly positive and negative statements from non-partisan or unaffiliated sources," according to Noyes' meethodology.
It fails to take into account the stories themselves and whether negative coverage is deserved or admit that negative coverage is the most accurate way to cover a given story.
It fails to provide the raw data or the actual statements it evaluated so its work could be evaluated by others. If the MRC's work was genuine and rigorous, wouldn't it be happy to provide the data to back it up?
At no point does Noyes dispute the accuracy of any of the coverage, nor does he offer evidence to back up his suggestion that Trump's multiple indictments have a positive spin that should be reported, or that the leading Republican candidate president should not receive the dominant amount of coverage. (Of course, if non-right-wing media started heavily covering another candidate, the MRC would simply accuse them of favoring that candidate, just the way it does so now regarding Trump coverage.)
Noyes concluded by declaring:
Eight years ago, the rap on the media was that it was so focused on a single celebrity candidate (Trump), the coverage deprived GOP voters of a real choice. This time around, TV’s obsession with Trump is far more intense, which means that if rank-and-file Republicans are interested in comparing the candidates, they’ll need to rely on events such as Wednesday’s debate — not the daily drumbeat of Trump courtroom developments that dominate ABC, CBS and NBC’s agenda.
What Noyes will not talk about, however, is the agenda of himself and his employer. It makes no sense to demand positive coverage of a candidate who can't stop getting indicted, or to insist that candidates in single digits in the polls be covered as intense as the one with a 40-point polling lead over them. It seems that Noyes and the MRC would like a different Repubican nominee than Trump, but they're too afraid to explicitly say so lest they face the wrath of pro-Trump supporters, some of whom may very well be the MRC's funders. Again, there's no reason to exclude Fox News' coverage from evaluation given that the MRC thinks every media outlet should have the same right-wing bias as Fox News, which the MRC will never admit has an agenda.
In other words, another bogus, dishonest "study" that is designed to advance a partisan agenda and not advance the cause of "media research." That's why nobody trusts the work of the MRC.
WND Columnists Again Rush To Defend Trump After (Fourth) Indictment Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily defended Donald Trump after his (fourth) indictment, so WND columnists made sure to do the same. Andy Schlafly complained in his Aug. 15 column:
Monday night in Georgia, Democrats launched yet another political prosecution of Trump. Tacked onto this indictment by the Democrat-controlled county were 18 other Republicans as defendants, illustrating how this is about politics rather than law.
Democratic allies of President Joe Biden have piled up a string of 91 bogus felony charges against their Republican opponent, Donald Trump. That's in addition to dozens of similarly contrived charges against lawyers, colleagues and supporters of the leading Republican candidate.
his unprecedented abuse of the legal system for political ends, a process known as lawfare, presents an existential crisis for "democracy in America," to quote the title of Alexis de Tocqueville's famous book. Previous generations of Americans met their challenges with our Constitution mostly intact, but this abuse of prosecutorial power threatens our Republic.
Democrats like to recite the mantra that "no person is above the law," but the Supreme Court has long held that the president is effectively immune from oppressive legal harassment during his term of office. Prosecutions can be so demanding and distracting that no president should be expected to discharge the duties of that high office while under the thumb of a judge.
The leading candidate for president has been ensnared in a judicial process controlled by his political enemies. This unprecedented crisis requires extending the well-established immunity of the president to candidates for that office, such that the American people remain free to select our next president in a free and fair election.
Schlafly then complained that a judge in a previous indictment instituted a limited gag order on Trump over his threats to and attacks on said judge and other court officials:
The liberal goal of gagging Trump overlooks that the American people have their own First Amendment right to hear what Trump has to say. He's the front-runner for president, and there is no free speech right more important than that of voters to hear the views of our future president.
Trump does not have a right to attack and intimidate people, and he is not above the law -- something Schlafly doesn't seem to understand.
Wayne Allyn Root huffed in his Aug. 18 column that the indictment was somehow proof that the 2020 election was stolen:
Folks, now you know it. I know it. Everyone with a brain knows it. Even Democrats (deep down) know it. The 2020 election was stolen. The debate is over.
How do I know? Because both the feds and Georgia just indicted our former President Donald Trump for talking about, questioning and trying to investigate a stolen election. When the communist thugs, bullies and tyrants make it a crime to question a stolen election, in a country built around free speech, it's 100% proof they stole the election.
[...]
The bans accomplished nothing. The noise would not go away. Polls showed a huge majority of Americans believe the 2020 election was rigged.
The communist thugs started to panic. They couldn't let Trump run for president and keep talking about a stolen election. Worse, what if he won and opened an investigation? Democrats would go to prison for life. Or worse. This was treason.
They had to act – to end this talk once and for all. To set an example. To make sure no one ever dared question any stolen election ever again – because of course, they plan on rigging and stealing 2024.
[...]
So now they've taken it a step further. Now they've indicted and arrested Trump (and other Republicans) for free speech, for talking about a stolen election, for asking questions, for trying to investigate ... in America.
Trump faces hundreds of years in prison for free speech.
So, now the mystery is gone. Now you know. When it becomes a crime to talk about a rigged and stolen election, when Democrats are so desperate that one indictment is not enough, so they indict Trump again and again and again and again ...
That's the final proof the election was stolen.
That's also the final proof this is a communist takeover of America. These are the hallmarks of communist and Nazi thugs and tyrants throughout history: steal elections, weaponize government, censor and ban dissent, arrest your political opponents.
Folks, we are there.
Michael Master devoted his Aug. 18 column to explaining why he will vote for Trump no matter what and how the guy is just like Winston Churchill:
Donald Trump has a huge ego. No humility. The media, Democrats, establishment Republicans paint him as some self-centered lunatic. A criminal lunatic. But Trump has my vote against all other candidates – and that's true for almost 60% of Republicans, according to Real Clear Politics and Morning Consultant, despite the indictments against him. If Trump wins the Republican nomination, then more than 90% of Republicans will vote for him … again.
Trump is a true outsider. Prior to being POTUS, he never held a government position. He owes nothing to bureaucrats, most of whom think that they are the ones who really run our government. He is determined to stop those deep state bureaucrats in order to make America great again, so of course the deep state and Democrats and RINOs are determined to stop Trump – any way that they can, including using the legal system as a political weapon.
Winston Churchill also had a huge ego. No humility. He was beaten in his bid for reelection as prime minister even after guiding England against Germany. Leaders of his own party campaigned against him. Then, just a couple of years later, the people voted him back into office. Why? because voters eventually realized that he got results. Because they realized that Churchill stood up to the enemies of England rather than make deals with those enemies as Neville Chamberlain did. Churchill put England first.
Trump is much like Churchill.
Is Trump a self-centered lunatic? Maybe. But so what? As said by Billy Joel: It just could be a lunatic that you are looking for.
So Trump has my vote, even more so now because of the indictments. Make America Great Again. Put America first, especially for average working Americans. Stop the bureaucrats, stop the deep state, stop Democrats, stop those establishment Republican politicians.
Rachel Alexander spent her Aug. 21 column nitpicking the indictment and declaring that the prosecutors who brought it will be disbarred:
It is well known that RICO laws, named after the original federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, contain a lot of vague, broad provisions and "process crimes." The laws were drafted in order to ensnare the Mob, since it was difficult making other crimes fit their actions. RICO laws have been used unfairly since then to target pro-life protesters, since not much else would stick. So it was no surprise when left-wing activist prosecutor Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney in Georgia, used the state's RICO laws to charge and get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, er Donald Trump and 18 others over their concerns about election fraud in the 2020 election.
Here is exactly why the State Bar of Georgia will of course disbar the prosecutors over the frivolous, harassing indictment. I received a – ahem – leaked draft of the opinion from the bar's disciplinary judge. Although the case hasn't even been tried yet, and there hasn't been a single ruling on it from a judge, of course the bar already knows it has no merit.
Schlafly returned to fret in his Aug. 22 column about the others indicted in Georgia along with Trump:
The attempt in Georgia to ruin the lives of 19 Republican leaders with a sham indictment should not be accepted by Americans nationwide. Georgia taxpayers should not be looted by the Fulton County prosecutor with this travesty foisted on the rest of the country, and the American people should not go along with this abuse of power.
Leftists are exploiting a weakness in our political system that for too long has given nearly unlimited and unaccountable power to low-level prosecutors. A county prosecutor has no business interfering with the election for president of the United States, yet Democrats are so determined to hold onto the White House in 2024 that they are willing to go there.
Their single-minded purpose is to prevent – at all costs – the election of a Republican as president. If they succeed at blocking or even imprisoning Trump, no other candidate is likely to take on the Establishment ever again.
[...]
If Georgia will not restrain the misuse of its taxpayer dollars to infringe on First Amendment rights, other states should defend the rights of their own residents against this wrongful attempt to chill political activity in a national election. Objecting to an election as a fraud is no crime, yet that is all these indictments allege.
MRC Loved 'Rich Men North of Richmond' Song -- Until Singer Stopped Playing Along Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's other song of the summer -- after Jason Aldean's "Try That In A Small Town" -- was Oliver Anthony's "Rich Men North of Richmond." Christian Toto hyped the right-wing embrace of Anthony, and whined that non-right-wingers weren't rushing in the same way, in his Aug. 19 column:
The singer shares plainspoken lyrics that speak to the working stiff, the guys and gals who break their backs only to watch it scooped up by the government. The songs aren’t overtly political, but they speak to modern frustrations in ways that make progressives nervous.
Well, if you work for Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline or TheWrap.com you don’t even bother. Those entertainment sites are ignoring the stunning rise of Oliver Anthony, a Virginia resident whose song “Rich Men North of Richmond” went viral mere days ago.
A Google News search also couldn’t find the AP or Reuters picking up the story. Most mainstream news outlets pretend it’s not happening.
Meanwhile, his recent concert drew strong media coverage from right-leaning outlets.
Billboard begrudgingly covered Anthony’s rise, while both TMZ and Rolling Stone found the most newsworthy element of his story is that conservative influencers are sharing his music.
Like that noted alt-right figure Joe Rogan.
[...]
Reporters understand Anthony’s work undercuts their narratives. Bidenomics is working! There is no collusion between the Biden administration and Big Tech!
Look, squirrel!
Everything is fine, and our elites have the situation firmly in hand.
Anthony’s music says otherwise, and reporters are loathe to give those messages the oxygen they richly deserve.
When the song's lyric about "the obese milking welfare" was called out -- which alludes to right-wing attacks on welfare recipients who tend to disproportionately be people of color -- Nicholas Fondacaro lashed out in an Aug. 23 post:
The rich liberal cast of ABC’s Good Morning America was possibly feeling targeted Wednesday as they broke the network news silence on the runaway, smash-hit song Rich Men North of Richmond with the direct intent to smear singer/songwriter Oliver Anthony with accusations of being a racist. The classic tactic of the rich men north of Richmond.
[...]
The report was delivered by correspondent Chris Connelly, who noted that “Fans hear an authentic, from-the-heart hit that speaking on behalf of an overlooked America,” but added that “Critics hear racially-tinged dog whistles.”
Anyone who has actually listened to the song and the lyrics knows that race was not brought up once or alluded to.
[...]
Ironically, ABC flashed their own racism because their assertion was that welfare was synonymous with minorities. And if the song truly used "racially-tinged dog whistles" as they claimed, then why have so many black reaction YouTubers fallen in love with the song? It also doesn't square with what Anthony told Fox News earlier int he week that America is a "melting pot" and that's a good thing.
Connelly steered clear of the lyrics that directly called out ABC’s friends and allies in Washington, like President Biden and his terrible economy, which made up a vast majority of the song:
But the lyrics Fondacaro quoted to back up that claim don't reference Biden or any specific media outlet -- which means he's doing the exact thing he's accusing ABC of doing, reading things into lyrics that may not be there.
When NPR noted that the song's lyrics leaned into right-wing conspiracy theories -- not only about welfare but a reference to "minors on an island" that alludes to Jeffrey Epstein -- that hint at QAnon topics, Clay Waters went on a rant in an Aug. 27 post:
National Public Radio is stirring up liberal hysteria again, courtesy of Odette Yousef, who works the outlets “extremism” beat (as in solely “right-wing” extremism). NPR’s website claims that “Yousef aims to explore how extremist ideas break into the mainstream, how individuals are radicalized and efforts to counter that.”
The latest “extremist idea” Yousef has latched onto is a… song? The raw, countrified tune “>Rich Men North of Richmond,” a populist plea from singer/songwriter Oliver Anthony criticizing taxes and welfare, made history by debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It was accompanied by a not very terrifying clip of Anthony with his guitar and two dogs.
[...]
One doesn’t have to be a conspiracist to have suspicions about Epstein’s death, including the lackof guard checkups and the lack of a cellmate.
With their hypersensitivity to “right-wing extremism” and misinformation, today’s liberals have painted themselves into their own extreme worldview, where speaking out against child trafficking is dangerous.
Waters went on to whine further that it was pointed out that QAnon leans hard into the "anti-Semitic blood libel" of elites supposedly drinking the blood of children, then huffed that professional homophobe Matt Walsh was (accuretly) described as "far-right."
An Aug. 29 post by Tom Olohan cheered that Robert Kennedy Jr. -- whose presidential campaign the MRC has been ironicallypromoting in the hope it might hurt President Biden's re-election efforts -- got on the song's bandwagon:
According to RFK Jr., people aren’t paying attention to what he described as a “corrupt collusion” between the government and corporate power. He said that this duo is “strip mining the wealth from the American middle class and destroying the lives of the working poor in this country.”
“The whole system is rigged against you,” RFK continued. “And those corporations because of government collusion with these rich men north of Richmond have their boots on the neck of every American... [T]he wealth is being stolen-by corporations with the cooperation of these government agencies”
But a funny thing happened -- Anthony started pushing back against the right-wingers turning his song into a political tool. He issued a YouTube video in which he stated, "It’s aggravating seeing people on conservative news try to identify with me, like I’m one of them. It’s aggravating seeing certain musicians and politicians act like we’re buddies and act like we’re fighting the same struggle here, like that we’re trying to present the same message." He added that his song "has nothing to do" with Biden. He further stated:
"It was funny seeing my song at the presidential debate," Anthony said of the Republican debate last week in Milwaukee. "Cause it’s like, I wrote that song about those people."
"So for them to have to sit there and listen to that, that cracks me up. But it was funny kind of seeing the response to it. That song has nothing to do with Joe Biden, you know? It’s a lot bigger than Joe Biden. That song is written about the people on that stage and a lot more too not just them, but definitely them."
The MRC stopped writing about Anthony and his song after those sentiments became known. Apparently, it wants nothing to do with someone who won't completely play along with its right-wing narratives.
Newsmax Brings On Roger Ailes' Widow To Trash Fox News Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax loves to tweak Fox News in portraying itself as the up-and-coming right-wing network amid turmoil at the bigger competition. One of the ways it's been doing that is by invoking Beth Ailes, widow of Fox News mastermind Roger Ailes, to regularly trash the channel. She's very much a loyalist to her late husband; a 2016 Newsmax article noted how she was in the "war room" he assembled to try and help him past numerous allegations of sexual harassment in his years at Fox News (it didn't work, and he lost his job).
We've noted how, in the wake of Fox News firing Tucker Carlson, Newsmax's Fox-bashing at the time included hyping Beth Ailes' attacks on post-Ailes Fox News:
Roger Ailes' widow took to social media to wish her late husband a "happy heavenly birthday" and at the same time bash Fox Corporation Chair Rupert Murdoch and Fox News for what the network has become.
Ailes, who as chairman and CEO built Fox News into a network empire, was forced out in July, 2016, amid sexual harassment allegations. He died May 18, 2017 at age 77 as a result of complications of a subdural hematoma.
"Happy Heavenly Birthday Roger Ailes. It took you 20 years to build Fox News into the powerhouse that it was and only 6 years for the Murdochs to wreak havoc. Rupert thought he could do your job. What a joke. He has the checkbook but could never come close to your genius. RIP." Elizabeth Ailes tweeted Monday.
Roger Ailes, who established Fox News Channel as a leader in conservative broadcasting, would never have fired host Tucker Carlson, Ailes' widow, Elizabeth Ailes, tells Newsmax.
Elizabeth Ailes tweeted earlier this week that it took her husband 20 years to build Fox into a powerhouse, while it took owner Rupert Murdoch and his sons only six years to cause havoc there.
"It did take Roger 20 years to build the channel, and he never once had his hand off the wheel," she said Thursday on "Eric Bolling The Balance""He had his 8 o'clock call, his 2:30 meeting, and he was always in touch even on a rare day that he might take a day off."
Roger Ailes, rather than firing Carlson, would have been involved in how Carlson "was positioning his shows," she said, "just as he was with Bill O'Reilly whenever there was something controversial or something big came up. He was always very much in touch with the talent, never telling them what to do or how to say something, but rather how to keep everybody in their lane, if you will."
Whwen it was revealed that Fox News generously matched employee donations to charitable causes no matter what they were, including the Satanic Temple and (even worse) Planned Parenthood, Ailes returned to Bolling's show on July 21 to complain:
Reacting to reports that Fox News is promoting far-left and even "satanic" charities through its employee donation portal, Beth Ailes, widow of Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, told Newsmax on Friday that what the country is seeing from the network is "industrialized devil worship."
On Friday, The Blaze reported that Fox News' company portal app, Fox Giving, matches employee donations of up to $1,000 to the Satanic Temple, the Trevor Project, Planned Parenthood, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and other liberal charities.
Beth Ailes, whose late husband established Fox News Channel as a conservative broadcasting pioneer, appeared on Eric Bolling The Balance" and said she couldn’t believe it when she first learned about what Fox News was doing.
[...]
Calling the network's actions "a betrayal of the Fox News core audience" that her husband "had sought to serve for so long," Ailes said it was also "an example of how the Murdochs have decided that they will give us all these reasons why this is OK. They will seek to have a triumph of reason over instinct.
"All of us know that devil worship, [gender-transition] care, you name it, some of the themes of these organizations that are available to match the donations ... they are evildoers," she continued. "As Christians, we have an obligation to call them out.
"Christianity is under attack. And what we're seeing from Fox is industrialized devil worship."
So birth control -- which is most of what Planned Parenthood does -- is "devil worship"? Weird.
As part of Newsmax's overall slagging of Fox News over its hosting of the first Republican presidential debate, Ailes appeared again on Newsmax on Aug. 29:
Fox News saw a ratings drop from previous Republican debates because of "four T's" – Tucker, trust, talent, and Trump – Elizabeth "Beth" Ailes told Newsmax on Tuesday night.
Ailes, the wife of the late Roger Ailes, the founding chair of Fox News, appeared on "Eric Bolling The Balance" to discuss Fox's catastrophic drop in ratings for its recent Republican debate, which former President Donald Trump skipped due to a "hostile" network.
[...]
"The decline of Fox can be told as a story of three or perhaps four T's: That would be Tucker, trust, talent and, of course, President Trump," Ailes told Bolling. "Imagine if the network had not fired Tucker, we could imagine that Tucker got the president to participate in a debate or perhaps give an interview, maybe not at the same time.
"But imagine how many people would have watched that."
Ailes also took a xenophobic shot at Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch for purportedly not being American enough to understand right-wingers:
Ailes suggested the Murdoch family, controlling shareholders of Fox's parent company, are out of touch with Fox's audience.
"Trust is something that takes a lot of hard work," she said.
"I believe Rupert, the major Murdoch, and Lachlan, the minor Murdoch, do not understand America the way Roger did because they weren't born here," she added of the Australian billionaire and his family.
"They don't have the love of country, in my opinion, that only comes from being born here," she said.
Ailes even put in a plug for her new apparent right-wing TV home:
"It is not the brand it once was," she said.
And that fact has opened up competition from networks like Newsmax.
"I think that a lot of the audience has left," Ailes told Bolling.
"And that's because there's no more Eric Bolling. There's no more Bill O'Reilly. There's no Greta [Van Susteren]. Where is everybody? They're on Newsmax."
It was not mentioned that the reason Bolling and O'Reilly are no longer at Fox News is that they both left under a cloud of sexual harassment allegations -- just like Roger Ailes did. It was also not mentioned that Fox News is continuing to face litigation in connnection with Roger Ailes' alleged boorish behavior. Beth Ailes will never be asked by Bolling why she chose to stand by and defend such a sleazy womanizer and why she continues to do so.
WND Turns To Gateway Pundit Again For Dishonest Defense Of Capitol Rioter Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily hasonceagain farmed out to the notoriously unreliable Gateway Pundit a wiidly dishonest defense of a participant in the Capitol riot. Jim Hoft served up the dishonesty in a Sept. 6 article:
Infowars host Owen Shroyer pleaded guilty in June to a single Class A Misdemeanor of Entering and Remaining in a Restricted Building or Grounds on January 6, 2021.
he highly talented journalist was initially charged in August 2021 — eight months after remaining outside the US Capitol on January 6.
After nearly two years of fighting charges related to his presence outside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 Owen made the decision to plead guilty to a lesser charge.
Shroyer allowed the government to review his social media accounts — likely looking for any scrap of incriminating wrong-think they could find.
Owen stood outside the US Capitol. Owen and Alex Jones warned people about going inside the Capitol. They knew it was a setup. Instead of being awarded medals for their actions that day, the regime arrested Owen months later on bogus charges. After all, he IS a Trump supporter.
Today DOJ prosecutors sought 120 days of prison time for Owen. They want him prosecuted for “speech crimes.”
Who are the real criminals here?
Do not fool yourself. The regime wants to treat every Trump supporter like this. They want to jail us all. And they will do just that if we let them.
Hoft, unsurprisingly, is lying. As an honest and credible media outlet reported, Shroyer was facing prison time despite not entering the Capitol because he violated a 2019 agreement with authorities -- made after he interrupted a congressional hearing -- that deferred prosecution because he agreed "loud, threatening, or abusive language, or to engage in any disorderly or disruptive conduct, at any place upon the United States Capitol Grounds."
When Shroyer was sentenced to 60 days in jail -- half of what was sought by prosecutors -- WND reprinted another screed on Sept. 12, this time by Alicia Powe:
Infowars reporter and War Room host Owen Shroyer was sentenced to 60 DAYS IN PRISON – Owen stood outside the Capitol and warned Trump supporters not to go inside the U.S. Capitol.
Owen also frequently spoke out against the stolen 2020 election.
DOJ prosecutors sought prison time against Owen for this speech crime!
For this he was sentenced to 60 DAYS IN PRISON.
[...]
Owen stood outside the U.S. Capitol. Owen and Alex Jones warned people about going inside the Capitol. They knew it was a setup.
Instead of being awarded medals for their actions that day, the regime arrested Owen months later on bogus charges. After all, he IS a Trump supporter.
Today DOJ prosecutors sentenced Owen Shroyer to 60 days of prison. They want him prosecuted for “speech crimes.”
Like Hoft, Powe is lying by censoring the fact that Shroyer is getting jail because he violated a previous deferred-prosecution. She also didn't mention that, as another credible news outlet reported, Shroyer was very much riling up the crowd -- not trying to turn them away -- and that the judge told him, "I do not believe that you were trying to distract the crowd or turn the crowd away from the Capitol."
It has since been reported that Infowars won't pay Shroyer's salary while he's rotting in jail, which is arguably hilarious for everyone not named Owen Shroyer, Gateway Pundit or WND.
NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC's DeSantis Defense Brigade: Spouse Division Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is outraged that some in the media are treating Ron DeSantis' wife like ... the MRC and its fellow right-wingers treat Hillary Clinton. Plus: Poem bans, homophobic campaign ads and DeSantis' alleged comedy chops. Read more >>
MRC Hypocritically Defends Russell Brand Following Rape, Assault Allegations Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center used to hate Russell Brand -- until he started spouting right-wing-friendly narratives, after which it proclaimed him to be a champion of "free speech." Since then, Brand has whined about being "censored on YouTube" for what Brand euphemistically described (and uncritically repeated by MRC writer Catherine Salgado) as “changing narratives around COVID[-19], the pandemic and COVID treatments.” But as we learned later, this apparently involved him falsely claiming that the FDA had approved ivermectin to treat COVID. Still, the MRC put this in its completely made-up "secondhand censorhip" metric even though everyone involved, including Brand, agreed that his claim was false.
As we learned with Kanye West, the MRC will give you a lot of slack for offensive behavior if you're been offering lip service to its preferred right-wing narratives. When people started to back away from Brand after numerous allegations of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse surfaced, the MRC rushed to portray him as a victim despite the seriousness of the allegations. Luis Cornelio huffed in a Sept. 19 post:
YouTube appointed itself judge, jury and silencer in the kangaroo court of public opinion preemptively punishing individuals subjected to leftist cancel culture or accusations — but only in some cases.
YouTube announced on Tuesday that comedian and actor will no longer be able to monetize his videos amidst sexual assault allegations brought against him. According to the New York Post’s Page Six, YouTube acknowledged that the punishment — despite no arrest or criminal convictions — followed “serious allegations against the creator.” The decision drew the ire of prominent voices who blasted YouTube’s unilateral decision and pointed out the disproportionate punishment as YouTube has turned a blind eye to accusations raised against Democrats and media members on the left.
In recent years, Brand has become a voice against Big Tech’s attack on free speech and has been subject to YouTube’s censorship in the past. It isn’t immediately clear whether YouTube’s targeting of Brand, which applies to “all channels that may be owned or operated by the actor,” has been applied to leftist individuals who have also faced damning allegations of sexual misconduct.
Catherine Salgado hopped board the anti-cancel culture bandwagon in a Sept. 21 post:
Rumble has refused to follow YouTube’s example in preemptively silencing Russell Brand amidst new allegations of sexual assault, touting “the vital cause” of a “free internet.”
Video platform Rumble has insisted on standing for free speech in the wake of calls to demonetize Brand. Rumble responded to an anti-free speech letter Caroline Dinenage by stating, “Although it may be politically and socially easier for Rumble to join a cancel culture mob, doing so would be in violation of our company’s values and mission. We emphatically reject the UK Parliament’s demands.”
[...]
"Rumble is right to reject and rebuke the U.K. or any other 'Cancel Culture Mob' demands to demonetize its customers," said MRC Free Speech America Director Michael Morris. "American social media companies should also be exporting the American principles of freedom, free speech and expression to the four corners of the earth, not importing the anti-American censorship ideals of totalitarian governments overseas."
Rumble posted a letter on X (formerly Twitter) in response to the U.K. letter sent to Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski. “While Rumble obviously deplores sexual assault, rape, and all serious crimes, and believes that both alleged victims and the accused are entitled to a full and serious investigation, it is vital to note that recent allegations against Russell Brand have nothing to do with content on Rumble’s platform,” Rumble explained. Rumble further noted that it is dedicated to “the vital cause of defending a free internet,” where individuals cannot arbitrarily demand censorship of other users.
You will not be surprised that all of this fretting about cancel culture on the MRC's part is totally hypocritical. When singer Lizzo was accused of sexual harassment of her backup dancers, Teirin-Rose Mandelburg wrote an Aug. 2 post under the headline "‘About Damn Time’ Lizzo Got Canceled" that began by gloating, "Cancel culture looks like it’s about to strike again. The latest victim is a big one … pun intended." (Remember, the MRC thinks that making fatjokes about Lizzo is the height of comedy and "media research; Mandelburg also referenced Lizzo's supposedly "morbidly obese body.")
The MRC published a Sept. 23 syndicated column by Ben Shapiro, who dubiously claimed that Brand has traken "heterodox positions on matters ranging from COVID-19 to the Ukraine war," then absolves Brand of guilt because he supposedly is no longer the same person who committed those offenses:
Full disclosure: I’ve interviewed Russell and been interviewed by him at length. I consider him a friend. You can never truly know another person well enough to rule out vile, despicable, criminal behavior in their past; I didn’t know Russell during his most debauched period, and I assume that if I had, we wouldn’t have gotten along. And the allegations, as Brand himself says, are incredibly serious. Presumably we will find out all the facts as time goes on.
There is a question worth asking here, aside from the obvious question about Brand’s alleged crimes: What prompted the media to begin digging into Brand? It was an open secret in Hollywood that Brand was a sexual degenerate throughout the 2000s; the media were utterly unconcerned about such matters. In fact, the same media outlets now investigating Brand were happy to make money off of him as he engaged in overtly vile behavior he himself would now be ashamed of.
So what changed? Brand did. He began taking political positions that contradicted many of the most cherished assumptions of the media class. He spoke out on a variety of issues that were considered taboo. He abandoned his past embrace of debauchery and began promoting more honorable personal behavior.
[...]
This is dangerous stuff, no matter what emerges about Brand. If he’s guilty, he will pay for his crimes. But the preemptive destruction of his career makes for a truly ugly incentive structure. And it is now just one more reason for those who do have heterodox opinions to avoid speaking up.
The fact remains, however, that Shapiro is all too willing to give Brand a pass for apparently criminal behavior because he's spouting conservatively correct things now. He would not be so generous if Brand had not moved to the right.
Salgado continued the MRC's cancel culture hypocrisy in a Sept. 26 post:
In the latest instance of anti-free speech cancel culture, several companies have pulled their advertising from Rumble for its refusal to buckle to censorship pressure.
The anti-free speech left frequently uses financial or government pressure to demand censorship of individuals or content, even resorting to canceling shows, products or people by cutting off advertising funds. Burger King, HelloFresh, Asos and The Barbican are the latest to do just that.
The four companies withdrew ads from pro-free speech video platform Rumble when the latter refused to demonetize Russell Brand over as-yet unsubstantiated allegations of sexual misconduct. The group The News Movement, which is tied to a group funded by climate activist James Murdoch, was behind the advertising pressure, Reclaim the Net reported on Sept. 23.
Salgado then tried to argue it's not cancel culture when right-wingers do it:
The Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon explained the difference between consumers boycotting companies and companies or government officials exerting pressure to cancel opponents in an X (formerly Twitter) post. “I didn't see conservatives calling on stores and venues to stop carrying Bud Light. They just stopped buying it,” Dillon posted on Sept. 21. “They applied market pressure, but they didn't cancel anything. It's like the difference between changing the channel when a show you don't like comes on and calling the advertisers/network to try and get the show taken off the air entirely.”
Dillon apparently didn't mention the right-wing activists twisting the arms of those consumers for partisan political benefit.
Salgado played whataboutism in a Sept. 27 post complaining that YouTube CEO Neal Mohan defended the platform suspending Brand:
"If creators have off-platform behavior, or there's off-platform news that could be damaging to the broader creator ecosystem, you can be suspended from our monetization program,” he claimed. YouTube demonetized Russell Brand quickly after as-yet unsubstantiated allegations of sexual assault first began to circulate in the media, allegations which Brand denies. Yet, YouTube continues to platform former CBS News journalist Charlie Rose and former Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) despite their own sexual harassment and assault allegations. Mohan’s defense thus seems hypocritical.
Salgado didn't explain why her co-worker Mandelburg cheered Lizzo falling afoul of "cancel culture" despite no criminal charges being filed against her.
Remember, the MRC has a verylongrecord of embracing and defending right-wingers who engage in atrocious behavior or embrace extremism because it doesn't believe what they do, no matter how henious, discredits the narratives they peddle.
Another Sept. 27 post by Salgado cheered Rumble's continued hosting of a credibly accused sexual assault perpetrator:
Rumble continues to defy government officials, media outlets, and companies fiercely pressuring the pro-free speech video platform to censor Russell Brand.
Rumble has refused Russell Brand could be banned under the UK’s new anti-free speech online safety laws. “[O]ur staff has never been more prepared and ready for whatever comes at us,” Rumble announced in a Sept. 27 post on X formerly Twitter).
“Rumble has been under relentless attack from governments and the mainstream media on various fronts,” the platform posted. “What they fail to understand is that every attack only emboldens our community and makes us stronger.” Rumble added that it “was built for pressure and built for these types of moments,” and that its “infrastructure,” “ad system,” and “staff” have “never been more prepared and ready for whatever comes at us.”
Then again, Rumble CEO Pavlovski regularly associates with far-right and anti-Semitic poeple on his platform, so that's not quite the win Salgado thinks it is.
Salgado listed the Brand situation as one of the "Five Shocking Examples of Big Tech Censorship" that happened in September in an Oct. 3 post, rehashing her complaint that "YouTube constituted itself judge, jury, and hangman by demonetizing comedian and actor Russell Brand almost immediately when as-yet unproven sexual assault allegations began circulating." Of course, demonetizing is not "censorship," given that Brand has not been prohibited from posting anything.
WND's Alexander Tries To Salvage John Eastman As He Faces Disbarment Topic: WorldNetDaily
Rachel Alexander is a true believer that there was election fraud in 2020 -- despite the utter lack of credible evidence to prove it -- so it's not a surprise that she's running to the defense of the lawyer who manufactured a legal basis for overturning the 2020 election, John Eastman, as he faces a disbarment trial before the California bar. She wrote in her Sept. 4 WorldNetDaily column:
Former Republican Jennifer Rubin wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post last week criticizing Trump attorney John Eastman's defense in the California bar disbarment trial against him. Unlike her, I've watched every minute of the trial, which is going into the third week. The bar is desperately trying to show there was no legal authority for Eastman to advise Trump that Mike Pence could have rejected electoral slates from states suspected of election fraud, but as more evidence comes out, their case is getting weaker and weaker.
But all Alexander is doing is nitpicking the prosecution without landing any serioius punches. She started by going after greg Jacob, former attorney for then-Vice President Mike Pence, who assered that it was "gravely irresponsible for you to entice the president with an academic theory that had no legal viability," but she claimed he "contradicted himself" by "that "scholars disagree" whether it's the vice president's responsibility to substantively deal with accepting electoral slates" and that the Constitution is "at best ambiguous." but as another, more honest reporter pointed out:
But Jacob made clear that while there are certainly reasons to quibble over some of the fine points of the Electoral Count Act of 1887 and the 12th Amendment — the two pillars of American government that lay out the Jan. 6 electoral vote counting process — there’s simply no basis in history or law that Pence would have had authority to determine the outcome of the election himself — or even to jumpstart a state-level process that would have the same effect.
Alexander then went way into the weeds to discuss elections from 150 years ago to try and impugn another prosecution witness:
Rubin also claimed that a 91-page report authored by the bar's expert witness Matthew Seligman somehow destroyed Eastman's defense. The report from Seligman, who has probably been illegally practicing law without an active license while assisting the California bar on this, was all over the board on that issue. Rubin said his report found that the 12th Amendment, the Electoral Count Act of 1887 and congressional precedent show that "the Eastman positions were so devoid of support that 'no reasonable attorney exercising appropriate diligence in the circumstances would adopt them.'"
However, Miller got Seligman to discuss the legislative debates of the 1876 election, where Republicans wanted the vice president to decide competing sets of electoral slates from some Southern states, but Democrats did not. There, a deal ultimately was reached by a special commission, allowing Republican Rutherford Hayes to become president, and Democrat Samuel Tilden conceded. No Republicans were prosecuted nor their attorneys disciplined.
If Seligman thought Eastman's position was so outrageous, why does he prominently feature a debate between Eastman and progressive legal scholar Lawrence Lessig about it on his website? One of the scholarly articles that Seligman wrote, "Disputed Presidential Elections and the Collapse of Constitutional Norms," discussed how a political party could have deserted "constitutional norms" "while staying within the strict bounds of the law" to "steal the presidency in 9 of the 34 elections since 1887 and the opposing party would have been powerless to stop the theft." Tellingly, Seligman wrote the article in 2018, shortly after Hillary Clinton claimed she lost to Trump due to election fraud.
Alexander's claim that Seligman was "has probably been illegally practicing law without an active license" linked to an article she wrote elsewhere obsessing over how his his law license was inactive because he was working as a teacher.
Alexander concluded by ranting that any discipline Eastman might face, in this case as well as in Georgia, will overturned by a biased right-wing Supreme Court:
The criminal prosecutions will likely go on for years, since the left wants to drag them out to damage Trump during the presidential race. But it is not likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold a conviction sending Trump – or the others – to prison; not only does the current court lean to the right, but several of the justices were appointed by Trump. They won't stand for sending a president to prison over politics. Nor will they allow Eastman, a fellow legal academic who once clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas, to be disbarred over the First Amendment.
Rubin gleefully discussed the indictment of Eastman, but failed to discuss how a good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, failed to discuss how RICO laws are so vague and broad they can be used to get anyone, and failed to discuss how attorneys regularly represent some of the most heinous criminals on earth and protect their lies. "Your honor, my client could not have been there bombing all those people since he was with a friend at the time."
Everyone already knows how Disciplinary Judge Yvette Roland, who contributed recently to Democrats while serving as a judge, is going to rule. Can't wait for the grown-ups – SCOTUS – to take over.
Meanwhile, in reality, Eastman's defense continues to do poorly. His first defense witness was Michael Gableman, a Wisconsin activist who had no experience in election law and said he did not have "any understand of how elections work" when Wisconsin Republicans -- mad that Biden won the state in 2020 -- chose him to look for evidence of rampant election fraud in the state (which he didn't find because there was none). Not an auspicious start -- not that Alexander will admit it, of course.
MRC Complains Gmail Bias Lawsuit It Encouraged GOP To File Got Tossed Out Of Court Topic: Media Research Center
Last year, the Media Research Center hyped a study it claimed showed that the spam filter on Google's Gmail is purportedly biased against conservative fundraising emails by marking more of them as spam -- though it hid that the study also found that the alleged bias largely disappears as users read emails and mark them as spam on their own and the Gmail learns from that behavior. The MRC also censored the fact that a study co-author called out right-wingers for misrepresenting the results of the study. Nevertheless, the MRC's misleading narrative helped goad the Republican National Committee into suing Google over the purported bias.
Well, the case got tossed out of court, and Luis Cornelio spent an Aug. 30 post ranting about it:
A federal judge tossed a Republican National Committee lawsuit that alleged Google buried fundraising emails.
In a major loss for free speech, U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Calabretta dismissed an RNC lawsuit seeking to hold Google accountable for what Republicans described as email suppression. The RNC alleged that Google's Gmail intentionally sent 20 million Republican campaign emails to spam over the course of 6 days. However, Calabretta, a Biden appointee, claimed on August 24 that Section 230 shielded Google from the lawsuit. You read that correctly. The judge ruled that, “[w]hile is a close case,” the RNC failed to show “Google acted in bad faith” in suppressing emails, “and that doing so was protected by section 230,” according to standards set forth in a previous Supreme Court case.
[...]
In October 2022, the RNC filed a lawsuit against Google, citing a study that found that the Big Tech giant’s algorithms buried GOP emails in an apparent attempt to thwart the political party’s fundraiser emails. At the time, the RNC argued that Google pushed “millions of RNC emails en masse to potential donors’ and supporters’ spam folders during pivotal points in election fundraising and community building.”
Google maintained its innocence through the lawsuit. “The RNC is wrong,” Google claimed in a filing, reported by The Washington Post on August 24. “Gmail’s spam filtering policies apply equally to emails from all senders, whether they are politically affiliated or not.” The judge agreed, going as far as demanding that the RNC fix the suit to demonstrate — despite the growing evidence showing otherwise — that Google acted with a “lack of good faith.”
Of course, Cornelio and the rest of the MRC have acted in bad faith by making Google a political scapegoat so it can push its right-wing victimhood narrative, making it a poor judge of what it calls "bad faith" on Google's part. He also censored the finding from ther original study that the biases disappear as users engage with Gmail.
Cornelio also dutifully quoted the head of the RNC sticking to the narrative:
“This case is not over,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in reaction to the lawsuit. “The judge has given us leave to amend and re-file our complaint. This suit represents a crucial action against Big Tech’s anti-conservative bias. We look forward to filing our amended complaint and continuing this fight.”
Most ludicrously, Cornelio touted the MRC/RNC allegations as a "BOMBSHELL" in the headline of his post. If that so-called bombshell gets tossed out of court for lack of evidence, it's not a "bombshell" -- it's a failed and frivolous lawsuit.