Topic: Media Research Center
More man-crushing! More Psaki-hating! Hiding another Doocy screw-up! A dash of homophobia! That's how the Media Research Center's Curtis Houck spent his July reviewing White House press briefings. Read more >>
Friday, October 22, 2021
NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC's War on Jen Psaki (And Man-Crush On Peter Doocy): July 2021
Topic: Media Research Center More man-crushing! More Psaki-hating! Hiding another Doocy screw-up! A dash of homophobia! That's how the Media Research Center's Curtis Houck spent his July reviewing White House press briefings. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:01 AM EDT
Thursday, October 21, 2021
MRC Writer LIES About Reporting On Border Partrol Whip Claim
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center's Nicholas Fondacaro hyperbolically ranted in a Sept. 20 post:
Again: Fondacaro doesn't quote anyone declaring that the Border Patrol was using whips. That make him a liar -- eve as he accused others of telling "lies" he didn't actually identify. Yet so committed was Fondacaro to the false right-wing narrative that he spouted it again the following day:
Again, the reality warper is Fondacaro. despite accusing ABC and CBS of claiming the Border Patrol was "whipping" immigrants, he quotes nobody actually saying that. But Fondacaro wasn't done pushing his false narrative. He wrote in a Sept. 22 post: "Border Patrol was already stretched dangerously thin but on Wednesday, ABC’s World News Tonight celebrated their job getting harder as multiple mounted agents were ordered to 'administrative duties' after the rabid left and liberal media smeared them with lies about using 'whips' on Haitian migrants." But nowhere in his post did he quote any ABC employee saying the word "whips." Telling ridiculous and blatant lies is a Fondacaro staple -- but the MRC appears to be totally cool with one of his researchers spreading lies, since he still has a job there.
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:22 PM EDT
WND 'News' Article Push Conspiracy Theories Over Planned Parenthood, Biden's 'Failing Mental Abilities'
Topic: WorldNetDaily Bob Unruh peddles two anti-Biden conspiracies in a single Sept. 18 WorldNetDaily "news" article:
This being WND, Unruh offers no objective evidence that Biden has "openly failing mental abilities" or that anything Biden has done has occurred under the direct "instructions" of Planned Parenthood. It takes Unruh several more paragraphs to (badly) explain (with bias) that all his biased invective is over a relatively minor policy change regarding the Affordable Care Act. In 2020, the Trump administration added a provision to the ACA to make billing for abortion services more cumbersome by requiring that coverage for such services be billed and paid for separately, rather than allowing them to be paid under a single bill, a practice that medical observers said was "expected to generate consumer confusion and potentially coverage losses" -- an observation even the Trump administration agreed with. The Biden administration is simply reversing that policy. This also being WND, Unruh can't be bothered to balance his article with any countervailing view -- the entire article is a veiled opinion piece that censors dissent from its right-wing agenda. This, by the way, is the kind of "news" content WND wants its readers to pay for and other websites to republish, at least if they can "provide a large audience." But if WND can't provide its own audience for such content, why would anyone else want to?
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:18 PM EDT
Updated: Thursday, October 21, 2021 4:20 PM EDT
Newsmax Censors Most Criticism of Ariz. Election Audit
Topic: Newsmax Brian Truesdell wrote in a Sept. 24 Newsmax article:
That was the only reference to "critics" or any other viewpoint Truesdell would make in the article. The rest of his article largely consisted of repeating claims about the audit by those who conducted it and by Donald Trump, who hyped its results. He wrote at one point:
Truesdell didn't tell his readers that, as we've noted, Ayyadurai mislead in his stated finding and appeared to have no knowledge of Maricopa County policies and procedures regarding the early ballot envelopes and signature verification. Truesdell touted Trump's comments about the audit results but didn't mention that, as even a Newsmax article earlier in the day by Jeffrey Rodack admitted, a newspaper found the results misleading and factually dubious. The closest Truesdell got to noting that the audit would have no impact onthe 2020 election was an admmission that "The after-the-fact audit is not expected to change the election results retroactively" -- though he then promoted how "Trump supporters" have embraced the audit.
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:09 PM EDT
CNS Promotes Right-Wing Jewish Group's Nasty Attacks On Omar, 'Squad'
Topic: CNSNews.com We've documented how CNSNews.com -- led by managing editor Michael W. Chapman -- has embraced the right-wing, pro-Trump Coalition for Jewish Values as a reliable source of right-wing attacks on CNS' political enemies. Chapman has continued to promote the group's political attacks. A particular target of the group is the group of Democratic lawmakers known as "The Squad," and Rep. Ilhan Omar in particular, and Chapman is all too happy to serve as the group's PR agent. Chapman dutifully wrote in a June 3 article:
Fisher did not provide any evidence of any anti-Jewish attack that could be directly linked to any memver of "The Squad" or any thing they said, and Chapman was too locked in stenography mode to ask for any. A June 15 article by Chapman hyped Republican attacks on Omar as a "radical anti-Semite," adding, "In February 2021, the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), which represents more than 1,500 orthodox, traditional rabbis, denounced Omar's appointment as vice chair of the Africa, Global Health, and Global Human Rights subcommittee within the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs. That was followed by a June 23 article by Elizabeth Nieshalla hyping how "Some 200 rabbis from the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week, calling for the removal of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee." Nieshalla quoted the coalition claiming that “Jews are being attacked day and night on American streets by mobs incited by Rep. Omar’s rhetoric,” but no evidence was offered of any direct incitement. An Aug. 11 article by Chapman repeated the unsupported claim -- ironically, in an article complaining that Omar's spokesman pointed out that pro-Israel activists' attacks on Omar were endangering her life. A Sept. 23 article by Chapman enthusiastically promoted the CJV's vicious attack on the members of Congress, quite literally calling them Nazis:
Last year, CNS made a big deal of promoting complaints that some likened Donald trump to Nazis; Chapman didn't explain why the CNS collective mind changed on golng Godwin. Chapman then offered his own biased definition of the group:"'The Squad' is composed of radical, left-wing Democrats, who support socialist policies and are often critical of Israel, sometimes spewing anti-Jewish remarks." Of course, Chapman and the CJV are simpatico in wanting people to believe that any criticism of Israel is "anti-Jewish" and make no clear distinction between the two. We've already noted that Chapman called on the CJV to trash Colorado Gov. Jared Polis after he got "married" (his scare quotes, not ours) to his gay partner.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:41 AM EDT
Updated: Friday, October 22, 2021 12:09 AM EDT
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
MRC Complains About Facebook's VIP Policies -- But Censors How Trump Benefited From Them
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center's Alexander Hall huffed in a Sept. 13 post under the similarly huffy headline "Does Facebook Have Different Rules for VIPs? Report of Leaked Documents Suggest It Does":
Hall's alarmist take might be justified -- if he hadn't censored the fact that Journal made a big point of noting that among the major XCheck beneficiaries has been Donald Trump:
That interferes with the MRC's narrative that Trump was a victim of "censorship" by Facebook -- it rturns out he was given a pass to regularly violate the platform's rules. Because Hall knows that, he made sure to get back on his narrative, huffing further that "Big Tech censorship has disproportionately aided the left in recent years" and citing the Hunter Biden case as an example -- never mind that the Journal article offers no evidence there is any ideological bias in Facebook's XCheck issues, or that it appears the issues actually benefited conservatives like Trump. Hall's censorship of facts inconvenient to his narrative is much closer to actual censorship than many of the claims the MRC has made about purported "censorship" of social media posts, in which it has portrayed a flag about content or demonitization of a post -- but the original posts could still be read -- as "censorship.' And he's definitely not going to tell you that it's attacking Facebook's purported "censorship" while the MRC is bragging about how well its content does on Facebook.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:05 PM EDT
NEW ARTICLE: CNS' Multi-Pronged War on Nancy Pelosi
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com has always hated the House speaker, of course, but with Democrats now in power in Washington, its attacks against her have escalated. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:29 PM EDT
WND Puts Its Best Spin On Dubious Ariz. Election Audit Results
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily has uncritically repeated misinformation about, and from, the audit of 2020 presidential election voes in Maricopa County, Ariz., so it had high hopes for the announced results. An anonymously written Sept. 23 article tried to work up enthusiasm for it:
WND censored the fact that the citizen canvass report has been discredited, and that the databases accused of being deleted were actually inadvertently hidden by the people runmning the audit, which should offer a clue as to how seriously the audit should be taken. The anonymous WND writer added:
Pulitzer (not his real name) does not have a record that inspires trust: he's a con man, failed treasure hunter and inventor of one of the worst gadgets ever, the CueCat.Not that the anonymousWND writer thought this was worth telling readers, of course. The Sept. 24 article on the actual results -- also written anonynmously -- started out surprisingly balanced for a WND article, though he (or she) made the mistake of basing the story on the notoriously unreliable Gateway Pundit:
Cotton is lying; as county officials stated, "Nothing was purged. Cyber Ninjas don’t understand the business of elections. We can't keep everything on the EMS server because it has storage limits."The anonymous WND writer did acknowledge that "Maricopa County responded with a statement on Twitter saying it 'strongly denies claims that @maricopavote staff intentionally deleted data.'" And, of course, that 57,000 number is a bogus accounting. As the article continued, the anonymous WND writer became content to simply regurgitate whatever bogus claims were made:
As one fact-checker noted, that's not what happened, and "Ayyadurai appeared to have absolutely no knowledge of Maricopa County policies and procedures regarding the early ballot envelopes and signature verification. The audit was proved to be a sham, but it produced the results WND wanted, so it tried to keep the narrative alive. An anonymously written Sept. 29 article hyped the next step:
The article repeated the false claims about data being deleted.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:34 AM EDT
Tuesday, October 19, 2021
MRC Tries To Hype Minor Durham Indictment As A 'Massive Development'
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center's Nicholas Fondacaro hyperbolically declared in a Sept. 16 post:
Fondacaro went on to gush that "Fox News Channel’s Special Report was sure to drill down on the important details ABC omitted. In their over-three-minute (3:06) segment on the Durham indictment, correspondent David Spunt noted that Sussmann’s involvement was hinted a year ago." Because Fondacaro is so ideologically invested in building Sussmann's indictment on relatively minor charges into a "massive development" -- to the point of portraying notorioiusly biased Fox News as a voice of reason -- he's not going to tell you what other legal observers have said about it. One observer noted that "Durham struggles in the text of the indictment itself to explain why Sussman’s lie mattered—which is important in a false statement case because the false statement’s materiality is an element of the offense," and he points out that "the evidence that Sussmann lied at all is weak." He added that Durham's apparent mission to "pressure Sussmann to cooperate with a broader effort to prosecute Clinton-world operatives for an attempt to defraud the FBI on Trump-Russia matters" has two big flaws: that "digging dirt on political opponents and trying to interest law enforcement in that dirt is not presumptively a crime," and that "the Russia investigation in the main did not turn on these efforts or flow from them." (Indeed, Tim Graham lashed out in his Sept. 20 podcast at CNN's Brian Stelter for making a similar argument: "Stelter complained the charge of false statements was just 'peripheral characters flubbing details.' He ignored that many of Robert Mueller's indictments were for false statements under oath.") Fondacaro went on to complain that "Muir falsely claimed Durham was “appointed by former President Trump” when in reality it was then-Attorney General William Barr." But given the closeness at the time between Trump and Barr, isn't that a distinction without a difference? When Durham did something else minor, Fondacaro ramped up his hype machine again in a Sept. 30 post:
Of course, Fondacaro isn't going totell you that Baier, like himself, "made the story a priority" because he's paid to push right-wing agendas and it might adversely afffect his job if he did not make his news report Trump-friendly and Hillary-hostile. Also, the story of a Trump Organization server linked to Russia's Alfa Bank is far from "false" as Fondacaro claimed; and the server mystery is far from settled. But, again, Fondacaro is not a "media researcher" -- he's a right-wing shill who prioritizes manufacturing narratives over telling the truth. His fellow co-worker Brad Wilmouth is as well, which is why he spent an Oct. 3 post touting how, "picking up on recent reporting by NewsBusters, Fox News host Laura Ingraham lambasted the liberal media for downplaying the most recent developments in the investigation of wrongdoing by those involved in the anti-Donald Trump Russia collusion probe." So a partisan organization constructing right-wing narratives is "reporting" now?
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:54 PM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, October 19, 2021 10:05 PM EDT
Newsmax Touts Noem -- But Censored Affair Accusation
Topic: Newsmax On Sept. 28, Newsmax partnered with the conservative Young America's Foundation at the Reagan Ranch in California, and the star speaker was Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem. Needless to say, it cranked out the coverage of her spinning right-wing talking points and self-promotion:
That was followed with an article the next day from a interview Noem did with Newsmax at the event, under the headline "Gov. Kristi Noem to Newsmax: COVID Shows 'Leadership Has Consequences'." The article didn't mention the most recent direct consequence of her "leadership" -- a surge in COVID cases in the state following the big motorcycle rally in Sturgis, S.D., the previous month. Noem even got a Sept. 29 article from Charlie McCarthy on how her administration "has applied for a special-use permit to hold fireworks at Mount Rushmore on the Fourth of July next year," though "The Biden administration denied Noem's permit request for fireworks in 2021." One thing you won't read about at Newsmax, though: accusations of an extramarital affair she had with former Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski, for whome he had been an adviser. INteresting, the accusation came from a conservative website. Noem has denied the accusation, and she more definitively broke ties with Lewandowski a couple days after that accusation surfaced, when it was revealed he made sleazy sexual advances to the wife of a prominent Republican donor. But you will read nothing at all about this at Newsmax. It, did, however, note another burgeoning Noem scandal that erupted around the same time. Another excerpt from Newsmax's Noem interview with host Rob Schmitt, written by Eric Mack, allowed her to frame the scandal as a political attack by a "disgruntled" ex-employee:
This is the only mention of this scandal on the Newsmax website, which means it has censored later deveopments such as hiding mention of a meeting with a state employee in charge of issuing appraiser licenses in a video defending herself, the employee's subsequent claim she was forced to retire over the controversy and receiving a $200,000 payout to drop further action against the state, and blocking the release of documents regarding Noem's daughter's license. Newsmax seems to be doing a fine job of covering for a potential 2024 Republican presidential candidate.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:35 PM EDT
Irony: WND Columnist Complains About 'Trusted Sources'
Topic: WorldNetDaily Craige McMillan writes in his Sept. 24 WorldNetDaily column:
What McMillan isn't going to tell you: If the information was published by WND, there's a higher-than-normal likelihood that it's not true and shouldn't be trusted. He would like to keep his WND writing gig, after all. McMillan then goes on to demonstrate why WND shouldn't be trusted by spouting a conspiracy theory about why flu deaths were so low last winter:
Or, you know, flu deaths were down because wearing masks to keep COVID-19 from spreading also keeps the flu from spreading and more people got flu vaccinations. But Occam's Razor never seems to occur to conspiracy-mongers like McMillan -- there must always be a deep, dark conspiracy that echoes his right-wing ideology. McMillan concluded by declaring: "Don't sell yourself short. Don't pay much attention to so called trusted sources. The fact that they are being called trusted sources by those driving the narrative is a big clue. Any source that can be trusted isn't afraid of being questioned." Remember, this is a guy who thinks WND is a "trusted source." It's not.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:16 PM EDT
CNS Parrots MRC's Defense Of Nicki Minaj's Anti-Vaxxer Claims
Topic: CNSNews.com Showing once again there's less and less separation between the Media Research Center and its "news" division, CNSNews.com once again followed the MRC's partisan footsteps by echoing a story the parent had previously pounced on, this time the Nicki Minaj COVID story, in which the rapper is made out to be a victim for her COVID anti-vaxxer claims being exposed. Megan Williams parroted the rapper's side of events in a Sept. 16 article:
It wasn't until the 10th paragraph that Williams got around to noting that "Trinidad and Tobago claimed that there are actually no reports of the COVID-19 vaccine side effects that Minaj reported in her tweet." The next day, Melanie Arter seemed to be blaming the Biden White House for Minaj getting things wrong about its outreach to her:
Arter also uncritically repeated Minaj's bogus claims about her cousin's friend's swollen testicles without also mentioning the claim has been discredited.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:37 AM EDT
Monday, October 18, 2021
MRC Lashes Out Again At Teen Who Criticized Texas Anti-Abortion Law
Topic: Media Research Center Over the summer, the Media Research Center went on the attack against a Texas teenager, Paxton Smith, who used her high school graduation speech to inveigh against the then-proposed Texas law that would effectively outlaw abortions in the state -- sneering that she was "pro-baby killing" but then pretending that its vicious hatred for her wasn't about her opposition to the law. After the law passed, Smith made a couple more TV appearances to talk about the law ... and the MRC was ready to attack again. Brad Wilmouth complained in a Sept. 5 post:
Wilmouth concluded by declaring that Smith's appearance was a "segment promoting the killing of unborn babies." Alex Christy followed up with his own attack in a Sept. 9 post:
Christy somehow forgot to call Smith a baby-killer like his colleagues did. Did his pay get docked for that?
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:17 PM EDT
WND's Root Predicted Calif. Election Fraud -- But Can't Prove Any Fraud Happened
Topic: WorldNetDaily Wayne Allyn Root began his Sept. 13 WorldNetDaily column with a heavy dose of self-aggrandizement leading to a prediction:
Root didn't mention the fact that he lost his Newsmax gig for promoting scammy medicines that purportedly treat COVID. Anyway, back to his prediction:
If Root's prediction percentage is supposedly high, his average on repeating facts is much lower. Contrary to Root's assertions, voters were not required to fold the ballot any particular way, let alone a way that put Elder's name on the fold, a voter must have requested the ability to print a ballot at home at least seven days before the election (along with other safeguards to prevent fraud), and there have been no major issues with fraud in previous California elections where mail-in ballots have been used. Root concluded by huffing: "So, I'm rooting for you Larry. I know you'd make a great governor. But sadly, I know it won't matter. The election is rigged. Your governorship will be stolen, just as Trump's presidency was stolen." But then an interesting thing happened: nothing.Despite his love of spreading misinformation about about the presidential election to back up his claim that "Trump's presidency was stolen," Root has yet to offer any proof that the election was "stolen" from Elder. In his Sept. 20 column, he simply rehashed his earlier claims: "Exhibit A is the California recall election that just ended last week. It was rigged from the get-go. Larry Elder never had a chance. California Democrats just conducted a test run of the expanded plan. It worked to perfection." He offered no evidence to back it up. His columns on Sept. 27, Oct. 4 and Oct. 11 were all silent on the election. Meanwhile, in the real world, there were few issues with the election, and even Elder gracefully accepted his decisive loss. If Root can't come up with any actual evidence of election fraud, he will have to recalculated his prediction rate to lower it.
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:07 PM EDT
NEW ARTICLE: California Recallin' At The MRC
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center predictably shilled for right-wing radio host Larry Elder in the lead-up to the California recall election -- and was presumably glad it no longer had to suppress its transphobia to support early GOP front-runner Caitlyn Jenner. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:14 AM EDT
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