MRC's Bozell Still A Liar, Still Calling Brian Williams A Liar
Topic: Media Research Center

Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell just can't stop piling up the hypocrisy regarding NBC news anchor Brian Williams.

On the Feb. 6 edition of Sean Hannity's Fox News show, Bozell asserted that Williams was "lying about everything" and that "the honorable thing for him to do is to resign."

As we've documented, Bozell spent more than 15 years perpetuating the lie that he actually wrote his twice-weekly syndicated column, until the lie was exposed last year. And unlike Williams, Bozell has yet to even discuss his lies publicly -- despite having a weekly guest shot on Fox News -- let alone apologize for his deception or doing the honorable thing of resigning from the MRC.

How ironic that the man calling out an alleged liar is a liar himself.

Bozell's fellow guest, former military pilot Amber Smith, claimed Williams had told a "10-year lie." How would she feel if she knew she appeared on "Hannity" with a man who told a 15-year lie?

Liar Brent Bozell Turns Crusade Against Brian Williams Into Vendetta
Topic: Media Research Center

We've highlighted how Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell has no moral authority or credibility to demand that NBC's Brian Williams be fired over a falsehood -- after all, Bozell still has a job despite lying for 15 years about the authorship of his syndicated column.

Now, Bozell is in vendetta mode. A letter he sent to the MRC's mailing list starts:

I need you to take immediate action to help us bring down one of the most partisan left-wing propagandists on television. 

NBC’s Brian Williams shamelessly LIED about being inside a helicopter that was shot down in Iraq.

The fact that Bozell begins with his plan to "bring down one of the most partisan left-wing propagandists on television" before he gets to Williams' falsehood tells you that he doesn't actually care about the lie itself. He does care that he can exploit the lie as a cudgel to achieve a his goal of personally destroying Williams.

Demonstrating this further, Bozell goes on to rant in his letter:

Brian Williams’s influence extends far beyond NBC Nightly News viewers. He is beloved by the liberal entertainment media and routinely makes the rounds on Comedy Central and the late night talk show circuit.

This makes him all the more powerful.

Brian Williams is one of the biggest Obama cheerleaders on television. This is a man who infamously BOWED to Obama. He is a left-wing partisan who is committed to advancing the Left’s agenda.

And now he’s been exposed as a LIAR. He has no credibility and MUST be ousted.

Oh, and Bozell wants you to send money to his multimillion-dollar organization to accomplish this:

NBC News is feeling the heat. But we MUST maintain momentum to force NBC to pull the trigger on Brian Williams.

 There is one major roadblock to our effort…we did not plan for this campaign and so we did not budget for it.

Right now, we do not have the funds to continue bombarding NBC.

In order for us to sustain our efforts, we need to raise money.

Your generous donation will make the difference between Brian Williams continuing to anchor NBC Nightly News or losing his job.

Needless to say, Bozell does not explain to his readers why a shameless liar has any moral authority to lead this crusade.

As we said previously, if Bozell ever had the guts to apply the standards he's forcing on Williams to himself, he would resign from the MRC immediately and profusely apologize for misleading his readers for more than 15 years.

But Bozell is not a man of integrity; he is a man who has a vendetta to carry out.

NEW ARTICLE: Envy and Spite At The MRC
Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center writers' disdain for the success of the political satire of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert sure looks a lot like jealousy. Read more >>

Irony: Serial Liar Bozell Denounces Brian Williams' Falsehood
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center was quick to pounce on NBC anchor Brian Williams' apology for falsely claiming he was under enemy fire in an incident during the Iraq War. MRC chief Brent Bozell tweeted, "Brian Williams has to go. NBC's credibility is completely shot."

That's right -- the guy who lied twice a week for more than 15 years by presenting his syndicated column as being his creation when, in fact, it was written by his deputy Tim Graham ... is bashing Williams for telling a falsehood. If Williams' credibility is "completely shot" by telling a falsehood, why isn't Bozell's?

If Bozell wants to set an example Williams should follow and prove that his words have meaning instead of being empty partisan attacks, he should abjectly apologize for deceiving the public for years -- Bozell has yet to speak publicly about his years-long deception -- and resign as MRC president. But he doesn't have the guts to live up to his own rhetoric.

Meanwhile, the Washington Examiner's Paul Bedard uncritically promoted Bozell's tweet without mentioning Bozell's record of lying.

UPDATE: The MRC has sent out an email campaigning for Williams to be fired:

The MRC does not mention Bozell's record of lying or why he has been allowed to keep his job despite that.

MRC Buries Its Anti-Vaxxer Ties
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has been working overtime to keep conservatives from taking the blame for promoting anti-vaccination claims. Typical is a Feb. 3 NewsBusters post by Kyle Drennen, who complained that media outlets "jumped on potential Republican 2016 contenders Chris Christie and Rand Paul being sympathetic toward parents skeptical of child vaccinations" while they "ignored Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton holding the same positions in 2008."

Drennen conveniently ignores the fact that the debate over vaccines was much different in 2008, when Obama said in a campaign appearance that the link between vaccines and autism was "inconclusive" (a statement Drennen bizarrely claims is "anti-vaccine rhetoric"). As the Washington Post notes, a Lancet article claiming such a link was hotly debated at the time, but it would be another two years before it would be retracted. Drennen omitted that crucial piece of context from his post.

Drennen also omits the fact that his employer, the Media Research Center, has ties to anti-vaxxers.

We've documented how the MRC engages in its own selective anti-vaccination rhetoric by fearmongering about Gardasil and other vaccines designed to prevent HPV infections that can cause cervical cancer.

Further,  the MRC has become a staunch defender of former CBS correspondent -- and prominent anti-vaxxer -- Sharyl Attkisson now that she has become a reliable anti-Obama activist. While the MRC has criticized her anti-vaxxer rhetoric in the past, it has not done so since she became a right-wing cause celebre.

That makes Drennen's pearl-cluching about supposed (and out-of-context) liberal questions on vaccination more than a little hypocritical.

MRC Promotes Mark Levin's New Contract, Ignore His Racist Comment
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center loves Mark Levin -- so much so, in fact, that it will hide his most disturbing and inflammatory remarks from the MRC's readers.

Thus, you will not hear a thing about Levin's racist attack on CNN host Fareed Zakaria, mocking his "broken English."

You will, however, read at both NewsBusters and CNSNews.com all about Levin re-upping his radio show with syndicator Westwood One. At CNS, Barbara Hollingsworth serves up the gushy detail that "The news was hailed by leading conservatives, including fellow talk show host Sean Hannity, who called Levin 'a national treasure'." NewsBusters couldn't be bothered to put a byline on its Levin-fluffing, instead proclaiming that the contract extension is "Good news for Mark Levin fans."

Of course, neither post from the MRC subsidiaries informed readers that Levin is in business with the MRC -- Levin does live-reads for the MRC on his radio show, and the MRC runs ads touting Levin's endorsement of various MRC operations.

Reality, in the form of Levin's offensive words, can't be allowed to intrude on this little lovefest.

MRC Still Can't Talk Honestly About Rape Provision In Anti-Abortion Bill
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center still doesn't want to talk about rape exceptions, or lack thereof, in right-wing proposals to ban abortion.

The latest MRC writer to whiff on the subject is Kristine Marsh, who offers up this alternative version of reality regarding a recently tabled anti-abortion bill in a Jan. 23 MRC item:

The focus of the March for Life is celebrating life and pro-life legal victories, however the media chose to celebrate a GOP fallout over a pro-life bill instead. The Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act was dropped before it could make it to a House vote the night before the March for Life. The bill would’ve banned abortions after 20 weeks but was dropped for voting after North Carolina GOP Rep. Renee Ellmers allegedly led a resistance against the bill because it did not cover exceptions for cases of rape. Luckily another pro-life bill was passed in it’s place, forbidding federal funds from going towards abortion and disabling tax credits for insurance plans which pay for abortions.

Marsh gets the issue completely wrong. The problem Ellmers and other female Republicanhouse members had with the bill is not that it didn't create a rape exception, it's that the exception in the bill was granted only if the woman had reported the rape to law enforcement.

Marsh then huffed that one media outlet "cloaked the pro-life bills in ominous language saying the GOP was 'forbidding' access to abortions." Forbidding access to abortion is exactly what the bills are designed to do. Why does Marsh think it's "ominous" to report accurately on the bill's intent?

MRC Thinks Joy Behar Is A 'Journalist'
Topic: Media Research Center

In a Jan. 19 Media Research Center item headlined "Journalists Thrilled By All of Obama’s State of the Union Speeches," Rich Noyes makes no effort to discern between commentators allowed to express opinions and regular journalists, and he plucks the words of those journalists out of context to hide the fact that many of them simply appear to be making objective observations about Obama's speeches instead of the endorsements Noyes claims they are.

And then there's this section:

That's right -- Noyes is portraying Joy Behar, a former co-host of the decidedly not-journalism show "The View," as a "journalist."

Mind you, Noyes is the MRC's research director. But it's "research" like this that keeps the MRC from being taken seriously as a legitimate research organization -- it's too enslaved to its right-wing agenda for that.

MRC Unhappy Climate Deniers Are Accurately Labeled
Topic: Media Research Center

Mike Ciandella complains in a Jan. 14 Media Research Center item:

A group of climate change alarmists has demanded that the media stop being so nice to those with different viewpoints on climate. The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry petitioned the media to drop the term “skeptic” in favor of “denier,” when referring to anyone who questions their views on climate change.

The petition ignored more than 400 scientists who have publicly questioned the extent of mankind’s influence when it comes to climate change.

According to the Orwellian-sounding Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, “Public discussion of scientific topics such as global warming is confused by misuse of the term ‘skeptic.’” The Committee’s petition called for journalists to only use the term “denier,” and never “skeptic,” when referring to anyone not convinced that humans are responsible for climate change. CSI is a project of the Center for Inquiry, a group which, among other things, campaigns to prevent religious groups from being allowed to own hospitals.

CSI also relies heavily on the word of “experts” like Bill Nye (whose career depends on people not realizing that “science guy” doesn’t mean “scientist”) and Neil deGrasse Tyson (who has been criticized for fabricating quotes to make a point). Despite this, The Washington Post hyped this petition, and even used Nye’s name in the headline for credibility.

At no point does Ciandella dispute the accuracy of the label. While he tries to blur the issue by claiming that deniers merely have "different viewpoints on climate," he merely bashes those who support its (accurate) use.

Ciandella's complaining that Nye isn't a real scientist is rather rich considering that many of the leading lights on the denier side are even less qualified. For instance, Marc Morano, who leads the denier site Climate Depot, has a bachelor's degree in political science and spent much of his pre-denier career in media working for both Rush Limbaugh and the MRC-owned CNSNews.com.

Similarly, "Lord" Christopher Monckton also has no formal training in science; his degrees are in journalism and the classics. But Ciandella doesn't mention their purported lack of training in the subject in which they speak publicly on the most.

And it's quite rich of Ciandella to complain about the word "denier" when he uses the word "alarmist" to describe anyone who agrees with the demonstrated science of global warming.

MRC: Fox News Dispute With Dish Network Is A Democratic Conspiracy
Topic: Media Research Center

The last time we saw Media Research Center videographer Dan Joseph, he was embarrassing himself by pathetically pretending to be transgender to mock the idea that transgendered people have rights. Now he's on the conspiracy bandwagon in a Jan. 13 blog post (boldface his):

Dish Network dropped Fox News and its sister network Fox Business Channel at the end of last year and the network still remains blacked out for Dish’s 14 million subscribers. Dish Network claims that they dropped the nation’s number one cable news network because of a contract dispute. 

However in recent days Fox News has begun to suggest that Dish Network is engaged in an effort to censor the network's content.

While it’s not entirely clear who’s in the right in this matter, digging into the background of Dish Network’s  founder and chairman Charles Ergen may help to illuminate why animosity between Dish and FNC has reached such epic proportions.

As it turns out, Charles Ergen is a big-time donor to the Democratic Party.  According to Open Secrets, Ergen donated a total of $64,000 to the Democratic Senatorial campaign Committee in 2014. 

The whole censorship conspiracy Joseph is pushing had one big hole in it: as a substitute for Fox News, Dish Network made available another right-wing "news" channel, The Blaze, to its subscribers. Joseph didn't mention that.

Joseph then tries to back down, claiming that such a donation "does not necessarily mean that he is targeting Fox News due to a disagreement with the network’s content." Then he negates it by bringing out the boldface again: 

But, Ergen may have a history of abusing his position of power to promote his political preferences.

In 2012, a federal complaint was filed against Ergen in which several company executives alleged that he had intimidated them into making contributions to specific candidates, the majority of which were Democrats.

The claim was filed by an unnamed company insider who accused Ergen of "forcing" Dish Network’s Chief Operating Officer Bernard Han to donate to a Democratic Party candidate in the 2009/2010 election cycle.

The complaint also claimed that Han was “encouraged" to attend Democratic functions and fundraisers and that other Dish employees were strong-armed by Ergen in a similar way.

Curiously, a couple days later when noting that Fox and Dish Network had reached an agreement to return the channels to the service, Joseph mentioned nothing about his big Democrat censorship conspiracy.

MRC Defends The Honor of France's Far-Right National Front
Topic: Media Research Center

It's nice to know that the Media Research Center is running to the defense of the National Front, the far-right French political group.

In a Jan. 7 item, Scott Whitlock took offense at the "false equivalence" of right-wing extremists in Europe like the National Front being likened to extremist Muslims, making sure to tell us: "Militant non-Muslims are not beheading and shooting Muslims in Europe. In general, they are calling for changes in immigration laws."

Whitlock doesn't mention that those "changes in immigration laws" he presents as so benign actually involve a complete moratorium on immigration, or that National Front leader Marine Le Pen has likened Muslims in France to a Nazi occupation.

Two days later, Curtis Houck took offense at a pundit on MSNBC claiming that the National Front has "no business" taking part in Parliament, disdainfully noting how the pundit "drew a moral equivalency between the murdering Islamic jihadists who committed the attacks and caused so much angst since Wednesday and a French political party."

And a Jan. 8 NewsBusters post by Tom Blumer sneer at the New York Times highlighting the anti-immigrant sentiments of far-right nationalists like the National Front, snarkily adding: "Yeah, those are Europe's biggest problems, not Islamic terrorism."

We'd say something about strange bedfellows, but the right-wing MRC defending other right-wingers is not strange at all.

The MRC's 'No True Scotsman' Theory of Christian Violence
Topic: Media Research Center

"No true Scotsman" is the informal name of a logical fallacy that seeks to exclude a person from a group for certain behavior by claiming that through engaging in that behavior, they aren't a "real" member of that group.

Or, as the Media Rsearch Center interprets it: If a Christian committed an act of violence or terror, he or she is not a Christian. The point, of course, is to  drive home the point that Muslims who commit terroristic acts, i.e. the Charlie Hebdo attack, are acting in accordance with their group.

In a Jan. 7 MRC item, Kristine Marsh took offense when someone brought up an incident of a Christian who beheaded someone last year. Marsh insisted that the perpetrator was "heavily drugged man with fanatical 'Christian' beliefs," then huffed: "While this man was rightly described as a “religious zealot,” if there’s a beheading revival sweeping Christian denominations, we’re unaware of it. It takes an awful lot of magical thinking to seriously compare one random psychotic event to a the near-weekly decapitations by ISIS – not to mention al Qaeda’s fondness for sawing off infidels’ heads on video – and other common atrocities committed explicitly in the name of Islam."

When another person on TV pointed out that Anders Breivik, who massacred dozens in Norway, was a Christian, Matthew Balan denied it in a Jan. 12 item, claiming that Breivik "considered himself to be a 'cultural Christian,' and condemned then-Pope Benedict XVI, as well as Protestant churches. So, just as in the case of the Lord's Resistance Army, Breivik isn't a serious Christian."

Yet all Muslims are somehow responsible when someone claims to kill in the name of Islam. Interesting.

MRC, Alveda King Try to Exploit Nicki Minaj's Pain
Topic: Media Research Center

You knew that Nicki Minaj's admission that she is "haunted" by an abortion she had as a teenager would be catnip to anti-abortion activists. And true to form, the Media Research Center pounces and exploits her pain.

Katie Yoder writes in a Jan. 9 MRC item:

Despite the media’s narrative, the loss of a little baby through abortion is not easily forgotten, according to pro-life leaders.

Dr. Alveda C. King, pro-life activist and niece of Martin Luther King, Jr., and others spoke at a Washington, D.C. press conference Jan. 8 to launch “Healing the Shockwaves of Abortion,” a year-long initiative of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign to reach out to those impacted by abortion. At the event, Dr. King told MRC Culture that abortion will change even singer Nicki Minaj – and that Minaj will “reach that conclusion” that abortion “was bad for me” and “bad for my baby.”

At the event, MRC Culture asked King, the Priests for Life Pastoral Associate and African American Outreach Director, how she responds to women like Nicki Minaj, who recently admitted that while abortion “haunted” her, she defines herself as pro-choice.

King acknowledged, “I was pro-choice early on.” Referencing herself and Georgette Forney, a Silent No More Awareness co-founder who once had an abortion, she said, “We were protesting because we did not understand.”

“Nicki basically said, ‘Well I guess I must still say I’m pro-choice, or I would sound hypocritical because I had an abortion,’” she explained. 

Yoder falsely privileges King with the "Dr." honorific even though her doctorate is honorary.

Yoder goes on to claim that the "Shockwaves" project "seeks to expose and heal the secrecy and silence surrounding the emotional and physical pain of abortion." If the movement's treatment of Nicki Minaj is any indication, the actual goal is to exploit other people's pain for their own political ends by claiming that some women's regret of abortion means that nobody should be allowed to have one.

MRC Touts Bill Donohue's Censorship Push, Omits His Link to Bozell
Topic: Media Research Center

In a Jan. 9 CNSNews.com article, Susan Jones promotes Catholic League chief Bill Donohue's call for censorship of religious criticism, in which he blames the victim by suggesting that the staffers of Charlie Hebdo massacred by Islamist extremist had it coming because they were "pornographers disguised as satirists" suffering from "narcissism." Donohue also asserted there is no "moral right" to make fun of religion and the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists have no right to "do whatever they want."

Jones fails to report, however, that her boss, Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell, is on the board of advisers for the Catholic League. The MRC frequently fails to disclose Bozell's links to right-wing Catholic activists it promotes.

All of this raises an interesting question: Does Bozell endorse Donohue's call for censorship? After all, the MRC loves to call out any instance of religious criticism in the media no matter how deserved, as demonstrated by Dave Pierre's desperate attempts to dismiss concerns over the Catholic Church's history of sexual abuse.

We'd ask Bozell ourselves, but he's blocked us from following him on Twitter, apparently too thin-skinned to handle criticism.

UPDATE: Conservatives Hugh Hewitt and Noah Rothman have denounced Donohue's call for censorship and victim-blaming. By contrast, Jones offered no counterpoint to Donohue's view.

MRC Takes Another Cheap Shot At Sandra Fluke
Topic: Media Research Center

You might recall that the Media Research Center was one of the most vociferous defenders of Rush Limbaugh following his three-day misogynistic tirade against Sandra Fluke, with MRC chief Brent Bozell refusing to offer any meaningful criticism and launching an "I Stand With Rush" website and his MRC underlings enthusiastically endorsing Rush's misogyny.

Fluke's loss in her race to be elected to a California state senate seat gave the MRC an opportunity to another cheap shot at Fluke. In their Dec. 27 column, Bozell and Tim Graham sneer: "Even that paragon of permissiveness Sandra Fluke couldn’t exploit her Limbaugh-victim aura to win a state Senate seat in libertine California."

How does advocating for birth control make one a "paragon of permissiveness"? Bozell and Graham don't explain, perhaps because the exact opposite is true: Fluke is demonstrating her responsibility.

Apparently Bozell and Graham think every woman who takes birth control is a slut or a prostitute, just like Limbaugh said.