MRC Tries to Play The Clinton Equivocation to Defect From Trump Jr.'s Scandal Topic: Media Research Center
The Clinton Equivocation to deflect from Republican -- and now Trump -- scandals will never die at the Media Resarch Center, apparently. Geoffrey Dickens writes in a July 13 MRC post (boldface his):
The Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) evening news shows, in the last four nights, have been dominated by Donald J. Trump Jr.’s 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower – a meeting in which apparently no favors, money or meaningful information was exchanged – but those same shows all but ignored Hillary Clinton’s Russia-Uranium scandal back in 2015.
Author Peter Schweizer, in his 2015 bookClinton Cash, broke the story that a Canadian uranium company, seeking approval of a sale to the Russian government from then Secretary of State Clinton’s State Department, had donated millions to the Clinton Foundation.
At the time, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was considered the favorite to win the Democratic nomination but the networks couldn’t care less. Total amount of Big Three evening news network coverage of that story in over two years?Just 3 minutes and 1 second.
However, in just four nights the Big Three networks have swamped their evening news shows with62 minutes and 18 secondsof Donald Trump Jr. coverage, or20 timesmore than what they devoted to the Clinton Foundation uranium deal scandal.
Dickens leaves out a few inconvenient facts in recounting this -- namely, that this has since been revealed to be a partisan attack. As we've noted, Schweizer's book was funded by a group called the Government Accountability Institute, which was headed by one Steve Bannon, who later joined the campaign of Hillary Clinton's opponent, Donald Trump, and is now a top aide to Trump in the White House.
Dickens asserts that, according to Schweizer, "Bill Clinton was in Moscow for a particularly well-compensated speech" around the time that the deal was being considered. But as PolitiFact points out, the amount of money paid for that speech was not out of line with similar Clinton speaking engagements.
Dickens did concede that the uranium deal had to be signed off by "a committee, including Clinton’s State Department, but also including the Departments of Treasury, Justice, Defense, Homeland Security, Commerce, and Energy, plus the U.S. Trade Representative, and the Office of Science and Technology," as well as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which meant that Clinton by herself could not either approve or stop the deal. But Dickens then claimed that Schweizer "countered that argument" during an interview; in fact, all Schweizer did was more conspiracy-mongering.
In other words, there's no actual scandal here, no matter how much the MRC quotes a Trump-associated hitman to claim otherwise.
The MRC's Clinton Equivocation is becoming a crutch to use instead of conducting genuine "media research."
Dubious WND Doc Rants About Filthy, Disease-Ridden Immigrants Again Topic: WorldNetDaily
Elizabeth Lee Vliet -- a doctor affiliated with the far-riught-fringe Association of American Physicians and Surgeons -- plays the filthy-immigrant card (as she loves to do) in a July 21 WorldNetDaily column:
Since 2005, Americans have been warned about microscopic border crossers carried in with refugees and illegal immigrants, bringing diseases previously eradicated or rarely seen here. When not simply ignored by media and health officials, physicians and others sounding the alarm have been attacked as xenophobes.
Now we’re seeing these prescient predictions come true, most prominently in Germany, since 2015 when Angela Merkel began allowing more than 2 million migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East to flood into her country.
U.S. and German citizens are put at significant risk by the politically correct acceptance of unscreened immigrants from countries with a high prevalence of infectious diseases, many difficult or impossible to treat. Yet authorities in both countries have failed to fully inform the public of the dangers.
According to the July 2017 Infectious Disease Epidemiology Annual Reportby the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, Germany has seen a surge in chicken pox, cholera, dengue fever, tuberculosis, leprosy, measles, malaria, meningococcal diseases, hemorrhagic fevers, hepatitis, HIV/AIDS, paratyphoid, rubella, shigellosis, syphilis, typhus, toxoplasmosis, tularemia, trichinellosis, whooping cough, and many fungal and parasitic infections.
Vliet mentions nothing about vaccinations, which if done to the level recommended by the vast majority of medical experts not affiliated with the AAPS, would provide herd immunity that would protect Americans from many of these diseases. Perhaps that's because the AAPS opposes mandatory vaccination. Indeed, as we've documented, some disease outbreaks in immigrant communities are caused by outsider anti-vaccine activists spreading fear about vaccines.
Perhaps Vliet should address that issue -- and confront the AAPS about it -- before going on another anti-immigrant tirade. Ah, who are we kidding? She's totally dedicated to immigrant-bashing to address that issue:
Even healthy immigrants burden the system with social costs, such as housing, education and food stamps – costs borne by taxpaying workers whose own wages are depressed by competition from a glut of low-paid foreigners. Illegal immigrants are estimated to cost U.S. taxpayers $17 billion per year. That $17 billion is in addition to the costs for those allowed here legally under “refugee” status, for which we do not have reliable public estimates.
Liberal and progressive politicians like to say, “America is the land of immigrants.” In the past, this meantlegalimmigrants who follow our screening procedures for illness and other laws and who are coming to America to be part ofourculture.
Medical screening was one of the core purposes of the Ellis Island immigration center in New York. New arrivals were examined, quarantined if needed, or sent back to their country of origin if they posed a risk to Americans.
To protect the health and safety of American citizens, we must reinstate our prior customary medical screening as outlined on our own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website.
For national security and medical concerns, President Trump is correct to enforce our immigration laws, with careful vetting of those seeking to come to America to live and work.
Vliet doesn't mention that Trump wants to cut the CDC's budget by 17 percent.
SHOCK: Trump Stenographer CNS Defends Sessions Against Trump Topic: CNSNews.com
So it appears there is a limit to which CNSNews.com will serve as a servilestenographer and cheerleader for President Trump.
Trump's repeated Twitter attacks on his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, got CNS' attention, and it fell in line with the rest of the right-wing media to let Trump know that this was a bridge too far for them by hurling "news" articles and columns at the issue:
There's also a story about the White House press secretary being asked about "the conservatives rallying behind Sessions," and not one but two pleas from the MRC's favorite radio host-slash-business partner, Mark Levin, for Trump to leave Sessions alone.
Why, it's almost as if CNS has a highly partisan editorial agenda dictated from outside the organization that has nothing to do with actual news and everything to do with advancing its right-wing ideology.
UPDATE: So committed to defending Sessions is CNS that editor in chief Terry Jeffrey penned an entire column on it, asserting that "American [sic] needs an honorable person leading the Justice Department, which is why Attorney General Sessions needs to stay."
In a July 23 WorldNetDaily article, Alicia Powe spreads false and unsubstantiated smears of purportedly "Satanic" behavior against various and sundry people in entertainment and politics.
For instance, she quotes somebody named Christopher Everard, in the midst of accusing the entertainment industry of having "an anti-Christ thread," ranting that "Singer Katy Perry’s latest album cover is brazen with satanic iconology." This claim is never substantiated.
Powe also writes:
Americans are now witnessing music icons using occult imagery on album covers and even selling perfume and face cream containing blood and human body parts. During the 2016 presidential election, they learned that Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta had been invited to an occult “spirit cooking” event.
[...]
During the 2016 presidential race, WikiLeaks released stolen emails belonging to Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta revealing an invitation by his brother to a “spirit cooking dinner” at the home of artist Marina Abramovic.
Practitioners of the bizarre and gory ceremony mix blood, breast milk, urine and sperm together and use the mixture to paint messages on the walls.
Powe is lying. As an actual news organization, the Washington Post, explained, while "spirit cooking" was the name of an art installation by Abramovic in which some of those things happened, the actual dinner was normal and involved none of that stuff Powe wants to fearmonger over.
Do Powe and WND have the integrity to honestly and forthrightly correct their false smear against Podesta and baseless attack on Katy Perry? History suggests otherwise.
MRC's Double Standard on Insulting Comments About The Looks of Others Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Katie Yoder rants in a July 24 post:
With incessant coverageon everything from slut-shaming to the Women’s March, the liberal media claim to stand for all women. All women, unless they disagree with a liberal agenda, that is.
So much for diversity and tolerance.
On Friday, The Daily Beast and Culture Writer Ira Madison III attacked the looks of newly appointed White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Twitter.
“Butch queen first time in drags at the ball,” he tweeted alongside a picture of Huckabee Sanders at a White House press briefing.
In other words, Madison called Huckabee Sanders a gay male (“butch queen”) dressed as a woman (“in drags”).
It seems Yoder has forgotten that her boss, MRC chief Brent Bozell, said President Obama looked like a "skinny ghetto crackhead." That seems relevant if Yoder wants to further express any kind of moral superiority over Madison.
By the way, Madison later apologized and deleted his tweet (as Yoder later noted in an update). By contrast, Bozell has never apologized for his ugly, racially charged smear of Obama.
Yoder might want to keep that in mind as well the next time she attacks someone else for mocking the appearance of another.
WND Still Attacking 'Bible Answer Man' for Not Being Christian Enough Topic: WorldNetDaily
In April, we wrote about how WorldNetDaily's Art Moore effectively declared that the only acceptable form of Christianity is evangelical Protestantism by attacking Hank Hanegraaff, who hosts a radio show called "Bible Answer Man" but also recently converted to the Greek Orthodox faith, which Moore doesn't really elucidate is also a form of Christianity.
Well, Moore is keeping up the attack on Hanegraaff for apparaently not being Christian enough in a July 22 article:
Can Hank Hanegraaff continue to be the “Bible Answer Man,” daily answering questions about faith and practice posed by a largely evangelical Protestant audience of radio listeners after converting to the Greek Orthodox Church last spring?
Hanegraaff believes so, contending that in the spirit of “mere Christianity,” he remains a defender of the essentials of the faith.
But family members of the founder of the organization he leads, the Christian Research Institute, are calling on him to resign. They argue in a statementit is “fundamentally dishonest” for Hanegraaff on CRI’s call-in radio show to try to reconcile Protestant doctrinal principles such as “sola scriptura” — the Bible is the sole rule of faith and practice — with the Eastern Orthodox belief in the on-going, Spirit-led authority of church tradition.
Moore doesn't explicitly state that the family members attacking Hanegraaff have no authority over him since they're no longer involved in the ministry, though he does concede that one daughter "whose husband ... is CRI's webmaster, did not sign the statement.":
Moore stacked the article against Hanegraaff to ensure he couldn't properly respond because he's ill, as Moore effectively admits:
WND asked for an interview with Hanegraaff, but his spokesman, Stephen Ross, said he has been unable to respond due to his health. Hanegraaff revealed in May he has mantle cell lymphoma, a rare form of cancer, and has been undergoing aggressive treatment.
Ross gave WND a previous statement by Hanegraaff addressing the question of whether or not his conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy is in conflict with the mission of CRI.
Much of the rest of Moore's article consists of repeating parts of that statement, countered by attacks on Hanegraaff's faith.
MRC Promotes Levin's Temper Tantrum Over Book Sales Topic: Media Research Center
We've documented how the Media Research Center and right-wing radio host Mark Levin have had a mutual promotion agreement -- Levin touts the MRC on his radio show, and the MRC touts Levin on its network of websites. As far as we know, that business deal is still in force; at least, the MRC promoting Levin's latest book like it is.
On July 6, MRC chief Brent Bozell and lieutenant (and ghost-writer) Tim Graham penned a column complaining that the media (well, the media outside the right-wing bubble) was ignoring Levin's book. There was no disclosure of their history of business deals. That got the attention of CNN's Brian Stelter, who invited Levin on his show "Reliable Sources." Levin petulantly declined, essentially saying he didn't want to be on stupid CNN anyway.
The MRC indulged Levin's petulance further with a July 21 CNSNews.com article by Gage Cohen featuring Levin whining that the New York Times' nonfiction bestsellers chart bumped his book down from No. 1 to No. 2, while Nielsen Bookscan kept him in first place.
Bozell then followed up, doubling down on the hate on his Twitter account, in which he huffed that the Times was "shameful losers" for accurately reporting its numbers, then screeched that the Times was publishing "leftist 'Fake Book Lists,'" -- all despite offering no evidence that there is anything fake or falsified about the Times' data.
Oddly, Bozell didn't link to his own website's article as backup; instead, he used an article by the Washington Examiner's right-wing lackey Paul Bedard (with whom the MRC also has a promotion deal).
Perhaps Bozell and the MRC could act a little more like the media watchdogs they claim to be and a little less like the self-dealing promoters they appear to actually be.
WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah whines in his July 19 column:
There’s an imminent attack being prepared in the God-forsaken fake newsrooms of CNN Investigations.
I thought I’d alert you to this and prepare you for what I believe will be an all-out campaign by the network to discourage advertisers from working with independent news operations such as WND.com. Breitbart.com, DailyCaller.com and others.
How do I know?
I have it on good authority.
I’ve even heard from CNN Investigations in an email that strongly suggests the approach these fake, phony con men will be taking on their “story.”
[...]
Here’s my public response to this private solicitation: No thanks! I do not covet being quoted or misquoted by fake news CNN. I am not going to participate in your propaganda designed to squelch different points of view from being expressed in our nation. I have no desire to be a part of your nefarious and mischievous standard-less smut-peddling.
How ironic that Farah is raging at CNN for being "fake news" when his own website is one of the mostnotoriouspeddlers of fake news. Indeed, the signature story in WND's history -- Barack Obama's "eligibility" to be president -- was nothing but fake news.
Farah goes on to rant against CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, whom he claims went into an undefined earlier interview with Farah with the intent "to vilify, to defile, to slander and to ruin":
I had figured as much going in. Today everyone knows what Jim Acosta is about. He’s a highly partisan political activist – mean-spirited to the core – posing as a “newsman,” literally playing one on TV. In two hours, I never gave him a single soundbite he could use for the hatchet job he had planned. Thus, nothing ever aired.
Of course, "highly partisan political activist posing as a newsperson, with an intent to vilify, to defile, to slander and to ruin" is an accurate description of every single WND employee, including Farah. Remember how WND tried to personally destroy Obama, up to and including portraying him as the Antichrist.
Farah also complains that CNN is on a "search for selective facts to buttress a pre-conceived narrative" -- again, what WND does pretty much all the time.
In other words, Farah is projecting -- ascribing faults to CNN that are really about his own operation. If Farah has no problem being the founder and leader of such a biased "news" operation, why should he care what CNN does?
MRC Censors News About Withdrawing Its Own Award From Hannity Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center was in a little bit of a controversy in recent weeks.
In early June, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens used his column to attack the idea of the MRC bestowing its annual William F. Buckley Award for Media Excellence. Stephens declared that while neither Hannity nor the MRC were "particularly noteworthy," giving an award named after Buckley -- who had nourished a brand of conservatism that was "fundamentally literary -- to a conspiracy-monger like Hannity ushers in the "post-literate conservative world."
When Stephens ushered in his move to the Times from the Wall Street Journal a month before with a column questioning climate change, the MRC touted how Stephens made "liberal snowflakes" upset by it. But it stayed silent aout Stephens' diss of the MRC's planned award. A June 29 NewsBusters post by Randy Hall praised MSNBC for adding Stephens as a commentator -- but he stayed silent about how Stephens bashed the MRC's award.
Last week, however, CNN's Jake Tapper broke the news that the MRC has decided not to give the award to Hannity, reportedly after Buckley's son, author Christopher Buckley, "expressed great dismay" at the idea and contacted the MRC to express his disapproval. The MRC, meanwhile, was spinning it as a "scheduling conflict," and Hannity had a Twitter meltdown over the revelation, insisting that he was "unable to attend."
This is big news in the conservative world. But you won't read about it on any MRC-operated website.
We found no reference to the controversy on NewsBusters, CNSNews.com or MRCTV. The main Twitter feed for the MRC, as well as the NewsBusters feed, also ignored it. The only mention we found was a single tweet by MRC chief Brent Bozell, in which he advanced the questionable scheduling-conflict storyline: "MRC awarded Hannity the Buckley award. Hannity subsequently told us he couldn’t make it. We chose not to hand out the award this year."
In other words, the MRC got scooped on its own story and is trying to keep the truth from its own readers. It's a reminder that the MRC hates the truth when it involves something unflattering about its fellow conservatives -- and especially itself.
WND Never Proves SPLC's 'Hate Group' Assessments Wrong Topic: WorldNetDaily
Like other right-wing outlets (like the Media Research Center), WorldNetDaily has claimed a role in the current, coordinated right-wing war against the Southern Poverty Law Center for pointing out the hate-filled agendas of some right-wing groups. And like the MRC, WND simply attacks the SPLC instead of proving its assertions wrong.
For the second time in weeks, an organization has been caught using information from the domestic terror-linked Southern Poverty Law Center to smear a third party.
One lawsuit already has resulted and a second complaint is developing.
WND reported last month Liberty Counsel sued the charity-reporting service GuideStar for featuring SPLC’s “hate” designation on GuideStar’s page for Liberty Counsel.
Now, ABC News has put itself in the crosshairs of the Alliance Defending Freedom with the same stunt – using SPLC’s “hate” label to smear a non-profit.
The ABC story was about Attorney Jeff Sessions speaking at an ADF event. The network, citing SPLC, referred to ADF as “an alleged hate group.”
While Unruh does note the SPLC's claim that ADF "specializes in supporting the recriminalization of homosexuality abroad, ending same-sex marriage and generally making life as difficult as possible for LGBT communities in the U.S. and internationally," at no point does Unruh bother to disprove it, instead devoting the bulk of his article to rehashing old attacks on the SPLC.
The left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center, which has been in the spotlight recently for its practice of designating conservative non-profits as “hate groups,” has gone on defense.
Richard Cohen, the president of SPLC, which has been linked to a domestic terror attack, wrote in a Huffington Post commentary that Christians deserve the designation because they “sow the seeds of hate.”
For adhering to a biblical perspective on homosexuality, for one thing.
The Family Research Council, wrote Cohen, has a “long track record of using dehumanizing language and outright lies to portray LGBT people as sick, evil, and a danger to children and society. As stated on its website, it opposes the acceptance of homosexuality ‘in the law, in the media, and in the schools.'”
He also renewed his group’s attacks on the conservative Center for Immigration Studies.
“It’s a group whose immigration agenda is colored by ethnic bias,” he claimed.
SPLC’s defense of its activities comes on the heels of a lawsuit against the charity-monitoring organization GuideStar over its use of SPLC’s “hate” designations.
Note that Unruh falsely framed Cohen's calling out of specific hateful behaviors as an broad attack on "Christians." (As before, the bulk of Unruh's article is devoted to attacks on the SPLC.) Also, Unruh not only limits his quoting of Cohen to the above lines, he doesn't liken to Cohen's commentary, presumably so WND readers cannot see the specifics Cohen cited behind the SPLC's designation for the FRC and the CIS:
At their root, hate groups – those that have “beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics” – are anti-democratic. Like hate crimes, they rip apart society along its most fragile fault lines – lines such as race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.
CIS is a case in point. It’s a group whose immigration agenda is colored by ethnic bias. Part of a network of anti-immigration groups founded by white supremacist John Tanton, CIS has disseminated more than 1,700 articles from VDARE, a racist website and hub for white nationalists over the past decade. Hundreds of other articles came from leading racists and anti-Semites like Kevin McDonald, a former psychology professor who argues that Jews are genetically driven to destroy Western civilization. And, incredibly, after the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, CIS President Mark Krikorian wrote, “My guess is that Haiti’s so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough.”
The FRC is an even easier call.
It has a long track record of using dehumanizing language and outright lies to portray LGBT people as sick, evil, and a danger to children and society. As stated on its website, it opposes the acceptance of homosexuality “in the law, in the media, and in schools.” In other words, LGBT people should not have the same rights and protections as everyone else.
FRC President Tony Perkins claims that pedophilia is a “homosexual problem” – even though the American Psychological Association has concluded that gay men are no more likely than straight men to molest children. He has said the “It Gets Better” campaign, an initiative designed to give LGBT students hope, is “disgusting” and part of a “concerted effort” to “recruit” children into the gay “lifestyle.” He once voiced supportfor a proposed law in Uganda that would mean a life sentence for anyone caught having gay sex and the death penalty in certain cases involving homosexuality.
The FRC may not advocate violence, but its inflammatory rhetoric pours fuel on the fires of hate. FBI statistics show that the LGBT community is, by far, the minority group most likely to be targeted for violent hate crimes.
[...]
The CIS and FRC are certainly closer to the mainstream than groups like the neo-Nazi National Alliance. But that does not mean they don’t sow the seeds of hate. In fact, it means they have bigger, more powerful megaphones to spread their divisive, anti-democratic message. And that’s all the more reason to call them out.
That's a truth Unruh and WND obviously don't wants their readers to know.
MRC Still Pushing Bogus Study About Political Donations By 'Journalists' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Brad Wilmouth writes in a July 15 post:
On Friday's MSNBC Live, host Craig Melvin denied that the dominant news media have a liberal bias after Republican Congressman Dave Brat started hitting him with reports that over 96 percent of journalists who made political donations chose Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. A bit later, Melvin denied biased reporting as he declared, "Even if that bias did exist -- which, I mean, Dave, it doesn't -- even if it did --" Brat zinged him: "Ifit exists? Now, you got to come clean with me on that one."
At about 1:32 p.m. ET, after the MSNBC host began the interview by asking the Virginia Republican about Donald Trump Jr.'s emails and Russia collusion, Brat began complaining about the media's history of going soft on Democrats, and tied in their tendency to donate overwhelmingly to the liberal side. Brat:
No one gets to play the innocent here. Hillary raised $2 billion in the Hillary foundation from foreign money, and CNN and all the biggies never found anything on that. TheWashington Postis great on Watergate, but they missed Clintongate altogether. Why is that? Well, maybe it's because 97 percent of the donations from mainstream (media) folks go to the Democrat party. Gee, I wonder if that could, you know, influence the news at all.
The congressman was apparently referring to an October 2016findingby the Center for Public Integrity that more than 96 percent of journalists who gave large amounts money to presidential candidates that year had given to Clinton.
But that poll has been discredited because of its dishonesty. As we've documented, CPI's definition of "journalist" is so broad it includes people who haven't worked in journalism for years as well as TV talking heads like Larry King who aren't getting paid to be journalists. Most of the working journalists in hard news that CPI cites as making political donations are employed by small local papers, not large national media organizations that generally prohibit reporters from making poltiical donations.
That the MRC remains dedicated to promoting such a dishonest "study" tells you a lot about the lack of quality in the MRC's work.
WND's Klayman: It's OK for Cliven Bundy To Say 'Negro' Because MLK Said It Topic: WorldNetDaily
The political prosecution of Cliven Bundy, his sons and tens of other defendants is an outrage begun by President Barack Obama and his Justice Department, then run by former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, essentially because Cliven used the word “Negro” in commenting that he and his family could appreciate how African-Americans were mistreated by the federal government, given how this same federal government, under Obama and Lynch, with the aid of former Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, had attempted to enslave them, too. As just one example of how Obama took offense and then threatened Cliven, just watch the video below.
At a White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which occurred just after the successful standoff at Bunkerville, land Cliven’s family had ranched for over 150 years, Obama, with a sick, arrogant smirk, mocked and disparaged Cliven and in effect warned him about the consequences of using the word “Negro,” not coincidentally a term used by the great civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. to refer to himself and his fellow “Negroes.” Ironically, in the days of King, the use of the term “black,” which later gained acceptance, was thought racist. That is why the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was with King when he was tragically assassinated, later coined another term, “African-American,” to refer to his race.
(No, Larry, using the word "Negro" was not why Cliven Bundy got into trouble no matter how much you claim that' what he "essentially" said. And claiming that MLK used the word "negro" does not excuse Bundy's use of it.)
MRC -- Who Dismisses Ted Nugent's Underage Proclivities -- Rages At R. Kelly Topic: Media Research Center
Corinne Weaver sounded quite alarmed in her July 18 Media Research Center post:
The media can turn anyone into a hero or a villain. In the case of R&B pop star R. Kelly, they’ve promoted his career and downplayed at least 15 years of sex crime allegations. He’s been featured both as a guest and musical performer on top network shows.
Late night TV talk programs such asThe Tonight ShowandJimmy Kimmel Live!, as well as daytime’sGood Morning America, have given the singer glowing airtime and promotions for his many albums. Kimmel gave a friendly interview to the singer on December 4, 2013, and said to him, “There is so much I could learn from you.” Nothing was said about allegations about sex with underage girls.
The latest allegations against Kelly are the most alarming.BuzzFeed News unveiled a shocking expose alleging in the title that that the singer is “Is Holding Women Against Their Will” as part of a “cult.”
The claims, if true, are disburbing. (Kelly's people have denied it.) But Weaver is engaging in a double standard here.
We've noted that the MRC is loath to talk about how right-wing darling Ted Nugent loved to brag about bedding underage girls during his peak rock-star days. So obsessed was Nugent with them, in fact, that he had himself declared the legal guardian of one underage girl to put a patina of respectability on the relationship.
The one time that we could find that Nugent's love of jailbait was mentioned at the MRC, it was immediately dismissed with a Clinton Equivocation. In the 2014 post, Tim Graham (who else?) did the honors, attacking a New York Times article for committing the offense of bringing it up:
[Reporter Manny] Fernandez and the Times had no problem throwing the rhetorical kitchen sink at Nugent: "Democrats had no shortage of comments or behavior from Mr. Nugent’s past at which to take offense. They called him a 'sexual predator,' citing an episode of VH1’s 'Behind the Music' that stated he had admitted to liaisons with underage girls and had persuaded one girl’s mother to sign papers making him the girl’s legal guardian."
That's really rich from Democrats who didn't mind Clinton's liaisons with college-age interns, or charges of rape. But when you call Bill Clinton a sexual "predator," as Rand Paul did on TV, the Times avoided any mention of the word.
If a Clinton did it first, it's OK for a Republican. The MRC doesn't give non-conservative entertainers the same pass.
WND Report on Purported Clinton-Linked Witness Sure Looks Like Fake News Topic: WorldNetDaily
An anonymously written July 16 WorldNetDaily article tells the story:
Klaus Eberwein, a former Haitian government official who was expected to testify against alleged Clinton Foundation corruption and malpractice next week, has been found dead in Miami via gunshot wound to the head.
The death was ruled a suicide. Eberwein was 50 and reportedly told acquaintances he feared for his life for his fierce criticism of the Clinton Foundation.
Eberwein was due to appear next Tuesday before the Haitian Senate Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission where he was widely expected to testify that the Clinton Foundation misappropriated Haiti earthquake donations from international donors.
WND made sure to push the angle that the Clintons are somehow responsible for his death by including this promotional line between the second and third paragraphs: "How many people do YOU know who have died mysteriously? Not as many as the Clintons! Check out WND’s explosive report, '‘Clinton death list’: 33 spine-tingling cases.'"
As with anything Clinton (and most things WND), there's some fake news going on here. The anonymous WND reporter writes: "'The Clinton Foundation, they are criminals, they are thieves, they are liars, they are a disgrace,' Eberwein said at a protest outside the Clinton Foundation headquarters in Manhattan last year."
But as blogger Richard Bartholomew points out, the BBC attributed that quote to Dahoud Andre, a protest group leader. Bartholomew also couldn't find any independently sourced on-the-record statements Eberwein made about the Clintons, which makes WND's other statements about what Eberwein purportedly claimed -- i.e., "According to Eberwein, a paltry 0.6 percent of donations granted by international donors to the Clinton Foundation with the express purpose of directly assisting Haitians actually ended up in the hands of Haitian organizations' -- factually suspect as well.
Indeed, there's no on-the-record evidence that Eberwein was to testify about the Clinton Foundation. As the Miami Herald noted: "Eberwein was scheduled to appear Tuesday before the Haitian Senate’s Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, the head of the commission, Sen. Evalière Beauplan confirmed. The commission is investigating the management of PetroCaribe funds, the money Haiti receives from Venezuela’s discounted oil program." No mention of anything Clinton-related was made.
So is this another WND fake-news story based in its obsessive hatred for the Clintons? It's sure looking that way so far.
MRC Sees No Difference Between 'The Left' And A Journalist Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Scott Whitlock writes in a July 14 post:
Providing some unintentional comedy, CNN anchor Poppy Harlow on Thursday lectured a conservative Congressman, telling him, “I’m not the left. I’m a journalist.” Collectively, many Americans must have thought: “What’s the difference?” The haughty defense came after Harlow demanded of Representative Jim Jordan: “Are you comfortable with that huge reduction in Medicaid funding?”
Speaking of unintentional comedy, Whitlock has just revealed just how terrible a media researcher he is.
If Whitlock can't divine any difference at all between a journalist and someone on "the left," why should anyone take him seriously? Is he that brainwashed by the MRC's right-wing anti-media ideology that he cannot tell the difference, or has it made him so lazy that he refuses, content to mindlessly repeat any criticism of a conservative, no matter how factual, as coming from "the left"?
Does that mean that right-wing journalists are not, in fact, journalists because of their partisan bent? Whitlock doesn't address that paradox.
Being a hack may be the excuse, because he follows up the statement about Medicaid funding by asserting, "Of course, the GOP health care bill does NOT cut Medicaid." As we've pointed out, that's simply fake news -- if Medicaid is not being funded to keepthe current level of service, which is what President Trump's proposed budget does, it is in fact a cut.
The Clinton Equivocation to deflect from Republican -- and now Trump -- scandals will never die at the Media Resarch Center, apparently. Geoffrey Dickens writes in a July 13 MRC post (boldface his):
Elizabeth Lee Vliet -- a doctor affiliated with the far-riught-fringe Association of American Physicians and Surgeons -- plays the filthy-immigrant card (as she 
So it appears there is a limit to which CNSNews.com will serve as a 
In a July 23 WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center's Katie Yoder rants in a July 24 
In April, we 
We've documented how the Media Research Center and right-wing radio host Mark Levin have had a mutual promotion agreement -- Levin touts the MRC on his radio show, and the MRC touts Levin on its network of websites. As far as we know, that business deal is still in force; at least, the MRC promoting Levin's latest book like it is.
WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah whines in his July 19 
The Media Research Center was in a little bit of a controversy in recent weeks. 
Like other right-wing outlets (like the 
The Media Research Center's Brad Wilmouth writes in a July 15 
The political prosecution of Cliven Bundy, his sons and tens of other defendants is an outrage begun by President Barack Obama and his Justice Department, then run by former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, essentially because Cliven used the word “Negro” in commenting that he and his family could appreciate how African-Americans were mistreated by the federal government, given how this same federal government, under Obama and Lynch, with the aid of former Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, had attempted to enslave them, too. As just one example of how Obama took offense and then threatened Cliven, just watch the video below.
Corinne Weaver sounded quite alarmed in her July 18 Media Research Center 
An anonymously written July 16 WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center's Scott Whitlock writes in a July 14 
