CNSNews.com reporter Susan Jones primed the upcoming report on November's emloyment numbers with a Dec. 1 article noting that both Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell agree that the "single most important thing" that will bring workers back into the workforce is "getting past the COVID-induced disruptions." She also tried to justify her selective obsession with the labor force participation rate (which occurs only when a Democrat is president) by cheering a Republican senator referencing it, then adding:
According to the Congressional Budget Office, "Labor force participation is an important component of economic growth: As more people participate in the labor force, firms are able to expand employment and increase production."
Moreover, CBO notes: "Greater labor force participation is associated with higher tax revenues because the number of employed people, and therefore the number of people paying income and payroll taxes, tends to rise. It is also associated with lower spending on means-tested programs (which provide cash payments or other forms of assistance to people with relatively low income or few assets), such as Medicaid, and on refundable tax credits.”
Thus, in her Dec. 3 article after November's numbers came out, she led once again with the labor force particiipation rate, though it was actually good news:
In November, 99,977,000 people in this country did not have a job and were not looking for one -- a decrease of 473,000 since October and the lowest number since Joe Biden became president, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday.
This number reached a record high of 103,418,000 in April 2020, the fourth month of the coronavirus pandemic, and it has remained above 100,000,000 for 14 straight months until now.
Among those not in the labor force in November, 1.2 million people said were prevented from looking for work due to the pandemic, little changed from October.
Interestingly, Jones avoided mentioning who was president in April 2020. Also interestingly, she waited until the 11th paragraph of her article to mention the very good news that the unemployment rate went down to 4.2 percent. But Trump did get a name-check from Jones, when she once again reminded us of how good the economy was under him before the pandemic:
The labor force participation rate reached a Trump-era high of 63.4 percent in January 2020, just before the onset of COVID. In April 2020, the rate fell to a 47-year low of 60.2 percent. It has moved up since then, but until this month, it remained within a narrow range of 61.4 percent to 61.7 percent since June 2020.
Jones also rehashed her obsession with the labor force rate again, while also looking down on anyone who isn't working:
BLS describes labor force participation as an important labor market measure because it represents the relative amount of labor resources available for the production of goods and services.
Also, people who work contribute payroll and Social Security taxes that help support programs for people who do not work.
CNS didn't supply any of its usual sidebars on government employmenet and Hispanic employment. Perhaps that news was too good, and good economic news when a Democrat is president is bad news for CNS.
MRC Amplifies Its Lie About Networks Pushing Border Patrol Whips Claim Topic: Media Research Center
A while back, we busted Media Research Center writer Nicholas Fondacaro for falsely asserting that evening network newscasts reported that Border Patrol agents on horseback were whipping Haitian migrants -- despite the fact that none of the cliips he supplied ever showed anyone using the word "whips." Curtis Houc repeated thte lie in a Nov. 17 post:
On Tuesday night, the liberal major broadcast networks ignored on an important update to the investigation on the fake whips story along the southern border as the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general declined to investigate claims that Border Patrol agents used whips in September against Haitians illegally crossing into the U.S., passing the probe onto its Office of Professional Responsibility.
Of course, NewsBusters readers may recall that, when such claims were leveled on the week of September 19, ABC, CBS, NBC, and a whole host of fellow liberal outlets eagerly claimed without evidence that border officials were engaged in racism by whipping Black people longing to seek the American Dream.
And just as they’ve done with the Steele dossier, the media are refusing to admit their mistake.
Despite the fact that they have been debunked, Houck went on to link to Fondacaro's discredited posts to bolster his own bogus argument:
Flashing back to September, these networks were eager to boast of these debunked claims as if they were fact.
On ABC, World News Tonight anchor David Muir boasted on September 20 that they were “alarming images” and correspondent Kenneth Moton dubbed it “chaos and despair.” CBS correspondent Manuel Bojorquez was similarly unconcerned about facts that day, claiming U.S. officials were “threatening” illegal immigrants “with what appears to be horses reins or ropes.” Predictably, Telemundo also joined in the misinformation campaign.
The next night, the same two networks were up to no good while ABC kept up the lie into September 22.
Again: Fondacaro never quoted anyone from CBS or ABC using the word "whips."
Houck concluded: "If the liberal media admitted their mistakes, perhaps more people would trust them." How ironic that Houck made that statement while spreading a lie he will never admit telling, let alone apologize for.
CNS -- Which Touted Silver Linings To Pandemic -- Complains That Harris Sees 'Opportunity' Topic: CNSNews.com
Susan Jones complained in a Nov. 12 CNSNews.com article:
Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking at the Paris Peace Forum on Thursday, focused on what she called the "dramatic rise in inequality" -- gaps between the rich and the poor that she says were made worse and more visible by the global coronavirus pandemic.
She called the pandemic "an opportunity" to address those gaps.
Then, at a news conference on Friday, Harris said she and other world leaders discussed "what should be the norms and the rules of the 21st Century."
[...]
Today, at a news conference marking the end of her visit to Paris, Harris said it's up to the United States and its partners and allies to "focus on what should be the norms and the rules of the 21st century."
"We are at the beginning of a new era, as highlighted by the pandemic, to be sure. But also marked by the increasing awareness...of the climate crisis and immanency of that and the urgency of this moment. Technology, what it has done in terms of creating opportunities but also creating real concerns about security.
"We are at the beginning of a new era," Harris repeated.
Jones diidn't mention that, as we've documented, CNS previously had no problem publishing writers who claimed to find silver linings in the pandemic:
Managing editor Michael W. Chapman touted evangelist Anne Graham Lotz. who claimed to find a "blessing in the coronavirus" in that God is perhaps using the pandemic "to get our attention so that we will listen to His message," and that this will spark a "national spiritual renewal."
CNS published a column by Tony Perkins of the conservative Family Research Council literally headlined "A Silver Lining to the Dark Cloud of COVID-19," in which he gushed that while thousands may have died, but people are "turning to God"
A CNS column by John Stonestreet and Shane Morris promoted the alleged silver lining that divorce rates have gone down during the pandemic.
A CNS column by Stan Greer of the National Institute for Labor Relations Research declared of the pandemic: "One potential silver lining of this catastrophe is that it could force many elected officials in states that have granted monopoly-bargaining privileges to government union bosses at last to recognize that they have a duty to revoke all such privileges."
Erica Sanzi declared in her Oct. 15 CNS column: "It feels wrong to assert that there might have been a silver lining to the pandemic, but if one does exist, it’s that so many families got a front row seat for their children’s day-to-day education and were deeply unhappy with what they saw."
Jones didn't explain why these CNS columnists and writers are allowed to find silver liniings in a pandemic that "killed millions" but Harris isn't.
NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC's War on Jen Psaki (And Man-Crush On Peter Doocy): October 2021 Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck pulls back a bit on his obsessive, predictable Doocy-fluffing and Psaki-bashing. Read more >>
On Nov. 15, Donald Trump went nuclear on one of his former White House staffers, Alyssa Farah, after she did a guest stint on "The View" and -- presumably more triggering -- said in a CNN interview that she had a conversation with Trump before leaving the White House in which he admitted he lost the election:
Heard that Alyssa Farah was terrible on The View – they could have asked the people who know her and saved a lot of time. She was a “backbencher” in the White House, and is now a nobody again. We put her out there to face the public as little as possible. It’s amazing how these people leave with respect and adoration for me and others in the White House, but as soon as CNN or other cameras get shoved in their face, or the losers from the The View ask a question, or money gets thrown at them, or someone writes a fake book, inglorious lightweights like Farah change so quickly. I watched this clown on television saying exactly what they wanted her to say and I watched the lies. Was she paid by low-ratings CNN? By the way, as soon as the Crime of the Century happened on November 3rd, I knew the Election was Rigged and Stolen, and never changed my view on that one bit. I did not go soft on the “Real” Big Lie, the Election Scam, and never will. Backbencher said I told her I lost the Election – never did. I virtually never even spoke to Farah (it’s like she didn’t even exist in the White House). Anybody who ever says that I thought the Election was legit, even for a moment, is wrong. All you have to do is look at the thousands of pages of documents and evidence-which continues to mount. When we told Alyssa to “hit the road,” she wrote a very nice letter stating that working for “Trump” was “the honor of a lifetime” and she was “deeply proud of the incredible things we were able to accomplish to make our country stronger, safer, and more secure.” Show the rest of the letter Alyssa, and explain why you wrote it!
And what was the reaction at WorldNetDaily, the website run by Alyssa's father, Joseph Farah? Crickets. In the month-plus since Trump's rant, Joseph Farah has not mentioned it in any of his columns, and no WND "news' story has mentioned it.
We've documented the apparent rift between Joseph Farah and his daughter. He is firmly in thrall to Donald Trump and an enthusiastic promoter of Trump's Big Lie that the election was stolen from him; Alyssa Farah, meanwhile, stepped down from her last Trump White House job as communications director about a month before the Jan. 6 riot because, she said, she could no longer stomach Trump's refusal to admit that he lost.Since then, she has said that Trump demonstrated "a flagrant lack of regard for public health and for the well-being of others" by keeping a positive COVID test secret for days until it was ultimately revealed, and she has also signed on to be a commentator at CNN, which presumably galls her father too. She also got married recently, and she happened to be on her honeymoon when Trump dropped his rant dissing her.
There's a lot going on in her life, yet you will read nothing about it at WND. Joseph Farah is clearly too afraid of the fallout from his beloved Trump if he defends his daughter against him. But even then, you'd think he would be proud enough of his daughter's marraige to declare a point of personal privilege and mention it in one of his weekday columns. Instead, nothing but crickets.
There's definitely an ongoing rift in the Farah family, and it appears it won't be repaired anytime soon.
From Vile To Victim: The MRC's Flip-Flop on Dave Portnoy Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center used to understatnd that Barstool Sports and its founder Dave Portnoy were terrible, and it even called them out as such.
In October 2017, Jay Maxson cheered ESPN ending a partnership with Barstool Sports, "one of several vulgar media catering to left-wingers," which occurred after "revelations of Barstool's 2014 misogynistic trashing of ESPN's Samantha Ponder (see photograph) came to light." Maxson also noted a YouTube video by Portnoy that "viciously attacked Ponder," adding, "No self-respecting media organization would go within a hundred miles of people like this." In 2019, Maxson criticized a Barstool Sports writer for trying to "excuse away the recent arrest of [New England Patriots] team owner Robert Kraft on the charge of soliciting sex."
However, the MRC didn't heed Maxson's advice about not getting close to Portnoy. An April 2020 post by Jonas Wells touted how "Barstool Sports President, Dave Portnoy" -- no mention of the vile misogyny that goes on with him and his site -- "kept his opinion short and to the point," attacking sportswriter Jemele Hill as "absolutely idiotic" for pointing out that Kraft flying a planeload a N95 masks from China at the start of the pandemic had more to do with his being a buddy of Donald Trump than any magnamious motives.
In September 2020, as a way to attack "The View" co-host Sunny Hostin for the offenise of criticizing right-wing-friendly podcaster Joe Rogan, Kristine Marsh hyped criticism of Portnoy Hostin had made a few months earlier, noting after an interview Portnoy conducted with Trump that "over a dozen women, Barstool Sports reporters refused to sit down with HBO because they feared rape threats, he’s been on video using the n-word and, so, it’s not surprising to me that Trump would sit down with someone with that kind of reputation." Marsh linked to a Fox News article on Portnoy's response, in which he narrowly complained that Hostin told a "flat lie" because he "never made a rape threat." In Marsh's post, however, there was no reference to rape threats, only a statement that Portnoy "pushed back on saying she lied about him."
Portnoy got sanitized further in a December 2020 post by Joseph Vazquez, who gushed that Portnoy "exemplified the Christmas spirit by raising millions of dollars to help small businesses suffering under state-imposed lockdowns. The “ Barstool Fund ” has amassed a whopping $6,687,624 with 60,929 supporters so far. The funds have already helped 19 small businesses." Vazquez made not mention of the skeeviness of Portnoy or his website.
From there, it was a short trip to full victimhood, as he ultimnately met the MRC threshhold of getting brieflly suspended by Twitter. Autumn Johnson sympathetically wrote in a June 18 post:
Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports, was inexplicably suspended from Twitter on Friday.
@BFFsPod, the Twitter account for the weekly podcast hosted by Portnoy and TikTok star, Josh Richards, tweeted screenshot of Portnoy's account with the message "Account suspended."
The account tweeted out the screenshot along with the newly trending hashtag, #FREEPORTNOY. The podcast added that “you’ll want to tune into next week’s episode.”
Although Twitter appeared to provide no reason as to why Portnoy was suspended, The Daily Wire reported that some users speculated that he was targeted after he threatened to “drop my nuts on your head” during a debate on Penn National Gaming stock.
However, the platform’s terms of service allow it to suspend accounts for little to no reason.
Johnson didn't explain why she didn't find that remark offensive. Instead, she continued to portray Portnoy as a peach of a guy, highlighting how "Portnoy talked with Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire about why he is willing to engage with critics on social media."
Believe it or not, the MRC went even farther than that by giving Portnoy a pass on his personal sleaziness. When Business Insider published an account of numerous women who described humiliating and violent sexual encounters with Portnoy, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg used her Nov. 17 podcast to not only declare that Portnoy was a victim of a "hit piece," shes completely refused to pass judgment on Portnoy despite the disturbing details in the article because he's allegedly a real "American":
Beleive it or not, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy was just censored. Portnoy doesn't come off as politically right or left, but he does come off as American and supports the idea of saying whatever you want. That's a concept the left doesn't like. Now. I'm not going to sit here a defend Dave Portnoy. He's had his slew of sexual misconduct allegations that you could look at and and believe or not on your own time.
Having washed her hands of moral judgment of Portnoy -- even though moral judgment is kinda the MRC's thing -- Mandelburg complained that Twitter temporarily locked Portnoy out of his account, allegedly because he posted a conversation between him and Business Insider editors when the refused to appear on Portnoy's podcast. She offered noproofthis is what happened, but declared that "Insider is clearly leftist and so is Twitter, so it makes sense."
That's the level of "media research" the MRC has descended to these days -- all for the benefit of anyone who can help advance its right-wing agenda, no matter how sleazy. It's another example of the MRC mainstreaming extreme and/or terrible people to own the libs.
Yes, Mr. Brown, It *Is* Fake Outrage Topic: WorldNetDaily
Another attempt from WorldNetDaily to push dishonest right-wing narratives about schools came in a Oct. 27 column by Michael Brown, under the headline "No, Mr. Obama, this is not 'fake outrage'":
Former President Obama made a terrible mistake when he said earlier this week in Virginia, "We don't have time to be wasted on these phony trumped-up culture wars, this fake outrage, the right-wing media's peddles to juice their ratings."
Mr. Obama, the culture wars are anything but trumped-up, the outrage is quite real, and this is hardly a right-wing publicity stunt to generate ratings. Quite the contrary.
The people of Virginia – more specifically, the parents of Virginia – and the nation are saying enough is enough. You do not mess with their children.
[...]
Mr. Obama, was the Loudoun County, Virginia, school board "just trying to keep [the] kids safe" when they hid the fact that a girl had been raped in the girls' room by a boy wearing a skirt?
And was it their zeal to keep the kids safe that moved them to allow males to use the girls' bathroom based solely on a boy's preference? Really?
As we've documented when the Media Research Center tried to exploit the issue, that sexual assault was much more complicated than the transphobic Brown would have you believe. The boy and girl had previously had sexual relations before in this very same bathroom, and this encounter began with the girl inviting the boy to the bathroom for sex; the girl withdrew consent, the boy wouldn't stop, and that's when it became a sexual assault. Also, the assault occurred well before the Loudoun County schol district started discussions about transgender rights for stiudents, so the assault had absolutely no connection with it.
Brtown concluded:
For many years now, I have been saying that the left will overplay its hand, resulting in a cultural pushback. Be assured that the pushback is very real – not trumped up, not fake and not the creation of right-wing news media. Let the parents lead the way!
Ah, but it very much was the creation of right-wing media. Why? Because they wanted a Republican, Glenn Youngkin, to be elected governor of Virginia, and hyping hot-button culture-war issues was considered the best way to do that. Curiously, Brown made no mention of this race in the context of these issues being hyped, outside of a reference to Terry McAuliffe that didn't even mention that he was the Democratic candidate for governor against Youngkin.
As we've also noted, the fact that right-wing media largely abandonded the story after it served its purpose by getting Youngkin elected more demonstrates how fake that outrage was.
Indeed, Brown cheered how the culture wars got Youngkin elected in his Nov. 3 column, insisting that it showed "the culture wars are real, and parents have said enough is enough. Whether the issue was the dangerous, radical transgender agenda in children's schools ... or a destructive, overemphasis on racism in school curricula ... it appears that the voters spoke on these issues too." He went on to gloat that "it appears that the shocking news that the rape of a Loudoun County teenage girl in the girls' bathroom by a boy wearing a skirt was covered up by the local school board drew a sharp response from many parents. (And remember: the apparent cover-up was in the specific context of supporting transgender extremism in the schools.)"
So, yes, the culture wars were manufactured here to get a Republican elected. But Brown will never admit that truth, because his livelihbood of hating LGBT people depends on those culture wars looking as organic as he can make them. And part of that manufactured culture-war outrage is loudly insisting that it isn't being manufactured.
Newsmax Personnel Roundup: Fewer Anti-Vaxxers, More Accused Sexual Harassers (And A Turkish Propgandist) Topic: Newsmax
It looks like Newsmax will be down a couple anti-vaxxers on its staff.
After making a huge ruckus about Newsmax's proposed vaccine mandate policy for its employees, host Steve Cortes has left Newsmax, though it's unclear whether he quit or was fired. Numerous other issues appear to have played a part, inculding Cortes' allegedly terrible ratings. Meanwhile, Newsmax's White House correspondent Emerald Robinson has officially departed; she had been taken off the air in early November after she was caught spouting bizarre, bogus COVID conspriacy theories on Twitter.
Newsmax announced Robinson's replacement -- while remaining comploetely silent about the fact that he was a replacement -- in a Dec. 7 article by Brian Truesdell:
Newsmax announced today that veteran Washington reporter James Rosen will join the network as Chief White House Correspondent.
Rosen’s move to Newsmax — the nation’s fourth highest-rated cable news channel — marks an exciting new chapter in a singular journalism career.
As a top correspondent at Fox News and the Sinclair Broadcast Group over the last two decades, Rosen has reported from the White House, the State Department, Capitol Hill, the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, and the campaign trail. He has filed stories from nearly all 50 states and some 40 foreign countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, China, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, Uganda, and Haiti.
[...]
"James Rosen is not only a reporter’s reporter, but also a great thinker and author who can share complex issues on a TV screen and explain them in clear and understandable ways," Christopher Ruddy, CEO of Newsmax Media, said.
"We are pleased and proud to have him as a key part of our growing news team," Ruddy added.
Not only did Truesdell fail to mention that Rosen was replacing Robinson, he forgot to note that Rosen left Fox News under a cloud of sexual misconduct allegations. NPR reported that Rosen "had an established pattern of flirting aggressively with many peers and had made sexual advances toward three female Fox News journalists, including two reporters and a producer." Adding that Rosen is "married with young children." NPR continued:
In the winter following the September 2001 terrorist attacks, a female Fox News reporter joined the bureau from New York. In a shared cab ride back from a meal, Rosen groped her, grabbing her breast. After she rebuffed his advance, Rosen sought to steal away her sources and stories related to his interests in diplomacy and national security. That's according to four colleagues who say she relayed the episode as a warning about Rosen's behavior. The reporter declined to comment for this story. (NPR has decided not to name the women in this article as they have not granted permission to do so.)
In a subsequent episode several years later, a female producer covering the State Department alleged that Rosen had directly sexually harassed her. A foreign national, she subsequently accepted a deal from Fox that enabled her to extend her stay in the U.S. in exchange for not making her complaint public, according to several of her former colleagues. The producer, who now works for a foreign-based news organization, is abroad with family and did not respond to several detailed messages left by email and phone seeking comment.
Late last spring, Rosen turned his attention to a younger female reporter, according to two colleagues who say she told them of the incident shortly afterward. Returning from a lunch together, Rosen physically tried to kiss her in the elevator ride back to the office, and once refused, attempted forcibly to kiss her again. According to a colleague, he then asked the reporter to keep the approach quiet and offered her unsolicited help in getting more time on Bret Baier's nightly political newscast, Special Report.
At Newsmax, Rosen joins Eric Bolling as another former Fox News host who is also an accused sexual harasser.
Also, Nancy Pelosi rather famously dismissed Rosen as "Mr. Republican Talking Points." Of course, being Mr. Republican Talking Points is a key reason that Newsmax hired him.
On the other hand, Newsmax seems to be taking cues from Fox News' history of objectifying females by having attractive women on-air. A Dec. 20 article announced the hiring of Sarah Williamson as New York correspondent; she comes to Newsmax from Israeli channel i24. Williamson was reportedly called the "world's most beautiful news anchor," and she allegedly left i24 after lashing out at her native country of Australia over COVID lockdowns, ranting that "brainwashed" Aussies were living in a "totalitarian society" and huffing that "I'm not proud to be Australian at the moment." Sounds like she'll fit in fairly well at Newsmax.
Meanwhile, Newsmax is pulling new hires out of much more obscure places. A Dec. 13 article announced the hiring of Kilmeny Duchart as a congressional correspondent; her previous job was as host of a U.S.-based show for the Turkish TV channel TRT World, a network that is actually a propaganda outlet for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But, hey, being a skilled propagandist is not an impediment to getting hired at Newsmax.
UPDATE: Media Matters has a list of all the accused sexual harassers working for Newsmax.
CNS Falsely Portrays Biden, China's Xi As 'Old Friends' Topic: CNSNews.com
Patrick Goodenough uncritically wrote in a Nov. 16 CNSNews.com article headlined "China’s Xi Greets ‘Old Friend’ Biden, Urges ‘Peace’ and ‘Win-Win Cooperation’":
“I’m very happy to see my old friend,” Chinese President Xi Jinping told President Biden on Monday evening as the two began what Biden said would be a “candid and forthright discussion.”
Speaking through an interpreter and appearing on television screens in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Xi said that the world’s two largest economies “need to increase communication and cooperation.”
Because Goodenough likes making Biden look bad, he didn't explain that despite Xi's greeting,Biden does not see Xi as an "old friend."As a news organization that cares about fully reporting on issues explained:
Asked what Xi was getting at -- and if Xi was trying to undermine the U.S. -- White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates didn't answer directly, but reiterated that Biden doesn't see Xi as an "old friend."
"I'm not going to speak for President Xi," Bates told a reporter on Air Force One as Biden headed to New Hampshire.
"But like you just mentioned," Bates continued, "you've heard explicitly from the president himself, that he has a longstanding relationship with President Xi. They've spent a great deal of time together. They are able to have candid discussions, be direct with each other, which helps them be productive. But he does not consider President Xi an old friend."
[...]
Experts have tried to interpret Xi's use of the phrase -- whether it was genuine goodwill or meant to gain control of the narrative over Biden.
Wang Huiyao, president of the Center for China and Globalization, told Reuters Xi's use of the phrase is a show of genuine goodwill, while Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at Renmin University of China, told the news outlet "an 'old friend' doesn't necessarily mean he is still a real friend."
This isn't even the first time Goodenough has done this. He wrote in a June 16 article:
President Biden was asked Wednesday whether, given how much time he says he has spent in the past with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he would consider calling him up – “old friend to old friend” – and urge him to cooperate in the coronavirus origin investigation.
Biden, who was taking reporters’ questions after the U.S.-Russia summit in Geneva, disputed the characterization of Xi as an “old friend,” but did not otherwise answer the question.
Goodenough censored two things about this exchange: Biden's full, forceful response -- "Let’s get something straight. We know each other well. We’re not old friends. It’s just pure business" -- and the fact that the question was asked by Fox News' Peter Doocy. As we noted, Doocy's hostile question was such a screw-up on his part that Curtis Houck, his biggest champion at CNS's parent, the Media Research Center, buried the exchange in his usual Doocy-fluffing reports on White House press briefings.
MRC Falsely Claims Social Media 'Censored' Tucker Carlson's Jan. 6 Conspiracy Film Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Catherine Salgado complained in a Nov. 2 post:
Big Tech platforms censored Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s documentary series on the events of January 6th even before it was fully released, and media leftists have called for more.
Carlson, his show, and supporters posted and tweeted a preview trailer of the documentary series, “Patriot Purge,” last week. The stated aim of “Patriot Purge” is to uncover the “true story behind 1/6.” Facebook censored the preview with a “sensitive content” label. YouTube imposed age restrictions and a warning that the content “may be inappropriate for some users.”
Earth to Salgado: None of those things are "censorship." The preview trailer can still be viewed, and there was nothing stopping Carlson from airing it on the widely viewed channel of his employer. Salgado could also argue that Fox News has "censored" Carlson's documentary because it's available only on the Fox Nation subscription streaming service instead of Fox News proper, but she won't -- that doesn't advance her narrative.
Salgado went on to complain that a Washington Post reporter "pushed the narrative that Carlson’s documentary was a 'conspiracy theory' using 'baseless claims,'" and that a Post reporter alerted Facebook to the video being posted there. As if Carlson isn't pushing a narrative? Besides, it's not a "narrative" if it's true; as Poynter found in its review, the show "not only whitewashed what happened on Jan. 6, as supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol, clashed with police and halted congressional proceedings in an effort to overturn the 2020 election. It also conjured a dystopian, alternative explanation for the insurrection, centered on a mix of conspiracy theories, including that the violence outside the Capitol was spurred on by left-wing instigators and agents provacateurs, and that the siege may have been a trap orchestrated by the FBI." Poynter went on to discredit numerous claims the show makes.
Salgado's response to all this was not to do any fact-checking on her own but, rather, to simply regurgitate what the preview claims and tout how many times it's been seen (which would seem to blow a hole in her claim that the video was being "censored":
The “Patriot Purge” preview said that the documentary series provides “the true story behind 1/6, the war on terror 2.0 and the plot against the People,” suggesting the alleged Capitol “insurrection” may have been a “false flag.” The Twitter preview has over 3 million views as of publication. The first part of the documentary series was released on Nov. 1.
From there, Salgado started repeating the MRC's boilerplate attacks on anyone who would dare fact-check a conservative:
Big Tech and its so-called fact-checkers have proven to be unfairly biased in the past. PolitiFact, which was cited by Lima against Carlson’s documentary, is a Facebook fact-checking partner. The fact-checker has relied on communist Chinese information in the past and is part of liberal Poynter Institute's International Fact Checking Network (IFCN), which received over a million dollars from liberal billionaires George Soros and Pierre Omidyar.
She also repeated an oft-repeated MRC falsehood that "Trump was also banned from at least 10 platforms after he called for 'peace' following the Capitol 'riot.'"
This complaint was rehashed in the Nov. 17 podcast from the MRC's Tierin-Rose Mandelburg, in which she praised "Patriot Purge" without bothering to fact-check anything in it (or, apparently, to even watch it before issuing her judgment):
The video is clearly an attack on the leftist ideology ther everything pro-Trump is bad, if you're white you're racist, and if you don't consider Jan. 6 an insurrection, you're someho w terrorist. Facebook added a "sensitive content" filter to his video after the Washington Post whined about it. So: Half-naked girls online don't get a "sensitive content" filter, insane violence at a BLM or Antifa riot don't get a "sensitive content" filter, and neither does the viral image of Kathy Griffin holding a bloody Trump head. But Carlson's pro-America video did.
Yeah, the MRC would think that spreading right-wing conspiracy theories is "pro-America." Pretending that what happened on Jan. 6 wasn't an "insurrection" is another active MRC narrative designed to downplay those events.
WND Also Spread False Right-Wing Narrative About School Boards And Violence Topic: WorldNetDaily
If the Media Research Center and CNSNews.com were going to glom onto the false story that a national school board group depicted all parents who spoke up at school board meetings about right-wing culture-war issues as "domestic terrorists," you can bet that WorldNetDaily -- whose standards for accuracy are much lower than that of the MRC and CNS -- wanted in on that bogus action too. Bob Unruh embranced the false narrative in an Oct. 5 article:
Only days ago the National School Board Association asked Joe Biden to use federal anti-terror laws against parents who are protesting – and fighting – the leftist agendas of their school boards, who want to install Critical Race Theory and other indoctrination in classrooms.
Now the administration has responded with orders from Attorney General Merrick Garland to the FBI to move against those parents.
Without citing any instance of criminal activity, he cited a "disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff."
True to form, the "mama bear" mothers and the fathers who have been passionately speaking out at school-board meetings against "woke" curricula and mask mandates have something to say to Attorney General Merrick Garland and the National School Boards Association for effectively branding them as domestic terrorists.
"I am what a domestic terrorist looks like?" asked Asra Nomani, vice president of investigations and strategy for the non-profit Parents Defending Education. "You owe parents an apology!"
Her group, in a statement Monday night, accused activists of "weaponizing the U.S. Department of Justice."
"This is a coordinated attempt to intimidate dissenting voices in the debates surrounding America's underperforming K-12 education – and it will not succeed. We will not be silenced," the statement said.
Unruh returned two days later with a dubious conflict-of-interest attack on Garland in which he repeated the false narrative:
Joe Biden's attorney general, Merrick Garland, who recently unleashed a formal Department of Justice attack on parents opposing extremist ideas like Critical Race Theory in their public schools, is being accused of a conflict of interest for his agenda.
It's because his son-in-law runs a company that sells products to school districts, and those products apparently include data tools involving surveys that gauge students' "emotional and mental wellbeing" as well as surveys on sexuality and promotions of CRT, which claims that all of the United States is racist, all whites are offenders, and all blacks are victims.
Another Oct. 7 article by Unruh regurgitated an attack on an Associated Prsss fact-check about the National School Boards Association letter about the threats by dishonest anti-CRT activist Christopher Rufo, in which he deliberately misrepresents the letter by falsely claiming its warnings applied to all parents. As we've noted, even the MRC couldn't find anyplace where the group explicitly stated that parents were "domestic terrorists" simply for speaking out.
Chuck Norris ratcheted up the lie in his Oct. 11 column while repeating Fox News' alarmist take on the story:
Watching an episode of Tucker Carlson this past week, I was shocked to learn that the Biden administration is making plans to actually deploy FBI agents to round up American parents in every state who are disagreeing with public school boards.
Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered the FBI to address what he called a "disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence" against educators and school board members.
[...]
Are American parents now domestic terrorists because they disagree and dissent? Are parents really a national security threat? The feds are potentially criminalizing parenting because of protests!
How excessive is federal government overreach when American parents can't even disagree with school officials about subjects pertaining to their children that they conscientiously object to? Will the American public tolerate every breech of the federal government, even when the Biden administration gets it wish for the IRS to track every bank account with $600?!
At least Norris felt just enough shame that he added, "Let me state categorically that any acts or threats of violence against school board members are wrong."
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland is improperly chilling Americans' speech with his attack on parents, according to prominent legal commentator Alan Dershowitz.
Garland recently released a statement that essentially threatened parents who are opposing their local school boards' leftist moves, such as promoting transgender ideology and Critical Race Theory discrimination, with FBI investigations.
Unruh went on to reference "Garland's agenda against parents."
Unruh misrepresented the situation again in an Oct. 18 article, in which he referenced "a letter from National School Boards Association to the Biden administration demanding he use the nation's anti-terror laws against parents who object to and oppose the leftist agenda items," going on to claim that Garland issued a "memo against parents."
In an Oct. 25 article, Unruh attacked the school boards group itself: "The National School Boards Association, the education industry group that suggested parents protesting leftist school-board agendas were "domestic terrorism," owes some $20 million to the IRS, according to a report."
A Nov. 12 article by Unruh complained that "the National School Boards Association coordinated with the White House before it requested that Joe Biden consider parents objecting to leftist ideology in their public school as domestic terrorists," though he didn't explain why the group and the Department of Justice were not allowed to be proactive over the situation instead of waiting for an act of violence to occur before anything would be done. Unruh then seemed to justify the attacks by playing whatabnoutism:
The dispute focuses on the leftist campaigns many school boards are adopting, including COVID-19 mandates, and the fact that parents object to those. While a handful of parents have shouted down board members, at least as often board members have ordered parents to be quiet, shut down meetings in order to silence them, and even called police to remove members of the public speaking at board meetings.
Unruh didn't explain why school boards should not be permitted to enforce order at their meetings.
MRC Writer Touts One Last Limbaugh Lie Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center had a major sad when Rush Limbaugh died -- so much so, it loudly complained that his offensive right-wing schtick was being criticized and almost completely censored that one time he call a college student a "slut" because she took birth control. Jeffrey Lord cranked up the waterworks one final time in his Oct. 29 MRC column:
It was, of course, only a matter of time.
With his passing in February of this year, there would inevitably be a last issue of Rush Limbaugh’s monthly magazine – The Limbaugh Letter. That issue has just arrived in my mail box – not the electronic one but the snail mail one as the magazine was indeed quite physical.
As a subscriber to Rush 24/7, I was a subscriber to The Limbaugh Letter. It would arrive in the mail every month like clockwork, with Rush’s latest musings for the magazine written in about 16 concise pages.
[...]
The last, freshly arrived issue dated October of 2021 features a tribute to Rush himself, aptly titled “Forever Dittos, Rush!” The piece is indeed a wonderful tribute, filled with the indelible memories of Rush that are shared by so many millions of his fans.
Among the memories is this quite accurate assessment of just why so many Americans loved Rush. It says: “You not only spoke for us, you woke us up and connected us to each other as an enormous force.” Exactly.
Lord went on to gush:
The Limbaugh Letter was a monthly treasure trove of information and spot on analysis.
Leafing through my collection of back issues the breadth of topics featured amaze. Rush on the NFL, Kim Jong Un and North Korea, and, memorably, “Democrats are exposing themselves as the wacko-radical America-hating Marxists they really are.”
In another issue, the Parkland, Florida killing of 14 kids and three teachers at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas high school is discussed with a focus on the startling fact that the killer, teenager Nikolas Cruz, had 39 police visits to his home by police - but was never arrested. Why? Because of a quite deliberate Obama policy called the PROMISE - Preventing Recidivism through Opportunities, Mentoring, Interventions, Supports & Education program. Had Cruz been arrested just once for disorderly conduct, the Letter points out, it would have raised a red flag when he bought a firearm.
But Limbaugh's story about Cruz isn't true. First of all, the PROMISE programa wasn't an "Obama policy" -- while the program launched in that school district while Obama was in the White House, no federal departments or agencies, let alone Obama himself, were involved in its creation.
Second of all: A commission created to investigate the Parkland shooting found that while Cruz was referred to the program, there's no evidence he ever took part in it. As a local sheriff put it:
"The PROMISE program didn't fail for Cruz," Pinellas sheriff and commission chairman Bob Gualtieri told reporters. "It would never in any way, shape, form, would've affected his ability to buy that AR-15, to buy the shotguns, to buy anything else, to possess them."
He added: "It's completely irrelevant, it's a rabbit hole, it's a red herring, it's immaterial, and that's why we're taking it off the table. And the community needs to know that that has nothing to do with what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14."
How fitting that one of the strongest memories Lord has about Limbaugh is based on a lie.
NEW ARTICLE: CNS Learns To Live With A Republican Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com tried -- and failed miserably -- to destroy Glenn Youngkin as a Republican candidate for Virginia governor, but it ever-so-slowly came around. Plus: Like its Media Research Center parent, CNS hid the full story of a school sexual assault. Read more >>
Again! MRC Hypes Bad Employment Numbers Under Biden, Censors Good Numbers The Next Month Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center writer Joseph Vazquez has a highly biased approach to writing about the economy under President Biden -- mainly a lot of emphasis on hyping bad ndews and censoring good news. We've demonstrated one example of this: promoting less-than-good monthly employment numbers while censoring any mention of the good ones.
Vazquez kicked off another round of hyping one bad month of employment numbers in an Oct. 8 post:
Here we go again! The ABC, CBS and NBC morning news shows protected President Joe Biden by censoring another horrible report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The BLS reported at 8:30 a.m. today that the U.S. economy added only 194,000 jobs in the month of September. The BLS figure completely dismantled predictions by economists surveyed by Refinitiv who were expecting a 500,000 increase. That means predictions were off by a whopping 306,000 jobs.
CATO Director of Tax Policy Studies Chris Edwards told the MRC in response to the BLS report that “[l]arge and small businesses are surely worried about the large tax increases planned by the Democrats in Washington.”
Edwards is one of Vazquez's go-to right-wing economists when he needs a reliably biased, anti-Biden take on the economy.
Vazquez added: "News Nation Now, however, reported on the massive miss as a “major disappointment.” Perhaps the Big Three morning news shows should take notes." He didn't mention that News Nation is run by former Fox News executive and Trump White House staffer Bill Shine, who was never known for being fair and balanced.
On Oct. 12, Vazquez bashed a New York Times reporter for offering context on the numbers that he didn't like:
New York Times senior economics correspondent Neil Irwin bent himself into a pretzel spinning the atrocious Bureau of Labor Statistics report showing the economy only added 194,000 jobs in September.
Following the release of the abysmal job growth report on Friday, Irwin had the nutty spin: “The New Jobs Numbers Are Pretty Good, Actually.” Irwin had a much different reaction earlier on Twitter that undercut the gaslighting in his article. He tweeted immediately at 8:30 a.m. ET, after the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report dropped: “+194k on payrolls, a big miss. But unemployment rate way down to 4.8%.” He tweeted one minute later (8:31 a.m.) in his instant coverage of the BLS data: “Debating how many ‘o’s should be added to the word ‘oof’ in this circumstance.” He wrote in the lede paragraph of his article: “It’s not as bad as it looks.” That’s an interesting way of characterizing the “Slowest [Job Growth] Pace of [the] Year.”
Irwin celebrated that the economy was in a “steady expansion that is more rapid than other recent recoveries. It is being held back by supply constraints and, in September at least, the emergence of the Delta variant. But the direction is clear, consistent and positive.” He falsely stated that the unemployment rate “fell for good reasons, not bad — the number of people unemployed dropped by a whopping 710,000 while the number of people working rose by a robust 526,000.” The Wall Street Journal reported that “[m]any workers gave up the job search and exited from the labor force last month, the data showed.” It continued: “The smaller pool of labor meant that despite the slowdown in hiring, the unemployment rate fell to 4.8% last month from 5.2% in August.”
Vazquez never explained exactly why Irwin's statement that the unemployment rate "fell for good reasons" was "false," despite later asserting that "The unemployment rate did fall for 'bad' reasons, despite Irwin's gaslighting to the contrary."
Vazquez got an assist from MRC writer Curtis Houck, who touted how a reporter "twice called out the administration’s absurd spin about the putrid jobs numbers" at a White House press briefing.
However, Vazquez failed to mention that the disappointing numbers blew a hole in one of his right-wing narratives: that unemployment benefits disincentivizes people from finding jobs. He cheered that narrative when Fox Business host (and credibly accused sexual assaulter) Charles Payne pushed it, and he wrote a July post declaring that "A new poll blew apart the media’s year-long gaslighting that extended unemployment benefits weren’t discouraging work," which claimed to find that "benefits reduced the number of accepted job offers by an estimated 1.84 million over the course of the pandemic." Never mind of course, that numerous studies have shown that unemployment benefits do not keep people from seeking work; he went on to rant that non-right-wing media outlets have "hoodwinked America on the effects of extended unemployment benefits" and "numerous left-wing outlets pounded the same gaslighting drum.
But pandemic-related unemployment benefits ended on Sept. 6, which theoretrically meant -- if the right-wing lazy-grifter theory was true -- that all those lazy people grifting off employment benefits would be forced into the workplace in September. But as the numbers showed, that didn't happen. Vazquez has been completely silent about that development. Instead, he gushed in an Oct. 19 postabout how "The Wall Street Journal editorial board didn’t hesitate to pin the labor shortage blame on the proper culprit: “Bidenomics," which included "pandemic enhanced unemployment benefits, which ended in early September" and "$300 monthly allowance per child, food stamps and rental assistance." Again, Vazquez didn't explain why the ending of pandemic benefits didn't create a surge of job-seekers.
The following month, Vazquez once again showed that good news for the country is bad news for the MRC if it happens when a Democrat is president. In October, not only did employment increase by 531,000 jobs, thenunmbers for September were revised from a increase of 194,000 to a 312,000 increase.
Vazquez censored this information from his readers. Instead, he wrote a Nov. 8 post attacking that same New York Times reporter again, insisting that the economy is "poor" and only fleetingly acknowledged the "decreasing unemployment rate" and then -- like his co-workers at CNSNwws.com do when the numbers are too good under a Democratic president -- hyped "the dismal labor force participation rate."
But the following month, Vazquez went back to his old tricks.When the employment numbers failed to meet expectations for November, he was quick to crank out a Dec. 3 post declaring that "the economy only added 210,000 jobs, 340,000 fewer than expected" and criticized CNN for reporting the projected numbers before the real ones came out. He also complained that CNN reported that many people are leaving jobs for better-paying ones, which inVazquez's revisionism meand that "CNN still tried to twist itself into a pretzel to make it seem like the struggle to find workers was actually a good thing."
CNS Loves Promoting Polls That Make Biden Look Bad Topic: CNSNews.com
During the 2020 presidential election, CNSNews.com aggressivelypushedoutlierpolls -- often from dubious right-skewing pollsters like Rasmussen -- touting Donald Trump's alleged popularity and claiming Donald Trump was doing well despite him being behind in most reputable polls. But after Trump's loss and Joe Biden becoming the new president, CNS has largely focused on hyping polls -- again from dubious pollsters -- claiming that Biden is unpopular as a person and with his initiatives. A June 9 article by Aslianna Kreiner was typical of this CNS genre:
A poll by the Honest Elections Project (HEP) shows only 28 percent of people who are informed about HR 1, the “For the People Act,” actually support it.
“Only 29% of voters know anything at all about this expansive legislative attempt to reshape American elections, but when they are informed, only 28% support its passage,” the Honest Elections Project said in a memo to members of Congress and state legislators.
But as we documented when CNS previously touted polls issued by this group, the Honest Elections Project is a partisan right-wing group funded by dark money whose goal is to "advocate for greater controls on elections."In other words, the group is issuing these polls with the unambiguous purpose of promoting its agenda.
Nevertheless, CNS loves this group because it share those same partisan goals. An Aug. 24 article by managing editor Michael W. Chapman touted that "A new poll shows that 81% of voters in the United States support laws that require "every voter to show a photo ID when they vote," according to Honest Elections Project Action (HEPA), which conducted the survey of 1,200 registered voters in mid-July.
Unsurprisingly, CNS regularly plugs Rasmussen polls bdcause they too advance CNS' right-wing, anti-Biden agenda:
CNS seems to love Gallup because. despite its reputation as a top pollster, it does generate right-wing-friendly results. Last December, an article by Chapman touted how "In Gallup's 2020 poll on the most admired man, President Donald J. Trump came out on top." This was about a week before the Capitol riot, however, so that finding didn't exactly age well.
CNSNews.com reporter Susan Jones primed the upcoming report on November's emloyment numbers with a Dec. 1 article noting that both Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell agree that the "single most important thing" that will bring workers back into the workforce is "getting past the COVID-induced disruptions." She also tried to justify her selective obsession with the labor force participation rate (which occurs only when a Democrat is president) by cheering a Republican senator referencing it, then adding:
A while back, 
Susan Jones complained in a Nov. 12 CNSNews.com 
On Nov. 15, Donald Trump 
The Media Research Center used to understatnd that Barstool Sports and its founder Dave Portnoy were terrible, and it even called them out as such. 
Another attempt from WorldNetDaily to 
It looks like Newsmax will be down a couple anti-vaxxers on its staff.
Patrick Goodenough uncritically wrote in a Nov. 16 CNSNews.com 
The Media Research Center's Catherine Salgado complained in a Nov. 2 
If the 
The Media Research Center 
Media Research Center writer Joseph Vazquez has a highly biased approach to writing about the economy under President Biden -- mainly a lot of emphasis on hyping bad ndews and censoring good news. 
During the 2020 presidential election, CNSNews.com 
