MRC Writer Misunderstands The Lessons Of The Chicago 7
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Kyle Drennen complained in a Feb. 12 post:

In just another example of blatant media hypocrisy, on NBC’s 3rd Hour Today show Friday, co-host Al Roker enthusiastically talked to the cast of the Netflix film The Trial of the Chicago 7, which lionizes the far-left radicals who incited the violent 1968 riot at the Democratic National Convention. Amazingly, the deadly January 6 Capitol Hill riot never came up in the discussion, even as the ’68 Chicago rioters were given glowing labels like “iconic” and “hero.”

[...]

Apparently NBC failed to see the irony of promoting a movie celebrating the inciters of a violent riot in between it’s coverage of a Senate impeachment trial accusing former President Trump of inciting a violent riot.

Drennen clearly doesn't know his history. Otherwise, he would be aware that none of the Chicago 7 were ultimately convicted of inciting a riot. The protesters had planned a nonviolent protest against the Vietnam War, but the violence outside the convention was actually instigated by the police determined to make a show of force by violently cracking down on them, and the arrests of the leaders and the resulting trial were pushed by federal prosecutors under Richard Nixon determined to make an example of anti-war protesters.

In 1968, it was the police who created the riot and authorities tried to railroad protesters who would have been peaceful if not for the brutal police crackdown. On Jan. 6, it was the MRC's preferred president, Donald Trump, who incited thousands of protesters to storm and desecrate the Capitol. So, no, not the same at all. No irony here.

MRC's Double Standard On Attacking Reporters
Topic: Media Research Center

Last month, the Media Research Center got a bit of clickbait mileage out of a controversy involving a deputy press secretary in the White House press office, TJ Ducklo. It actually began with some manufactured outrage about how a reporter ended up having a romatic relationship with Ducklo, even though the reporter responsibly asked to be reassigned after the relationship began; Kristine Marsh sneered that a People magazine article on the relationship read "more like a PR piece for the reporter and her Team Biden boyfriend" (as if anyone expects hard-hitting journalism from People) and whined that the reassignment allegedly didn't happen soon enough.

Then there was an actual (though still relatively minor) controversy to address: Ducklo had objected to the story, and he tried to intimidate the female reporter working on it by using derogatory and misogynistic language. Since the MRC does not miss an opportunity to attack a Democratic president and his administration for even the slightest offense, it was quick to pounce.

First, Curtis Houck complained that the one-week suspension he originally received was a "slap on the wrist." He later whined that this story wasn't getting wall-to-wall impeachment-level coverage on the (non-Fox) evening news. When Ducklo ultimately left his job over the incident, Houck was still whining that it deserved wall-to-wall coverage:

When it comes to circling the wagons, the liberal media did just that for the Trump era, defending colleagues whenever they were called out by President Trump or a White House aide and framed such condemnations as dangerous attacks on our democracy. But when it came to light on Friday that Biden White House Deputy Press Secretary T.J. Ducklo threatened Politico’s Tara Palmeri, the broadcast networks were largely nowhere to be found.

Between late Friday morning and Monday morning, ABC’s flagship morning and evening newscasts ignored Ducklo mocking her love life and threatening to “destroy” one of their former White House correspondents. Over on CBS and NBC, they combined for a paltry one minute and 19 seconds with none since Saturday morning.

Worse yet, not a single network newscast has acknowledged the fact that Ducklo resigned on Saturday night.

All of this is quite hypocritical, because the MRC has sown itself to be quite cool with not just offensive language but actual physical assualt of a reporter by a conservative.

In 2017, Greg Gianforte, then a Republican candidate for a congressional seat in Idaho, body-slammed and hit a reporter who apparently asked him something he didn't like. He later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault. And MRC management was OK with that. As we documented, MRC chief Brent Bozell delcared that the reporter was "an obnoxious, dishonest first class jerk. I'm not surprised he got smacked," and executive Tim Graham huffed that the reporter had been working for a  British newspaper (though is an American), whining, "Let's ask why on Earth a House candidate in Montana should have to answer questions from a reporter for a BRITISH newspaper????"

As we also noted, their disdain for the reporter was personal -- he exposed the MRC's legally questionable purchase of a house in Pennsylvania from MRC vice president David Martin and was also among the reporters who highlighted the revelation that Graham ghost-wrote Bozell's syndicated columns.

The MRC has condoned behavior less egregious than Ducklo's, which makes all this hyperventilating less the expression of legitimate outrage and more a partisan political exercise.

MRC's Lord Knows Who's To Blame For Capitol Riot, And It Is ... Democrats?
Topic: Media Research Center

Jeffrey Lord whined in a Feb. 13 Media Research Center post:

As the impeachment week unfolded, Maryland Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin, the impeachment manager, has made a point of showing videos illustrating in graphic detail the attack on the Capitol. 

And no one has been more emphatic in support of Trump’s impeachment for the events of January 6th than Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. Schumer, of course, sat front and center in the Senate chamber and watched the video clips Raskin showcased.

But there’s something curious going on with the media coverage of Raskin and Schumer.

[...]

Now. What are we not seeing in the media? Let’s start with what we know.

Who runs the Capitol Police? That would be the Architect of the Capitol, the House and Senate sergeants at arms, as well as four committees, two each from both Houses of Congress. The Capitol Police web site identifies those four as one oversight committee from each body, plus, as always with Congress, the appropriating committees from the House and Senate.

In practice, this means the House Administration Committee and the Senate Rules and Administration Committee are the congressional committees in charge of the Capitol Police. 

In the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol, the House sergeant at arms, Paul Irving, resigned - and this was announced by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Shortly afterward, Michael C. Stenger, the senate sergeant at arms, resigned. Incoming Senate Majority Leader Schumer had made it clear that upon taking office he intended to fire Stenger.

Hmmm. What is the media not saying?

The number two Democrat on the House Administration Committee is…Congressman Jamie Raskin. And who sits on the Senate Rules and Administration Committee? That would be Senator Chuck Schumer.

[...]

But strangely there is no one in the media asking of Raskin and Schumer what was famously asked of Nixon by then-Tennessee Senator Howard Baker of the Senate’s Watergate investigating committee. To wit:

What did Raskin and Schumer know and when did they know it? 

And why didn’t they do anything to protect the Capitol, their colleagues and staff from what was coming?

Lord is careful not to note that those two Senate committees were controlled by Republicans on Jan. 6, the day of the riot. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, Democrats who won Senate runoff races on Jan. 5, were not sworn in until Jan. 20. Which tells you that Lord is not going to ask any of his fellow Republicians what they knew and when they knew it and why they didn't do anything to protect the Capitol and their colleagues.

That's an example of bias so ridiculous that it could only come from Jeffrey Lord.

MRC Has A Fit Over Springsteen's Super Bowl Ad
Topic: Media Research Center

As with its corporate subisidiary CNSNews.com, the Media Research Center had a minor meltdown over Bruce Springsteen's Jeep ad during the Super Bowl calling for people to meet in "the middle." First up was professional hater Gabriel Hays, who whined that Springsteen couldn't possibly be a credible advocate for moderation because he had once criticized President Trump:

Melodramatic and patronizing corporate TV ads are as big a part of the Super Bowl as a Tom Brady appearance, though New Jersey music legend Bruce Springsteen’s obnoxious Jeep ad about the “ReUnited of America” took patronizing to a whole new level. 

Considering “The Boss” has been slamming Trump and his supporters (which he has called “bums” and a “fucking nightmare”) for the better part of five years, his 2021 Jeep< Super Bowl ad seemed less an appeal to unity, than a call for Trumpers to get on with Democrats' far left ambitions for their country. 

The ad, produced by Jeep and starring the “Born to Run” singer, made a heavy appeal for Americans to find common ground with one another after a contentious Donald Trump presidency. The setting of the ad was a chapel in Lebanon, Kansas, the exact geographical middle of the United States of America. The singer elaborated on the obvious metaphor with soulful and somber words: “All are more than welcome to come meet here in the middle. It’s no secret the middle has been a hard place to get to lately, between red and blue, between servant and citizen, between our freedom and our fear.”

At the end of the ad, the words “To the ReUnited States of America” flashed on screen. Oh, back to normal, is it?

Of course, millions of conservatives have seen opportunistic Democrat politicians lie to them for years about Russian collusion, the first impeachment of Donald Trump (and his second). They’ve seen Dems endorse the Black Lives Matter protests which led to $2 billion worth of property damage and dozens of murders and the same conservatives have had the pleasure of being called deplorables, racists and rubes every step of the way.

Springsteen, a proud Dem, has done his fair share of demonizing these conservatives by going after their presidential candidate. Springsteen blistered Trump a few months before the 2020 election. In an interview with Atlantic, Springsteen called Trump a “to democracy,” adding that the then-president was standing in the way of “any kind of reform” that could stem from the Black Lives Matter protests, which were raging at the time.

“I don’t know if our democracy could stand another four years of his custodianship. These are all existential threats to our democracy and our American way of life,” he added in that interview. Of course that means the 74 million who voted for Trump are that threat.

For all his virtiol against Springsteen, Hays offered no evidence that the Boss is wrong about Trump.

After the Super Bowl, Kyle Drennen served up his own little rant, similarly whining about Springsteen's purported divisiveness (read: he's not a conservative):

On Monday, all three network morning shows hailed left-wing, bomb-throwing rocker Bruce Springsteen for a Jeep Super Bowl ad in which he hypocritically preached unity and meeting in the political “middle.” Rather than call out the singer for his history of incendiary partisan rhetoric, hosts all seemed to experience collective amnesia as they pretended he was the perfect messenger to bring people together.

[...]

This is the same Springsteen who during a concert on the Today show plaza in September of 2007 launched into a unhinged political tirade accusing the Bush administration of “rendition, illegal wiretapping, voter suppression, no habeas corpus, the neglect of our great city New Orleans and the people, an attack on the Constitution and the loss of our best young men and women in a tragic war.”

In 2007, just days after Springsteen’s Today show tantrum, CBS’s 60 Minutes as “an artist in progress” who was “questioning whether America has lost its way at home.”

Just before Barack Obama was sworn into office in January of 2009, Springsteen couldn’t resist the urge to kick the departing Republican president on his way out. He tarred the Bush administration as a “nightmare” in which “thousands and thousands of people died” and “lives were ruined.”

Drennen's rant against Springsteen's anti-Iraq War sentiments are odd, since we thought the MRC was no longer proud of the Iraq War, given how it complained that obituaries for conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer helped lay the right-wing ideological framework for the war.

Drennen also cited another ideological crime Springsteen committed -- he once vacationed with an Obama: "After vacationing with the Obamas on a luxury yacht the following year, Springsteen promptly released an anti-Trump protest song."

Drennen concluded by huffing: "Despite the sycophantic claims from NBC, ABC, and CBS, Bruce Springsteen is the least qualified person to talk of unity or meeting in the middle. Perhaps he should lead by example and apologize for all the disunity he’s fostered." Of course, both Hays and Drennen have proven they won't even broach a discussion of unity with someone they not only clearly despise but need to maintain as a political target as part of their jobs, so that would make them even less "qualified" than Springsteen, no?

MRC: Psaki Busting Fox News Reporter For Selective Quoting Is 'Revisionist History'
Topic: Media Research Center

We've documented how Media Research Center writer Curtis Houck's new delcared enemy is Biden press secretary Jen Psaki -- in no small part because she replace his beloved Kayleigh McEnany.  Houck's goal is to warp reality to make Psaki look bad. Filling the new role fo Houck's beloved is Fox News reporter Peter Doocy, whom he cheered once again in a Feb. 8 post for allegedly socking it to Psaki again:

Making his return to the White House Briefing Room on Monday for the first time since January 26, the Fox News Channel’s Peter Doocy sparred Press Secretary Jen Psaki over concerns about laid off energy workers and then a possible Biden administration directive to bar ICE from deporting illegal immigrants for crimes such as DUI and simple assault.

Doocy didn’t mince words, first asking Psaki about “when is it that the Biden administration is going to let the thousands of fossil fuel industry workers, whether it’s pipeline workers or construction workers who are either out of work or will soon be out of work because of a Biden, when it is and where it is they can go for their green job” seeing as how it’s “something the administration has promised.”

Psaki had zero remorse, seeming to suggest that such workers were concocted by Doocy’s imagination: “Well, I certainly welcome you to present your data of all of the thousands and thousands of people who won't be getting a green job, maybe next time you're here you could present that.”

Despite Twitter’s attempted clean-up on aisle 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Doocy came prepared.

Along with quoting AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka from his Axios interview and numbers on job losses from the axing of the Keystone XL pipeline, Doocy laid out the facts, but left Psaki exhibiting nothing but signs of disgust (click “expand”):

Houck then pulled a little trick: burying the contentious questioning in a partially obscured blockquote -- which hid the fact that Psaki busted Doocy on taking Trumka out of context:

DOOCY: But you said that they would be getting green jobs, so I'm asking when that happens. Richard Trumka, who is a friend — longtime friend of Joe Biden, says about the day one Keystone deal, he said “I wish he,” the President, “had pared that more carefully with the things that he did second by saying, here's where we're creating the jobs.” So, there's partial evidence from Richard Trumka. 

PSAKI: Well, you didn't include all of his interview. 

DOOCY: Okay. How about — okay —

PSAKI: Would you like to conclude the rest? 

DOOCY: — so, so, how about this, the Labor International Union of North America said the Keystone decision will cost 1,000 existing union jobs and 10,000 projected construction jobs. 

PSAKI: Well, what Mr. Trumka also indicated in the same interview was that President Biden proposed a climate plan with transformative investments in infrastructure and laid out a plan that will not only create millions of good union jobs but also help tackle the climate crisis. And as the President indicated when he gave his primetime address to talk about the American Rescue Plan, he talked about his plan to also put forward a jobs plan in the — in the weeks or months following. And he has every plan to do exactly that.

Not only did Houck not quote from the exchange in the body of his item, he then tried to claim that others who pointed out Psaki busting Doocy's context-ripping were engaging in "revisionist history":

Afterwards, Twitter’s far-left curators sided with Psaki, offering up some revisionist history: “White House press secretary Jen Psaki corrected Fox News journalist Peter Doocy after he truncated a quote from AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka while questioning her about Biden’s plan for ‘green jobs.’”

Someone have spa workers on hand to account for all the Twitter leftists (such as serial leftist hack Aaron Rupar) twisting themselves into pretzels for having through the above exchange was one of Psaki’s finest hours. Take that as a good sign that Doocy’s questioning was spot on.

Houck offered no evidence that Twitter's news curators are "far-left," beyond its failure to reinforce his far-right narrative.

It's clear that the only person engaging in revisionist history here is Houck.

MRC Tries To Revive Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory
Topic: Media Research Center

Last year, at the beginning of the pandemic, we documented how various places on the ConWeb pushed the idea that the novel coronavirus was developed by the Communist Chinese in a laboratory in Wuhan, China -- even the Media Research Center was sad that a far-right conspiracy blog was suspended by Twitter for pushing the bogus claim. Now, the Media Rsearch Center's Nicholas Fondacaro is trying to revive the conspiracy theory as a way to attack the World Health Organization. He wrote in a Feb. 9 post:

In the early days of the pandemic, the World Health Organization was caught covering for the murderous Chinese regime by pushing false information about how the virus spread. And ever since, the liberal media have been trying to downplay their lies, even going so far as to tout how China was shipping supplies around the world (they were defective), and complained when then-President Trump withdrew the United States the WHO.

But on Tuesday, ABC and CBS pushed a WHO claim that the coronavirus didn’t originate from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The assertion was dubious at best considering we knew that WHO scientists were only recently allowed into the country (over a year after the virus started spreading), they were being closely watched and followed by Chinese officials, and China had been trying to rewrite the fact the virus came from their country.

And according to a Fox News Channel segment on Special Report, there were no American scientists on the WHO team and even some Biden administration officials weren’t buying their findings.

While there are questions about how much meaningful access WHO officials looking into the coronavirus' origin in China have had, they aren't idiots or CCP dupes as Fondacaro would like you to believe -- they are medical experts, unlike right-wing propagandist Fondacaro. WHO virologist Marion Koopmans, who was on the team that went to Wuhan, has said that while the exact source of the coronavirus may never be pinpointed, "we have not been able to find any credible link" between the virus and the Wuhan lab.

But the truth doesn't generate clicks for Fondacaro and the MRC; peddling conspiracy theories and right-wing hate does.

NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Parler Game
Topic: Media Research Center
There's a big reason the Media Research Center has given a lot of attention to alt-right Twitter alternative Parler: key MRC funder and board member Rebekah Mercer also funds Parler. Not that it will tell you that, of course. Read more >>

MRC's Favorite Right-Wing Fact-Checker Is Spinning Facts Again
Topic: Media Research Center

According to the Media Research Center, the only real fact-checkers are the ones with a right-wing bias, which is why the MRC and its "news" division CNSNews.com love Just Facts and its leader, James Agresti. We've previously documented the bias and logical flaws in Just Facts' "facts," and they struck again in a Feb. 5 item published by the MRC. Agresti brought his nitpicky approach to  a single protester at the Jan. 6 Capitol riot:

A PolitiFact article written by Bill McCarthy declares “there’s no proof that” a left-wing anti-Trump activist named John Sullivan incited rioting at the U.S. Capitol. As a result of this claim, Facebook flagged and reduced distribution of a post which accused Sullivan of doing so.

However, video footage indisputably proves that Sullivan encouraged people to storm and vandalize the Capitol. Moreover, Sullivan was subsequently arrested and charged with “violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds” and “interfering with law enforcement” during the riot. In the wake of these revelations, PolitiFact “updated” its article twice but has not changed its conclusion despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

What Agresti is doing here is an alternative verson of the ConWeb argument that Sullivan's arrest somehow disproves that the Jan. 6 riot was a right-wing-driven event -- despite the fact that hundreds of those arrested are clearly right-wingers and Sullivan is apparently the only non-right-winger to have been arrested.

Indeed, Agresti goes on to complain that PolitiFact claims that "claims there is “no credible evidence” that the crowd that stormed the Capitol was 'infiltrated or led by antifa activists in disguise.'" But Agresti identifies nobody other than Sullivan and his accomplice who has been identified among the hundreds of rioters.

Agrestic also sounded like a defense lawyer in offering a very narrow defense of Donald Trump over accusations he incited the riot:

In contrast to PolitiFact’s claim that Sullivan’s calls to “storm” and “burn” down the Capitol don’t constitute incitement, PolitiFact has not fact-checked any of the hundreds of Congressional Democrats who declare in their mpeachment resolution that President Trump incited the riot. This is in spite of the fact that Trump didn’t call for violence and emphasized in his speech on that same day that people should go “to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Yet, the impeachment resolution alleges that Trump is guilty of “inciting violence against the Government of the United States” because he stated in his speech: “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” This quote is taken out of context, as Trump used the word “fight” 20 times in the speech, making clear that he was speaking about legal, not physical, fighting. For example, he said that Rudy Giuliani has “guts, he fights.”

Agresti also engaged in some context-ripping, as the resolution also noted that "In the months preceding the Joint Session, President Trump repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the Presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by State or Federal officials. Shortly before the Joint Session commenced, President Trump, addressed a crowd at the Ellipse in Washington, DC. There, he reiterated false claims that 'we won this election, and we won it by a landslide'" -- thus making it clear the incitement wasn't confined to what Trump said immediately before the riot.

MRC Repeats A Lie To Attack Fact-Checkers
Topic: Media Research Center

As is his wont, the Media Research Center's Alexander Hall spent a Feb. 4 post complaining about fact-checkers and their attempts to push for a more factual discourse:

There is no greater or more ironic threat to free speech than liberal journalists and fact-checkers. PolitiFact Editor-in-Chief Angie Drobnic Holan’s piece for Poynter is a great example.

“We’ve entered an intense period where false words are inspiring violent deeds,” Holan exclaimed in the opening remarks of her piece condemning free speech. “Opinion: To control online misinformation, we need real-world solutions,” published Feb. 2 expressed repeated outrage over conservatives questioning the 2020 election and the Capitol riot. Holan’s righteous condemnations conspicuously ignored mentioning this past summer of left-wing terror and years of the phony leftist Russia collusion narrative. She went on to call for a solution for misinformation from “every sector of society,” particularly “from technology companies and government.”

Her prescription for this crisis of truth, in true left-wing fashion, was to purge speech. Her first suggestion was for Big Tech companies to “be more consistent in their penalties for spreading misinformation.” Being “consistent” here was not about restricting left-wing conspiracy theories. Her goal was to restrict the speech of anti-establishment “politicians and candidates” with the same penalties used on a common citizen.

Of course, if Hall had bothered to read the Mueller report, he would have found that "leftist Russia collusion narrative" was not "phony," it simply didn't rise to a prosecutable level. He also seems to have forgotten that "conservatives questioning the 2020 election" is one of the things that instigated the Capitol riot. And, of course, "left-wing terror" is just a Trumpian code word used to push the right-wing narrative that all racial justice protesters are violent.

Hall went on to devote a paragraph of alleged "Antifa" and "Black Livews Matter" crimes (while refusing to acknowldging the crimes of his fellow right-wingers at the Capitol riot). On example he gave: "Tucker Carlson claimed that Smash Racism DC had '[broken] his oak door and one person mentioned a pipe bomb, as heard on a security video,' USA Today summarized." Funny how the supposely irredeemably "liberal media" outlet USA Today is suddenly credible when it's uncritically quoting a conservative, eh?

Just one problem with that story, though: There's no evidence that Carlson's door was damaged duyring the protest at his house. As we documented the last time the MRC pushed this story, Washington Post media reporter Erik Wemple actually went to Carlson's house after the attack and found that the front door "appeared to be in working condition," and that a person he talked to at the house offered no evidence of damage. A week later, Wemple pointed out again that the door "seemed sturdy and fully intact. A woman who answered a knock looked it up and down and appeared to conclude it was in fine shape," and the police report on the incident mentioned no damage to the front door. Protesters also agreed that nobody in their number damaged the door.

But Hall was simply not into reporting facts, even when criticizing a fact-checker. He went into guilt-by-association mode, declaring that "The Poynter Institute has gained well over a million in donations from liberal megadonors such as George Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF) and The Omidyar Network in the past." Which has nothing to do with anything, especially if he can't be bothered to get his own facts straight.

MRC Can't Stop Defending Melania Trump
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center was such a safe space for Melania Trump that it couldn't get outraged over the surfacing of her nude photos, which would likely have gotten her labeled as a slut had she not been married to a Republican presidential candidate (and later president). On her way out the door, the MRC was defending her -- and it still is.

Gabriel Hays whined in a Feb. 1 post:

Former First Lady Melania Trump can’t ever catch a break. According to a new poll, Donald Trump’s wife has been labeled the least popular first lady in history. Of course we all know it has much less to do with Melania than with a media whose unhinged hate for her husband sloshed over the entire family.

The CNN poll, published in January, found that only 42% of people polled found favor with the First Lady at the end of her tenure. Not only was that the lowest approval rating of her time under the title, but according to the outlet, it was the lowest rating among First ladies in the history of the poll. 

According to popculture.com, which published the findings of the CNN survey, Michelle Obama departed the White House with a 69% favorable rating, Laura Bush at a 67% favorable rating, and Hillary Clinton at a 56% favorable rating. Compared to those numbers, Melania’s measly 42% meant she practically left the White House in disgrace.

But the real story is that Melania received  much the same press treatment that painted her husband as the literal worst president in American history. This hostility, which she herself has called “shameful,” no doubt contributed to her low favorability. Most first ladies who’ve kept as low a profile as Melania haven’t been targets. (Hillary Clinton, elected to nothing at the time, stepped into the policy arena in the first year of her husband’s administration. Michelle “I’ve never been really proud of my country before” was the lefty media’s fantasy FLOTUS.) 

As Fox News Contributor Joe Concha said, Melania was “treated the worst of any first lady we’ve seen in the modern era.”

Hays whined that Michelle Obama got more fashion shoots than Melania did, not-so-subtly suggesting that Melania deserved it more because she's better-looking:

Another over-the-top display of bias towards Melania Trump involved fashion magazines like Vogue snubbing the former supermodel from its cover shoots, but putting First Ladies like Michelle Obama on the cover of its fashion magazine on multiple occasions. InStyle acknowledged that Obama graced the cover three times over the years, though reported that the Vogue’s editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour, admitted they’d never put Trump on the cover in the near future.

Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but when Michelle Obama gets Vogue three times during her time as First Lady and a former supermodel-turned First Lady can’t get even a spread in Home & Garden, then you know the media has it out for her. It’s fair to say that making the beautiful Melania look bad in the public eye was their goal and the poll proves they tried their damndest. 

Of course, Hays gets paid to make non-conservatives like Michelle Obama look bad in the public eye, so he's just projecting here.

Tim Graham similarly whined in his Feb. 19 column:

Melania Trump began her tenure as First Lady behind the Eight ball. First, the liberal media always adores First Ladies who are Ivy League-educated lawyers or career educators, not just – ick – wives. Second, Melania Trump’s beauty was deployed against her: she was seen as “arm candy,” a “trophy wife.” She resisted any attempt at public affection for the cameras. Comedians mocked their marriage, insisting she wanted to claw out of it, like it was a prison. She didn’t go for magazine cover articles or go “out and about in Washington” for fear of all the poison pens.

The same media outlets who treated the Trump marriage as a cynical ongoing negotiation lunged to portray Bill and Hillary Clinton as an inspiring romance, a baby-boomer Belle and the Beast.

Of course, part of the MRC's right-wing agenda over the past few decades was to denigrate both Hillary and Michelle, so he's projecting too.

Even The MRC Won't Defend Texas In Winter Storm's Aftermath
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Resarch Center was quick to rush to the defense of Texas after an unusual winter storm wreaked havoc on the state's power grid. Nicholas Fondacaro huffed in a Feb. 16 post:

Parts of Texas were in a dangerous situation Tuesday as back-to-back freezing weather systems left the Lone Star state with rolling blackouts as the power grid struggled to heat homes. But while the broadcast networks gawked at their plight, one even blaming it on a lack of federal control, they failed to tell viewers the truth: so-called green energy systems such as wind turbines were freezing over, preventing them from generating the much-needed power.

But Fondacaro was peddling his own (unsurprising) lie of omission: the reason the wind turbines froze over is beause they weren't properly winterized. It's not, as Fondacaro would link you to think, an issue solely of wind turbines that operate just fine in colder climates. And all forms of power generation, not just wind, were affected by the cold.

In a Feb. 18 post, Alex Christy complained that the media has pointed out why Fondacaro's  argument was bogus, then tried to pivot toward a new defense:

MSNBC Live host Stephanie Ruhle asked correspondent Morgan Chesky the question that was on a lot of people's minds Wednesday morning: "why is this power grid failing so badly" in Texas? According to both of them, it's because Texas' conservative energy policies led to companies putting profits over people, which resulted in the failure to properly winterize equipment.

According to Chesky, the attempts to blame wind turbines that have stopped working in the low temperatures are misguided because, "that only makes up a small portion of the massive sources of energy that Texas has at its disposal."

Chesky, instead pointed to the "natural gas pipelines that froze up because they're being built without any insulation. And we saw a nuclear plant that provides energy have to temporarily shut down due to a safeguard caused by the cold."

At this point it would have been useful for Chesky to point out that Texas has not only seen very cold weather, but has shattered temperature records that are in some cases well over 100 years old.

That's quite a shift from blaming wind turbines to eclaring it an act of God that nobody could have prepared for (except, you know, by winterizing their power generation equipment).

This was followed by Tierin-Rose Mandelberg complaining:

Earlier this week wintry storms hit the southern part of the United States and so far, more than 20 people have died and 4.1 million people are left without power. This storm is a natural occurrence and everyone knows that ... except everybody’s favorite pagan Bette Midler who thinks it's some sort of retribution from God.

Apparently Midler is so close to God she knows exactly who’s on His naughty and nice list. According to her, since Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn (R-TX) have not accepted Joe Biden’s win, God wanted to punish the state they represent, Texas.

[...]

It’s disconcerting that this type of behavior is common among leftists. The storm that hit Texas had nothing to do with politics or mother gaia. But, Tinseltown village idiots love jabbing the right however they can … even if it means telling conservative Texans they deserve to freeze in an ice storm. 

Mandelberg seems so unhappy that it can't blame liberals for the storm, so she has to go to the celebrity-bashing well (and the MRC, for some reason, loves to obsess over Midler).

The MRC finally landed on an argument it could live with (if an ancient one), as detailed  in a Feb. 22 post by Kyle Drennen: "Over the weekend, NBC’s Today shows on both Saturday and Sunday eagerly tried to exploit the deadly winter weather in Texas to push the Biden administration’s radical climate change agenda. ... The leftist media are never shy about using a crisis to help Democrats force through their agenda." As if attacking non-conservative media outlets for pushing an "agenda" isn't also an agenda.

And that's really all the MRC did. When the Texas storm's aftermath is so severe that even a right-wing apparatchik like the MRC won't come to the defense of a solidly Republican state -- as it became clear that state power officials ignored warnings about generation facilities vulnerable to cold weather and deregulation caused massive price spikes for electric power -- you know things in Texas are bad.

MRC Throws Ex-Parler CEO Under The Bus (And Still Won't Talk About Rebekah Mercer)
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Alexander Hall sounded a lot like a paid hype man-slash-PR representative for Parler in a Feb. 15 post:

The wildly popular free speech platform Parler has made a sudden return after being nuked from the internet by Amazon Web Services back in January.

“Parler, the world’s #1 free speech social media platform with over 20 million users, is announcing its official relaunch today, built on sustainable, independent technology and not reliant on so-called ‘Big Tech’ for its operations,” the social media platform revealed on Monday in a press release. “Parler’s relaunch—open to Americans of all viewpoints—is available immediately.”

Parler’s interim CEO Mark Meckler explained how Parler has risen from the ashes of being deplatformed earlier this year: “When Parler was taken offline in January by those who desire to silence tens of millions of Americans, our team came together, determined to keep our promise to our highly engaged community that we would return stronger than ever.”

The platform explained in its press release that “Parler’s new platform is built on robust, sustainable, independent technology.” It also specified that the platform will only be available first for “its current users only in the first week, with new users being able to sign up starting the following week.”

The email assured readers that Meckler is a “free speech advocate” with “expertise in launching, growing and developing effective business and technology models for two of the largest grassroots organizations in modern American history, Tea Party Patriots and Convention of States.”

The mention of Meckler as interim CEO might come as a surprise to MRC readers who weren't told that the former CEO and co-founder, John Matze, was fired a few weeks earlier. But Hall was eager to throw Matze under the bus:

Meckler has been tapped to temporarily lead the company as it overhauls its leadership after its previous CEO left amid controversy.

Ex-Parler CEO John Matze explained to Axios on HBO that Parler’s negotiations to bring Trump onto their platform never materialized. "I didn't like the idea of working with Trump, because he might have bullied people inside the company to do what he wanted. But I was worried that if we didn't sign the deal, he might have been vengeful and told his followers to leave Parler," Matze stated.

Matze had also written a memo to employees with dubious claims regarding why he had been terminated. “However, Fox News contributor and Parler co-owner Dan Bongino doesn’t see eye to eye with Matze’s version of the ousting,” Fox news reported. “Bongino said there were ‘two separate visions for the company’ and the ‘free speech vision’ originated from Bongino and other owners of the company.”

Hall linked to a Fox News article on  the controversy that included a fuller quote from Matze stating that "the Parler board controlled by Rebekah Mercer decided to immediately terminate my position as CEO."Yep, that's the same Rebekah Mercer whose family has donated millions of dollars to Hall's employer and sits on the MRC board.

Weird how Hall didn't mention that detail; indeed, Hall made no mention of Mercer at all, evn though she's reported to have played a major role in firing Matze. As NPR reported:

In an interview with NPR, Matze claimed that there was a dispute with Mercer over just how far Parler would take its openness to free speech. He said that if the company wanted to succeed, Parler would have crack down on domestic terrorists and any groups that incite violence, including the Trump-supporting conspiracy theory QAnon.

"I got silence as a result," Matze said.

Matze said that after the attack on the Capitol, he felt that the site had to step up its content-policing efforts.

"To me, it was a clear indication of what could have happen if we didn't change the ways were being done," he said.

It has since been claimed that the Parler board stripped Matze of his entire ownership stake, despite his being a co-founder. Further, seemingly contrary to its right-wing reputation of allowing all speech no matter how offensive, Parler has not only reportedly banned far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, it also allegedly suspended Matze's account for a time. Meanwhile, despite having an interim CEO, Mercer appears to be the one running the show at Parler.

But fully reporting the happenings around Parler was not Hall's concern. It was time for him to go back into hype-man mode:

Conservatives and free speech commentators are abuzz over the fact that Parler has come back online.

“The internet is a better place with @parler_app!” Conservative commentator Brigitte Gabriel proclaimed on Twitter. 

Parler had originally been kneecapped by multiple tech companies in January.

Hall conveniently didn't mention those pesky posts filled with hate and threats of violence that were the actual reason Parler was "kneecapped." But the truth isn't really his concern.

MRC Lamely Attacks Study Debunking Its Conservative-Victim Narrative
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center just hates it when its narratives are debunked -- in no small part because it can't be bothered to make even a miminal defense of them. Which brings us to a Feb. 1 item by Corinne Weaver complaining that a study blew up one of the MRC's biggest narratives, that conservatives are uniquely being "censored" on social media:

A study released by the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights decided that the argument that conservatives are being censored by Big Tech is “not legitimate.”

“False Accusation: The Unfounded Claim that Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives,” levied the accusation that conservative censorship is a myth. Deputy Director Paul M. Barrett and Law + Research Fellow J. Grant Sims wrote that “the claim of anti-conservative animus is itself a form of disinformation: a falsehood with no reliable evidence to support it.” The study referred to the overall bans of former President Donald Trump on Facebook and Twitter as “reasonable responses to Trump’s repeated violation of platform rules.” 

The piece accused Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), conservative commentator Ben Shapiro and Fox News host Tucker Carlson of spreading “The false contention that conservatives are throttled online.” The problem with criticizing online censorship now, according to the study, is that it delegitimizes efforts made by platforms “when they’re actually experimenting with more aggressive forms of fact-checking and content moderation.”

The study relied on NewsGuard’s classification of “manipulators.” It noted, “All of the top five manipulators, in terms of their engagement levels on Facebook, were right-leaning: Fox News, The Daily Wire, Breitbart, The Blaze, and Western Journal.”

Furthermore, Barrett and Sims relied on the leftist Oxford Internet Institute’s report on “junk news.” That report had classified several conservative websites as “junk news,” including Drudge Report, NewsBusters, CNSNews.com, MRCTV, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, The Washington Free Beacon, LifeNews, National Review, the Red State, and The Federalist. These sites were smeared as “unprofessional,” “counterfeit,” “biased” and “emotionally driven.”

Note that all Weaver does here is dismiss the study as "liberal" and relied on a "leftist" group's previous report; she later accused the Stern Center of having "a liberal advisory board." At no point does Weaver even attempt to rebut any claim actually made in the report.

Weaver has previousluy attacked the "leftist" OII -- as we've noted, last October she bashed it for concluding that the MRC's NewsBusters blog (where her posts appear) publishes "junk news" and that the MRC's Curtis Houck offered a biased analysis of a presidential debate. In 2018, Weaver attacked another OII study concluding that "junk news" is disproportionately created by right-wing websites; she offered no rebuttal of that claim either, instead whining that "Liberal media will go a long way to portray conservatives as liars -- all the way to England."

There's a lot in the Stern Center report that's pretty damning of the MRC's victimization narrative, though Weaver will never admit it. It stated that "Even anecdotal evidence of supposed bias tends to crumble under close examination" -- and offered examples. It takes to task Robert Epstein -- a favorite of the MRC for his dubious research claiming that Google manipulates search results for the purpose of "switching" votes from  Democrats to Republicans:

The basic question Epstein asks—how might internet searching affect voting—is potentially important. But his extrapolation to hard numbers of purposefully changed votes seems highly questionable. Francesca Tripodi, a social media scholar at the University of North Carolina who has reviewed Epstein’s work, says in an interview that he lacks evidence of either Google’s intent to manipulate elections or that the company has distorted search results toward that end. In a November 2020 article in Slate, she writes that “his hypothesis that Google influenced U.S. elections has never been rigorously tested or reviewed by political or information scientists.”

In fact, there is other research that clashes with Epstein’s findings. A study released in 2019 by researchers at Stanford University concluded that Google’s search algorithm is not biased along political lines and instead emphasizes authoritative sources. In a separate inquiry published the same year, The Economist came to a similar conclusion. The magazine compared news sites’ actual proportion of search results in Google’s News tab with a predictive model of that proportion based on factors Google says its search rankings rely on—namely, a site’s reach, output, and accuracy. “If Google favored liberals, left-wing sites would appear more often than our model predicted, and right-wing ones less,” The Economistsaid. “We saw no such trend.”

Epstein counters that his “work is meticulous. My standards are very high.” He points out that in 2015, he co-authored an article on SEME for the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That piece, however, didn’t make any allegations against Google or point to any actual vote manipulation.

The report also blows up the MRC's key narrative that Twitter exclusively bans conservatives for expressing mainstream conservative views:

Conservatives do get suspended or banned for violating Twitter’s rules against such things as harassment, hateful conduct, or, as in Trump’s case, glorifying violence. But liberals are excluded in this fashion, as well. Pinning down precise proportions is impossible because Twitter doesn’t release sufficient data.

[...]

More broadly, Twitter has suspended or banned individuals and groups of highly disparate political persuasions. In 2018, the platform excluded some 80 accounts belonging to activists affiliated with the left-leaning Occupy movement. According to some of these activists, Twitter revoked the accounts without giving a reason. In February 2020, Twitter banned 70 accounts affiliated with Mike Bloomberg’s short-lived campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, reportedly for violating the platform’s policy against platform manipulation and spam.

On the right, Twitter doesn’t target conservatives or Republicans as such, but people who violate its rules by calling for violence, harassing others, or advocating hateful ideologies. Among the right-leaning users who have faced enforcement action are white nationalists like Richard Spencer, Jared Taylor, and David Duke, as well as white nationalist organizations such as the American Nazi Party, the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party, and American Renaissance magazine.

Weaver could not possibly offer a response to this because "media researchg" isn't what the MRC does -- its job is to push right-wing narratives.

This is what happens when you put a partisan narrative first, as the MRC has done with its anti-social media war: you get swiftly and painfully owned by actual media researchers.

MRC Pushed The Lie That Psaki Wanted Questions In Advance
Topic: Media Research Center

Media Research Center executive Tim Graham presumably chortled heartily to hgimself as he wrote this Feb. 1 item:

Daily Beast media reporter Maxwell Tani is reporting that anonymous White House reporters are tattling on Jen Psaki's press team, that they have already probed reporters to find out what questions they plan on asking Psaki during the daily briefings. Some of these reporters don't like an idea forming that they're coordinating their questions and coverage with the Democratic staff. 

The Biden White House did not deny this report, but the White House says "it has tried to foster a better relationship with the press corps than the previous administration, and has tried to reach out to reporters directly in order to avoid appearing to dodge questions during briefings."

You can see Psaki wanting to cut down on the "circle back" answers, but this kind of snooping can also affect which reporters are called on, and who might be skipped, or delayed until the end, when cable news might move on from live coverage.

It's always amusing to see reprters using each other as anonymous sources, so they can keep the White House from learning who's tattling on them. Journalists love to preach the need for transparency, and routinely avoid it with their sourcing.

Just one problem: It's not true, at least in the way Graham wants you to think it is. As Matthew Yglesias pointed out, well down in the Daily Beast article is a segment that discredits the entire premise:

Under previous administrations, many White House reporters would meet informally in the morning for gaggles with the press secretaries. During these interactions, White House communications staff could get a sense of the topics reporters were interested in that day, and would come prepared for questions during televised briefings later in the afternoon.

Eric Schultz, a former deputy press secretary in the Obama White House, said that the new comms team was restoring normalcy to the briefing process. Finding out what reporters are focusing on, he said, was standard procedure in most pre-Trump White Houses in order to reduce the number of questions that go unanswered during televised briefings.

“This is textbook communications work. The briefing becomes meaningless if the press secretary has to repeatedly punt questions, instead of coming equipped to discuss what journalists are reporting on,” he said. “In a non-covid environment, this would happen in casual conversations throughout the day in lower and upper press. One of the few upsides to reporters hovering over your desk all day, is that you get a very quick sense of what they’re working on.”

In other words: Psaki's comms shop is simply re-establishing what the White House press office did before Trump. Other reporters have also confirmed that Psaki was returning to a pre-Trump norm that nobody objected to. Graham isn't going to tell you that, though.

Nevertheless, Kristine Marsh kept the bogus narrative going in a Feb. 3 post, complaining that "The View’sliberal hosts weren’t only bored by the Daily Beast report that the White House press office was already asking reporters to feed them the questions before press briefings; in fact, they rationalized and defended it." She then laughably referred to 'the alarming behavior from the Biden administration," censoring the fact that this behavior occured and was accepted under many previous presidential administrations.

Meanwhile, Curtis Houck dishonestly complained in his daily press briefing writeup on Feb. 2 that "not a single reporter stepped up to ask Psaki about the embarrassing Daily Beast report that her team had been probing reporters to pre-screen their questions ahead of briefings. Talk about a case of collusion." Houck repeated the claim the next day.

Over at the MRC's more extreme MRCTV operation, Sergie Daez huffed: "Jen Psaki is off to a poor start as White House press secretary. Even though she’s been positively pampered by the leftist media, Psaki can’t seem to give direct answers to reporters in White House press briefings, constantly saying that she’ll 'circle back' instead. Now, it looks like the direct answers she is able to give can't come without rehearsal."

Daez cited a Fox News report as the basis for the post, which censored the fact that Psaki was returning to a pre-Trump practice.

In short: The MRC got days of content from spreading a lie. Don't expect Graham and Co. to apologize.

The MRC's Hitler Hypocrisy Strikes Again
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has a bad habit of getting mad about others using Hitler comparisons when it does so on a regular basis, and it apparently has no intention of stopping its hypocrisy.

Teirin-Rose Mandelberg groused on Jan. 25 that director Spike Lee stated that Trump "will go down in history with the likes of Hitler," then played whataboutism: "The Capitol riots were disgraceful. But anyone who excused the summer’s race violence is in no position to dole out blame. Lee is blind to his own hypocrisy." The same day, Alexa Moutevelis channeled her inner Rush Limbaugh and used an article to smear abortion-rights supporters as "feminazis." 

On Jan. 27, Lindsay Kornick complained:

Talk about throwing Godwin’s Law out the window. This latest op-ed from the Philadelphia Inquirer goes so far as to compare Donald Trump to Hitler on Holocaust Remembrance Day. National unity is looking more and more like a pipe dream by the day.

On January 27, retired Inquirer editor David Lee Preston did his part in remembering one of the worst atrocities in humanity by, what else, comparing President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. His piece, aptly-titled “Is it wrong to compare Trump to Hitler? No,” dives straight to the point that yes, it is now okay to connect a former U.S. president to the Nazi dictator.

[...]

The last thing this nation needs is more lying, fearmongering, and division. And the last thing this solemn Holocaust Remembrance Day needed was a sideshow of more whiny Trump comparisons to Hitler.

Kornick then downplayed the  Jan. 6 right-wing riot at the Capitol by complaining about the writer's compaison of it to Kristallnacht: "Absolutely, yes, they are different! Once again, the Capitol Hill attack was reprehensible. What it wasn’t was a night of widespread slaughter and destruction targeting an oppressed minority. Any comparison of the two is disgusting, especially during a time when we’re supposed to honor the 11 million lives lost to the Holocaust, including six million Jewish people."

On Feb. 11, Tim Graham noted that ABC correspondent Terry Moran said of Trump's grip on the Republican Party: "He has the Republican party as a personalized power like we haven't seen. It's a caudillo, it’s a Caesar, it's a Fuhrer, we don't see that in this country. We do now." He huffed in response: "It's a little strange considering some rogue Republicans are voting and speaking out against Trump, which doesn't sound much like Hitler's Germany in action. But the media insist: you either agree with our plot, or you're like a Nazi."

If GOP criticism of Trump is a normal thing these days, where is that to be found on the MRC network of websites? Graham pointed to no examples, and we've seen no space on any MRC website where conservatives are permitted to criticize Trump with impunity.

Nicholas Fondacaro ranted in a Feb. 22 post:

To kick off Sunday’s Global Public Square, CNN host Fareed Zakaria, praised a “brilliant scholarly work” comparing British and German conservative parties in the early 20th century. The point was to suggest that America was on its way to emulate Germany with the modern Republican Party and News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch marching to create a new Nazi Party to destroy our democracy.

But fear not, Zakaria reassured would-be critics he wasn’t saying Republicans WERE Nazis. He was only saying they’re LIKE Nazis. He said this while the chyron said " Republicans need an exorcism."

Fondacaro then baselessly claimed that "Zakaria betrayed his own disgust for democracy and the will of the governed." That's a rather rich complaint given that his employer is still peddling the Big Lie that the election was stolen from Trump.

None of these complaints about others going Godwin noted that their boss, Brent Bozell, declared of Twitter removing Trump's account and Amazon Web Services canceling its hosting deal with Parler over the hate and violence Parler permitted: "Stalin censored speech. So did Mao. So did Hitler. It’s what tyrants do."

None of these MRC employees was fretting about Bozell spreading "lying, fearmongering, and division." None of these employees accused Bozell of being blind to his own hypocrisy. They're just loyal MRC drones being paid to not hold themselves to the same standards they demand of others.