Tim Graham, meanwhile, spent an Oct. 14 post complaining it was pointed out that initial doubts about the veracity of the Hunter laptop story were reasonable:
In the latest episode of What Liberals Won't Ask, Fox Special Report host was interviewing Obama's former CIA director (and former Democrat congressman) Leon Panetta about the latest developments in the Israel-Hamas war. But before it was over, Baier said "I'd be remiss" not to ask about the 2020 campaign and "that letter you signed onto from [51] former intelligence officials saying that the laptop and e-mails had all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."
Baier noted the original New York Post story that was so energetically suppressed by the news media and social media. Later, The Washington Post investigated and acknowledged in 2022 the laptop was authentic (as did The New York Times). Baier asked: "Do you have regrets about that now looking back, knowing what you know now?"
Panetta replied: "Look, Bret, I was extremely concerned about Russian interference and misinformation, and we all know intelligence agencies discovered that had Russia had continued to push disinformation across the board, and my concern was to kind of alert the public, to be aware that these disinformation efforts went on. Frankly I haven't seen any evidence from any intelligence agency that that was not the case."
"You don't think that it was real?" Baier asked him, incredulous.
"I think that disinformation is involved, here," Panetta claimed. "I think Russian disinformation is part of what we're seeing everywhere. I don't trust the Russians. And that's exactly why I was concerned that the public not trust the Russians either."
Baier was stunned enough to kick the tire on more time: "I don't want to dwell on this because we have bigger things to talk about and bigger urgency, but obviously Hunter Biden said it was his laptop and this investigation continues. So you don't have any regrets about doing what you did?"
Panetta smiled and said "No, I don't have any regrets about not trusting the Russians."
In his headline, Graham called the letter a "fraud," despite offering no evidence that anyone who signed it had knowledge to that effect -- as we've documented, there was little reason to trust the story at face value when it first appeared, given the New York Post's status as a pro-Trump organ, the shady pro-Trump operatives like Rudy Giuliani who were promoting it, and the Post's failure to provide independent evidence to prove the laptop's vertacity that would addressed such doubts. Graham also failed to directly challenge anything Panetta said; instead, he quoted his fellow right-wingers who appeared in a later "Special Report" segment ranting about the "Russian fallacy" -- which, of course, wasn't a fallacy given that even a Republican-led congressional report agreed that there was sufficient evidence of regular contacts between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives to warrant an investigation.
When Hunter committed the offense of defending himself in a USA Today op-ed, Curtis Houck had a meltdown -- as the MRC tends to do whenever he defends himself -- in a Nov. 2 post:
On Thursday, USA Today partnered with Hunter Biden for a cartoonishly dumb op-ed that accused Republicans, Fox News, the New York Post, and Biden critics writ large of “demoniz[ing]....addiction,” arguing he’s the victim of “a vile and sustained disinformation campaign” that threatens the sobriety of addicts writ large.
Talk about a rich case of low-brow politics by USA Today to have a story such as this inside the column, proving how the liberal media are shameless about their 2020 election interference and look to do so in 2024: “Conspiracy theories: GOP's Hunter Biden hysteria makes even less sense after plea deal gets put on hold”.
The headline was gag-worthy: “I fought to get sober. Political weaponization of my addiction hurts more than me.” The subhead with even dumber with Biden whining that “[m]y struggles and my mistakes have been fodder for a vile and sustained disinformation campaign against my father, President Joe Biden, and an all-out annihilation of my reputation.”
[...]
Biden then flipped the script, stating explicitly that he’s “not a victim” because, “[b]y any standard, I grew up with privilege and opportunity, and fully accept that the choices and mistakes I made are mine, and I am accountable for them and will continue to be.”
Clearly, he hasn’t accepted responsibility since he's fighting charges tooth and nail and filing lawsuits.
Feigning concern for average Americans, he proclaimed in a skyscraper-sized strawman that he’s “trouble[d]” by “the demonization of addiction” and “human frailty” from the American public.
Wait, so he’s claiming anyone condemning him means they’re also smearing anyone suffering or suffered through addiction of some sort?
We don't recall Houck ever accusing Donald Trump of not "accepting responsibility" for his actions because also "fighting charges tooth and nail and filing lawsuits,": and he doesn't explain why Hunter is not allowed to defend herself. Houck further complained that Hunter called out his attackers:
Biden went onto whine about “being bombarded by the denigrating and near-constant coverage of me and my addiction on Fox News (more airtime than GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis) and in The New York Post (an average of two stories a dayover the past year).”
[...]
Biden even addressed the laptop from hell: “My recent haircut turned into a wild conspiracy to evade drug tests, tabloids steadily splash nude pictures of me on their covers, and even a member of Congress displayed revenge porn of me on national television.”
Houck didn't even bothter to justify posting the vicious right-wing attacks on HUnter, such has posting nude images of him online -- but he bizarrely insists that Hunter's a whiner for pointing that out. It's almost as if he knows that the right-wing jihad against Hunter is all about vicious personal destruction; he and his fellow right-wingers would be dancing in the streets if Hunter was driven to overdose or suicide as is their goal.
Graham similarly mocked Hunter for defending himself in his Nov. 3 podcast:
USA Today published a ridiculous column by Hunter Biden claiming Republicans were somehow demonizing all addicts with their investigations of his business dealings with Dad. "What troubles me is the demonization of addiction, of human frailty, using me as its avatar and the devastating consequences it has for the millions struggling with addiction," he claimed.
Don't investigate the Biden influence-peddling business! It will "devastate millions of addicts"!
[...]
He kept returning to his ridiculous thesis: "It is already a near-impossible decision for addicts to get sober, and the avalanche of negativity and assault of my personal privacy may only make it harder for those considering it." He praised his family for giving him the space for "sincere redemption," and then, as if it's impossible to ignore, he drags in his brother Beau's death from brain cancer in 2015: "After what I have gone through since my brother died in 2015, and the perpetual public humiliation of me, I am now certain I can survive anything (except a drink or a drug)."
Graham didn't explain why it was "ridiculous" for Hunter to defend himself, nor do we recall him ever similar judgment on Trump's actual ridiculous defenses against the criminal acts he appears to have committed.
MRC's Anti-Abortion Extremists Mad That Ohio Voters Support Reproductive Rights Topic: Media Research Center
The anti-abortion extremists at the Media Research Center unsurprisingly supported efforts to make passage of a constitutional amendment in Ohio supporting abortion rights more difficult -- and when that failed, they tried to the amendment itself. Chief extremist Tierin-Rose Mandelburg whined about the amendment getting enough signatures from voters to make the ballot in a July 5 post:
I don’t know what Ohio is typically known for - but I do know that it seems its residents want it to be known as a land of abortion.
On Wednesday morning a truckload of petitions appeared at the Ohio Secretary of State’s office. Signatures urged for all pro-life laws in Ohio to be removed, facilitating the state to become an entirely anti-life state.
The coalition who initiated the petitions, Ohioans United for Reproductive Freedom, want an amendment to be added on the November ballot to enshrine abortion into the Ohio constitution. This would, in essence, make abortion legal in the state up until birth.
The Ohio Right to Life group released a statement following news of the arrivals of the numerous boxes with an estimated 700,000 signatures advocating for dead babies.
Mandelburg went on to complain that the signature collection process went pretty much like all of them do:
ACLU Ohio supposedly collected signatures for roughly 12 weeks and reached all 88 Ohio counties yet, its unlikely all those people knew what they were signing. One signature collector evenmadmittedthat he wa s knowingly collecting invalid signatures so he could get paid.
It's heartbreaking that so many Ohio citizens blindly signed something either without knowledge of what it actually supports or just to help someone “get paid.”
It’s also heartbreaking to realize that many Ohio citizens knew the damage an amendment like this would cause and knowingly signed it.
Of course, as any promoter of ballot initiatives knows, you collect signatures over and above the number required to get on the ballot because some will inevitably be invalid for whatever reason.
After the initiative made it on the ballot, anti-abortion activist Republicans quickly rushed its own initiative to the ballot as a countermeasure -- to raise the initative approval threshold to 60 percent. Kevin Tober spent an Aug. 8 post complaining that it was accurately pointed out thatthe attempted change to the approval threshold was designed to thwart the will of POhio residents on reproductive rights:
As the polls were set to close in the special election in Ohio to decide whether to raise the ballot initiative threshold to 60 percent in order to amend the state constitution, ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News each ran segments worrying that if the ballot initiative was successful, it would make it harder for abortion advocates to protect so-called “abortion rights.”
On ABC’s World News Tonight, fill-in anchor Mary Bruce hyped the “huge turnout in Ohio for a special election.” She then used the leftist lingo “abortion rights” and worried that they “could be at stake.”
[...]
Meanwhile, on NBC Nightly News, the highly partisan Ali Vitali was given the assignment to report from Ohio. Much like Bruce and Presha, Vitali was just as obnoxious: “High turnout for a highly charged special election that could determine the fate of abortion rights here.”
“It's all against the national backdrop of Republicans in red states losing referendums on abortion in the past year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade,” Vitali proclaimed.
She then ended her report similarly to the way Presha did by setting the media narrative early that if the ballot question failed, it meant the pro-life cause was in trouble nationally: “Results in this typically red state will provide a road map for other states, either for future efforts to stymie abortion access or to paint Republicans as out of step on this issue.”
Democrat activists in the media like Vitali would do everything in their power to make sure that happened.
Tober was silent on Republican activists in the media pushing thse anti-abortion measures.
That attempt failed, and the MRC turned its attention to trying to shame anyone who supports reproductive rights. Mandelburg returned for an Oct. 6 post touting how "A bipartisan group of black pastors signed a letter Tuesday urging Ohio voters to oppose a measure that would enshrine abortion into the state Constitution." That included rehashing of old, false attacks against the founder of Planned Parenthood:
The letter also brought up the racist regime that is run by Planned Parenthood. Years ago, eugenicist Margaret Sanger set up Planned Parenthood locations purposefully in minority neighborhoods, targeting black babies “before they entered the world.”
As we've documented, there's no evidence that Sanger had any racist motive in establishing Planned Parenthood, and the majority of abortion clinics are actually located in white neighborhoods. But those lies adhere to Mandelburg's narrative, so no fact-checking was forthcoming from her.
Mandelburg spent a Nov. 1 post claiming that "more than 12 churches have experienced incidents of vandalism along with schools and cemeteries" in Ohio, going on to sneer:
Pro-aborts have a tendency to throw temper tantrums when they feel that their so-called “right” to kill kids is being threatened.
Issue 1 is an extreme pro-abort law that, if passed, would allow abortion up to the time of birth. Naturally, pro-lifers are opposed to this ballot initiative. No child in the womb should be killed at any point, never mind at a point where said child can feel pain, can live outside the womb on his or her own, has fully functioning limbs and is fully developed. But that's what pro-aborts in Ohio want.
Pro-Abort Ohioans want residents to vote yes on Issue 1 so bad that they took it upon themselves to vandalize and attack religious related buildings as a way of protest.
Tim Graham spent a Nov. 3 post complaining that an Ohio Republican politician who claimed without evidence that the Ohio initiative would supercede parental consent laws:
Take a look at the actual language of Issue One, and you can see it's quite easy to see it's for abortion rights for all "individuals," in any trimester, which would include 12-year-old girls.
[...]
So how hard is it to argue this would enable 12-year-old girls with 21-year-old boyfriends (or even rapists) from "exercising this right"? There's no mention of parental consent. [PolitiFact reporter Adam] Edelman and his cast of "nonpartisans" underline that Ohio already has a parental-consent provision for "abortion care."
Graham then whined that "Edelman, like other 'fact checkers,' is trying to declare conservative spin as 'false,' just as they claimed you couldn't say in 1992 that Bill Clinton would raise taxes -- and he promptly did." Graham didn't explain why someone's opinion can't be fact-checked when there is evidence to prove it wrong.
The next day, Alex Christy grumbled at the existence of pro-choice Republicans was reported:
Next Tuesday, Ohioans will decide whether they want abortion to be a constitutionally-protected right and to help the pro-abortion side out, Friday’s edition of NBC Nightly News interviewed a trio of Republicans who tried to claim that being pro-abortion is conservative.
Former state lawmaker Joan Lawrence stated that “I think it's up to the individual, not the government to decide what to do about a pregnancy.”
She also declared that, “It's not a partisan issue, it really isn't. And Republicans are making it a -- trying to make it a partisan issue.”
Christy didn't prove any of these people wrong, but instead ranted: "Republicans are pro-life and conservativism will never be pro-abortion, just like NBC will never do a puff piece on pro-life Democrats who think abortion without limitations shows how their party is out of touch."
Graham grumbled about another fact-chec in a Nov. 5 post, annoyed in particular by the writer noting that abortions later in pregnancy — what anti-abortion groups often call 'late-term" abortions'": "It's always amusing to see leftists finding it weird you would describe a late-term abortion as a 'late term abortion." What's it supposed to be called, 'a well-considered choice'?" Graham, if you'll remember, is offended people call fetuses by the medically accureate term "fetus."
The initiative passed handily -- despite efforts by Republican officials in state office to game the vote, such as an unannounced voter purge and forcing anti-abortion bias into the ballot language -- which caused Mandelburg to engage in a bout of performative sadness in a Nov. 8 post, in which she laughably called the initiative's 12-point margin of victory a "close call":
It was a devastating day in Ohio on Tuesday when voters approved Issue 1, making abortion a so-called “right” in the Catholic state. Life-affirmers were heartbroken at the sobering news.
Ohio voted 56 percent to 44 percent to Issue 1. While it was a close call, ultimately Issue 1 passed. Unfortunately, the result isn’t surprising.
[...]
Now in Ohio, Issue 1 will trump the formerly instituted 22-week restriction by not defining the word “viability.” This will give abortion providers the chance to interpret the word on their own and perform abortion at any point on a case-by-case basis. This is a radical, pro-abortion policy and is heartbreaking for the innocent lives that will be lost as a result.
That sentiment was shared among pro-life individuals across the nation who expressed their heartbreak on social media.
After derisively describing those who supported the measure as "pro-aborts," Mandelburg concluded by lamenting:
Ultimately, it’s a sad and devastating day for pro-lifers in Ohio and the nation at large, but it’s an even more sad day for the babies that will be victim to this decision. On the one hand, this is what the overturn of Roe did. It pushed decisions back to states. But now the battle lies in getting people to wake up and realize what happens during an abortion and why it's a complete and utter grave evil so that our nation can become one that actually honors liberty and justice for ALL.
Perhaps one way to start is for anti-abortion extremists like Mandelburg to stop portraying anyone who isn't as extremely anti-abortion as they are as not just wrong but evil.
MRC's Elon Musk Sycophancy Continues As It Ignores His Controversies Topic: Media Research Center
After giving a pass to his anti-Semitism and cheering his petulant and vulgar dissing of advertisers, it's clear that the Media Research Center will never hold Elon Musk accountable for any of his numerous missteps in running Twitter (well, X). Clay Waters spent a Dec. 3 post lashing out at a news report that did outline those missteps:
The liberal media knives are out for entrepreneur Elon Musk, who has been steering the liberal-dominated blue-check bastion social media platform formerly known as Twitter toward free speech and increased diversity of opinion since taking it over a year ago. Thursday’s edition of the PBS NewsHour devoted almost six minutes to attacking the space and technology impresario.
The conversation between National Public Radio’s tech reporter Bobby Allyn and PBS host Geoff Bennett was keyed to a threatened “advertising freeze” from virtual-signaling corporate entities like Disney and Apple, after controversy over a Musk reply to a tweet on X that was perceived as anti-Semitic (and which he later apologized for), and Musk’s vulgarity-laden response to his corporate critics at a New York Times-hosted business conference.
“Increasingly unhinged” was the descriptor bestowed on Musk by Allyn, who pitched a tantrum against Musk on Twitter earlier this year. His employer NPR left the platform in a huff over Musk labeling it “US state-affiliated media.”
The two tax-funded journalists engaged in performative offense-taking against Musk’s F-bombs, practically panting that the outburst would mark the beginning of Musk’s long-awaited downfall (and presumably flock to Mastodon or Threads, two would-be Twitter replacements everyone’s already forgotten about).
In fact, that tweet wasn't just "perceived as anti-Semitic" -- it actually was anti-Semitic -- and Musk didn't merely "reply" to the tweet, he endorsed his message by calling it "the actual truth." And it wasn't until more than two weeks later, during the same event at which he lashed out at his advertisers, that he bothered to offer some sort of apology; that endorsement tweet remains live as of this writing, suggesting that his so-called apology wasn't terribly sincere. Waters seems to have forgotten that Musk's labeling of NPR's feed was completely arbitrary and violated Twitter's own labeling standards, falsely likening it to propagandistic state-controlled media organizations in other countries, and the move backfired so badly that Musk dropped all labeling of "state-affiliated media" feeds on Twitter.
Waters didn't actually rebut anything Bennett and Allyn said about Musk, instead whining that "Bennett relegated Musk’s ambitious technological achievements, which the Biden Administration is depending on, as quasi-blackmail material stored up by Musk" and that "Allyn also portrayed Musk as a mad scientist with his hooks into the power structure."
The MRC kept up its sycophancy with a Dec. 4 tweet thanking Musk for the "Twitter files," which are nothing but cherry-picked documents selectively given to journalists hand-picked by Musk to sydcophantically write about them.
A Dec. 8 post by Luis Cornelio served up more Musk sycophancy:
Facebook and Instagram are under legal scrutiny stemming from a lawsuit filed by New Mexico, accusing the companies of inexplicably facilitating “prime locations” of child sex abuse content—and X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk is blasting the inexplicable silence from advertising companies that have boycotted ads on X over accusations of anti-Semitism.
The disturbing allegations, brought forth by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, accused the Mark Zuckerberg-owned social media platforms of turning a blind eye to the spread of sexual content involving sexual “coercion” of children, through “prostitution” and/or the “sale of [Child Sexual Abuse Material].” Specifically, the attorney general’s office alleged that Facebook and Instagram “served” streams of “sexually explicit images” to children and reportedly “enabled” adults to “find, message, and groom minors, soliciting them to sell pictures or participate in pornographic videos.”
Musk pressed Disney CEO Bob Iger on whether Disney would pull ads from the Meta-owned platforms. Notably, Iger in recent weeks pulled ads from X over dubious accusations that Musk’s platform placed ads near or next to racist and anti-semitic content. "Why no advertiser boycott, Bob Iger [sic]? You are endorsing this material!" Musk wrote in a fired-up X post. In a follow-up post, Musk added, “[W]hy do their Chief Marketing Officers endorse child trafficking!? Let’s ask them.”
Musk’s criticism came in response to Disney’s decision to pull ads from X after the release of a dubious report accusing the platform of placing ads near or next to alleged anti-Semitic or racist posts. Musk then took legal action.
Seemingly without questioning the evidence, notable companies such as Apple and Disney quickly pulled ads. However, neither company has yet decided to take similar action following the new accusations from the New Mexico attorney general.
Actually, the evidence that Musk did this is pretty clear. But Cornelio is falling into the MRC pattern of refusing to acknowledge that this evidence was gathered by Media Matters, the MRC's more liberal watchdog rival. Cornelio merely stated that Musk "took legal action" but not against who, and he didn't explain why anyone should be "questioning the evidence" when it's so well documented.
Christian Toto similarly defended Musk in his Dec. 9 column:
Plus, Disney recently yanked advertising from X, Elon Musk’s free speech friendlier version of Twitter.
That’s an overtly political move.
Musk is a left-leaning soul, but he’s been drifting to the Right given the Left’s quest to silence free speech. Iger’s Disney followed a false narrative that Musk is an anti-semite and pulled ads from the platform in response.
Meanwhile, TikTok promotes Osama bin Laden’s rhetoric and other social media giants teem with hateful content.
Why single out X?
We know why. Iger and co. haven’t gotten politics out of their system yet. Talk is talk until we see real action behind it. The ball’s in your court, Mr. Iger.
It's almost cute how Toto pretends Musk is "left-leaning" despite all the evidence to the contrary. He also failed to offer any evidence that Musk's anti-Semitic leaning is a "false narrative."
WND's Brown Won't Fully Denounce Anti-Semitism From A Fellow Right-Winger Topic: WorldNetDaily
Despite his longtime dishonest treatment of LGBT people -- pretending to care about them despite repeatedly expressing his disdain and outright hatred of them -- WorldNetDaily columnist Michael Brown does occasionally get things right (though it took him way too long to stop being such an enthusiasatic supporter of Donald Trump). In August, for example, Brown did denounce the anti-Semitism of Nick Fuentes. In his Nov. 17 column, though, Brown had a somewhat less forceful take on the apparent anti-Semitism of another right-wing figure:
What did commentator Candace Owens mean when she posted that "Christ is King" in the midst of a very public dispute with her Daily Wire employer Ben Shapiro? I'm not going to enter into the details of that dispute, other than to say I agree with Shapiro's concerns.
Here, I want to focus on Owens posting the words "Christ is King" on X (formerly Twitter).
In a previous post, she quoted the words of Jesus that "you cannot serve both God and money," causing many to wonder if this was a dig on Jewish people, who are allegedly money hungry.
But why, specifically, did she add, "Christ is King"? Others are wondering as well.
As reported in the Jerusalem Post, "The posts on the social media platform X appeared to some as an antisemitic dog-whistle, alluding to Shapiro's comments and invoking ancient anti-Jewish tropes through its use of Biblical language and its appeal to the Christian faith. Yashar Ali, the prominent journalist with more than 700,000 followers on the site, shared a screenshot and said, 'I know what Candace's tweets mean.'"
Perhaps Candace Owens can clarify the issues herself.
For those wondering what could be wrong with proclaiming "Christ is King," the unfortunate reality is that this beautiful, biblically based truth has been hijacked by elements of the extreme religious right, often with antisemitic implications.
Brown referenced his earlier criticism of Fuentes, then quoted a writer who noted that Capitol rioters and participants in the anti-abortion March for Life have also said "Christ Is King" and stated that "a proper theological understanding of 'Christ is King' ought to compel us to live at peace with our neighbors." Still, Brown tried to give Owens the benefit of the doubt and wouldn't directly criticize her:
Yes, Jesus is King and will always be King. He was born a King, died a King, reigns in heaven as King, and will return as King – in fact, as King of kings and Lord of lords (Revelation 19:16). For myself, as Jewish follower of Jesus, I unashamedly proclaim Him as the Messianic King and the Savior and Lord of all. And yes, in His name and authority we are called to go and make disciples of the nations (Matthew 28:18-20).
But to use "Christ is King" as a political slogan, especially one with racist and antisemitic overtones, is to bring disgrace on that holy and beautiful name.
I certainly hope this is not what Candace Owens meant. A clarification is certainly called for.
We dare not mess with such sacred words.
It's not that Brown is incapable of aggressively calling out anti-Semitism -- he did so in thedays after Hamas' attack on Israel -- but only when those perpetrating it are his political enemies and can be safely demonized. But Owens and Brown are fellow political travelers, so he's holding his fire.
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.