Scott Whitlock declared in a May 3 item:

Another week, another round of embarrassing corrections from major news media outlets. The Washington Post, The New York Times and NBCNews.com, among others, were forced to retreat on stories saying that Rudy Giuliani was warned by the FBI over Russian disinformation.

[...]

The Washington Post claims “democracy dies in darkness.” Accountability dies with a small update at the bottom of a website few will ever check again.

Of course, correcting the record is accountability, a concept the MRC is unfamiliar with. We would remind Whitlock that his employer has yet to tell its readers that the Fox News story just before the 2016 presidential election that Hillary Clinton's indictment was imminent was false, even as Fox News itself retracted the story.

For all of Whitlock's taking media to task for running a correction, he -- as well as the rest of the MRC refused to give right-wing media outlets the same mocking treatment for the embarrassing corrections they had to make at around the same time. We've already documented how the MRC stealth-edited a post to obscure the fact that Fox News reporter Peter Doocy used a White House press briefing to promote a bogus story from sister organization the New York Post falsely claiming that theBiden White House was giving copies of Kamala Harris' children's book to undotumented immigrant children.

The MRC wasn't done dowmplaying it, though. MRC executive Tim Graham complained in his April 30 column that "On Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, Trevor Noah mocked the fake news of Kamala Harris’s kiddie book being handed out to migrant children as combining 'immigration, socialism, and reading, the three worst things in the world!'"-- but he didn't tell readers that the "fake news" came from a fellow right-wing media outlet.

That wasn't the only right-wing media screw-up that the MRC would downplay. Fox News had to correct a graphihc that falsely claimed the Biden would mandate that Americans cut 90 percent of meat from their diets, limit consumption to four pounds per year and one hamburger per month. Pretty embarrassing, right? Not according to the MRC, which -- again -- was more mad that the mistakes were called out.

In an April 28 post, Kristine Marsh complained that on an episode of "The View,": "Whoopi Goldberg started off by playing a highlight reel of Republicans discussing a debunked New York Post story alleging minors at a border facility were given Kamala Harris’s book, as well as Fox News issuing an apology for a misleading graphic about the Biden administration wanting to limit meat consumption for climate change. That spurred condescending lectures from the liberal co-hosts about media bias and fake news on the right."

The same day, Curtis Houck whined that MSNBC's Joy Reid "reveled in recent corrections from News Corp-owned outlets despite multiple recent ethical and factual failures from MSNBC and fellow Comcast-owned network NBC," adding, "Reid set the table with the retracted Fox News stories about meat consumption and Vice President Harris’s children’s book at a detention center (and the fact that Tucker Carlson has a show) to argue FNC is a bastion of fake news filled with people who think the coronavirus was never real and the election was stolen."

Graham kept up the whataboutism in a May 8 post, insisting that  despite the falseness of the Fox News story, liberals still thinik it's a good idea to eat less meat:

Liberals are having it both ways right now. It's nuts to suggest Joe Biden has a plan to take away your meat. But the eco-lefties really want to limit everyone's meat intake, especially beef. On Saturday night's All Things Considered, NPR host Michel Martin brought on New York Timescolumnist and food writer Mark Bittman for an interview headlined "Food World Ramps Up The War On Meat."

Martin began by explaining "It was falsely suggested multiple times on Fox News and by some Republican members of Congress that President Biden's climate plan will limit red meat eating in order to curb greenhouse gas emissions." But that doesn't mean the left isn't eager for a meat limit.

Graham concluded by complaining that the NPR segment "only considered interviewing leftists who don't like meat-eaters. The meat-lovers didn't get a rebuttal." Graham offered no evidence that any of the people in the segment were "leftists" beyond their saying eating less meat is not a bad idea (which isn't a"leftist" viewpoint).

Posted by Terry K. at 10:20 PM EDT

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One of the components of the Media Research Center's election-fraud conspiracy theory was a poll it conducted claiming that some people who not have voted for Joe Biden if they knew about the Hunter Biden controversy -- but it has censored the fact that the company that did the poll, McLaughlin & Associates, worked for Donald Trump's re-election campaign, putting the poll's objectivity into question and raising questions of conflicts of interest (not to mention McLaughlin's notorious unreliability). But that's the kind of bias the MRC prefers, so it sent some more money McLaughlin's way, as detailed in an anonymously written April 26 item:

As Joe Biden nears his 100th day in office, a new poll conducted for the Media Research Center by McLaughlin & Associates finds a plurality of voters say the news media have given the President an easier ride than his predecessors.

The public’s perception of a pro-Biden bias is confirmed by a recent MRC study which found broadcast evening news coverage of the new President has been more positive than negative (59% positive vs. 41% negative). By contrast, our analysis of the same time period in 2017 found 89% negative coverage of President Trump, vs. just 11% positive.

The poll of 1,000 people who voted in last fall’s general election was conducted from April 8 to April 12. When asked if they thought the news media has been easier or harder on Joe Biden, or if Biden has been treated about the same as other Presidents, voters by a more than three-to-one margin saw the media as going easy on Biden.

Nearly half (45.3%) said the media had been “easier on Joe Biden,” compared to just 13.8% who said the media had been “harder on Joe Biden.” Just over a third (34.7%) said they thought the media had treated Biden about the same as other Presidents, while 6.2% said they didn’t know.

Again, the MRC hid from readers McLaughlin's partisan record and dubious reliability. On the other hand, McLaughlin did produce the result the MRC paid it for, so appears that narrative once again trumps facts.

That makes for great campaign oppo research. But legitimate "media research"? Not so much.

Speaking of biased polls, an April 27 item by Joseph Vazquez touted:

A newly released poll revealed that Americans aren’t putting up with big business unleashing faux outrage at states attempting to protect their electoral processes.

Rasmussen Reports released a survey of 1,000 American adults showing that 37 percent of Americans were less likely to purchase Coca-Cola products. Rasmussen said that the results were due to the company’s liberal political stance against Georgia’s recent law protecting voter integrity. In addition, the survey found that Americans opposed major businesses attempting to influence politics “[b]y more than a 3-to-1 margin.” Perhaps Coca-Cola and others should learn that leftist virtue-signaling doesn’t necessarily pay dividends.

Vazquez isn't going to tell you that Rasmussen has a notorious conservative skew, or that what he and Rasmussen call "voter integrity" -- the preferred right-wing terminology for Republican-pushed election law changes -- most people would call voter suppression.

Posted by Terry K. at 8:57 PM EDT

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One of the things the Media Research Center pays its employees to do is to spew hate at Hollywood and the Oscars in particular, seemingly because the best films never star right-wing actors like Kevin Sorbo or Kirk Cameron. Needless to say, it predictably hated this year's Academy Awards.

Lindsay Kornick kicked off the hate by complaining that presenters and others talked about black people:

Even in a pandemic, we can always count on The Oscars. Or rather, we can always count on The Oscars to give us a night of insufferable political preaching. And Sunday night’s ceremony delivered political rantings in record time.

The 93rd Annual Academy Awards kicked things off with actor/director Regina King, representing her film One Night in Miami. She was there to introduce the nominations for Best Original Screenplay, but in true Oscar fashion, she started by bringing up the George Floyd murder trial and protests in Minneapolis. She even lectured viewers who loathe Hollywood preaching, claiming, “As a mother of a black son,” she needed to speak.

[...]

Lecturing the audience still willing to put up with your nonsense is not going to win you any more viewers, ABC, no matter what the Los Angeles Times tells you. Between that and Regina King’s further attempts to explain away Hollywood’s hypocrisy for not wearing masks while the cameras are on, the show was already faker than the movies.

Elise Ehrard continued the whining over black people being talked about, lashing out at a dorector for saying that "Today, the police will kill three people":

This year's Academy Awards show was an unwatchable train wreck of BLM& virtue-signaling and bad lighting. A freshman film student could have produced a better show than this mess.

The shout-outs to BLM reached peak cringe during the acceptance speech of Travon Free. Free shared an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film with co-director Martin Desmond Roe, for the Netflix film Two Distant Strangers. Two Distant Strangers is about a young black man murdered by police.

[...]

So, we must repeat once again, for the people in the back: The Washington Post’s own database of fatal police shootings lists only 14 unarmed Black victims and 25 unarmed white victims in 2019. In 2020, 1,021 people were shot and killed by police but only 55 of them were judged by The Washington Post to be unarmed, so 95% were armed and a threat to others. While any death is a tragedy, there is no epidemic of cops killing unarmed victims. It is manufactured outrage designed to fill up left-wing activist coffers and promote racial division.

But Free didn't specify that unarmed people were killed by police, and even Ehrhard's own numbers back up Free's point that black people are disproportionately shot by police. And isn't Ehrhard also trying to stir up racial division for the purpoise of filling up the MRC's coffers?

Karen Townsend perpetuated the tone:

From the beginning until the end, the 93rd Annual Academy Awards was loaded with Black Lives Matter wokeism. Airing on ABC on Sunday night, the show began with self-described "preaching" from actress/director Regina King on the Chauvin trial in Minneapolis and the dangers faced by black men.

The tone was set and the show was none the better for it. It was an unusual set up for the Oscars this year, with no host, and a non-theater location. There were none of the traditional time constraints for acceptance speeches, no music suddenly beginning as a cue for the winner to wrap it up, little to no movie clips - the pacing and production quality were shockingly bad for Hollywood.

Presenter and actress Laura Dern was insufferable to endure. She spoke slowly and added her own twist to introducing nominees for Best Supporting Actor, saying, "Each of these five artists presented us with themes of equity and social justice in their own unique and extraordinary ways." She personalized the introductions as though she was the center of attention. It was awkward to watch.

[...]

To say that this awards ceremony was boring is an understatement. It is no wonder that ratings have been so bad for these shows – who wants to turn in and listen to Hollywood one-percenters scold their audience about the hardships presented because of social injustices? The pandemic has shown us that the entertainment industry has forgotten how to entertain us. The movies up for awards were all filled with messages, not entertainment. The industry is more focused on social activism, not entertaining their consumers.

Gabriel Hays kept up the MRC's race-obsessed coverage by unironically accusing the Oscars of being race-obsessed:

Oh, it’s Oscar season, baby, and once again that means fixating on all the political things Hollywood wants to talk about rather than actual movies. In the year of the pandemic, big Hollywood movies seemed hardly relevant, but our moral betters in Tinsel Town weren’t going to pass up a chance to lecture us.

The Oscars awards show was a parade of diversity -- the hollow kind the left specializes in. And the media lapped it up. The Hollywood Reporterw as so impressed with its industry’s commitment to minimizing whiteness in Hollywood that it put out a little scorecard on just how many different races were awarded.

So much for not making race a thing.

Hays followed up by cheering the lower-than-usual ratings for the Oscars:

Sure, you may feel annoyed about all the woke, self-righteous stuff Hollywood actors have directed at conservatives during the Academy Awards, but the silver lining is that they’re only hurting themselves.

According to Nielsen ratings – as reported by The Hollywood Reporter – April 25’s 93rd Annual Academy Awards was the worst rated in the awards show's history. Even worse, this year’s Oscars ratings were literally twice as bad as last year's, and that one had previously ranked as the worst in Oscars history. 

Yikes.

Hays unsurprisingly buried the actual reason: theaters have been closed for much of the past yer due to the pandemic. But that truth is inconvenient for Hays, so he made sure to steer the story back to the MRC's narrative: "We can’t rule out the fact that these awards shows are also losing ratings due to them getting even more political with each consecutive year. "

Posted by Terry K. at 9:16 PM EDT

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The longtime modus operandi of the Media Research Center is that merely saying anything even remotely positive about a Democratic politican automatically makes you part of the "liberal media." And that's the way the MRC treated President Biden's address to Congress on April 28. Nicholas Fondacaro set the tone in a pre-speech item:

With just a few hours until President Biden delivered his first address to Congress on Wednesday, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News couldn’t hold back their excitement as they trumpeted Biden’s call for an additional $4 trillion in federal spending on mostly liberal pet projects. CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell kicked off the newscast by celebrating the return of big government, while NBC’s Lester Holt parroted Biden’s on-the-record comments attacking Republicans.

O’Donnell was arguably the most excited by the prospects of Biden’s massive spending spree, soon to be $6 trillion total. “25 years after Bill Clinton declared that the era of big government is over, President Biden will argue the opposite,” she cheered, “saying that ‘Government still works’ and can deliver for the people, as he attempts to sell trillions of dollars in new federal spending on everything from universal pre-K and free community college to elder care and infrastructure.”

As for Holt, he started his program with a tacit admission that he was working as a puppet of the administration as they fought against the congressional Republicans:

Fondacaro would never say that, by the same standard, Fox News was a puppet for the Trump administration for the past four years. But then, he's a right-wing puppet too.

Speaking of puppets, Curtis Houck acted like one in echoing Fondadcaro in another pre-speech item:

Showing they were so enthralled with President Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress before he even said a word, ABC and NBC had already started on Wednesday night gushing over his plans, bringing out movie trailer-like opens and boasting of his “hope for an America returning to normal” filled with an agenda that’s extremely “popular” with all Americans.

After the speech, the MRC issued its usual predictable anti-media attacks on anyone who refuses to hate Biden as much it does:

• ‘Rose to the Moment’; NBC Trumpets Biden’s ‘Remarkable Speech’ With a ‘Popular’ Agenda
• CBS Lauds ‘Progressive’ Biden’s ‘Bold,’ ‘Bipartisan’ Speech Built on ‘Simplicity’
• Seriously? ABC Trumpets ‘Pragmatic’ Biden’s ‘Make America Feel Good Night’
• MSNBC Raves Biden’s ‘Brilliant’ ‘Superpower’ Is Being a Radical Who’s ‘Boring’
• Media Bowled Over By Biden's 'Bold,' 'Ambitious' Agenda
• Morning Joe Swoons Over Biden Speech: Reagan Era ‘Officially Ended Last Night’
• NY Times Hails Big-Spending Biden: ‘Transformational Figure in American History’?

The MRC's resident would-be insult comic minus the "comic" part, Gabriel Hays, raged against Biden's speech and anyone working in entertainment who liked it:

President Joe Biden’s first speech to a joint session of Congress on April 28 was completely devoid of substance, and filled with cheap platitudes intended to get slow-witted Americans to consent to less freedom and even bigger government. Of course, Hollywood loved the hell out of it.

These entertainers are as shallow and mendacious as they come. The liar-in-chief is a man after their own hearts. Actors like Jeffrey Wright, Alyssa Milano, and Rob Reiner turned on the melodrama in response to Biden’s boring, but radical, speech from Wednesday night. They claimed to be “proud” of Biden and expressed relief that we finally have a president who “cares about us.” 

One even mentioned that they were “ugly crying” because they were so happy he was president. These people need to get lives.

MRC chief Brent Bozell even got the chance to rant about Biden and the media in a cushy solo appearance on Fox Business (though curiously omitting the network's name from the post on it):

According to Brent Bozell, journalists are either “fully vested” in the radical socialism of Joe Biden or they are simply lying with their spin of the Democrat’s “bold,” “ambitious” agenda. Appearing on Varney and Co. Thursday, the MRC president declared, “What Joe Biden is recommending makes Barack Obama a piker by comparison. For them to say he was pragmatic, for them to say this was feel-good, for them to say this was bipartisan, these are lies, Stuart. These are lies.” 

Calling out the complicit press, he added, “They know it. Or... if they're not lies, they're fully vested in socialism themselves. This is not a news media anymore.” He concluded, “Look, last night what did we see by any objective America sure? You saw the proposal for the greatest expansion of the federal government in the history of the United States of America.”

We don't recall Bozell attacking Fox News as being "complicit" with or "fully vested" in the Trump administration and right-wing politics.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:50 PM EDT

Updated: Monday, May 24, 2021 9:51 PM EDT

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Media Research Center executive Tim Graham huffed in his April 28 column:

Twitter's sidebar came to the rescue on April 22. One of its article headlines read, "Stacey Abrams encouraged Americans to invest in Georgia-based businesses after new voter laws were passed, according to journalists and fact-checkers." That sounds contrary to the spirit of what Abrams wrote.

Then came stealth edits by Abrams at USA Today. In the original article, Abrams said she wasn't opposed to individuals choosing to boycott the "racist, classist" Georgia voting bill that had just been passed.

"Until we hear clear, unequivocal statements that show Georgia-based companies get what's at stake, I can't argue with an individual's choice to opt for their competition," she wrote. She hedged a little by saying boycotts can cause "hardships" and added, "I don't think that's necessary — yet."

The article was "updated," but really, it was a substantial rewrite. The sentence about her not being able to "argue" about a boycott was removed. And she added a complaint that Major League Baseball's boycott "could cost our state nearly $100 million in lost revenue" and then blamed Republicans for caring more about voter suppression than people's "economic well-being."

According to the Internet Archive digital library, the op-ed was revised on April 6, but a notice acknowledging it was "updated" wasn't added until April 22.

Graham might have more credibility on this issue if the MRC's NewsBusters -- of which he is the executive editor -- hadn't stealth-edited an item just the day before.

As we documented, the MRC's Curtis Houck touted his man-crush, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy, asked White House press secretary Jen Psaki about "reporting from the New York Post that 'every' illegal immigrant child brought to one U.S. facility 'is being given a copy of her children's books, Superheroes Are Everywhere,'" then insisted that Psaki "played dumb" with her answer.But the story was utterly false.

Houck's article got stealth-edited to delete a reference to Doocy asking about the book issue in the headline and the section where Houck touted Doocy asking about it was completely rewritten to instead describe "an exchange about a now-dubious claim from the New York Post about Vice President Harris's children's book being given out at one U.S. detention center for illegal immigrant children." It's not until the very end of Houck's post that there's any evidence that it was altered, where an editor's note stated that the post was "updated."

If Graham wants to complain about stealth-editing, he might want to first address the way his own organization does it.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:41 AM EDT

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Even when the Media Research Center's Curtis Houck doesn't have Peter Doocy to man-crush over at Jen Psaki's White House press briefings, he can still indulge in the ol' MRC tradition of trying to play cancel culture on public broadcasting. For Psaki's April 20 briefing, Houck declared his outrage at PBS' Yamiche Alcindor refusing to play along with right-wing narrative by screeching "DEFUND PBS" in the headline:

Hours before the guilty verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial, White House reporters stepped up Tuesday afternoon and did their due diligence in a briefing filled with harsh questioning. At least six reporters went toe-to-toe in slamming Press Secretary Jen Psaki over President Biden’s earlier comments demanding a guilty verdict and the White House’s refusal to call out Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) for comments threatening the jury.

However, PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor was still a holdout in defending Waters. After a serious questions seeking clarification on Biden’s comments, she asked if she “could speak to Americans who feel on edge” and “anxious,” but “especially African Americans who have seen so many verdicts, so many trials happen.”

Alcindor’s subsequent question was the epitome of liberal partisanship and why PBS shouldn’t be able to engage in partisan activity using our tax dollars as she went to bat for Waters against “an onslaught of attacks” from Republicans:

Houck found another right-wing reporter to fawn over for the April 21 briefing:

Near the end of Wednesday’s White House press briefing, the New York Post’s Steven Nelson irked Press Secretary Jen Psaki with a basic question about whether President Biden “acknowledge[s] his own role”  in major crime legislation that leftists argue contributed to the “systemic racism” his administration has claimed they will work to eradicate[.]

Nelson used most of his time to continue his pattern of pressing Psaki on matters concerning federal marijuana policy and its affect on administrative staffing.

After four questions about marijuana, Nelson pivoted to Biden’s comments following the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial in which he said the murder of George Floyd “ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism in the United States.” 

Nelson argued Biden said that despite the fact that “he’s an architect of multiple federal laws in the 1980s and ’90s that disproportionately jailed black people and contributed to what many people see as systemic racism.”

Citing Cornell West as having called Biden one of the core “architects of mass incarceration” that needs to atone for, Nelson wondered: “To what extent does President Biden acknowledge his own role in systemic racism? And how does that inform his current policy positions?”

Houck put Nelson in his hostile right-wing reporter pantheon: "Like Fox’s Peter Doocy and Kristin Fisher and Real Clear Politics’s Philip Wegmann, Nelson has established quite the track record of asking probing questions aimed at soliciting answers from Psaki, but have instead left her both perturbed and stumped."

Houck never described his other crush, Kayleigh McEnany, as having been "perturbed and stumped" by "probing questions" from reporters -- he was too busy attacking the reporters who asked them.

Houck then skipped a few days of briefings because they were "uneventful" -- meaning that Doocy and Co. weren't there to ask hostile questions. But for the April 27 briefing in which Doocy made his first appearance back from his honeymoon, Houck excitedly squealed, "He's Back!":

After a few uneventful White House press briefings, Monday’s episode drew a number of interesting exchanges on the border crisis, the coronavirus pandemic, masking, schools, and President Biden’s Wednesday address to a Joint Session of Congress. 

And after having been off to get married, Fox News’s Peter Doocy returned with a bang in an exchange on the administration’s continued masking despite having long been vaccinated.

This was the briefing that Houck later stealth-edited to obscure the fact that Doocy pushed fake newsby repeating a false claim that federal officials were giving copies of a book written by Vice President Kamala Harris to immigrants. And Houck hates Psaki so much that he refused to mention that Psaki congratulated Doocy on his marriage (or that Psaki blew up Doocy's mask questions).

This was followed the next day by Houck pushing (through another right-wing reporter, Wegmann) another boghus story, about "former Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly selling out Israel to his friends in the terrorist-loving Iran." As we've noted, Houck is joining his MRC buddies in choosing to trust an enemy of the United States over a Democrat.

Posted by Terry K. at 4:46 PM EDT

Updated: Sunday, May 23, 2021 10:19 PM EDT

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The Media Research Center's Nicholas Fondacaro screeched in an April 26 post:

It was a heck of a way to start a week as the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, NBC, and Spanish-language networks CNN en Español, Telemundo, and Univision completely blacked out the bombshell leaked audio that suggested former Secretary of State John Kerry backstabbed Israel and shared secrets with Iran’s terrorist-backing regime.

The audio of Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and an Iranian journalist was leaked to The New York Times and an Iranian outlet based in the U.K. And according to Zarif, Kerry had confirmed Israel’s involvement in operations against Iranian forces in Syria. If true, it constituted a massive betrayal against the U.S.’s biggest ally in the region. But it didn’t garner an iota of airtime on any of those networks.

Instead of covering that major story, all three of the major broadcast networks gushed about the Oscars and how woke they were. Only the CBS Evening News noted how terrible the ratings were, without going into detail. And the Spanish-language networks touted the Latinos that won awards.

Because the MRC is the PR agent for Fox News, Fondacaro added: "Fortunately, Fox News Channel wasn’t beholden to the Biden administration and wasn’t an ally to the Iranian regime, like those networks were. 'Breaking tonight, what could be a major breach of national security and international relations at the hands of former Secretary of State and current climate adviser John Kerry,' announced Special Report anchor Bret Baier at the top of the newscast."

After a few more paragraphs of gushing over Fox News pushing this story, Fondacaro got around to mentioning -- in the 11th paragraph of his item -- a crucial bit of information that undermines his declaration that  Kerry "backstabbed Israel and shared secrets with Iran’s terrorist-backing regime": the information was already public.

Indeed, it appears that may have been the case. As an actual news outlet pointed out, we don't know the date of that leaded Zarif conversation, but "in July 2017, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told fellow world leaders on a hot mic that Israel had struck Hezbollah dozens of times in Syria. By August, an Israeli general confirmed Israel had struck Syrian and Hezbollah arms convoys nearly 100 times in the previous five years. And by September 2018, a senior Israeli official upped the number to more than 200, specifically citing Iranian targets struck in the previous two years." Kerry has explicitly denied there was any such conversation. Also, it could be argued that Zarif "was effectively venting about his lack of influence in the Iranian government — the idea that he would hear this kind of thing from an American diplomat rather than his own government," adding that "it’s worth being skeptical about the private gripes of an Iranian leader."

Buit because he has been so thoroughly indocrtinated in the MRC's system of vicious hatred of anyone who's not a right-winger like himself, Fondacaro has chosen to believe an enemy of the United States over Kerry.

Indeed, the rest of the MRC apparently has too. Curtis Houck ranted in an April 27 post that White House reporters didn't "ask Press Secretary Jen Psaki about former Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly selling out Israel to his friends in the terrorist-loving Iran." The same day, MRC executive Tim Graham appeared on Fox News, where he "railed against the liberal media's purposeful lack of interest in recordings purporting to show Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif bragging about former Secretary of State John Kerry having informed him of Israel intelligence operations against his country."

Graham then devoted part of his April 28 podcast to the story, effectively justifying running with a story it almost certainly knows is dubious at best  because the "liberal media" peddled questionable stories about Donald Trump. Which tells us that MRC has chosen to put its right-wing narrative before the facts. 

Another reason we can surmise the MRC knows this has been debunked: it hasn't touched the story since -- not even to apologize to Kerry for claming he "backstabbed Israel."

Posted by Terry K. at 9:35 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, May 20, 2021 9:38 PM EDT

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Despite lacking any credibility in conducting legitimate research -- and despite said alleged "research" being filled with bias -- the Media Research Center think it can judge the research of others. Kayla Sargent wrote in a March 5 post:

A New York University-affiliated organization has joined the left-wing bandwagon to attack conservative media on Facebook. In so doing, it ignored the social media platform’s obvious bias against conservatives.

A study from Cybersecurity for Democracy claimed that “far-right” news sources received greater engagement on Facebook than news sources from other political parties. “When we look only at the far-right, we see that misinformation sources significantly outperform non-misinformation sources,” the authors of the study claimed. “Being a consistent spreader of far-right misinformation appears to confer a significant advantage.”

Essentially, the study claimed that right-leaning news sources outperform left-leaning or “center” sources in an attempt to ignore or downplay Facebook’s constant barrage of censorship against conservative voices.

[...]

Unsurprisingly, the study did not mention the obvious bias against conservatives on Facebook. Facebook fact-checkers attacked a meme about Dr. Seuss, and the platform deleted content from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Yes, the MRC really is mad that Facebook pointed out that a meme falsely portraying "The Cat in the Hat" was containing "inappropriate content" was flagged for missing context. Of course, the discredited narrative of a "constant barrage of censorship against conservative voices" is something the MRC has been pushing for years, and this study discredits it further. Knowing that, Sargent has to distract by attacking the organizations cited as sources in the study, NewsGuard and Media Bias Fact Check:

The two sources that the study used teemed with liberal bias. NewsGuard co-CEO contributed four times more money to Democratic candidates than Republicans in 2018. 

Media Bias Fact Check’s liberal bias was astounding. The organization said that the liberal Soros-funded Poynter Institute is “a leader in distinguished journalism and produce[s] nothing but credible and evidence based content.” It also called PolitiFact, a Facebook fact-checker affiliated with the Poynter Institute, “simply the best source for political fact checking.”

The MRC loves to dismiss media organizations that don't parrot its right-wing agenda as "liberal."

On March 16, Heather Moon attacked a study claiming that Instagram uses its recommendations to promote "dangerous misinformation and conspiracy theories," complaining that "the study was vague about what that even means." Moon then went after the allegedly "leftist" Center for Countering Digital Hate, which issued the study: "The leftist group responsible for the study has been pushing to deplatform sites like The Federalist and ZeroHedge. It was founded by a self-described 'expert in online malignant behaviour' who is unabashedly anti-free market. Exemplifying the study’s lack of objectivity, the leftist group behind the study decided what constituted “'dangerous misinformation' and selected Instagram accounts that might generate the most concerning recommendations." Because the study cited fact-checkers to identify stories with misinformation, Moon issued a typical anti-fact-checker rant:

There are many problems with fact-checkers. Facebook’s fact-checkers are all part of the liberal Poynter Institute's International Fact Checking Network (IFCN), which received $1.3 million from liberal billionaires George Soros and Pierre Omidyar. A report from December 2020 also revealed that one of the certifiers working at IFCN was a highly partisan Clinton supporter. Lead Stories, which has performed a significant percentage of the fact-checks on Facebook at times, is run by eight former CNN alumni. USA Today, reportedly used college interns to help with its fact-checking.

College interns work at the MRC. Does that mean the MRC is even more discredited? Moon didn't say.

Moon went on to complain that "some examples of suggested posts that the study deemed “dangerous” instead appear to simply be contrary to the left’s narrative," citing as an example of this a post about COVID tests that claimed "It’s now common knowledge that PCR tests produce absurd numbers of false positives, so the data we have is severely inflated." In fact, the rate of false positives for COVID PCR tests are close to zero, with most false-positives attributable to how the test was conducted rather than the test itself -- making this a poor example for Moon to cite, as she seems to be arguing that misinformation is a conservative attribute.

Nevertheless, Moon devoted a March 29 post to bashing another study she didn't like:

A new study from a George Soros-funded group used flawed methodology to claim Facebook failed to prevent more than 10 billion views of so-called “misinformation.” 

The study used Facebook’s fact checkers, shown to be inaccurate and biased, to compile a list of “misinformation” posts. It then jumped through some convoluted hoops in order to arrive at an attention-grabbing 10.1 billion preventable views of so-called “misinformation.” The group behind the study wouldn’t even release the lists of posts or pages used in the study because the focus of the study is Facebook’s algorithm. Withholding such information prevents the study from being objectively and thoroughly reviewed, giving the impression of a pseudo-scientific study that wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny.

We would remind Moon that her employer conducts "studies" that fail to make underlying data public about the subjective judgments it makes about the content being reviewed. By Moon's definition, the MRC is putting out pseudo-scientific studies that won’t stand up to scrutiny.

Moon recycled her "problems with fact-checkers" rant, then went after the group that issued the study, Avaaz, as having supported "highly divisive, radical leftist causes.Later, she was in the uncomfortable position of quoting Facebook itself criticizing the Avaaz study.

So Facebook is suddenly trustworthy and not evil because the MRC needs it to advance its attack against Avaaz? No wonder nobody trusts the MRC.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:33 PM EDT

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The Media Research Center doesn't merely hate journalists who refuse to be right-wing shills, it has no problem with them being the target of violent threats for said refusal -- which we already know. That hasn't stopped, as the MRC has been cheering Fox News host Tucker Carlson's attacks on journalists.

The latest round actually started last July, when Carlson claimed to be unnerved by the New York Times doing a story on him -- or, in the words of the MRC's Nicholas Fondacaro, "he exposed how the radically leftist New York Times had assigned a so-called 'journalist' and photographer to hunt him down, find out where he lives, and print it for all his haters to find him." Actually, the Times never published Carlson's address -- and then Carlson's viewers unearthed personal information about the Times reporters working on the story and harassed them. Apparently Fondacaro is totally cool with that.

On March 10, Waters huffed that another Times reporter, "self-appointed social media hall monitor" Taylor Lorenz was a "hypocritical snitch" for complaining about being an online target, playing the blame-the-victim card by highlighting a Washington Examiner commentary headlined "Taylor Lorenz Did This To Herself." 

And what did Lorenz do to warrant such attacks? She apparently committed a minor act of misattribution that kicked off a campaign of hate against her, which kicked off an online hate campaign against her. In February, Waters went after Lorenz for being a "politically correct hall-monitor" because that misattribution came in a story about politically incorrect speech on the invitation-only social media app Clubhouse, which she found a way to infiltrate.

In a March 11 post, Fondacaro touted Carlson's attack Lorenz, for complaining that Carlson sicced his followers on them:

What started out as a small section of a larger segment about elites claiming they were somehow oppressed during Tuesday’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, blew up Wednesday after The New York Times and social media reporter Taylor Lorenz claimed the Fox News host directed online harassment at her. But during his show later that night, Carlson shot back at the newspaper for absurdly equating criticism to harassment when they were the ones who harassed his family last summer by trying to dox them.

In fact, there was no evidence presented that the Times ever tried to dox Carlson, and Fondacaro did not explain how, exactly, the Times "harassed" Carlson's family. And he forgot to mention that Carlson effectively sicced his followers on the Times reporters to dox them.

Fondacaro pretended that no reporter has ever been unjustly criticized by anyone on Fox News and scyophantically repeated Carlson's defense and his attack on a Times statement defending Lorenz:

In the statement in question, The Times claimed “Tucker Carlson opened his show last night by attacking a journalist” and described it as “a calculated and cruel tactic, which he regularly deploys to unleash a wave of harassment and vitriol at his intended target.”

“We were embarrassed for Taylor Lorenz. She spends her entire life on the internet, so, of course, after a while, you become a deeply unhappy narcissist. That’s what the internet does to people,” Carlson explained. “And we assumed her bosses would be embarrassed for her too. Little did we know, that they are all exactly like she is.”

After denouncing harassment and saying he would condemn a mob bearing down on her home (which happened to him), Carlson debunked what she claimed was harassment:

So Carlson -- and, thus, Fondacaro -- doesn't think that doxxing reporters and sending them death threats because they didn't like something that was reported constitute "harassment"? Interesting.

Jeffrey Lord tried on pile on in a March 13 post with more blame-the-victim ranting: "One doesn’t know whether to laugh at the ridiculous Lorenz tweet or The Times statement. It is The Times itself, not to mention all manner of left-wing television and print/Internet outlets that routinely 'unleash a wave of harassment and vitriol' at Tucker. The Times loves to write articles reporting on Tucker advertisers who have been intimidated by leftists into leaving. It has outright lied in saying that he 'derides immigrants.' On and on go the attacks. Even on his home, with his wife quivering inside." He concluding by spouting a right-wing talking point: that this episode proves "the American left - in particular The New York Times - wants to silence conservative media. Period and for good."

Then, in a March 15 post, Donovan Newkirk pretended the undisputed claim that Carlson's attacks on journalists isn't true. When a CNN analyst noted,that "when Tucker Carlson puts you on his target board, people throw out crazy threats and death threats, he sneered in response, "Apparently stating someone’s name more than once in a sentence constitutes endangering the welfare of 'a lot' of people."

Yep, the MRC would be quite happy if a deranged Tucker fan followed through on threats and harmed a reporter Tucker targeted.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:43 PM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, May 18, 2021 9:47 PM EDT

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The Media Research Center is essentially the PR arm for Fox News, so it loves to reward the channel for giving copious play to the right-wing narratives it so loves (though it will never out-and-out state that it's rewarding it pedding right-wing propaganda). Nicholas fondacaro wrote in a March 18 post:

It had been days since the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC delivered any kind of substantive follow-up to Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s nursing homes deaths and cover-up scandal, even as new damning information developed. This was not the case for the Fox News Channel’s Special Report as they aired an exclusive interview on Thursday with a nursing home administrator who sat in on phone conferences in which Cuomo was consigning many elderly folks to death.

Throughout the day, Fox News had aired portions on other news shows. And it’s common for the broadcast networks to use such clips from each other to pad out their programming. This was not the case Thursday, as all three of them gushed about President Biden calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “killer.”

In stark contrast, Fox News correspondent Aishah Hasnie spoke to an insider who wanted to speak out about Cuomo’s disastrous leadership. “Michael Kraus is the administrator of Silver Lake Specialized Care Center in Staten Island, New York. And for the first time, he and his team are telling us what really happened behind closed doors when Governor Andrew Cuomo issued that controversial March 25 order,” she reported.

The headline on Fondacaro's piece? "Real Journalism." Of course, he thinks anything on Fox News that goes into own-the-libs mode is "real journalism."

The next day, Joseph Vazquez gushed at how sibling channel Fox Business "wasn't having it" on the Biden administration's  statements on tax hikes by uncritically putting forward right-wing financial types to attack it:

Forbes Media Chairman Steve Forbes agreed with DeAngelis and said that the tax hike on “families” was the “first of the many taxes to come when they do that next reconciliation bill where they’re going to have massive tax increases.” Forbes said the tax hikes would include the “very destructive capital gains tax.” In addition, Forbes warned about Democrats trying “to ease the restrictions on state and local tax deductions. So, they’ll raise the rates more, but allow more deductions. [It’s] another way of bailing out people who are living in the [badly managed] blue states.”

Forbes lambasted the leftist tax agenda: “Big tax increases, convoluting the code and hurting economic growth. All this happy talk about ‘great economy ahead,’ I take it with a grain of salt.”

[Correspondent Jackie] DeAngelis turned to Strategic Wealth Partners CEO Mark Tepper: “Mark, you did talk about the capital gains tax and how that could impact the markets as well.” She continued: “[Raising taxes on families] would certainly impact the markets because it would come down to families, households — have less money to spend, they have less money to put into the economy, um, and they’re going to have to sort of really pull and shore up those budgets. That impacts people.”

Under the headline "This Is How You Do It," Brad Wilmouth declared on April 2:

In a Wednesday morning segment debunking just some of the left's lies about the Georgia voting law, the Fox News Channel again demonstrated for consumers why the network not only delivers important information (while others parrot leftist propaganda), but clean-up in the ratings.

For this instance, Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade brought on Governor Brian Kemp (R-GA) to methodically walk through some of the left's false claims, including their disinformation campaign around topics such as early voting and access to food and water while waiting in line.

Unlike if he had appeared before some belligerent CNN or MSNBC host, Kemp was allowed to explain that anyone can still supply water or food to voters as long as they stay outside a minimum distance from both the polling place and the voters. After Kilmeade explained that poll workers can still have refreshments at the polls, Kemp recalled that, in fact, anyone can do so at the proper distance:

Yes, Wilmouth was quite happy that Fox News let Kemp spread his talking points without challenge. Oh, and that boast of Fox News cleaning up in the ratings was linked to a Fox News press release, as a good Fox News lackey would.

In a headline blaring "Instead of Going With Dem Word Games Like Lib Media, Fox Calls Them Out," Fondacaro cheere: "During Tuesday’s edition of Special Report, Fox congressional correspondent Jacqui Heinrich walked viewers through how Democratic lawmakers were twisting and perverting the English language to fit their political machinations. This support for words have meaning ran counter to the liberal media, who just didn’t go along with the Orwellian redefining of words but actively took part and promoted it." Speaking of Orwellian, we don't recall Fondacaro getting upset at Fox News redefining "fair and balanced" as promotion of right-wing talking points.

Fondacaro gave Fox News another cookie for essentially repeating the MRC mission statement on April 14:

It’s become obvious to most people paying attention over the past four to five years that the liberal media had become activists consumed by their hatred of President Trump; it’s a fact that’s indisputable. And ever since Joe Biden became President, the liberal media had shifted their focus towards beating down all Republicans and gaslighting their viewers into thinking they’re the enemy. Well, on Wednesday’s Special Report, Fox News media analyst Howard Kurtz walked viewers through the media’s schemes.

“Tonight, we take a closer look at what appears to many viewers to be a seismic and long-term shift left on the part of the mainstream media. So, is it happening? And, if so, what are the reasons and the ramifications,” anchor Bret Baier teased at the top of the segment. The segment itself was very detailed as Kurtz showcased the liberal media’s favoritism for Democrats at different levels.

Kurtz -- and, thus, Fondacaro -- didn't explain why Fox News isn't considered "mainstream media" despite the fact that, as Fondacaro's co-worker Wilmouth pointed out, it regularly cleans up in the ratings, nor did they explain why Fox News shouldn't be held just as accountable for its heavy right-wing bias.

Wilmouth returned to gush on April 15: On Wednesday, Fox News Channel again demonstrated that it's keeping people well-informed about important issues while other networks were spreading misinformation. At 6:07 am, Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade explained that the accidental shooting of 20-year-old Daunte Wright in Minnesota was a "tragedy," but he had a serious crime on his arrest warrant."

It's almost as if the MRC is on the Fox News payroll.

Posted by Terry K. at 8:12 PM EDT

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The Media Research Center was quick to seize on alleged links between Noah Green, who struck and killed a Capitol Police officer with his car before he was shot and killed, and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Kristine Marsh huffed in an April 5 post:

The media quickly lose interest in investigating the political beliefs of murderers if they don’t happen to be right-wing white guys. Last Friday afternoon, a black man who called himself a follower of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, rammed his car into the Capitol building barricades, killing one police officer and injuring another. But on this morning’s broadcasts, both NBC and CBS completely omitted that inconvenient detail.

After months of wailing over fears of right-wing extremism, NBC and CBS couldn’t be bothered to note the radical beliefs of the attacker. Instead, both networks used their reports to fret about the January 6 attack and push for more fencing around the Capitol.

Marsh did update her post to note that NBC later "decided to take note of Green's radical views."

Tim Graham complained on April 8 that the Washington Post didn't give Green's link to Farrakhan link the prominence he demanded: "So there are only three stories that mentioned Green's fandom for Farrakhan -- it was never mentioned in a headline, and was routinely buried in late paragraphs on an inside page. That's how you downplay an angle you do not like one bit." Graham offered no evidence that the angle was deliberately downplayed.

GHraham returned on April 18 to complain further -- and to implicitly defend a participant at the Jan. 6 pro=Trump Capitol riot:

On Friday's NBC Nightly News, they focused on recent political violence against the Capitol Police, but they were obviously more interesting in tagging the "far right" for recent violence, and not the "far left." When the April 2 Capitol cop killing came up, the assailant Noah Green was not named, and his love for Louis Farrakhan was also spiked.

Lester Holt touted “a milestone today in the investigation of the deadly riot at the US Capitol, the first guilty plea.” He turned to NBC Justice Department correspondent Pete Williams, and they were naming names and applying labels.

In a brief report, Williams reported "It was a member of the far-right Oath Keepers who has agreed to tell investigators what he knows" about the January 6 Capitol riot. John Schaffer of Indiana, 53, pleaded guilty to entering the Capitol with bear spray and trying to obstruct the electoral vote count. The government dropped a charge of assaulting Capitol Police with the spray." Schaffer called himself a "founding life member" of the Oath Keepers, Williams underlined. 

[...]

Schaffer may have shown criminal intent in his behavior on January 6 but he didn't kill a Capitol Police officer. But he was named, and Noah Green was not. 

Graham omitted the fact that, unlike the Oath Keepers with Schaffer or any other Capitol riot participant, the Nation of Islam disavowed Green's actions -- which Graham knows happened because he repeated it in his April 8 post while complaining that the Washington Post "allowed the Nation of Islam to defend itself intensely."

Speaking of inconvenient facts, there's one thing you won't find at the MRC: a post identifying Robert Aaron Long, the suspect in the Atlanta massacre that killed eight people -- six of them Asian -- as a Christian, even though he was an active member of an evangelical Christian church. The church kicked him out after the shooting, but it has not spoken about the church's beliefs that may have led him to commit the massacre. On the other hand, the MRC did try to deny the very existence of anti-Asian hate crimes in the wake of the massacre.

Posted by Terry K. at 10:06 PM EDT

Updated: Sunday, May 16, 2021 10:11 PM EDT

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We've noted how the Media Research Center likes to slur media outlets as "whores" for doing the same kind of promotional things for corporate siblings that the MRC's own "news" outlet, CNSNews.com, does for its parent org (yet our use of the word has put us in Twitter jail). It has done so again, but for a slightly different reason.

An April 6 item by Scott Whitlock carries the headline "CBS WHORES Out for Crony Capitalism, Backs Biden Billions to Electric Cars in 'Infrastructure'." He went on to rant:

CBS This Morning on Tuesday went all in on the billion dollar boondoggle for electric cars in Joe Biden’s “infrastructure” bill. With no explanation of just how expensive this part of the plan is, the journalists backed the idea of GM (with the heavy hand of the government) switching to all electric by 2035. 

Co-host Gayle King cheered, “Part of President Biden's infrastructure bill would help people buy greener electric cars which you know are more expensive. General Motors plans to stop making gas-powered cars by 2035.” Reporter Ben Tracy gushed, "The tail pipe is an endangered species."

He parroted, “Automakers are also counting on the federal government. President Biden's infrastructure plan calls for 500,000 EV charging stations across the country by 2030.”

Of course, by his own definition, Whitlock is a whore because he's parroting right-wing talking points in the service of his employer and the larger conservative movement, for which he receives payment (which, of course, makes him closer to an actual whore than CBS). His insistence of imposing motives on CBS' reporting where there may not be any is a form of whoredom as well. And for all his whining about "crony capitalism," we're pretty sure Whitlock didn't care as much when the cronies were part of a Republican-led government.

Meanwhile, CNS has contined to whore itself out for its owner by serving up even more stenography of its boss:

• MRC's Brent Bozell Calls on Conservatives to Reject Big Tech Money
• Bozell: 'Hunter Biden Teaching a Class on Fake News Is Like Ted Bundy Teaching a Class on Dating'
• Brent Bozell: Journalists Are Either Lying or ‘Fully Vested’ in Biden’s Socialism
• Brent Bozell: Facebook ‘Gets Its First Opportunity to Interfere with the 2024 Election’

This kind of whoredom, of course, is the entire reason CNS exists. Do you really think Bozell and Co. are interested in running a truly independent, fair and balanced "news" operation?

Posted by Terry K. at 10:15 AM EDT

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How has Media Research Center writer Curtis Houck been attacking White House press secretary Jen Psaki and man-crushing on hostile Fox News reporter Peter Doocy since the last time we checked? Let's find out!

Houck was heavy on the man-crush on April 9:

Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy joined the Briefing Room rotation on Friday to cap off another whirlwind week and, as the fourth reporter called on during Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s Q&A, he brought up President Biden’s past opposition to court-packing (as he seems to be moving toward doing just that) and the latest headlines from the Biden border crisis.

And on the courts, Doocy got a key assist from none other than CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins.

Doocy started with the Supreme Court and brought up comments Biden made in 1983 in light of Biden’s appointing of a commission to study court reform (which should be read as nothing more than a leftist power grab). 

When he brought up 1983 before his question, Psaki interjected with a weak dad joke about how she was impressed with Doocy’s trip aboard the “time back machine.”

Weird how Houck believed that Kayleigh McEnany could be as snarky as she wanted to be, while Psaki gets shut downb for allegedly making a "weak dad joke." It's almost as if his severe right-wing bias influences these posts of his.

On April 12, Houck didn't have to man-crush on Doocy because "New York Magazine correspondent Olivia Nuzzi put Press Secretary Jen Psaki on the defensive as she asked about whether the Biden administration’s continued mask usage despite having been vaccinated and discouragement of social interaction has contributed to vaccine hesitancy." Houck failed to mention that one of the groups with the largest rate of vaccine hestiancy is Republican men, who likely aren't taking their cues from Biden.

Houck whined of the April 15 briefing that "Thursday’s White House press briefing quickly devolved into a predictable pattern of near emptiness in terms of answers from Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who ducked questions on issues such as the debunked Russian bounties story, the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine, and her party’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court." Of course, Houck loved when that "emptiness" from the podium emanated from McEnany.

Houck grew outraged that pressers from both Biden and Psaki on April 16 didn't entertain hostile right-wing reporters -- and, because he's incapable of seeing anything in other than black-and-white terms, he pushed the MRC narrative that if hyou're not a hostile right-wing reporter like Doocy, you're a pro-Biden sycophant:

The White House press corps has never been a fan of guns or the Second Amendment, so it was no surprise on Friday when multiple reporters hammered President Joe Biden and Press Secretary Jen Psaki from their left flank on gun control. In one instance, a reporter compared gun violence to the coronavirus pandemic and demanded their responses be of equal vigor.

Capping off his first foreign head-of-state visitor to the White House in Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Biden wrapped up his week with a brief, joint press conference with Suga (which followed the traditional two-and-two model of two reporters from each country’s press corps being called on).

[...]

ABC’s Maryalice Parks likewise sounded like someone from Everytown or the Giffords Center, expressing frustration with hearing Psaki<“talk over and over again about the President’s support of the House bills, but right now it just doesn’t seem like they’re — you guys have those votes in the Senate.”

Houck had a different hostile Fox News reporter to cheer on -- and even more sneering hatred of Psaki -- for the April 19 briefing:

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki began her week with a briefing so bad that there’s no way to go but up. On Monday’s episode, Psaki arrived with a short fuse and clashed with multiple reporters over basic immigration questions, and blew a gasket at the Fox News Channel’s Kristin Fisher over the administration’s mixed messaging on the refugee cap.

Fisher started with an admission of confusion and an open invitation to clear things up on the White House’s flip-flopping on what number of foreign refugees could be allowed entry into the U.S.: “I’m still just a little bit confused about what changed between 1:00 pm. on Friday and around 4:30p.m. on Friday to go from, ‘We’re not raising the refugee cap to, we are raising it by May 15th.’ What – what changed in those three and a half hours?”

By then, Psaki had fielded numerous questions on it, but Fisher merely wanted the record corrected. Instead, Psaki claimed “we never said we’re not raising the refugee cap” and the administration had always been clear.

Fisher tried to interject, but Psaki demanded she be allowed to in order to reassert that there was never a doubt that they would maintain Trump immigration levels (though that’s exactly what they had said they would do).

Remember: In Houck's world, Fox News reporters are always right and Psaki is always wrong. That's because narratives are more important at the MRC than the truth is.

Posted by Terry K. at 8:03 PM EDT

Updated: Friday, May 14, 2021 9:06 PM EDT

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