MRC Defends 'He Gets Us' Super Bowl Ads, Hides Who Funded Them Topic: Media Research Center
While the Media Research Center normally spends its time around the Super Bowl attackinghalftimeshows, this year it chose instead to focus on commercials (as it has done inthe past) -- or, in this case, to complain about others being outraged. Tim Graham groused in a Jan. 30 post that CNN had on "a writer for 'Religion Dispatches,' a project of the far-left Political Research Associates," to discuss a certin planned ad:
On Friday, The Lead with Jake Tapperon CNN investigated the currently prominent "He Gets Us" TV ads promoting Jesus in terms meant to please centrists and liberals. Comically, CNN presented this largely as a right-wing conspiracy.
Fill-in host Pamela Brown explained: "If you're planning to watch the upcoming Super Bowl, you'll likely see a few ads about Jesus. CNN's Tom Foreman looks into the He Gets Us campaign and why some are calling this a PR stunt for right-wing politics." Notice "some" is the usual phrase for "some left-wing hacks."
[...]
In short, CNN is a sucker for the notion that any attempt to recruit people into evangelical Christianity is inherently political, and inherently opposed to the Left.
John Simmons served up a Feb. 13 post also complaining that the ads were being criticized:
Super Bowl commercials are one of the most anticipated elements of the NFL’s big game. But Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took exception to a pair of advertisements that were faith-based.
AOC criticized a pair of ads put out by the Non-Profit “He Gets Us,” an organization that tries to portray Jesus and his teachings from a left-of-center perspective.
Both ads focused on a message of loving your neighbor, which is nearly impossible for anyone to find something wrong with. I say nearly impossible because AOC did just that.
Neither Graham nor Simmons noted, as an actual news outlet did, that the "He Gets Us" ads come from a foundation that has found right-wing anti-LGBT and anti-contraception activism. Nevertheless, the MRC still tried to sanitize those ads; a Feb. 14 post by Alex Christy gushed, "The much-talked about He Gets Us ads were about having childlike faith and loving your enemies."
Graham devoted his Feb. 15 column to rehashing how the ads were criticized:
The high-dollar advertisements on Fox’s broadcast of Super Bowl 57 were pretty light and humorous, except for the dead-serious black-and-white messages pushing the message “Jesus: He Gets Us.”
This big ad campaign clearly wants to reach young people with Christian messaging in the most contemporary terms, with ads that claim “Jesus was a refugee” or a misunderstood criminal defendant. What’s unfolded is a comedy of liberals furious that anyone would recruit people to worship Jesus, as if it were a vast right-wing Christian conspiracy.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: “Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign.” If you thought that was too lame-brained to repeat, MSNBC host Joy Reid copy-catted that a bit on TV: “I think it is fair to say Jesus Christ wouldn’t spend millions of dollars on television ads promoting His image.”
Every Christian is instructed by the Bible to share the gospel of Jesus, from person to person, or on television, if possible. It’s not “fair to say” Jesus would somehow oppose that. It’s fair to say liberals hate it because they see religion -- organized or unorganized -- as a malignant right-wing sickness that ruins the culture.
Graham only obliquely referenced the funding and agenda behind the ads, by criticizing someone who brought it up:
On February 11, weekend All Things Considered anchor Michel Martin brought on Josiah Daniels of Sojourners, a “progressive Christian” website. He threw a red flag. “I think that it's sort of the height of Christian hypocrisy to, on the one hand, say we really want to accept everyone, but then on the other hand, you're taking money from people who have worked to curb access to abortion rights or they've worked to curb LGBTQ rights.”
The glaring hypocrisy here is the secular leftist media do not “accept everyone.” With zero dissent, NPR is putting on Daniels to insist Christians “should disassociate from these groups who are working to curb marginalized people's rights.”
In the end, Jesus sounds “divisive” in the book of Matthew: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.” Jesus isn’t accepting of everyone. He calls everyone to accept Him. Jesus warned of “false prophets.” These networks and their conspiracy-decrying experts fit the term.
Graham didn't actually admit that the money behind the ads also funds right-wing causes he likes -- that would have been too divisive, right?
WND Hyped Doomed Lawsuit To Overturn 2020 Election Topic: WorldNetDaily
The election denial dead-enders at WorldNetDaily were desperately hoping that a last-ditch case to overturn the election would be taken up by the Supreme Court. Bob Unruh detailed the longing in a Dec. 18 article:
A lawsuit that actually could challenge American election results, and possibly overturn them, is heading for a conference in the U.S. Supreme Court in just weeks.
The case does not allege the 2020 election was stolen.
Instead, it alleges "that a large majority of Congress, by failing to investigate such serious allegations of election rigging and breaches of national security, violated their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic," according to a report in the Gateway Pundit.
A guest report at the website by Tim Canova explains the little-known case, Brunson v. Adams, was filed by four brothers from Utah, acting as their own counsel, and it actually seeks the "removal of President Biden and Vice President Harris, along with 291 U.S. Representatives and 94 U.S. Senators who voted to certify the Electors to the Electoral College on January 6, 2021 without first investigating serious allegations of election fraud in half a dozen states and foreign election interference and breach of national security in the 2020 presidential election."
The report speculated, "The outcome of such relief would presumably be to restore Donald Trump to the presidency."
The report explained the "national security interests" implicated by the allegations allowed it to bypass the appeals court and move up to the Supreme Court, "which has now scheduled a hearing for January 6, 2023.
It would require the votes of only four justices to move the Petition for a Writ of Certiorari forward, the report said.
Of course, those allegations of election fraud were not "serious," and as such, there was no obligation for members of Congress to treat them seriously. When the Supreme Court predictably refused to take up the case -- even Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis said rejecting the case was the right decision -- WND did no article about it.
But the Brunsons promised to file a motion to reconsider, and Unruh got his hopes up again in a Feb. 15 article, this time citing a right-wing outlet slightly more credible than Gateway Pundit:
The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to take another look at 2020 election-fraud claims, and it will only take four votes for the case to come under a full briefing and arguments schedule.
A report from Just the News reveals the justices are to review a lawsuit charging that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and others, including 291 members of the House and 94 senators "violated their oaths of office by refusing to investigate evidence of fraud in the 2020 election before certifying Biden as the winner."
That meant, the case charges, that Biden and Harris were inaugurated "fraudulently."
The plaintiff in the case is Raland J. Brunson, and he's seeking the removal from office of those who committed that offense.
The court last month declined to hear the case, but he filed a petition for reconsideration and now the court has scheduled a private conference for that review.
Four of the nine justices must vote to review for a hearing to be scheduled.
This time around, Unruh inserted right-wing boilerplate about the 2020 election:
Critics of President Trump's claims about election fraud say his arguments repeatedly have lost in courts – often to decisions by Democrat-appointed judges.
But what is known about the 2020 election is that Mark Zuckerberg handed out, through foundations, hundreds of millions of dollars that local election officials often used to influence the result by recruiting voters from Democrat precincts.
Even worse, social and legacy media worked together to suppress accurate reporting about the scandalous overseas business deals that were benefiting the Biden family. Dozens of intelligence experts falsely labeled the reporting, about details contained in a laptop computer abandoned by Hunter Biden, as Russian "disinformation" when it actually was the truth.
The Media Research Center later found out, through a poll, that 36% of self-described Biden voters said they were not aware of evidence linking Joe Biden personally to those deals.
Thirteen percent of those voters, 4.6% of all Biden voters, said had they known the facts, they would not have voted for Biden.
That change undoubtedly would have cost Biden victories in multiple swing states, and would have installed President Trump in his second term.
We've debunked the MRC's conspiracy theory, which is built on polls from dubious right-wing pollsters.
The motion to reconsider failed as well; WND similarly failed to do a news article on that development. Neither of Unruh's articles, by the way, offered a balanced, opposing view on the Brunson lawsuit, which would seem to further undermine its claim to be a legitimate news outlet.
MRC Pushes Imaginary 'Secondhand Censorship' Metric Yet Again To Defend Lies And Misinformation Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has spent the pastseveralmonths pushing a completely made-up metric it calls "secondhand censorship," which is nothing more than an absurdly high number manufactured for the sole purpose of advancing right-wing narratives about "censorship" of conservatives online. It pushed that bogus narrative again in an anonymously written Jan. 25 post:
Big Tech is playing games with speech. Its primary concern is with neutralizing conservative influence online. It does this by preventing users from hearing or seeing a message that the left disagrees with.
“Big Tech kept information from users on social media over 275 million times last year by blocking influential conservative voices. All users are left with is leftist-approved propaganda,” said Media Research Center President Brent Bozell. “This is secondhand censorship.”
Even new Twitter owner Elon Musk stated that witter’s new policy provides “freedom of speech,” but not “freedom of reach,” a that has been espoused by leftists for several years. The secondhand censorship numbers document that loss of reach — the real harm that results from Big Tech censorship.
“Unfortunately, Musk’s comments about Twitter policy being ‘freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach’ only underscores the true goal of totalitarian censors on the left,” noted MRC Free Speech America & MRC Business Director Michael Morris. “Censors seek to prevent social media users that might otherwise be influenced from seeing a message that leftists disagree with. That is secondhand censorship, and conservatives can’t sit idly by and allow it to happen.”
Using our exclusive CensorTrack.org database, MRC Free Speech America documented 517 cases of Big Tech censorship in 2022. That censorship translated to no fewer than 275,396,336 times that platforms harmed social media users by keeping information from them through secondhand censorship.
The MRC then went on to hide inconvenient facts about the so-called victims of that "secondhand censorship." For example:
Big Tech’s suppressive information practices have worked in tandem with harmful public policy measures that contributed to real-world harm.
“Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health,” reads The Great Barrington Declaration. The document, which has over 936,000 signatories including public health experts and medical practitioners, calls out the negative health impacts of COVID-19 lockdown measures. “The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.”
Facebook censored the declaration in February 2021. A Twitter Files release also confirmed that Twitter censored individuals associated with the declaration. But Facebook and Twitter were not alone. Other platforms such as Reddit and Google also censored the declaration.
But the anonymous MRC writer censored the fact that the Great Barrington Declaration also called for dangerous herd immunity at a time when thousands of people were dying of COVID daily and no vaccines wereyet available.
The MRC also bizarrely complained that election falsehoods were blocked:
Facebook, in particular, was very busy censoring election-related content in the month of May, well in advance of the November 2022 midterm elections.
The platform targeted an election-related post by Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro in November, with the help of its fact-checking partner PolitiFact, as documented in a May 10 CensorTrack.org entry. The “fact-checker” flagged a Daily Wire article that cited political commentator Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary “2000 Mules.” Facebook applied a notice to the post that claimed it was “partly false.” The notice also stated that “the same information was checked in another post by independent fact-checkers.” The notice referred to a PolitiFact article about the documentary that claimed it used a “faulty premise.” The movie documentary examined voter fraud in the 2020 election by using cell phones’ geolocation data.
The secondhand censorship effect of the fact-check harmed Shapiro’s 8.5 million Facebook followers because they weren’t allowed to see information linking potential voter fraud to the 2020 election.
The anonymous MRC writer didn't explain why Shapiro should have been allowed to spread lies from a discredited film. To the contrary, Shapiro should be glad that actual fact-checkers did what he wouldn't and stopped him for spreading those lies. Meanwhile, the MRC went on to privilege more lies:
Another substantial censorship act came when both Meta platforms — Facebook and Instagram — de-platformed or unpublished the pages of the liberal Robert F. Kennedy-led group Children’s Health Defense in August at the same time, and without warning.
A screenshot shared by Children’s Health Defense indicated that both Facebook and Instagram accused the group of sharing “false information about COVID-19,” as noted in MRC Free Speech America’s CensorTrack.org database. Children’s Health Defense said that, “more than half a million followers have been denied access to truthful information.” Facebook, meanwhile, claimed the group violated its “Community Standards on misinformation that could cause phyical harm."
Children’s Health Defense had 327,480 Instagram followers and 174,266 Facebook followers at the respective times of censorship. The collective secondhand censorship effect of this suppression amounted to 501,746 times that Big Tech harmed users by hiding COVID-19 perspectives from users.
The MRC writer censored the fact that Children's Health Defense is a bunch of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists with a record of spreading misinformation, and nobody considers Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a real "liberal," as the writer wants us to believe. And, no, the writers makes no argument that lies should be allowed to spread unchecked on social media. Instead, the MRC pompously concluded:
Without being able to read opinions from both sides of an issue, we do not enjoy a free society.
The fundamental, God-given right to free speech must be protected.
Our freedom is at stake.
So spreading lies and misinformaiton is a "fundamental, God-given right" now? Since when? Meanwhile, the MRC clearly believes that there is no freedom of speech for those who call out lies and misinformation spread by right-wingers.
NEW ARTICLE -- CNS Unemployment Reporting: Reluctantly Noting Good News Topic: CNSNews.com
The country's employment news was so positive during 2022 that CNSNews.com had trouble finding ways to distract from all this positivity happening under a Democratic president. Read more >>
The Fox News Defenders At The MRC Try To Ignore The Fox News-Dominion Scandal Topic: Media Research Center
On the rare occasions the Media Reserarch Center criticizes Fox News, it's usually in the form of Heathering -- for example, hating Shepard Smith for reporting facts instead of right-wing narratives or for a single news segment that didn't hate transgender poeple enough. It almost never criticizes Fox News for the same reasons it criticizes the "liberal media" regarding bias, even though it's much more biased than any of those channels. Indeed, the MRC is must more comfortable serving as Fox News' PR division and cheerleader than its critic.
So when filings by election-tech company Dominion in its defamation lawsuit against Fox News showed that the channel's hosts knew that Donald Trump's claims of election fraud were lies but instead chose to spread those lies on the air rather than tell viewers the truth -- a much larger scandal than anything the MRC has ever accused any "liberal media" outlet of doing -- the initial response by the MRC was to censor it as best it could. In the first coule weeks after the revelation of the scandal, references to it were oblique or buried:
A Feb. 18 post by Alex Christy referenced only "Fox News and its lawsuit with Dominion" but said nothing about what that involved, instead playing whataboutism by promoting an attack by Bill Maher on MSNBC host Ari Melber claiming that the channel is just like Fox News in telling viewers what they want to hear.
Tim Graham waited until the 15th paragraph of a Feb. 19 post criticizing NPR for failing to sufficiently hate President Biden before noting that the NPR program in question "wrapped up with enjoying how the Dominion lawsuit against Fox ended with juicy revelations that hosts didn't believe in the election-fraud stories they were promoting after the 2020 votes were cast" before also going to whataboutism: "NPR has absolutely no time to talk about how they misled their own audience (playing to liberal sentiments) in October 2020 that the Hunter Biden laptop was Fake News, a 'pure distraction.'" Graham didn't mention that the New York Post -- a pro-Trump, anti-Biden outlet -- offered no independent verification of the laptop story at the time that would have bolstered the story's credibility.
This followed the pattern Fox itself used regarding the scandal, in which it not only censored the story, it expressly forbade its media reporter, Howard Kurtz, to talk about it. The MRC censored all mention of that censorship, though Kevin Tober wrote a Feb. 26 post touting how Kurtz "used the opening monologue of his Sunday media analysis show MediaBuzz to call out the media's double standard and selective outrage in how they deal with controversial comments from conservatives and leftists."
Meanwhile, Graham was playing the same whataboutism card on Twitter in a way he wouldn't commit to writing in an MRC post -- though he still clung to the whataboutism narrative in arguing with NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. A March 1 tweet by Graham admitted the Fox News revelations were "scandalous" but instead complained that "CNN puts on David Zurawik to lecture Fox has never, ever been a 'news channel.'"He them complained that Folkenflik said that Fox News "really a business operation around which is wrapped a highly ideological and political shop, around which is wrapped the public face of a news operation." Rather than disputing anything Folkenflik said, he played Hunter laptop whataboutism:
GRAHAM: This is a scandal, to be sure. But you work in a highly ideological and political shop, wrapped in the face of a news operation. Your ardor to Get Fox is part of it.
GRAHAM: OK, buddy why don't you review how you people have covered (refused to cover) the Hunter Biden laptop?? Even your "Public Editor" embarrassed herself on that one.
Folkenflik refused to respond, presumably because he saw that arguing with Graham would be futile. As Media Matters' Matthew Gertz pointed out about Graham regarding this exchange: "Devote your career to working the refs over liberal media bias --> the right-wing outlet you prop up against it turns out to be filled with liars deliberately working to elect Republicans. Maybe just sit this one out?"
Finally, two weeks after the scandal broke, the MRC finally committed something to one of its websites regarding the scandal. Graham's promotion for his March 3 podcast offered no judgment whatsoever against Fox News -- weird given its usual love of hot takes -- even though he would be ranting hard had a "liberal media" outlet done only a fraction of what happened here:
The Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News has uncovered an embarrassing collection of messages underlining that Fox's owner and stars had contempt for wild claims about Trump winning the 2020 election, but aired lawyers like Sidney Powell, who pledged to "release the Kraken" of truth....that never arrived. Tucker Carlson, for one, called her out on TV.
CNN's Oliver Darcy, one of America's premier haters of Fox News, reported with glee in the "Reliable Sources" newsletter that text messages and emails showed that privately, Fox was much harsher with these election-fraud claims than they were on television.
Fox was worried that their pro-Trump audience would leave them for Newsmax. Ex-conservative Mona Charen claimed conservatives were more interested in "agreeable fictions" than on "complex facts." Conservative journalists and conservative media critics and conservative media consumers should never be rightly accused of seeking "agreeable fictions."
In the actual podcast, his focus was not on what Fox News did, but that CNN reported on it: "It's been a glorious week at CNN. Now, I don't mean in the ratings department -- theiy are firmly in third place -- I mean the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News has revealed a scandal I think we can call Krakengate." He then summed up the scandal as Fox News having Trump lawyer Sidney Powell making claims of election fraud I dare say that in real time, most of us listening to her thought she sounded, um, implausible?"
If so, Graham and the rest of the MRC made little effort to tell their readers that; indeed, no post by Graham from that time referenced Powell. A Nov. 20, 2020, post by Mark Finkelstein complained that MSNBC's "Morning Joe" noted that right-wingers criticized Fox News for the few times it reported facts instead of right-wing spin, ironically citing as an example then-Fox reporter Kristin Fisher doing a "takedown of yesterday's press conference featuring Rudy Giuliani" -- as we have learned from Dominion's filings, Fisher was criticized by her bosses for not "respecting our audience" by fact-checking Giuliani, and Fisher said she lost on-air opportunities as punishment for it. Finkelstein waited until the final paragraph to menion that a reference "an FNC primetime host 'bewildered' by yesterday's press conference with Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell was presumably a reference to Tucker Carlson, who questioned the absence of evidence supporting Powell's assertions."
Three days later, however, the MRC was portraying Powell as a victim in a post by Kayla Sargent noting that Powell was dropped by Trump's legal team," which Twitter saw as the perfect opportunity to suspend her account for twelve hours." The following month, Finkelstein was complaining about criticism of reports that Trump was considering "the possible appointment of Sidney Powell as a special counsel to investigate the election"; the next day, Finkelstein did concede that "In this NewsBuster's opinion, President Trump would have been better advised not to have invited Michael Flynn or Sidney Powell into the White House over the weekend," but he did not specifically criticize Powell. Later in the month, Kristine Marsh groused that MSNBC employed "hyper-partisan spin" in naming Powell to a year-end list of dishonors.
In January 2021, however, it was back to playing the victimhood card for Powell; a Jan. 4 post by Corinne Weaver whined that video clips of Powell on Trump's Twitter account were among those that were "censored," and a Jan. 12 column by Cal Thomas huffed that Powell's Twitter account was "permanently banned as Twitter announced a purge of 'accounts dedicated to sharing content related to the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory.'"
Graham went on to whine that CNN's Oliver Darcy reported on all this, then tried to give credit to Carlson for briefly calling her out. Graham then shockingly criticized Fox News and Trump, albeit only barely mentioning them by name and framing that criticism as coming from the "liberal media":
But conservative media outlets also have to consider that whatever good faith they've built up with people who are not as conservative could just get wiped out when the big liberal media can all unite and show that they have thte same regard for the truth that Donald Trump has. Conservative media will not be credible if doesn't have the courage to stick with what journalism is supposed to be: Do you have a story that will stand up, or doesn't it? Is it underbaked, half-baked? Is it a compost heap? It is absolutely defensible to question election results, for a news company to let the Democrats or the Republicans challenge the results in the weeks after an election. That is part of democracy. But the bottom line of election is if you lose in court, the election is over. You can't riot your way into the presidency or a second term of the presidency, or you don't really have a democracy. Trump's lawyers couldn't win in any state, so it was over. Now, from November to December you can be a news channel and put on Republican laywers or Democrat [sic] lawyers and hash it out -- I'm sure that Hillary Clinton's people would have wanted to hash out the idea that Trump stole the election with the help of the Russians. But we should all want to question wild claims of voting machines somehow stealing millions of votes from Trump or anyone else.
But Graham's employer never did any of that questioning -- instead, the MRC manufactured its own parallel conspiracy theory that the election was stolen from Trump because the Hunter Biden laptop story didn't cause Biden to lose, based on dubious polls it bought from highly biased pollsters. Graham cannot credibly denounce Trump's conspiracy theory without rejection a very similar one pushed by his employer. Graham also failed to note that the "liberal media" did not push claims or Russian election-meddling to the extent that Fox News gave a platform to Trump's bogus election claims, which shows that they are more responsible than Fox News is.
Graham continued: "We want to root for Fox News. We root for the conservative media. The liberal media in this country needs balancing. One of the things that's most important about it is the way the other news media want to say, 'X will not be a story. None of us are going to talk about it. When Fox talks about it, that's for your crazy uncle at the Thanksgiving Day table.' This is the game that is played." Graham went on to complain that right-winger Jonah Goldberg, "who took many dollars from Fox News as a contributor and now takes dollars from CNN," criticized the Fox News scandal, when whined again that the scandal let CNN credibly criticize Fox News:
But for many of us, the worst part here is how this set of texts and emails enables Oliver Darcy and company to mount their high horses and suggest that Fox News has never, ever been a news channel. CNN, next to Jonah Goldberg, put on screechy liberal David Zurawik, who said this whole Fox News channel thing has been fraudulent since is was founded in 1996. And then comes this puke-tastic part about how [speaks in hoiry-toity voice] so-called mainstream journalism, they only provide information for the citizenry and let them make good choices. This is not really a definition of what they're doing on CNN.
Graham then went on a lengthy anti-liberal media whataboutism tangent, name-checking the pee tape, Michael Avenatti and the Steele dossier, then defended poliltical operative Roger Ailes running Fox News as OK because Tom Johnson, who was once an adviser to President Lyndon Johnson, once ran CNN (but he didn't mention that the guy who runs the MRC's "news" division CNSNews.com, Terry Jeffrey, was a political operative for Pat Buchanan's presidential campaigns in the 1990s). then it was back to whining that CNN has a point in criticizing Fox News:
Now, for us at NewsBusters, it's most distressing when Oliver Darcy touts the Bulwark trashing the conserative media critics. He wrote in his little newsletter, "Mona Charen has an excellent piece on how conservative criticism about the press gave birth to a propaganda machine. Charen, quote: "The channel that debuted with the tagline 'fair and balanced' has become comletely untethered to any standared of integrity. Its own bias bears no comparison to that of the 'mainstream media.'" At least she put "mainstream media" in quotes. But come on. She knows better. Mona Charen used to come repeatedly to the MRC to help her construct several books about media bias. She knows how the liberal media performed. So to sit her now and say 'Fox News is so, so much worse than then palces I show up now' ... So perhaps when there's a conservative propaganda machine in this equation, Mona Charen should be whipping herself for this into a frenzy.
Graham then disavowed any role the MRC played in creating Trump and the Fox News propaganda monster (which currently employs several former MRC workers, something Graham didn't disclose):
Now, you can be a anti-Trump conservative. But what we too often see is Trump somehow turning conservatives into liberals, now suggesting that the media bias monitors caused Trump. This is just a classic liberal schtick. I hated it when Politico's Tim Alberta threw it at us years ago in an interview. Came into the building, shut the door -- oh, this is kind of off the record; oh, is it? Well ... This idea that somehow NewsBusters or Brent Bozell created the Trump monster, I hated it then and I hate it now. It's not true. What you're basically saying with that whole argument that, well, obviously, you peole should never have criticized the liberal media in the first place.
Now, Mona Charen concluded with this: "For decades, conservatives longed to get the whole story into the national news. But by demanding agreeable fiction instead of accepting complex fact, they have embarassed themselves and undermined the case -- still relevant -- for fair and balanced coverage." There's another clip, I'm gonna post that on the bulletin board. Because we as conservatives should never demand agreeable fiction.
I don't accept that's what I've been doing or what we've been doing or what most of you have been doing. None of us should be comfortable being accused of being comfortable being accused of being for agreeable fiction. you can't govern a country on phantoms and hallucinations. You need some solid facts and evidence and reasoning, and we beleive that conservatism works best, and we make that case based on facts and evidence and reasoning. There is so much good journalism being done by conservative journalists you cannot slime at all as some kind of agreeable fiction that's spit out for conservatives who hate the truth. As CNN and the others try to avoid covering the bad things happening under Biden, we cannot let them suggest, "Oh, don't listen to any stories that conservatives want to tell, that we don't want to tell," That is not workable, and that's not the way democracy should work. They would have more of a high horse to ride on if they weren't skipping and avoiding and averting stories that make the Biden adminisration look bad. And we can do this over and over again.
[...]
And there's many, many people across the United States who are going to get those stories from conservatives, who listen to them on conservative media, who need that conservative media to be credible so that these stories that are real and have real, lasting impact don't get treated by crazy crackin' crap. Let's have a high standard of information, let's demand it as media consumers, and let's try to do it as conservative journalists. Lecture over.
Note that at no point did Graham specifically criticize Fox News for any specific actions it was revealed to have committed per the Dominion filings, and that he made sure not to put what little criticism he did in writing in a way that would be easily findable in a Google search. And given that we'vefoundnumerousfalsehoods at the MRC, it's clear Graham is not holding his co-workers to those same standards he's now demanding that other right-wing media follow (otherwise, Nicholas Fondacaro and Jay Maxson would not still be employed there). And if Graham and the MRC really cared that much about how conservative media is perceived, they wouldnot have waited until two weeks after the story broke to speak about the scandal.
It should be the easiest thing in the world to criticize Fox News over this scandal -- you would never hear the end of it from the MRC if a non-conservative channel like CNN was involved. But the MRC still wants to be able to have its people appear on the channel and Fox Business to promote its narratives, so it will never perform that easy layup -- it will instead pontificate and play whataboutism to protect Fox News from actual, direct criticism and preserve the right-wing media bubble.
CNS Sets Up Anti-Biden Narrative of U.S. Helping Ukraine Too Much Topic: CNSNews.com
For a guy who's supposed to be an "Investigative Journalism Fellow" her his bio, CNSNews.com writer Micky Wootten sure doesn't do much investigative journalism. Instead, his main job these days is setting up anti-Biden narratives about spending too much money on supporting Ukraine after its invasion by Russia. (If you'll recall, CNS effectively took Russia's side in the runup to the war by touting Vladimir Putin's anti-LGBT initiatives and blaming President Biden for the war for purportedly being too soft on Russia.) The campaign began with a Sept. 8 article featuring Wootten asking a CNS intern-like gotcha question of a Republican senator:
When asked whether the U.S. should continue to provide Ukraine with security assistance, Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said “yes,” while acknowledging the need for “proper oversight over everything that is being sent.”
At the Capitol on September 8, CNS News asked Senator Ernst, “According to a Congressional Research Service report, since the start of the war, the U.S. has committed $12.9 billion dollars to help provide Ukraine with the equipment they need to defend itself. Should the U.S. continue providing additional security assistance to Ukraine?”
Here's what else Wootten has written on that subject thus far, with a heavy emphasis on how much money is being spent:
Wootten has also promoted other attacks on aid to Ukraine. A Feb. 13 article touted how right-wing hero Elon Musk is limiting what Ukraine can do with the Starlink satellite communications service run by Musk-led SpaceX:
On Feb. 8, SpaceX announced that it has limited the Ukrainian military’s ability to use its Starlink satellite internet service to control drones, citing that the “Ukrainians have leveraged it in ways that were unintentional and not part of any agreement.” The service reportedly has been weaponized in the fight against Russia.
After Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Elon Musk’s SpaceX sent thousands of Starlink satellite internet kits to help the country stay online while Russian attacks caused disruptions to their internet service.
[...]
However, as the war in Ukraine nears its one-year anniversary, Musk and SpaceX have expressed concerns over the ways in which his Starlink services are being used by the Ukrainian military. Furthermore, Musk’s rhetoric online in recent weeks suggests the billionaire is among those who fear that the ongoing conflict has the potential to escalate in the coming months.
Wootten used a Feb. 17 article to tout an "anti-war" rally featuring fringe and pro-Russia figures:
On Sunday, Feb. 19, former House Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) will speak at the “Rage Against the War Machine” rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and call for a long-list of anti-war objectives, including stopping the arming of Ukraine, and negotiating a peace deal.
The rally, which is being organized by both the Libertarian Party and the People’s Party, will start at 12:30 p.m. at the Lincoln Memorial and will end at the White House.
Gabbard, of course, is a CNS favorite for being a purported Democrat who criticized actual Democrats and for spouting anti-Biden(and, thus, pro-Russia) talking points on Ukraine. Wootten also hyped that "Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters will be making a guest appearance via video" without mentioning that he too is a Russian stooge to the point that Russia invited him to speak at the United Nations on its behalf.
MRC Again Lashes Out At Rep. Frost For Being Young And 'Socialist' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center really hasa thing against newly elected Rep. Maxwell Frost for being 1) young and 2) not conservative, hanging the "socialist" or "radical leftist" label on him despite providing no evidence that he is. That anti-Frost weirdness with a Feb. 2 post by Tim Graham:
The new edition of People magazine is the latest example of a liberal media organ celebrating new socialist Congressman Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), elected at age 25.
When Rep. Adam Putnam (R-Fla.) was elected at age 26 in 2000, no liberal media outlet wrote a gushy piece about the new generation of leaders. He was white and Republican. Same goes for Rep. Elise Stefanik, who was at the time the youngest woman elected to Congress at age 30 in 2014.
But they love this radical youngster. The headline was “GEN Z GOES TO WASHINGTON: Last year, he drove an Uber in Orlando. Now he’s in Congress – the fact of a new generation rising to power.”
Graham, for some reason, was really mad that Frost pointed out how he had difficulting finding a place to live in Washington as a young adult whose first checks as a congressman hadn't arrived yet:
Just like AOC, Frost plays the card of "I'm just a regular twenty-something who can't afford a DC apartment -- yet!
He ran smack into a problem that affects millions of Americans: denied apartments because of debt and only pending income. (His first paycheck from Congress comes Feb. 1.) ”I have a light at the end of the tunnel here,” Frost says. “But these are the filters that lead to power, and it makes it difficult for working-class people to get into government.”
Frost staffers are quoted for extra gush. Trinity Tresner, 23, joined his campaign because she “says she was drawn to his ‘message of love and inclusion.’”
People wants everyone to jump for joy -- because he's black (and a Democrat).
Graham didn't mention how his fellow right-wingers like to attack Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for having worked as a bartender before getting elected to Congress -- so much for Republicans being the party of the working class. He then ranted about another profile of Frost, this one in Vogue magazine:
Notice how the media puffs the politician by saying he's receiving their attention.
Vogue also rushes to gush over Frost being impoverished: "Frost’s résumé is stacked with admirable positions, but they have not necessarily led to the kind of economic foundation usually required of a congressional candidate—as has been widely reported, he drove for Uber while he was running and also took on a significant amount of debt."
They won't check up in a few years, when Frost has a net worth of a million dollars and is still in Congress.
If Graham had ever called out Repuiblican members of Congress for getting rich while in office, he might have a point. And he again offered no evidence to back up the "socialist" tag he hung on Frost.
WND Thinks The Devil Sounds Like A Right-Winger's Imaginary Liberal Topic: WorldNetDaily
The violations and crimes of the current administration aren't what matters at this point. They are indeed the expected now, with more in store, because an immensity of lying already has gone unchallenged. These lies have been left standing to mock the masses, for whom such a vast scope of evil is simply unimaginable.
The lies of the devil:
"I don't exist, so don't waste your time looking for me – and besides, I work in such darkness that you cannot begin to appreciate my machinations."
"The ownership of 95% of news propagation, opinion and entertainment, by a handful of nameless, faceless corporate entities is only fair, because Capitalism."
"Joe Biden is of sound mind and body. He is the president. He writes everything he reads off the teleprompter himself, and he alone is in charge."
"Joe and Hunter and Jim, et al., weren't selling our country to our enemies. Joe never knew nothin', and if he did it was just honest and open commerce."
"We denied election results when you stopped our guys, because it just couldn't have happened, so you must have cheated. You denying election results is unprecedented, evil and anti-democracy. These were the most transparent and honest elections ever held."
"Our borders are completely secured. Those 7 million are just visiting. We're not pushing them to vote. We just want them to be able to have driver's licenses. But Motor Voter won't apply to them."
"The inflation, the border issues, the needless war and conflict with Russia, the destruction of vast swaths of American businesses during lockdown, the mandated vaccinations, the well-hushed VAERS reports of vaccine injury and death, the soaring gas prices and foreign oil purchases, the food and formula shortages … all Trumps fault."
"These vaccines are safe and effective and will stop the spread."
"Shutting down all businesses except the big-box stores will stop the spread."
"Wearing masks is essential. And the FDA and WHO agree that chain link fences will definitely keep out mosquitoes."
"Ivermectin can kill you! The billions who have used it safely – going back decades – are all lying anti-vaxxers."
"The crisis is too great to allow doctors to treat the symptoms as they appear. Patients should stay home and wait till they are ready to die, before going to the hospital to be put on ventilators that will kill 80% of them."
"All those old people in the nursing homes were about to die anyway."
"Printing hundreds of billions of dollars of paper money to finance our takeover of the world will not change the value of your money. And everything will be much better when we control everything."
"Alex Jones had to be locked out of the discussion. Michael Flynn was eliminated instantly because he spoke to a Russian before he was sworn in. OANN had to go because they were too extreme. Newsmax is history because AT&T had to economize. It had nothing to do with them refusing to follow their marching orders. And there's no such thing as Cancel Culture."
And finally, "This is a good war, and a small nuclear exchange won't really be that bad."
MRC's Maxson Spreads Even More Anti-Vaxx Fearmongering, Misinformation Topic: Media Research Center
Jay Maxson is the Media Research Center's resident anti-vaxxer, spreading fearmongering and misinformation (if not outright lies) to scare his (or her) fellow right-wingers against getting COVID vaccines. And despite having been proven to be a liar and misleader, the MRC is still giving Maxson an unchallenged platform to do more of the same, and he pushed one of those falsehoods in a Jan. 5 post:
The mere mention of young, vaccinated athletes possibly suffering serious health problems as the result of COVID shots is strictly verboten by left-stream media at the mercy of Big Pharma. Mediaite slapped down Charlie Kirk this week for raising the idea that Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest could possibly be related to vaccination.
The Blaze “fire starter” Jason Whitlock insists, however, the subject should be fair game for discussion, in light of Monday’s incident when the Buffalo Bills’ player nearly died after tackling an opponent.
Kirk suggested that a vaccine might be responsible for Hamlin’s injury. “This is a tragic and all too familiar sight right now: Athletes dropping suddenly,” he said on Twitter.
Maxson then got mad that "Mediaite’s Michael Luciano delivered the Left’s obligatory verbal flogging of Kirk for his repeated attempts “to cast doubt on the effectiveness and safety of Covid-19 vaccines.” But he offered no proof that Kirk and Whitlock are right and the critics are wrong.
A Jan. 18 post by Maxson went on to portray people indoctrinated in false anti-vaxx extremism who faced the consequences for believing such liees as victims of the evil "COVID Cartel":
The “COVID Cartel” has censored and canceled American skeptics of the vaccine for nearly three years, but last night several of them told their horror stories on Jason Whitlock’s Fearless special. Silenced no more, many of these victims of Big Government, Big Pharma, Big Tech and Big Media revealed shocking and heartbreaking realities that should never happen in this country.
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (Rep-Wis.) called the cover-up of harms caused by the vaccine “corrupt” and “maniacal.” He said the pandemic provided “a golden opportunity to create a climate of fear in order to gain power and control of the citizens.” Along with a persistent state of denial about the collateral damage of the health of many Americans.
In an op-ed last year, Sen. Johnson said the timing of scapegoating the unvaccinated for the ongoing pandemic was no coincidence.
The most poignant portion of the 3-hour-plus Fearless special was the story of Green Bay Packers’ Hall of Famer Ken Ruettgers (in photo), his wife Sheryl and her support group for women suffering ill effects caused by vaccinations. She thought the vaccine was safe, but a day after her shot in 2021, she experienced tingling of her lymph nodes, swelling and burning on her scalp. A baffled neurologist seriously suggested she take the booster shot and just see what happens.
Despite the fact that actual medical experts -- as opposed to the right-wing politicians and sports guys Maxson is citing -- say that such reactions are rare and not a reason to not take the vaccine, went on to cite Ken Mauer Jr, an " NBA official who was fired for refusing to vaccinate, also appeared on Fearless. He said people are being hurt and losing their lives because of adverse reactions, and said he stood on the principle of freedom. A Christian, Mauer says he’s proud to be part of the opposition to the vaccination." Of course, being Christian has nothing whatsoever to do with a desire to put one's health at risk.
Maxson ranted in a Jan. 20 post that several members of a college basketball team coming down with COVID was somehow evidence that the vaccines are worthless:
So the COVID vaccines aren’t really fool-proof? Get outa here! Maybe there’s something the deniers know that the “experts” don’t know. Take Northwestern University’s men’s basketball program; its scheduled game against Iowa Wednesday was postponed, and Saturday’s upcoming game against Wisconsin has been cancelled due to a COVID outbreak on the Wildcats team.
Only six healthy players were available for the Wildcats’ next game against Wisconsin, which announced Thursday night the game “will not be played due to COVID-19 health and safety protocols within the Northwestern program.”
This wasn’t supposed to happen. COVID, thanks to the incredibly safe and effective vaccines and booster shots, was a thing of the past. Or so we were told by the federal government and censorship-happy Big Tech.
Maxson is being deliberately obtuse and misleading. Continued mutation of COVID means that new variants more easily work around vaccine protection, and protection wears off over time, meaning that people need to get boosters to maintain maximum protection. But even if a vaccine does not completely protect from catching COVID, it does reduce symptoms and the chances of hospitalization and death.But Maxson doesn't care about facts; he (or she) just wants to fearmonger and lie:
Meanwhile, media lemmings across the country who tore unvaccinated athletes apart for not getting jabbed with the incredible shots have egg dripping down their faces. And that’s because vaccines are no more reliable now than they were in the past.
Nearly 700 million doses of vaccinations have been given in the U.S., and just three days ago the CDC was crowing about how safe and effective they are. Problem solved. Not. The CDC’s number is a statistic. The Northwestern COVID outbreak is personal for each of the players who were unsuccessfully vaccinated.
In a Feb. 24 post, Maxson touted an attempt by an anti-vaxxer group (not that it was accurately identified as such) attacking the NFL over vaccine mandates:
COVID vaccinations are safe and effective, no problem mon. Or so we’ve been told ad nauseum by government officials and media lemmings. The NFL has been urged by the Health Freedom Defense Fund (HFDF) to suspend vaccination mandates and to screen for heart issues over serious vaccine side effects. Screening is urgently needed, the Fund said in a letter to the NFL, because vaccines can cause myocarditis, especially among young males.
HFDF is a nonprofit seeking to rectify health injustices by advocating for freedom, choice and bodily autonomy. The Fund’s letter to the National Football League Players Assocation cited eight studies on the subject matter and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s warning labels on Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that the drugs come with the risk of pericarditis.
During previous seasons, the NFL heavily pressured all players to be vaccinated. Those few who refused became pariahs. Leslie Manookian , president and founder of the HFDF, told the players union head, DeMaurice Smith, “Safety signals illustrate that the near and long-term health outcomes of the COVID-19 vaccines remain uncertain.”
Maxson went on to quote Manookian uncritically blame vaccines for the on-field collapse of NFL player Damar Hamlin, despite no actual evidence to that effect. Then he found an anti-vaxxer doctor to spread his propaganda:
One can almost hear the screeching lefties on television condemning this letter that flies in the face of their nonstop “safe and effective” campaign. Nevertheless, Dr. Anish Koka, a Philadelphia cardiologist, said it’s not “unreasonable for the NFL Players Association to at least consider the fact that young healthy men now are such low risk of COVID, do you want to take the risk of myocarditis related to the vaccine?”
Dr. Koka is skeptical about screening all the NFL players because it could affect the free agent market. This argument is thin, however, because practically all NFL players have been vaccinated, free agents included.
[...]
The HFDF recommendation deserves a response from and honest consideration by the NFLPA. It should not be dismissed out of hand by shrill media lapdogs for the government’s “safe and effective” mantra.
Maxson is a lapdog for people who put misinformation before facts. Doesn't anyone at the MRC bother to fact-check Maxson's work before publishing it?
Newsmax DirecTV Victimhood Watch: The Big Slowdown Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax finished out week 6 of its victimhood narrative over getting dropped by DirecTV with further slacking off of its victimhood obsession. In the time period of March 4-7, it published no articles on at all on March 5 and 6, which the rest appeared only on March 4 and 7:
That's right -- only five articles. That makes at least 243 "news" articles attacking DirecTV since it happened on Jan. 25. There was also a March 7 column by Perkins, who heads the right-wing Family Research Council, making some of the same (discredited) arguments:
The campaign to boot conservatives from major satellite services began with COVID, but it has expanded.
A month after Joe Biden was sworn in, Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and then-Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Calif., fired off letters to 12 companies, insisting that "right-wing media" outlets were hives of "misinformation," "conspiracy theories," and "lies," which, they allege, sparked the Jan. 6 riots.
They also accused networks like Newsmax, Fox, and OAN of being "key vectors" of disinformation about COVID that "could end up getting people killed."
Of course, we know now that the only real vector of COVID deception was the government itself.
As we noted the last time someone at Newsmax brought up this letter, it was in response to the indisputable fact that Newsmax, Fox News, and OAN spread falsehoods and misinformation about the 2020 presidential election that helped incite the Capitol riot.
Perkins' lame talking points continued:
DirecTV called their January announcement to drop their fourth-highest-rated cable news channel a "business decision."
That’s interesting since it had no qualms keeping 20 other less popular channels which are costlier for the broadcaster to carry.
As we've also noted, many of those channels are carried as part of package deals to carry multiple channels from a media company. Perkins closed by ranting:
Liberals, who used to at least pretend to have some use for free speech, have dropped all pretense now.
Their pattern of silencing people and ideas that threaten their leftist orthodoxy must be addressed — or this devastating cancer will spread.
It’s time to find out if DirecTV’s actions to cancel Newsmax and OAN were motivated by congressional Democrats.
But Perkins did his own bit of censorship -- he refused to tell readers that DirecTV replaced Newsmax with another right-wing channel, The First, meaning that there is no viewpoint censorship happening.
WND Hypes Misleading Study Criticizing Masks Topic: WorldNetDaily
Misinterpreting studies regarding COVID to advance anti-vaccine and anti-mask narratives is pretty much WorldNetDaily's thing. Itr happened again in a Feb. 1 article by Peter LaBarbera:
Wearing face-masks — even fancier N95 masks — probably has "little or no" effect in protecting against COVID-19 and the flu compared to not wearing one, according to a massive new British meta-study.
"There is uncertainty about the effects of masks," concludes a team of 12 international researchers in the study published Jan. 30 in the peer-reviewed U.K. journal Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.
"Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza/SARS‐CoV‐2 compared to not wearing masks," an abstract of the U.K. study states.
Moreover, the study concludes that among medical workers, even the more robust N95 masks did not yield greater protection compared to more standard masks, which might surprise people who wear the boxier masks believing they are gaining heightened protection from COVID.
But researchers have found numerous issues with the study. As one analysis demonstrated, the study ignored how COVID spreads and how masks work, as well as making apples-and-oranges comparisons between studies:
This Cochrane Review combined RCTs where face masks or respirators were worn part of the time (for example, when caring for patients with known COVID or influenza: “occasional” or “targeted” use) with RCTs where they were worn at all times (“continuous use”).
Because both SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses are airborne, an unmasked person could be infected anywhere in the building and even after an infectious patient has left the room, especially since some people have no symptoms while contagious.
Most RCTs of masks and N95s included in the review have not had a control arm – therefore finding no difference could indicate equal efficacy or equal inefficacy.
The analysis also pointed out the low compliance with masking in the Cochrane review: "But if in a study of masking, most people don’t actually wear them, you can’t conclude that masks don’t work when the study shows no difference between the groups. You can only conclude that the mask advice didn’t work in this study."
LaBarbera isn't going to tell you that, of course -- his job is to discredit the efficacy of masks, as his employer orders him to do.
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Year of Drag Queen Rage Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center ratcheted up its vicious hatred of drag queens even more, smearing them as pedophiles and even lashing out at those who point out the hate. Read more >>
Unlike With Kanye West, MRC Has No Problem Insisting Ilhan Omar Is 'Anti-Semitic' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Reserach Center was very reluctant to tag Kanye West as an anti-Semite or to admit that Donald Trump plays into anti-Semitic tropes (which wasn't helped by his dining with West and white supremacist Nick Fuentes). But while all that reluctance was going on, the MRC was more than happy to repeatedly attack Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar as anti-Semitic -- largely by portraying any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic without explaining why the two must be conflated. We've noted how the MRC's Mark Finkelstein tried to distract from Trump's embrace of anti-Semitic tropes by reciting right-wing talking points about how "Omar has a long history of anti-Israel/antisemitic statements. There was that notorious tweet in which she wrote: 'Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.' Her most infamous bit of classic antisemitism came when, directly pointing the finger at AIPAC, Omar claimed US support for Israel is 'all about the Benjamins baby.'"
Indeed, Omar has been a longtime MRC target for building a narrative of anti-Semitism around her. In February 2022, Curtis Houck complained that Stephen Colbert called out Florida gov. Ron DeSantis for not quickly denouncing neo-Nazis but "ignored DeSantis emphasizing how anti-Semitism is a scourge inside the left as they’ve chosen to include open anti-Semites in the halls of Congress like Ilhan Omar (MN). In an April 2022 post, Matt Philbin sneered when Omar called out right-wing Christian travelers who inflicted their religion on their fellow plane passengers by holding a loud prayer session: "It’s not just Jews. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn, doesn’t seem to like Christians much, either.
As the MRC was desperate to downplay the Kanye/Trump drama, it was quite eager to attack Omar's alleged anti-Semitism -- particularly as Republicans taking control of the House meant that they would purge designated Democratic enemies like Omar off committees. Nicholas Fondacaro raged in a Nov. 22 post when a co-host on "The View" defended her:
Up in arms that possible House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) promised to strip extremist Democrats of their committee assignments when/if he becomes speaker of the House, including Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, The View took to downplaying her rabid anti-Semitism on Tuesday and giving a full-throated defense of her anti-American comments comparing the United States to terrorist groups like Hamas and the Taliban.
Despite admitting that Omar had used disparaging tropes about the Jews and money, racist co-host Sunny Hostin whined that McCarthy’s repeated references to them were somehow harmful “tropes” against her. “She committed to learning more. We’ve never heard her say anything like that again,” she falsely declared, pointing to their midterm win percentages as a bizarre argument against McCarthy.
Hostin then tried to use her big brain to hint that McCarthy attacking Omar, a popular politician on the left, was somehow racist code for the Republican base:
So, I think it's very interesting that the people he chooses to attack are the very same people that he thinks his base wants attacked. That says something about where the Republican Party is today.
In recent months, co-host Sara Haines has become the only cast member willing to stand up to Hostin when she’s spewing nonsense. And she did it again in this instance as she called out how Omar had compared the U.S. and Israel to the terrorist organizations of Hamas and the Taliban.
Hostin and co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar immediately jumped to Omar’s defense arguing that what she said was true “depending on who you talk to”:
The Omar remark to which he's referring is so entrenched on the right that Fondacaro didn't feel the need to explain or elaborate. It comes from a 2021 remark in which she noted that "we have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban"; she later clarified to note that “I was in no way equating terrorist organizations with democratic countries with well-established judicial systems."
Note that Fondacaro also does not dispute the accuracy of her statement but instead rushed to smear her as anti-Semitic for saying it; he also does not explain how it was "false" for Hostin to say Omar is "committed to learning more." (And, again, Fondacaro is maliciously smearing Hostin as a "racist" because he doesn't understand metaphors.)
Kevin Tober called Omar a "noted anti-Semite" in a Nov. 26 post, unironically linking to a 2019 NPR story on Omar's "criticism of Israel," thus again conflating any criticism of Israel to anti-Semitism (and blowing up the MRC's narrative about NPR being hopelessly biased). Jeffrey Lord gushed over McCarthy's plans in his column the same day:
The liberal media loved Pelosi for forcing the Republican Rep. [Marjorie Taylor] Greene off her committee assignments for, among other things, anti-Semitism. McCarthy warned of the precedent this would set, but he went unheeded.
Now McCarthy has turned the tables. Democrat Rep. Omar has been seriously accused -- as was Greene -- of anti-Semitism. Infamously Omar had written of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby.” An uproar ensued. On another occasion Omar had cited what she called “unthinkable atrocities committed by the US, Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan and the Taliban.”
The MRC portrayed Greene as a victim because her anti-Semitism (Jewish space lasers, anyone?) and extremism was called out and even whined that she was being compared to Omar.
In his Dec. 3 column, Lord touted right-wing radio host Chris Salcedo playing whataboutism over Trump dining with Ye and Fuentes , highlihght that he delcared "Fuentes is every bit as anti-Semitic as 'AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Louis Farrakhan are.' For Trump to dine with Ye and Fuentes, he said, was just as bad as if he 'broke bread with Ilhan Omar, the leaders of BLM, or Linda Sarsour, or any leftwing Jew hater.'"
WND Spouts GOP Talking Points In 'News' Story Attacking Biden Address Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh wrote a Feb. 8 WorldNetDaily article under the headline "'Banal failure': Headlines pummel Biden's State of the Union":
It was the Washington Examiner that called Joe Biden's 2023 State of the Union address to the American public – those who watched it, "A banal failure of a State of the Union."
"The best thing that can be said about President Joe Biden's second State of the Union address last night is that a record-low number of people wasted their time watching it. It was a laundry list of nanny statism, promising that not even the tiniest detail of people's lives will be free from federal interference…"
Fox News said the 'top 5 moments" ranged from Biden being called a "LIAR" to an "awkward kiss."
That report admitted the speech was a "soft launch" to Biden's campaign for president in 2024, when he will be advanced into his 80s already.
[...]
The Daily Mail focused on Biden's lies, with the headline, "Biden repeats misleading claims he has created more jobs than any other president, has made the biggest deficit reduction in history and is responsible for lowering inflation during 'deluded' State of the Union address."
But Unruh failed to disclose the fact that all the outlets he cited to attack Biden's address are biased right-wing outlets predisposed to hating anything and everything Biden says -- you know, just like WND. Indeed, Unruh went on to present misleading Republican talking points as "news":
The "LIAR" epithet came when he "repeated an old Democratic talking point that has long been debunked by fact-checkers." He said Republicans want Medicare and Social Security "to sunset."
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., erupted with "LIAR!"
Biden immediately tried to backtrack, claiming, "It's being proposed by some of you."
Republicans have said they don't want to eliminate the programs, but want them under more strict scrutiny.
Biden also lied about the number of jobs he "created."
"Two years ago, our economy was reeling," Biden claimed. "As I stand here tonight, we have created a record 12 million new jobs, more jobs created in two years than any president has ever created in four years."
But the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that number is only 2.7 million, as the rest were lost during COVID-19.
Unruh didn't explain why that distinction matters -- a job is a job, and a job ceases to exist if it was "lost," meaning it must be created again.
Unruh went on to push another talking point: "Biden repeatedly claimed credit for bringing inflation down. It was 6.5% in December, down from 9.1% in June. But it was 1.4% when he took office, meaning any drop in inflation under his policies still is costing American families thousands of dollars more each year because of inflation his policies triggered." Unruh offered no evidence that Biden's policies are directly responsible for any rise in inflation.
Unruh waited until the very end of his story to cite a non-right-wing media outlet:
The leftist AP wrote sympathetically that Biden "exhorted Congress Tuesday night to work with him to 'finish the job' of rebuilding the economy…"
But it conceded that three-quarters of Americans say the nation now is on the wrong track, under Biden, and most Democrats don't want Biden as their candidate in 2024.
Unruh offered no evidence that the AP is "leftist" -- ironic, since he used to work for the AP before joining WND, where he could spread biased journalism in a way the AP wouldn't have let him do.
In continuing to publish such biased, factually deficient journalism, WND continues to do the same thing that caused the financial hole it has been stuck in for years.
MRC Slurs Man Fighting Racism As 'Racial Arsonist' Topic: Media Research Center
Curtis Houck began a Jan. 30 Media Research Center post with a major snit:
Having spent multiple segments decrying the disturbing beating of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police earlier this month,CBS Mornings wound down Monday’s show by bringing in racial arsonist Ibram X. Kendi to fawn over his latest attempt to spread his poison about antiracism (and how black people are still subject to inequities in all facets of their lives by white oppressors) to teens.
“Coming up, New York Times bestselling author Ibram X. Kendi and Nic Stone will be here to talk about their book empowering young people to stand up against racism,” boasted co-host and Democratic donor Gayle King in one of two teases.
Of course, King wasn’t going to challenge his views on such things as calls for racism against non-black people, that white Americans still pose a threat of terrorism to black people, opposing teaching children to hate themselves and each other means you’re a KKK member, or a constitutional amendment to declare anything unconstitutional if it promotes “racial inequity.” And he’s somehow still with CBS despite calling Justice Amy Coney Barrett a “colonizer” for adopting two black children.
Note that three paragraphs in, Houck is still attacking Kendi with right-wing talking points and has not addressed the actual segment. He seems to have missed the fact that the Buffalo massacre, which was specifically about a white man murdering black people, is clear evidence that"white Americans still pose a threat of terrorism to black people." Houck's charge that Kendi favors "racism against non-black people" links to a right-wing attack piece on him in National Review, which used to argue in favor of racial segregation. Houck's remark about " teaching children to hate themselves and each other" is channeling what right-wingers like himself have been indoctrinated to believe critical race theory is. And Houck doesn't explain why Kendi's call to eradicate laws that promote racial equality is a bad thing; instead, he linked to a right-wing Federalist piece that bizarrely attacked Kendi's proposal as "openly totalitarian" and "would unleash a Woke Gestapo on society." Houck apparently beleives such obviously incendiary language is not the work of a "racial arsonist."
Finally, Houck got around to the matter at hand, which was Kendi appearing on CBS to promote an adaptation of his book "How To Be An Anti-Racist" for teenagers, which he did by pedentaically attacking a statistic he cited:
Kendi replied that “black people have among the lowest life expectancy in the United States” and “police violence” is to blame because it’s “one of the leading causes of death for young black men.”In turn, he’s merely speaking out in hopes “black people” can “live and racism” will “die.”
Fact-check: Pants on fire.
According to the CDC, the top five causes of death for “non-Hispanic black” “male[s]” from 1-19 years are as follows: “Homicide” (so not necessarily police, but could include black-on-black crime), “unintentional injuries,” “chronic lower respiratory disease,” “suicide,” and “cancer.” For 20-44, all causes were the same except third place was changed to “heart disease.”
Houck is being dishonest here, because offered no evidence the CDC lists "police violence" as a category. Meanwhile, a study by three universities that did take it into account found that use of force by police was the sixth-leading cause of death of young Black men. In other words, Kendi is right and Houck is wrong.
Houck concluded by touting more National Review hit jobs on Kendi, oblivious to the fact that the publication was an advocate for racial segregation.And Houck never explained what, exactly, makes Kendi a "racial arsonist."
UPDATE: It was Alex Christy's turn to complain about Kendi in a post the next day:
Ibram Kendi took his book tour to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show on Monday night and in the least shocking development ever, called his critics racist for not agreeing with his redefinition of the word racist.
[...]
After [host D.L.] Hughley asked for that new definition, Stone continued, “racism is a system of ideas -- you have racist ideas and basically, they are made to keep inequities going, right?”
On this definition, Kendi added, “Because one of the things that happens is, people who have historically been racist refuse to define that term because it allows them to exonerate themselves.”
Or maybe that definition is wrong. Simply looking at statistics, seeing a difference, and then claiming racism is junk science. But being wrong isn’t enough for Kendi, he has to call anyone who calls him out on his reductionism and politicized language a racist.
Of course, given that similar previous statistical difference between races have been proven to be racist in nature, there's little reason not to consider that possiiblity now.
While the Media Research Center normally spends its time around the Super Bowl attacking halftime shows, this year it chose instead to focus on commercials (as it has done in the past) -- or, in this case, to complain about others being outraged. Tim Graham groused in a Jan. 30 post that CNN had on "a writer for 'Religion Dispatches,' a project of the far-left Political Research Associates," to discuss a certin planned ad:
The election denial dead-enders at WorldNetDaily were desperately hoping that a last-ditch case to overturn the election would be taken up by the Supreme Court. Bob Unruh detailed the longing in a Dec. 18 
The Media Research Center has spent the 
On the rare occasions the Media Reserarch Center criticizes Fox News, it's usually in the form of Heathering -- for example, 
For a guy who's supposed to be an "Investigative Journalism Fellow" her his bio, CNSNews.com writer Micky Wootten sure doesn't do much investigative journalism. Instead, his main job these days is setting up anti-Biden narratives about spending too much money on supporting Ukraine after its invasion by Russia. (If you'll recall, CNS 
The Media Research Center 
The violations and crimes of the current administration aren't what matters at this point. They are indeed the expected now, with more in store, because an immensity of lying already has gone unchallenged. These lies have been left standing to mock the masses, for whom such a vast scope of evil is simply unimaginable. 
Jay Maxson is the Media Research Center's resident anti-vaxxer, spreading 
Newsmax finished out 
Misinterpreting studies regarding COVID to advance anti-vaccine and anti-mask narratives is pretty much 
The Media Reserach Center 
Bob Unruh wrote a Feb. 8 WorldNetDaily 
Curtis Houck began a Jan. 30 Media Research Center 
