During an obnoxious appearance on the Wednesday edition of HLN’s S.E. Cupp Unfiltered, CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta opened up and showcased his true disdain for Trump supporters after they booed and heckled him at a rally the night before.
According to Acosta, when he was surrounded by those Trump supporters in Tampa Bay, Florida, “Honestly, it felt like we weren't in America anymore. I don't know how to put it any more plainly than that.”
Americans should not be treating their fellow Americans in this way. But unfortunately what we've seen and this has been building for some time since the campaign,” he whined. The hypocrisy was breathtaking for two main reasons. First, there had been many a CNN employee that had condemned Trump supporters as racist rubes. Don Lemon is one name who fits that title.
Second, Acosta followed up by seeming to insinuate that those Trump supporters were ready to attack him like animals. “[Trump] is whipping these crowds up into a frenzy to the point where they really want to come after us,” he proclaimed. “We have these bike rack-like barriers around the press cage, as we call it, to protect us essentially from people who might take things too far. It's unfortunate.”
As someone who used to work on large stage productions in college, those barriers are primarily put up to protect the equipment.
[...]
After being teed up by host S.E. Cupp, Acosta worried that one day, one of those Trump supporters would snap and try to hurt a journalist, or worse. “I think it's been dangerous for some time. I was worried during the campaign that a journalist was going to get hurt and it has been building,” he opined. “But when you refer to members of the press as the enemy of the people, you're essentially putting targets on our backs.”
The smears against those hard-working Trump supporters weren’t just coming from Acosta. Cupp decried the pro-Trump “mob” and how a mother at the rally put an anti-CNN button on her baby. “And not even children are safe with parents using their babies as props in Trump’s war against the media,” she spat. “The fever pitch of Trump’s rhetoric and the mob-like dispositions of his supporters at these rallies has become downright scary.”
Following a clip of former Fox News commentator Lt. Col. Ralph Peters ludicrously comparing Trump’s rhetoric to Soviet purges, Cupp suggested it “might not be quite that bad,yet.”
It’s generally understood that the elitists at CNN and their affiliates look down their noses at Trump supporters in the heartland, but this level of open discontent is not too uncommon. And yet they're still struggling to rack their brains with why people dislike them.
Fondacaro also huffed that "Acosta asserted that the reason those Trump supporters hated CNN was that they were essentially brainwashed by Fox News and other conservative media outlets." But since he and his employer are are among the chief instigators of anti-CNN hate, he had no further comment.
MRC Loves It When Media Conform To Its Pro-Trump Agenda Topic: Media Research Center
We already know the Media Research Center attacks any media outlet that lacks a sufficiently pro-Trump bias. Butit also hands out gold stars on occasion to news stories told in a way that supports the MRC's pro-Trump agenda.
In a July 27 post, Julia Seymour was delighted that some outlets properly, in her view -- credited Trump for a high GDP increase last quarter:
CNBC’s Squawk on the Street and Bloomberg.com viewed the latest U.S. GDP report as good news for the Trump administration.
The 4.1 percent second-quarter GDP estimate announced July 27, was the best quarterly pace in almost four years. Bloomberg.com called it a “Win for Trump” that same day.
Squawk on the Streetco-anchor Sara Eisen said, “Though, look, he is right to take a victory lap here because there are places in this GDP report he can point to to show that his policy is working.”
Seymour was disappointed, however, that it "remained a question for CNBC" that the economy would achieve the 3 percent annual growth Trump has predicted.
In an Aug. 9 post, Nicholas Fondacaro ranted that NBC covered the story of Melania Trump's parents becoming citizens, having "speculated that they received special treatment in the process and possibly used chain migration, a program the President opposes, even though the process still exists and still legal."Fondacaro pretended he could divine the purported emotions and agenda of the reporter and anchor involved, calling anchor Lester Hold "seemingly offended" by the story and insisting that the reporter"gloated" while reporting it and is "often resentful."
Fondacaro then described another network's coverage to show how NBC should have behaved:
In sharp contrast,CBS Evening News was congratulatory to the First Lady’s parents. “Melania Trump's parents became U.S. citizen today! Viktor and Amalija Knavs, natives of Slovenia took the oath at a ceremony in New York City. They had been living in the U.S permanent residents,” reported anchor Jeff Glor.
Not only was CBS welcoming to the Knavses but they completely separated them from their story on Trump’s immigration policy. They kicked off the broadcast by reporting on a federal judge who blocked the administration from deporting asylum seekers who were already in the judicial process. The news brief on Melania’s parents was the second-to-last story they covered that evening.
So that's what the MRC wants -- uncritical praise of Trump. Remember that the next time it offers what it claims to be "media research."
MRC Does Damage-Control Work For Makers of Right-Wing Roe v. Wade Film Topic: Media Research Center
Last month, Newsmax's James Hirsen tried to do damage control over reports of production problems on a right-wing film purporting to tell the "untold story "of the Roe v. Wade court case that legalized abortion across the U.S. Now the damage-control baton has passed to the Media Research Center.
In an Aug. 10 post, the MRC's Gabriel Hays attacked the "fake news" that the "liberal media" has been spreading about the in-porudiction film. But Hays never identifies anything that's "fake" about the reporting, just repeats director Nick Loeb's assertions that everything is fine. Most outlets that reported on the film's problems got a dismissive label by Hays: the Daily Beast is "lefty," Jezebel is "radical feminist," and apparently even the Hollywood Reporter is "liberal" by implication. By contrast, he quoted from a Washington Times article about the film but never labeled it as conservative.
Hays portrayed Loeb and his associates involved in the film's production as depicting "what's really going on," as if they don't have a vested interest in spinning things to their benefit:
In terms of what’s really going on with “Roe V. Wade,” the director and several other members of the team stated that it is running smoothly and that the bad press covering the production is just that. In terms of the reports of graphic abortion imagery present in the film, Loeb seemed surprised that anyone claimed to have that kind of information, asking “How do you know what’s in a film until it’s done?”
The Hollywood Reporter’s claims that the movie presented the typical, debunked anti-abortion talking points. She stated that “The filmmakers based the story on 40 research books on the subject and used ‘two sources for every fact we stated.’”
[...]
Those who are actually working on this controversial film see this as a concentrated attack by the fake news media to cripple their work. Mr. Loeb stated, “The ‘fake news’ is incredible. They’re falling all over themselves to lie and spin the truth.”
Hays doesn't bother to note any evidence Loeb has supplied to prove his claim that everybody but him is spreading "fake news" about the production, let alone consider the possibility that Loeb himself is the one spreading "fake news" in order to counter a mounting PR disaster.
MRC Continues To Be Callous About The Lives of Journalists Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's callous attitude toward the safety of journalists has been notorious, and it hasn't stopped. Typical is an Aug. 1 post by Scott Whitlock:
According to Chuck Todd, booing and nasty language towards reporters could well lead to the killing of journalists. Specifically, he compared a Trump rally this week to the 2017 horrific car killing (and injuring of multiple others) by a racist white nationalist in Charlottesville. Todd began by lecturing hisMTP Dailyviewers on Wednesday: “Tonight, I'm obsessed with how we're no longer obsessed over the things President Trump says.”
The MSNBC journalist then made his vile comparison. First, he played a clip of the President talking about fake news. Todd sneered: “But when you ignore this, you get this... And this kind of unfocused visceral anger at the other side of really neutral people like folks in the press corps, it can lead to this.” Then, he played 2017 footage of accused white nationalist James Alex Fields Jr., who was charged with murdering Heather Heyer via his car.
Todd concluded by huffing: “This is not normal. We shouldn't be in the business of just shrugging our shoulders and normalizing it.”
Whitlock then played the ol' whataboutism card: "We shouldn’t be normalizing violence. That's true. Then why did Todd in 2017 by bringing on Antifa supporter Mark Bray to promote the violent organization. Todd oozed at the time: 'Mark Bray, you are writing this book Antifa, the Anti-Fascist Handbook. Explain this movement and its roots.'"
Whitlock seems to have overlooked the word "explain." Bray is a scholar, not an activist, and his explanation of why antifa protesters may resort to violence is often presented by right-wingers as an endorsement of it.
The same day, Nicholas Fondacaro took yet another shot at the MRC's favorite enemy, CNN's Jim Acosta, for being "worried that one day, one of those Trump supporters would snap and try to hurt a journalist, or worse. 'I think it's been dangerous for some time. I was worried during the campaign that a journalist was going to get hurt and it has been building,' he opined. 'But when you refer to members of the press as the enemy of the people, you're essentially putting targets on our backs.'" Fondacaro then dismissed Acosta and his CNN ilk by trotting out the old canard of denouncing non-conservatives as "elitists" who "look down their noses at Trump supporters in the heartland."
Curtis Houck then mocked reporter April Ryan for allegedly having "dismissed the harassment and threats against the White House Press Secretary and melodramatically surmised that Jim Acosta’s 'life...was in jeopardy' at Tuesday’s Trump rally." Houck then ratcheted up his dismissive attitude: "Later, she also showed a visceral disdain for conservatives and Second Amendment supporters by brushing aside that part of the Constitution in favor of the First Amendment which many journalists seem to think only concerns them."
And Ryan Foley complained that "During Sunday’s edition of MSNBC Live With Alex Witt, the panel engaged in some serious hyperbole while discussing President Trump’s most recent tweet declaring the press the enemy of the people with two predicting that his “incendiary” rhetoric towards the press will lead to someone in the media to “get injured or possibly killed.” He added : "As always, the liberal media will never cease to disappoint when it comes to predicting that, when push comes to shove, they make things about themselves."
Well, yeah, people do tend to get a tad self-centered when the think their lives are in danger for simply doing their jobs -- as Foley undoubtedly would if he ever felt his life was threatened because he worked for the MRC.
And a separate post by Fondacaro showed just how self-centered he and the MRC are acting: "All weekend, the liberal media had been decrying Trump’s attacks on the press and suggested it would lead to violence against them. Clearly, they only care for themselves because what do they think will come from their own anti-Trump and anti-conservative 'hate movement'? This is just another way to delegitamize perfectly reasonable criticism of the the media." Fondacaro didn't how Trump denouncing the media as the "enemy of the people" -- or even the MRC's war on Acosta -- is "perfectly reasonable."
It seems that a little violence, real or threatened, shouldn't be allowed to get in the way of the MRC's anti-media mission.
Meanwhile, April Ryan now has a bodyguard due to death threats, and a caller to C-SPAN said of CNN's Brian Stelter and Don Lemon, both also frequent targets of the MRC: "If I see them, I'm going to shoot them." The MRC has yet to weigh in on either incident, let alone explain if those things are "perfectly reasonable."
On a July night in 1918, Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, Alexandra, and their five children were brutally murdered by Bolshevik assassins at the direct order of Vladimir Lenin or at least with his complicity. Those who agreed to accompany the tsar and his family into imprisonment were also killed. All were shot, bayoneted and clubbed to death and the bodies taken to the Koptyoki forest where they were stripped and mutilated. The bodies were first thrown down a mine shaft, but later hastily buried in unmarked graves in several locations.
By virtue of both accident and search over the years, most of the bodies have been found. On July 18, 1998, the bodies of the tsar, his wife and all but two children were laid to rest amid great pomp and ceremony in St. Petersburg. Bodies of son Alexei and daughter Marie were never found.
Now, this is a very telling beginning to the communist revolution in Russia and a harbinger of things to come. A group of barely human and hate-consumed thugs burst into the Alexander Palace and brutally murdered one of the most beautiful and most photographed families in history. This was not just a political assassination where the goal is simply to eliminate enemies; it was a bloody celebration of the great and all-consuming sin of envy. This is what Marxism is all about – first envy, then hate, then protest, and then destroy and replace with communism.
That's a highly simplistic view of those events -- starting with the claim that "barely human" communists "burst into the Alexander Palace and brutally murdered" the tsar and his family. As the Wikipedia page to which Bailey links points out, Tsar Nicholas and his family were held under protective custody at Alexander Palace starting in March 1917 after Nicholas' abdication -- following the first revolution in Russia, the February Revolution, which was not communist-directed. The October Revolution later that year was led by Lenin; the Romanovs were not executed until July 1918.
Bailey's suggestion that the Romanovs deserved to live because they were "one of the most beautiful and most photographed families in history" ignores that numerous events led to that revolution that were generally blamed on tsarist leadership -- military failures, governmental corruption, failure to respond to popular demand for modernization and mismanagement of the economy.
That's a much more historically accurate of the causes of the Russian Revolution than "envy," and it helps to explain why the Bolsheviks executed the Romanovs with such viciousness better than Baily's kneejerk blaming of it on the purported nature of communism.
Bailey does sort of get that right later in his column, admitting that "Tsar Nicholas was hated because he was a spoiled elitist, a dictator coming from a family of dictators, an oppressor of the poor, and he did little to combat the cultural backwardness of Russia in comparison to Europe and America. And, yes, there was the envy factor." But he then turns that into gushing praise for his favorite president, citing none other than far-right activist Wayne Allyn Root, last seen here hypocritically fretting about "white genocide" in South Africa:
But none of these factors hold true for Donald Trump – except for envy of his monumental business success, his unadulterated masculinity and, I think, of his “beautiful” family as well. Townhall writer Wayne Allyn Root wryly says that “everyone hates Trump,” but just look at what he has accomplished in his first two years. The economy is humming like never before with a 4.1 percent growth in GDP; his poll numbers are steadily increasing; major diplomatic inroads have been made with both Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin; and, as Root says, Trump is on his way to a Nobel Peace Prize.
But Bailey concludes his column by getting it wrong again: "As with Tsar Nicholas, Trump’s great sin was to stand in the way of 'progress' as defined by the leftist elite, and for that he and his family have been given the 'death penalty' in the hearts, minds and souls of the Marxist masses."
MRC Attacks 'Social Justice Warrior' NFL Hall of Fame Inductee, Gives Suspected Murderer Inductee A Pass Topic: Media Research Center
Jay Maxson, the mysterious Media Research Center sports blogger, spent an Aug. 5 post complaining about Randy Moss' induction speech at the NFL Hall of Fame. Maxson huffed that "just another high-profile forum for political statements, like the Oscars, the Grammys, the ESPYs and other programs used by leftists to promote their controversial views," singling out Moss for wearing "a tie bearing the names of a dozen black men and women killed in altercations with police or citizens. Call it the opening shot of protest for the 2018 NFL season."
Maxson went on to whine: "Media also seem to have amnesia about the pattern of disrespectful behavior that made Moss a controversial figure throughout his football career. In 2002, he bumped a female traffic control agent for half a block, until she fell down, with his SUV. Moss, who had marijuana in his vehicle, was arrested on suspicion of a felony assault charge. Since he's now officially a social justice warrior, none of that needs attention from the media though.
By contrast, Maxson wrote, "Legendary Baltimore linebacker and new Hal [sic] of Famer Ray Lewis took a more positive approach as he invoked the late Dr. Martin Luther King and extolled the audience to look at what unites us, as opposed to the divisive protests marring NFL games (and Hall of Fame ceremonies)." Maxson added an excerpt from Lewis' speech: "Are you living every day to make this world better? Think what we can do if we work together as a country ... teaching our nation to love each other again."
Maxson seems to have amnesia about Lewis' pattern disrespectful behavior that made Moss a controversial figure throughout his football career -- specifically, as we noted when MRC "news" division CNSNews.com exhibited a similar amnesia, the fact that Lewis was charged with murderin the deaths of two people allegedly stabbed to death by Lewis and/or members of his entourage following a Super Bowl party in 2000. Lewis managed to plea bargain down to a charge of mere obstruction of justice, and he paid undisclosed sums to the families of the deceased.
But Lewis is all about family and love now, so Maxson and the MRC aren't so gauche as to bring up his criminal record from a time when he was less loving -- and Moss becomes the bad guy for bringing up uncomfortable subjects.
LeBron Derangement At The MRC Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is mad that LeBron James won't shut up and dribble.
Following James' interview with CNN's Don Lemon, in which he said he would never meed with President Trump because of his expressed views on racial issues, the MRC's Alex Sears declared that "James has been ridiculed for his political hot takes" and lamented that "he refused to harbor the idea that a sit down with the president would be a good thing. For someone who considers themselves knowledgeable enough to comment on politics, he sure doesn’t see the benefit in reaching across the aisle."
Then, Scott Whitlock was upset that another media outlet reported what James said, framing it as the outlet having "touted James' attacks on Trump."
Krstine Marsh ranted further about the Lemon-James interview, complaining that "Lemon kept provoking the athlete to attack Trump, from his border policy to his comments on the NFL anthem protests," then huffed that in a later CNN panel discussion, "Lemon and his panelists then raged against the right for claiming that journalists or any public figure had to be “one-dimensional” and not comment on anything unrelated to their field of work." Yet that's exactly what the MRC is doing here.
Because pro athletes who espouse anything other than conservative politics is an exploitable issue, MRC officials Tim Grahm and Brent Bozell weighed in, attacking James for refusing to meet with Trump: "Pro athletes are free to make that choice, and they feel they should be immune from criticism for making it. Oh, to be coddled like that." Funny, Graham feels that way about anything Trump does.
Graham and Bozell then took a dip into Kaepernick Derangement Syndrome:
[A]thletes can often be divisive – and have recently relished that role – whether they demonstrate a lack of sportsmanship, or get on the wrong side of the law, or they feel they need to use their fame to score political points that offend so many.
Why must the Left always try to create the often false impression that conservatives divide, and they unite? The national anthem, for example, is a time when conservatives call for unity. The kneelers are the original dividers.
When Trump attacked both Lemon and James in a tweet, specifically attacking Lemon's intelligence -- which brought claims of Trump repeated denigrating the intelligence of blacks -- the MRC went into defense mode: Nicholas Fondacaro declared "attacks on intelligence were something Trump preferred to use on African-Americans, it was actually something he has used on a lot of people," and he attacked in a later post the "false assertion that the President reserved insults of intelligence to African-Americans."
Even the reason for James' media tour -- his funding of a school for underprivileged students in his hometown of Akron, Ohio -- couldn't escape criticism, though you'd think such a philanthropic effort might be worth a little praise. Jay Maxson sneered that "James said his funding of the school comes with political strings attached. He endorsed Clinton two years ago and he shilled for ObamaCare; wonder how he leans?" sarcastically adding, "These young children should do well in political science class." He then attacked the media for placing the school James funded "on a pedestal before the first report cards have been issued. Time and longitudinal studies will demonstrate the efficacy of this approach to education."
That sure didn't stop Maxson from attacking James for opening his school, though.
FLASHBACK: When The MRC Loved Secret Taping Topic: Media Research Center
Secret or deceptive taping is suddenly an issue at the Media Research Center.
Callista Ring complained that Sacha Baron Cohen's new show was all about "ridiculing conservatives" in taped encounters as part of a "fake, absurd program" done in character, most of which "mock conservatives through humiliation, the cheapest form of humor." Lindsay Kornick threw more shade at the show, huffing over its "appalling targeting of conservative figures disguised as entertainment. Of course, the result is not entertaining in the slightest which explains why hardly anybody watches it."
And when Omarosa Manigault Newman began promoting her book detailing her time working in the Trump White House, the MRC's Curtis Houck denounced her as making "salacious, unverified claims." When she revealed tapes of conversations she had with administration officials, Kyle Drennen whined that the media was giving too much time to them despite Omarosa's "major credibility problems."
The MRC then swiftly moved into whataboutism mode. Tim Graham and Brent Bozell tried to distract from Omarosa's tapes by reliving NBC "suppressed" Juanita Broaddrick's accusation that Bill Clinton raped her "until the threat of removing their darling President Clinton from office had passed" (though Graham and Bozell suppress the fact that -- speaking of credibility problems -- Broaddrick had spent nearly two decades claiming he didn't). Then, the ultimate whataboutism: A post by Geoffrey Dickens headlined "FLASHBACK: When The Media Despised Secret Taping," in which he complained that "the networks" hyped Omarosa's "negative takes" and played "audio from her surreptitious tapes," when "In 1998 when Linda Tripp recorded her conversations with then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky about her trysts with Clinton, the former Pentagon employee was savaged as a 'treacherous' 'back-stabbing' 'betrayer' by journalists at TV and print outlets."
As long as we're going to play the whataboutism game, let's look back at a time when the MRC loved secret tapes.
In 2015, when the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress secretly taped Planned Parenthood officials, then edited those tapes out of context to make claims about things that, for the most part, didn't actually happen, the MRC first nitpicked coverage, complaining that fetuses were accurately described as fetuses instead of the conservatively correct term of "unborn children" and that CMP leader David Daleiden was accurately described as an "extremist" (as if secretly taping people as part of a calculated political attack isn't extreme). The MRC also turned a blind eye to how the CMP selectively edited its secretly recorded tapes, arguing that it was OK because CMP ultimately released unedited versions of its tapes (which came some time after the edited versions and more often than not showed the activities CMP attacked didn't happen as described in the edited versions). Of course, the MRC preferred the term "undercover video" instead of "secretly recorded" and never saw fit to question the credibility of Daleiden and the CMP.
Like everything else the MRC does, this is predicated solely on whatever advances whatever right-wing agenda it's currently trying to push.
MRC's Double Standard on TV Hosts' Alleged Conflicts of Interest, Part 2 Topic: Media Research Center
In May, we noted how the Media Research Center obsesses over how NBC "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd's wife works as a Democratic strategist -- while it defended Greta Van Susteren when she frequently had Sarah Palin as a guest on her Fox News show without disclosing that her husband worked as an adviser to Palin.
The double standard continues: Tim Graham huffed in an Aug. 2 post about how "Mrs. Todd has donated $13,250 to federal candidates so far in this election cycle, all of them Democrats," denouncing this as an "ongoing conflict of interest in political coverage" for Todd.
Let's look at another relevant comparison. Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has long been a right-wing activist and was particularly active during the anti-Obama Tea Party years. That's a potential conflict of interest that much more serious than Todd's, since issues of justice are at stake instead of journalism (not that anyone at the MRC has uncovered an instance in which any candidate linked to Todd's wife got favorable treatment on TV from Todd).
Needless to say, the MRC rushed to defend the Thomases.
In a 2010 post, Matthew Balan touted how CNN's Jeffrey Toobin "defended Mrs. Thomas' grassroots conservative work , while Graham complained that "Media outlets from CNN to NPR to the Washington Post have picked up on the Los Angeles Times story suggesting there could be conflicts of interest for Virginia Thomas to start her group Liberty Central while she's married to Justice Clarence Thomas," an article Balan also reference.
When then-MSNBC host Keith Olbermann called for Thomas to resign from the Supreme Court of the conflict, Noel Sheppard sarcastically claimed, "isn't it marvelous how a cable news anchor shows such disrespect to the wife of a Supreme Court justice?" (Though it's about the same level that Graham shows for Todd's wife.) Sheppard then huffed that "despite Olbermann's blathering, the only potential conflict here would be if the Supreme Court heard a case involving a donor to Liberty Central. At that point, there are procedures in place to deal with it."
Later in 2010, Kyle Drennen groused that "questions about Thomas's political involvement" were being raised again following reports that Ginni Thomas called Anita Hill (whom the MRC can't stop hating a quarter-century on) demanding an apology, and that "implied that since Virginia Thomas is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas her conservative activism in a conflict of interest." And in 2011, Graham lamented that it was revealed that Clarence Thomas never reported his wife's income from right-wing activist groups on financial disclosure forms and that he had to go back many years and revised the forms, and lamented evenmore that then-Rep. Anthony Weiner insisted that Clarence Thomas "should recuse himself on the constitutionality of ObamaCare" if and when that came to the Supreme Court because of that.
Lest anyone accuse the MRC of not knowing what side its bread is buttered on, MRC chief Brent Bozell sat down for a 2012 interview with Ginni Thomas -- by this time working for the right-wing Daily Caller -- "to discuss a wide variety of issues ranging from media bias to the future of the conservative movement." The MRC version of it does not indicate whether discussions of conflicts of interest took place, but since this was a friendly interview with a friendly media outlet, we're guessing it didn't.
Lately, Ginni Thomas has been spreadingfakenews on social media. Needless to say, the MRC doesn't want to talk about that, let alone what that might mean for her husband.
Curtis Houck's Jim Acosta Derangement Syndrome Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center writer Curtis Houck -- who's also the managing editor of NewsBusters, the MRC's main vehicle for disseminating the "sober, substantial" media criticism he claims the MRC issues -- has a weird obsession with CNN correspondent Jim Acosta. Houck is the leader of the MRC's war on Acosta, attacking pretty much every public utterance Acosta makes, hurling insults, cheering every time he's heckled by rabid Trump supporters and portraying him as a mentally deranged partisan. Houck's obsession with Acosta has only gotten worse, to the point that we can declare him a victim of Acosta Derangement Syndrome.
Under the headline "Jim Acosta Loses His Mind, Throws Fit in New Tussle with WH’s Huckabee Sanders," Houck ranted in an Aug. 2 post: "Just a reminder: CNN is straight up lying to you if any of their more prominent figures ever say they don't want to be the story because everything is about them. And Thursday’s White House Press Briefing perfectly illustrated that as chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta lost his mind when Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders wouldn’t fall into a trap he had laid for her." Houck claimed Acosta "angrily responded" as Sanders "took him to the cleaners," while "Acosta’s colleagues soldiered on with more professionalism than Acosta could ever show." Houck also touted how Sanders referenced the MRC's utterly fraudulent assertion that "90 percent of the coverage on [Trump] is negative."
On Aug. 8, Houck promoted a piece in the Atlantic critical of Acosta "for living up to the verb closely associated to his name (accost) and making himself the story when it should be reporting the news" and claimed that the writer offered "advice that Acosta undoubtedly will ignore."
When Acosta appeared on Steven Colbert's late-night show, Houck was ready with more venom (excessive bolding in original):
Receiving a raucous hero’s welcome reserved for far-left politicians, CNN’s Jim Acosta flaunted Jim Acosta on the Wednesday edition of CBS’s The Late Show by reliving his August 2 duel with Sarah Huckabee Sanders, claiming he’s a fact-checker, blaming “conservative outlets” and “websites” for “twist[ing] and warp[ing]” their views of him, and using an either or fallacy to justify his chicanery.
[...]
Acting as though we’re living through the end times, Acosta fretted that “these are tough times” so “tough questions” must “be asked” and “I don't think we do ourselves any good, Stephen, if we shy away from these hard questions and, you know, my goodness, the way I look at it is — and this is the debate I have with my fellow journalists when we talk about this — what if we just did nothing?”
Jeez. This guy really does think he’s Captain America squaring off against Thanos< inInfinity War.
Houck also wrote -- in addition to complaining that Acosta spoke "smugly" and exhibited "utter stupidity" -- that Acosta "also sought to blame conservative media and websites (which, one could assume included NewsBusters) for giving people a false understanding of Acosta and his colleagues." Interestingly, Houck doesn't dispute that claim -- which tells us he knows Acosta is right.
Houck also claims Acosta exhibits "narcissism," which is "clear to the naked eye." As is Houck's worsening case of Acosta derangement.
MRC Chief Laments No Emmy Nominations for Fox News, Doesn't ID Show That Deserves One Topic: Media Research Center
The Aug. 1 column by the Media Research Center's Tim Graham and Brent Bozell starts off lamenting:
On July 26, the News and Documentary Emmy Award nominations were announced, and PBS topped the list with 45 nominations. CBS led the broadcast networks with 31 nods, followed by CNN and HBO with 22 each, and ABC with 20.
MSNBC got 5. Vice News got nine. Al-Jazeera International USA got five. And The New York Times got seven — for videos! Even the liberal website Vox got three.
The Fox News channel, which leads in cable-news viewership year after year after year, got none.
Raise your hand if you're surprised.
Graham and Bozell go on to rant that the Emmys "has nothing to do with talent. It's about the best promotion of the leftist agenda," singling out various and sundry programs that received nominations.
Missing from their column, however, is any mention of a Fox News documentary that Graham and Bozell believed was worthy of a nomination. If you are going to spend a column whining that Fox News didn't get nominated for anything, shouldn't you at least offer an example of something that should have been nominated? Given how often MRC types appear on Fox News, you'd think they could easily do that.
But they didn't. Because that's pretty much how Graham and Bozell roll.
MRC Suddenly Decides to Trust Website It Hates For Echoing Its Agenda Topic: Media Research Center
Funny how a website publishing an article advancing a right-wing organization's agenda suddenly makes said website trustworthy. Witness this July 25 post from the Media Research Center's Ashley Rae Goldenberg:
Following a report from Gizmodo, left-wing news site Vice News has accused Twitter of “shadow banning” right-wing personalities, politicians, and political pundits.
In a piece, Vice proclaimed in the headline, “Twitter is ‘shadow banning’ prominent Republicans like the RNC chair and Trump Jr.’s spokesman.” According to the report, searches for Republican Party chair Ronna McDaniel, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) all do not automatically fill into the search bar when users begin to look up their accounts if they do not follow those accounts. The search also reportedly fails to list the verified account for Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA).
Vice noted, “Not a single member of the 78-person Progressive Caucus faces the same situation in Twitter’s search.”
This was followed by the usual outraged statement from MRC chief Brent Bozell denouncing said alleged shadow banning. But Bozell didn't mention the political bent of Vice -- and neither Bozell nor Goldenberg mention that the MRC has a history of denouncing content on Vice. For instance:
An August 2017 item by Corinne Weaver huffed that an "America-hating lefty" writer for Vice advocated blowing up Mount Rushmore and basically suggested the website shoujld be censored: "According to the Wall Street Journal, Vice Media is currently valued at $5.7 billion. That's a massive outlet for the kind of anarchist terrorism they are advocating in their headline. Not to mention, the rest of the article is absolute filth that attacks every single president."
In June, Katie Yoder went into freakout mode over a report that a Vice producer once "attempted to pay for one woman’s abortion under the condition that Vice could film it."
On July 20, Isaac Cross attacked a Vice article for pointing out that studies have shown that anty-gay discrimination is a contributing factor in the overall poor health of the LGBT community. Cross was outraged thatVice didn't blame "the lifestyle choices of LGBTQ members" -- as if one chooses to subject themselves to the discrimination efforts of people like Cross -- and huffed: "When it comes to LGBTQ media, the blame is frequently placed on somebody else because they are victims, and once the victim always the victim."
And Vice apparently committed an even greater heresy than blowing up Mount Rushmore, as Clay Waters highlighted in a July 29 post a Vice piece arguing that the film "Animal House" hasn't aged well. Waters whined that "liberals spoil everything" by "insulting fans" of the "comedy classic" with "hectoring, concluding with arbitrary hostility."
So if the MRC thinks Vice is a terrible website for denouncing "Animal House," how can it trust the "shadow banning" report without showing even the slightest amount of skeptism avoer it? Yet it has done just that.
MRC: It's 'Self-Centered' for Journalists To Be Concerned About Their Safety Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is so intent on refusing to acknowledge the humanity of journalists that it mocks and belittles them every time they express concerns about their safety in an era in which the president of the United States denounces them as the "enemy of the people" -- even as it fretted about a Fox News reporter who said she didn't feel safe at a protest outside the Supreme Court.
And it's particularly aggrieved when CNN employees are concerned about their safety. When, for instance, CNN anchor Don Lemon took to the air in January to point out actual death threats called into the network and blamed the anti-media environment encouraged by President Trump (and, truth be told, by the MRC), Randy Hall denounced Lemon for engaging in "a pathetic act of self-sanctimonious behavior," then retorted to political analyst Brian Karem after making a similar observation: "Wait, so Brian, would that mean that you'd agree that James Hodgkinson was inspired by Rachel Maddow and Bernie Sanders to try and murder Republican congressmen in June at a Virginia baseball field?"
Of course, if Hall could show any evidence that Maddow or Sanders ever called Scalise an "enemy of the people," let alone criticized him personally in any form, he might have a point.
The MRC's Curtis Houck (pictured) -- who's currently leading the MRC's war on Jim Acosta and gets a tingle up his leg every time Acosta is heckled while covering a Trump rally -- demonstrated his callousness toward the humanity of journalists who don't work for Fox News in an Aug. 1 post about a discussion between NBC's Katy Tur -- whose concerns about safety at Trump rallies the MRC has dismissed in the past -- and director Rob Reiner about the current hostile environment for journalists in the Trump era. Here's how Houck utterly mocked their concerns in the first paragraph of his post, headlined "Self-Centered Lefties: Katy Tur, Rob Reiner Showcase Why People Hate Hollywood, the Media:
In roughly eight minutes Wednesday afternoon, MSNBC Live host Katy Tur and far-left liberal actor Rob Reiner were able to showcase why the embarrassingly smug behavior of Hollywood and the liberal media has continued to lose them supporters despite their deranged attempts to play the victim card.
That's right: According to Houck, it's apparently "self-centered" and playing "the victim card" for a journalist to be concerned about one's safety. (So, um, Curt, what exactly is a "far-left liberal"? Is that oppose to a far-right liberal?)
Houck sneered that Tur was hosting a "pity party" for journalists -- even though crowds at pro-Trump rallies she covered turned so hostile against her that she needed Secret Service protection to leave arenas -- and complained that she showed a "video of CNN’s Jim Acosta being heckled at a Tuesday night Trump rally" (which, again, Houck is totally down with).In Houck's warped right-wing view, Tur "ranted" and "howed how out of touch she is with the American populace when she seemed exasperated at the notion that, three years after Trump began his candidacy, droves of people still believe that “the media” and Hollywood don’t “represent regular people.” And an MRC postreferencing Reiner wouldn't be complete without derisively calling him "Meathead," demonstrating Houck's inability to separate the actor from a role he hasn't played in 40 years.
Houck probably thinks his callous, name-calling attack is just more of the "sober, substantive appraisals" of media he claims the MRC provides. The fact that he made that claim with a straight face shows us that he doesn't know how wrong he is.
Bozell Doubles Down on MRC's Defense of Infowars Topic: Media Research Center
We've already noted how the Media Research Center is running to the defense of conspiracy theorists Alex Jones and his Infowars operation, ludicrously insisting that it's no different than CNN while hiding details about the extreme, offensive content Infowars traffics in. The news that several social media networks have removed Infowars content has sent the MRC into defense mode for Jones once again.
MRC chief Brent Bozell issued a statement that claims in part: "I don’t support Alex Jones and what InfoWars produces. He’s not a conservative. However, banning him and his outlet is wrong. It’s not just a slippery slope, it’s a dangerous cliff that these social media companies are jumping off to satisfy CNN and other liberal outlets." Bozell doesn't mention the kind of content that got Infowars kicked off those social networks, like insisting that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax.
The item containing Bozell's statement tries to link the removal of Infowars content to the MRC's longstanding assertions that social networks are conducting "censorship" of conservative content -- claims that are dubious at best. But if Jones is not a "conservative," as Bozell claims, why is it so worried about his content being removed?
Bozell went on to complain: "Conservatives are increasingly concerned that InfoWars is not the end point for those who want to ban speech. It’s just the beginning. We are rapidly approaching a point where censorship of opposing voices is the norm. That’s dangerous." But the MRC's own "news" division,CNSNews.com, censors content all the time -- it has no liberal columnists, and it refuses to tell its readers when President Trump and his White House officials are making false or misleading statements.
An Aug. 7 MRC post by Corinne Weaver was slightly more honest than her boss about the content that got Infowars removed from those social media sites -- she admits that "Jones has said many offensive and bizarre things not in keeping with conservative beliefs" and admitted that Jones was "claiming that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax." But she started her post by claiming that removing "extremist content" was part of a "war against freedom of speech."
Interestingly, none of these MRC writers who have come to Infowars' defense mentioned the fact that YouTube, Spotify, Facebook and other social networks are private businesses that have policies governing the use of their websites and that they are perfectly within their rights to remove whatever content they deem as a violation of those policies. You'd think that, as pro-business conservatives, the MRC would defend the social networks' right to run their businesses as they see fit.
MRC Loves It When CNN's Acosta Is Heckled At Trump Rallies Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's war on CNN's Jim Acosta is so nasty that it cheers whenever Trump supporters heckle him when he covers rallies hosted by President Trump.
In a June 25 post, for instance, Curtis Houck sneered that Acosta was a "carnival barker" and happily noted "quite the crowd behind him during a live shot with chants of 'go home, Jim' and 'fake news Jim,' while one attendee moved from side to side with a 'CNN Sucks' sign" -- and, yes, Houck carefully put all of those insults in boldface type for maximum impact every time he referenced them in his post. Houck further sneered that later in the segment, Acosta spoke "in a tone which suggested he fancied himself the most honest, righteous man in America."
In a July 31 post on another heckling, Houck once again called Acosta a "carnival barker," this time adding "showboater" to his list of derogatory names, and put the insults in boldface. He then further attacked the "self-centered liberal journalist" for responding to the crowd's heckling
Houck later added an Acosta-bashing update: "Acosta returned for another live shot in The Situation Room’s 6:00 p.m. Eastern hour and, even though the rally had started and thus crowds were no longer heckling him, the pompous CNNer again acknowledged their chants from earlier in trying to make viewers feel bad for him."
Of course, Houck's obsessive hatred for Acosta -- and. as the leader of the MRC's war on Acosta, his need to criticize every single thing Acosta does -- might be generating a little sympathy for the reporter as well.
The two main agenda items for the Media Research Center over the past year are unhinged hatred of CNN's Jim Acosta and callousness toward the safety of the journalists who cover President Trump. The MRC's Nicholas Fondacaro combines both in one Aug. 1 post:
We already know the Media Research Center attacks any media outlet that lacks a sufficiently pro-Trump bias. Butit also hands out gold stars on occasion to news stories told in a way that supports the MRC's pro-Trump agenda.
Last month, Newsmax's James Hirsen 
The Media Research Center's 
Kent Bailey, head of the 
Jay Maxson, the mysterious Media Research Center sports blogger, spent an Aug. 5 
The Media Research Center is mad that LeBron James won't shut up and dribble.
Secret or deceptive taping is suddenly an issue at the Media Research Center.
In May, we 
Media Research Center writer Curtis Houck -- who's also the managing editor of NewsBusters, the MRC's main vehicle for disseminating the "sober, substantial" media criticism he claims the MRC issues -- has a weird obsession with CNN correspondent Jim Acosta. Houck is the leader of the MRC's 
The Aug. 1 
Funny how a website publishing an article advancing a right-wing organization's agenda suddenly makes said website trustworthy. Witness this July 25 
We've already 
