George Stephanopoulos Proves The MRC Wrong Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Rich Noyes launched a pre-emptive pre-debate attack on ABC's George Stephanolpulos, bashing his allegedly "pro-Democratic" record on debate analysis and complaining that "in eight out of the last nine general election presidential debates (every one since he joined ABC News in 1997), Stephanopoulos has gone on his network’s airwaves to claim victory for the Democratic candidate, all in the guise of offering impartial analysis."
But Noyes offered no evidence that Stephanopoulos' view of those debates deviated from general public -- in fact, as we've pointed out, Stephanopoulos' opinion of the outcome of the 2008 debates accurately reflected that of the American public as indicated by post-debate polling.
Nevertheless, the MRC was a bit flummoxed that Stephanopoulos is continuing to reflect public opinion. From an Oct. 4 NewsBusters post by the MRC's Matthew Balan:
ABC's George Stephanonopoulos carried a eight-out-of-nine record of declaring the Democratic presidential candidate the winner into Wednesday night's Obama-Romney presidential debate. Surprisingly, the Clinton administration veteran affirmed that Mitt Romney scored points on President Obama: "I think Governor Romney definitely more crisp in his presentation tonight....he was able to be aggressive without being offensive."
Again, post-debate polling found that the majority of Americans thought Romney won the debate. It's not surprising at all -- the MRC simply chooses to play partisan politics by blaming everything it doesn't like on "liberal bias," even when the facts prove them wrong.
MRC Still Falsely Smearing Rachel Carson Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is not done smearing Rachel Carson.
Liz Thatcher returns in a Sept. 27 MRC Business & Media Institue column to call Carson a killer of millions simply for writing a book. As she did in a previous column, Thatcher blames Carson's book "Silent Spring" for killing people, asserting that the book "can be linked to a legacy of easily preventable deaths from malaria since the United States banned the use of DDT in 1972."
But as we pointed out the last time Thatcher made these claims, Carson never advocating banning DDT, the U.S. ban on DDT didn't apply to the rest of the world, and DDT had been so overused that mosquitos had developed a resistance to it. Thatcher never mentions these facts in her column.
Thatcher also obsesses over Carson's suggestion that DDT is a cancer-causing carcinogen, a claim that has not yet been definitively proven; Thatcher cites right-wing activist Steven Milloy to claim that "while the link to cancer is based purely on hypothetical assumptions, that even if this link does exist, the risk might actually be worth it when the vast amount of deaths from malaria is considered."
But Thatcher doesn't mention DDT's effects on the environment. Slate's William Souder notes that "The threat of DDT to wildlife—as a deadly neurotoxin in many species and a destroyer of reproductive capabilities in others—has never been in doubt."
Bozell Defends D'Souza Film, Doesn't Say What It's About Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell pulls off a rare feat in his Sept. 28 column: He defends Dinesh D'Souza's anti-Obama film "2016: Obama's America" without once addressing any of the claims it makes.
Bozell touts the film's "box office gross of more than $32 million," making it "second place on the all-time box-office money list for political documentaries," and laments that "You didn't see D'Souza on CBS or NBC (although he showed up on ABC's "Nightline" in late night). There were no cover stories in Time or Newsweek."
Bozell did single out some negative reviews, one of which noted that "'D'Souza spins out the conspiracy theory' of America in dramatic economic and geopolitical collapse by 2016," but at no point does Bozell respond to the substance of that claim -- he simply paints the reviewas the kind of negative review a conservative can expect from the liberal media.
In fact, D'Souza's film is rife with false and misleading claims, which do indeed embrace a conspiracy theory of Obama being somehow "anti-American."
Apparently, the "Tell the Truth!" campaign run by Bozell's Media Research Cdenter doesn't apply to D'Souza, just like it doesn't apply to any conservative.
MRC Repeats Its False Attack on Katie Couric Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center, it seems, will never forgive Katie Couric for exposing Sarah Palin for who she is.
At its annual "DisHonors Banquet," the MRC invented an award to give to Couric, "The Worst Reporter in the History of Man." (Funny, we might have given such an award to Noel Sheppard, who has issued more apologies for false and offensive content this year alone that Couric has in her entire career.)
The CNSNews.com edition of a lightly rewritten MRC press release touting the award includes a video purporting to contain some of the evidence in support of the "award." Among the clips is Couric stating, "Good morning. The Gipper was an airhead!"
This description of Ronald Reagan was Couric's introduction to a 1999 segment on Edmund Morris' just-released Reagan bio -- but as we've detailed, that was the advance word on the book, and even conservatives used the "airhead" phrase when discussing the book. It's dishonest for the MRC to single out Couric for using the word when even Dinesh D'Souza brought it up; the MRC continuing to obsess over it more than a decade after the fact borders on the pathological.
Conspicuous by its absence is any mention of the best piece of reporting Couric did: her interview of Sarah Palin, in which she managed to stump Palin on such innocuous questions like which newspapers she read.
It seems that the MRC has moved beyond mere Heathering and into full-on Mean Girls mode.
Meanwhile, Slate's David Weigel went to the MRC's shindig -- a "black tie appreciated" affair that featured Brent Bozell "wearing the kind of white tuxedo coat that James Bond prefers in Monaco" -- and points out how the MRC's anti-media campaign isn't working: "Barack Obama’s winning. The Huffington Post is providing AOL’s political coverage. MSNBC reverse-engineered Fox News’ approach to proud, ideological news analysis, and it’s beating CNN."
Weigel also noted that the evening's events -- ironically held in a building constructed by the federal government -- were underwritten in part by Republican mega-donor Foster Friess, one of the event's two "diamond" sponsors. The other one? "Anonymous."
It's quite funny that even people who give huge amounts of money to the MRC don't want to be associated publicly with it.
What Fringe Views Does The MRC 'Endorse' Via Linking? Topic: Media Research Center
A Sept. 25 Media Research Center Culture & Media Institute article by Lauren Thompson that Nickelodeon linking to Jason Biggs' Twitter account, which contains "filthy and perverted tweets," constitutes an endorsement of Biggs' Twitter content.
By that standard, let's see what the MRC endorses via its blogroll on the NewsBusters front page:
Denigrating Sandra Fluke as a "slut" for talking in public about birth control (Rush Limbaugh, but you knew that already)
That's just a tiny selecton of what can be found on the sites the MRC links to. If Thompson wants to continue playing this game, we'll be more than happy to provide more examples.
NEW ARTICLE: The Media Anything-But-Research Center Topic: Media Research Center
The MRC won't fact-check Mitt Romney out of fear the truth will make him look bad -- but it will fact-check a Kanye West song. Read more >>
Bozell's Meaningless, Hypocritical Anti-Media Letter Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Brent Bozell has released a letter signed by more than 20 "prominent conservative leaders" in which they engage in the usual ant-media ranting and declare that they are "publicly urging our members to seek out alternative sources of political news in order to make an intelligent, well-informed decision on November 6."
It's not news that they despise the so-called "liberal media," and they have likely been poisoning their followers against it for years. So there's nothing new in their urging people to seek other sources because they've been doing that for a long time.
Bozell's letter is the usual evidence-free right-wing ranting that the media won't credulously report right-wing talking points as news. Bozell also wrote:
A free and balanced media are crucial to the health of this country. It is your duty as journalists – as outlined in the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics – to “distinguish between advocacy and news reporting,” while simultaneously “seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.”
But Bozell has demonstrated he does not follow these SPJ guidelines with his own "news" organization, CNSNews.com. CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey has a clear anti-Obama bias that presents itself as advocacy, his reporters have similar right-wing biases, it does the bidding of MRC donors in its reporting, and it's so biased it presents right-wing talking points as "news."
Bozell could have made CNS a shining example of how a news organization should operate; instead, it's a mirror-image caricature of the purported bias he rages against.
If Bozell cannot even run his own "news" organization without bias, what moral authority does he have to criticize alleged bias in others? None that we can see.
MRC's Research Laziness, 'Redistribution' Edition Topic: Media Research Center
We'vedetailedhow the Media Research Center is not particularly interested in doing research, especially when it conflicts with its right-wing, pro-Romney agenda. The MRC does it again with attacking President Obama over taped comments, ignoring their full context and bashing anyone who tries to point that context out.
A Sept. 19 NewsBusters post by Jeffrey Meyer highlighted "audio of then-State Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) speaking at Loyola University talking about his support for wealth redistribution, complaining that MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell wouldn't play the tape becuase it hadn't been "authenticated."
That caution was justified. The full version of the 1998 Obama video -- the edited version of which had been promoted by the Drudge Report in a clear attempt to distract from a leaked video of Mitt Romney denigrating the 47 percent of Americans who Obama supporters as freeloaders -- shows that Obama was referring to "redistribution" as a way to "decentralize delivery systems in ways that both foster competition, can work in the marketplace, and can foster innovation at the local level and can be tailored to particular communities." In other words, Obama was not talking about advocating socialism at all.
Nevertheless, the MRC continued to push Obama's "redistribution" comment while not lifting a finger to verify, let alone mention, its proper context:
Brent Baker referenced "video of Barack Obama in 1998 advocating redistribution of wealth," calling it a "display of Obama’s far-left economic philosophy."
Clay Waters complained that a New York Times writer "took pains to point out that the old Obama segment was 'carefully clipped,' implying it was misleading." Which, of course, was entirely true.
Geoffrey Dickens huffed that "when tape emerged of Barack Obama stating he was in favor of “redistribution” of wealth," the Bit Three networks (no mention of Fox News, of course) devoted "just six and a half minutes" to it, compared with 88 minutes to the Romney tape.
In his weekly appearance on Fox News' "Hannity," MRC chief Brent Bozell ranted that Obama's comment "confirms ... that he's a socialist who believes in the redistribution of wealth."
Matt Hadro grumbled that "NBC failed to press Obama adviser David Axelrod over the President's remarks about redistribution" but "did find time, however, to cover the 'Honey Boo Boo' nickname generator."
In an MRC press release, Bozell touted how "the Romney campaign exposed a 1998 video showing then-State Sen. Barack Obama espousing his far-left philosophy of wealth redistribution." Bozell also referred to when "Obama disparaged small business" -- which the MRC also deliberately took out of context.
When Washington Post political fact-checker Glenn Kessler dared to put Obama's words in their proper context, the MRC attacked him -- never mind that no Bozell employee could be bothered to do so.
In a Sept. 21 Newsbusters post, Ryan Robertson began by ranting about how Obama and Vice President Biden "are given the benefit of the doubt by the supposedly non-partisan media" because "we're told by liberal media 'fact checkers' that Republicans end up using them out of proper 'context.'" Of course, Robertson is really whining that conservatives get busted taking their opponents' words out of context on such a regular basis that he must regurgitate the right-wing attack line of trying to discredit all fact-checking.
Robertson went on to claim that Kessler "furiously spun" Obama' statement and that the edited clip has just "one missing sentence, one that somehow redeems Obama for his previous statement." Robertson then nit-picked that Kessler's Pinocchio rating was too severe:
By excluding the last sentence, Kessler thought this was a "whopper" of a lie. Yet according to his own scale, this doesn't make any sense. "One Pinnocchio" statements are marked by "some shading of the facts and selective telling of the truth. Some omissions and exaggerations, but no outright falsehoods." Two Pinocchio-defined statements are said to be "significant omissions and/or exaggerations. Some factual error may be involved, but not necessarily." Three Pinocchios, as Kessler notes, are merited when there is "significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions."
By his own rating system, at worst this only deserved two. What's more, keep in mind that this has not yet been made into a campaign ad, and yet Kessler and his staff eagerly set to excoriating the Romney camp, giving them the worst-possible score on their Pinocchio scale.
At no point does Robertson explain why the full context doesn't redeem Obama. And he falsely claims that Kessler did not "quote anything Romney or a Romney surrogate said about it per se." But Kessler did:
Nevertheless, the Romney campaign had seized on the remark as evidence of Obama’s apparently socialist tendencies. “You know, President Obama said he believes in redistribution,” GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan said Tuesday. “Mitt Romney and I are not running to redistribute the wealth. Mitt Romney and I are running to help Americans create wealth.”
Apparently, if we are to believe Robertson, Paul Ryan is not part of Romney's campaign.
That's the level of self-deception the MRC must practice in order to justify its laziness in trading what little "research" it actually does for mindlessly repeating anti-Obama partisan attacks.
Bozell claimed in his press release: "Like an overeager Labrador retriever, the liberal media will do anything to please their master, even if it means biting his opponent every day between now and the election." And Bozell is desperate to please his master, Mitt Romney, by using his multimillion-dollar organization to dishonestly attack Obama.
MRC Falsely Attacks Rachel Carson As A Killer of 'Millions' Topic: Media Research Center
Liz Thatcher uses a Sept. 20 Media Research Center Business & Media Institute article to portray enviromentalist Rachel Carson as a heartless killer, complaining that a children's books about her "teach children to idolize Carson and how to become liberal activists, but without telling them the lives that could have been saved by DDT."
Thatcher laments that if Carson hadn't written her book "Silent Spring," "DDT could have been used to help prevent millions of people from dying a miserable death from malaria." Thatcher then repeats attacks on Carson from her fellow right-wingers:
Henry Miller, scholar at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, argued in a Sept. 5 op-ed for Forbes.com called “Rachel Carson’s Deadly Fantasies” that Carson’s real legacy lie in her disingenuous claims that stopped a useful life saver around the world.
“DDT was used with dramatic effect to shorten and prevent typhus epidemics during and after WWII when people were dusted with large amounts of it but suffered no ill effects, which is perhaps the most persuasive evidence that the chemical is harmless to humans,” Miller wrote.
Another expert, Dennis Avery, a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute, said Carson is indirectly responsible for millions of preventable deaths noting “The absence of DDT had led to the needless deaths of at least 30 million people from malaria and yellow fever in the tropics … Most of them were helpless African children.”
Just one problem with Thatcher's Carson-bashing: Carson never actually advocated banning DDT. William Souder writes at Slate:
Rachel Carson never called for the banning of pesticides. She made this clear in every public pronouncement, repeated it in an hourlong television documentary about Silent Spring, and even testified to that effect before the U.S. Senate. Carson never denied that there were beneficial uses of pesticides, notably in combatting human diseases transmitted by insects, where she said they had not only been proven effective but were morally “necessary.”
“It is not my contention,” Carson wrote in Silent Spring, “that chemical insecticides must never be used. I do contend that we have put poisonous and biologically potent chemicals indiscriminately into the hands of persons largely or wholly ignorant of their potentials for harm. We have subjected enormous numbers of people to contact with these poisons, without their consent and often without their knowledge.”
[...]
Carson did not seek to end the use of pesticides—only their heedless overuse at a time when it was all but impossible to escape exposure to them. Aerial insecticide spraying campaigns over forests, cities, and suburbs; the routine application of insecticides to crops by farmers at concentrations far above what was considered “safe;” and the residential use of insecticides in everything from shelf paper to aerosol “bombs” had contaminated the landscape in exactly the same manner as the fallout from the then-pervasive testing of nuclear weapons—a connection Carson made explicit in Silent Spring.
Thatcher's portrayal of DDT as the only possible way to eradicate malaria overlooks the facts that 1) it had been so overused that mosquitos had developed a resistance to it, reducing its effectiveness; 2) the U.S. ban on DDT didn't apply to the rest of the world, and 3) DDT is undenably destructive to the environment. Souder continues:
DDT had been effective against malaria in Europe, in Northern Africa, in parts of India and southern Asia, and even in the southern United States, where the disease was already being routed by other means. But these were mostly developed areas. Using DDT in places like sub-Saharan Africa, with its remote and hard-to-reach villages, had long been considered problematic. It was an old story and one still repeated: Africa was everybody’s lowest priority.
And in any case, the World Health Organization had begun to question its malaria-eradication program even before Silent Spring was published. One object lesson was that the heavy use of DDT in many parts of the world was producing new strains of mosquitoes resistant to the insecticide. Much as it can happen with antibiotics, the use of an environmental poison clears susceptible organisms from the ecosystem and allows those with immunity to take over. The WHO also faced declining interest in the disease among scientists and sharp reductions in funding from the international community.
When the recently created Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT for most domestic uses in 1972, this ruling had no force in other parts of the world and the insecticide remained part of the international anti-malaria arsenal. The United States continued to manufacture and export DDT until the mid-1980s, and it has always been available from pesticide makers in other countries.
One result is that DDT is still with us—globally adrift in the atmosphere from spraying operations in various parts of the world, and also from its continuing volatilization from soils in which it has lain dormant for decades. The threat of DDT to wildlife—as a deadly neurotoxin in many species and a destroyer of reproductive capabilities in others—has never been in doubt. Carson’s claims in Silent Spring about DDT’s connection to human cancer and other disorders have not been completely resolved. The National Toxicology Program lists DDT as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.” The same holds for two of its common break-down products, DDD and DDE, which are also suspected of causing developmental problems in humans.
Funny that Thatcher doesn't blames those who indiscriminately overused DDT for causing "millions of deaths."
MRC Won't Fact-Check Romney, But Will Fact-Check A Kanye West Song Topic: Media Research Center
We've documented how the Media Research Center is too lazy and/or biased to fact-check anything Mitt Romney says. It has found time, however, to fact-check -- and grammar-check -- a Kanye West song.
Paul Wilson whines in a Sept. 14 MRC Culture & Media Institute post:
Celebrities have certainly been doing their part to get their beloved President Obama elected – including parroting wild speculations from Democratic politicians about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s taxes.
Hip-hop artist Kanye West took a shot at Mitt Romney in “To the World,” a song on his new album Cruel Summer. West referenced a speculation by some on the left that Romney is a tax dodger saying: “I’m just trying to protect my stacks / Mitt Romney don’t pay no tax.”
West’s line echoed the wild speculations of Democrats such as Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who infamously claimed that a Bain Capital investor told him Romney paid no taxes. Reid’s claim was completely “unsubstantiated,” even according to media outlets like ABC. But that didn’t stop the Obama campaign from running with it.
Aside from being grammatically flawed (the double negative suggests Romney does pay tax), West’s claim is factually untrue. He has released his tax returns for 2010 and 2011, both of which show him paying taxes to the federal government. Romney’s returns revealed that he paid effective tax rates of 13.9 percent in 2010 and 15.3 percent in 2011 respectively.
West is also hardly a model for fiscal transparency. Forbes recently estimated that West, who walked through an Occupy encampment wearing gold chains, made an annual income of $35 million. And according to Fox News, in 2010, West’s own charity [the Kanye West Foundation] spent more than a half-million dollars while donating no money to actual charitable grants and contributions. Perhaps West should be concerned with his own tax returns, instead of rapping false rumors about Romney.
Perhaps Wilson should be more concerned about the veracity of a presidential candidate than nit-picking the lyrics of a song he doesn't like.
MRC's Baker Bashes Fact-Checkers Who Do The Job He Won't Topic: Media Research Center
The other day, we documented how Media research VP for research Brent Baker was too lazy to do any actual, you know, research on the truth of Mitt Romney's attack on Obama supporters, snarkily stating, "And the inaccuracy is?" Now Baker is mad at the fact-checkers who did the work he wouldn't do.
In a Sept. 19 MRC item, Baker was upset that the truth was told about Romney's statement and that media fact-checkers looked at everything Romney said about the 47 percent of voters who support Obama and didn't stop at the one correct claim he made:
NBC and CBS felt compelled Tuesday night to fact check Mitt Romney’s assertion “47 percent of Americans pay no income tax” and both had to acknowledge his accuracy, but then tried to undermine Romney’s point. Noting the statistic had become “Tea Party mantra,” NBC’s Andrea Mitchell allowed “it’s true that approximately 47 percent of Americans do not pay federal income taxes, as Mitt Romney said, but,” she quickly added, “not because they are living off of the 53 percent.”
Over on CBS, Anthony Mason relayed how “Roberton Williams with the non-partisan Tax Policy Center says, to be precise, 46.4 percent of Americans pay no federal tax. But,” Mason insisted, “it’s more complicated than that.”
Mason gave a soundbite to Williams for a non-correction effort to explain away Romney’s concern: “Sixty percent of them are working and pay federal payroll taxes, the taxes that support Social Security and Medicare, so they’re not deadbeats that are not on the tax roll at all.”
Yes, Mr. Baker, the truth is complicated. Baker doesn't like things to be complicated, apparently.
At no point does Baker lift a finger to fact-check the fact-checkers -- after all, he has no basis to, since unlike Baker, they actually did their work -- instead whining that they ignored "Romney’s overall point about a growing number of Americans getting more from government than they put in."
One has to wonder how much the Romney campaign is paying Baker not to work. Would someone like Baker spout such lazy nonsense voluntarily?
So, to sum up: Baker is the head of research for an organization that claims to do research -- and he's attacking others for doing the research he refuses to do.
Baker really is an incredibly lazy researcher. Arrogant, too.
Which makes the MRC's "Tell the Truth!" such a joke since it exempts Republicans and conservatives from having to do it.
MRC's Graham Hurls Media-Bashing Charge He's Too Lazy to Prove Topic: Media Research Center
Tim Graham headlines a Sept. 15 NewsBusters post thusly: "'Mainstream' Media Bloggers, Reporters Deny That Reporters Are Tougher on Romney In Press Conferences Than on Obama." But if you're familiar with the work of the Media Research Center, it should not be a surprise that Graham makes no effort to prove the accuracy of his headline.
All Graham is doing is keeping up his freakout that a couple of reporters were caught on tape planning to make sure that Mitt Romney was asked a certain question. Again, if you're familiar with the MRC's work, you will not be surprised that Graham considers this part of a grand liberal-media conspiracy, as he huffed in a Sept. 12 post: "But when has the public gotten a sense these journalists have done this to hold Obama accountable?"
In the Sept. 15 post, Graham mocks Washington Post media writer Erik Wemple for asking reporters about the whole coordinating questions stuff -- never mind that it's much more research than he or any other MRC employee has done on the issue. Instead, Graham does armchair pontification: 'Many Obama critics think that Obama may not have strategized that reporters would stoop to asking silly softballs from supposedly serious newspapers like the New York Times, such as how he was 'enchanted' by the presidency." Again, Graham has done no actual research to back up his whining; he's merely citing out-of-context anecdotal evidence.
Graham gets even huffier with a Politico writer who pointed out that Romney called the press conference to talk about the very thing the reporters asked him about: "It does not answer our argument that they looked like they were all plotting to hit Romney like an Obama-loving pack who thought the president deserved an abject apology."
Which is the core problem with Graham's "argument" -- it's about what it looked like, not what actually happened. Graham hasn't lifted a finger to find out what actually happened. He'd much rather carry water for the Romney campaign by attacking any media person who dares ask Romney a question that isn't fawning.
It's another part of the MRC's highly selective "Tell the Truth!" campaign.
MRC's Baker on Romney Video: 'And The Inaccuracy Is?' Topic: Media Research Center
You know what passes for "research" at the Media Research Center. It has produced yet another example.
Eager to defend Mitt Romney from his nasty attack on Obama supporters as freeloaders who don't pay taxes, Brent Baker repeated that summary of Romney's remarks in his Sept. 17 NewsBusters post, then asked: "And the inaccuracy is?"
Well, gee, Mr. Baker, you're the MRC's vice president for research and publications. Can we presume that you would research if there are any actual inaccuracies in Romney's claim before you drop a glib, snide statement like that?
Apparently, we can't.
As numerous websites that, unlike Baker and the MRC, actually are capable of reseraching basic facts point out, it's absurd -- and utterly false -- to portray every one of the 47 percent of Americans who pay no income taxes as deadbeats and freeloaders or even Obama supporters, as Romney did.
Only 18 percent of tax filers did not have to pay either income tax or payroll taxes.
Nearly all of the people who did not pay either type of tax were elderly – 10.3 percent of total tax filers - or had incomes less than $20,000 – 6.9 percent.
But it's not just low-income people who get out of paying income taxes. About 1 percent of the top 1 percent of income earners, those making about $533,000 or more, did not pay income taxes. That's roughly 13,000 tax filers.
Of the 47 percent of Americans who pay no federal income tax, two-thirds pay federal payroll tax. Most of them aren’t making a lot of money; a couple with two children has to earn less than $26,400 to pay no income tax. Altogether, only a tenth of Americans pay no federal tax, and most who pay neither income nor payroll tax are retirees.
According to 2011 data from the Tax Policy Center, more than half of the filing units not paying income taxes are those with incomes less than $16,812 per year. Nearly a third - 29.2 percent - of those paying no income taxes are tax filers earning between $16,812 and $33,542, and 12.8 percent are those with incomes between $33,542 and $59,486. In other words, the poor are least likely to pay federal income taxes, but many middle-class families are also exempt. Smaller but significant numbers of the higher-income earners are also exempt: The same data shows that in 2011, 78,000 tax filers with incomes between $211,000 and $533,000 paid no income taxes; 24,000 households with incomes of $533,000 to $2.2 million paid no income taxes, and 3,000 tax filers with incomes above $2.2 million paid no income taxes.
Overall, according to the Tax Policy Center, "of the 38 million tax units made nontaxable by the addition of tax expenditures, 44 percent are moved off the tax rolls by elderly tax benefits and another 30 percent by credits for children and the working poor."
According to one analysis, only the very broadest definition of Americans "who are dependent upon government" yields a number approaching 47 percent.
If Romney is including anyone who receives Social Security and Medicare – both considered an earned entitlement since Americans pay for them – the percentage of Americans receiving money from the government hits 37 percent.
It’s safe to say that most of the 46.4 percent referred to by Romney are in the lower income brackets. According to the most recent Gallup polls of registered voters, 37 percent of those making less than $36,000 a year indicate they plan to vote for Romney. Moreover, as we noted earlier, a sizable chunk of 46.4 percenters are retirees, and among those 65 and older, Romney leads Obama by nine points, 52 percent to 43 percent. According to a Rasmussen Reports poll of likely voters between Sept. 10 and 16, 40 percent of those making less than $20,000 said they plan to vote for Romney; 50 percent of those making between $20,000 and $40,000 said they supported Romney. The Pew Research Center similarly found in its latest poll that 32 percent of those making less than $30,000 and 42 percent of those making between $30,000 and $50,000 support Romney — as do a plurality of seniors.
Baker seems to believe that the MRC's name has changed to the Media Snark Center. That's probably just as well -- Baker and his subordinates substituted actual research for lazy partisan attacks a long time ago.
MRC's Graham: Romney Was 'Waterboarding' Obama With Questions Topic: Media Research Center
How badly does the Media Research Center want the media not to hold Republicans accountable for their words?
Appearing on Fox News, MRC director of media analysis Tim Graham said that the media daring to ask Mitt Romney questions about his almost universally panned personal attack on President Obama "was like a waterboarding."
Graham doesn't explain why someone who accused the president of the United States of sympathizing with the embassy attackers should be exempt from being questioned about it. Instead, he freaks out about a pair of reporters figuring out how to ask a question of Romney, which Graham potrays as collusion. Dave Weigel explains what really happened:
Reporters covering Romney had no idea whether he'd take one, two, or twenty questions. They had no idea who he'd call on -- they'd certainly endured pressers where foreign reporters wasted time with existential questions.* And so, at best, what we're hearing are two members of one reporting team figuring out how to phrase something. At worst, we're hearing two reporters from different organizations figuring out the best way to ask a question they both want to lob, anyway.
But really, it's about Graham and the MRC trying to protect Romney from the so-called "liberal media" to ease his path to victory. And Graham will say stupid things like this in public to distract from that fact.
Interestingly, the NewsBusters post by Ken Shepherd promoting Graham's appearance makes no mention of his "waterboarding" statement, but it did highlight his attempt at Agnew-esque alliteration with his reference to a "pathetic pack of politicizers."
MRC's Waters Still Fighting To Take Obama Out of Context Topic: Media Research Center
Clay Waters just can'tstop taking President Obama's "you didn't build that" comment out of context, and he can't stop getting upset at people who point out that it's being taken out of context.
After a New York Times reporter correctly pointed out that "you didn't build that"was being taken out of context, Waters grumbles in a Sept. 11 MRC TimesWatch post: "Sigh. As Times Watch has stated before (whenever someone on the paper's roster of objective reporters feels duty bound to defend Obama from Republican attacks) the precious 'context' they seek doesn't help Obama dodge the charge of being anti-business."
Waters then quotes part of Obama's statement -- conveniently leaving out the part where Obama recognized " individual initiative," which most people would not describe as "anti-business."
