MRC's Graham: Anti-Biden Claim Isn't 'False,' It Just 'Isn't ... Very Factual' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham thought he had a pretty good gotcha in a Feb. 26 post:
The reputation of PolitiFact as an "independent fact-checker" just doesn't rest on their factual accuracy. It rests on whether their selection of which facts to check demonstrate an ideological tilt (it does). Conservatives were mocking their tweet from Thursday night:
Beware of Facebook posts blaming Joe Biden for insulin price hikes. Experts said any recent price changes facing individual patients are likely due to the way insurance works, not the Biden administration.
"Beware of Facebook posts blaming Joe Biden" is what PolitiFact is specializing in right now.
Bill McCarthy was taking exception [to] a Facebook post that claimed "Insulin went from $60 to $500 with the swipe of creepy Joe’s pen..." A Facebook post with 1,100 shares is more dangerous, apparently, than national media outlets that mangle the facts for millions of Americans.
But then Graham had to concede that PolitiFact's fact-check was correct. He wouldn't go so far as to admit the claim is "false," of course, instead setting for "isn't ... very factual":
Let's stipulate that this isn't a very factual assertion. Last summer, President Trump ordered that insulin prices be reduced in the Medicare program for seniors, but it wasn't set to be implemented until January 22, and Biden suspended it (temporarily) in his wave of Trump-reversing executive orders.
In most non-MRC settings "isn't ... very factual" is the same thing as "false." But in Graham's fevered, hate-filled brain, proving that a claim about Biden is no different than being on the Democratic Party payroll, so he went on to whine that "PolitiFact underlined that the fact-checker community as a bloc was rushing to defend Biden,"further complaining:
Even so, this has not been a TV story. A quick search of transcripts in Nexis for “Biden” and “insulin” since January 20 on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC found no mention of Biden’s freeze on Trump's insulin price order. There were eight stories with these two words, all of them on the cable channels, and five of the eight were about the prospect of Texans caught without insulin in the winter storm.
Yes, that's what Graham is whining about -- that PolitiFact stopped a lie in its tracks before it could gain traction in the larger right-wing media sphere. Not that Graham and the MRC would have ever told its readers this was false absent this whining about PolitiFact. (Also note that Fox News is suspiciously absent from his Nexis search.)
This is the problem with Graham's war on fact-checking -- he doesn't actually care about facts, only in pursuing right-wing gotchas that gets clicks. The fact that he left this post up tells us he doesn't understand what an utter failure this attempt was. Then again, he's failed before, so he's apparently used to the feeling.
MRC's Houck Gets A Chance To Crush On McEnany Once More Topic: Media Research Center
We've documented Media Research Center writer Curtis Houck's massive crush on Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany -- in whom he can see no flaws and who performed her job perfectly as far as he's concerned -- so when McEnany resurfaced for a Fox News appearance on March 2, Houck predictably gushed over his crush once more and uncritically treated her biased complaints as the indisputable truth:
In her first interview since the end of the Trump administration, former White House Press Secretary and newly-minted Fox News contributor Kayleigh McEnany spoke Tuesday about what she viewed as a “disparate” and “unfair” treatment from liberal journalists who refused to give her “a modicum of respect,” while current Press Secretary Jen Psaki had been able to skate by relatively unscathed.
Speaking with Harris Faulkner, McEnany said that, when asked to evaluate how she was treated in the briefing room, it was “disparate, unfair in the sense of....a Democrat woman standing at that podium would never have had a Playboy reporter in the back of the room shouting at her as she left, and nor should a Democrat woman ever have to face that, and nor should a Republican woman.”
Building on having name-checked carnival barker Brian Karem, McEnany added that there should be “a modicum of respect that I think reporters and those at the podium in a political role should have for one another,” but was sullied by “reporters who were more interested in being political operatives, let’s say, than journalists.”
McEnany left viewers to conjure up which reporters she was talking about and, in contrast to many of the reporters she dealt with, she took the high road by making clear that “there are some incredible reporters who, to this day, represent the kind of journalism I think is good.”
McEnany's attack on Karem is part of a grudge against him that dates back months.
What McEnany (and Houck) don't seem to understand is that respect has to be earned, and because McEnany spent her sporadic press briefings attackingreporters who ask reasonable questions and tellingthemlies starting from her very first day on the job, she didn't.
Houck also gave McEnany a pass for shirking her job at the end: "The interview also touched on how McEnany had wanted to give a final briefing to recap the administration’s many, many successes, but the events of (and the fallout from) January 6 inhibited that." There was nothing stopping McEnany from doing her job in the final two weeks of Trump's presidency;' instead, the day after the pro-Trump Capitol riot on Jan. 6, McEnany read a brief statement, refused to take questions, then fled the room, never to be seen again. She could have answered questions about the Trump administration's response to the riot -- which might have earned her a modicum of respect -- but she chose not to do her job.
But that doesn't matter to Houck. As for as he's concerned, McEnany is perfect in every way, especially in their shared loathing for journalists who refuse to parrot right-wing narratives.
MRC's Double Standard on Politician's Sexual Harassment Charges Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has published dozens of articles referencing allegations of sexual harassment against Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo., with the usualwhining that news networks that aren't Fox News aren't covering it enough (which, as far as the MRC is concerned, should be the lead story every single day). Many of these articles are written by Nicholas Fondacaro, who has a pathological hatred of the entire Cuomo family (he constantly denigrates Cuomo's brother, CNN host Chris Cuomo, with the childish nickname "Fredo"). But non-right-wing channels covering the story still wasn't sufficient for the MRC; it managed to complain that the non-Fox nets devoted too much time to harassment claims relative to claims that Cuomo allegedly caused coronavirus deaths in New York nursing homes by moving COVID patients out of hospitals to nursing homes during the initial surge of pandemic cases (even though it's hard to nail down a direct cause and effect). Sheesh, make up your minds, guys.
But as with the MRC's obsession with linking nursing home deaths to Cuomo, its obsession with Cuomo's sexual harassment accusations has a double standard.
More than 20 women have accused Donald Trump of sexual harassment -- and as we've documented, not only has the MRC largely ignored them, the women they didn't ignore were mocked and denigrated. E. Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of sexually assaulting her, was dismissed by the MRC as "weird," "bizarre" and "scatterbrained."
Back to Cuomo: A March 13 post by Tim Graham highlighted a claim that the first woman who accused Cuomo of sexual harassment faced a "smear campaign." This is hypocrisy, of course; in addition to its smears of Carroll, the MRC ran a campaign of denigration against the women who accused Brett Kavanugh of sexual misconduct after his nomination to the Supreme Court -- even bizarrely portraying the women as part of some vast conspiracy (literally; a column by Graham and Brent Bozell was actually headlined "The Vast Anti-Kavanaugh Conspiracy").
The MRC doesn't really have the high moral ground here, and we know that holding Republicans accountable for their sexual harassment scandals is simply in its DNA.
NEW ARTICLE: When The Story Turns, The MRC Hides The Truth Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center loves pushing right-wing narratives. But when those narratives get overtaken by the facts and make right-wingers look bad, the MRC either gets defensive or refuses to correct the record at all. Read more >>
MRC Hides Facts To Defend GOP Governor's Abysmal COVID Death Rate Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Nicholas Fondacaro spent a Feb. 28 post complaining that "Face the Nation moderator Margaret Brennan singled out Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota to be the target of her ire because of her fair handling of COVID in her state." But as we've come to expect from Fondacaro, he's being dishonest in his defense of Noem.
Fondacaro asserted that "Brennan mischaracterized Noem’s CPAC speech and whined about people cheering" -- but he never identified what, exactly, Brennan "mischaracterized" about the speech in which she took a shot at Anthony Fauci. Fondacaro sounded more like Noem's press secetary and less like the "media researcher" he purports to be as he jumped to her defense:
When Noem finally appeared on the show, she wasted no time in schooling Brennan on her lies. “Well, I’d like to respond to something that you said. You indicated I ignored medical advice, I didn't listen to my health experts. And I most certainly did,” she shot back. “In South Dakota, we took this virus very seriously. What I did though was tell my people the truth.”
Decrying how Noem refused to destroy small businesses and harm students with isolation via lockdowns, Brennan tried to distort reality by citing the state’s deaths per capita. “As of today, the CDC says your state has the eighth-highest death rate per capita in the U.S. That’s the rate of deaths per 100,000 residents. Don't you think your decisions as an executive contributed,” she sneered at her guest.
Looking at the numbers according to The New York Times, South Dakota had less than 2,000 deaths from COVID. And only seven on Saturday.
Fondacaro's claim that Brennan "distort[ed] reality" by citing per-capita deaths is quite hilarious when you know that three months earlier, the MRC's Kristine Marsh cheered Noem for citing per capita statistics as a way to "put the journalist [George Stephanopoulos] in his place" when he noted rising coronavirus cases and deaths in South Dakota. Only in the world of the MRC where Republicans must be protected at any cost would "less than 2,000 deaths from COVID" be considered something to cheer about.
Fondacaro went on to rant that "At one point, Brennan accused her of being personally responsible for seeding nearly every case in the Midwest, as if it couldn’t have come from anyplace else." But Brennan was specifically citing the annual motorcycle rally last August in Sturgis, S.D., attended by hundreds of thousands of bikers. Researchers say the rally may have been responsible for as many as 266,000 new cases of coronavirus at a public health cost of more than $12 billion. (State officials claim to have found only around 300 cases it could link to the rally.)
Fondacaro then played New York whataaboutism in an attempt to take the heat off Noem:
Back in reality, we know that New York had seeded most of the country as residents fled the state because of the lockdowns. And COVID deaths in New York nursing homes (roughly 15,000) greatly overshadowed the deaths in all of South Dakota. That’s not to mention that New York also spawned a new virus variant that’s worrying researchers.
Fondacaro provided no evidence to back up his claim that New York "seeded most of the country" with coronavirus. Also, he failed to concede that deaths in an entire state as big as South Dakota should not be competing with deaths in the close quarters of nursing homes (where, as much as he deseprately wants to, Fondacaro can't blame them all on Andrew Cuomo), let alone the entirety of New York, which has a much higher population than South Dakota.
This is yet another example of how the MRC tries to ensure the right-wing narratives it pushes trumps the facts.
MRC Hypes Cuomo Nursing Home Scandal -- But Censors News Of GOP Official Who Killed A Guy Topic: Media Research Center
For months, the Media Research Center has been hyping claims that Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo caused deaths from coronavirus in the state's nursing homes by ordering COVID patients early in the pandemic to be discharged from hospitals to the nursing homes (though it usually hid the fact that it was done to open up space in hospitals during that early surge of COVID patients), and then manipuated data to hide it. It has been assisted by Fox News weatherperson JaniceDean, who has a personal vendetta against Cuomo because in-laws in New York nursing homes died early in the pandemic -- never mind that nursing-home coronavirus deaths were not necessarily caused by hospital patients transferred there, or that it's highly unlikely that the deaths of Dean's in-laws couldn't be blamed on such transfers.
The MRC even called in Donald Trump's dubious pollster, McLaughlin & Associates, to conduct a poll with the goal of blaming the "liberal media" for not covering this story in a way that drove up Cuomo's negatives to levels that the MRC and it sfellow right-wingers desired to see.
Given the MRC's rampant bias, you will not be surprised to learn that it has completely censored news of a Republican state official who actually did kill a guy, then tried to cover it up.
South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg struck and killed a man with his car on a dark highway last summer. He claimed at the time that he thought he hit an animal and didn't realize he struck a man until the next day when he returned to the scene. But it was later revealed that Ravnsborg had been browsing websites on his phone just before the crash, and the victim's broken glasses were found inside Ravnsborg's car. Ravnsborg has pleaded not guilty, and critics are asking him to resign, but he has so far refused.
Imagine how the MRC would have treated Ravnsborg if he was a Democrat -- it would be demanding that the "liberal media" give wall-to-wall coverage to this case the way it has done regarding Cuomo. But because Ravnsborg is a Republican, it has remained silent. The MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, has also refused to report on this story.
That's the protection you get from the MRC if you're a Republican.
MRC Whines That False COVID Claims Are Being 'Censored' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has a badhabit of defending false or extreme claims by right-wingers in order to advance its bogus narrative that social media sites are exclusively "censoring" the views of conservatives out of purported "liberal bias." Kayla Sargent did this again in a Feb. 22 post:
YouTube has, once again, cracked down on testimony that it decided was “misinformation” about COVID-19.
The video-sharing platform removed a video featuring testimony from Thomas Renz, an attorney for the anti-lockdown advocacy group “Ohio Stands Up!” Renz spoke before the Ohio House State and Local Government Committee in support of House Bill 90, which would “establish legislative oversight” over the state’s COVID-19 response.
“Google and YouTube censored Mr. Renz, a licensed attorney testifying before the Ohio Legislature on a matter of great public importance regarding how the COVID-19 response has been a failure from the beginning in Ohio and throughout the United States because it has always been more about money and power than an appropriate response to a disease,” said the advocacy group in a blog post.
Renz testified that “no child under the age of 19 has died from this disease in Ohio,” and he further stated that “every single action the governor has taken has apparently been based on political science rather than real science.” The Ohio Capital Journal, however, found that “Data from the Ohio Department of Health shows [11] children in the age group have died of the disease during the pandemic.”
Despite the fact that Renz specifically offered to provide further information about his claims “under oath,” YouTube simply would not allow the testimony to remain on the platform.
Sargent disproves the premise of her post -- that YouTube had arbitrarily "decided" what was misinformation in Renz's testimony -- by acknowledging that Renz made an indisputably false claim that wasn't going to be fixed by his offering to testify "under oath." But that wasn't all; the Ohio Capital Journal article Sargent cited noted a host of other dubious claims Renz made:
While it’s unclear which specific COVID-19 misinformation from Renz sparked YouTube’s decision, there’s a lot to choose from.
Renz’s testimony was a firehose of COVID-19 conspiracy theorizing: He said unspecified entities “provide funding for people to find a COVID-19 death;” the ODH “whitewashes” its coronavirus data; that PCR testing, which public health officials consider to be a premier diagnostic, is “garbage” or “absolutely useless.”
He claimed the lockdown orders of the spring to be “the most drastic curtailment of rights ever taken in American history.” The statement was made without acknowledgement to the enslavement of Black Americans, the mass detention of Japanese Americans to internment camps during World War II, the forced relocation of Native Americans, or any number of national atrocities through American history.
While Sargent described him as an attorney, the Capital Journal also noted Renz's dubious background "His 'about me' page for his website lists no prior legal experience besides serving as a clerk on the Indian Supreme Court. However, in a prior interview, he said he did not remember when he served on the court and said he did not speak Hindi."
This sketchy guy full of false and misleading claims perhaps shouldn't be the kind of person the MRC goes to the mat for if it wants to be taken seriously.
MRC's Double Standard on Section 230 Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has long railed against Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives immunity from liability to internet services on which users post something illegal. But the MRC and other right-wing activists have created the narrataive that social media is deliberately and solely "censoring" conservatives merely for posting conservative things, which has never been proven. Last fall, the MRC cheered the Trump administration's efforts to overhaul Section 230 to counter what Alexander Hall claimed "the unchecked power of Big Tech companies,"even encouraging readers to use "the MRC’s FCC contact form to alter Section 230." It also hailed a Republican-pushed bill to alter Section 230 that would purportedly "provide more accountability for Big Tech companies," uncritially quoting one Republican congressman claiming without evidence that social media is trying to "censor content that deviates from their beliefs."
MRC chief Brent Bozell ranted in a letter to Congress that "Section 230 gives social media platforms, such as Facebook, undeserved protection from liability. Facebook is an ideologically driven publisher of editoralized content that used its dominating market power to deliberately and successively swing the election in favor of its preferred presidential candidate, Joe Biden. ... ... Given their massive market dominance and power, if Facebook’s unfair protection from liability under Section 230 is not severely curtailed, Americans will no longer vote for their elected representatives — Facebook will decide who our political masters are." The MRC's Free Speech America project (which doesn't actually believe in free speech because it's blocked us from following its Twitter account) is demanding that Section 230 be altered in an apparent attempt (based on what the MRC has criticized over the past few months) to allow conservatives to spread false claims -- regarding election fraud and coronavirus conspiracies, whcih the MRC has portrayed as "conservative content" that must not be "censored" -- with impunity. The MRC even gushed over then-President Trump's threat to veto a defense funding bill if it did not completely repeal Section 230; Congress quickly overrode Trump's veto, so it was ultimately a hollow, meaningless effort.
(If you want to find out exactly how the MRC had been lobbying the Trump administration to change Section 230, however, you're somewhat out of luck -- it threw a tantrum at a fellow conservative group for filing a Freedom of Information Act request seeking copies of email communications between the MRC and administration officials, insisting that they are "private.")
But when non-conservatives offer thoughts on Section 230 -- and, worse, point out how bogus the MRC's narrative is -- the MRC melts down over that, as Hall did last October:
Democrat [sic] Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) condemned Trump’s “propaganda parrots” on Fox News and his fellow conservatives for “peddling a myth” at a Big Tech hearing. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation October 28. Markey undermined the core idea of the “Does Section 230’s Sweeping Immunity Enable Big Tech Bad Behavior?” hearing by suggesting that “anti-conservative bias” at Big Tech is a “false narrative.”
[...]
Markey contrasted the problems he considers to be real while gaslighting conservatives that their concerns about Big Tech bias are invalid:
“Here’s the truth, violence and hate speech online are real problems. Anti-conservtive bias is not a problem,” Markey suggested.
When Democrats called for a review of Section 230 following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot -- inflamed in large part by false claims about election fraud promoted on social media by Trump and others -- Kayla Sargent took exception:
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has been a hot topic for quite some time, and now, the left appears to be using the liability shield as an excuse to attempt to further regulate free speech online.
Democrats in Congress and the Senate may be placing Section 230 under the microscope following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol building.
“Social media continues to be a concern. The amount of radicalization on both ends of the political spectrum done by social media and the so-called Section 230 exemption needs to be reviewed,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) in an interview with Greta Van Susteren on Full Court Press.
During the interview, Warner paid lip service to the notion of being pro-First Amendment, while simultaneously arguing that some speech should not be allowed to be amplified.
Ssrgent did seem to be happy, however, that President Biden "told The New York Times Editorial Board that Section 230 should be 'revoked, immediately.'"
Sargent also attacked a Democratic-led attempt to reform Section 230, claiming that "it will do far more harm than good" because it "would cut liability protections for providers on paid-for speech like ads, which could encourage platforms to censor even more content to avoid liability." Sargent repeated the MRC's meaningless narrative that "Twitter censored former President Donald Trump 625 times between May 31, 2018 and January 4, 2021. President Joe Biden was not censored at all during the same time span." As before, Sargent provided no evidence that Biden violated Twitter's terms of service 625 times the way Trump did, thus earning being "censored" by Twitter.
On Feb. 22, the MRC gave its paid apparatchik Dan Gainor a platform to fearmonger that "Every aspect of technology is now being closed off to the conservative movement" -- a claim that's ridiculous on its face.He made this claim at an event hosted by something called the "Repeal and Replace Section 230 Coalition," where he was joined by "congressmen, industry experts and religious figures."
We couldn't find much about this coalition, but it turns out that Gainor's fellow presenters at the eveng included far-right congress woman Marjorie Taylor Greene -- just a couple weeks after the MRC finally denounced her extremism after months of portraying her as a mainstream conservative -- Jim Garlow, a right-wing evangelist who was an aggressive supporter of Trump; Dikran Yacoubian, a conservative activist who got a funder to give $2.5 million to right-wing org True the Vote in an attempt to find election fraud in the presidential election (none was found, so he wants his money back); and Mark Masters, who currently runs the radio syndicator founded by his father, accused cult leader Roy Masters.
These are the people the MRC is hanging out with to push its anti-Section 230 crusade.
UPDATE: Jeffrey also devoted a Feb. 24 column to complaining that the National Endowment for the Arts was getting money from the relief bill: "Did federally funded artists produce any great masterpieces in this period? Did American taxpayers get their money's worth? Should we now use a bill allegedly designed to fight COVID-19 to pay the NEA an additional $135 million?" Apparently, Jeffrey apparently believes that artists weren't affected by the pandemic. He also gratuitously complained that theater group "based in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco congressional district" once got a grant to stage "a groundbreaking trans and queer examination of American masculinity's deep roots in Trouble."
MRC Helps Anti-Abortion Website Plays Dumb On Why Its YouTube Channel Got Shut Down Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Kayla Sargent quickly went Godwin in a Feb. 10 post:
The YouTube censorship Gestapo has struck again.
YouTube has reportedly entirely banned the pro-life group LifeSiteNews from the platform in its latest attempt to silence conservative voices.
“YouTube just completely removed the LifeSiteNews YouTube channel. This isn’t a temporary ban; every single one of our videos is completely gone. Thankfully, we have backups of all our videos, but this means hundreds of thousands of people have lost access to our truth-telling content,” the pro-life organization said on its website.
“Being completely removed from YouTube means we’ve lost access to more than 300,000 followers,” LifeSiteNews continued.
Sargent went on to play dumb by claiming that "The specific reason that YouTube suspended LifeSiteNews is unclear, as YouTube did not respond to a request for comment at the time this piece was published." In fact, it probably wasn't that hard to figure out; the next day, Vice got the scoop from YouTube (which likely correctly surmised that the MRC is hostile media and wouldn't treat it fairly):
YouTube has banned LifeSiteNews, an anti-abortion outlet that bills itself as the “#1 pro-life news website,” for repeatedly sharing videos that spread misinformation about COVID-19 and the vaccines against it.
“In accordance with our longstanding strikes system, we terminated the channel LifeSiteNews Media for repeatedly violating our COVID-19 misinformation policy, which prohibits content that promotes prevention methods that contradict local health authorities or WHO,” Ivy Choi, a YouTube spokesperson, told VICE News in an email.
[...]
In November, YouTube took down a LifeSiteNews video featuring a doctor who called the coronavirus pandemic “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public,” according to LifeSiteNews. The doctor also called both masks and social distancing “useless” when it came to stopping the spread of the deadly virus.
The Centers for Disease Control disagrees. New research from the agency, released Wednesday, found that when people wear two snug masks, they can reduce the coronavirus’ transmission by about 95 percent compared to being unmasked.
Then, in late January, LifeSiteNews earned a second strike from YouTube for a video about the alleged links between abortion and the coronavirus vaccines. This is a popular topic among anti-abortion advocates, who are increasingly divided over whether they should take take COVID-19 vaccines that may have been developed with the use of fetal cells.
LifeSiteNews has spread numerous other coronavirus conspiracies as well. LifeSite presumably knew about YouTube issuing strikes against its content, which it could have told Sargent about. Instead, it knew that Sargent would be a sympathetic writer who would help LifeSite forward the bogus right-wing narrative that "conservative speech" is being "censored" on social media.
(A Feb. 12 article at the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, did admit that YouTube banned LifeSite for coronavirus misinformation, but published it under the deceptive headline "YouTube Bans Pro-Life LifeSiteNews, Shuts Out 300,000 Followers." Sargent never bothered to update her article to tell readers the real reason LifeSite was banned.)
But LifeSite knows where to go so its claims of victimization will not face much scrutiny. Thus, Alexander Hall was the willing stenographer for it again in a Feb. 23 post:
LifeSiteNews said they have been financially kneecapped by Google.
LifeSiteNews author Gualberto Garcia Jones stated that “thanks to our conference on the morality, legality and science behind the covid vaccines, Google has completely banned our website from Google Ads and Google Ad servers” in an Feb 23 email to the Media Research Center. Jones explained further that the financial blacklisting by Google has massive implications: “[U]nfortunately, our advertising agency used Google ads as it is the industry standard. In addition, Google has banned us from Google News and Google discover.”
LifeSiteNews explained in its reporting on the censorship, that Google had “cit[ed] alleged ‘dangerous or derogatory content’ the company declined to identify.” The outlet also said it “received an email notifying us that LifeSiteNews ‘is not currently in compliance with our AdSense Program policies and as a result, ad serving has been disabled on your site.’"
LifeSiteNews said that the only example Google provided was “a February 4 LifeSite articledetailing an interview former University of Virginia school of medicine profesor Dr. David Martin gave on mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines and the distinction between vaccination and gene therapy.”
Given that LifeSiteNews deliberately hid from Sargent the real reason it got kicked off YouTube, it's entirely likely that it's obfuscating about why it Google blacklisted it. Certainly it knows that its COVID conspiracy-mongering is problematic, but it's obvious that it will never admit to spreading lies.
Hall would know that as well if he could be bothered to do anything beyond stenography. Instead, he uncritically repeated Sargent's claim that "YouTube has reportedly entirely banned the pro-life group LifeSiteNews from the platform in its latest attempt to censor speech online," without bothering to explain that YouTube was not "censoring speech" but shutting down lies.
Neither Hall nor Sargent explained why LifeSite should be allowed to spread lies without consequence. This is yet another example of the MRC embracing peddlers of fiction masquerading as fact in an attempt to own the libs.
MRC's Houck Can't Stop Gushing Over Doocy's Hostile Questions Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center writer Curtis Houck's abjecthatred for Biden press secretary Jen Psaki -- and man-crush on Fox News reporter Peter Doocy -- is continuing apace.
On Feb. 22, Houck attacked Psaki's appearance on a Sunday talk show, effectively accusing her of incompetence: "Along with struggling to answer basic questions during White House press briefings, Press Secretary Jen Psaki found herself paddling the struggle boat on Sunday with ABC’s This Weekas chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl inquired about then-candidate Joe Biden’s affection for scandal-ridden Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY)." The next day, Houck gushed over Doocy under the headline "Doocy Demolishes Psaki on Biden WH’s Immigration Double Standard":
A day after struggling with questions about embattled OMB Director nominee Neera Tanden, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki found herself being torched Tuesday by Fox News’s Peter Doocy about the administration’s immigration policies and specifically the reopening of a detention center both President Biden and Vice President Harris derided as an abomination under the Trump regime.
Worse yet for Psaki, Doocy drew follow-ups from CBS’s Ed O’Keefe (who asked an excellent question earlier in the briefing about the Keystone XL pipeline) and McClatchy’s Francesca Chambers. Later on, she faced stiff questions fromNew York Post’s Steven Nelson on drones and government surveillance.
Houck served up more gushing over Doocy and sneering at Psaki in a Feb. 24 post:
After making his mark during Tuesday’s White House press briefing, Fox News’s Peter Doocy again tussled Wednesday with Press Secretary Jen Psaki over illegal immigration, wondering whether the term “kids in containers” was more apt for the detaining of illegal immigrant children since Psaki was turned off (read: triggered) by the description of “kids in cages.”
Doocy started with this: “We spoke yesterday about immigration and this facility — HHS facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas for migrant children. And you said it is not kids in cages. We’ve seen some photos now of containers. Is there a better description? Is it kids in containers, instead of kids in cages? What is the White House’s description of this facility.”
Clearly not amused, Psaki insisted she would “give a broader description of what’s happening here&rdquo where they were not and would not “separate” and “rip” kids “from the arms of their parents at the border” but instead “expand and open additional facilities, because there was not enough space in the existing facilities — and if we were to abide by COVID protocols, that’s the process and the step.”
She added how children were also having access to an education and medical care, so it was different than whatever the Trump administration did. Coincidentally, in-person education is something younger American citizens haven’t been able to get for almost a year thanks to teachers unions.
Houck then complained that "Psaki went personal by wondering if Doocy was concerned about being accurate with viewers." Never mind, of course, that Houck's beloved Trump press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, regularly attacked reporters, as did Houck for using the same aggressive tone with McEnany that Doocy is using with Psaki.
Under the ridiculous headline "Doocy Smash," Houck's Feb. 25 post gushed even more over Doocy:
Clearly on a roll since returning to the White House Briefing Room rotation on Tuesday, Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy continued his streak Thursday of asking the tough questions to Press Secretary Jen Psaki. This time, Doocy was dogged in seeking comment on the nursing home scandal and sexual misconduct allegations against Biden ally and Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY).
Despite the fact that ABC had ignored it through Thursday morning (while ABC, CBS, and MSNBC waited until then with CNN first noticing in the noon Eastern hour), Doocy began his questions by invoking former Cuomo aide Linsdey Boylan’s claims in light of Cuomo chairing a virtual meeting of the National Governors Association with President Biden.
Doocy wondered if, given Boylan’s disturbing claims about Cuomo, the White House was “worried about this becoming a distraction from an important meeting about COVID response.”
Psaki’s answer was standard for a spokesperson in that she insisted Biden “has been consistent in his position” that “[w]hen a person comes forward, they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect” and “[t]heir voice should be heard not silenced and any allegation should be reviewed.”
Ruling? Pants on fire, Jen. Sure, one could say anyone and everyone should be “heard,” but as we’ve seen with Tara Reade versus Christine Blasey Ford, not all allegations are actually heard in the public square. Psaki might as well have followed up with the adage about a tree falling in the forest.
Houck is not going to mention that he and the rest of his MRC crew smeared and disrespected women who accused Donald Trump of sexual assault and harassment and care about Tara Reade not as a woman but as a tool with which to bash Biden, so Houck may not want to beg comparisons here.
Again, Houck imputed sinister motives to Psaki's side of the exchange, claiming that "a peeved Psaki insisted that Doocy of routinely engaging in disinformation." Given that Fox News is very much a disinformation mill masquerading as a "news" channel, that concern is well founded.
MRC Brings Back Misinformation-Peddling Pollster Topic: Media Research Center
Late last year, we caught the Media Research Center's Joseph Vazquez promoting right-wing pollster Richard Baris while censoring the fact that Baris had been busted for pushing false claims about fraud in the 202 presidential election. So it's probably not surprising that Vazquez gave Baris another platform in a Feb. 19 post:
Big Data Poll Director Richard Baris slammed a CNBC economic survey arguing that President Joe Biden won an initial approval rating that topped the first ratings of the last four presidents.
CNBC’s recent All-America Economic Survey of 1,000 people claimed that Biden’s leftist agenda won him a whopping 62 percent initial approval rating for his “handling of the economy and for uniting the country.” The result supposedly topped the “first ratings of the last four presidents.” In addition, Biden’s initial rating was “18 points higher than Trump’s.” Baris summed up Biden’s numbers in one sentence: “At this point, there’s no excuse for them to continue to release results derived from methodologies that have repeatedly proven to be flawed.”
When reached for comment, Baris told the MRC the accuracy of polling companies could be measured by the reliability of their predictions leading up to the tumultuous 2020 election:
The only real test of a pollster's accuracy and trustworthiness comes on Election Day. It’s important to remember that these pollsters failed miserably last November. There are several reasons for that failure, all of which are now pretty widely acknowledged in the industry.
Given that Baris has already been busted pushing false informaiton, there's no reason to trust his opinion on anything -- but Vazquez does anyway, letting him rant about polls he doesn't like use methods he doesn't like. But he seems to be overlooking that CNBC's poll can be described as valid because its Biden poll presumably uses methodology similar to its previous polls, making comparisons between those polls more valid. It's much more difficult to draw comparisons between polls if the methodologies they used are drastically different.
Given that BNaris has made his pro-Republican leanings all too clear, it's hard to take his criticism of other polls seriously because it seems obvious he's just trashing the competition. Indeed, FiveThirtyEight thinks that Baris' Big Data Poll findings are so unreliable that it has received an F rating and has been banned from its polling analysis.
This is who Vazquez thinks is a credible "expert" on polling.
Jealous? MRC Still Envious That Obamas Are Doing Well Topic: Media Research Center
In a March 15 post, a Media Research Center writer suggested that CNN's Brian Stelter doing a segment on Fox News host Tucker Carlson's incendiary and offensive rhetoric meant that he was jealous of Carlson's ratings. By that logic, we can assume that the MRC's weird fixation on how productive Barack and Michelle Obama (and how much money they've made in the process) have been after leaving the presidency is an expression of jealousy as well. Obama hasn't been president for four years ,and it hasn't stopped.
Late last year, Clay Waters served up some late-breaking attacks (coming after our previous item) on book reviewers weighing in on Obama's presidential memoir: in one piece, he whined that the New York Times Sunday Book Review's "obeisant" and "almost reverent" take on the book "took up five full pages of the section; in the other, Waters huffed that former Times book critic Michiko Kakutani "fulfilled her reputation for sucking up to President Barack Obama" in an interview with him, further complaining that "Kakutani mined Obama’s vast book (the first of a threatened two in a series) for more of Obama’s mind-droppings."
In a Feb. 18 post, Gabriel Hays has decided it's perfectly fine to attack the child of a (former) president:
The Obama media empire continues to grow stronger as yet another Obama family member gets a cushy Hollywood gig. What’s next? The Obama dogs getting their own late night talk show?
In addition to Michelle and Barack Obama having respective massive book deals, a Hollywood production company which has produced Oscar-award winning movies, and frequent guest appearances for Michelle on PBS, their daughter is now in on the action. News dropped recently that Malia Obama landed a lucrative screenwriting gig with Amazon Studios and Star Wars actor, Donald Glover.
It sure pays to be an Obama these days.
Hays sounds like he thinks he deserves that gig.
Obama's planned podcast with Bruce Springsteen prompted more MRC whining. Kyle Drennen huffed that the podcast was a "vanity project" and that coverage of it "made it clear journalists were still adoring fans eager for any new product being put out by the Democrat." Hays returned to ramp up the petulenace under the all-caps headline "INSUFFERABLE":
What is it with the entertainment industry giving radio and podcast gigs to people who should have shut up years ago? In what is probably another sign of the apocalypse, two of the more insufferable lefties in American history are teaming up for one podcast series.
Former President Barack Obama and “Glory Days” singer Bruce Springsteen have launched a podcast titled “Renegades: Born in the USA.” Yeah, how’s that for obnoxious?
[...]
And Barry’s just being Barry, making media content with his mega-million dollar partnership with Netflix and his book deals, and talking trash about conservative Americans and Trump every step of the way. Yeah both of these jokers are real renegades, the way they are shilling for the all-encompassing liberal machine that is now looking to brand grandma’s facebook posts as “domestic terrorism.” Real outsider stuff, boys.
Hays is almost entertainingly oblivious to how much he's pegging the insufferably-obnoxious meter. But will he concede that Obama was, in fact, born in the USA? The jury's still out on that.
On March 3, Kristine Marsh grumbled that Michelle Obama had a book to sell, and that "ABC’s morning show Good Morning America was happy to act as Michelle Obama’s PR team, not only helping to sell her book to kids but also promote her well-crafted image of the wise and inspirational role model. There wasn’t one critical or tough question in the exclusive ABC interview.
And on March 14, Tim Graham was shockec -- shocked! -- that People magazine failed to a harsh right-wing takedown of Michelle Obama, underthe headline "Lickspittle Olympics":
Just five weeks after their latest puffball cover story on Joe and Jill Biden, People magazine offers a cover story on Michelle Obama. The cover announced the theme: " Love, Family & What I Know Now: The former First Lady on keeping life fun, parenting grown daughters, and how marriage was shaken but stayed strong: 'I look across the room and I still see my friend'."
"We've learned to count our blessings" is the big takeaway inside, and "making the most of pandemic isolation with her husband and daughters (Baking! Eavesdropping!)"
But why now? What is she selling? The excuse for another six-page spread of sugar is a new “young readers edition” of her 2018 memoir Becoming. (They're counting their royalties, not just their blessings.)
[...]
Now who is buying the Obamas as "working class" folks now? After more than $100 million in book deals and Netflix deals and speaking fees, and so on, and so on? But People will still publish this syrup in all seriousness.
But aren't fluffy profiles the reason People magazine exists? And hasn't the MRC spent the past four years insisting that a self-proclaimed billionaire narcissist with a taste for gaudiness is the champion of working people?
Seems that Graham is still jealous that Michelle Obama's memoir sold many times more copies than the sum total of anything he ghost-wrote for his boss, Brent Bozell.
MRC Remains Angry TV Cop Shows Mirror Current Issues In Policing Topic: Media Research Center
We've documented how the Media Research Center has gotten upset that police-related dramas on TV are taking the ripped-from-the-headlines approach in addressing recent controversies over police brutality that don't adhere to the MRC's pro-police, anti-reform agenda. You will not be surprised to learn that the complaining has continued. Lindsay Kornick complained in a Jan. 3 post:
Looks like CBS’s NCIS: New Orleans will spend its 2021 doubling down on false liberal propaganda. While the show already bent over backwards to claim police officers are killing young black men last month, the latest episode somehow went further to appease a “burn the establishment” progressive and her mostly “peaceful” crowd.
Kornick further complained that one character "even goes so far as to peddle the usual lie that the “vast majority” of BLM protestors are just peaceful idealists being dragged by a few bad actors. She linked to a right-wing Townhall.com post ridiculing a study finding that 93 percent of protests did not result in rioting -- a "vast majority" by any definition and, thus, not a "usual lie." (Ironically, the MRC would be using this exact same argument a few days later to distance conservatives from the right-wing Capitol rioters, even though both were clearly on the same pro-Trump side.)
Rebecca Downs went after a different show, "The Rookie," grumbling on Jan. 4 that the show "aims to get political on policing" by discussing racial issues and that one show writer said that it "can’t do one special episode, where we feel good and solve racism in the end, and then go back to our usual thing the next week. We want to change things for as long as we get to do this show.” This was followed by her complaint on Jan. 11 that the show"revealed a new “ polarizing” character, veteran officer Doug Stanton (Brandon Routh) and his hit-you-over-the-head racial profiling. The episode also featured interactions between titular character Officer John Nolan (Nathan Fillion) and James Murray (Arjay Smith), a local black man, while Nolan's assigned to a community policing center."
Downs' anger continued as the show's storyline did, ranting on Jan. 18 that the latest episode featured how that "polarizing" officer character "physically assaults an innocent young black man who does not match the description of their suspect, then threatens to arrest the man's entire family for trying to intervene while pointing his gun at them all in an over-the-top scene, with the rookie he is training, Officer Jackson West (Titus Makin Jr.), uncomfortably watching it all." She concluded by huffing that "it looks like next Sunday we can enjoy what is, at best, another increasingly crowded, melodramatic, and poorly written episode of The Rookie." The next week, Downs groused that the character was "a white racist cop personified," adding that "Our main characters may want Stanton gone, but he also is a veteran of the job who knows a thing or two."
Elise Ehrhard bashed another show in a Jan. 26 post:
CBS's woke court drama All Rise has spent all season pushing BLM propaganda. One lie that Black Lives Matter promotes is the myth that America's first police departments were created to capture fugitive slaves. The leader of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York< even said on Fox News that the first police departments were used as "slave patrols." One way that leftism attempts to destroy American institutions is by lying about their founding.
BLM's claim is demonstrably false. The first pre-Civil War police departments were created in Boston, New York and Philadelphia and their creation had nothing to do with capturing runaway slaves. But facts never stopped Hollywood from promoting BLM myths.
No, it's not "demonstrably false." Northern big-city police departments may not have been founded on capturing slaves, but historians point out that Southern cities had slave patrols that predated police departments' founding, and that all such police operations were created to enforce the existing social hierarchy before evolving into a force for protection starting in the late 19th century.
On Feb. 14, Ehrhard complained that another show pointed out that last summer's protests were mostly peaceful: "Television shows this year just have characters keep saying over and over again that the protests are peaceful, really, really peaceful. Did they ever hear of Shakespeare's warning, 'I think thou doth protest too much'? If protests were genuinely peaceful, Hollywood writers would not have to keep telling audiences that." She concluded by sneering out the MRC's nasty narrative: "BLM and Antifa protests have been a poisonous exercise in domestic terrorism and no amount of Hollywood lying should ever cause Americans to forget it."
Downs returned on Feb. 22 to bash "The Rookie" some more: "For weeks, ABC’s The Rookie hit viewers over the head with the evils of racist white cops, personified through Officer Doug Stanton (Brandon Routh). While Officer Stanton may be gone, the show is just getting started on the racial white guilt."
Kornick, meanwhile, ranted about a yet another show in a Feb. 21 post: "CW’s Batwoman may have a new lead, but the politics are as bad as ever. With several subtle victimization jabs in the past few episodes, the superhero series finally makes a bold move by supporting the ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards) movement. Again, this is supposed to be our hero, ladies and gentlemen."
Fortunately for the MRC, there's still one show on TV that reliably pushes its right-wing agenda. A Jan. 25 post by Dawn Slusher cheered, "Leave it to CBS’s excellent hit cop drama Blue Bloods to confront anti-police sentiment head-on and depict how it affects not only officers, but their families, as well," calling the show "a breath of fresh air in an industry that refuses to recognize the humanity of police officers and how they sacrifice their lives to keep us safe."
MRC's Double Standard On Sleazy Sex Scandals Topic: Media Research Center
We've documented how the Media Research Center spent a lot of time over the past few years Heathering the Lincoln Project for being never-Trump conservatives and looks for any opportunity to write negatively about it. Well, it was handed a plum opportunity when it was revealed that Lincoln Project co-founder John Weaver had sent unsolicited and sexually provoctive messages to teenage males. Unsurprisingly, the MRC launched into its usual blitz of complaining that the alleged scandal wasn't getting attention outside its media bubble and that other Lincoln Project representatives were somehow still allowed to appear on TV:
Meanwhile, the MRC was studiously ignoring a creepy sex scandal involving a conservative who wasn't anti-Trump. Take it away, Law & Crime:
The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) on Friday announced that a former aide to President Donald Trump was arrested in Washington, D.C. and charged with receiving, possessing, and distributing child pornography.
Ruben Verastigui, 27, who worked on Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, was previously employed as a senior digital strategist for the Senate Republican Conference and Republican National Committee. He was also the digital media coordinator for the anti-abortion group Students for Life of America. He left the Republican Conference in July of 2020 to become the communications manager for the nonprofit group Citizens For Responsible Energy Solutions.
[...]
The details are graphic.
According to that public document, Verastigui allegedly told another person in April of 2020 that he was “into” sexually assaulting babies.
The MRC has censored any mention of Verastigui and his crime. Meanwhile, his former employer, Students for Life, has been given a lot of play at the MRC; The group's leaders have been been signatories to twoletters issued by the MRC pushing its dubious narrative that "Big Tech:" is solely muzzling conservatives, and a January post by Gabriel Hays cited Students for Life among the groups cheering a Supreme Court ruling making it harder to obtain medication to induce an abortion.
If the Lincoln Project is tainted by Weaver's sleazy sex scandal, why isn't Students for Life tained by Verastigui's even sleazier sex scandal?
You'd think that the MRC would be outraged at all sex scandal perpetrators. Apparently, those who are sufficiently loyal to the right-wing cause and the organizations that employed them get a pass.
Again: Aside from the above-noted Jay Maxson example, none of this posts offer any sort of defense of Limbaugh -- they simply whine that Limbaugh was criticized -- accurately, one could say -- upon his death. (Also, note that the MRC so loved the word "despicable" to describe the non-right-wing media's response to Limbaugh's death that it appears in the headlines of three of these items.)
One post, however, did attempt to defend the arguably indefensible. Tim Graham devoted a Feb. 18 post to responding to an Associated Press obituary of Limbaugh that noted "As the AIDS epidemic raged in the 1980s, he made the dying a punchline," that "When actor Michael J. Fox, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, appeared in a Democratic campaign commercial, Limbaugh mocked his tremors" and that "when a Georgetown University law student supported expanded contraceptive coverage, he dismissed her as a 'slut.'"Graham's response: There's context! And Rush (allegely) apologized!
Each one of these could be dissected and put into context -- for example, he apologized for making light of AIDS patients. But reporters skip over the apologizes where he apologized. He also apologized for suggesting law student Sandra Fluke was a "slut." He also apologized to Michael J. Fox, but Brent Baker has fuller context.
Adding context would crimp the "cruelty" and "malice" charges, but Sedensky left that out. There's also no sense of timeline -- the "AIDS Updates" and jokes about D.C. homeless advocate Mitch Snyder are from 1990, before Limbaugh's show became a widely distributed national show.
Graham linked to no evidence that Limbaugh ever apologized for his "making light of AIDS patients." And Limbaugh didn't merely "suggest" Fluke was a "slut" -- he out-and-out called her one, the MRC gave him a pass for doing so, and Limbsugh's so-called apology wasn't much of one and it came only after advertisers threatened to quit the show.
Graham's post, by the way, was the only one of the Limbaugh defense posts in which Fluke was mentioned by name.
The MRC had the same hates as Limbaugh did, so it couldn't understand why his targets -- or anyone who's not in their right-wing media bubble -- might object to the offensive things he said. Because to Graham and the rest of the MRC crew, they weren't offensive.
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham thought he had a pretty good gotcha in a Feb. 26 post:
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