Topic: Media Research Center
Mysterious Media Research Center sports blogger Jay Maxson rages against ESPN magazine's "Body Issue" featuring naked athletes -- then dances on the magazine's grave. Read more >>
Tuesday, July 2, 2019
NEW ARTICLE -- Out There, Exhibit 73: Body-Slammed At The MRC
Topic: Media Research Center Mysterious Media Research Center sports blogger Jay Maxson rages against ESPN magazine's "Body Issue" featuring naked athletes -- then dances on the magazine's grave. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:34 PM EDT
Monday, July 1, 2019
How Is CNS' Managing Editor Hating Gays Now?
Topic: CNSNews.com Michael W. Chapman, CNSNews.com's LGBT-hating managing editor, has kept up his agenda, with an extra emphasis on portraying them as filthy, disease-ridden degenerates. As he has before, Chapman had a bit of a sad in the grim duty of reporting that President Trump doesn't hate gays as much as he does, noting in a June 7 article that Trump "applauded gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans in a recent tweet" and that 'his administration has launched an international campaign to "decriminalize homosexuality' worldwide." Chapman's response to that was spend six paragraphs of his article highlighting statistics that "Gay and bisexual men are the population most affected by HIV," including an entire paragraph on the hazards of anal sex. Chapman did the same thing in a June 27 article highlighting a poll showing that "the percentage of non-gay Americans aged 18-34, who are considered allies of the LGBT community, fell from 63% in 2016 to 45% in 2018. He devoted the final three paragraphs to once again rehashing LGBT health risks, empahasizing that "anal sex is the highest-risk sexual behavior for HIV transmission." Chapman went on to cheer a Catholic bishop for ordering his parishioners not to attend any Pride Month-related events, calling them "contrary to Church teachings on faith and morals," as well as another Catholic bishop who defended the other bishop by insisting that "that preaching the truth of the Gospel is not homophobic." Chapman added: "Unlike the unitive and generative nature of heterosexual coitus between a married man and woman, homosexual intercourse is non-unitive and non-generative." Chapman also jumped aboard the MRC corporate bandwagon and denounced the Cartoon Network for failing to hate gays the way he does and for marking Pride Month. Chapman added another editorial comment: "June is celebrated as "Pride Month" in honor of the Stonewall riot in 1968, when gay partiers fought back against the police during a vice raid on the homosexual bar, the Stonewall Inn, which was then owned by the Mafia." Chapman didn't explain the relevance of pointing out who owned the bar. And, for the heck of it, he touted one of his favorite anti-gay pastors, E.W. Jackson, denouncing "the fact that some U.S. embassies around the world are defying the order of the president to not fly the gay-rainbow flag next to or below the U.S. flag, an act in itself that is blasphemous, he said, and the equivalent of 'shaking your fist in God's face.'"
Posted by Terry K.
at 5:20 PM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, July 2, 2019 4:37 PM EDT
WND Columnist Tries To Puff Up Trump's Rally Crowd Numbers
Topic: WorldNetDaily Brent Smith gushed in his June 21 WorldNetDaily column:
Except that's not quite true. As a real news outlet reported, while there were people camping in line outside the arena before Trump's event, the arena easily acommodated them, there were some empty seats in the arena when Trump started speaking, and an overflow area was virtually empty. Smith then attempted a comparison:
Smith offered no evidence that "Soros, Media Matters, public/private sector unions, etc." had ever paid for an audience? But you know who did? Donald Trump. His campaign paid actors $50 for three hours of work to act like enthusiastsic Trump supporters at his campaign announcement. And while Obama's 2012 campaign kickoff occurred at a less than full arena, by the end of the campaign he was drawing big crowds. He was also outdrawing Mitt Romney.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:18 AM EDT
Sunday, June 30, 2019
Fake News: MRC Falsely Portrays Reason For Anti-Abortion Group's Pinterest Ban
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center's Alexander Hall does PR duty for an anti-abortion group in a June 11 post:
Live Action offered no proof that its ban was based on anything Project Veritas supposedly exposed, and Hall apparently asked for none, since he's appparenlty going on nothing except what Live Action has claimed on its website. It appears there is no link between the two. As an actual news operation reported, Live Action was banned not for conservative content but, rather, for using Pinterest to forward misinformation:
As far as Live Action being labeled among porn websites, Hall ignored that Pinterest explained that the label was a quirk of the company’s internal content moderation tools due to such bans being originally directed at porn, and that the account was never labeled as pornography. Hall should know better than to take anything issued by Project Veritas as face value. After all, even his boss, Brent Bozell, denounced the organization after one notoriously botched sting, yet it fell for another piece of disinformation from the group anyway. Hall is doing neither his readers nor his employer any favors when he hides the truth in favor of serving as a stenographer for right-wing interests.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:05 PM EDT
CNS Joins In MRC's Bashing of Taylor Swift For Expressing A Political Opinion
Topic: CNSNews.com Another branch of the Media Research Center has gotten in on bashing Taylor Swift for expressing political opinions. CNSNews.com published a June 6 column by Kelsey Bolar of the conservative Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal operation that berated Swift for speaking out in favor of the Equality Act -- the immediately leaped to a speculative talking point that anti-LGBT right-wingers have embraced: the specter of transgender athletes:
Bolar didn't mention that Rasmussen polls tend to have a right-leaning bias, making such results dubious at best. Bolar sneered that "Swift’s misleading form of Instagram activism is nothing new" because "Hollywood elites have been virtue-signaling to us for years" -- as if Bolar herself isn't virtue-signaling from the right by raging against the eternal conservative bogeyman of "Hollywood elites" -- then lectured that her views on equality are incorrect because the rights of conservative Christians would purported be violated:
But Bolar admitted in the article she linked to that Soule finished in eighth place, meaning that even if the two transgender athletes had not competed in the race, she would have done no better than sixth. Do college recruiters really care about sixth-place athletes? Bolar concluded by lecturing some more about how Swift can learn from her because, unlike Swift, she's in her 30s and now knows everything:
Hint to Bolar: You're not "answering the difficult questions" if you're staying in your right-wing bubble and automatically dismissing ideas that conflict with your worldview.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:32 AM EDT
Updated: Sunday, June 30, 2019 11:34 AM EDT
Saturday, June 29, 2019
NewsBusters Blogger Attacks Time For Covering Story -- But Not Fox News
Topic: NewsBusters A June 11 NewsBusters post by Randy Hall is your usual Media Research Center bias blather:
Hall does acknowledge that the hotel owner has received violent threats, so the "violent haters" stuff is an accurate representation of her situation, whether he admits it or not. The headline on Hall's item claimed that Time was "promot[ing]" the hotel's offer -- another example of the Depiction-Equals-Approval Fallacy, which falsely assumes that a given news outlet approves of the given news it's reporting on because it doesn't explicitly denounce it. Curiously, Hall's post is illustrated with a screenshot of ... a Fox News report on the same story. Hall made no mention of the Fox News story in his item, let alone complain that Fox News was, like Time, "promoting" the hotel simply by reporting on its existence. It's as if the MRC refuses to hold Fox News to the same journalistic standards it demands from media that aren't slavishly right-wing.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:48 AM EDT
WND's Massie Doubles Down on Divine-Donald Narrative
Topic: WorldNetDaily The last time we checked in on WorldNetDaily columnist Mychal Massie, he was hopping aboard the divine-Donald bandwagon by declaring that "God has given us a window of reprieve through President Trump." Massie followed up in his June 17 column by doubling down, declaring that Trump's election represents a "season of Mercy for America" and that "judgment will quickly follow when President Trump leaves office":
Massie is presumably exempting his own wickedness from judgment , which includes hatred and lies about the Obamas and blacks who aren't as far-right as he is. He concluded with another portrayal of Trump the merciful:
It's good that Massie's not asking us to believe him, given his history of lies.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:55 AM EDT
Friday, June 28, 2019
Media Bias: CNS Spins Away John Dean's Testimony
Topic: CNSNews.com For a "news" organization that's run by a "media research" group that rages against media bias, CNSNews.com sure publishes a lot of biased news. Its coverage of the John Dean's congressional testimony was another example. CNS' framing was clear from the start, as Susan Jones' June 4 article on the announcement of Dean's testimony, portraying "the Democrat-led [sic] House Judiciary Committee" using Dean's testimony as an "attempt to move forward with impeachment." Jones also portrayed Dean as a serial complainer because "In March 2006, Dean also recommended the censure of President George W. Bush in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee." As the testimony date neared, Jones served up more biased previews. She huffed in one article:
In the second, Jones went into pro-Trump spin mode, insisting that what Trump did is nothing like Watergate and treating a dubious Trump tweet as the indisuputable truth:
In fact, even conservative Fox News anchor Bret Baier has pointed out that "This was not, as the President says time and time again, no collusion, no obstruction. It was much more nuanced than that." In CNS' only article regarding Dean's actual testimony, managing editor Michael W. Chapman stepped in to personally attack Dean and cite none of his actual testimony:
Chapman concluded by spinning the Mueller report, misleadingly claiming that it "concluded that no Americans and no one in the Trump 2016 campaign colluded with Russians to affect the election. In addition, the report found no evidence that President Trump had obstructed justice." Jones served up her own follow-up, which framed Dean as among "anti-Trump partisans" who testified at the hearing. While Jones, unlike her boss, did devote a couple paragraphs to what Dean actually said, she gave much more space to Trump and pro-Trump Republicans attacking Dean.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:39 AM EDT
Updated: Friday, June 28, 2019 12:55 AM EDT
Thursday, June 27, 2019
MRC Has Another Anti-Gay Cartoon Freakout
Topic: Media Research Center Gay cartoon freakouts appear to be a trend at the Media Research Center. Jorge Plaza served up his contribution in a June 13 post:
A depiction of a pony as non-heterosexual is "lefty indoctrination"? That's apparently what that is in MRC world. But Plaza wasn't done ranting about non-hetero cartoons, taking aim at the Cartoon Network and "Steven Universe":
Plaza concluded by huffing: "With shows like Steven Universe, it’s no wonder that 59% of Generation Z (those born from the mid-90s to mid-2000s) believe that there are more than two genders with only two-thirds identifying as exclusively heterosexual. If parents are not vigilant, childhood gender dysphoria will only worsen as cartoons teach kids to explore their sexuality. So Plaza thinks cartoons are making people gay? What's his stance on soy?
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:03 PM EDT
Irony: Anti-Vaxxers At WND Fret About Mumps Outbreak At Border
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily fretted in an anonymously written June 14 article: "Thousands of illegal aliens flooding across America’s southern border, part of what President Trump repeatedly has described as a national emergency, have been segregated now because they’ve been exposed to either mumps, chicken pox or both." Yes, we are supposed to believe that WND -- which has a lengthy record of fearmongering people into not getting vaccinations for diseases like mumps and chicken pox -- is suddenly concerned about the spread of such diseases. Of course, as we saw when it falsely blamed Islam for a measles outbreak in a Somali immigrant community -- WND flip-flops on that policy when it can blame immigrants and migrants for disease outbreaks. And that's exactly what WND is doing here, further ranting that "There also have been problems with measles and flu among the population of illegal migrants who have broken American laws to enter the nation, and now are being provided services at the expense of U.S. taxpayers." Then, just as it did a few days earlier, it called up its favorite dubious doc to do even more fearmongering:
We, of course, know Orient for her association with the far-right Association for American Physicians and Surgeons. Physicians for Civil Defense appears to be just Orient, and its website is just a blog. But no matter which hat she's wearing, Orient is lying about the existence of an Ebola threat in the U.S. As we documented, any Africans arriving from the Democratic Republic of Congo likely left months ago, and as even she concedes, the Ebola incubation period is 21 days, meaning that any Ebola patient will be struck with the disease long before they arrive in the U.S.
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:54 PM EDT
MRC's Political Director Spouts The Company Line
Topic: CNSNews.com If the Media Research Center is supposed to be a 501(c)3 "research and education organization" that's not supposed to be very involved in politics, why does it have a political director? Indeed it does, and Christian Robey is that man. And to show he's an MRC company man, he dabbled in the whole "media research" thing -- or, as it plays out that the MRC, kneejerk bashing of the "liberal media" -- in a June 11 CNSNews.com column. He begins by whining in classic MRC style we've heard a million times from his co-workers:
He continued by offering up a dubious defense of President Trump:
But as an actual news outlet has documented, the Charlottesville rally was organized by a white nationalist and featured neo-Nazis and white supremacists, meaning that even if some people were defending Confederate statues, "this rally was clearly not one for your average supporter of Confederate monuments." Robey also overgeneralizes by suggesting that the media is painting all Trump supporters as "deplorables." But even Hillary Clinton, in the speech transcript Robey attached to his article, described only half of Trump supporters as "deplorables ... racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it" whom Trump's campaign "has lifted up." Robey concluded by repeating the bogus generalization: "When the media regard nearly half the American people with such disdain, and report the news accordingly – and during an already divided time in our history – the end result may well be a house divided against itself, which cannot stand. If and when it all comes down, the media will have played a pivotal role in bringing our American house down." Robey woin't tell you that he and the MRC have the exact same view from the opposite side: They dismiss and despise the half of America they deem non-conservative as "socialists" and "elites" -- and treat them accordingly. Is that not just as divisive as what Robey claims the media is doing? Will that also "bring our American house down"? Sure -- just don't expect Robey to admit it. He's a company man, after all.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:36 AM EDT
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
AIM Cherry-Picks To Pretend Trump Isn't A Liar
Topic: Accuracy in Media Accuracy in Media's Brian McNicoll is enough of a Trumpophile that he labors to find loopholes to prove that President Trump doesn't lie. He does this again in a June 19 piece claiming that the Washington Post "featured some of the claims of Trump lies that were among the 1,400 claims of 'false and misleading statements' that were debunked in Accuracy in Media’s 10,000 Lies in 10 Days series." McNicoll runs into an immediate veracity problem, in that there really is no such thing as a "10,000 Lies in 10 Days series" at AIM, at least that we could find in the form McNicoll claims it exists. There are a few articles in which McNicoll attacks the Post for tracking Trump's falsehoods, but only one of those appears after the Post reached the 10,000-falsehood milestone, and McNicoll doesn't link to any of them. Also, the Post doesn't call them "lies" -- which claims intent to lie on the part of Trump that the Post can't prove in many cases -- sticking instead to "false and misleading statements." McNicoll's defense of Trump is rather lame. For instance:
Well, not really. Whole, or current, dollars are always higher than dollars in the past, and adjusting for inflation is the only way to make a credible comparison between past and present monetary claims. McNicoll did even more pro-Trump spinning:
Butr McNicoll is cherry-picking numbers just like Trump did. Manufacturing jobs under Obama did, in fact, grow at an overall steady pace from their lowest recession-driven number in March 2010, and over 900,000 manufacturing jobs were created from that point until January 2017, when Obama left office. McNicoll is not about to give any credit to Obama for that.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:53 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, June 26, 2019 11:46 PM EDT
MRC Sports Blogger Sneers At Idea of Equity for Women's Soccer
Topic: Media Research Center Mysterious Media Research Center sports blogger is at it again, devoting a June 9 post to attacking the U.S. women's soccer team and player Megan Rapinoe in particular for filing a lawsuit against US Soccer for gender discrimination. Maxson sneered that Rapinoe "earns a six-figure salary as a pro soccer player" but didn't his/her readers that the men's soccer players make much more -- the women make 38 percent of what the men do despite being much less successful in international play. Maxson sneered further: "Rapinoe also complained that men's soccer has the gall to schedule two tournaments while the women's World Cup is ongoing. Apparently, equality requires the men's game to come to a complete standstill during the women's World Cup." In keeping with his/her gay-bashing ways, Maxson was similarly outraged that "four team members are pushing for radical cultural change" by co-founding a company to make gender-neutral clothing in inclusive sizing, to which Maxson huffed: "Non-binary ways inclusive, that is." Maxson went on to grumble that "this team is heavily dominated by an LGBT influence. Ellis is married to a woman. The face of the national team in recent years has been lesbians Megan Rapinoe and Abby Wambach. The team has rainbow-themed uniform numbers, and a Christian hopeful of playing with the team last year, Jaelene Hinkle, was considered an undesired 'heretic' to hostile media and fans." As we've noted, Hinkle declined a call-up to the team in 2017 because she was so bigoted that she refused to wear the rainbow-themed jersey. Sounds like Maxson's kind of people -- though he/she ignores several team players who consider themselves Christian and, unlike Hinkle, are not afraid to associate with people slightly different from them.
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:34 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, June 26, 2019 3:42 PM EDT
WND Helps Its Dubious Doc Play The Bogus Ebola Card on Border Crossings
Topic: WorldNetDaily Dubious WorldNetDaily doc Jane Orient of the far-right Association of American Physicans and Surgeons plays both sides of the fearmongering fence -- not only does she fearmonger about vaccines, she fearmongers about the diseases allegedly being brought into the country by unvaccinated people (which could largely be eradicated by, you know, the vaccines she opposes). She does the latter in a June 10 WND article by Bob Unruh:
In fact, there is no outbreak of Ebola at the southern border -- it's basically impossible since Ebola has an incubation period of 21 days and Africans who turn up on the border have typically been in transit for months before they get there. Further, the case of Ebola involved a man who entered the U.S. legally from Liberia but failed to tell officials of his contact with an Ebola victim before his flight to the U.S. Unruh also let Orient claim without evidence that "most immigrants may have" latent tuberculosis, failing to mention that Orient, as the managinging editor of the AAPS' Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, published a 2005 article that falsely claimed cases of leprosy in the U.S. have exploded because of immigration. Orient and the AAPS have yet to issue a correction. Unruh didn't help his credibility by citing a second, even more dubious source: "Kalen McBreen reported at Infowars that 'hundreds' of newcomers today have come from an area in the Congo in Africa to San Antonio, and hundreds more are en route." It tells you someting about the state of journalism at WND that it considers Infowars a credible source. Needless to say, neither Unruh nor Orient made any mention of vaccines that might help curb any actual disease outbreak they could blame on filthy immigrants.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:13 AM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, June 26, 2019 12:29 AM EDT
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
MRC's Graham Mad That Conservative Put Logic Before Politics
Topic: Media Research Center Tim Graham is the Media Research Center's designated hate-listener to National Public Radio, and his NPR-related posts are largely dedicated to ranting that David Brooks, who appears on a fair-and-balanced weekly panel discussion, isn't ranty and shouty and kneejerk pro-Trump and far-right like Sean Hannity. In a May 26 post, Graham gave National Review's Ranesh Ponnuru -- subbing for Brooks on the weekly panel -- the same treatment, accusing him of the crime of being reasonable and logical:
It tells you a lot about Graham's right-wing worldview that he thinks conspiracy-monger McCarthy is the reasonable one. Graham went on to grouse that Ponnuru "actually underlined that the Attorney General has lost any credibility to be seen as neutral. He said nothing about whether the FBI was neutral in 2016, or whether the media has ever been neutral on this." He further huffed:
But Graham is very much expecting -- nay, demanding -- that Ponnuru be an unblinkingly defender of all things Trump, because Trump equals conservativism equals Republicanism, and no one is allowed to deviate from the path. After Ponnuru responded to Graham at the National Review website by pointing out that Graham didn't actually respond to any point he made on NPR, Graham just had to sneer in response:
No, Tim, the Clinton campaign was not "colluding with Russians"; it paid Fusion GPS, who in turn paid Christopher Steele for opposition research, who uncovered the Trump-Russia links. All of which is legal. Graham seems not to have considered that Ponnuru offered "no rebuttal" to Siddiqui is because there really is no "monkey business." To claim otherwise is to demand that Ponnuru promote a conspiratorial right-wing narrative, no matter how loony or bogus it is. In short, Graham seems to be mad at Ponnuru because he has integrity in putting logic and facts ahead of a dubious political narrative.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:07 PM EDT
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