NEW ARTICLE: A Cop-Killer's Best Friends
Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center doesn't want to talk about how its operations earned Facebook likes from cop-killer Jerad Miller, and WorldNetDaily doesn't want to talk about how its anti-police rhetoric mirrors that of Miller's. Read more >>

MRC Desperately Tries To Discredit School-Shooting Statistic
Topic: Media Research Center

When the group Everytown for Gun Safety came out with its statistic last week that there have been 74 school shootings since the Newtown massacre, the MRC knew it had to shoot it down, as it were.

In a June 11 MRC item, Matthew Balan dismissed Everytown for Gun Safety as a "pro-gun control group" founded by Michael Bloomberg, taking refuge in a conservative blog's insistence that gang violence and gun suicides don't count as "school shootings."

A June 12 NewsBusters post by Tom Blumer called the group's number a "falsehood" and touted how CNN allegedly debunked the group's figure by focusing only on "situations similar to the violence in Oregon -- a minor or adult actively shooting inside or near a school." As Media Matters notes, this follows the strange right-wing logic, articulated by right-wing writer Charles C. Johnson, that"It's not a school shooting when someone goes and shoots a specific person on campus. It's a shooting that happens to take place at school."

In a June 13 item, Kristine Marsh attacked the group's purportedly "false data," as if people killed at school by means other than mass shootings didn't really die.

MRC Bashes Connection Between Cop-Killers And Right-Wingers, Ignores Cop-Killer's Fondness For MRC
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center is doing what it can to bash anyone who dares point out the fact that cop-killers Jerad and Amanda Miller had links to right-wing ideology:

• A June 9 NewsBusters post by Jeffrey Meyer complains that Michael Eric Dyson tried to "connect the shooting in Las Vegas to conservative media and politicians."
• a June 10 NewsBusters post by Laura Flint grumbled that MSNBC's Joy Reid said that the shootings proved the rise of “right-wing extremism.” Flint groused: "MSNBC is leaning forward so heavily on this meme that it’s falling over itself to paint blood on the hands of mainstream conservatives for the violence of mentally-disturbed extremists who have nothing to do with the conservative movement."
• A June 10 MRC item by Kristine Marsh complained that a CNN writer cited the Southern Poverty Law Center -- which is somehow an accessory to terrorism because "when Floyd Lee Corkins tried to shoot up the conservative Family Research Council in 2012, he later admitted he targeted the conservative organization because the SPLC listed the FRC as a 'hate group' for it’s 'anti-gay' stance on marriage"-- in "blaming the right for the deadly cop shootings in Las Vegas."Marsh continued, "It’s pretty rich to talk down to conservative media for using hateful and negative language while on the network that employs Al 'White Interlopers' Sharpton, but again, nobody ever accused liberals of too much self-awareness."

Unmentioned by all of these MRC writers: Jerad Miller's Facebook page includes likes for MRC operations NewsBusters and CNSNews.com, as well as For America, the political operation run by MRC chief Brent Bozell.

That alone puts the lie to the MRC's claim that pointing out the Millers' link to right-wing media is inaccurate. Plus, it's utterly hypocritical given the MRC's past eagerness to link mass killers to liberal causes.

Las Vegas Cop-Killer Loved the MRC
Topic: Media Research Center

Jerad Miller has been identified, along with his wife, Amanda, as the perpetrators in the Las Vegas incident in which three people, including two police officers, were shot to death before he and his wife committed suicide. Turns out he was a big fan of Brent Bozell's Media Rsearch Center empire.

Among the 107 entries on what appears to be Miller's Facebook "likes" page are the MRC's NewsBusters and CNSNews.com, as well as Bozell's quasi-super PAC operation For America.

Why point this out? Because turnabout is fair play. The MRC  has regularly highlighted the supposed liberal links to other shooters, including Floyd Corkins, who has been described has having been inspired by the Southern Poverty Law Center; the MRC complained that "media isn’t interested in holding the SPLC accountable for its rhetoric." The MRC has also highlighted how "Chris Dorner, an ex-cop on a vengeful rampage against police officers in Los Angeles, praised liberal media personalities in his oddly chatty 'manifesto' posted on Facebook. " (Dorner's manifesto also contained praise for conservatives, which the MRC conveniently failed to mention.)

Will the MRC tell us what of its rhetoric may have inspired Miller? Will the MRC even admit that Miller was a fan? Don't count on it -- as of this writing, no MRC outlet has devoted any original coverage to the shootings.

MRC Writers Trash A Movie They've Never Seen
Topic: Media Research Center

Journalistic honesty dictates that you actually watch the movie you're passing judgment on. The Media Research Center apparently doesn't care about such things.

In a June 2 MRC Culture & Media Institute column, Katie Yoder rants about the film "Obvious Child," complaining about the "abortion romantic comedy"
and how "lefty media types were enthusiastic" about it. Given that Yoder wrote hger article five days before the film opened, it's highly unlikely she had a chance to see the film before spewing her opinion on it.

The ignorance continues in Brent Bozell and Tim Graham's June 6 column, in which they rail against "the courageous destruction of God's most beautiful and most innocent creation" and smear the film as "feminist nihilism." Their column was posted on the morning of June 6 -- the day the film opened -- making it highly unlikely that they too bothered to watch the film they're trashing.

Yoder followed up with an article posted later on June 6 in which she complains that eople who have actually watched the movie -- unlike her -- are expressing positive opinions about it. Even though Yoder may have had the chance to watch the film before posting her article, there's no indication she did.

Then again, since Yoder, Bozell and Graham are clearly going to trash this movie whether they saw it or not, they apparently decided to cut out that waste of time of seeing a film they've already formed an intractable opinion about.

Who needs journalistic integrity anyway?

MRC Censors News Of Bodies In Septic Tank of Irish Nun-Operated Home
Topic: Media Research Center

Earlier this year, the Media Research Center repeatedly attacked the film "Philomena" as "anti-Catholic" for detailing the abuses in the Irish system of unmarried mothers working in indentured servitude in laundries and other convent facilities operated by Catholic nuns (despite the fact that the woman whose story the film is based on praised it as "a testament to good things, not an attack").

In that vein, there's this story:

In a town in western Ireland, where castle ruins pepper green landscapes, there’s a six-foot stone wall that once surrounded a place called the Home. Between 1925 and 1961, thousands of “fallen women” and their “illegitimate” children passed through the Home, run by the Bon Secours nuns in Tuam.

Many of the women, after paying a penance of indentured servitude for their out-of-wedlock pregnancy, left the Home for work and lives in other parts of Ireland and beyond. Some of their children were not so fortunate.

More than five decades after the Home was closed and destroyed — where a housing development and children’s playground now stands — what happened to nearly 800 of those abandoned children has now emerged: Their bodies were piled into a massive septic tank sitting in the back of the structure and forgotten, with neither gravestones nor coffins.

We'd ask what Brent Bozell and his MRC crew had to say about this story, but they have not weighed in on it -- or, perhaps , they have expressed their opinion by refusing to acknowledge it exists.

Asof this writing, no MRC website has mentioned this story -- not even its ostensible "news" division, CNSNews.com.

Remember that Bozell asserted that woman whose story was told in "Philomena" believes that her child really wasn't taken from her since he was "adopted by loving parents," and the girl "obviously" did "something wrong" for the nuns to take the child from her.

How will Bozell justify the nuns' disposal of hundreds of children in a septic tank? We can't wait to find out the answer.

There's A Reason Live Action Is Ignored By Non-Right-Wing Media
Topic: Media Research Center

Katie Yoder writes in a May 28 Media Research Center Culture & Media Institute item:

It seems like prime media bait: a group accusing a taxpayer funded organization of horrors from racism to sex trafficking. Except that the story is centered on abortion – and the accused is Planned Parenthood.

Pro-life advocacy group Live Action has released an  investigative report and video compiling “shocking activity” that occurs within Planned Parenthood’s abortion clinics. As part of a Planned Parenthood Exposed campaign, Live Action asked Americans to sign a petition to halt the $500 million per year in taxpayer money that funds Planned Parenthood. Members of Congress received copies of the report on May 28, according to the press release.

The fact that Yoder is uncritically copying from a Live Action  press release shows us the low level of scrutiny she is providing the group. And why should she question anything Lila Rose's group does? They adhere to Yoder's anti-abortion agenda, and that's all she needs to know.

Yoder laments that Live Action "most likely can’t rely on the media to spread its message" -- but she can certainly count on the MRC to do so, which presumably is why Yoder is so willing to be the group's hype woman. But she ignores a key reason what that is: Lila Rose is as dishonest as the activist who trained her, James O'Keefe.

Media Matters has documented how Rose's group has released numerous false attacks on and dishonest smears of Planned Parenthood, which Rose has apparently declared her mortal enemy. 

Yoder will never tell you about any of that, of course -- that runs counter to her little PR operation.

Neither will the MRC's "news" division CNSNews.com, which published a May 30 article by Zoey DiMauro that promotes Rose's campaign of dishonesty and made no apparent effort to let any of her critics respond.

MRC Still Peddling Lies About Rachel Carson
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Brent Bozell and Tim Graham devoted their May 30 column to lamenting the existence of a "horrible myth" that Ronald Reagan's silence on the growing AIDS epidemic caused people to die, citing a rant by gay activist Larry Kramer: "Our murderer is dead. The man who murdered more gay people than anyone in the entire history of the world, is dead. More people than Hitler even."

Meanwhile, those who work for Bozell and Graham are busy pushing their own horrible death myths.

In a May 27 NewsBusters post, Scott Whitlock rants:

The liberals at Google honored radical environmentalist Rachel Carson on their home page, Tuesday, in honor of what would have been her 107th birthday. With the Google logo in the background, an illustration featured the late Carson in the wilderness, next to birds, turtles and butterflies. Clicking on this picture will bring web browsers to a search of all things Carson. Journalists, Al Gore and Hollywood have long lauded the activist. But few of them have questioned her accuracy or impact.

Carson's claim to fame came when she published Silent Spring in 1962. The book warned of the dangers of pesticide to birds and lobbied for banning the chemical DDT. However, this contention turned out to be flat-out wrong and has had deadly consequences. As San Jose State University entomologist J. Gordon Edwards explained: "This implication that DDT is horribly deadly is completely false.  Human volunteers have ingested as much as 35 milligrams of it a day for nearly two years and suffered no adverse effects.  Millions of people have lived with DDT intimately during the mosquito spray programs and nobody even got sick as a result."

In an article entitled "Rachel Carson's Deadly Fantasies," Forbes writer Henry Miller explained how Carson's fear-mongering cost millions of lives: 

[...]

Will Google do a tribute to the millions who died because of DDT bans?

Except little of that is actually true. As we pointed out the last time the MRC did this, Carson never advocated for banning DDT, just that they not be overused. And for good reason -- overuse was creating DDT-resistant mosquitoes. Also, the U.S. ban on DDT didn't apply to the rest of the world and, thus, could not possibly have caused "millions of lives." Further, DDT is undenably destructive to the environment.

We will see Google do "a tribute to the millions who died because of DDT bans" before conservatives like Whitlock acknowledges the millions of deaths caused DDT-resistant mosquitoes.

MRC's Sharyl Attkisson Dissonance Continues
Topic: Media Research Center

A May 15 Media Research Center item by Sean Long does something we weren't sure the MRC was going to do -- call out its new BFF, former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson, for her shoddy reporting on vaccines:

More than simply covering the connection, some reporters, including former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson who reported anecdotes and interviewed many families convinced that vaccines caused their children’s autism.

Attkisson was particularly prone to report such anecdotes. Some segments, such as May 18, 2004, “Evening News” began and ended with minute long interviews with parent who blamed vaccines for their children’s autism. She even ended that story by asking, “How can it be wrong to err on the side of caution?”

In a similar broadcast on June 12, 2004, Attkisson included an anti-vaccination parent at a rally who claimed, “The CDC is going to become the Enron of the vaccine industry.” The Enron Corporation had recently collapsed in part due to fraudulent financial practices.

Years later, on April 21, 2014, Attkisson defended her vaccine reporting to CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” calling them “some of the most important stories I’ve done.”

But being the MRC, this only goes so far.  Not only does Long fail to reconcile this criticism of Attkisson with the MRC's praise of her self-proclaimed martyrdom for her coverage of the Obama administration, the MRC has approvingly added an Attkisson quote about how her former CBS bosses were purportedly "ideologically entrenched" to its "Journalists Admitting Liberal Bias" page.

There seems to be a bit of cognitive dissonance here -- the MRC can't bash Attkisson for her shoddy vaccine reporting and at the same time praise her for her similarly shoddy reporting on the Obama administration. Shouldn't the same standard be applied to all of Attkisson's reporting?

Ah, but if there weren't double standards, it wouldn't be the MRC.

MRC's Bozell & Graham Mansplain Feminism
Topic: Media Research Center

Shailene Woodley is fast-rising movie star, and at age 22, she's already thrown the country's most uptight feminists into a tizzy.

Time magazine asked Woodley: "Do you consider yourself a feminist?" To say she didn't give the Hollywood answer would be an understatement.

"No, because I love men, and I think the idea of 'raise women to power, take the men away from the power' is never going to work out because you need balance."

Many women continue to reject "feminism" because it evokes an ideological rigidity grounded in the hostility toward men. That, in turn, drives feminists around a bend.

[...]

This sputtering is a bit amusing. Feminists insist you support their entire agenda or you're guilty of waging a "war on women." Apparently a woman who isn't a feminist is anti-woman.

Feminists insist they care only for equality between the sexes, but if that were so, why would so many women balk? Because they hate themselves? Or because after 40 years of screaming, it is pretty apparent that activist feminists in academia, the media, and politics will never stop complaining. Forty years from now they will still be waging a war on intolerable "patriarchy."

It's becoming faddish again to mentally bra-burn. The Times found twenty-something feminist actresses who are perpetually outraged at people's failure to bow to feminism. 

[...]

Many people don't accept the term "feminist" because it sounds like a very serious kind of pagan religion, with its own dogma and doctrinal enforcers. Others find feminists to be boors, pure and simple. Still others see the hypocrisy of it all. If feminists really believed women should be liberated to make their own path, wouldn't they embrace a debate over feminism? Such is the world of the "tolerant" left.

-- Brent Bozell and Tim Graham, May 23 column

The Very Uncivil Brent Bozell Lectures On Civility
Topic: Media Research Center

Brent Bozell and Tim Graham write in a May 21 column:

Just before the 2010 midterms, Comedy Central star Jon Stewart drew a large crowd to Washington to celebrate a "Rally for Sanity." He gave a closing speech, intended to be inspirational and not comical, on how "we can have animus and not be enemies."

The same man who succeeded in convincing CNN to cancel "Crossfire" in 2004 because its squabbles were "hurting the country" felt the need to sermonize about overdoing caricatures of our political opponents on television. This raises the question: Does this man watch his own show?

"The country's 24-hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems but its existence makes solving them that much harder," Stewart proclaimed in his address. "The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous flaming ant epidemic. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing."

Simply put, Stewart is lecturing the media not to behave like ... Stewart.

That's right. The man who likened President Obama to a "skinny ghetto crackhead," verbally abuses his fellow TV panelists, and hires misogynists as employees -- among numerous other examples of incivility -- is lecturing Jon Stewart about civility.

Oh, the irony.

NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Watch-Chihuahua
Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center launches MRC Latino, despite the fact that it has not been historically friendly toward Hispanics or their issues. Read more >>

MRC Censors Facts About IRS Documents
Topic: Media Research Center

Geoffrey Dickens breathlessly writes in a May 15 Media Research Center item:

On Wednesday Judicial Watch released a new batch of IRS documents that showed “extensive pressure on the IRS by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) to shut down conservative leaning organizations.” The documents also revealed the IRS’s handling of the Tea Party applications was directed out of the agency’s DC headquarters, contrary to initial claims that blamed low-level officials in Cincinnati.

While the news led Wednesday's Special Report with Bret Baier on FNC, coverage by the Big Three (ABC, NBC, CBS) networks on their Wednesday evening and Thursday morning shows? 0 seconds.

But Dickens isn't telling the full truth about the IRS documents, choosing only to parrot what the right-wing Judicial Watch said about them.

As Media Matters points out, Levin did not tell the IRS to "shut down conservative leaning organizations"; rather, he urged the IRS to "remind all 501(c)(4) organizations about their obligation to observe that restriction on their activities if they want to retain their tax exempt status." Another Levin email on the subject added, "This is not a partisan issue."

Despite the lack of factual basis, MRC chief Brent Bozell regurgitated it in a Fox News appearance.

If all Dickens and Bozell can do is repeat right-wing talking points instead of actual facts, they're not very good media watchdogs, are they?

MRC Whiffs On Purported 'Radical Environmentalism' In 'Godzilla' Film
Topic: Media Research Center

Sean Long writes in a May 16 Media Research Center Business & Media Institute item:

It is a sad day when the iconic Godzilla becomes a vessel for extreme environmentalism.

Gareth Edwards’ remake of the classic “Godzilla” pushed a strong environmental message where three massive monsters serve as nature’s brutal revenge against mankind’s abuse of the earth. The film which opened on May 16, sent multiple messages including anti-nuclear power and the message that “humanity has abused” the world and “deserved” Godzilla’s attack, according to the director.

[...]

Edwards also tried to exploit fear of global warming. While refraining from making this message explicit, The Daily Beast also reported Edwards saying that “stories have been used for a long time to smuggle the morals of the day inside them, and today, people are worried about global warming.”

A few media outlets have noticed the radical environmental messages in the new “Godzilla,” movie including the Latin Times’s Phillip Martinez who called “Godzilla” a “life lesson on how man has ‘tarnished’ nature.”

Long quotes only interviews about the film, and he gives no indication he has actually seen the film he's critiquing.

By contrast, another ConWeb writer did see the film before writing about it, and he couldn't find that supposedly radical message. Drew Zahn writes in his WorldNetDaily review:

What didn’t finally arrive in the movie, however, was the purported environmentalist message I was expecting, based on other commentaries. The whole, “shove global warming down your throat” message never materialized.

True, there is a line in the film, “The arrogance of man is thinking nature is in our control and not the other way around,” but, of course, that could be interpreted any number of ways. And there is a general sense of dread about nuclear weaponry (which was a significant theme in the original series of films, begun in 1954).

But a careful examination of Director Edwards’ words reveals his ideas don’t fit quite so neatly into hyperpartisan boxes.

[...]

As for the huge, environmentalist message? If Edwards was trying a preach a message about how evil humanity is and how we’re in danger of disaster from our carbon footprint … he failed.

On the other hand, if he was trying to make an entertaining monster movie that honors the legend of Godzilla … he succeeded wonderfully.

Perhaps that should be a lesson to Long: See the movie before you bash it.

MRC Touts Birther's Endorsement of MRC
Topic: Media Research Center

Ken Oliver-Mendez devotes a May 16 NewsBusters post to an interview with Sen. Ted Cruz's father, Rafael Cruz:

As a travelling pastor, Rev. Rafael Cruz, father of Sen. Ted Cruz, is in a unique position to sense where the political winds are blowing in this mid-term election year. During a visit to the Media Research Center, the elder Cruz said that with just over five months to go between now and Election Day, he sees major conservative gains ahead, including the retirement of Sen. Harry Reid as Majority Leader that would come with Republicans winning control of the United States Senate.

Oliver-Mendez also promotes the elder Cruz's endorsement of the MRC: “You are doing something that is absolutely necessary in this country when we have so much of the liberal media that they have ceased to be broadcasters, they have ceased to be really journalists and they have become mouthpieces for the administration. They have apparently no concern for truth – all they want to do is promote the talking points of the administration – so you are standing in the gap.”

What Oliver-Mendez didn't do, however, is mention the elder Cruz's history of inflammatory statements, which include saying that President Obama is a Marxist who should go "back to Kenya," falsely claiming that “the first bill President Obama signed into law was to legalize third trimester abortions" (in fact, it was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and he has never signed any law approving third-trimester abortions), and asserting that gay marriage is some kind of government conspiracy.

Oliver-Mendez runs MRC Latino, the MRC's Hispanic media-monitoring operation. Between this and the MRC's longtime hostility to Hispanics and their issues, the success of this venture seems rather dubious.