MRC Fawns Over Trump's New Social Media Operation, Censors Questions About It Topic: Media Research Center
If you're a right-wing social media site, the Media Research Center wants to give you some free (or paid, we don't know) PR. It did so for Parler -- even going so far as to censor the conflict of interest that chief Parler funder Rebekah Mercer is also a major funder of the MRC -- it did so for the MyPillow guy's operation, it did so for GETTR, and now it's doing so for Donald Trump's new social media operation.
In an Oct. 21 post announcing the creation of the operation, Autumn Johnson put "BREAKING" in the headline even though she was breaking absolutely nothing but, rather, repeating a report from another right-wing website:
Former President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that his new social media platform will be coming soon, The Daily Wire reported.
TRUTH Social will be released next spring under the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG). The platform will compete with Facebook and Twitter, like Parler and GETTR.
Trump said he is excited about the new platform’s potential.
“I created TRUTH Social and TMTG to stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech,” he said in a statement. “We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American President has been silenced. This is unacceptable. I am excited to send out my first TRUTH on TRUTH Social very soon.”
TMTG concurred with Trump’s statement, adding that the “mission is to is to create a rival to the liberal media consortium and fight back against the “Big Tech” companies of Silicon Valley”:
Johnson added that "Trump was permanently banned on Facebook and Twitter following the Jan. 6 riot in Washington D.C.," but made sure not to mention why.
Another thing Johnson refused to mention: questions about the operation itself. When the site launched, it was immediately overrun by trolls who snapped up registered names like "donaldtrump," "donaldjtrump," and "mike pence," and its terms of service are pretty tyrannical for a site purporting to "stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech." The app may also violate the terms of use of the open-source software it's built on. Then there's the fact that Trump in all likelihood did not "create" anything related to this venture beyond lending his name to it (for a presumably princely sum), given that TMTG refused to tell the Washington Post exactly what Trump's relationship with the company will be.
But Johnson is nothing if not an enthusiastic PR agent for Trump. In an Oct. 28 post on Trump losing a legal action against Twitter, she spent three paragraphs gushing over how he "just last week announced the creation of his own social media platform: TRUTH Social," linking to her earlier post.
Johnson returned to gush in a Dec. 5 post about the amount of capital TMTG claims to have:
A new social network being created by former President Donald Trump reportedly said it has $1 billion lined up in capital.
Trump announced his plan to create a new social network after he was banned from Facebook and Twitter. The network is a product of Trump’s new company, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), and he is the chair of the company.
TMTG plans to become a publicly listed company by merging with Digital World.
Digital World reportedly said $1 billion in capital has been lined up for the venture, while the company itself plans to invest $293 million.
Johnson was curiously incurious as to how a company formed less than two months earlier and has, as one observer noted, "no product, no users, no publicly identified executives, and no revenue," has access to such an astronomical amount of money, though there appears to be much shadiness to be investigated. Instead, she quoted from a press release, blandly stating that "Other investors have not been identified, but Digital World reportedly said the money will come from 'a diverse group' of investors."
But never mind that, there was another hot scoop to gush over. This time, Alexander Hall did the gushy honors on Dec. 7:
Is this the start of a big conservative splash in the tech sphere?? Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) will reportedly resign from his position as a congressman to join former President Donald Trump’s burgeoning Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG.)
Trump is out of the presidency, but his company has the potential to be a major player in the social media sphere, and it just gained one major power-player. “Trump Media & Technology Group ('TMTG') today announced that Congressman Devin G. Nunes has been selected to join the Company as Chief Executive Officer,” TMTG declared in a Dec. 6 press release. “Mr. Nunes will be leaving the U.S. House of Representatives and will begin his new role as Chief Executive Officer of TMTG in January 2022.”
Hall did surprisingly suggest the cronyism involved here, noting that "Nunes has a history of backing up Trump in the most high-stakes times of crisis" and that Trump "awarded Nunes the Presidential Medal of Freedom," while Nunes was "one of the 147 House Republicans who voted to challenge President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory" on the day of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Hall didn't however, mention Nunes' notirious litigiousness toward any critic on social media, including a parody Twitter account claiming to be Nunes' cow. Perhaps that ligitiousness is the real skill Nunes is quitting Congress to bring to Trump's operation (that, and all the potential grift to cash in on). Hall will never mention that, either.
WND Parrots Bogus MRC Attack On 2020 Election Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh spent a Nov. 23 WorldNetDaily article touting an alternative version of the Big Lie:
The problems with the 2020 presidential vote are well-documented.
For example, a poll after the election showed more than one-third of voters who chose Joe Biden were not aware of the evidence linking the former vice president to corrupt financial dealings with China through his son Hunter.
Had they known, according to the survey commissioned bv the Media Research Center, President Trump would have won at least 289 Electoral College votes.
The survey found that 13% voters of the voters who said they were unaware of the scandals would not have voted for Biden had they been made aware.
That amounted to 4.6% of Biden’s total votes.
As we documented, the survey whose results the MRC paid for was McLaughlin & Associates, who worked for Trump during the 2020 campaign, so its results are highly suspect at best. The MRC's Big Lie is a conspiracy theory on a part with Trump's own. (The creeping WND-ization at the MRC has been going on for years.)
Unruh went on to repeat another election conspiracy:
And research revealed that Mark Zuckerberg handed over a total of $419.5 million to the Center for Technology and Civil Life and the Center for Election Innovation and Research leading up to the 2020 presidential election, and the two groups used it to buy Democrat votes.
Essentially.
In fact, Zuckerberg's foundation is nonpartisan and its money was available to any election organization that wanted it. Indeed, more Republican-controlled counties applied for and got money from the foundation, though more money went to Democratic-controlled counties.Unruh didn't explain why it's a bad thing for more people to be involved in the election process.
In other words, Unruh's "essentially" actually means "not at all."
Unruh went on to tout a right-wing initiative in Michigan that is "circulating a petition to prevent voter fraud" that would "require photo ID for voting" and make it that "government officials would be barred from sending absentee voter ballot applications unless the voter asked for that." But Unruh censored mention of criticismof theinitiative, which exploits a loophole in the Michigan state constitution to ram though the changes without a vote of the people and exempt it from a veto by the (Democratic) governor, as well as that the initiative does, in fact, restrict voting.
Remember, WND is a leading propagandist for Trump's Big Lie, and it won't report anything that undermines that narrative.
Newsmax Joins CNS In Uncritically Repeating Trump's Falsehoods Topic: Newsmax
CNSNews.com wasn't the only ConWeb outlet to uncritically reprint recent false and misleading commnets from Donald Trump. Jeffrey Rodack was the stenographer in a Nov. 23 Newsmax article:
Former President Donald Trump is slamming President Joe Biden’s order to release 50 million barrels of oil from the strategic reserve to bring down energy costs
Trump said, in a statement released on Tuesday, "For decades our country’s very important Strategic Oil Reserves were low or virtually empty in that no President wanted to pay the price of filling them up.
"I filled them up three years ago, right to the top, when oil prices were very low. Those reserves are meant to be used for serious emergencies, like war, and nothing else. Now I understand that Joe Biden will be announcing an 'attack' on the newly brimming Strategic Oil Reserves so that he could get the close to record-setting high oil prices artificially lowered.
"We were energy independent one year ago, now we are at the mercy of OPEC, gasoline is selling for $7 in parts of California, going up all over the country, and they are taking oil from our Strategic Reserves. Is this any way to run a country?"
As we documented, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was more than 80 percent full -- not "low or virtually empty" -- when Trump filled them, it took no political courage on Trump's part to do so given that oil prices were at rock bottom at thet start of the pandemic, and Trump signed a bill mandating sale of SPR reserves to fund the government. And that $7 gas is only a one remote gas station in California; the average gas price in the state is around $4.
This is what happens when being a servile stenographer is more important than reporting facts.
CNS Editor's Double Standard On Deficit Spending Continues Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor and supposed deficit hawk Terry Jeffrey had no interest in blaming Donald Trump or a Republican-controlled Senate for growing deficits through 2020, but he's quick to heapblame on Democrats now that they're in control of the White House. That pattern did not change in the final four months of 2021. Jeffrey declared in a Sept. 13 article:
The federal government collected a record $3,586,456,000,000 in total taxes through first eleven months of fiscal 2021 (September through August), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.
The federal government also collected a record $1,829,589,000,000 in individual income taxes in the September-through-August period.
Jeffrey made no mention of how the spending continued a pattern of higher pandemic-related deficit spending established by the Trump administration in 2020. He did, however, include a stock photo of Nancy Pelosi and the back of (maybe) President Biden's head, and he also bizarrely suggested that the country wasn't spending enough money on defense and too much money on helping American citizens:
On the spending side, the federal government spent the most money through the Department of Health and Human Services, which has $1,340,131,000,000 in expenditures in September through August.
The Social Security Administration placed second, spending $1,092,771,000,000.
The Department of Defense—Military Programs spent $653,852,000,000 or less than half of the $1,340,131,000,000 spent by HHS.
Jeffrey repeated much of that, with updated numbers, in an Oct. 25 fiscal-year-end article:
The federal government collected a record $4,045,979,000,000 in taxes in fiscal 2021, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement for September, which is the final month of the federal fiscal year.
Federal spending also hit a nominal high of $6,818,158,000,000 in fiscal 2021, up from the $6,551,872,000,000 that the federal government spent in fiscal 2020. However, when the $6,551,872,000,000 the federal government spent last year is adjusted for inflation from September 2020 dollars into September 2021 dollars it equals $6,905,040,760,000—thus, exceeding this fiscal year’s total of $6,818,158,000,000.
[...]
The Department of Health and Human Services spent $1,466,673,000,000 in fiscal 2021. The Social Security Administration spent $1,192,453,000,000. The Department of Defense spent $717,585,000,000.
Jeffrey didn't mention that Trump was preseident for the first 2 1/2 months of fiscal 2021. Nevertheless, he included a stock photo of Biden, Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris.
The complaint was regurgitated in Jeffrey's Nov. 10 article:
The federal government, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement, collected a record $283,927,000,000 in total taxes in October, which was the first month of fiscal 2022.
Federal spending hit $448,983,000,000 in October, which was the second highest ever for the first month of a fiscal year. The federal government set its record spending in the first month of the fiscal year last October, when the it spent $554,232,780,000 (in constant October 2021 dollars).
[...]
The biggest expenditure by the Treasury in October was for the Department of Health and Human Services, which accounted for $120,507,000,000 in spending.
The second biggest expenditure was for the Social Security Administration, which accounted for $101,055,000,000 in spending.
The third biggest expenditure was for the Department of Defense-Military Programs, which accounted for $65,482,000,000 in spending.
This time, the stock photo was of Biden, Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
It was lather, rinse, repeat for Jeffrey's Dec. 10 article:
The federal government collected a record $565,135,000,000 in total taxes through the first two months of fiscal 2022 (October and November), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.
The federal government also collected a record $282,094,000,000 in individual income taxes in the first two months of this fiscal year.
While collecting its record $565,135,000,000 in total taxes in the first two months of this fiscal year, the federal government spent $921,526,000,000—resulting in a deficit of $356,390,000,000 in the first two months of the fiscal year.
[...]
The Department of Health and Human Services spent more money--$254,706,000,000—in the first two months of fiscal 2022 than any other federal department or agency. It was followed by the Social Security Administration, which spent $201,487,000,000. The Defense Department-Military Programs placed third with $126,299,000,000 in spending in the October-through-November period.
This month's stock photo featured Biden and Pelosi.
Each of these articles notes at the end that "The business and economic reporting of CNSNews.com is funded in part with a gift made in memory of Dr. Keith C. Wold." Is Wold rolling in his grave seeing hismoney paying for such lazy, rote reporting?
MRC Continued To Take Harris Out Of Context To Blame Her For COVID Vaccine Mistrust Topic: Media Research Center
It says something about the kind of year it's been on the ConWeb that we haven't had a chance until now to further review one of the Media Research Center's most malicious and bogus right-wing narratives.
We'vedocumentedhow the MRC has repeatedly taken Vice President Kamala Harris' words during the 2020 presidential campaign out of context to falsely portray her someone trying to undermine trust in vaccines developed under then-President Trump, and it continued to do so since we last checked in. In his July 24 column, Jeffrey Lord repeated the bogus Harris attack in defending Fox News host Sean Hannity from "The View" co-host Sunny Hostin:
Remember, as above, that Hannity was saying this on getting vaccinated in September of 2020: “If doctors and scientists say it’s safe my personal inclination is to take it.”
Contrast Hannity on vaccinations with Harris a mere one month later in October of 2020. Recall this headline from Fox News:
Vice presidential debate: Kamala Harris claims she won't take vaccine if Trump recommends
VP Pence slammed Harris for 'undermining public confidence' in a potential vaccine
Somehow, in some mysterious way, Hostin was, as far as I can tell, not upset about Harris saying she would refuse to be vaccinated if Trump were president. But it’s now okay to suggest that Hannity was opposed to the vaccine when, in fact, he clearly was expressing support for the vaccine while Harris was busy politicizing it by saying she would refuse to get vaccinated if Trump were president.
Note that Lord only quoted the headline which fits his narrative. He didn't repeat what the Fox News article reported that Harris also said: "If the public health professionals, if Dr. Fauci, if the doctors tell us we should take it, I’ll be the first in line to take it, absolutely." He's also lying about what Harris said. She didn't say "she would refuse to get vaccinated if Trump were president"; she said she would refuse "if Donald Trump tells us we should take it." Big difference.
In other words, Harris was saying the same thing Hannity did. And given that Trump was hyping a then-nonexistent vaccine as a ploy to get re-elected and his history of being an inveterate liar, there's ample reason for nobody to trust anything he said.
In a July 26 item, Tim Graham served another one of his complaints that fact-checkers committed the offense of putting Harris' words in their proper context to debunk a right-wing narrative:
PolitiFact’s aggressive defense of Biden and Harris popped up again on Friday. They tagged it as “False” for a Tik-Tok video that “Says Joe Biden and Kamala Harris distrusted COVID-19 vaccines.”
The quotes in the video are all accurate, but they caused Facebook to flag the video as “Missing Context.” As in – the editing is too negative for their liking. Once again, they’re not “fact checking” – they’re context checking.
The short summary in Tom Kertscher's article proclaimed “Video clips appear to show Joe Biden and Kamala Harris raising doubts about COVID-19 vaccines, but they were raising concerns about the rollout by then-President Donald Trump, not the vaccines themselves.” [Emphasis mine.]
THAT is not accurate. If you suggest someone shouldn’t trust the vaccine until something happens – in this case, until the Democrats are elected – you’re sowing distrust in the vaccines.
Graham grudgingly conceded the statements were taken out of context, then laughably insisted the "aren't wildly out of context."Remember that Graham doesn't believe that Trump tells falsehoods, he just has "a casual relationship with the truth."
Kristine Marsh used an Aug. 13 post to bash CNN for a report suggesting that "blamed conservative media for vaccine hesitancy," huffing: "What [CNN host Don] Lemon won’t acknowledge is that the media’s bias has been evident throughout their reporting on the pandemic, from squashing the lab leak theory, to calling blaming China for the virus, racist, and excusing anti-vaccine comments from Democrats before the election." As evidence, she linked to an earlier MRC post that took Harris and Biden out of context, which doesn't exactly help her case.
CNS Combines Transgender Freakout, Biden-Bashing In A Single Article Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com likes to have meltdowns over the idea that other people don't hate transgender people as much as they do, particularly Democratic government officials iike President Biden and Nancy Pelosi. Thus, we have a Nov. 22 "news" article by notorioiusly biased reporter Susan Jones that began by taking a shot at President Biden:
In a statement issued under his name, President Joe Biden on Saturday called transgender people "some of the bravest Americans I know."
He said 46 of them were killed "in horrifying acts of violence" so far this year, making this the deadliest year on record for transgender Americans.
And in a separate statement on Saturday, the "Biden-Harris Administration" mourned those 46 transgender Americans "who have lost their lives to anti-transgender violence and hate."
We don't recall CNS ever making distinctions about "statements issued under his name" when Donald Trump was in office. Jones then found a way to take a shot at Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband by sneering at his title:
On Saturday, the White House and Doug Emhoff, the "second gentleman" who is married to Vice President Kamala Harris, hosted a first-of-its-kind vigil at the White House "to honor the lives of transgender and gender diverse people killed this year, and countless transgender and gender diverse people who face brutal violence, harassment, and discrimination in the United States and around the world."
According to the administration's statement, "The Second Gentleman lit 46 candles representing the transgender and gender diverse killed this year in the United States, and a 47th candle for those who have lost their lives to violence around the world." (The White House apparently did not release video of the event, although Emhoff tweeted a photo.)
Jones then complained that "=The White House also released a report from the "Interagency Working Group on Safety, Opportunity, and Inclusion for Transgender and Gender Diverse Individuals," highlighting 45 key, early actions the administration has taken," going to list a few then giving up, parenthetically throwing in the towel: "(It's a long list. You can read the entire thing here.)" Never mind that it's Jones' job to be a reporter and not pass the buck to her readers.
Finally, Jones complained:
This second White House statement uses the word "crisis" four times, as in:
"Ending the HIV crisis among transgender and gender diverse communities," "Addressing the Crisis of Missing or Murdered (transgender) Indigenous People," "support services to address the crisis of Missing and Murdered (transgender) Indigenous People," and addressing "the crisis of anti-transgender stigma and violence..."
MRC Still Putting Scare Quotes Around Jan. 6 'Insurrection' Topic: Media Research Center
We've documented how the Media Research Center is trying to downplay the events of Jan. 6 by denying that it was an insurrection against the government. It hasn't stopped doing that.
A Dec. 10 post by Brian Bradley threw out the scare quotes in complaining that "leftist figurehead" Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League -- not a "leftist" organizaiton, by the way -- complained that an ADL fellow was de-platformed by Face book for "'studying' the role that company may have played leading up to the Jan. 6 so-called 'insurrection.'" It's unclear why Bradley put "studying" in scare quotes, though it's all too clear why he did that to "insurrection."
In a Dec. 12 post, P.J. Gladnick featured an article abnout the Jan. 6 committee where "one problem is that none of the supposed insurrectionists has actually been charged with insurrection. " after the writer noted "law-enforcement officers who were attacked by insurrectionists," Gladnick added: "Attacked by 'insurrectionists' who were not charged with insurrection. That could be one reason why the January 6 investigations have become 'weirdly static.'" Is Gladnick denying that law enforcement officers were attacked as well?
Jeffrey Lord embraced scare quotes as well while playing whataboutism in his Dec. 25 column:
Thus it is that Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election – when it fact it was Hillary Clinton’s campaign paying for the infamous dossier. Thus it was that all those riots in 2020 that resulted in death, looting, burning and destruction were really “mostly peaceful.” Perfectly decent high schoolers Sandmann and Rittenhouse were racist brats. And the riot by a relative handful of out-of-control protestors at the Capitol on January 6th was really an “insurrection”, with the U.S. government itself hanging by a thread, with a coup attempt incited by President Trump under way.
The results of all this garbage is that the American people, in true “show me” mood, began to realize they were not being given “just the facts” journalism in any given situation but rather they were being fed liberal narratives masquerading as facts. Or, as the shorthand became, “fake news.”
Jeffrey didn't explain exactly what was "fake news" about any Jan. 6 coverage.
NEW ARTICLE: The Root of COVID Misinformation Topic: WorldNetDaily
Wayne Allyn Root worked his way down the right-wing media food chain to end up at WorldNetDaily, which has shown itself to be quite tolerant of his factually deficient fearmongering about COVID vaccines. Read more >>
MRC Sports Blogger Goes Full Brandon In Cheering Biden Slur Topic: Media Research Center
We've noted how the Media Research Center has heartily embraced the "Let's Go Brandon" anti-Biden slur despite its long history of raging against any other vulgarity expressed in the media. But a couple weeks before MRC sports blogger Jay Maxson lamented how a "Monday Night Football" broadcast was "coarsening the culture" by dropping an F-bomb, his (or her) fellow sports blogger, John Simmons, was cheering a crowd chanting the unexpurgated version of "Let's Go Brandon." He gushed in an Oct. 21 post:
There are two things you can know for certain about Boston: the people there are incredibly passionate about almost everything, and it is a firmly liberal city. That’s why what happened after Game 4 of the ALCS between the hometown Red Sox and the Houston Astros might come as a surprise.
Between chants of “F--- A-rod” (former New York Yankees third baseman and Fox Sports analyst Alex Rodriguez) and “F--- (Astros second baseman Jose) Altuve,” impassioned and clear chants of “F--- Joe Biden” could be heard just outside of Fenway Park.
Now we all aren’t surprised when college campuses in the South break out in these cheers during football games (since the South tends to be conservative anyway), but a place like Boston joining in on the fun goes to show just how much our president’s approval has dropped in just nine short months.
Maybe this is a continuing sign that even liberal America is beginning to wake up to just how bad of a leader Joe Biden is.
[...]
Perhaps this is just a one-time thing, perhaps this is a pattern that will continue. Either way, it is encouraging to know that Americans are beginning to see the truth about how Biden and his vision for America will only bring ruin to us all, and that it is time we did something about it.
Simmons linked to a Fox Sports clip in which the "F--- Biden" was quite audible on the air. Simmons did not complain that the insult was "coarsening the culture."He didn't explain the MRC's double standard -- perhaps because the MRC appears to have an editorial policy in which no insult of a Democrat is too vulgar to complain about.
CNS Lets Trump Spread More Falsehoods Unchecked Topic: CNSNews.com
Biased CNSNews.com reporter Susan Jones began a Nov. 23 article by bashing President Biden's decision to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, scoffing that it "may lower fuel prices just a little for a short time." Then she served as a stenographer for Donald Trump:
But former President Donald Trump, who returned the Petroleum Reserve to full capacity, issued a statement condemning the move:
"For decades our Country’s very important Strategic Oil Reserves were low or virtually empty in that no President wanted to pay the price of filling them up. I filled them up three years ago, right to the top, when oil prices were very low," Trump said:
Trump is lying -- the SPR was not "low or virtually empty"; in fact, it was more than 80 percent full at the the time Trump authorized filling it further. The SPR holds a maximum of 727 million barrels of oil, and Trump's authorization was for 77 million barrels. At the time, oil prices had cratered due to the pandemic, so it didn't exactly require an act of political courage on Trump's part to do that, despite his suggestion otherwise. Even then, it took months to obtain the oil for the SPR, in part because oil producers opted to cut production rather than feed a market in which oil prices had actually gone negative due to plummeting demand.
Jones went on to uncritically quote Trump:
Those reserves are meant to be used for serious emergencies, like war, and nothing else. Now I understand that Joe Biden will be announcing an “attack” on the newly brimming Strategic Oil Reserves so that he could get the close to record-setting high oil prices artificially lowered.
We were energy independent one year ago, now we are at the mercy of OPEC, gasoline is selling for $7 in parts of California, going up all over the Country, and they are taking oil from our Strategic Reserves. Is this any way to run a Country?
Jones didn't mention that Trump signed a bill in 2018 that mandated the sale of 100 million barrels of oil from the SPR by 2027 to fund the government -- which runs counterfactually to his claim that the SPR whould be reserved only for "serious emergencies, like war, and nothing else."
This is just another example of CNS giving Trump a pass for repeating falsehoods, even as it nitpicks President Biden for any possible misstatement.
UPDATE: Oh, and Trump's reference to gas "selling for $7 in parts of California"? That appears to be referring only to a single station in one California town that can get away with gouging consumers because it's the only station in the immediate area. The average price of gas in the state is around $4 a gallon.
MRC Lashes Out At FCC Nominee Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center reflexively attaacks anything remotely involved with President Biden, proving that's all abouty right-wing activism and not at all about "media research." So when Gigi Sohn was nominated to the Federal Communications Commission board, the MRC was quick to lash out. Autumn Johnson spend a Nov. 9 post trying to invent a conspiracy theory that Sohn will destroy right-wing media because she has been critical of them:
The Sohn account has repeatedly been vocal about her dislike of right-of-center media outlets, especially Fox News. “[D]o you still want me to believe that social media is more dangerous to our democracy than Fox News?” the unverified Twitter account of Sohn tweeted in 2020 in response to a tweet that stated Fox News would not call Biden “President-Elect” immediately after the election.
The Sohn account once called Fox News “state-sponsored propaganda.” “For all my concerns about #Facebook, I believe that Fox News has had the most negative impact on our democracy,” the Sohn account tweeted earlier in 2020. “It's state-sponsored propaganda, with few if any opposing viewpoints. Where's the hearing about that?”
When discussing the political biases of Sinclair Broadcasting, the Sohn account suggested that the company lose its FCC license, stating “Will @FCC do anything when Sinclair’s licenses are up for renewal?” the Sohn account added.
Sinclair Broadcasting does not have a corporate FCC license; its individual stations do, and its bias is very much an issue.
Joseph Vazquez trotted out his overlyfamiliar Soros bogeyman in a Nov. 15 post:
Tech on the Rocks Podcast host Gigi Sohn, who has a documented history of left-wing bias against conservative media, is co-founder and former President of the leftist group Public Knowledge, which “has long sought more government control of the internet and media,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Influence Watch reported that Public Knowledge is a “staunch supporter of expanded regulations on internet businesses and technology companies, backing so-called ‘net neutrality’ regulations against internet service providers.” Soros’s Open Society Foundations funded Public Knowledge with at least $1,148,984 just between 2016-2020 alone.
Even more telling: Sohn was named a 2017 “Leadership in Government” fellow for OSF. Sohn celebrated via her old verified Twitter ccount: “On Jan 16, I start a Leadership in Government Fellowship @OpenSocietyFoundations. I'll be speaking, writing, etc. Follow me at @gigibsohn.”
The fact that a pro-censorship Biden FCC nominee is connected to Soros should concern every American who cares about freedom.
In a Nov. 30 post, Catherine Salgado was mad that "Soros-linked" Sohn refused to buy into the right-wing social media "censorship" narrative:
Sohn has openly mocked the idea that there is biased censorship of conservatives online. “For years, @Twitter & @Facebook tried to appease @realDonaldTrump & other right-wing extremists on phony claims of conservative bias. It didn't work,” Sohn tweeted from her unverified account in May 2020. She also slammed Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) for highlighting online bias. “No shock - @Jim_Jordan rants and raves about so-called anti-conservative bias on online platforms, which we all know is a bunch of BS,” Sohn tweeted n July 2020.
Media Research Center President Brent Bozell tweeted, “Biden’s pick for the FCC is an enemy of free speech. Gigi Sohn is another far-left Biden nominee like Comrade Omarova. Her views are a threat to free speech online and on TV. Senators should oppose Sohn's ridiculous nomination.”
Salgado didn't seem to notice that the fact her boss used social media to trash Sohn sorta blows a hole in the MRC's "censorship" narrative.
Salgado joined in Johnson's conspiracy-mongering that "Sohn has also indicated that she will censor non-leftist voices, particularly through her repeated attacks on Fox News" and "impl[ied] she would expand government power over the internet."
WND's Farah Keeps Up The COVID Conspiracy Theories Topic: WorldNetDaily
Conspiracy-minded WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah loves his COVID conspiracy theories, and he has kept plugging away on that front. In his Nov. 28 column, he found a conspiracy in the naming of the omicron variant:
The World Health Organization, a lackey for the Chinese, skipped the Greek letter "Xi," as in President Xi Jinping, and chose "Omicron" as the name of the newest COVID variant, to avoid "stigmatizing a region."
For scientists, emergence of the variant likely raises concern around the mutation and effect of the virus, but for Greek alphabet fans, it raises the question, how did we get from "Mu" to "Omicron"?
According to Paul Nuki, the Global Health Security editor for the Telegraph, an anonymous WHO source has confirmed the letter "Xi" was skipped to "avoid stigmatizing a region."
It is seemingly the case that the "region" the WHO hopes to preserve from "stigmatization" is President Xi, the strongman of China.
[...]
To summarize, the World Health Organization is a compromised organization, beholden to an authoritarian dictator who is petty enough to apparently ensure that the letter "Xi" was skipped to protect himself from any blame for the virus. Skipping over the letter signifies the deep influence of China over the organization.
It signifies that the WHO is willing to employ social justice jargon around "stigmatization" to defend a regime that sends Muslim Uighurs to concentration camps.
Farah kept up the misinformation in his Dec. 6 column:
One thing we can be sure of with viruses: You better hope no one, like the Chinese Communist Party or Anthony Fauci, crosses one of these deadly bioweapons with the common cold.
That would be really bad – no matter how it happened.
Well, guess what? It has happened! Somehow we're being told, in otherwise hushed tones, that the omicron variant of the original virus that causes COVID-19 (read China-Fauci flu) "may have picked up genetic material from another virus that causes the common cold," the Washington Post reported Saturday.
It was a very short and seemingly innocuous new story. I wouldn't have seen it if someone had not sent it to me. I wish I hadn't! Sometimes the news is so bad, I wish I had gone into a different business.
They didn't just bury the lead. They buried what could be the story of the decade!
[...]
The blessing is, while omicron is easier to catch, it seems to be a snap to get rid of – or so it seems they're telling us now. But who knows what they'll be telling us tomorrow?
In fact, the omicron variant -- like all COVID variants --is "genetically distinct" from the common cold, and it appears to be more dangerous than the common cold, especially for those who have not been vaccinated.
Farah concluded with one last bit of conspiracy-mongering: "That's also why we should not be tolerating how we're being denied prescriptions for a host of safe therapeutics that can be used for treating even the original COVID-19. For some reason, the Big Pharma kingpins won't allow most of them to be readily available to the American people."
MRC's Houck Takes His Love Of Doocy to His Boss' Podcast Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck has been spreading his love of biased Fox News reporter Peter Doocy -- and his abject hatred of White House press secretary Jen Psaki -- inNewsBustersblogpostsformonths. Now he's doing it in person. He made an appearance on his boss Tim Graham's Dec. 3 podcast to join him in fawning over Doocy some more.
Houck began by regurgitating a question Doocy wrote, then complained that Psaki "insisted that Doocy needs to put it in full context, that he's somehow missing something. That's one of her tropes that she uses. She sometimes plays dumb, like she didn't hear what you asked her." He then cheered a Biden mask gotcha that right-wingers love to do, which Graham cheered as an "optics question." Graham then pretended Doocy's biased questioning wasn't biased: "These are good questions, and they're holding him accountable, and this is the kind of question you would want them all to ask him. And I dont think that they come off as -- they certainly come off as questions that are not intended to make Biden look good. I don't think they're necessarily seen as right-wing questions."
Houck went on to tout a Doocy attack on Dr. Anthony Fauci, which he claimed started as "a technically benign question. You could argue he was setting a trap, we'll just roll with it." Graham sneered that the exchange showed "what we all know, and that is Dr. Fauci is a bureaucrat first and foremost," adding that he "was looking forward to" Doocy's attacks on Fauci. Houck then touted another biased gotcha question from Doocy to Psaki. He then bashed "liberal" reporters in the White House briefing room of pushing "narratives" -- a word he doesn't use in describing Doocy's questions.
Disappointingly, Houck and Graham didn't do much more beyond rehashing right-wing talking points. But their love of Doocy and hatred for Psaki remains all too clear.
Graham and Houck went on to other subjects, at one point declaring that people who are vaccinated but are overly careful about going out in public should be mocked as much as anti-vaxxers, adding that "the vaccinations should count for something." Did Graham not notice that the website he's the executive editor of (and where Houck is the managing editor) regularlypushes anti-vaxxer arguments?
CNS' Donohue Continues to Misinform About Catholic Clergy Sexual Abuse Topic: CNSNews.com
Right-wing Catholic activist Bill Donohue has long been dishonest about the issue of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church -- eager to heap blame on the supposed exess of gay priest when the reality is that many were crimes of opportunity than of sexual orientation -- and he's made it clear he will continue to be dishonest about. Donohue complained in a Nov. 8 CNSNews.com column:
Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson recently released a "Report on Clergy Sexual Abuse" that bears scrutiny. There are many aspects to it that are seriously tainted.
In the Executive Summary of the report, it says that in August 2018, Peterson's Department of Justice announced that it was seeking information from "individuals who had suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a member of the clergy or an adult in a position of authority."
Why were the clergy singled out for an investigation and not anyone else? The report offers no explanation. It cannot be that there has been a rash of news stories on current cases of clergy abuse — there has not been.
[...]
As I detail in my new book on this subject, "The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes," sexual abuse of minors is rampant throughout a wide range of institutions. Moreover, given the undeniable progress that the Catholic Church has made, it makes it even more indefensible to focus exclusively on it.
Donohue is playing dumb here. Most religious denominations don't have the rigid structure and hierarchy that the Catholic Church does, which makes it easier to demonstrate the patterns of abuse and cover-ups that have been documented over the years.
Donohue then went to his go-to complaint, that gays aren't being blamed:
Then there is the proverbial cover-up. Boys are mentioned 203 times in the 174-page report; girls are cited 16 times. That's because, as always, boys were the most likely to be victimized.
When the report says that "Many of the victims of clergy sexual abuse were teenage boys," it is being deceitful. When 91.5 percent of the victims were teenage boys, that's not "many." That's almost all.
Why does this matter? Because 92.2 percent were postpubescent. And that means that homosexual priests were responsible for over 90 percent of the alleged cases of sexual misconduct. Yet never once in the report is the word "homosexuality" mentioned (there are four references to "homosexual" acts).
To be sure, the cover-up of the homosexual scandal in the Catholic Church is not unique to Nebraska—it's ubiquitous. Now imagine what Peterson would have said, and the media as well, if over 90 percent of the alleged victims were teenage girls. It would have been trumpeted far and wide.
But as we've noted, researchers for the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who compiled an independent study of the abuse, stated that no connection was found between homosexual identity and an increased likelihood of sexual abuse and argued that the idea of sexual identity should be separated from the problem of sexual abuse, since one does not have to have a homosexual identity to commit homosexual acts. Indeed, Donohue offered no evidence whatsoever that any of the priests accused of sexual abuse identified as homosexual.
He then served up one of his favorite distractions: "I am calling on Attorney General Peterson to launch a probe of the sexual abuse of minors in Nebraska's public schools." He offered no proof that there's any sexual abuse scandal or cover-up that rivaled what has happened in the Catholic Church.
In his Nov. 11 column, Donohue cheered a church report showing a reduction in sexual abuse reports, which he attributed to weeding out gay priests:
There is no other institution in society where adults regularly interact with minors that can match this record. But don't expect state attorneys general to launch a probe of the sexual abuse of minors in any of them, especially the public schools, where it is sorely needed.
What has changed is a reduction in the percent of abuse committed by homosexuals. Typically, 8 in 10 cases of abuse involve male-on-male sex, the victims being boys. The latest data show that this figure has dropped to 6 in 10. The decrease makes sense: the seminaries have done a much better job screening for candidates who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies.
We continue to deplore the failure of the media to cite data which contradict the false narrative that the scandal is ongoing. That is a lie.
Donohue concluded by plugging his new book on the subject:
As I demonstrate in my new book, "The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes," the sexual abuse scandal effectively ended decades ago. The book also addresses the two major parties to the scandal: enabling bishops and homosexuals priests, and why they did what they did.
We can assume that Donohue's is as biased and dishonest as his previous work on the subject.
WorldNetDailiy and Newsmax started out in the same place -- as anti-Clinton propaganda operations in ther 1990s -- but have ended up in very different ones. Newsmax learned how to generate sustainable revenue and picked the right sugar daddy in Richard Mellon Scaife while WND descended into hateful conspiracy theories, which led to things like Joseph Farah being a tad bitter that Scaife didn't send any money his way. Today, Newsmax is riding the Trump train to being a farther-right alternative to Fox News (while attracting a lawsuit or two), while WND is begging for money to keep from going out of business for good.
So it's a bit interesting that WND's Joe Kovacs devoted a Nov. 7 article to sympathizing with the anti-vaxxers pulling shenanigans at Newsmax:
Journalists at one news agency have become embroiled in piercing controversy over reports of a company-imposed vaccine mandate and claims by its White House correspondent the COVID shot contains a satanic marker allowing people to be tracked.
On Friday, Newsmax anchor Steve Cortes indicated he would defy the COVID-vaccine mandate his own company purportedly issued the previous day.
"I will not comply w/ any organization's attempt to enforce Biden's capricious & unscientific Medical Apartheid mandate. I will not be forced into the injection, nor will I disclose my vaccination status," Cortes tweeted late Friday.
"No one should be pressured to choose between medical privacy & their job."
But as we've noted, Newsmax got tired of Cortes' shenanigans -- his weak ratings were apparently as much of an issue as his anti-vaxxer rantings -- and cut him loose at the end of November.
Kovacs went on to treat Newsmax correspondent Emerald Robinson's bizarre rantings about linking vaccines to Satan because of an enzyme called luciferase as perfectly reasonable:
Luciferase is a bioluminescence marker in a class of enzymes that can produce light in a chemical reaction, as when fireflies emit their own glow.
The word derives from the same Latin root used in "Lucifer" meaning "light-bearer" that appears once in the Bible to refer to Satan the devil: "How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, You who weakened the nations!" (Isaiah 14:12 NKJV)
Robinson's tweet has since been taken down and her Twitter account was subsequently suspended.
While the CDC maintains luciferase is not in any COVID vaccine, Robinson vociferously disagrees, and wrote an article titled, "What is Luciferase? How a firefly enzyme that glows might herald the end of the world."
In it, she alleges a diabolical plot by Big Pharma to hide the actual ingredients of COVID shots so people will remain unaware of the government's desire to track individuals with the presence of luciferase in their bodies.
"Under the cover of vaccinating people, we are really preparing to tag and track people," Robinson writes.
[...]
Elliot Jacobson, the company's executive vice president and chief content officer, said in another statement that the company is a "strong proponent that COVID-19 vaccines are overarchingly safe and effective."
'We have seen no evidence to suggest LUCIFERASE or LUCIFERIN are present in any vaccines or that they are used as any sort bioluminescent marker," Jacobson said.
Jacobson also told the Hill that Newsmax does not believe "the vaccines contain any toxic materials or tracking markers."
Newsmax also got tired of Robinson's shenanigans, and she too no longer works there.
WND's insistence on treating conspiracy theorists with the same gfavity as evidence-based experts and analysis is one big reason why it's in the dire financial situation it is.
UPDATE: Joseph Farah himself praised Cortes' and Robinson's anti-vaxxer rantings in his Nov. 8 column, declaring, "It was a bad day for reporters battling COVID restrictions – but maybe it actually was a heroic day." He added: "Is the nation divided? Is the world split asunder? Are families disconnected by these mandate policies? Are companies? How about the media? You betcha! And we haven't seen the end of it."
If you're a right-wing social media site, the Media Research Center wants to give you some free (or paid, we don't know) PR. It did so for Parler -- even going so far as to censor the conflict of interest that chief Parler funder Rebekah Mercer is also a major funder of the MRC -- it did so for the MyPillow guy's operation, it did so for GETTR, and now it's doing so for Donald Trump's new social media operation.
Bob Unruh spent a Nov. 23 WorldNetDaily 
CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor and supposed deficit hawk Terry Jeffrey 
It says something about the kind of year it's been on the ConWeb that we haven't had a chance until now to further review one of the Media Research Center's most malicious and bogus right-wing narratives.
CNSNews.com likes to have meltdowns over the idea that other people don't hate transgender people as much as they do, particularly Democratic government officials iike 
We've documented how the Media Research Center is trying to downplay the events of Jan. 6 by denying that it was an insurrection against the government. It hasn't stopped doing that.
We've noted
Biased CNSNews.com reporter Susan Jones began a Nov. 23 
The Media Research Center reflexively attaacks anything remotely involved with President Biden, proving that's all abouty right-wing activism and not at all about "media research." So when Gigi Sohn was nominated to the Federal Communications Commission board, the MRC was quick to lash out. Autumn Johnson spend a Nov. 9 
Conspiracy-minded WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah 
The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck has been spreading his love of biased Fox News reporter Peter Doocy -- and his abject hatred of White House press secretary Jen Psaki -- 
Right-wing Catholic activist Bill Donohue has 
WorldNetDailiy and Newsmax started out in the same place -- as anti-Clinton propaganda operations in ther 1990s -- but have ended up in very different ones. Newsmax learned how to generate sustainable revenue and picked the right sugar daddy in Richard Mellon Scaife while WND descended into hateful conspiracy theories, which led to things like Joseph Farah 
