MRC Writer Takes His Marching Orders From Tucker Carlson Topic: Media Research Center
It's no surprise that the Media Research Center loves Fox News, so it's not much of a surprise that its writers are taking their marching orders directly from their hosts.
In a Nov. 19 post, Nicholas Fondacaro transcribed a rant from Fox News host Tucker Carlson about how "ABC, CBS, and NBC covered up California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom’s non-COVID-compliant dinner party earlier this month." He included a statement from Carlson in his transcript reproduction: "Schoolchildren don't face a meaningful risk from this virus. When children contract the virus, CDC data show that their survival rate is over 99.99 percent. And that's not a TV term. In this case, it's a scientific term. Literally 99.99 percent. Teachers and other adults under the age of 70 have between a 99.5 and a 99.9 percent chance of surviving. Again, not estimates, real numbers from the federal government. That's science, but nobody cares about science anymore."
Fondacaro invoked those numbers as the basis for posts over the next few days that complained about media warnings about spreading coronavirus at Thanksgiving gatherings. He began a Nov. 22 post by huffing, "Despite the science tells us that the coronavirus has an over 99 percent survival rate, the liberal media were still fearmongering and telling people to remain cut off from family, and not celebrate Thanksgiving."
He declared on Nov. 23: "With Thanksgiving just a few days away, 50 million Americans were predicted to travel and not let a virus with a 99.6 percent survival rate keep them from gathering with family. This irritated the liberal media, who decried those refusing to be locked in their homes."
The talking point spread to fellow MRC writer Kristine Marsh. She complained in a Nov. 23 post: "The media really wants to ruin your Thanksgiving holiday. As each day gets closer to the day when millions of Americans will get together with their families they probably haven’t seen in months, the networks get more obnoxious in insisting Thanksgiving meals are COVID death traps, despite the virus’s high survival rate."
Fondacaro returned to gush over Carlson invoking thost statistics again, writing in a Nov. 30 post: "Noting that some would argue that closing schools was about protecting teachers and staff, he then pointed out that, depending on age, teachers had a 99.5 to 99.98 percent chance of survival."
Of course, a survival rate is not an infection rate, and Carlson, Fondacaro and Marsh are blithely dismissing the fact the both coronavirus infections and deaths are already on the rise -- yesterday marked the highest single-day death toll since the pandemic began -- and that infection rates (and, it follows, death rates) do indeed appear to be going up as the result of Thanksgiving gatherings.
In other words: the experts are right, and Carlson and Fondacaro are wrong. And more than 277,000 Americans (as of this writing) are still dead.
Terry Jeffrey Trump Deficit Blame Avoidance Watch Topic: CNSNews.com
Has CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey continued to complain about the federal deficit while refusing to call out his fellow Republicans for their key role in running it up? Of course he has. From a Nov. 12 article:
The federal government set an all-time record for the amount of money it spent in the first month of a fiscal year, when it spent $521,769,000,000 in October, the first month of fiscal 2021, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today.
Before this year, the most the federal government had ever spent in the first month of a fiscal year was in October 2009, when it spent $483,357,690,000 in constant October 2020 dollars.
This October’s record of $521,769,000,000 was $38,411,310,000—or 8 percent—more than that.
[...]
That is the second largest deficit the federal government has ever recorded in the first month of a fiscal year. The largest-ever deficit in the first month of a fiscal year came in October 2008, when the deficit hit $285,160,410,000 in constant October 2020 dollars.
As per his pattern, the words "Trump" and "Republican" are nowhere to be found, despite the fact that Republicans control the presidency and the Senate and, thus, are in control of federal spending. He also omitted context: Not only did Jeffrey not mention the coronavirus pandemic as the key reason federal spending exploded this year, he didn't mention that a major recession was the reason for increased deficit spending in 2008 and 2009.
And, as usual, Jeffrey's choice of a file photo -- featuring Trump, Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer -- falsely implies equal blame for the deficit when Trump is the president and has the ultimate veto power over the budget.
Again, a blurb at the end notes that "The business and economic reporting of CNSNews.com is funded in part with a gift made in memory of Dr. Keith C. Wold." Somehow, we doubt Wold's memory is being well served by such shoddy reporting, especially as done by a man who's the head of the "news" operation that's getting the money.
MRC's Double Standard On Sexism Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Scott Whitlock ranted in a Nov. 18 post:
It must be nice to live in the hypocritical world of CNN hacks. After all, you can spew vile sexism and you don’t have to feel bad about it. That’s what Bill Weir did on Wednesday as he went after incumbent Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler.
The Georgia senator tweeted this: “I’ve lived the American dream. I went from the farm to the Fortune 500. I want Georgians to have the same freedom & opportunities I had. And it won’t be possible if we go down the road to socialism. We must hold the line and protect the American Dream."
Spewing misogyny, Weir slimed, “Good news, Georgia! If you live on a farm, you now qualify to marry the Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange!” This was an attack on Loeffler for her 2004 marriage to Intercontinental Exchange founder and CEO Jeffrey Sprecher. He’s also the Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.
Whitlock seems to have forgotten that a few months ago, his employer engaged in misogyinistic slut-shaming by working to justify smearing Vice President-elect Kamala Harris as a "hoe" because she once had an affair with a prominent politician that allegedly boosted her own political career.
Whitlock didn't explain why Weir's pointing out that Loeffler married into wealth is so much worse or more "sexist" then endorsing a claim that Harris slept her way to the top.
Whitlock concluded by huffing, "Remember, at CNN you can say anything about someone, so long as they are a conservative or a Republican." He didn't that his employer allows you to say anything about someone as long as they are a Democrat or liberal. Talk about a double standard.
Newsmax TV Basks In Trump's High-Profile Attention Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy has long been a buddy of President Trump -- it was touting Trump's presidential ambitions way back in 2011 -- and that's finally paying off in a serious way, with Trump promoting Newsmax TV (and its competitor One America News) as he feuds with Fox News.
Immediately after the eleciton, Ruddy parroted the Trump line by repeating his "concern" that Democrats were stealing the election and noting that Newsmax had not called Arizona for Biden the way Fox News did, which he portrayed as "media malpractice." From there, Newsmax was taking shots at its much bigger rival while also engaging in self-promotion. For instance:
Newsmax has also been baskinginattentionfrom other media outlets over its Trump-raised profile. It's also brought speculation that someone else could buy it and turn it into a Trump-centric media channel, leading Ruddy to declare that "Newsmax would never become ‘Trump TV,'" though that's what it effectively is already. As Mediaite noted in an interview with Ruddy: "While Ruddy insists Newsmax is a news network and not Trump TV, its current success is mostly based on telling viewers that there is credence to Trump’s false claims he won the election until it was stolen." But he also made sure to flatter his friend, saying on Newsmax TV that a "Trump TV" channel would be successful.
There's also been some backlash to all the attention. A Mediaite commentary called out Ruddy's friendship with the Clintons (though, as we've noted, this hasn't stopped Newsmax from attacking the Clintons), donated tpo other Democratic candidates, and (gasp!) doesn't reflexively despise George Soros.
All in all, it's an interesting time to be Christopher Ruddy right now.
Uber-Catholics At CNS Suddenly Doesn't Want To Talk About Predatory Bishop Topic: CNSNews.com
When former Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was defrocked after revelations of sexual abuse of children came to light, the uber-Catholics at CNSNews.com worked to try and tie McCarrick to Democratic politicians -- ignoring the fact that he also had ties to Republican politicians as well. Curiously, both of the stories in which CNS tried to tie McCarrick to Democrats have been mysteriously deleted without explanation.
Still, CNS continued to use McCarrick's behavior as a cudgel, this time to attack Pope Francis, whom those CNS uber-Catholics see as too liberal:
In a March 2 article, managing editor Michael W. Chapman touted how far-right Archiishop Carlo Vigano "alleged that Pope Francis knew about the homosexual abuse of teen boys and seminarians by then Cardinal Theodore McCarrick but stayed silent; Pope Francis even allowed McCarrick to carry out diplomatic and fundraising missions for the church."
On April 23, Chapman restated that in claiming that "In 2018, Vigano publicly called on Pope Francis to resign for allegedly ignoring the homosexual abuse practices of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick."
In touting a pro-Trump rant by Vigano on June 8, Chapman again noted that he "called on Pope Francis to resign in 2018 for reportedly covering up the sexual abuse history of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick."
In a June 17 column, dishonest right-wing Catholic Bill Donohue declared McCarrick to be the church's "poster boy for sexual abuse crimes," then complained: "What Catholics want to know is not one more anecdote about McCarrick's homosexual adventures—which is all the story offered—they want to know who knew what and when about his behavior. The Catholic clergy and laity have been waiting for more than two years for the Vatican report on him. Why the delay? Never once do the reporters mention this."
CNS even snuck in a stealth attack in an Oct. 22 article stating how much the Catholic Church is supposed to hate gay people while omitting the context of Pope Francis expressing his support for same-sex civil unions (which CNS was in mid-meltdown over) included a file photo of the pope "reaching out to hug" McCarrick (which not referencing McCarrick's scandal).
Well, that Vatican report on McCarrick finally came out last month, and nobody looks particularly good, least of all Pope John Paul II, who elevated McCarrick to archbishop despite warnings about his behavior. Pope Benedict XVI -- like John Paul, a conservative-leaning pope in line with what CNS thinks a pope should be -- removed McCarrick as archbishop but not from ministry and did not do a full investigation into claims about McCarrick. Even Vigano doesn't come off well, with the report finding that he didn't investigate McCarrick when ordered to by the Vatican in 2012, and that he invited McCarrick to event while serving as the papal nuncio to the U.S.
In other words, there's a lot here that's worth reporting, especially to the Catholics who run CNS. But that didn't happen -- CNS devoted no news article to the McCarrick report. The only mention of the report at CNS came in a Nov. 11 column by Donohue -- who was not interested in discussing what was in it:
Having read the 449-page report by the Holy See on former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, and having completed a manuscript on the subject of clergy sexual abuse (it is scheduled to be published later next year), I am in a position to assess its findings. That will be done soon.
My immediate interest is in assessing the Report's critics. They are a mixed bag. Some are reasonable, others are not.
So, yeah, that's pretty much it. It seems that the uber-Catholics at CNS have decided that if they have to admit that their preferred popes and their favorite pope-basher were also complicit in letting McCarrick get away with his predatory behavior for decades, they weren't going to talk about it at all.
MRC vs. Twitter: More Bogus 'Censorship' Claims Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is still falselyclaiming that Twitter enforcing its rules of service against President Trump is exactly the same thing as "censorship."
Corinne Weaver complained in a Nov. 23 post that "Twitter has labeled Trump’s tweets 52 times since Nov. 16. Team Trump’s tweets have been labeled 16 times as well in the past week. Overall, Trump and his campaign have been censored 262 times since May 31, 2018. Meanwhile, Biden and his campaign have received no such censorship." Weaver updated the numbers on Nov. 30: "Overall, since May 31, 2018, Trump and his campaign have been censored by Twitter 325 times. By comparison, neither former Vice President Joe Biden nor his campaign have been censored on the platform."
As before, in neither post did Weaver identify any Biden post that violated Twitter's terms of service the way Trump's false claims about election fraud do. Further, those Trump posts aren't even actually "censored": they are labeled and "de-amplified," but anyone can still read them.
The fact that Twitter's actions against Trump's misinformation-laden posts isn't actual censorship, however, is not keeping the MRC from falsely calling it that. Take, for instance, this Nov. 16 post by Alexander Hall:
Twitter has continued its censorious campaign against sitting President Donald Trump.
On Sunday evening Trump proclaimed, “I WON THE ELECTION!” denying that former Vice President Joe Biden had won the presidency. Twitter quickly retaliated by flagging his tweet with the statement: “Official sources called this election differently.” Twitter’s fact-check led to an events page declaring: “Joe Biden is the projected winner of the 2020 presidential election,” according to “projections by The Associated Press, NBC News and other news outlets.” This events page provided no mention whatsoever of the numerous legal challenges that may change the election’s outcome.
Trump’s posts were labeled in the following hours for numerous other statements, ranging from calling the 2020 presidential election “Most fraudulent Election in history” to sharing a clip discussing how Dominion voting machines could be hacked with the statement This claim about election fraud is disputed.”
Twitter flagged other statements today as well.
Again: Flagging isn't "censorship." Neither Hall nor Weaver has explained why it's using that false terminology.
Nevertheless, Hall did it again, ranting in a Nov. 19 post that "Twitter censored multiple conservative commentators shortly after they were retweeted by President Donald Trump." Actually, according to the article from the right-wing site Reclaim the Net that Hall sourced for his item, the accounts in question were suspended for, yes, violating Twitter's terms of service. Typically that means simply deleting the offending posts to restore service.
On Nov. 20, Heather Moon complained that "Dan Bongino, conservative commentator and a partner in Twitter alternative Parler, was censored by Twitter." As usual, Bongino wasn't "censored"; Twitter flagged the post for promoting bogus information. Sadly, Moon was utterly incurious about why an investor in a "Twitter alternative" still has an account on Twitter. (And she failed to disclose that another Parler investor is Rebekah Mercer, who is a major funder of, and board member at, the MRC.)
Meanwhile, a Nov. 13 post by Kayla Sargent brought more anti-Twitter (and bogus "censorship") drama:
It’s no secret that Twitter takes its self-proclaimed role as the arbiter of truth seriously, but a recent report released by the company shows just how far it’s willing to go to censor its opponents.
Twitter proudly announced in a Thursday update: “Approximately 300,000 Tweets have been labeled under our Civic Integrity Policy for content that was disputed and potentially misleading. These represent 0.2% of all US election-related Tweets sent during this time period.”
Twitter censorship is now no longer something that the platform denies or conceals: it now publicly lists the number of people it has censored with impunity.
Sargent is lying when she claims Twitter is "censor[ing] its opponents," and she provides no evidence whatsoever that anything was done outside its Civic Integrity Policy. She's also forced to concede that "a few on the left were censored as well" -- undermining the MRC's entire victim narrative that conservatives are solely targeted by social media -- but bizarrely listing former Trump White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci as being on "the left." No, Kayla, criticizing Trump does not automaticlally place you on "the left."
Meanwhile, the MRC's Dan Gainor had a piece published at Fox News ranting that "Trump has been the enemy of leftist Twitter for his entire presidency, despite having nearly 89 million followers on the site. While the site refused to shut him down, it has censored him and his campaign nearly 200 times. Most of those have come this month" and claiming the site as "censored" Trump. As with the others, he didn't bother to explain why Trump's repeated violations of Twitter's terms of service were "censorship."
ConWeb Triggered By Harry Styles In A Dress Topic: The ConWeb
Pop star Harry Styles did a photo shoot for Vogue magazine in which he wore dresses, and unsurprisingly, the ConWeb melted down over it. Todd Starnes ranted in a Nov. 16 WorldNetDaily column:
Harry Styles, the former boy band singer, is making national headlines in the fashion world. He's the first man to grace the cover of Vogue. He was also wearing a dress.
Mr. Styles says society should dismiss the idea that there are clothes for men and clothes for women. He went on to say that wearing ladies' garments is "amazing."
Vogue prides itself in being the industry leader when it comes to fashion and style – and if they have their say, hairy-legged men with burly chests will be painting the town red in Gucci gowns with matching handbags.
[...]
It's a direct assault on cultural norms – this idea of gender fluidity. The left wants you to believe there's no such thing as male or female. They want you to believe that you actually exist on some sort of spectrum.
They want to create a society where it's perfectly acceptable for Doris and Sally to wear jock straps. And we should celebrate if Cousin Leroy meanders through Walmart wearing ladies' unmentionables.
“There is no society that can survive without strong men,” Owens tweeted on Monday. “The East knows this. In the West, the steady feminization of our men at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children is not a coincidence. Bring back manly men.”
[...]
She trended on Twitter at the number two spot because of the tweet and received criticism from many fans of Styles.
“You’re pathetic,” Olivia Wilde responded to Owens. Wilde is a filmmaker who cast Styles as the lead in her upcoming movie Don’t Worry Darling.
Vox’s Carlos Maza said Owens sounded “like the pearl-clutching puritans who've been around since the 50s and 60s. Genuinely impossible for them to be cool for even one second.”
Candace tweeted after she began trending to clarify her position, “I meant: Bring back manly men. Terms like ‘toxic masculinity,’ were created by toxic females. Real women don’t do fake feminism. Sorry I’m not sorry.”
And at the Media Research Center, Sergie Daez was aghast that anyone would criticize Owens for her meltdown:
Who would look more manly? A gnarly-faced Scot who’s clad in a kilt, sporting a fierce beard, brandishing a claymore and wearing a scowl that could kill a snowflake? Or a smooth-faced boy with styled hair who’s wearing a dress that resembles a ball gown from the 1800s?
While appearance doesn’t reveal everything about one’s character, it can send off a message about one’s beliefs. Harry Styles, British vocalist of the band One Direction, seems to think that it’s alright for men to wear dresses, as evinced by his latest photo shoot with Vogue magazine. Conservative political activist and author Candace Owens found the sight revolting, and she tweeted on November 14, “There is no society that can survive without strong men. The East knows this. In the west, the steady feminization of our men at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children is not a coincidence. It is an outright attack. Bring back manly men.”
Billboard.com reported Owens’s disgust in an article published on November 16, where they called Owens a “hater” and “conservative firebrand.” They also presented a number of tweets defending Styles from Owens’s comments, including a tweet from actress Olivia Wilde, who is known for acting in the medical drama House.
Billboard’s headline indicated that Wilde was defending Styles from Owens, but it sounded more like a childish attempt to avenge an injury.
Actually, Daez is the childish one here, responding to actor Zach Braff's tweet that people are "free to be whatever the f*** yoiu want jto be" by retorting, "Clearly it’s more important to Braff to be what one wants to be rather than to be what one is, that is, oneself," going on to further sneer, "Styles might have his own issues to deal with, but it’s important to just be yourself."
But it's clear Daez doesn't want Styles to "be yourself," especially if that self involves wearing a dress in a photo shoot.
WND's Brown Not Ready to Quit Trump Yet Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily columnist Michael Brown has longbeen an apologist for President Trump, demanding that we ignore his impossible-to-ignore amorality and the fact that he's an objectively horrible person and support him because he has delivered the right-wing goods. Even after the election, as Trump pushes increasingly dubious charges of election fraud, Brown still can't quite quit him.
In his Nov. 4 column immediately after the election, Brown cited several "takeaways"' from the election, among them being "If Trump does get reelected, it will be with God's help," "Trump succeeded in increasing his black and Latino support," and "People of faith should keep praying and putting their trust in God for His desired outcome, whatever that may be." But he did hedge a bit, admitting that the country's "massive crisis of trust" was driven in part by "Trump's masterful way of creating distrust," and adding in another takeaway that "Charismatic prophets are about to be vindicated or humiliated."
I personally hope that the seemingly impossible happens, that Trump is proven to be the rightfully reelected president and that the prophecies about him prove true.
But what if a Biden-Harris presidency was needed to reveal the dangerous radicalism of the left, leading to greater spiritual desperation in the church, leading to a spiritual awakening in the society? What if the worst-case scenario for tens of millions of conservative voters resulted in the transforming of even more millions of hearts in the years ahead?
Brown, as usual, is ignoring the possibility that if Trump's election was ordained by God, he was sent as a warning and not as a deliverance, and that Biden is the actual divine deliverance.
Brown tried to play both sides in his Nov. 9 column, admitting that he appreciated Joe Biden's claims for unity, but he seemed to put the onus on Biden much more than Trump to make that happen:
But as long as there are strong beliefs that the election has been stolen, there will be no healing in sight.
Conversely, should the courts overturn the current vote, there will be no healing.
And when crowds dance in jubilation at the defeat of Trump, there will be no healing.
And when BLM and Antifa remain as radicalized as ever, there will be no healing.
And if Biden becomes our next president and seeks to enact many of his promised policies, as his constituents would expect him to do, there will be no healing.
And if Biden and Harris continue to advocate for the legality of slaughtering the unborn, there will be no healing.
And if Biden is serious about making transgender rights the civil rights issue of the day, there will be no healing. (Note his specific mention of "Gay, straight, transgender" in his speech.)
Even with something as simple as a national mask mandate, it would only deepen the divide.
Brown sounded very much like a Trump supporter in his Nov. 11 column:
Right now, legal officials and the courts are weighing the question of a fraudulent election. But regardless of the final verdict, we can say for sure that the odds were already stacked against President Trump.
Just think of what might have happened had the mainstream media reported the story of the Hunter Biden laptop the way they reported the alleged Russian collusion story (among other anti-Trump stories).
What might have happened if the internet giants didn't suppress conservative voices?
More broadly, what might have happened if COVID-19 did not crush the thriving economy, or if the virus did not pave the way for tens of millions of mail-in ballots, opening the door wider to potential fraud?
But he did seem to concede just a little that Trump may not be divinely ordained: "Again, this does not mean that God is with Trump and against his political opponents. This does not mean that, unless Trump is reelected, God's purposes have failed. And this doesn't mean that Trump did not create his own problems. But it does mean that all these obstacles, multiplied endlessly, are no match for God. Not even close. If He wants Trump in office, it will happen."
On Nov. 13, Brown ranted against the "radical left" and claimed to speak for Biden's black voters: "I do not believe that a large majority of blacks who voted for Biden were also voting for socialism or for transgender activism or for disrupting the nuclear family. (Note also that Trump did increase his support among black voters by 4% from 2016.)" He admitted that " most Americans also resist the agenda of the radical right, but that agenda tends not to make its way through society via our schools and the cultural elitists."
Brown both-sided it again in his Nov. 20 column -- even though the rancor is coming mostly from his side -- but he does seem to understand the stakes:
Allow me to state the obvious. Barring divine intervention, which would include the miraculous changing of the hearts of millions of people, there is no good outcome to the current electoral crisis. Absolutely none.
If, by some miracle, Trump still prevails and wins reelection, the outcry will be greater than anything we have yet seen.
It will be greater than the riots that have convulsed our country this year. Greater than the riots of 1968. Greater than anything in our history, short of the Civil War.
And be assured of this. The outcry against Trump will not stop.
After all, if his legitimate election in 2016 was fought tooth and nail for the last four years, what would happen if the courts pronounced him president for another four? The opposition against him, in the media, in politics and on the streets, would be intense beyond words. "Hysterical" would be a better description.
On the other hand, if Biden prevails and is sworn in Jan. 20, tens of millions of Americans will believe the election was stolen, and Trump would likely keep stoking the fire. Or do you think he and his followers will just say, "Hey, we tried, but the better man won, fair and square"?
As I said, barring divine intervention, this is not a likely outcome, in which case the Biden presidency will be marked by constant derision and scorn, with countless people even refusing to acknowledge his authority.
How can we survive in a state like this?
But rather than state the obvious -- that it's Trump's responsibility to turn down the heat -- Brown wimps out, first quoting Rabbi Shmuley Boteach bragging that "American irrationality is part of our greatness" (while smearing Biden as someone who "might have mentally left the reservation," a characterization Brown apparently has no problem with), and then declaring that God will save us all, in whatever form: "The God we worship and serve can bring light out of darkness and order out of chaos. The God we adore uses the foolish to confound the wise and the weak to confound the strong. The God we honor brings resurrection out of crucifixion. And when all seems lost, He is often at work the most. As the old saying goes, man's extremity is God's opportunity."
MRC Launches Misleading, Nitpicky Attacks On Ga. Senate Candidate Topic: Media Research Center
Almost as if acting on orders from their Republican overlords, the Media Research Center is going on the attack against the Rev. Raphael Warnock, the Democratic candidate in one of the Georgia Senate races that will help determine control of the body for the next two years.
Scott Whitlock went on a misleading anti-Warnock tirade in a Nov. 18 post under a headline laughably calling Warnock "Radical Raphael":
Journalists have already shifted from attack dogs for Donald Trump to cuddly puppies in how they cover Joe Biden. But they’ve been strangely quiet on the background of a man who could help the Democratic Party win the U.S. Senate in a Georgia runoff election.
Raphael Warnock is facing incumbent Republican Kelly Loeffler,. He is also a radical leftist who has condemned serving in the military and trashed America’s ally Israel. Yet ABC, CBS and NBC have shown no interest in these incendiary beliefs that could torpedo his campaign and Democratic control of the Senate.
Here are some of the shocking things Warnock has said or been connected to. Network journalists should do their jobs and investigate, something that cable outlets have at least attempted.
As Fox News reported, Reverend Warnock told church parishioners in 2011 that one could not serve in the military and be a good Christian: “America, nobody can serve God and the military. You can’t serve God and money. You cannot serve God and mammon at the same time. America, choose ye this day who you will serve. Choose ye this day.”
No, Scott, Warnock did not claim that "one could not serve in the military and be a good Christian." In full context, Warnock was fleshing out the old "cannot serve God and mammon" Bible verse and was speaking out against militarism, not military service.
In his Nov. 20 column, Tim Graham declared Warnock to be an "acolyte" of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whom the right-wing media spent years inveighing against for his links to Barack Obama. Graham also took Warnock's remarks about God andthe military out of context, listing it as among his allegedly "extreme sermons" (even though it's based on a Bible verse) and sneering, "If that’s about violence, he hasn’t claimed nobody can serve God and Planned Parenthood."
Since Warnock once said something nice about Wright, that gave the MRC license to bring up all the old attacks on him, including the notorious "God damn America" quote. When someone pointed out that the remark was taken out of context and that the right-wing outrage against both Warnock and Wright seemed to stem in part from the fact that both are black, Mark Finkelstein retorted in a Nov. 23 post that "When it comes to attempting to explain away the unexplainable, nothing's more hackneyed than claiming the offensive statement was 'taken out of context,'" then insisting that Loeffler wasn't being racist by attacking black pastors: "If Warnock had been defending a pastor of pallor who made the same despicable statement cursing our country, Loeffler would surely be bringing it to the attention of Georgia voters in a similar way."
Graham returned in a Nov. 30 post for yet another nitpicky meltdown against a fact-checker for checking facts. He whined that PolitiFact ruled that Warnock's statement that Loeffler is for "getting rid of health care in the middle of a pandemic" was "half true," huffing, "By the extremely literal logic that PolitiFact often applies to the GOP, it could be interpreted that 'getting rid of health care' means 'closing all the hospitals and forbidding doctors to work.'" Of course, getting rid of the Affordable Care Act, as Loeffler wants to do, without a replacement option means that you are, in fact, getting rid of some people's health care, at least in the form and at a price they're familiar with.
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 >>
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.
The left-wing news media didn’t just poison the information environment with their incessantly negative coverage of President Trump going into the 2020 election. They also refused to give airtime to important arguments of the Republican campaign — both pro-Trump and anti-Biden — which meant millions of voters cast their ballots knowing only what the media permitted them to know about the candidates.
To measure the true effect of the media’s censorship on the election, the Media Research Center asked The Polling Company to survey 1,750 Biden voters in seven swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), six of which (all but North Carolina) were called for Biden (survey details below). We tested these voters’ knowledge of eight news stories — all important topics that our ongoing analysis had shown the liberal news media had failed to cover properly. We found that a huge majority (82%) of Biden voters were unaware of at least one of these key items, with five percent saying they were unaware of all eight of the issues we tested.
This lack of information proved crucial: One of every six Biden voters we surveyed (17%) said they would have abandoned the Democratic candidate had they known the facts about one or more of these news stories. A shift of this magnitude would have changed the outcome in all six of the swing states won by Joe Biden, and Donald Trump would have comfortably won a second term as president.
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:
At the time you cast your vote for president, were you aware that in just the five months from May through September, the economy created more than 11 million new jobs?
At the time you cast your vote for president, did you know that the president had negotiated three different peace agreements between Arab countries and Israel, something never done before, and for which he’s been nominated for three separate Nobel Peace Prizes?
At the time you cast your vote for president, were you aware that Joe Biden chose as his running mate and successor Kamala Harris, rated the most left wing Senator in America, even more leftist that Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist?
At the time you cast your vote for president, were you aware of the Trump administration's unprecedented $10 billion effort to expedite effective treatments to fight COVID-19, with the promise of 300 million doses of a safe vaccine available to the public as soon as next year?
Are you aware that Facebook and Twitter censored President Trump or his campaign 65 times in the past year, but neither platform censored Biden or his campaign a single time?
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.
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:
Divorce rates in the United States have declined, and marriages have grown stronger — during the pandemic.
Predictions of a COVID-induced divorce surge never materialized. And according to Dr. Bradford Wilcox, director of the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project, divorce filings in five states that display them in real time are down between 10 and 20 percent since last year. While Wilcox admits that these numbers may also reflect “deferred” divorces, unhappy couples unable to get to the courthouse during lockdown, more and more data trickling in suggests trends more surprising and encouraging than initially assumed.
Last year, according to the American Family Survey, 40 percent of married Americans surveyed reported their marriages were in trouble. This year, that number is down to 29 percent. According to the same survey, 58 percent of married people between the ages of 18 and 55 report that their appreciation for their spouse has increased during the pandemic. Also, 51 percent report a deepened commitment to their marriage during COVID, while only 8 percent report a weakened commitment to their marriage.
[...]
For instance, during the pandemic, fathers have spent more time at home and have helped out more with household chores. The marital benefits of a father’s presence go far beyond the division of labor. Wilcox believes that the increased time men spend engaging in home life makes an incredible difference relationally with both spouse and children. Even more, for many during this pandemic, the home became the center of work, play, meals, and even worship, a trend far more significant than it sounds. In effect, COVID has at least temporarily reversed a long-term trend in which the home has been largely de-centered from modern life.
As Aaron Renn, a researcher with the Institute for Family Studies, pointed out back in March, pre-industrial families organized shared lives around shared labor, shared meals, shared recreation, and shared education. During the pandemic, however, families were forced to stop treating their homes as nothing more than shared bunk spaces and food repositories. As Renn predicted, many families have now rediscovered what he calls “the productive household.” And as Wilcox believes, a backyard garden, renovations, cleaning the garage, family projects, and even board games can re-center families.
And, maybe, instead of just leaving when conflict started, couples were forced to stay together. Maybe they experienced the long-term relational and personal improvements that comes when conflict is faced and resolved, as opposed to running away from each other.
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.
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:
Hard to believe, but very few Americans have doctors who are using a safe, proven protocol for early home/outpatient treatment for those with COVID-19 symptoms or a positive test result. If they had, some 180,000 deaths could have been prevented so far.
How could this happen? Two main reasons. First, The National Institutes of Health have not sanctioned any treatment for home/outpatient use – but only treatment promoted for hospital use. Second, the Food and Drug Administration does not approve of the use of the key cheap, safe and generic drug used in the U.S. since 1955, namely hydroxychloroquine (HCQ).
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."
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.
Black Lives Matter protest is so passé now that the National Football League's weekend focus Sunday was on "National Coming Out Day." The league released a 30-second long "National Coming Out Day PSA" on YouTube Saturday, which aired during early-game Fox broadcasts Sunday.
[...]
Let's be real here. Sports leagues frequently suck up to the LGBT pressure groups' agenda, to stay on their good side, to prevent boycotts and nastiness. They're fearful of being labeled "homophobic."
Now it's not important to just be a great athlete. By coming out of the closet NFL players are sure to get the Jason Collins treatment. The president, commissioners, coaches and athletes fawned all over the former NBA player for cravenly coming out as he retired from the NBA in 2014.
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:
Boise, Idaho, you can kiss your inclusion in March Madness next spring good-bye. The NCAA prefers a different version of inclusion for its host sites, one that doesn't ban males from participating in female sports like Idaho does. College sports fans, trans inclusion is rolling down the tracks and little can stop it.
SB Nation Outsports reports that the NCAALGBT hasn't yet rescinded its agreement for NCAA Tournament games in Boise, but the sport's governing association is in the tank for transgenders.
[...]
As if social justice activism hasn't ruined people's enjoyment of sports enough, it's just a matter of when college sports become more defined by the letters NCAALGBT than by biological gender and notions of fairness.
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:
Can't a 93-year-old critically ill man be allowed to die in peace? Not if he is Hall of Fame former baseball manager Tommy Lasorda. Then SB Nation Outsports will dog him to his dying day because he never admitted his late son was homosexual.
Outsports writer Dawn Ennis goes lower than low in a shameful assault on Lasorda (seen in photo delivering his Hall of Fame speech), who managed the Los Angeles Dodgers from 1976-1996, won 1,599 games and two World Series. Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1997, Lasorda is currently in an intensive care unit in a Los Angeles-area hospital.
[...]
Tommy Lasorda is not a "legend" because he didn't get on his knees to the LGBT fascists and say his son was homosexual. Ennis is a "legend" for contributing to cancel culture with her crassness, disrespect and lack of civility.
That's what passes for sports commentary at the MRC.
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."
It's no surprise that the Media Research Center loves Fox News, so it's not much of a surprise that its writers are taking their marching orders directly from their hosts.
Has CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey 
The Media Research Center's Scott Whitlock ranted in a Nov. 18 
Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy has long been a buddy of President Trump -- it was touting Trump's presidential ambitions 
When former Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was defrocked after revelations of sexual abuse of children came to light, the uber-Catholics at CNSNews.com 
The Media Research Center is still 
Pop star Harry Styles did a 
WorldNetDaily columnist Michael Brown has 
Almost as if acting on orders from their Republican overlords, the Media Research Center is going on the attack against the Rev. Raphael Warnock, the Democratic candidate in one of the Georgia Senate races that will help determine control of the body for the next two years.
The Media Research Center has been building a conspiracy theory that the presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. First, it 
Remember when the Media Research Center 
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 
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 
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:
