With these 21 articles, Newsmax has run at least 191 articles attacking DirecTV for dropping it since it happened on Jan. 25.And none of these articles mentioned that DirecTV replaced Newsmax with another right-wing channel, The First, which means no viewpoint "censorship" is happening.
Meanwhile, Newsmax unironically ran a wire service story on Feb. 15 stating how that "For the first time ever, U.S .adults will spend more time this year watching digital video on platforms such as Netflix, TikTok, and YouTube than viewing traditional television, Insider Intelligence forecast Wednesday." Newsmax has pointed out that "it offers its feed for free on its website, on YouTube and on multiple streaming platforms such as Roku, so viewers with DirecTV service will still be able to watch it -- which would seem to show that Newsmaxdoesn't actually need to be on DirecTV and that everyone who really wants to watch it has found a way to doing so.
Newsmax also continues to have columnist complain on its behalf. Kenny Cody ranted in a Feb. 14 column:
Nearly one year after removing the conservative leaning One America News Network (OANN), from their channel lineup, DirecTV decided to drop Newsmax, a conservative-leaning outlet.
While DirecTV is arguing that both decisions were based upon non-negotiable contractual terms, the sense from Newsmax is that the provider wanted conservative voices, reporting, and voices silenced across their medium and perhaps thinks that both the Biden administration and other Democratic politicians had a significant influence regarding its decision to remove the network from its channel lineup.
Cody censored the fact that DirecTV replaced Newsmax with another right-wing channel, so no "conservative voices" are being "silenced." But the victimization narrative is a hard one to break, so Cody just kept ranting, with an added bit of pretending it's not government interference into private business matters if the government looked into this particular private business matter:
While it can be argued that Big Tech is working against conservative voices, a proper investigation should be launched to ensure if there was actual interference or influence by federal government officials, over companies like DirecTV.
It's not pro-big government to investigate the connection between government and private companies if it means they have a political bias, a bias demonstrated by impinging upon speech platforms.
It would be a giant step forward for the GOP if this connection were probed and proven by both U.S. Senate and U.S. House Republicans.
Dennis Kneale cheered Newsmax's strategy of screaming loudly over being on the bad end of a business decision in his Feb. 15 column:
By now, AT&T must be regretting the decision by executives at its DirecTV service to oust the Newsmax network from the 13-million-subscriber platform. The Newsmax response has been vociferous and effective, enlisting a platoon of conservative allies to side with the cable network.
Newsmax has fought back against its much larger foe by running a non-stop barrage of on-air stories about the clash, and online coverage on its website, and referrals to a new fight website. It also has used Twitter as a megaphone and a rallying point for supporters.
What AT&T and DirecTV brass may have viewed as a negotiation over new fees has blown up into a fight against Big Tech censorship. And with good reason.
DirecTV canceled a smaller conservative network, OAN, last April, after a few Democrats called on media platforms to pull the plug on conservative networks for spreading "misinformation." Now this?
He too failed to disclose thatDirecTV replaced Newsmax with another right-wing channel.
CNS Brings Back Men's Rights Activist To Complain About Women Topic: CNSNews.com After a gap of several months, CNSNews.com has started running new columns by shady men'srights activist Edward E. Bartlett, and he's just as hateful of women as feminism as ever. For his Dec. 5 column -- his first CNS column since June 21 -- Bartlett complained that men aren't seeing enough equality:
Twelve years ago the United Nations established UN Women, a step heralded as a “historic step in accelerating the Organization's goals on gender equality and the empowerment of women.” Indeed, women are disadvantaged, compared to men, in such areas as sex-selective abortion, early sex trafficking, and other areas.
But what about gender equality for men?
He then made the kind of complaints that men's rights activists do, such as that men are less likely to have custody of their children and that "Men are nearly twice as likely as women to be victimized by a false accusation." He concluded by huffing that "Perhaps it’s high-time that the United Nations establish a new agency for UN Men."
Bartlett's Dec. 15 column ranted against the proposed Students' Access to Freedom and Educational Rights (SAFER) Act, which he complained would change "sex" to "gender identity" in college sexual misconduct cases and, more worrying to him, "proposes a far broader definition that would encompass virtually all sex-related conduct that is perceived to be 'unwelcome,'" which he claimed "would open the door to an avalanche of false allegations of “sexual harassment” against men."
Baertlett raged against UN Women again in his Dec. 19 column, complaining that "The Marxist narrative that marriage is dangerous was once again promoted to unsuspecting women around the world" because of it. He concluded:
All of this to show how the Marxist-feminist vision to obliterate social and biological distinctions is a sure-fire recipe for the dissolution of the institution of marriage.
There’s a word that captures the sheer depravity of the UN Women scheme: Evil.
Bartlett began his Jan. 13 column by going into right-wing conspiracy theory territory before mounting his usual men's rights hobby horse:
Marc Morano recently published a brilliant exposé that reveals the neo-Marxist plan to install the New World Order. The Great Reset explains how progressives fabricate false narratives, with the aim of stampeding the public into demanding the passage of new laws that curtail freedom. Exhibit A is the COVID-driven vaccine mandates, face-mask dictates, and school closures, despite the fact that COVID was deemed to be “ one of the least deadly pandemics…over the last 2,000 years.”
Another false narrative has taken hold in the public consciousness, a narrative that pertains to the issue of domestic violence.
Recently the Centers for Disease Control reported its latest findings on domestic abuse. The CDC found that each year, 6.5 million men and 5.6 million women are victims of physical violence by an intimate partner. That’s right – domestic violence is a problem that affects more men than women.
[...]
In stark contrast to decades of peer-reviewed studies, feminists refuse to acknowledge the existence of female-perpetrated abuse. That’s because they believe domestic violence is an outgrowth of power imbalances between men and women, what they glibly refer to as the “patriarchy.”
Kowtowing to the feminist line, the Washington Post recently published an article titled, “Climate Change Puts More Women at Risk for Domestic Violence.” No surprise, the article never hints at the fact that domestic violence is a problem that affects men and women equally.
[...]
It's a common-sense proposition to assert that weather crises are stressful events that can trigger partner abuse. But the Washington Post needs to stop publishing propaganda-like claims based on junk science about extreme weather events rooted in an extreme gender ideology.
Bartlett spent his Jan. 23 column joining other men's rights activists in taking the side of Johnny Depp in his defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife, Amber Heard:
Columnist Katie Jgln is one of those activists who loves to promote Leftist narratives about men and marriage. Like many feminists, Jgln (that’s how she really spells her name) reflexively blames the “patriarchy” whenever things don’t turn out the way she might like.
During last summer’s defamation trial of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, for example, JgIn made this claim:
“Because if there’s one thing this whole situation is actually a perfect example of, it’s how the patriarchy — the social system feminism is fighting to dismantle — works.”
Really, Katie?
Heard admitted to being a domestic abuser when she lectured Depp, "I did not punch you, I was hitting you." And persons who watched the trial, myself included, doubted the truthfulness of many of Amber’s statements. An article published in the Journal of Forensic Psychology Research concluded that indeed, Heard was an inveterate liar.
But the authors of the study did not conduct any interview with either Depp or Heard, and the study was concluded before the trial. Forensic psychologists say that "Psychiatric opinions about an individual should not be given without appropriate effort to personally examine that individual. Nor should they be given lightly, inside or outside of a courtroom. Bartlett continued to complain:
Regarding domestic violence, there’s the misnamed (and probably unconstitutional) Violence Against Women Act. When the U.S. Senate held a hearing< on October 5, 2021 to reauthorize the law, all mention of male victims was swept under the rug.
Examples abound of the harsh treatment of men by the criminal system. Keeping in mind that more men than women are victims of domestic violence, one would expect the proportion of males and females arrested for domestic violence would be approximately even. But the Department of Justice documents that four out of five arrests for partner abuse are of men.
All three of these could be counted as triumphs for the Matriarchy.
MRC Continues Hypocritical Obsession With Soros' Donations Topic: Media Research Center
In December, the Media Research Center continued its obsession with George Soros by tallying up the money he has given to various causes -- you know, like like right-wing moneybags have donated to the MRC (not that it will bring up that part). It kept up the manufactured outrage that Soros does what every other politically inclined billionaire does throughout January. The MRC's chief Soros obsessive, Joseph Vazquez, complained in a Jan. 4 post:
Leftist billionaire George Soros was apparently more heavily involved in the 2022 electoral cycle than previously thought.
CNBC reported that Soros’ Open Society Policy Center "quietly" spewed $140 million “to advocacy organizations and ballot initiatives in 2021,” which is in addition to the over $170 million he "personally" spent to bolster Democratic candidates and campaigns in the 2022 midterm elections. It gets worse.
CNBC noted that the new numbers bring Soros’ multimillion-dollar agenda to buy up elections and political influence to roughly $500 million since January 2020.
[...]
Soros once stated that his goal was “to become the conscience of the world,” according to late New York Times reporter Michael T. Kaufman’s 2002 book Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire. He clearly wasn’t kidding.
In this regard, Soros is no different from other billionaires, including the right-wing ones who help fund Vazquez's paycheck -- that that Vazquez will tell you that, of course, and he would never accuse, say, the Mercers of having "spewed" donations to the MRC.
This was followed by the MRC's own work the next day, as compiled by Vazquez and Dan Schneider:
Leftist billionaire George Soros has been using his enormous fortune to buy influence around the world through news and activist media organizations for decades.
A new MRC Business analysis revealed that Soros specifically funneled at least $131,111,250 between 2016 and 2020 into 253 journalism and activist media groups worldwide to spread his radical leftist ideas on abortion, Marxist economics, anti-Americanism, defunding the police, environmental extremism and LGBT fanaticism. Soros pumped a whopping $103,236,632 into media groups that circulated his extreme views throughout the U.S. and abroad between 2000 and 2014. Fast forward to the period between 2016-2020, and Soros blew past the $100 million global media funding milestone again in just a four-year timespan.
Vazquez and Schneider offered nothing but cherrypicked examples that are really no worse than the anti-abortion extremism pushed by their employer. Still, the point of all this was to get a TV hit out of it, and as it was going live, MRC chief Brent Bozell ran to Fox Business, where he knew he could spout his talking points at Stuart Varney without challenge :
One-hundred and thirty-one million dollars is “far more than any entity, any foundation, anyone else probably in the world investing in [media],” Bozell noted. “This is a man who wants to fundamentally change the world.” Bozell also rebuked the media, remarking that it’s the “tip of the spear for the left and it's George Soros who’s funding it.”
The MRC's anti-Soros activistm got even more attention in the right-wing media bubble, and Vazquez dutifully transcribed in in a Jan. 6 post:
Conservative radio host Mark Levin has apparently had it with leftist billionaire George Soros wielding colossal influence over American politics and society.
Levin tweeted on Jan. 5 that “Soros has spent decades using enormous sums of money to overthrow our society.” He then called on the “[t]he GOP [to] look at what [Soros’] massive network of anti-American groups are doing.” MRC Business can help with that. Levin’s tweet came just before MRC Business released its second report in its three-part research series on Soros’ enormous ties to the global media.
Vazquez hyped the work of other fellow Soros-haters in a Jan. 11 post:
New research has put a dollar amount on the ungodly amount of cash leftist billionaire George Soros has poured into global politics in the past 23 years, and it’s in the billions.
The Capital Research Center (CRC) reported Jan. 4 that new filings reveal that Soros’ “nonprofit empire has poured out nearly $21 billion since 2000, making him perhaps the biggest ATM for leftist political causes in the world.”
To put that into perspective, The University of California Berkeley projected that if one were to save money at a rate of $100 per day, it would take 27,397 years to save $1 billion. That means it would take a person saving $100 per day roughly 575,342 years to save up to the $21 billion Soros unleashed since 2000 in an effort to secure the leftist political outcomes he desired in the U.S. and around the globe.
Vazquez seems jealous that Soros has that kind of money to spend. He also didn't mention that the CRC has a history of shoddy "research" that, when we exposed it, caused it to accuse us of inciting civil unrest for doing so.
Vazquez found another bubble person to spew anti-Soros hate from the MRC's favorite misinformingpodcaster in a Jan. 13 post:
Podcast host Joe Rogan was blunt in calling leftist billionaire George Soros's vast political power in global politics “terrifying” and equated him to a Batman villain.
Soros is like “an evil person in a Batman movie,”Rogan quipped during the Jan. 12 edition of The Joe Rogan Experience with guest and former CIA covert operations officer Mike Baker. Rogan referenced Soros’ gambit to spend millions of dollars to elect leftist extremist district attorneys and politicians in order to advance his radical agenda.
“It’s fucking terrifying,” Rogan said. “He donates money to a very progressive, very leftist — whether it’s a DA or whatever politician — and then funds someone that’s even further left than them to go against them.”
According to Rogan, “[H]e’s playing like a global game and then he enjoys doing it.” Recent research suggests Soros has spent $21 billion on global politics since 2000 to move the societal needle towards his dystopian worldview.
Vazquez and Schneider served up the finalpart of their anti-Soros screed in a Jan. 17 post:
The over $32 billion that leftist billionaire George Soros poured into his organizations to spread his radical “open society” agenda on abortion, Marxist economics, anti-Americanism, defunding the police, environmental extremism and LGBT fanaticism around the globe has paid dividends.
In fact, his funding has helped him establish ties with some of the biggest name media personalities in the United States and abroad which help indoctrinate millions with his views on a day-to-day basis. MRC Business found at least 54 prominent media figures (e.g. reporters, anchors, columnists, editors, news executives and journalists) who are tied to Soros through their connections to organizations that he funds. These include personalities like NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt and The Washington Postexecutive editor Sally Buzbee.
[...]
Soros’ $131 million in media spending has virtually insulated him from any serious investigations by journalists. If anything, media figures tied to Soros tend to smear anyone who criticizes him as being anti-Semitic. CNN Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour harassed Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó and accused his boss, Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, of “stoking anti-Semitism” because he opposes Soros’ radical open border agenda. NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt exploited a violent attack on Soros’ home to take a generalized swipe at his critics by painting Soros as a “target of conspiracy theories.”
Vazquez made sure not to mention that his employer has a history of using anti-Semitic tropes like "puppetmaster" to attack Soros, and his uncritically repeated the false conspiracy theory that a young Soros was a Nazi collaborator during World War II. There was also no mention of the fact that the MRC operates its own propaganda operation masquerading as a "news" outlet, CNSNews.com.
But, again, the point is to get a TV hit out of this, not fess up to double standards. So Bozell ran to Fox News the next day to serve up more manufactured outrage:
Soros “understands the importance of media and the power of media,” Bozell told Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher. Bozell also took time to slap down a common leftist deflection whenever a conservative criticizes the enormous influence of George Soros. “Remember David Koch and the Koch Brothers? Remember the Mercer family,” asked Bozell. “What they’ve given is a spit in the bucket compared to George Soros. All the hundreds of stories on [the Kochs and the Mercers] and this ‘right wing conspiracy,’ nothing on George Soros.”
Needless to say, Bozell didn't disclose that his MRC has received large amounts of Mercer money.
Vazquez touted more complementary attacks in a Jan. 23 post:
Bongino Report Content Manager Matt Palumbo peeled back “the layers” of leftist billionaire George Soros’ global political and media influence during a recent interview with The Epoch Times.
Palumbo noted that his book — The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside The Secret Network of George Soros — includes a “list of publications that are linked to Soros.”
Palumbo told The Epoch Times that Soros' well funded media empire gives him connections with some of the biggest names in journalism, which in turn allows him to be shielded him from serious journalistic scrutiny. In addition, Soros' influence encourages media figures to call anyone who dares criticize him "anti-Semites.”
“Just go on any of the publications that are Soros-linked: ABC, CBS, CNN, Washington Post, New York Times — the list, it’s a very long list — type in Soros’ name, and look at how they cover him,” Palumbo said.
Vazquez smugly added. "MRC Business’ research directly corroborates Palumbo’s analysis." And neither he nor Palumbo seem particularly curious about the shady, opaque funding behind the Epoch Times; then again, it's in the right-wing media bubble with them, so there will be nothing but softball direct the Epoch Times' way.
Vazquez and Schneider wrapped things up with a Jan. 31 summary post in which they unironically demand even more investigations of Soros. They will not be turning a similarly close eye to, say, the Mercers anytime soon -- don't want to bite the hand that feeds you, after all.
WND Unhappy With Amy Grant Hosting A Same-Sex Wedding Topic: WorldNetDaily
When Amy Grant -- whose early musical fame was as a Christian singer before crossing over to greater fame in the secular music world -- hosted a same-sex wedding for her niece at her farm, the homophobes at WorldNetDaily were, unsurprisingly, not pleased. Larry Tomczak was first out of the gate with a Dec. 20 column:
Months ago, Joe Biden hosted a gathering with gay icon Elton John and 2,000 LGBTQ celebrants on the White House lawn. If I had been invited, I would've attended to evangelize just as I have at 20-plus gay pride events.
In situations like this, it's extremely important to discern God's will. If I were a new convert, knew there'd be nudity, drugs and revelry, struggled with same-sex attraction or if I was younger and prohibited by my parents, I wouldn't go.
Apart from a strategic LGBTQ outreach, could I envision ever hosting a homosexual/lesbian event at my church or on my property? I wouldn't do it.
A news story recently stated that Christian music legend Amy Grant was hosting a niece's gay wedding at her farm. I believe she's doing this sincerely as a goodwill gesture, but it's generating understandable concern about its appropriateness and what it communicates. Having ministered with Amy in the past at "Jesus Festival" events, I know she is a loving person.
[...]
A reasonable question: "Is this another 'crossover' move, similar to when Amy crossed over from "Contemporary Christian Music" (CCM) to a more "pop culture" genre? Let's examine the situation from a purely biblical worldview, resolving not to accommodate culture but align with sacred Scripture.
Tomczak's column began with this note:
Author's note: I attempted to give this article to Amy prior to publishing. She declined to read it, saying, "Even if I am misrepresented; even if I am in the wrong, God knows my heart." Having reviewed the article first with five senior leaders, including Dr. Michael Brown and one of Amy's original pastors, we pray and entrust this to God.
The next day, Bob Unruh hyped criticism of Grant from the usual anti-LGBT forces:
Pop star Amy Grant, whose early years in the music industry had her focus on Christian music, recently announced that she is allowing a same-sex wedding, involving a family member, on her farm.
Which prompted noted evangelist Franklin Graham, the chief of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the worldwide Christian ministry Samaritan's Purse, to remind her of something biblical.
"God defines what is sin, not us; and His Word is clear that homosexuality is sin," he said in a social-media statement. "We have all sinned, and in order to have a relationship with God and spend eternity with Him in Heaven, we must turn from our sin and put our faith in His Son, Jesus, Christ, who came to earth to die for our sins."
Grant has adopted the secular concept that love is love and all love is the same
She said, "Jesus, you just narrowed it down to two things: Love God & love each other."
[...]
he Western Journal noted, "According to ChurchLeaders.com, this is not the first time Grant has openly supported homosexuality and the LGBT community. … ChurchLeaders cited a 2013 interview Grant did with the pro-gay news site 'PrideSource,' in which she referred to Christians who abide by God’s Word with regard to homosexuality as 'the religious community.'"
[...]
The Western Journal said, "Grant is heavily implying here that people are born gay in how they are 'wired' and dangerously believes that our acts and behaviors have no impact on our standing with God. She is also implying that those afflicted with homosexual urges should not feel any kind of conviction to repent and turn from their sin so long as they believe that they are 'loved.'"
The publication, like Graham, warned Grant, "Indeed, we are loved by a God who sent His only Son, while we were yet His enemies, to die for our sins so we might be reconciled with the Father. But God cannot tolerate sin and its deliberate practice under the twisted guise of 'love.'"
Tomczak went after Grant again in his Jan. 24 column for her refusal to hate LGBT people like he does:
Ever since Christian recording artist Amy Grant said she was hosting her niece's same-sex "wedding" at her farm, people have been perplexed that this professing Christian celebrity was acting to legitimize a homosexual union – clearly condemned by God, all major world religions and contrary to thousands of years of church history.
Interviewed on Pride Source, Amy previously said, "I know the religious community has not been very welcoming … but with God, everybody is welcome. Everybody!"
On Proud Radio, she said, "It's so important to set a welcoming table. … You're loved. Gay. Straight. It doesn't matter. … It doesn't matter how we behave. It doesn't matter how we're wired."
Sounds reasonable, but it's unbiblical.
Tomczak then effectively went Godwin by invoking someone who was executed by the Nazi regime through quoting him saying something he did not actually say:
As Christian martyr Dietrich Bonhoffer said, "Silence in the face of evil is evil itself. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. God will not hold us guiltless."
"Keeping the peace," people-pleasing, and "having happy families" mustn't become an idol that takes precedence over obeying God and honoring His Word.
After repeating a series of Bible quote that have no actual connection to the issue at hand, Tomczak concluded:
Christians are the only Bible many people read. The power of influence is a sacred responsibility; may we be vigilant never to lead people astray. Unfortunately, there's now a "Christian" group calling themselves "Faithful America" who've started a petition supporting Grant with over 15,000 signatures.
Here's the deal: There's hope for America and another Great Awakening if Christians remain humble, obedient and faithful to God's Word. Yes, we love brides, but the preeminent one is the Bride of Christ "not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy, and without blemish" (Ephesians 4:27).
"Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous" (Hebrews 13:4).
It seems that Tomczak is driven by hate, not compassion.
MRC Complains Again That It's Pointed Out Trump Speaks Like A Mobster Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Mark Finkelstein complained in a Jan. 18 post:
Is Don gonna make Ron an offer he can't refuse? Or maybe just cut to the chase and have him whacked?
That's what Joe Scarborough seemed to suggest on today's Morning Joe. Reacting to Trump having said that if Ron DeSantis runs against him, "we'll handle that the way I handle things," Scarborough said: "Sounds like a mob threat."
Mika Brzezinski, ever Joe's faithful echo, agreed: "former President Trump, with what sounded like a threat."
Really? Let's consider the history of how Trump "handles things" when dealing with political opponents.
To date, there have been no reports of any opponent disappearing after Don invited him on a fishing outing. Nor have any turned up in a concrete bridge foundation.
Instead of ordering hits, Trump's MO has consisted of . . . calling his opponents funny or insulting names.
"Low-energy Jeb." "Lyin' Ted Cruz.' "Lil' Marco Rubio." And now, "Ron DeSanctimonious."
Not exactly how the Godfather or Tony Soprano used to "handle things."
Finkelstein then went on to concede that, yes, there may be something to this as others have also pointed out Trump's penchant for mob-style language but dismissed the complaint as coming from the "liberal media":
The liberal media has a habit of calling Trump a "mob boss, as here, here, and here. Scarborough now accusing Trump of making a "mob threat" takes things to an ugly new level.
But hey! This is the liberal media. No prob with implying that an announced Republican presidential candidate might be threatening to murder an opponent!
All of which, of course, does not disprove the fact that Trump does, in fact, speak in mob-style language even if he doesn't fully follow through -- and, really, he's merely invoking tropes than being a real mob boss anyway; real, successfl mob bosses don't speak like that in public. It's all about image, and Finkelstein is apparently enough of a Trump-fluffer that he must defend the guy from other people making accurate observations. (which the MRC has complained about before).
(Oh, hey, look, here's a picture of Trump posing with a mobster. found just a few days after Finkelstein's post.)
Finkelstein went added: "Note: Mika and Joe also mentioned Trump's recent criticism of evangelicals, after he previously blamed the GOP's underperformance in the midterms on pro-lifers overdoing the abortion issue." But not only did he not criticize Mika and Joe for highlighting it, he didn't try to rebut Trump. In fact, this -- which Finkelstein followed with a unusually straight recounting of what Trump said -- is the only reference to Trump's criticism of evangelicals at NewsBusters, which tells you that Finkelstein and the rest of the MRC are actually scared to cross Trump. Perhaps out of fear that he may for once actually follow through on his mob talk?
NEW ARTICLE: Morris And The Midterms Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax pundit Dick Morris spent his time during and after the midterm elections making more failed predictions, fawning over Donald Trump and spitting out the occasional dumb hot take. Read more >>
MRC Keeps On Musk-Fluffing As 'Twitter Files' Slow Topic: Media Research Center
The saga of Musk-fluffing at the Media Research Center continued with a Jan. 20 post by Paetin Iselin hyping how "JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon dealt leftists a dose of energy infrastructure reality" by noting that thte world's oil and gas usage will not stop immediately and that "Billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk joined the conversation in support of Dimon." Autumn Johnson used a Jan. 27 post to dutifully parrot a new selective release of "Twitter files" given to Musk's hand-picked journlaists:
New Twitter Files show the pre-Musk, pro-censorship Twitter regime lacked “the guts to out” a watchdog group with ties to government officials that falsely labeled American accounts “Russian bots.”
Journalist Matt Taibbi detailed the reportedly fraudulent work of the Hamilton 68 dashboard, a project of the “neoliberal think tank” Alliance for Securing Democracy in the latest round of Twitter Files released today. Taibbi previously reported that FBI counterintelligence official Clint Watts created Hamilton 68, which describes itself as a "Tool to Track Russian Disinformation on Twitter." Hamilton 68 claimed to have a list of “600 Twitter accounts to Russian influence activities online.” In reality, most of the “Russian” accounts turned out to be American, British and Canadian accounts. “It’s a scam,” Taibbi summarized.
Hamilton 68 was “used as a source to assert Russian influence in an astonishing array of news stories” and “as evidence of the spread of ‘fake news’ on sites like Twitter,” he continued. “It was a lie.”
But as right-leaning Sinclair Broadcasting noted but Johnson wouldn't, the Alliance for Securing Democracy responded to Taibbi's (and, thus, Musk's) attacks on Hamilton 68, pointing out that it worked with right-wing websites like the Daily Caller to provide context -- namely, that it wasn't exclusively tracking Russian bots:
The ASD claims “members of the media, pundits and even some lawmakers often failed to include the appropriate context when using the dashboard’s data, despite ASD experts’ extensive efforts to correct misconceptions at the time.”
Those efforts included ASD voluntarily working with right-wing media publications like The Daily Caller to push back against how many media organizations were using, or misusing, the data. In an article titled “‘We don’t track bots’: what the media’s Russian bot coverage is getting all wrong” from April 9, 2018, Bret Schafer, the ASD’s then-communications director, said that most of the reporting on the dashboard was “inherently inaccurate” and “Most notably, and this is the most common errors, we don’t track bots, or, more specifically, bots are only a small portion of the network that we monitor.”
[...]
It is this point of nuance that the ASD repeated Friday in its fact sheet pushing back against Taibbi’s allegation and emphasized in its self-published guide to the Hamilton methodology. In the section “Understanding the Content” in the methodology guide, author J.M. Berger, an expert on extremism, writes “While the users in the network generally serve to promote Russian influence themes, the content within the network is complex and should be understood in a nuanced way.”
After that, there was another fallow period without new "Twitter files" to promote, so the MRC was reduced to lashing out at anyone who dared criticize Musk. P.J. Gladnick groused in a Feb. 5 post that a Politico article on Europe unifying aginst Russia in which "revelations about Twitter are transformed into just another rant against Elon Musk's takeover"-- that is, it pointed out Musk's pro-Putin leanings and how Twitter service in Ukraine has degraded during the Russian invasion. Ultimately, of course, Gladnick is mad that Politico wouldn't parrot the right-wing pro-Musk narrative: "Sniff! Gone are the glorious days of the FBI censors behind the scenes at Twitter, tragically replaced by someone who promotes the free speech that seems to be so despised by Politico and its fellow liberals. Goodbye cruel world!"
A Feb. 7 post by Renata Kiss hyped podcaster Joe Rogan complaining tha the "Twitter files" haven't gotten traction outside the right-wing media bubble and insisted that the story "as big a scandal as Watergate," going on to note that "YouTube even censored Rogan’s interview with Dr. Peter McCullough, a consultant cardiologist, for his criticism of the COVID-19 vaccines." Actually, that interview was filled with COVID misinformation, but the MRC defendedhim anyway.
Another post that day from Paeten Iselin expressed horror that Twitter "censored" a photo of a Republican senator posing with a dead animal he apparently shot, but praised Musk for fixing the situation:
On Tuesday, Twitter restricted Senator Steve Daines’s (R-MT) account when he shared a photo of himself and his wife antelope hunting — something he called their “Montana way of life.”
Daines thanked Twitter owner Elon Musk for stepping in to resolve the issue. “I am grateful Elon Musk reached out to me to resolve this issue and am glad that he recognizes that free speech is a bedrock of our country, and acted quickly to reinstate my Twitter account after being made aware of its suspension,” he said.
[...]
Even Musk admitted the censorship was ludicrous.
“This is being fixed,” Musk tweeted. “Policy against showing blood in profile pic is being amended to ‘clearly showing blood without clicking on the profile pic’. The intent is to avoid people being forced to see gruesome profile pics.”
Musk later added, “Going forward, Twitter will be broadly accepting of different values, rather than trying to impose its own specific values on the world.”
Note that Iselin only euphemistically described the photo as on involving "hunting" and didn't describe what it actually depicted, which was Daines posing with a dead animal.
CNSNews.com went into its second week of covering the discovery of classified documents in locations used by Joe Biden inbetween his stints as vice president and president the way it covered the first week -- with lots of attacks on Biden:
There was also a Jan. 24 column by Daily Signal writer Fred Lucas -- a former CNS reporter -- complaining that the National Archives "declined to answer whether anyone told the agency not to notify the public or Congress about the classified documents that were found to have been stored at the Penn Biden Center before the 2022 midterm elections in November" though it "issued 10 separate statements from January to December regarding documents it has not received from former President Donald Trump.." He didn't mention that Biden has apparently been cooperative through the entire process while Trump has been antagonistic and deceitful.
But when classified documents were discovered at former Vice President Mike Pence's home in Indiana, CNS' tone changed drastically from how it treated Biden. Melanie Arter blandly wrote about it in a Jan. 24 article:
Former Vice President Mike Pence notified the National Archives last Wednesday that a small batch of classified documents were found last week at his residence in Indiana.
According to Pence’s lawyer, the documents were “inadvertently boxed and transported” to Pence’s home at the end of the Trump administration, and the former vice president was “unaware of the existence of sensitive or classified documents at his personal residence.”
You will not be surprised to learn that CNS did not publish article after article of Democrats criticizing Pence's recklessness in harboring classified documents or fret about the national security implications. Instead, a Jan. 25 article by Susan Jones complained that the Pence discovery got Biden off the hook and showed a "systemic" issue:
Revelations that another vice president -- Mike Pence -- had classified documents at his home in Indiana is taking some of the media heat off former Vice President and now President Joe Biden -- just as the discovery of classified documents in Biden's possession took some of heat off former President Donald Trump.
"So now this appears systemic," Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), now a former member of the House intelligence committee, told MSNBC on Tuesday as the news about Pence broke while he was being interviewed.
"It certainly appears now that there's a systemic problem with former occupants of the presidency and vice presidency having classified information at their homes, when it shouldn't be there; or at their libraries or their university repositories," Schiff told host Andrea Mitchell.
That was followed by a Jan. 26 article by Craig Bannister noting that "the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) formally asked the presidents and vice presidents of the last six administrations to re-check their personal records for any classified documents or presidential records they may “inadvertently” have in their possession."
There was also a Jan. 25 article by Jones featuring Republican Sen. Marco Rubio quipping that "I think the executive branch needs to hire better movers" while referencing document issues involving Trump and Biden -- but not mentioning Pence.
But, really, CNS wanted to get back to keeping the classified-document focus on Biden. A Jan. 25 article by Jones stated:
"We're investigating the Biden family for influence-peddling," Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said on Wednesday, as the discovery of classified documents in the home of former Vice President Mike Pence home prompted media defenders of Joe Biden to describe the problem as "systemic."
MRC Writer Mad That Drag Queen Star Won't Go Away Topic: Media Research Center
We've documented how chief Media Research Center LGBTQ-hater Tierin-Rose Mandelburg melted down over drag queen Shangela being a contestant on "Dancing With the Stars." Well, Shangela has committed the offense of not going away, so Mandelburg's hateful head exploded again in a Jan. 17 post:
The word “cringe” couldn’t have been any more applicable.
Dancing With the Stars contestant D.J. Pierce, commonly known by his drag queen name, “Shangela,” went on Good Morning America Tuesday to talk about his upcoming “Fully Lit” tour and his push for drag queens and LGBTQ garbage across the nation. And the show hosts were head-over-heels excited for their special guest.
The segment started with co-host Robin Roberts literally jumping for joy waiting for "Shangela" to come out from backstage. After that, Roberts and fellow co-hosts Lara Spencer and Michael Strahan sat down with Pierce to talk about upcoming and past highlights of his life.
[...]
“We need that right now. We need that all the time but especially now [with] everything going on in the world,” Roberts interjected.
I can name about a billion things we need more of right now other than drag queens, but carry on.
And we need Mandelburg's obssessive hatred of drag queens even less. Yet she continued to whine anyway:
His added that biggest accomplishment was probably walking across the White House lawn in stilettos to watch President Biden sign the Respect for Marriage Act.
“It’s great to see, you know, our country in this way, the administration supporting the LGBTQ community, protecting the rights and the equal treatment of so many people. That is what matters in this world and I’m just happy to be a part of it and to experience it live and in person,” Pierce said.
Here’s the thing: if Pierce wants to dance in dress-up clothes, that doesn't affect me. And if GMA wants to use its air time to frivolously promote someone with clear delusion in his head, so be it. That’s honestly nothing new for GMA.
But the second "Shangela," or whatever he goes by on a given day, enters a space where children are present and tries pushing LGBTQ propaganda down little throats, that's a bridge too far.
Huh? Merely existing as a drag queen "where children are present" is "a bridge too far"? Not hating LGBTQ people is "propaganda"? Mandelburg has a seriouscomplex about drag queens -- and has clearly been indoctrinated to hate them.
We'd suggest she seek professional help, but her mental illness is currently paying her bills and she might see derailing her gravy train as a bit on the cringe side.
WND Columnist Joins ConWeb Writers Deploring Modern Art Topic: WorldNetDaily
We'venoted over the year a mini-trend of ConWeb writers complaining about modern art for being abstract and non-representational. Patrice Lewis offered her contribution in a Jan. 6 WorldNetDaily column by Patrice Lewis, which began by recalling an incident in a childhood art class in which a student who drew a "startlingly realistic" portrait who supposedly criticized by the instructor:
I never took an art class again. If art was so subjective that a highly talented student was in danger of failing because he didn't conform to the instructor's preference for abstract, then I wanted nothing to do with the art world. (Also, I finally recognized my artistic talent had plateaued around age 12.) Still, I felt very sorry for that student and hoped he wasn't too discouraged to continue practicing his skill.
This is a suitable junction to admit I'm a cultural cretin. The subtleties and nuances of art that send critics into raptures and turn investors into collectors absolutely baffles me. I have a few art books among our vast library, but any art fancier will scoff at my preferences (Maxfield Parrish? Norman Rockwell? Walter Brightwell?).
All of this is a lead-up to an opinion piece by Matt Margolis I read a few months ago entitled "Can't We Just Admit That Modern Art Is Garbage?"
That led to a rant bashing modern art as non-represetational and mostly lazy:
The verbiage used to describe modern art has long been mocked for its absurdity. Phrases such as "juxtaposing against the geometric perspective" and "representing the angst and energy oscillating through a metropolis" are thrown about in an effort to convince the viewer that the canvas in front of them is something more than squiggles, blotches, lines, or other output frequently executed by kindergartners.
While I don't care for the work of such modern artists as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, or Andy Warhol, at least these artists put some effort into their works. But click on the link to see Joseph Marioni's masterpiece "Yellow Painting." Yes, this is considered a serious work of art. Must have taken him five whole minutes to execute it.
The "plasticity" of modern art is such that hoaxes are not uncommon. In 1964, for example, Swedish journalist Åke Axelsson introduced a series of paintings by an unknown French avant-garde artist called Pierre Brassau that created a buzz among critics. The pieces were described as "painted with powerful, determined strokes" that yet "had the delicacy of a ballet dancer." However, these critics were forced to defend their assessments after learning "Pierre Brassau" was a 4-year-old chimpanzee.
Or how about the two teenagers in 2016 who, while visiting the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, spontaneously placed a pair of eyeglasses on an empty patch of floor? The new "exhibit" drew visitors who stared at, admired, and photographed the glasses as if they were witnessing something marvelous.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, tells you everything you need to know about modern art. It's neither "intense" nor "plastic." It's stupid.
"Modern art can be pretty much anything that consists of two ingredients," concludes Matt Margolis. "1) Zero talent and 2) a gullible audience convinced of its value." I'm forced to agree with him.
[...]
On the other hand, consider this: One of Piet Mondrian's abstract paintings (described as possessing a "serene sense of compositional balance and spatial order, and with superb provenance") just sold for $51 million, setting a new auction record for the Dutch artist's work. I guess P.T. Barnum had it right when he purportedly said there's a sucker born every minute.
MRC's Anti-Abortion Extremists Rage Against Abortion Pills Topic: Media Research Center
As befits an anti-abortion extremist, Media Research Center writer Tierin-Rose Mandelburg has been lobbying hard against abortion pills. A Nov. 18 post by Mandelburg cheered right-wing efforts to outlaw them:
The Conservative legal group, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), sued the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday over the FDA’s illegal approval of abortion pills. The group represents four healthcare organizations and four doctors in the first lawsuit of its kind.
ADF filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American College of Pediatrics, the Christian Medical & Dental Associations and doctors Shaun Jester, Regina Frost-Clark, Tyler Johnson and George Delgado.
Supposedly the FDA approved the legalization of abortion drugs (mifepristone and misoprostol) in 2000 by characterizing pregnancy as an “illness,” as ADF’s report noted. The ADF report also indicated the FDA “never studied the safety of the drugs” before it approved them and disregarded evidence of the harm that these drugs can cause.
ADF Senior Counsel Members Julie Marie Blake said, “The FDA never had the authority to approve these dangerous drugs for sale. We urge the court to listen to the doctors we represent who are seeking to protect girls and women from the documented dangers of chemical abortion drugs.”
[...]
The fact of the matter is that abortion doesn’t just hurt the child who is killed, it also puts the life of the mother in danger. That’s what ADF is trying to get people to recognize and understand in order to help hurting mothers and children with their lives at risk.
As we pointed out when the MRC's "news" division CNSNews.com similarly promoted the ADF's lawsuit, the abortion pill is much safer than pregnancy.
When the Food and Drug Administration announcd a plan to allow pharmacies to provide the pills for anyone who has a prescription, Alex Christy complained in a Jan. 4 post:
The morning shows of ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN saw nothing controversial about the FDA’s new policy that allows pharmacies to provide abortion pills to anyone with a prescription.
The cast of CNN This Morning spent the most time on the matter as. Co-host Poppy Harlow kicked things off with an announcement, “the FDA is announcing a big move on access to abortion. We're talking about the pill or the medication for it. This comes, of course, after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. What's changed is that pharmacies, like your average ;pharmacy is now able to sell these abortion pills to people who have a prescription.”
[...]
The move clearly had an ideological motive, which means there is another perspective on the matter, but CNN did not provide that perspective. Nor did NBC’s Today, or CBS This Morning [sic] in their brief reports.
Later that day, Mandelburg served up her own rant against the new FDA policy:
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Tuesday that it would permit retail pharmacies to offer abortion pills in the United States. From “corner drugstores to major chains,” obtaining a pill to end the life of a child just got that much easier, The New York Times reported.
Under the updated rule that stretched the two-pill combo (mifepristone and misoprostol) availability from a few mail-order pharmacies or specific doctors/clinics to places like CVS or Walgreens, more and more babies lives are going to end. Supposedly a prescription order is still needed but pharmacies are expected to have plenty of murder drugs on hand for when those orders roll in.
Other than the fact that “lethal poison” will be placed next to “antibiotics and allergy medication,” as Live Action’s Lila Rose put it, babies will be dying in masses and emergency rooms will likely be flooded with women who were injured from the pill.
Abortion pills can cause severe bleeding, infection, and require possible surgical intervention. In some cases they can kill the mother as well as the baby. In a letter to the FDA back in February, 2022, Senators James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) along with 125 colleagues presented the risks of the pill. Even so, 11 months later, the FDA yet again altered their rules in order to allow these pills to be more easily accessible.
Again, Mandelburg failed to tell her readers the fact that pregnancy kills more women than the abortion pill does.
Tim Graham even whined about it in his Jan. 4 podcast: "Then there are the pro-abortion hardliners in the Biden administration, with the Food and Drug Administration pushing for abortion pills to be more broadly available in pharmacies to make abortions more plentiful. The networks announce this news as if it's utterly non-ideological, non-political, and non-controversial. There is no pro-life view on abortion pills that anyone needs to hear."
Mandelburg spews more rage at abortion pills in a Jan. 18 post:
Isn’t it great when people we pay good money to do their jobs don’t know how to do their jobs?!
*crickets
According to a report by the National Review, most pharmacy workers who willingly distribute chemical-abortion drugs are unaware of the negative effects and risks of the abortion drug. Though the drug is extremely dangerous, pharmacists are passing them out willy nilly.
Earlier this month President Joe Biden’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made it possible for major chain drugstores like CVS, Wallgreens and Rite Aid to carry and distribute abortion pills. In order to obtain them it appears that a woman (or pregnant person lol) would need a prescription order but the pharmacies will be stocked and ready to fill those orders ASAP.
[...]
Oh lovely! So now pharmacies can pass out drugs that kills a child and has the potential to kill his or her mother too. No, literally, a chemical abortion is a “multi-day progression of bleeding, cramping, and contracting” that could take “up to 30 days to complete.” These drugs are “four times more dangerous” than surgical abortions and have reportedly increased abortion-related ER visits by 500 percent from 2002-2015. They are NOT safe whatsoever.
Regardless, according to the FDA, not only are women able to waltz into CVS to get their prescriptions, they also don’t even have to see a doctor in person in order to have a script written for them. They can virtually tell a doctor about how they want to abort their baby and that same day, visit a local pharmacy to pick up the lethal poison.
Graham clearly did notorder his subordinate Mandelburg to practice what he preaches to non-right-wing media and offer up an opposing view. Heck, Mandelburg didn't even disclose the right-wing tilt of National Review.And, again, Mandelburg censored the fact that abortion pills are much safer for women than pregnancy -- she has a narrative to perpetuate, after all.
New York just became the first city in the United States to offer free abortion pills at public clinics.
Just before the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade as well as the annual March for Life, NY Mayor Eric Adams announced free medication abortion to make it even easier for the women in New York to chemically execute their unborn children.
The city supposedly offered medication abortions at 11 public hospitals but the pills will now be free and accessible at four clinics across NYC.
The program is funded by a $1.2 million package for “sexual health services,” as reported by Yahoo News, money that could have been allocated to help pregnant mothers or provide resources other than murder for women in crisis pregnancies.
Thanks, Tierin-Rose, for admitting that you believe women who have abortions are committing muirder, which means you also presumably demand that women who have abortions be arrested, imprisoned and even executed for having one.Not that you'll admit that publicly, of course -- don't want to look too much like the extremist you are, right?
UPDATE: When PBS had on a doctor who pointed out the safety of abortion pills, Tim Graham spent a Jan. 7 post raging at both PBS and the doctor, bizarrely calling the pill's safety a "creepy talking points":
On Wednesday's PBS NewsHour, viewers received a bucket of happy talk about medication abortions from Dr. Jennifer Villavicencio. Twice, she insisted the use of mifepristone was "extraordinarily safe" -- but it's not safe for the unborn baby, who is expelled from the mother and killed.
PBS emphasized support for the Food and Drug Administration trying to "expand abortion access" after the Supreme Court's Dobbsdecision reversedRoe v. Wadeand returned the abortion issue back to the states..
[...]
PBS picked an expert that they presented as an objective media source, but it's easy to dig up that she's a hardcore abortion advocate. Planned Parenthood is a fan!
What Graham didn't do, of course, is go beyond spoiuting right-wing anti-abortion talking points to try and disprove Villavicencio.
Newsmax also put out a Feb. 11 "news" article by Lee Barney:
Since DirecTV dropped Newsmax on Jan. 24, AT&T's stock has fallen by almost 7%, wiping nearly $10 billion from its market value.
AT&T, the 70% owner of DirecTV, has come under fierce criticism after deplatforming Newsmax from its satellite TV systems — the second conservative channel it has removed in the past year, with OAN going last April.
Days after the Newsmax drop, former President Donald Trump called on Americans to cancel not only DirecTV but all AT&T services, including cellular and wireless services.
[...]
Since the removal of Newsmax, AT&T stock appears to be significantly underperforming the market while major stock indices have held steady during the past 12 trading days.
The S&P 500 actually rose 0.37% between Jan. 25 and Feb. 10, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined just 1.84% between those dates.
Unsurprisingly -- since the Newsmax agenda comes before facts -- Barney offered no evidence that deplatforming Newsmax had anything whatsoever to do with AT&T's stock drop, apparently unaware of the idea that correlation does not necessarily equal causation.Also note that Barney did not mention the actual stock price of AT&T, presumably because that would undermine his case. The stock price was $20.42 on Jan. 25, which then plunged to ... $19.07 on Feb. 10. The price on Jan. 25 was actually a six-month high, and it had been much lower -- under $15 -- last October, when Newsmax wasn't an issue.
Still, Newsmax found a way to invoke it as part of its victimhood ploy:
With the addition of these 25 article, this means that in the three weeks after DirecTV dropped it, Newsmax has run at least 170 articles attacking the decision -- and, as near as we can tell, only one of these articles (and one opinion column) reference the fact that DirecTV replaced Newsmax with another right-wing channel, The First, which negates its frequent claims that conservative views are being "censored" by Newsmax.
Meanwhile, a Feb. 14 column by Bernard Kerik complained that Fox News isn't supporting Newsmax in its victimhood:
Fox News, the network that claims to be "fair, balanced and unafraid," seems eerily silent as of late. This deafening silence seems to coincide with DirecTV's drop of Newsmax from the airwaves. DirecTV, it should be noted, is owned by AT&T.
The satellite provider, DirecTV, pulled the plug on Newsmax on Jan. 24 after refusing to go on paying a licensing fee to carry its programming.
DirecTV wouldn’t pay a penny — despite Newsmax being the fourth largest cable news channel in the nation, and having more viewers than most of the 22 liberal-leaning channels that it continues to air — and pay fees to.
You would think that censoring a fellow conservative outlet would stir outrage in Fox News, who — given the present political environment — could always be next.
However, you would be wrong.
According to The Daily Beast, Fox News "has only devoted 35 seconds of airtime to Newsmax getting the boot — via a brief mention from Howard Kurtz"on his Sunday morning media show.
"Where are you, Fox? How about you, Fox . . . We did it for OAN," said Newsmax host Eric Bolling, referring to One America News, another conservative outlet that was dropped by DirecTV last year.
Quite a difference from four years ago when Fox News offered a strong defense of a CNN reporter who was kicked out of a White House event for shouting questions at President Donald J. Trump.
Ther difference, of course, is that Newsmax is a direct competitor to Fox News, while it needs CNN around as a foil and a "liberal" punching bag. Kerik does eventually understand the former point, though he bizarrely invokes Martin Luther King Jr. in doing so:
Fox’s disgustingly transparent silence while AT&T’s DirecTV attempts to sabotage and destroy Newsmax, a major fellow conservative network, is painfully abhorrent, and raises serious questions of motiveandintent.
Why are they now cowardly? Why are they afraid to speak out?
Is this an opportunity to remain silent while DirecTV attacks and attempts to destroy their principal conservative competitor?
We can only speculate, but as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
For now, one thing is clear, Fox News is no longer a friend and supporter of conservatives, and more so, is no longer a staunch defender of our nation's First Amendment.
Kerik is deluded if he thinks Fox News ever cared about the First Amendment if it wasn't in its financial and political interest to do so.
As has been the trend inrecentmonths, the employment numbers have been so good that CNSNews.com -- which routinely labors to cherry-pick less impressive numbers when a Democrat is in the White House -- has trouble talking down the numbers. Indeed, the main article by Susan Jones on January's job numbers carried the unusually excited headline "160,138,000! Record Number of Employed in January; Labor Force Participation Up, Unemployment Rate Down," and Jones herself reflected that in the article intself:
The first employment report of 2023 shows robust strength in the labor market, as the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates.
The Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics says a whopping 517,000 non-farm jobs were created in January, way above estimates of 183,000.
"Job growth was widespread, led by gains in leisure and hospitality (+128,000), professional and business services (+82,000), and health care (+58,000). Employment also increased in government (+74,000), partially reflecting the return of workers from a strike," BLS said.
In another headline number, the unemployment rate dropped a tenth of a point to 3.4 percent -- after remaining in the 3.5-3.7 percent range since March.
Sometime after Jones' article was posted, the headline was toned down without explanation to remove the exclamation point and simply read "160,138,000: Record Number of Employed in January." Presumably, Jones was also lectured by her bosses about not positively portraying news that makes a Democratic president look good.
The only form of criticism she could find is noting that the labor force participation rate -- her favorite cherry-picked alternative number -- "is now just one point below the Trump-era high of 63.4 percent recorded in February 2020, just before the COVID-prompted shutdowns."
There was no sidebar story this month, such as editor Terry Jeffrey reporting on manufacturing jobs. That also presumably is a function of CNS not wanting to make this news look too good for Biden.
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC Wanted Brittney Griner To Rot In Prison Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center whined that the purportedly "anti-American" WNBA player was released in a prisoner exchange with Russia -- and it censored the criminal record of the onetime Marine whom it preferred was released instead. Read more >>
MRC Licks Its Chops At Prospect Of GOP Investigations Of Hunter Biden Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has longbeenobsessed with destroying Hunter Biden as a means to destroy President Biden, and Republicans taking control of the House in the midterm elections had it licking its chops at the prospect of investigations designed to further smear him and, by association, the president. Which means it spent a lot of time after the election complaining that people were pointing out this Republican bloodlust. A Nov. 20 post by Kevin Tober lashed out at an ABC reporter for noting this:
After spending the past year cheering on Congressional Democrats in their seemingly never ending quest to investigate former President Donald Trump and his actions on and leading up to the January 6 riots, including the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate and presumably prosecute Trump, suddenly investigations and oversight are bad since it’s the GOP’s turn to conduct them.
The leftist media’s blatant and shameless hypocrisy was on full display during Sunday’s This Week on ABC when fill-in host Jon Karl interviewed former Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan about his take on politics and his new book which outlines solutions to America’s fiscal problems.
Karl fretted to Ryan that his book “which looks at the financial issues facing the country,” was “not part of this campaign.” Yet if it were part of the 2022 midterms, Karl would’ve tried his hardest behind the ABC News anchor desk to demonize his policy solutions just like the media did in 2012 when Ryan was the GOP Vice Presidential nominee.
Instead, Karl bemoaned how Republicans are talking about oversight investigations into Hunter Biden’s corruption and other reportedly illegal activities by the Biden crime family.
[...]
Karl then jumped in to smear the GOP once more before the show ended: “those that are saying hell no, they won't vote for Kevin McCarthy, they like chaos. I mean, that's not an argument against it. I mean, they want chaos.”
Tober didn't disprove anything Karl said.
Mark Finkelstein spent a Nov. 22 post trying to legitimize GOP probes of the Bidens after MSNBC host Joe Scarborough "suggested that today's Republicans are making a similar mistake in investigating what he repeatedly called "Hunter Biden's laptop.'":
That was a blatant mischaracterization. As Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the House oversight committee that will be conducting the investigation has made clear, this is an investigation of Joe Biden. The question is whether Biden was indeed "the big guy" who was skimming a share of the ill-gotten proceeds that Hunter obtained through his influence-peddling schemes.
Scarborough told Republicans "they're going to waste two years and lose big in '24."
It's through that lens that we therefore have to ask: why is the liberal media so intent on trying to dissuade the Republicans from investigating Hunter Biden's dealings and the possible connections to Joe Biden? One thing is certain: it's not out of MSM concern that by investigating, the Republicans will be hurting themselves politically! We all know that old adage about not stopping an enemy when he's in the process of destroying himself!
[...]
Note: as for Scarborough's claim that Republicans are exclusively focused on "Hunter Biden's laptop," to the exclusion of addressing issues of concern like crime, inflation, and the border. Comer made the point that Republicans can walk and chew gum at the same time, and that the great majority of House Republicans are not on the Oversight committee and will be addressing those other issues.
Alex Christy was similarly defensive in a Dec. 7 post: "House Republicans have not even taken the gavels yet and CNN’s Inside Politics warned them Wednesday not step out of line with voters by investigating Hunter Biden or wokeness. If only CNN had this segment when Democrats were pursuing Donald Trump’s taxes.
Finkelstein returned for a Dec. 12 post attacking "Morning Joe" again for questioning the validity of the investigation:
Mika Brzezinski broke out her violin, lamenting that Republicans are "going after Joe Biden's remaining son," and skeptically saying, "we've gone through this. Haven't we gone through this?"
Scarborough claimed "Every time they go down this path, and they want to investigate the investigators, they want to attack the FBI, they want to attack the CIA, they want to attack the intel community. It never pays off for them." So what Team Scarborough is doing now is just mocking the investigators, facts be damned.
Democrat apparatchik Adrienne Elrod even claimed that Hunter Biden's laptop is a "frivolous" and "meritless" matter and claimed Biden's approval rating will go up because he's "delivering for the American people." Question for Adrienne: if the Hunter laptop matter is so "frivolous" and "meritless," why have your fellow Democrats brought in slime merchant David Brock to threaten members of the Republican committee investing the matter with dishing dirt on them?
So, go ahead, liberal media. Keep trying to whistle past the graveyard of Hunter Biden's laptop. We'll see who's laughing when the investigations are done.
Yes, the MRC has previously complained that Brock is fighting back on Hunter's behalf. And if those committee members have nothing to hide, why is Finkelstein complaining about Brock investigating the investigators when it loudlycheered GOP special counsel John Durham for doing basically the same thing?
Apparently remaining in flip-flop mode over polls, Toberhyped one that fit the narrative in a Dec. 15 post:
According to a Fox News poll released late Thursday evening, voters in both parties support an investigation by the Justice Department into Hunter Biden's business dealings with foreign governments.
According to Fox News Digital, "Recent revelations about social media companies tamping down the story in the run-up to the 2020 election have not changed voters' opinions — just as many feel it is important to investigate Hunter Biden now as they did this past August."
[...]
The question remains, will the networks eventually cover this poll? Probably not considering the narrative that's been set that only Republicans care about Hunter Biden's crimes. This poll has set another leftist media narrative crumbling to the ground.
As we've documented, the MRC hyped numerous narrative-advancing polls prior to the midterm elections -- despite libelously accusing the media of fabricating polls in the 2020 election -- as evidence that "leftist media narratives" were being crumbled, only to have the midterms reveal much reduced support for Repubican narratives then it thought. And, no, it's not accusing those pollsters of fabricating their numbers like it did in 2020.
The victimization narrative at Newsmax over getting dropped by DirecTV has aggressively continued as it goes into its fourth week:
After a gap of several months, CNSNews.com has started running new columns by 
In December, the Media Research Center continued its 
When Amy Grant -- whose early musical fame was as a Christian singer before crossing over to greater fame in the secular music world -- hosted a same-sex wedding for her niece at her farm, the homophobes at WorldNetDaily were, unsurprisingly, not pleased. Larry Tomczak was first out of the gate with a Dec. 20 
The Media Research Center's Mark Finkelstein complained in a Jan. 18 
The saga of Musk-fluffing at the Media Research Center continued with a Jan. 20 
CNSNews.com went into its second week of covering the discovery of classified documents in locations used by Joe Biden inbetween his stints as vice president and president the way it 
We've documented
We've
As befits an 
Newsmax finished out the third week after being dropped by DirecTV whe, yes, even more victimhood:
As has been the trend 
The Media Research Center has 
