MRC Complains Editorial Cartoon Mocking A Preferred Target Was Withdrawn Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Alex Christy complained in a Nov. 9 post:
The woke inmates run the asylum at the Washington Post as executive editor Sally Buzbee apologized to staff on Wednesday for running a cartoon condemning Hamas that some considered racist and insensitive.
The cartoon in question shows a caricature of a Hamas leader, that could possibly be Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk or leader Yahya Sinwar, and not some generic Palestinian, strapping himself to women, children, and babies and saying “how dare Israel attack civilians.”
This is, of course, a completely fair and accurate depiction of Hamas, but the Washington Free Beacon’s Drew Holden reports that Buzbee said in an e-mail, “Given the many deep concerns and conversations today in our newsroom, I wanted to ensure everyone saw the notes sent out tonight by The Post's opinions editor, David Shipley, to Post readers and to his staff in opinions.”
[...]
The Post itself also noted, “Palestinian American poet Remi Kanazi wrote: ‘This is the Washington Post. This is the kind of anti-Palestinian racism that’s acceptable for publication.’ Left-wing British activist Owen Jones called the cartoon an example of ‘racist dehumanization.’”
How so? If anything the cartoon is saying Hamas doesn’t care about the very Palestinians Kanazi and Jones claim to care so much about and that dead Palestinians benefit Hamas because it gives them a talking point for their propaganda campaign.
Still, Buzbee added, “A cartoon published by Michael Ramirez on the war in Gaza, a cartoon whose publication I approved, was seen by many readers as racist. This was not my intent. I saw the drawing as a caricature of a specific individual, the Hamas spokesperson, who celebrated the attacks on unarmed civilians in Israel.”
It will not surprise you to learn that the MRC has a double standard on offfensive editorial cartoons. As we've documented, it had a fit when a cartoon critiquing Ted Cruz for exploiting his children during his 2016 presidential campaign -- but had no problem with a New York Post cartoon depicting Barack Obama as a chimipanzee. Its NewsBusters also once published a cartoon of a "Combat Barbie" that includes a prisoner-of-war uniform as an accessory.
In other words, the MRC has no problem with cartoons that offend people -- as long as those people are its political enemies.
WND Columnist: Dracula Was A Muslim-Hating Christian, So He Couldn't Have Been All Bad! Topic: WorldNetDaily
Did you know that the archfiend best representing the Halloween season – namely, Count Dracula – is fake news?
I don't mean that he's fake in the sense that he's fictional – which, of course, he is – but rather that his entire genesis is grounded in a pattern we now recognize and see on a daily basis: leftist propagandistic forces working to transform heroes into villains.
Count Dracula entered the popular consciousness in 1897, with the publication of Bram Stoker's novel, "Dracula," which surrounds the exploits of an undead bloodsucker from Romania. As many novelists do, Stoker tried to give his story an aura of historic legitimacy by connecting it to real people and events. For his novel's namesake, he found a real Romanian, Vlad III Dracula (c. 1430-1476), also known as Vlad the Impaler.
[...]
Despite all this, it's what is left out – the all-important context, which fake news thrives on omitting – that invalidates the overall depiction of Vlad. Just as Americans today are regularly hammered about their ancestors' role in slavery – without ever being told that everyone engaged in slavery, and often on a much worse scale than Americans – virtually everyone of Dracula's era was by today's standards cruel, and impalement was a standard form of execution.
Also left out is that Vlad was first exposed to savagery in his youth, when he was a prisoner of the Turks, who regularly tortured and impaled their victims (and turned his younger brother and fellow prisoner into a catamite). In his adult years, he learned to fight fire with fire – not least because he was vastly outnumbered and disadvantaged – terrorizing and impaling his Ottoman enemies no less than they had done to his people. Even the contemporary claim that he dined around his impaled victims was a tradition begun by Sultan Murad II, his captor, who ordered tables set and a feast held among the corpses of his Christian enemies following the battle of Varna,1444.
[...]
Count Dracula was actually a committed Christian and saw his Just War against the invading Turks as being first and foremost about defending Christendom from Islam. Far from blaspheming and turning against God following his first wife's death – as dramatically portrayed in the opening scene of "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (1992) – Vlad regularly visited, sponsored and spent his free time in Orthodox monasteries, and even sent donations to Mount Athos.
Perhaps the "Chronicle of Efrosin," which appeared less than a decade after Dracula's death, best captures his character. It depicts a man with a severe persona who meted out terrifying punishments for those who dared transgress especially moral laws. According to the chronicle, "He hated stealing so violently in his country that anyone who caused any evil or robbery, or a lie or an injustice, did not live long. Be he an important boyar, priest, or monk, or an ordinary person, be he the richest man, he would not escape death. So feared he was."
Above all, Vlad is remembered as a fierce warrior who terrorized the 150,000 jihadists who invaded his homeland in 1462. Being vastly outnumbered, with some 4,000 horsemen, on a pitch black night he violently blitzed into the Ottoman camp in order to cut the head of this vast Islamic snake by assassinating its sultan, Muhammad II.
[...]
Little wonder that, whereas Dracula is a bloodsucking fiend in the West, in his native Romania he remains a hero. Till now, whenever there is talk of corruption or immorality, it is common for Romanians to resignedly end the conversation by quoting the following lines of an old poem: "Where art thou, old prince, Vlad, on them all to lay thy hands."
And so, on this Halloween, you can remember Count Dracula not as fiendish vampire, but as a fallible man who, like so many Europeans before him, did what he could, fighting fire with fire, to keep his tiny Christian kingdom safe from Muslim invaders.
MRC's Jean-Pierre-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Watch, Fatal Attraction-Free Edition Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Reserarch Center's Curtis Houck helped right-wing New York Post reporter Steven Nelson whine (with serious "Fatal Attraction" vibes) that White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wasn't calling on him -- an assist he wouldn't have provided to a non-right-wing reporter being dissed by his beloved Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. Well, Jean-Pierre finally got around to calling on Nelson, and Houck rejoiced in his writeup of the Dec. 4 briefing:
During Monday’s White House press briefing, the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had quite the day as she ended what had been a petty, 187-day blackout against the New York Post’s Steven Nelson, hilariously ended the briefing after a question from Real Clear Politics’s Philip Wegmann about the new twist in the Biden corruption saga, and was caught in a double standard by Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich over voting access.
With the penultimate slot in the briefing, Jean-Pierre surprisingly called out to Nelson, who thanked her and added that while “[i]t’s been awhile,” he’s “hop[ing] we can do more.” Jean-Pierre chuckled in annoyance, saying he took it “one step too far.” Bizarre.
Nelson cut to his first question:
Section 702 of FISA is expiring this month and, against this debate, Senator Wyden just this past month released a letter saying that the White House is secretly funding a domestic court record dragnet administered by AT&T. Apparently, according to Wired, the White House altered funding for this program in 2021 and resumed at last year, and I was wondering what you could tell us about this program and the reason that it was paused and then resumed by the White House.
As Jean-Pierre often does with reporters she regularly calls on, she played dumb and said she’d “have to check with the team.”
Houck also did some Peter Doocy mancrushing by proxy:
Prior to Nelson and Wegmann, Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich channeled her colleague Peter Doocy by laying a trap for Jean-Pierre in asking if “the White House still believe[s]” that Georgia’s voting laws are un-American and promote voter suppression even though “Georgia did have record turnout” in 2022.
Nelson got to ask more biased questions of President Biden two days later, and Houck gushed over that too:
Two days after the end of a 187-day-long ice out by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the New York Post’s Steven Nelson was part of the press pool Wednesday during President Biden’s remarks about a funding battle with Congress on the border, Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine, so Nelson jumped in afterward to press Biden onwhy he’s “interacted with so many...foreign business associates” of his brother Jim and son Hunter.
Nelson shrewdly caught Biden’s attention by saying he had questions about China and Ukraine and they certainly were....but not on Biden’s terms. Biden probably forgot that Nelson was the reporter who asked him on June 8 if, based on the investigation from the House Oversight Committee, he accepted bribes and sold out the country. Smart move, Steven.
He then dropped two devastating numbers for Biden amid his reelection campaign (and simply in terms of credibility with the American people): “[P]olling by the Associated Press...shows that almost 70 percent of Americans, including 40 percent of Democrats, believe that you acted either illegally or unethically in regards to your family's business interests.”
Given the dozens of liberal media puff pieces and both general and specific allegations of Biden family malfeasance, it’d certainly be higher if weren’t for such a complicit media.
Um, isn't Houck part of a "complicit media" for Republicans and against Biden? Let's not pretend he's acting any different than what he's accusing others of doing.
Houck unusually praised the Biden White House for adhering to right-wing pro-Israel narratives during the Dec. 6 briefing:
Wednesday’s White House press briefing took a dark turn when an Arab reporter lashed out at Israel as “a terrorist state” inflicting “collective punishment” on Gazans and “killing...civilians” and “journalists” just moments after a reporter from the Saudi-funded Alarabiya asked whether the U.S. finds it “acceptable” and “positive” that “the ratio of killing Hamas fighters is equivalent to two civilians.”
On both counts, the National Security Council’s John Kirby wasn’t having it. In the case of the former, he began by kvetching about the plight of the Lebanese army, which isn’t particularly sterling given the country’s largely run by the Iranian-backed terrorist group, Hezbollah.
Houck didn't mention that civilians in Gaza are being killed at an unusually high pace for armed conflicts, and that numerous journallists covering the conflilct are also being killed. But then, that would deviate from the approved narrative.
Houck lazily summarized two days of briefings in one Dec. 15 post, with an emphasis on Doocy mancrushing:
With President Biden out and about to start the week, White House press briefings didn’t kick off this week until Wednesday and continued on Thursday, leaving plenty of space for questions from the left bashing Israel, the New York Post ’s Steven Nelson and Real Clear Politics’s Philip Wegmann stumping Biden flacks Karine Jean-Pierre and John Kirby, and, of course, Doocy Time on Hunter Biden’s life of ruin, illegal immigration, and White House leaks.
[...]
Fox’s Peter Doocy had his own questions on this: “You said that President Biden was familiar with what his son was going to say on Capitol Hill. If I called my dad and said, ‘I am about to violate a congressional subpoena,’ he would probably say, ‘Son, you shouldn’t do that.’ Was there any attempt by President Biden to talk Hunter out of it today?”
Jean-Pierre reiterated Joe “was familiar with what Hunter was going to say” and remains “proud of” him, but refused to go further (and thus have her cake and eat it too) because Hunter’s “a private citizen” and thus his chats with his father are “private conversations.”
Doocy also hammered away on illegal immigration, wondering if “10,000 illegal border crossings” in just one day would be enough for the administration to “admit…the Biden border policy so far has not worked” and if 1,000 of those being gotaways is “a national security risk.”
On both, Jean-Pierre instead bashed Republicans, accusing them of wanting to slash the number of border patrol agents and prevent law enforcement from stopping the flow of fentanyl.
Shifting to Thursday, Doocy Time was with Kirby as the Fox correspondent wondered “why would somebody around here leak that the Vice President is upset with the President about Gaza”.
Kirby noted the regime officially “refute the basic premise of” it, but he didn’t entirely because a vice president should be “offering…advice and counsel to the President” and everyone there “wants to see the Israelis be more surgical, more precise”.
Doocy unsuccessfully tried again, but not without a hilarious flub as he asked whether “President O’Biden” and his team were “okay that people…are going to press with this.” Naturally, it drew more than a few laughs, including from Kirby and Doocy.
If Jean-Pierre had made such a mistake, Houck would have portrayed it as further evidence of her purported incompetence. But because Doocy did it, it's merely a "hilarious flub."
WND Columnists Also Praise Johnson As New House Speaker Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's columnists unsurprisingly joined its so-called reporters in praising Mike Johnson's selection as House speaker and pretending there's nothing abnormal about his right-wing extremism. Jerry Newcombe wrote in his Oct. 31 column:
After Louisiana Congressman Mike Johnson was voted in as the Speaker of the House, many on the Left threw a fit about him. He has been described as:
an “extremist” by Democratic Congresswoman AOC of New York City.
a “Christian Nationalist” by a Christian professor (John Fea, Messiah College).
a "staunch conservative on issues like abortion and government spending" by journalist Garrett Haake of NBC News and MSNBC.
And on and on it goes.
But the reality is that Mike Johnson stands in a long tradition of American leaders who looked to God and the Bible for guidance. If you know history, you know that great Americans like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr. were regular readers of the Scriptures.
Today’s secularists have so successfully cut us off from our Judeo-Christian traditions that someone like Mike Johnson is supposedly an interloper in an otherwise blissfully secular America, to paraphrase the late D. James Kennedy.
[...]
If Mike Johnson is an “extremist” and a “Christian Nationalist,” then so were George Washington, John Adams, and most of America’s Founders. And I’ll gladly take more of that rather than less of it.
Patrice Lewis similarly defended Johnson in her Nov. 3 column:
Like most of America, I knew very little about Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson until he was elected speaker of the House. Now, of course, every aspect of his life and past is being examined under a microscope. The mainstream media – which has been engaging in a great deal of pearl-clutching over his conservative Christian values – is desperately trying to uncover some dirt on the man so they can brand him as a hypocrite or a danger or a criminal. So far they're not coming up with much. As a relative newcomer (he was first elected to Congress in 2016), maybe he simply hasn't been around long enough to tick off important people.
On the surface, Johnson seems to be a decent guy. He and his wife have been married almost 25 years and have four kids. No personal scandals are associated with his name (beyond the "scandal" of being a conservative Christian, of course).
Contrary to the mainstream media complaints (MSNBC calls him a "Christian nationalist" who wants to end abortion rights and gay marriage; The Guardian accuses him of being an election denier, climate skeptic and anti-abortion), Johnson's primary political focus appears not to be cultural issues so much as the national debt and international saber-rattling. Whatever.
So, in the absence of anything more substantial, the mainstream media are doing what they do best: Manufacturing scandal out of nothing. To this end, they came up with the most shocking and disturbing information they could about Speaker Johnson. After thoroughly scouring his personal and financial histories, Democrats have launched a full-scale assault on Johnson for an unforgivable reality: He isn't rich.
WND also published a Nov. 6 Real Clear Wire column praising Johnson: "The election of Mike Johnson as speaker is nothing short of a miracle – not just because he is a lesser-known congressman with little leadership experience, but because he is a man of faith who promises to govern based on biblical principles. It’s almost like he wants to make America great again, following the lead not of Donald Trump, but of George Washington."
MRC Hyped Leak Of Nashville Shooter's Manifesto To Attack Transgender People Topic: Media Research Center
Like WorldNetDaily, the Media Research Center sought to explit the leak of the pages from the alleged manifesto -- actually more like notebook rants -- of the "transgender shooter" at a Nashville school earlier this year as a way to portray all transgender people as violent and mentally ill. Nicholas Fondacaro huffed in a Nov. 6 post:
On Monday, Nashville authorities, Democratic politicians, and local media types were thrown into a tailspin by conservative podcaster Steven Crowder after he released three pages of the manifesto written by the transgender shooter that targeted elementary students at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee earlier this year. Despite the authenticity of the writings being confirmed by multiple outlets (local and national), the broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC ignored it that night.
Instead of reporting on this massive leak, ABC’s World News Tonight chose to hype Dolly Parton getting inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, CBS Evening News touted Britain’s Price William handing out an environmentalist prize, while NBC Nightly News fretted over the actor’s strike dragging on. Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo also refused to cover the leak. NBC’s omission stood out because their local affiliate, WSMV had been reporting on it all day.
Fondacaro made sure to add a "warning" at the top of his post that he would be referencing "excerpts from what is alleged to be the manifesto of the transgender Nashville school shooter. Explicit and derogatory language is used. Reader discretion is advised." He also complained that a local TV reporter pointed out how right-wingers were trying to exploit the leak:
Another local reporter, Phil Williams, the chief investigative correspondent for News Channel 5, confirmed the pages were real as well but claimed he had “multiple sources” that told him “the selective leak of three pages of the #CovenantSchool shooting ‘manifesto’ is EXTREMELY misleading.” “People who have read the whole thing say ‘there’s something in there for everybody.’ Another, ‘She hated everybody,’” he added.
Williams’ liberal bent was obvious since he put out multiple posts on X (formerly Twitter) lashing out at the “MAGA keyboard warriors” and “MAGA accounts” that were criticizing him.
Fondacaro didn't explain how Williams pointing out right-wing attacks on him proved a "liberal bent." The same day, Jorge Bonilla cited Fondacaro's post in noting that "news broke of the leak of three pages from the Nashville school shooter’s manifesto (AKA the Nashville Trannifesto), which was covered by ZERO networks" -- which, of course, proved Williams right in noting that right-wingers want to exploit the manifesto to peddle transphobia.
The next day, Bill D'Agostino made the transphobic intent explicit in complaining about how non-right-wing media weren't obsessing over the "transgender Nashville shooter’s manifesto" the way his fellow right-wingers were:
A transgender woman who murdered three Christian schoolchildren and three teachers is a politically inconvenient story for the left generally, and the Democratic party and particular. Perhaps that’s why nobody’s surprised that CNN, MSNBC, and their ilk are attempting to prevent as many people as possible from learning about her professed motive.
Another Nov. 7 post by Fondacaro cheered NewsNation host Chris Cuomo attacking Nashville polilce for not releasing the alleged manifesto before then, though he grumbled that Cuomo "huffed that the manifesto was going to be 'weaponized' by 'the right' because of the shooter’s hatred toward them." Fondacaro didn't mention that he and his co-workers had been doing exactly that.
Catherine Salgado praised Crowder for leaking the manifesto pages in her own Nov. 7 post:
Louder with Crowder host Steven Crowder says YouTube censored his video exposing parts of the Nashville transgender shooter’s alleged manifesto.
Crowder obtained several pages of the alleged manifesto of Audrey Hale, a biological woman who identified as a man and killed six—including children—at a Christian elementary school in March. Screenshots indicate that YouTube removed Crowder’s podcast episode breaking the story and accused him of “glorif[ying] violent criminal organizations.”
It seems, however, the purpose of releasing the alleged manifesto was to expose Hale’s disturbing philosophy, not glorify it.
Salgado didn't mention that the real purpose of Crowder hyping the leak was to impugn transgender people. And she completely ignored the fact that Crowder was exposed earlier this year hurling disgusting verbal abuse at his now-estranged wife and mistreating his employees; she didn't note whether his leaking the manifesto absolves all that nasty behavior from him in the eyes of her and her fellow right-wingers.
Salgado also put YouTube stopping the spread of the leak in a Dec. 5 list of the "WORST Censorship of November" by "big tech," making sure to note that Hale was "a biological woman who identified as a man."
WND Complains That New House Speaker's Right-Wing Extremism Is Exposed Topic: WorldNetDaily
As the right-wing extremism of new House speaker Mike Johnson was being exposed, WorldNetDaily went into defense mode, attacking anyone who pointed it out. Peter LaBarbera spent an Oct. 25 article insisting there was nothing extreme about Johnson and portraying him as a victim:
Newly elected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is a Christian, pro-Trump, pro-life social conservative who scores well on all Right-leaning Capitol Hill voting scorecards, which is one of the many reasons why he is being denounced by leftist groups – even as grassroots MAGA and conservative activists are celebrating Johnson's victory to become, as one put it, "the most conservative House speaker in decades."
Johnson, 51, a four-term congressman representing Louisiana's Fourth District, became the speaker Wednesday, receiving 220 votes and unanimous Republican support, after weeks of turmoil following conservative firebrand Matt Gaetz's bold move to force a vote to take down former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
[...]
Johnson has a long list of conservative bona fides that have earned him respect from various sectors on the Right, while irking NeverTrumpers and Republican social liberals including Meghan McCain, who, after the vote, sent out an X post blasting Johnson as a "raging homophobe":
[...]
McCain might have chosen that particular Sexual Left smear-term because Johnson, a former Alliance Defending Freedom attorney, stands firmly against homosexual "marriage" and allowing schools to indoctrinate children in LGBT propaganda without their parents' knowledge.
LaBarbera is a professional homophobe himself -- he runs his own anti-gay group, Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, which is apparently not paying the bills, forcing him to moonlight as a WND reporter -- so he sees Johnson's anti-gay hatred as perfectly normal. Indeed, he went on to complain that the Human Rights Campaign called out Johnson's homophobia while adding his own:
The HRC X post lifts a past quote from Johnson in which he stated, apparently describing people who disagree morally and spiritually with homosexuality: "It's another perspective on the homosexual lifestyle, which many people people is morally wrong and physically dangerous."
Though it is decidedly politically incorrect these days to even discuss the health risks associated with homosexual behaviors (especially between men), CDC data and publications clearly show elevated and disproportionate STD (aka STI, or sexually transmitted infection) rates for "men who have sex with men."
LaBarbera further complained in an article the next day:
Democrats, leftists and media opposed to new House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., are using the notorious, far-left group Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and its discredited "hate" designation to tar Johnson as being affiliated with a supposed "hate group," which is actually a leading Christian conservative legal defense organization.
Johnson worked as an attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom, formerly the Alliance Defense Fund, which the SPLC has smeared as a "hate group" – mainly due to ADF's longstanding opposition to homosexuality and the transgender agenda.
[...]
SPLC's tactic of "designating" various conservative organizations as "hate groups" to advance the Left's political and cultural narratives has come under withering criticism in recent years as many millions of Americans who follow conservative media and social media were educated on the group's radicalism and highly political nature.
LaBarbera didn't actually prove the SPLC's analysis of ADF to be incorrect -- he just went on an extended tirade against the SPLC.Instead, he inserted an "editor's note" that "Years ago, this reporter's organization, Americans For Truth, which opposes the LGBT agenda, was one of the first pro-family, socially conservative groups to be mislabeled a 'hate' group by the SPLC." Note that he edited out "About Homosexuality" from the name of his group, and no, he did not explain how the SPLC "mislabled" it.
Bob Unruh touted Johnson's anti-gay stance, framing it as biblical, in an Oct. 27 article:
Amid the Washington, D.C., reign of Joe Biden, whose actions often target and try to punish Christians in America on issues he has chosen as his primary focal points, like abortion and transgenderism, the new House speaker bluntly has put himself in the opposition.
Rep. Mike Johnson, newly elected to the speaker's post after Rep. Kevin McCarthy was removed, said, "Go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it – that's my worldview. That's what I believe, so I do not apologize for it."
He was being interviewed by Fox News' Sean Hannity, and was questioned about some of his work, and statements, while he was with the Alliance Defense Fund, now Alliance Defending Freedom, years ago.
He then described homosexuality as "sinful behavior" and said there was "no clear right to sodomy in the Constitution," during a time when it was his responsibility to defend, in court, various state laws regarding those lifestyle choices.
He also said, "I also genuinely love all people regardless of their lifestyle choices. This is not about the people themselves. I am a Bible-believing Christian."
As we've seen with fellow homophobe and WND columnist MichaelBrown, it's fundamentally dishonest to claim that being anti-gay means you "genuinely love all people" and hate only their purported "lifestyle choices." Unruh went on to put 'same-sex "marriage"' in scare quotes and dishonestly claim that the Supreme Court moving to make it legal "was made during a time when several extremists in the LGBT ideology were on the court."
Unruh served up more dishonestly in an Oct. 30 article:
Ex-White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki openly has blasted new House Speaker Mike Johnson for his Christian faith, exhibiting what one commentator has described as "open discrimination based on his religious faith.'
Psaki's diatribe came as she told people what she thinks about Johnson this weekend:
Oddly, she targets his faith as she points out how reasonable he likely is.
"First glance, Mike Johnson does seem fine. Fine-ish. Conservative, yes. But he once started a civility caucus with a Democrat. And I mean, if nothing else, he wears a suit and has glasses. How threatening can this guy actually be?" she charges.
Then a clip of Johnson appears in which he states: "I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, well, it’s curious. People are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun? I said, Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my world view."
Psaki's editorializing?
"You heard that right. The Bible doesn’t just inform his worldview, it is his worldview."
And she claims that makes him "divisive."
Unruh offered no evidence that Johnson's hateful right-wing interpretation of the Bible is the only correct or permissible one.
When it was reported that Johnson uses "accountability" software with his teenage son that sends alerts when either party is allegedly viewing pornography online, Unruh falsely framed it in a Nov. 6 article as a confirmation that "Johnson doesn't watch porn." He was silent on the creepiness of the fact that Johnson's "accountability" partner is his teenage son.
MRC Pushes More Dubious Attacks On NewsGuard Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's latest round of loud and lame attacks on website-rating firm NewsGuard continued in an Oct. 30 post by Autumn Johnson:
MRC Free Speech America has exposed NewsGuard for its rank bias in favor of the left, but a new lawsuit reveals more information about an alleged conspiracy between the flawed media ratings firm and the Pentagon to censor speech online.
Consortium News, an independent news site, filed a damning lawsuit against the federal government of the United States and NewsGuard Technologies, Inc, alleging First Amendment violations and defamation. As part of its lawsuit, Consortium News cited NewsGuard’s contract with the Department of Defense to “identify, report and abridge the speech of American media organizations that dissent from U.S. official positions on foreign policy.” The news website accused NewsGuard of “acting jointly or in concert with the United States to coerce news organizations to alter viewpoints” and thus “imposing a form of censorship and repression” of free speech.
Funny how Consortium News became an "independent news site" for the MRC's current purposes; in 2011, it dismissed the operation as being run by "wackier liberals." And the MRC has not "xposed NewsGuard for its rank bias in favor of the left" -- it has merelywhined that it exposed the shoddiness of right-wing websites. Also, as it usually does, it falsely portrays efforts to expose online falsehoods and misinformation as "censorship."
Tom Olohan unsurprisingly did the latter as he uncritically repeating the rantings of one of the MRC's favorite dishonest transphobes in a Nov. 9 post:
The Daily Wire host Matt Walsh tore into the anti-free speech firm NewsGuard after one of its employees reached out to him about so-called “misinformation.”
Walsh wrote in a Nov. 8 post that an employee of NewsGuard, a website ratings firm with a demonstrable bias against conservatives, had reached out to him. Walsh wrote, “Some hack with a ‘fact checking’ organization called NewsGuard emailed a lengthy list of questions after monitoring my podcast for ‘misinformation.’” During the Nov. 8 edition of The Matt Walsh Show, Walsh laid into NewsGuard as well, describing NewsGuard as “a core component of the left’s evolving censorship apparatus.”
Walsh described NewsGuard as, “a powerful and influential organization, one that you are funding with your tax dollars. They recently received a massive grant from Biden’s Department of Defense for nearly $750,000. As Michael Shellenberger testified before Congress earlier this year, ‘Both The Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard are U.S. government-funded entities who are working to drive advertisers’ revenue away from disfavored publications and towards the ones they favor.’”
[...]
Walsh noted that NewsGuard has targeted a number of organizations, including Breitbart, Revolver News, The Federalist, Fox News, Redstate, Life News, PragerU and The Daily Wire in “transparently partisan” fashion.
Olohan gave no evidence of these purportedly "transparently partisan" attacks on right-wing websites -- he simply parroted the complaint. Given Walsh's record of falsehoods, as exhibited in the lies he spread (and the MRC uncritically repeated) in attacking Target for not hating LGBT people as much as he does, there's little reason to take him seriously.
Catherine Salgado served up her anti-NewsGuard hate in a Nov. 20 post:
Twitter Files investigations uncovered biased ratings firm NewsGuard’s pitch bragging of government ties.
Journalist Lee Fang explained in collaboration with RealClearInvestigations Nov. 15 that the Twitter Files unearthed a pitch from NewsGuard CEO L. Gordon Crovitz to Twitter in 2021. In the pitch, Crovitz described NewsGuard as a “Vaccine Against Misinformation” that largely drew from government sources, particularly the very government agencies that contracted with NewsGuard! These disturbing findings come after MRC Free Speech America twice exposed NewsGuard’s anti-right bias.
Again, the MRC exposed nothing except its determination to turn NewsGuard into a political target. Salgado then played the TikTok card because it's apparently a customer of NewsGuard:
NewsGuard’s “nutrition labels” arbitrarily rating dozens of sites in multiple languages and its reports on specific regions have garnered praise from the likes of CNN and are moving into schools, libraries, and internet service providers. Crovitz markets “BrandGuard” for advertisers, too, Fang wrote. NewsGuard’s investors include the firm that represents pharma giant Pfizer and an individual tied to ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, in which the Chinese Communist Party government owns a board seat and maintains a financial stake.
Of course, the MRC is leaning into anti-vaxxerarguments by singling out Pfizer as another client.
Newsmax's Morris Had Things To Say About House Speaker Fight Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax pundit Dick Morris says what he needs to to get on his employer's TV channel, and he had opinions about the House Republicans firing Kevin McCarthy as House speaker and squabbling over picking a new one. He surprisingly didn't endorse it, as an Oct. 4 Newsmax TV appearance showed:
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., with his actions against ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other activities in the chamber, is "destabilizing the Republican Party," and eventually could cost the party the presidency, political strategist and former presidential adviser Dick Morris tells Newsmax.
"I'm in line with what Newt Gingrich says, which is that Gaetz is a self-serving ambitious guy who did this simply to attract attention and that he's leading basically a group of people who were exercising their power trying to get on the news and destabilizing the Republican Party," Morris said Tuesday on Newsmax's "The Right Squad."
[...]
Morris pointed out that with the election coming up in 2024, the Republican Party is projecting "an image of being totally incapable of governing, and totally incapable of running Congress."
He was joined in this appearance by credibly accused sexual harasser Matt Schlapp (which Newsmax didn't mention):
American Conservative Union leader Matt Schlapp, also on Tuesday night's program, argued that Gingrich, like former Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan, was a "failed speaker," and that there is a division in the conference because Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell believes that there should not be spending fights because they are lost.
Morris returned for an Oct. 13 appearance to press his point again:
Political analyst and author Dick Morris told Newsmax on Monday that a fractured House Republican conference might be losing something important while members bicker over who will be next to hold the speaker's gavel.
"The majority of the American people are absolutely appalled that in the middle of what's going on in the Middle East and the crises the world faces, the Republicans are squabbling of who is going to have that gavel," Morris, a former presidential adviser to Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, told "Rob Schmitt Tonight."
"What they can end up doing is blowing it. They'll end up losing all the chairmanships and the majority and the whole bit and, to boot, being seen by the country as incapable of governing.
"The stakes are so high and the big differences in ideology are minuscule. This is a battle of egos and personalities that can get out of hand and lead ... Democrats to taking power again."
When House Republicans did finbally pick a new speaker, Morris unsurprisingly tried to give Donald Trump credit for it in an Oct. 28 appearance:
Former President Donald Trump was the "decisive influence" in the House Republicans' choice of a new speaker, and it is "quite a recommendation" for him to choose and trust Speaker Mike Johnson, his advisor Dick Morris said Saturday on Newsmax.
"The important point is that Republicans in the House have learned their lesson," Morris said on Newsmax's"Saturday Report."
"I think they were excoriated throughout the country for the horrible ballot after ballot after ballot and they rejected candidate after candidate. They've learned their lesson and I think they'll follow him and back Johnson where he's going to lead."
Newsmax floated the idea of Trump as speaker on a temporary basis, if not longer, but it too signed off on Johnson as the new speaker.
WND Tries To Falsely Conflate Local Election Issue Into Its Discredited Election-Fraud Narrative Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh did what he could to overhype a minor election controversy, declaring in a Nov. 2 article that A judge in Connecticut has overturned a mayoral primary election because of a mail-in ballot stuffing fraud, setting a standard that holds serious implications for the entire nation." He cited the wildly unreliable Gateway Pundit as his main source for his story, which undercuts his credibility. Nevertheless, Unruh went on to try and tie this story to WND's dubious election-fraud narrative, repeating his old, discredited talking points:
The issue is the same that raised numerous complaints during the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden purportedly got 81 million votes – more than any presidential candidate ever and far more than the leftist but popular Barack Obama got during his elections.
There were a multitude of concerns about ballot harvesting, ballot box stuffing and worse. But the issue remained fogged because many jurisdictions actually changed their voting procedures and processes because of COVID-19, leaving the accountability for such behavior uncertain.
What is certain about the undue influences on the 2020 president was that Mark Zuckerberg handed out some $400-plus million that was used by the election officials often to recruit voters from Democrat districts in an agenda to help Joe Biden. That actually prompted many jurisdictions to ban the use of such outside money in that manner.
Further, the FBI decided to interfere in the election results by telling media and other corporations to suppress what turned out to be accurate reporting, based on evidence found in a laptop computer abandoned by Hunter Biden at a repair shop, about the scandals in which the Biden family was involved.
The FBI suggested it all was "Russian disinformation" even though the bureau at the time knew it was accurate reporting. A subsequent polling revealed that undue influence almost certainly took the election victory away from President Trump.
In fact, as a credible media outlet has reported, the incident is analomous and not connected to anything else, and the city in which the incident happened, Bridgeport, has long had voting issues. Former Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill was quoted as saying, "There are so many conspiracy theories out there and yet for years we’ve had study after study tell us that it doesn’t happen."
That lack of credible evidence to prove there was any widespread fraud in 2020 undercuts Unruh's talking points -- not that it will stop him from repeating them. Meanwhile, WND has given space to other right-wingers to do the same. A Nov. 8 column by Betsy McCaughey invoked the Connecticut election and other isolated cases to push her talking points:
Across the nation, Republicans are pressing state legislatures to eliminate drop boxes and bar third parties from collecting huge numbers of completed ballots – a practice called "harvesting." Republicans also want to use software to match the signature on the mail-in ballot to the signature on the voter registration form.
Democrats almost universally oppose these safeguards, calling them "voter suppression." "Cheating suppression" is more like it.
Perceptions of unfairness are corrosive. At a House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing in June, polls were cited showing 37% of Democratic-leaning voters and 71% of Republican-leaning voters doubt the honesty of elections.
Of course, right-wingers like McCaughey and Unruh are the ones most dedicated to manufacturing doubts about election integrity, despite insisting that they are "corrosive."
NEW ARTICLE -- Out There, Exhibit 88: The MRC's He-Man Woman-Hater's Club Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center isn't a big fan of women who play sports, and it's concerned that women's lingerie might not be slutty enough. Also, Tim Graham got ratioed for trying to slut-shame Monica Lewinsky. Read more >>
MRC's Hypocritical Double Standard On Anti-Semitism Topic: Media Research Center
After the Hamas attack on Israel in October, the Media Research Center rushed to attack anyone who dared voice anything even slightly critical of Israel as an endorsement of Hamas and liberally throwing around the "anti-Semitic" tag. For instance:
This is all utterly hypocritical, given that the MRC has never rushed to criticize actual anti-Semitism on its own side. It spent years praising Kanye West for spouting anti-abortion rhetoric and palling around with Donald Trum, but when he starting spouting virulently anti-Semitic remarks -- ironically, two days after the MRC's Tierin-Rose Mandelburg gushed, "BRB, adding Kanye West’s music to my daily mix," in a post that aged extremely poorly to say the least -- the MRC was still praising him, with Mandelburg cheering his "power moves only" and "mic freakin' drop" after his "White Lives Matter" stunt with Candace Owens. It took 10 full days for the MRC to address West's "death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE," and even then it was buried in an article cheering West for buying right-wing social media site Parler (a deal that fell through when West's anti-Semitism became too toxic). The MRC then tried to argue that the cancellation of West's social media accountssomehow proved he was correct about his hatred of Jews (though the MRC deleted that post a few days later). It wasn't until it was& argued that Ye's anti-Semitism is part of mainstream conservatism that the MRC was moved to forcefully criticize him.Still, when an MRC writer criticized Apple Music for deleting a West playlist, he couldn't be moved to accurately describe West's hateful remarks as anti-Semitic.
The MRC was similarly squishy about anti-Semitic remarks made by NBA player Kyrie Irving , then labored hard to distance Donald Trump from his role in having dinner with West and anti-Semitic white supremacist Nick Fuentes, despite Trump's history of invoking offensive Jewish stereotypes. All this, of course, didn't stop the MRC from rushing to frame Rep. Ilhan Omar's criticism of Israel as "anti-Semitic" though it mostly looked the other way when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene spouted weird things about Jewish space lasers.
Despite that, the MRC lashed out when non-right-wing media refused to play along with its narrative. Alex Christy whined in an Oct. 14 post that the Associated Press fact-checked a viral tweet portraying old content as new:
AP fact-checker Philip Marcelo beclowned himself on Friday as he rated a claim that Hamas sympathizers chanted anti-Semitic remarks “false,” not because they didn’t—he admits that they did—but because the clip “is more than two years old.”
Under the headline, "Old video of pro-Palestine supporters shouting antisemitic remarks is being misleadingly shared," Marcelo begins by laying out the “CLAIM: A video shows Hamas sympathizers driving through London shouting antisemitic remarks during Friday’s day of protests against Israel.”
He then responds, “AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The widely shared clip is more than two years old. London police at the time apprehended four men in connection with the incident.”
[...]
Marcello’s X-used-to-be-known-as-X blunder aside, nowhere in those quotations does anyone mention anything about a date. It is not as if the people who demonstrated in support of Hamas on Friday have suddenly changed their tune. Quite the opposite, in fact. This is who Hamas and their sympathizers are.
Of course, the implication was that the video was new, whether Christy wants to admit it or not, and it was dishonest to suggest otherwise.
An Oct. 16 post by Luis Cornelio cheered the removal of an "anti-Semitic" video from YouTube:
YouTube, infamously known for its quick censorship of speech critical of the left, inexplicably dragged its feet to take down a sickening video from Hamas terrorist leaders calling for Islamists to rise up against Israel. It did so only after MRC Free Speech America pressed the company over its policies.
MRC Free Speech America reached out to YouTube on Oct. 12 to question whether the company allowed content that “actively calls for the mass murder of Israeli citizens?” MRC researchers launched an investigation after Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh helped to ignite what became infamously known as the “Day of Jihad.” Haniyeh’s anti-Semitic call to action against Israel was uttered during an interview with Qatari state-owned Al Jazeera, which the outlet — notorious for its historically pro-Hamas bent — then promoted on YouTube.
By contrast, Cornelio and the rest of the MRC have been silent about the plethora of anti-Semitic content at right-wing video site Rumble and how it helps the creators of that content make money off it.
An Oct. 28 column by Jeffrey Lord, headlined "The Rise of Anti-Semitism In America, Again: What The Media Elite Forgets," which is largely a tangent about the Nazi-linked German-American Bund in the 1930s, which unsurprisingly had an anti-Semitic component. Lord declared that "history records the American people of the day were seriously appalled by all of this. They were informed by the media of the day." What Lord forgets is that anti-Semitism in America didn't begin or end with the German-American Bund -- no less than Henry Ford was virulently anti-Semitic to the point that he published newspapers to spread that hate -- meaning that the Bund had a ready audience for that part of its agenda.
As all this was going on, there was more hypocrisy: The MRC desperately tried to ignore that Elon Musk endorsed an anti-Semitic tweet and even tried to insist that it wasn't a reflection of how Musk actually feels. No liberal would get such a wide benefit of the doubt from the MRC, and it has denounced non-conservatives as "anti-Semitic" for less.
Newsmax Touts Dean Phillips As RFK Jr. Replacement For Biden Spoiler Topic: Newsmax
While it was hyping Robert Kennedy Jr.'s would-be Democratic presidential campaign, Newsmax was also touting another Democrat with the same goal of disrupting President Biden's re-election. It actually began with a July 2022 article by Jeffrey Rodack repeating how Dean "said he doesn’t want President Joe Biden to run again in 2024," then picked more steam over the past summer. Charles Kim wrote in a July 29 article:
Democratic donors are urging a moderate congressman from Minnesota to challenge President Joe Biden in the 2024 primary.
Politico reported Friday that third-term Rep. Dean Phillips, who represents a suburban district of Minneapolis, is being urged by donors to enter the Democratic primary field for 2024.
The report said that Phillips, 54, is scheduled to meet with donors in New York City next week to explore the possibility of entering the 2024 race.
[...]
But despite Phillips' scheduled meeting and his donors' interest, he "is highly unlikely to mount a primary challenge unless Biden's health worsens or his political standing drops precipitously," Politico reported.
The apparently unironically named Charlie McCarthy touted Phillips' would-be campaign in an Aug. 13 article:
A Democrat [sic] lawmaker says President Joe Biden should not run for reelection.
Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., appeared Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" and said he wants Biden to end his campaign for the 2024 Democrat [sic] presidential nomination.
He says his opinion is based on "how people feel" and not based on the 80-year-old president's age.
"I would like to see Joe Biden, a wonderful and remarkable man, pass the torch — cement this extraordinary legacy," Phillips said.
"And by the way, this is not how everybody thinks, but I do believe the majority wants to move on."
Phillips previously called on other Democrats to challenge Biden. He has not committed to running himself.
As Phillips did, in fact, prepare to run himself, Newsmax touted that too:
As Newsmax wound down its promotion of Kennedy after he moved from running a Democrat to an independent, Phillips conveniently replaced him in that spoiler-wannabe space. It published two wire articles on his Oct. 27 candidacy declaration, and it continued to run a mix of mostly original articles on him:
There was also a Nov. 23 article by Theodore Bunker noting that Phillips "issued an apology this week after he repeated criticisms of Vice President Kamala Harris while attempting to defend her."
Missing from all this, however, is any reference to an appearance by Dean on Newsmax TV -- it seems that Phillips is not putting a lot of time into catering to right-wing media in order to boost his campaign, presumably because he understands he's only being used by them as a proxy to attack Biden an d they will never support him in the general election should he actually win the nomination. Kennedy, by contrast, did numerous interviews with Newsmax and was even featured in a cover story in its magazne despite that being the case.
WND's Alexander Still Mad That Election Deniers Face Legal Consequences For Spreading Lies Topic: WorldNetDaily
Rachel Alexander continued her election frauddead-ender ways in contining to complain that those who pushed the bogus claims are being held accountable for their actions in her Oct. 30 column, bizarrely insisting that such accoutability is "fascist":
The left has gleefully discovered that by dominating the legal system, they can squelch conservative agendas and viewpoints through the courts. Judges afraid of losing their careers and reputations and being harassed by protesters are issuing rulings that comply with the fascists. State bars are disbarring conservative attorneys, deterring other attorneys from representing conservative positions like challenging election corruption. Prosecutors are going after the brave attorneys who assisted President Donald Trump with the 2020 election lawsuits.
Knowing the legal system is stacked against them, so they would very likely end up serving time in prison if they went to trial, attorneys Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and Kenneth Chesebro, along with bail bondsman Scott Graham Hall, agreed to accept plea deals in the politically motivated RICO prosecution by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis this past month.
The justice system has become so corrupt that conservatives can no longer get a fair jury trial. The Democrat-appointed judge who handled the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News forced a nearly $1 billion settlement by granting a summary judgment motion for Dominion, which resulted in jury instructions stating that all of the statements made by attorneys Powell and Rudy Giuliani, as well as all negative claims made on the network about Dominion, were false. So there's no way a jury would have found for Fox News based on that.
Is Alexander say that making specious claims of election fraud is part of the "conservative agenda" now? Appears so. And Alexander's evidence for her complaint that Dominion received "summary judgment" in its lawsuit against Fox News that statements by Powell and Giuliani were false was based on a pro-Fox writer's selective quoting of the judge's ruling in that lawsuit, which pointed out that "Through its extensive proof, Dominion has met its burden of showing there is no genuine issue of material fact as to falsity. Fox therefore had the burden to show an issue of material fact existed in turn. Fox failed to meet its burden."
Judges can also keep out evidence and witnesses based on bogus technical reasons. In the disbarment trial of Trump's former attorney and constitutional legal scholar John Eastman, California Bar Disciplinary Judge Yvette Roland, who contributed to Democrats while serving on the bench, has kept out the majority of evidence based on relevance or hearsay, even though the hearsay rules in that type of trial are much more relaxed.
She's even refused to allow multiple official government documents into evidence, such as reports by the Georgia State Election Board and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp's office regarding election irregularities. Many of Eastman's witnesses were not allowed to testify because she said their testimony wasn't relevant, even though they were going to testify about their interactions with him regarding investigating election corruption – the precise issue he's on trial for.
Alexander further complained, as shehas before, that Ellis has completely recanted her Trump work in an effort to save her skin:
Ellis, who cut a deal with the Colorado Bar earlier this year to avoid losing her law license, admitting she "spread misrepresentations" about election fraud, continued her implosion implicating others. Instead of merely accepting the plea deal, she decided to read a statement throwing everyone under the bus. She said she failed to do her "due diligence," claiming that if she had known then what she knew now, she wouldn't have represented Trump. She was charged with felonies related to the alternate electoral slate, and pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings.
The four will be required to testify against others. While Ellis appears to have no restraint at throwing others under the bus, the others are expected to be far more cautious with their testimony. Ellis raised over $200,000 for her legal defense, no doubt due to her name recognition from representing Trump, so after her statement in court some of her donors want their money back. The Colorado Bar is expected to go after her again due to her plea deal.
Alexander concluded by ranting:
While the Georgia court may be a kangaroo court, there is always a chance any conviction will be reversed by a fairer court. While the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to accept any election cases related to the 2020 contest – granted some were very narrowly split votes among the justices not to accept them – no doubt due to the justices not wanting to be hassled by the left the rest of their lives as "election deniers," there is a good chance they will draw the line at putting people in prison for merely being concerned about real election fraud.
Yes, Alexander is really claiming that it isn't "fair" for people to held accountable for their actions in perpetuating falsehoods because those lies advance her right-wing political agenda -- never mind that a lawyer getting caught lying in court is very much an easily actionable offense.
NEW ARTICLE -- Out There, Exhibit 87: Measuring Manhood At The MRC Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center spent a lot of time fretting that fictional characters weren't sufficiently manly -- and it was triggered by talk of vasectomies. Read more >>
MRC Cheered Rude GOP House Members Who Couldn't Handle A Reporter's Question Topic: Media Research Center
Nicholas Fondacaro huffed in an Oct. 25 post as part of his daily hate-watch of "The View":
At a late-night press conference to announce that House Republicans had nominated yet another speaker designate, North Carolina Representative Virginia Foxx ABC Capitol Hill correspondent Rachel Scott for asking ridiculous questions; telling who to “shut up” and “go away.” This absolutely triggered the left-wing cast of ABC’s The Viewo n Wednesday, with co-host Sara Haines flipping out completely and demanding the “nasty little woman” be kicked out of office.
“Oh my God!” Haines exclaimed after the edited soundbites of Foxx were shared. There was some confusion amongst the cast about who made the comments, so Haines tried to clear that up, saying, “Her name is Virginia Foxx, she’s a nasty little woman.”
“She's the meanest Republican,” faux conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin added.
In fact, all Scott asked was whether newly chosen House speaker nominee Mike Johnson stood by his efforts to overturn the 2020 eleciton. Fondacaro hid that information to his readers -- leaving it buried in a transcript at the end of his post -- and he failed to explain why the question was "ridiculous."Also, Foxx wasn't theonly Republican who had a meltdown over Scott's simple question; other House members similarly shouted her down.
But because the MRC doesn't think non-right-wing journalists should be treated with basic humanity, it was tickled pink at the Republicans' rude response to a simple question. Tim Graham whined that Republicans were criticized for their nastiness in his Oct. 25 podcast:
After House Republicans agreed on Mike Johnson as a Speaker nominee, ABC reporter Rachel Scott started asking typical "election denier" questions, and drew boos and a "shut up" from Republicans. Reporters were outraged...even though they were 2016 election deniers.
AP's Seung Min Kim tweeted "For the record, a completely fair question." CBS reporter Robert Costa joined in: "Boos and jeers don’t make questions suddenly disappear." But these reporters don't ask the same questions of election-denier Hakeem Jeffries, who leads the House Democrats.
CNN veteran John King was especially upset: "They are anti-democratic. They simply are. That's a fact. And they are anti-free speech. They don't like questions that they don't like. They don't want to answer questions that they don't like. Well, sorry, welcome to America."
The problem with this hot take is that CNN used to send a rabid Rottweiler to the press briefings and now sounds like a poodle. When Fox's Peter Doocy asks tough questions, the same people who loathe him onThe View turn around and yell at Republicans to get out of Congress.
Graham didn't explain in his writeup why Scott's question was a "typical 'election denier' question," or why the question shouldn't have been asked. If Johnson wasn't an active election denier, there wold be no need to ask the question.
CurtisHouck complained that Foxx was called out for her nastiness in another Oct. 25 post:
Scott made sure to re-up footage of her asking Johnson if he “stand[s] by” his actions surrounding January 6 and both the subsequent boos and Congresswoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) telling Scott to “shut up”.
Scott defended herself, insisting in a voice-over that “it remains a legitimate question” and whining he again “didn’t answer” when she tried Wednesday morning[.]
[...]
After finishing her report, Muir sang Scott’s praises as if she had been subject to some sort of traumatic crime:“Rachel Scott asking the tough questions on the Hill and you’ll keep doing it. Rachel, we support you. Thank you.”
Graham returned to complain in an Oct. 29 post that ABC "This Week" host Martha Raddatz "had to replay a clip of Scott badgering Johnson about election denial as Republicans had just nominated him for Speaker" -- even though, again, she merely asked one simnple question, which is the opposite of "badgering." Graham went on to rant:
Raddatz and Scott didn't have anyone on the set to suggest why Scott's question was booed. It's booed because the Democrats have a pile of election deniers in their leadership, starting with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. For that viewpoint, you would have to turn to Fox News Sunday and Mollie Hemingway.
But "Fox News Sunday" didn't discuss that at all -- Hemingway jhoined host Shannon Bream in whining about a New York Times column pointing out how far-right Johnson is.
Graham went on to play the whataboutism card in an Oct. 31 post:
The "mainstream" journalists don't think of Fox News as well, journalists. When you insult them, it's fine. But insult the "mainstream," and "freedom of the press" is endangered. On Monday, the Society of Professional Journalists rushed to agree publicly with the National Association of Black Journalists that Republicans shouldn't have taunted ABC reporter Rachel Scott for asking Rep. Mike Johnson about being an election denier. Rep. Virginia Foxx told her to shut up. "Journalists should be able to hold those in power accountable without being harassed."
But SPJ didn't protest in January 2022 when President Biden called Fox reporter Peter Doocy a "stupid son of a bitch." Earlier this year, SPJ issued a long statement attacking Fox News over the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit. SPJ did tweet about Fox News...when they publicly supported CNN's Jim Acosta when he temporarily lost his White House (yelling) credentials:
[...]
Reporters never see themselves as doing the harassing and badgering.
Again, Scott was not "harassing and badgering" Johnson -- she just asked a simple question. Graham did not explain why he and Johnson should be so afraid of this question and are so eager to falsely portray it as "harassing and badgering." Instead, he whined that the National Association of Black Journalists, which defended Scott, is a "leftist lobby." We don't recall Graham ever describing Doocy as being a member of a "right-wing lobby" because he works for Fox News and advances right-wing narratives in the White House press briefings he attends.
The Media Research Center's Alex Christy complained in a Nov. 9 post:
Did you know that the archfiend best representing the Halloween season – namely, Count Dracula – is fake news?
The Media Reserarch Center's Curtis Houck helped right-wing New York Post reporter Steven Nelson whine (with 
WorldNetDaily's columnists unsurprisingly joined its 
Like 
As the right-wing extremism of new House speaker Mike Johnson was being exposed, WorldNetDaily went into defense mode, attacking anyone who pointed it out. Peter LaBarbera spent an Oct. 25 
The Media Research Center's latest round of loud and lame attacks on website-rating firm NewsGuard continued in an Oct. 30 
Newsmax pundit Dick Morris says what he needs to to get on his employer's TV channel, and he had opinions about the House Republicans firing Kevin McCarthy as House speaker and squabbling over picking a new one. He surprisingly didn't endorse it, as an Oct. 4 Newsmax TV 
WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh did what he could to overhype a minor election controversy, declaring in a Nov. 2 
After the Hamas attack on Israel in October, the Media Research Center rushed to attack anyone who dared voice anything even slightly critical of Israel as an endorsement of Hamas and liberally throwing around the "anti-Semitic" tag. For instance:
While it 
Rachel Alexander continued her 
Nicholas Fondacaro huffed in an Oct. 25 
