Topic: CNSNews.com
The pro-Trump and anti-Biden bias CNSNews.com was blindingly obvious in the run-up to the election. Reporting only on polls that made Trump look good was just the start. Read more >>
Tuesday, December 1, 2020
NEW ARTICLE: CNS' 2020 Election Bias, Part 1
Topic: CNSNews.com The pro-Trump and anti-Biden bias CNSNews.com was blindingly obvious in the run-up to the election. Reporting only on polls that made Trump look good was just the start. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:56 AM EST
Monday, November 30, 2020
MRC Enlists Another Biased Pollster To Push Its Election Conspiracy Theory
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center has been building a conspiracy theory that the presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. First, it baselessly claimed that pre-election polls showing Joe Biden with a big lead over Trump were faked. Then -- after attacking political polls as unreliable or faked -- it paid for a poll (from Trump's pollster, McLaughlin, who clearly has a conflict of interest) claiming to find that some voters wouldn't have voted for Biden if they knew about the dubious right-wing narrative on Hunter Biden. Now, it's out with another "special report" by Rich Noyes under the overheated headline "The Stealing of the Presidency, 2020":
First: Noyes didn't mention the fact that the MRC denounced election-related polling immediately after the election, and he gave no reason why this poll should be trusted. Second: Noyes didn't disclose the fact that The Polling Company was founded by former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, raising the issue of a conflict of interest. Conway sold The Polling Company to Republican PR firm CRC Public Relations in 2017 after joining the Trump White House, giving her a windfall of up to $5 million -- and also, a company to which the MRC has paid more than $3 million for its services over the years. Third: The MRC poll was clearly designed to push respondents toward Republican narratives.At one point, Biden is referred to as "the Democrat candidate" -- a deliberate grammatical error designed to denigrate Biden. The poll also asked biased pro-Trump questions like:
As we've noted, the Nobel Prize stuff is effectively meaningless, and the stuff about social media "censoring" Trump and not Biden is MRC-directed language and censors the fact that Trump violated Facebook's and Twitter's rules while Biden did not. Fourth, and most crucially: The poll did not ask respondents about their news-watching habits, so the poll could not possibly determine that the "left-wing news media" didn't sufficiently push GOP talking points. It also did not ask respondents whether they knew about negative attacks on Trump -- it asked about the sexual misconduct allegations against Biden from Tara Reade, but made no mention of the sexual assault accusation made against Trump by E. Jean Carroll -- so there is not a baseline upon which to establish how much the "left-wing news media" allegedly didn't report about Biden. Of course, this is all getting the play inside the right-wing bubble that the MRC wants. Rush Limbaugh touted it, of course, making sure not to ask the questions that we did. MRC chief Brent Bozell also appeared with podcaster (and MRC board member) Bill Walton. Bozell didn't disclose that McLaughlin was Trump's pollster but did admit that the Polling Company was "Kellyanne Conway's old company (but didn't mention that Conway was a Trump adviser), then laughably claimed that both pollsters were "highly, highly respected" (in fact, McLaughlin as a C-minus rating from FiveThirtyEight, while The Polling Company has a middling B/C grade). Bozell also crowed that these results were "scientific," but he made no mention of (and Walton didn't ask about) his own attack on pre-election polls as deliberately fake. Presumably since he's on the MRC board, Walton did almost no pushback on Bozell's increasingly outlandish and dubious claims. With all these conspiracy theories, it seems the Trump years have made the MRC even more WorldNetDaily-like than ever.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:52 PM EST
Again Defying Its MRC Parent, CNS Finds Another Pandemic Silver Lining
Topic: CNSNews.com Remember when the Media Research Center went hypocritically nuts over people found silver linings to the coronavirus pandemic -- i.e., reduced pollution and a healthier environment -- while its own "news" division, CNSNews.com, was touting its own silver linings (i.e., increased spirituality)? Well, CNS is pushing the double standard again. A Nov. 12 column by John Stonestreet and Shane Morris is positively giddy at the idea that divorce rates have gone down during the pandemic:
Stonestreet and make sure to ignore that in some areas, the divorce rate has increased during the pandemic. So, maybe not the total silver lining they're touting.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:57 PM EST
WND Can't Stop Pushing Hydroxychloroquine
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily is still -- still! -- pushing hydroxychloroquine to treat despite the complete lack of credible evidence that it works. Joel S. Hirschhorn ranted in a Nov. 11 column:
Hirschhorn cites the usual dubious suspects in support of his argument: Harvey Risch, Vladimir Zelenko, and the bogus HCQ statistics assembled anonymously and touted by the group to which Hirschhorn belongs, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.And as befits a guy who put Anthony Fauci before a"grand jury" impaneled in his own fevered brain, Hirschhorn ranted that "The media-hyped meme that Fauci is a trusted expert is nonsense. A Nov. 19 "news" article by Art Moore touted a congressional hearing that was designed to defend hydroxychloroquine -- Risch testified at it -- with one congressman claiming that "the drug hydroxychloroquine was used as a "weapon" in the presidential election after it was promoted by President Trump. While Moore gave some space to Dr. Ashish Jha, the sole witness who accurately testified about studies showing not only that hydroxyvchloroquine didn't work but also that some studies showed patients who took HCQ had a higher death rate than those who weren't, he also let another witness attack Jha's testimony as "wreckless [sic] and dangerous for the nation." Hirschhorn returned on Nov. 24 to complain that "The leftist press has totally ignored the hearing and the main messages delivered by senators and distinguished doctors who testified." He attacked Jha as a "shill" for Democrats and accused Fauci of "malpractice," then proclaimed: "The big reveal of the hearing was that Democrats have no interest in expanding access to proven home treatments for COVID and saving lives. Right now, leftist Democrat politics are causing tens of thousands of preventable COVID deaths. All those who voted for Biden should know that Democrats are a fundamental cause of the rising numbers of COVID hospitalizations and deaths."
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:54 AM EST
Sunday, November 29, 2020
How Is MRC Sports Blogger Hating Gays Now?
Topic: Media Research Center Jay Maxson, the Media Research Center's mysterious sports blogger who has no internet presence outside the MRC and may not even be a real person for all we know, is still feeling the anti-LBGT hate as much as ever. Maxson complained in an Oct. 12 post:
Maxson is clearly not fearful of acting like a homophobe, as exhibited by his depiction of an athlete's coming out as "craven." On Oct. 21, Maxson whined that the teams in the World Series, the Los Angeles Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays, were being noted for catering to their LGBT fan bases, sneering that they earned " LGBTQ alphabet points" and that "Tampa's lesbian mayor" threw out the first pitch at a game, adding that "The Dodgers were one of the first baseball teams succumbing to pressure to feature Pride Nights, hosting what is believed to be the first Gay and Lesbian Night in August of 2000." Maxson ranted against transgenders in a Nov. 6 post:
On Nov. 16, Maxson retorted against an article noting that longtime baseball coach Tonny Lasorda refused to acknowlege his son is gay by declaring him to be on his deathbed:
That's what passes for sports commentary at the MRC.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:04 PM EST
CNS-Mark Levin Stenography Watch
Topic: CNSNews.com For unexplained reasons (but probably having something to do with the lack of a student intern), CNSNews.com published no Mark Levin stenography for just over a month, from Aug. 14 to Sept. 16. But with an election coming up (and a new fall intern in the building), CNS didn't want to ignore Levin's right-wing rants any longer. Let's look at the Levin stenography CNS published in September and October:
Despite the late start, that's 15 articles over the two-month period. That makes for a total of 76 articles in 2020, a little off the pace of the past three years, when it devoted at least 96 articles annually to Levin. CNS also gave Levin space to whine on Oct. 5 that Facebook had restricted the visibility of"constitutional scholar, best selling author, and conservative talk-radio host" Levin over his promotion of fake news. Interestingly, the article by Lucy Collins doesn't explain exactly what the content was that got his page restricted. A couple days later, Craig Bannister followed up by repeating Levin's assertion that Facebook "backed down on censorship of his page."
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:12 PM EST
Saturday, November 28, 2020
MRC Attacks Reagan Film It Hasn't Seen
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center has a long tradition of attacking the alleged content of TV shows or movies it hasn't actually seen. A new Showtime documentary about Ronald Reagan is another example. The show didn't debut until Nov. 18, but the MRC already had its knives out. Brent Baker huffed in a Nov. 13 post, personally attacking the film's director, Matt Tyrnauer, since he couldn't credibly go after content he hadn't seen: The Showtime pay cable channel, owned by ViacomCBS, has become the latest media outlet to promote specious leftist attacks meant to destroy the credibility and respect for a political leader admired by conservatives.
Baker's post carried the declarative headline "Showtime Documentary Smears Reagan as Racist Precursor to Trump" even though, again, he can't possibly know this is true having written this five days before the documentary aired.
Clay Waters did much the same thing in a Nov. 15 post -- three days before airing:
Waters then attacked a Times review of the series as being "similarly receptive to the left-wing revisionism," further attacking the reviewer of having a "liberal worldview." Interestingly, neither Baker nor Waters specifically rebutted anything they claim is in the film beyond denouncing it as "liberal." The sole MRC post on the series that actually appeared after its debut was a Nov. 21 post by right-wing film reviewer Christian Toto -- and even he didn't review it. Instead, he wrote, "The just-released docuseries The Reagans does little to hide its rage against the nation’s 40th president. Early reviews highlight the film’s critical take on his presidency and cultural impact." Toto linked to Baker's attack on the director, which, again, isn't an "early review" since Baker hadn't seen the film. Rather than actually bothering to see the film he's attacking, Toto denounced it as "It’s why another Reagan project is so very necessary, at the very least to add balance to the pop culture record." He went on to gush about a Reagan biopic currently in production starring Dennis Quaid as the president, also noting that the film also features Jon Voight and Robert Davi -- though he didn't note those two are wildly conservative. He also didn't mention that the film's production had to take a break due to a coronavirus outbreak on the set.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:57 AM EST
Updated: Saturday, November 28, 2020 11:21 AM EST
WND Finally Launches Subscription Option, Is Still Lying To Its Readers
Topic: WorldNetDaily It's taken nearly two years after the start of its current, ongoing financial crisis, but WorldNetDaily has finally -- finally -- created a formal subscription option for readers. As described in a Nov. 18 article, the "WND Insider" program offers ad-free content for a minimum of $50 a year, with higher subscription levels offering things like discounts at its online store and subscriptions to its sparsely read Whistleblower magazine. Of course, in making that announcement, WND made sure to portray itself as a victim of "Big Tech":
WND is deliberately vague about exactly why it faces such issues -- because it publishes fake news, as we point out every time WND insists that it doesn't. But it's still trying to gaslight its readers by insisting that it's the non-right-wing media that's the real "fake news" and that WND is the "desperately needed counterbalance":
The Founding Fathers probably didn't support a "free press" that is as blatantly biased and has published as many falsehoods as WND.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:06 AM EST
Friday, November 27, 2020
MRC Thinks Conservative Misinformation Is Just Asking 'Honest Questions'
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center is in active denial about Facebook's attempts to mollify conservarives -- and now it's simply lying to itself about it and denying that conservartive misinformation about the presidential election was misinforming anyone. Alexander Hall ranted in a Nov. 10 post:
Yes, Hall actually claimed that deliberate conservative misinformation was merely asking "honest questions" about the election. He then crowed that "Roose was then scorched by The Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon for brazen hypocrisy," but all Dillon actually did was play whataboutism, whining that Roose "never mentions 'left-wing misinformation.'" Hall went on to portray conservative misinformation as normal -- note his biased dichotomy between conservatives "swaying public opinion" and "far-left influencers indoctrinating" people"-- but he's also forced to concede that not only does Facebook not actually censor conservative views to the extent the MRC insisted it has, conservative posts dominate the site:
Having admitted that, Hall then labored to return to the misleading right-wing narrative by huffing that "Contrary to Roose’s recent accusation of Facebook enabling conservative election skeptics, Facebook has cracked down on conservative information in the past year." But he cited only one example, that of the New York Post's dubious Hunter Biden story -- and he won't even vouch for the veracity of the story, stating that it was based on "purported emails." It appears that Hall wants conservatives to be able to mislead and lie with impunity. UPDATE: Hall did the same thing in a Nov. 12 post claiming that "A Biden campaign staffer is furious that conservatives are still allowed to question the integrity of the 2020 election online" and was "slamming the platform for giving conservatives a voice." In fact, the staffer accurately pointed out that "Donald Trump voter fraud and election victory lies represented 17 of the top 20 posts on FB between 11/3-11/8. While Twitter disabled sharing of Trump’s election disinformation, Facebook continued to actively promote the posts in feeds." Hall again claimed that "Contrary to liberal critiques, Facebook has cracked down on conservative information in the past year, specifically that which could hurt former Vice President Joe Biden’s bid for the presidency," but again he cited only the New York Post story.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:14 AM EST
Updated: Saturday, November 28, 2020 10:22 AM EST
CNS' Jones Uncritically Pushes Pro-Trump Election Narratives
Topic: CNSNews.com One of the leaders at CNSNews.com of perpetuating biased pro-Trump narratives in the immediate aftermath of the presidential election was reporter Susan Jones. Jones was very busy on Nov. 9. First, she complained that Joe Biden has "been declared the winner by major news outlets," then gave Republican Sen. Roy Blunt space to refuse to acknowledge Biden won and huff that "the media doesn't get to decide who the winner is. There is a canvassing process." Of course, Jones couldn't admit Biden won either. She demonstrated that denial in another article that day transcribing President Trump taking credit for the first announcement of a coronavirus vaccine, which she wrote "comes six days after the election that Democrats insist Joe Biden won, despite the continuing vote count and legal challenges in a few swing states." After that, Jones indulged in pushing the right-wing (and CNS) narrative that Biden getting a record number of votes doesn't really matter because Trump got nearly as many: "Democrat Joe Biden won more than 75 million votes, the most of any presidential candidate; but President Donald Trump won 70 million votes, the second highest total in history." Jones continued to promote pro-Trump narratives over the next few days, with minimal pushback if any, regarding the president's increasingly desperate challenges to vote counts across the country:
It wasn't until Nov. 19 that she wrote her first article on the reality of Trump's failing election challenges, under the headline "Georgia Secretary of State: 'We Have Not Seen Any Widespread Voter Fraud'." But even then she wasn't willing to competely give up the conspiracy theories, complaining that "partisan host Jake Tapper" pointed out that speculation about election software allows certain people to change vote tallies is "frankly crazy stuff, tin foil hat stuff."
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:17 AM EST
Thursday, November 26, 2020
MRC Hypocritically Attacks CNN For Doing What Fox News Does
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center will never inflict on Fox News the journalistic scrutiny it regularly inflicts on CNN and MSNBC, despite the fact that it's at least as guilty, if not more, of the things it regularly attacks those other news channels of doing. Note the whataboutism Joseph Norris uses in deflecting uncomfortable criticism in a Nov. 6 post:
Actually, that claim was not based on an "unnamed source" but internal memos that CNN obtained copies of. (And, as we've noted, the MRC has no problem hypocritically using anonymous sources when doing so advances its right-wing agenda.)
So uncritically repeating anything Trump does is "reporting the news," even if it's obviously false or doomed to failure? We suspect that this MRC reporting standard will change when Joe Biden takes office. Norris whined further:
If this sort of media bias is a bad thing -- and Norris is, by letting CNN's statements about Fox News being an arm of the Trump campaign pass unrebutted, effectively admitting those accusations are true -- why won't Norris criticize Fox News? Perhaps because not only is the MRC also an arm of the Trump campaign, MRC staffers tend to appear on Fox News and it doesn't want to do anything to jeopardize that relationship. At the top of that not-to-do list is anything that might document how Fox News uses the exact same "bias" techniques it bashes CNN and MSNBC for using. Which makes the "astounding" hypocrisy on display here that of Norris and the MRC, not CNN.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:13 AM EST
Updated: Thursday, November 26, 2020 10:50 PM EST
Hate-Filled CNS Editor Smears Biden As 'Evil,' His Supporters As Lazy, Godless Heathens
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey's hatred of Joe Biden is so unhinged that not only did he petulantly rant about a Biden speech interrupting a football game, he vented his anger at Catholic bishops who dared to congratulate only the second Catholic in history to be elected president. It turns out Jeffrey's irrational anger extends to anyone who voted for Biden as well, spending his Nov. 11 column smearing Biden voters as lazy, godless heathens, since an exit poll shows more people who don't work full time, aren't married and don't attend church voted for Biden:
Jeffrey wasn't done with the smears. In his Nov. 18 column, he painted Biden as "evil" for supporting abortion rights and transgender rights in listing "five things candidate Biden promised to do as president can fairly be described as evil," and he's especially outraged (and hate-filled) by the transgender stuff:
CNS maliciously -- and falsely -- portrayed Biden as suffering from "cognitive decline," and the editor who greenlighted that unfair and highly biased coverage wrote the above hate-filled screeds.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:15 AM EST
Updated: Thursday, November 26, 2020 9:38 AM EST
Wednesday, November 25, 2020
Sore Losers: MRC Is Bitter About Trump's Loss
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center has not taken Donald Trump's election loss well as Joe Biden's victory became more apparent. That bitterness was demonstrated in a Nov. 6 post by Alex Christy in which he lashed out at CNN for acknowledging Joe Biden's win:
The same day, Nicholas Fondacaro huffed in defiance of reality (and Trump's mutual defiance of same): "As the ballot counting dragged on Thursday in key states around the country and President Trump continued to fight for a second term, the partisan “journalists” at NBC News had grown obviously irritated that they couldn’t declare their candidate the winner. At no time was this more blatant than their primetime coverage when they demanded Trump be 'conciliatory' and handle his concession like former Vice President Al Gore did in 2000." Fondacaro went on to call the request that Trump concede "ridiculous" -- a description in itself has become more ridiculous as Biden has expanded his lead over Trump by, as of now, more than 6 million votes, which contradicts Norris' Fondacaro served up more bitterness: "The Sunday after Democratic nominee Joe Biden was declared the apparent president-elect, ABC’s Good Morning America was working really hard for their nominee. While ignoring Biden’s history of demonizing his opponents, they celebrated him as a great uniter that would end the rancor. They also trotted out Cindy McCain to urge the current president to concede to her nominee." Curtis Houck added:
Houck linked back to a earlier post he did on CNN's response that, in fact, made no mention of Baier's and MacCallum's response to Trump's speech. Perhaps he, as NewsBusters managing editor, can look into that reporting gap and detail that "level of sobriety" for us. The MRC was also embittered by the idea that Biden did well enough to have a mandate from the American people or that Trump was in any way repudiated:
The MRC also defended Trump's increasingly desperate efforts to deny the fact he lost by launching specious legal attacks over vote counts in states. Duncan Schroeder grumbled that "On Sunday evening’s CNN Newsroom, host Ana Cabrera and national security analyst Samantha Vinograd nastily attacked President Trump for daring to question their candidate’s vote counts. Cabrera accused Trump of “a dangerous attempt to undermine” voting and Vinograd vehemently declared that “someone needs to FedEx President Trump a copy of the Constitution.”Schroeder also asserted that Cabrera was "crazily ranting that Trump desires 'to undermine' voting" -- as if it was perfectly sane for Trump to try to disqualify millions of votes. Norris returned to complain: On CNN’s New Day, the leftist network completely dismissed Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud and election interference in the 2020 presidential election. Rather than report on the ongoing investigation, we are apparently supposed to trust CNN’s judgement and credibility on this one." Norris offered no evidence that any of Trump's claims about election fraud were, in fact, credible; he played a mixture of handwaving and whataboutism by adding that "it remains to be seen if there is any more validity to the claims of voter fraud and misconduct, than there was about the litany of other scandals and claims made about Trump." Clay Waters groused:
Waters didn't dispute the accuracy of the comparison, only complained that it was made. Bill D'Agostino tried to falsely compare this year's situation to the 2000 presidential when, he claimed, "TV journalists indulged losing candidate Al Gore’s protracted attempts to overturn the election, treating his lawsuits and requested recounts with great respect." In fact, the 2000 elected was determined by a 537-vote margin in Florida (which Gore lost, despite winning the popular vote), while Trump is actively trying to throw out thousands of votes across several states. Meanwhile, the MRC continued to indulge Trump's protracted attempts to overturn the election. P.J. Gladnick responded to one commentator's concern that Trump was trying to steal the election by retorting, "It's not 'stealing' if legal challenges throw into serious question the way the voting was conducted."
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:47 PM EST
Updated: Thursday, November 26, 2020 9:57 AM EST
WND's Cashill Switches From Obsessing Over Obama To Slandering Biden
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill has managed to take a break from obsessing about Barack Obama (temporarily, anyway) to obsess about Joe Biden. In his Oct. 21 column, Cashill complained about Biden's 2011 speech in Moscow at a time when the U.S. was trying to reset relations with Russia. He then rehashed the conspiracy theory about Russians gaining control of Uranium One at a time when "a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation" -- a claim pushed by right-wing activists that has been largely discredited. On Nov. 4, Cashill declared: "As she has watched the events of the past month unfold – or, more accurately, not unfold – Hillary Clinton had to have been seething. If Big Media, Big Tech and the deep state had provided her the cover it provided Joe Biden, she would have shattered the glass ceiling in 2016 and swanned her way into the White House." He added: "Hillary had to know she was an awful candidate, but Biden was magnitudes worse. He was the guy caught on video groping little girls, not her. He was the guy who (allegedly) digitally raped a Senate staffer, not her. He was the guy who could not remember what office he was running for, but Hillary never forgot." Cashill was in slander mode in his Nov. 18 column, smearing Biden as "a senile old pedophile who could not attract a thousand people to a rally" who stole the election from Donald Trump. The longtime conspiracy theorist then laughably complained that "the media filled the empty heads of their audience members with any number of conspiracy theories that the National Enquirer would have passed on." He then slandered some more, along with following the WND corporate line about election theft:
Cashill is lying to himself if he thinks accusing others of pushing conspirach theories will make people forget his amply demonstrated love of same.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:00 AM EST
Tuesday, November 24, 2020
Obama's New Book Makes The MRC Melt Down
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center has long been envious of Barack and Michelle Obama's success after leaving the White House and tried to tear them down whenever possible -- hence it took time out in the middle of runup to the presidential election to do a commercial for a "comedic play" by right-wing filmmaker Phelim McAleer called "ObamaGate" (which isn't actually a thing) that featured "the embarrassing and conspiratorial text messages of “FBI Lovebirds” Peter Strzok and Lisa Page." So when the publicity machine for Barack Obama's new presidential memoir got fired up, the MRC melted down. On Nov. 12, Kristine Marsh huffed that "CNN journalists let former President Obama take a turn at spewing hate towards President Trump and the millions of Americans who voted for him ... he bashes Trump voters as racists and praises his former Vice President, Joe Biden." Rich Noyes whined that "CBS News will roll out their red carpet for the former President on Sunday, helping him sell the first volume of his memoirs on Sunday Morning and 60 Minutes. The rest of the media will surely follow." He then rehashed how the media liked to say nice things about Obama. Scott Whitlock ranted that it was "COLLUSION" that "Gayle King, who vacationed with the Obamas and is a Democratic donor, will score the first interview with Barack Obama as he promotes his new book." He later complained of the then-upcoming interview that "The early indications are not positive if you care at all about objectivity. The co-host encouraged Obama to lash out at Donald Trump." Getting past the prebuttals to the actual interview, Nicholas Fondacaro grumbled that King "conducted a gooey interview" and proclaimed that "CBS’s insistence on letting King (someone who also donated to Democrats) shows they’re not a serious news organization." Under the headline "GAG," Marsh returned to huff: CBS’s 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley gave Gayle King a run for her money in who could be the most obnoxious, sycophantic journalist interviewing Barack Obama for his new book on Sunday. After Pelley prompted the former president to compare President Trump to a dictator who had weakened our country before our adversaries, he buttered up Obama as actually too nice to Trump and claimed Americans wanted Obama to be nastier to the sitting president." Whitlock came back to whine: "Who needs a PR machine when you have CBS News? That’s certainly the case when it comes to Barack Obama and his new book. In less than 24 hours, CBS promoted the Democrat’s new book for 48 minutes over multiple programs." Marsh found another network to attack over Obama: "Like the obedient lap dogs they are, MSNBC immediately took up Barack Obama’s call for the mainstream media to fight conservative media misinformation when Joe Biden is in the White House." She disingenously added regarding former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs' appearance on the channel: "Gibbs immediately went to low-hanging fruit by bringing up birther conspiracies about President Obama from the fringe as if to suggest this was the kind of news being spread by most conservative media outlets, (when actually Hillary Clinton supporters actually started these conspiracies about Obama in 2008.)" In fact, the MRC passively endorsed Obama birtherism and only spoke out against it in 2016 when the eligibility of Ted Cruz -- MRC chief Brent Bozell's preferred Republican presidential candidate that year before doing the big Trump flip -- was questioned. Joseph Norris chimed in with a claim that "In two separate segments on Monday morning’s New Day, CNN hosts Alisyn Camerota and John Berman gushed over former President Obama being invited to trash President Trump during a pair of softball CBS interviews on Sunday" and "continued to swoon over Obama’s upcoming book and media appearances," going on to grouse, "While the words of a former President should be reported on, they should not be treated with the weight and deference the partisan network provided, especially given the blatant partisan motivation behind the remarks." Whitlock returned to whine again, this time about Gayle King having "cheered the “powerful message” of Mrs. Obama going after Donald Trump again." And Tim Graham -- who expressed much of the envious jealousy over the Obamas' post-presidency success -- devoted a column to huffing about "the media's incessant and aerobic adoration of former President Barack Obama" and rehashing the complaints his MRC underlings were paid to issue about the interviews:
Graham added: "Obviously, conservatives believe that the job of holding the news media accountable is ineluctably connected to the media's alleged watchdog role." Of course, the MRC's own "news" division, CNSNews.com, is exempt from the MRC's scrutiny, having embarsssed itself as a pro-Trump sycophant with no interest whatsoever on serving as a watchdog on its fellow conservatives. UPDATE: Marsh had yet another Obama meltdown, sneering "Gross" in the headine and ranting that "Late Show host Stephen Colbert practically bowed down before Barack Obama during a sit-down interview with the former President on his Tuesday night CBS show," while denouncing the interview as filled with "liberal smugness."
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:47 PM EST
Updated: Thursday, November 26, 2020 1:32 AM EST
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