MRC Spread Falsehoods About Swalwell And Spy -- But Won't Correct The Record Now That He's Been Cleared Topic: Media Research Center
Last month, the House Ethics Committee closed its investigation into Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell over allegations he had a relationship with a woman who turned out to be a Chinese spy, making no findings of wrongdoing. Swalwell had never been credibly accused of any wrongdoing, and he cut off all ties to her when he learned about her spy activity in 2015.
The Media Research Center won't tell you this, however, because it's been attacking Swalwell over the alleged relationship for years.
In a November column, for instance, Jeffrey Lord cheered that Swalwell might be removed from House committees by Republcians for what he described as "a decidedly ill-advised affair with an alleged Chinese spy," touting how incoming House speaker Kevin McCarthy "clearly thinks" he showed "appallingly bad judgement and cannot be allowed to sit on the Intelligence Committee."
Whe the GOP officially took over the House, the MRC cheered Republican attacks on Swalwell, just as it did over attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar similarly designed to force her off House committees for not being a right-wing toady:
A Jan. 12 post by Bill D'Agostino complained that "CNN cut away from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s press conference after he made a series of unflattering claims about Representatives Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA)."
A Jan. 18 post by Nicholas Fondacaro raged that when Swalwell appeared on "The View," the hosts "didn’t even question Swalwell about his possible sexual relationship with Chinese Spy Fang Fang. Instead, she simply asked him to give his response to what Speaker McCarthy has said about him when he announced his intent to strip the compromised Congressman of his seat on the House Intelligence Committee."
Not long after Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) warned on Tuesday that he received a classified intelligence briefing from the FBI about Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA) that concerned him enough to pull his Intelligence Committee assignment, some of CNN’s purported journalists on The Lead – including host Jake Tapper – pretended not to know why the compromised Congressman shouldn’t be allowed to serve on the committee. Essentially, gaslighting their viewers.
In December 2020, Axios reported that Swalwell’s campaign was infiltrated by a Chinese spy that went by the name Fang Fang. They noted that Fang installed an intern in Swalwell’s office and had sexual relationships “with at least two mayors of Midwestern cities.” Swalwell has never been publicly grilled on whether his relationship with Fang was also sexual.
Fondacaro censored the fact that Axios also reported that Swalwell immediately dropped the relationship after being alerted to Fang's spy activity and no one has accused him of wrongdoing.
Tim Graham spent a Jan. 23 post whining that a fact-checker found McCarthy's attacks on Swalwell and others to be "specious" -- but rather than rebut any points in the fact-checker, he grumbled: "This is where liberal-media 'fact-checking' is annoying. They use their own partisan incuriosity against Republicans." Kevin Tober served up his own whining fit in a post the next day:
Apparently having sex with a Chinese spy as a member of Congress isn’t enough for MSNBC. During Monday night’s The 11th Hour on MSNBC, frequent guest Jason Johnson lashed out at House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for daring to express his desire to prevent Democrat Congressmen Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, the latter of which had reportedly had sex with a Chinese spy, from serving on the House Intelligence Committee.
[...]
Johnson then said with a straight face and without any hint of irony that “there's no legitimate reason to keep Schiff or Swalwell off the intelligence committee. In fact, if anything it's to lock out people who are primarily concerned with this country from knowing the dangers that perhaps other colleagues on the committee provide to this country.”
Alex Christy complained that "As House Republicans prepare to kick Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell off the Intelligence Committee, CNN Newsroom co-host Erica Hill condemned Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday for not following 'tradition.' Apparently, Hill forgot that history did not begin yesterday." Hethengroused that Hill did not say why Swalwell was a "target," but he refused to mention the fact that nobody has credibly accused Swalwell of wrongdoing.
Tober came back on Jan. 29 to cheer how Swalwell and other Democratic members of Congress targeted by the GOP were asked about those accusations on CNN, and he noted (relucantly, we presume) that Swalwell responded by noting that "three different times, [the FBI] came out and said two things. All I did was help them, and also, I was never under any suspicion of wrongdoing."
With the Republicans having ultimately done its partisan duty and kicking Swalwell off the intelligence committee, the MRC went silent about him for a while, though a March 11 post by Mark Finkelstein complained that Swalwell advocated blocking access to Fox News to military bases in the wake of revelations in the Dominion lawsuit shwoing that Fox News deliberatly lied to its viewers about election fraud in thte 2020 election. But when a defender popped up on TV, Tober was there to rant about it in an April 21 post:
On MSNBC’s The ReidOut, host Joy Reid returned to one of her favorite Republican targets in the United States Congress: Marjorie Taylor Greene. The source of her rage this time was Greene’s comments during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing where she pointed out that her colleague Eric Swalwell (D-CA) was reported to have slept with a Chinese spy. Despite the allegations being legitimate enough to have him booted off the House Intelligence Committee, Reid still insisted it was nothing more than a “right-wing conspiracy theory.”
Republicans acting in a partisan manner against Swalwell does not equate to the allegations against him being "legitimate."
Tober, like the rest of his MRC co-workers, will not tell you that a Republican-led House ethics committee found no wrongdoing, just like every other authority who has looked into it. And it's even less likely that the MRC will apologize to Swalwell for spreading falsehoods about him and correct the record.
Newsmax Quietly Deletes Many Guo Wengui-Paid Propaganda Pieces Topic: Newsmax
Is Newsmax suddenly ashamed of taking money to publish propaganda?
We'vedocumented how, over the past couple of months, Newsmax has published numerous "sponsored" articles written by moonlighting right-wing writers who were paid to churn out articles defending Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui (a.k.a Miles Guo), who was arrested on fraud charges. One of those writers was Matt Palumbo, who works for right-wing radio host Dan Bongino. The other main writer was Kelly John Walker, a right-wing podcaster who was arrested and convicted last year for threatening to zip-tie an elementary school principal because a friend's child missed a school field trip because had to quarantine due to COVID exposure. These were some of the articles he wrote:
But some of these articles -- along with many of those written by Palumbo -- have since been deleted by Newsmax. No explanation was provided; perhaps the Guo checks cleared and they no longer wanted to seen as a willing provider of paid propaganda.
We've also noted that the Guo propaganda pieces on Newsmax have a listed "sponsor" of Token Team -- which happens to be the name of a company with whom Newsmax partnered a few years back to accept cryptocurrency as payment for ads. The two prinicpals of Token Team were John Tabacco, later a Newsmax TV host, and Vito Fossella, whose congressional career ended in disgrace when it was discovered he had two families, one in Washington and another back home in Staten Island.
Well, we found another connection: A show called "Wise Guys with John Tabacco" airs weekly on Newsmax, and the March 26 edition of his show featured Nicole Tsai, spokesperson for a Guo front group called the New Federal State of China. The interview was filled with softballs, and Tabacco challenged none of the talking points Tsai promoted, including her suggestion that federal agents set Guo's apartment on fire shortly after his arrest. Co-host Cara Castronuova, with a group called Citizens Against Political Persecution, fed the narrative too, hyping Guo's ties to Donald Trump and claiming he's a victim of "political persecution," conspiratorially adding: "I'm not going to throw out accusations, but I do think Biden and his son have ties to the CCP."
Neither Tabacco or any of the other interview panel participants -- who also included defense attorney Lou Gelormino -- disclosed any ties with Guo and his businesses and movements. And Guo interests clearly loved this segment because it has been reposted elsewhere with Chinese subtitles.
WND Tries To Make Tucker Carlson's Firing Another Ray Epps Conspiracy Theory Topic: WorldNetDaily
Unsurprisingly, WorldNetDaily was unhappy that Fox News fired Tucker Carlson, a fellow right-wing cosnpiracy theorist. A month before Carlson's firing, for instance, WND was eagerly touting cherry-picked footage from the Capitol riot given to Carlson to push the false narrative that the riot was peaceful.
In an April 24 article about his departure, Bob Unruh gushed that "Always a leader in breaking the news, Carlson had interviewed President Trump multiple times and just finished airing a series of interviews with Elon Musk," conspiratorially adding that "multiple reports from left-wing media noted the departure comes just days after Fox reached a $700 million plus settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over the network's coverage of the 2020 election." That was followed by an article by Unruh citing right-wingers complining about Carlson's firing and a reprint of an article by the Daily Caller (which Carlson co-founded) touting Carlson's presidential prospects.
But WND needed someone to blame for Carlson's firing, and it tried to find one in an old scapegoat: Ray Epps the Capitol riot whom WND has insistedwithoutevidence was a secret FBI agent whose job it was to provoke other rioters into committing crimes and violence. As it so happened, the day before Carlson was fired, "60 Minutes" did a segment on Epps that recapped the right-wing conspiracy theories falsely smearing him and highlighting the threats that have targeted him as those conspiracy theories spread in the right-wing media bubble.
Editor Joseph Farah spent his April 24 column ranting that Epps had called out Carlson for falsely targeting him, and even went so far as to call CBS interviewer Bill Whitaker a "hitman":
On Sunday night, "60 Minutes" whitewashed the shameless Jan. 6 provocateur Ray Epps. And Fox and Tucker Carlson coincidentally parted ways.
In case you missed "60 Minutes," it was surreal. The whole thing.
[...]
And who do they blame for the "confusion" surrounding Epps for the "Insurrection"?
Tucker Carlson. It took "60 Minutes" three years to try to explain this to the American people – and to try to blame Carlson for Ray Epps' insidious actions. Epps is portrayed as a tragic figure, even though he is always on the front lines of the Capitol, even the night before, encouraging protesters to go "inside the Capitol!"
[...]
Once again, he blamed it all on Tucker Carlson.
"He's obsessed with me," says Epps. "He's going to any means possible to destroy my life and our lives."
"Why?" Whitaker asks.
"To shift blame on somebody else," Epps suggests. "If you look at it, Fox News, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ted Cruz, Gaetz, they're all tellin' us before this thing that it was stolen. So you tell me, who has more impact on people, them or me?"
Instead of actually rebutting anything Epps said, Farah simply quoted from the interview.
Peter LaBarbera furthered the claim that Epps got Carlson fired in another April 24 article:
One day after the airing of a sympathetic CBS "60 Minutes" interview with controversial, videotaped, alleged Jan. 6 instigator Ray Epps — in which Epps played the victim and sought to shift blame for J6 violence to Tucker Carlson — the most popular host on Fox News was ousted by the network.
In the "60 Minutes" interview Sunday, Epps claimed Carlson is "obsessed with me," and said, "He's going to any means possible" to destroy his life to "shift blame [for J6] on somebody else."
LaBarbera complained that the "left-leaning" Los Angeles Times pointed out the right-wing conspriacy theory about Epps:
"Murdoch also was said to be concerned about Carlson’s coverage of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol," the Times reported. "The host has promoted the conspiracy theory that it was provoked by government agents, and Carlson has called Ray Epps — a Texas man who participated in the storming of the Capitol but did not enter the building — an FBI plant, without presenting any evidence."
That description by the left-leaning newspaper misses the salient point of why Epps and his non-arrest by the Justice Department have drawn so much attention on the right: he is shown so clearly on film doing more than other J6 attendees who were arrested and jailed for entering the Capitol.
Moreover, Gateway Pundit, which has been at the forefront of coverage on J6 issues, reported that Epps is wrong when he claimed (in congressional testimony) that he never violated the law on Jan 6. GP reports that while several J6 protesters were prosecuted for touching a large Trump sign that was thrown at police, Epps was not, although he also is allegedly shown on video touching the sign.
LaBarbera didn't give Gateway Pundit an ideological label, even though it's a far-right conspiracy rag that's currently being sued for spreading lies. He then repeated right-wingers manufacturing conspriacy theories about Epps' "60 Minutes" appearance:
Many conservatives saw the "60 Minutes" piece Sunday as only the latest effort by liberal elites to distract the public from the federal government's role in stoking the J6 "insurrection" narrative to disparage Trump supporters and undermine Trump's pursuit of another presidential term in 2024.
Conservative radio host Dan Bongino said "60 Minutes" was attempting to exonerate Epps to salvage the left's J6 narrative for the 2024 presidential election.
[...]
If the object of CBS' "60 Minutes" was to neutralize conservatives' suspicions of Ray Epps as some sort of federally aligned actor instigating criminal behavior on Jan. 6, their puff piece interview with him and his wife Sunday certainly did not achieve its objective.
U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., tweeted Monday, along with video of Cruz's Senate interrogation of the FBI official: "Ray Epps is the only person I’ve seen on video January 5th and January 6th urging and directing people to go into the Capitol. In a text message on January 6th he bragged that he orchestrated it. Why do democrats and the media portray him as the victim? So bizarre."
Twitter conservative Greg Price tweeted: "There’s also another thing: Ray Epps has never been arrested by the FBI despite them throwing everyone who was near the Capitol in solitary confinement and him being the only person on tape on J6 telling people to go into the building."
It wasn't until the 15th paragraph of his article that LaBarbera got around to noting that Epps' lawyers had sent a cease-and-desist letter to Carlson and Fox News, which sent him into Carlson defense mode:
"Mr. Carlson and Fox News have repeatedly peddled claims about Mr. Epps that lack any foundation in fact," states the letter by attorney Michael Teter. "Mr. Carlson and Fox News guests and contributors have incorrectly called Mr. Epps a federal agent, accusing him of acting as a provocateur of the riots. Oddly, Mr. Carlson now also espouses the view that those rioters were akin to peaceful tourists. This leads to the obvious question: is Mr. Carlson now accusing Mr. Epps of provoking peaceful protests."
Carlson consistently said on his Fox broadcasts that violent J6 protesters deserve to be prosecuted. His coverage alluded to disparagingly in Teter's letter concerned J6 video coverage unearthed by Carlson's team in March that exposed overzealous DOJ prosecution of the supposed J6 "ringleader," Jacob Chansley. The infamous horned "QAnon Shaman" was shown being led around peacefully by Capitol Police on Jan. 6, a spectacle at odds with the left's "violent insurrection" narrative. Weeks later, Chansley was released 14 months early from his federal prison sentence, after his lawyer objected to the government hiding the exculpatory video.
Teter's letter also says Carlson's on-air statements about Epps "have always been nonsensical fantasies disproven by videos and accounts by those attending the January 6th events. Selective and creative editing cannot overcome facts."
As we've noted, Carlson's footage of Chansley was cherry-picked and ignored his behavior before his arrest, and even his own attorney said Chansley's release from prison had nothing whatsoever to do with the video.
Farah used his April 25 column to rant that Carlson's firing was "election interference" -- even though Carlson isn't running for anything -- and again cited the "60 Minutes" story on Epps, "the one man safe from the Liz Cheney's House Unselect Committee of Jan. 6," as a contributing factor: "One would have to be blind or a Democrat not to see the fix was in."
A May 4 article by LaBarbera tried to drag Epps into the trial of several members of the Proud Boys over their actions regarding the riot, repeating claims by far-right writer Julie Kelly referencing "multiple sightings in evidence of the still-uncharged Ray Epps."
NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC Flips Over Elon Musk, Part 10: The Hearings Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center touted hearings spearheaded by House Republicans based on the "Twitter files" Elon Musk released -- but largely ignored inconvenient facts that showed how the hearings didn't go well for right-wing narratives. Read more >>
MRC Flip-Flops Between Musk-Fluffing, Whining That Right-Wing Hate On Twitter Is Still Monitored Topic: Media Research Center
When it wasn't cheering Elon Musk's own-the-libs stunt of arbitrarily relabeling NPR's Twitter feed as "state-affiliated media" (which ended up making things worse when Musk ultimately, and just as arbitrarily, dropped the label for not only NPR but actual state propaganda from other countries), the Media Research Center ontinued to vascillate between Musk stenography and complaining that Musk still hadn't given right-wing hate a sufficiently free space to spread on Twitter. Gabriela Pariseau served up another example of the latter in a March 31 post:
Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced late last night that Twitter’s “Algorithm goes open source at noon Pacific Time” (today). But the tweet begged a couple of questions: What does that mean and why is he doing this? MRC Free Speech America asked industry insiders.
Musk released the news just hours after the Media Research Center released a damning study revealing that Twitter censorship has actually increased under Musk’s leadership. But the move seems to be more of a distraction from Twitter's ongoing problem with censorship.
As we've noted, that "damning study" is mostly whining that right-wing hate is still monitored and blocked. Also, Pariseau's list of "industry insiders" is highly dubious, given that one is her boss, Dan Schneider. Three are anonymous -- two former Twitter employees and "a high-level employee at a social media company who asked not to be identified," which would seem to run counter to the MRC's regular attacks on anonymous sources. Her final source was Nathan Leamer of something called the Digital First Project, which we can assume that beyond its website's platitudes is nothing more than a right-wing advocacy group given Leamer's previous employment at Republican strategy firm Targeted Victory, whom you might remember is the firm Facebook hired to plant stories in right-wing media -- including, presumably, the MRC -- attacking competitor TikTok. The MRC has never told its readers about this, nor has it disclosed whether it was a beneficiary.
The MRC reverted to its Trump-fluffing norm soon enough. Mark Finkelstein spent an April 21 post whining that a TV host expressed a little schadenfreude over Musk's public failures (which the MRC didn't really talk about otherwise):
Elon Musk has become the liberal media's second-most-hated man, behind only Orange Man Bad. Witness today's opening of Morning Joe, wherein Mika Brzezinski proclaimed "Thursday was a very rough day for Elon Musk," gloated over Musk's SpaceX Starship exploding shortly after liftoff yesterday.
To our knowledge, after countless hours of suffering through Morning Joe, Mika has never been equally enthused about a North Korean rocket going kaput! Then again, Kim Jong-un is merely a nuclear-armed dictator and enemy of America. Whereas Musk occasionally makes life a bit uncomfortable for liberals!
Brzezinski also exulted over Musk's Twitter travails, with his plan to eliminate free blue checks running into opposition, and Tesla's share price having dropped. We can report the Twitter accounts of @Morning_Joe, @JoeNBC, and @MorningMika now reflect they haven't paid for their Twitter Blue check.
[...]
Warning sent to any entrepreneur who dares to cross the liberal/ESG line: the MSM will revel in any misfortune that might befall you!
Finkelstein is being utterly hypocritical, given how his employer repeatedlytakes pleasure in the misfortune of its sworn enemies.
Luis Cornelio baselessly tried to claim victory in an April 24 post by cheering a Twitter policy change that will allow right-wingers to maliciously misgender transgender people:
Elon Musk’s Twitter halted part of its hateful conduct policy that has explicitly been used to censor those who oppose transgender ideology on the platform.
On April 18, Twitter removed parts of the policy that prohibited the “deadnaming” and “misgendering” of transgender individuals, marking a partial victory for free speech.
The policy change, which was not publicly announced, came after MRC Free Speech America tracked hundreds of censorship cases of individuals who cited the scientific fact that there are two genders. A March MRC study revealed that Twitter censorship is shockingly on the rise after his takeover.
[...]
The platform implemented similar anti-speech policies to muzzle individuals who affirmed the existence of two genders or pointed out the biological differences. In December 2021, MRC Free Speech America tracked 100 examples of Big Tech censoring content that stated the scientific-based statement that there are two genders. Big Tech companies, and particularly Twitter under its previous regime, identified such content as so-called “hateful conduct.” Meta and YouTube labeled similar content as “hate speech.” LinkedIn, in contrast, used “bullying” and “harassment.”
Cornelio didn't explain what purpose it serves for right-wing activists to deliberately misgender transgender people. His post also weirdly contained the MRC's "Anti-Americanism" tag, as if malicious misgendering is some sort of American virtue.
Pariseau was back to fretting that Musk wasn't kowtowing enough to her fellow right-wing haters in an April 26 post:
While Twitter is still throttling content, the platform will now notify users when it limits an account’s reach. It was the least the platform could do.
“Freedom of Speech, not reach,” Twitter Safety euphemized in a Monday tweet announcing that the platform rolled out its new visibility filter labels. A Twitter Safety blog post last week explained that the platform would soon “add publicly visible labels to Tweets identified as potentially violating our policies letting you know we’ve limited their visibility.”
Twitter Safety attempted to justify its “freedom of speech, not reach” stance in its blog post. “Twitter users have the right to express their opinions and ideas without fear of censorship,” Twitter Safety wrote. “We also believe it is our responsibility to keep users on our platform safe from content violating our Rules.”
Twitter Safety attempted to justify its “freedom of speech, not reach” stance in its blog post. “Twitter users have the right to express their opinions and ideas without fear of censorship,” Twitter Safety wrote. “We also believe it is our responsibility to keep users on our platform safe from content violating our Rules.”
While the new policy marks a victory for transparency, MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider warned that policing speech is not Twitter's responsibility. “Our skepticism of Twitter becoming a haven for free speech has just been justified,” he said. “It’s not Twitter’s responsibility to limit speech. That should be left up to individual users who can decide what they like and dislike. Censoring or throttling speech is what authoritarians do. It should never take place in a free society.”
Yes, those repeated paragraphs exist in the original.
Of course, Schneider and Pariseau very much want speech censored or throttled -- as long as it's speech they disagree with. They, however, don't believe they should be subject to any rules even though those platforms don't belong to them.
CNS Catholic Priest Turned Right-Wing Pundit Continued Pushing Political Talking Points Topic: CNSNews.com
Jerry Pokorsky, like Michael Orsi, is a Catholic priest who'd really rather be a right-wing pundit. CNSNews.com gave him a platform to feed those ambitions, and it continued doing so until its shutdown in April. Pokorsky spent his Dec. 30 column spouting talking points and cosnpiracy theories to laughably claim that right-wingers have been silenced:
Government and media elites throttled reasoned dissent based on evidence during the pandemic. We were not allowed to question these assertions: Bats transmitted the COVID virus. The US never funded the gain of function research in the Wuhan lab. The COVID virus never escaped from the Wuhan lab. Lockdowns were necessary and should remain in the government arsenal. Masks and rigorous social distancing prevent the spread of COVID. COVID vaccines are safe for everyone and prevent the spread of COVID. Vaccination is a moral obligation.
Conventional wisdom deemed unassailable by corporate media, politicians, and government agencies include:
Obamacare: If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.
Lois Lerner’s IRS did not target tea party conservatives.
Medical facilities do not traffic in aborted baby parts and do not use them to develop pharmaceuticals.
Trump colluded with the Russians to get elected in 2016.
BLM riots were largely peaceful.
The Hunter Biden laptop was likely Russian disinformation.
There is no significant voter fraud in US elections.
[...]
Homophobes and Catholic teaching threaten the mental health of the LGBTQ community.
With surgery or hormone treatment, a person can change his or her sex.
Monkeypox (like AIDS) threatens the entire population.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are inviolable moral precepts that transcend and replace the Ten Commandments.
Taken individually and in isolation, these assertions may represent aberrations from the cultural norm. Taken together and in historical context, we have sufficient evidence to conclude that immoral authoritarianism threatens the culture. The verdict is in. The facts are good enough for conclusions that require our testimony and action. Most of our elites – government, corporate, the media, and even some in the Church -- are liars. They depend upon our silence to accomplish their evil purposes.
He then falsely claiming that right-wingers have been silent about all of this:
Every cultural crime scene needs careful analysis to compile sufficient and persuasive evidence for the pathology report. Speak honestly and freely. We’ve been silent too long. “The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.” (Romans 13:12)
A resolution for a happy new year!
In his March 16 column, Pokorsky accused LGBT people of being involved in "blood worship" and maliciously described President Biden as supporting the "butchering of young people":
It is perplexing to realize that most of our population fails to distinguish between a surgeon and a butcher. It is breathtaking to realize that many parents and school systems around the United States have become butchers.
The mutilation of children in blood worship of the LGBTQ ideology has become common practice. At long last, emerging as a political point of contention, such liturgical butchery is now a standard part of many government school programs.
It is even more shocking to read that the president of the United States – a self-professed Catholic -- has elevated the butchering of young people as a moral imperative:
[...]
Liberals have supported the butchery of abortion for over 50 years. If butchering unborn babies is a yawner, it is even more acceptable to butcher the genitals of children after birth.
These non-butchers behaving like butchers give the profession a bad name. Perhaps the butcher industry association (there probably is one) should protest.
President Biden besmirches the reputation of honest butchers -- and Catholics. And his mother.
For his final column before CNS' shutdown, on April 6, Pokorsky bizarrely tried to argue that not discriminating against people is a "heresy" against the Catholic Church:
The “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) heresy undergirds the LGBTQ agenda and the promotion of female ordination. The diversity component stresses our differences more than unity (family, tribal, national, or religious). The equity component is unachievable because there will always be differences in physical and intellectual abilities and opportunities. The inclusion component is unintelligible. Why does it exclude pro-life Christians, for example?
The DEI heresy views man as a “ghost in a machine” with interchangeable parts. The various forms of sexual debauchery derive from the heresy. Church teaching is realistic: Man is an embodied spirit. Our masculine and feminine attributes express who we are.
Within the context of sound doctrine (based on Scriptures, Sacred Tradition, and Magisterium), theologians are free to speculate under the watchful eye of the Church. The study of theology – like Mary’s pondering of the Angel Gabriel’s greeting – deepens our understanding of God’s revelation.
Let’s consider a rebuttal of the DEI ideology based on the Catholic theology of "sacramental sexuality."
But Pokorsky raged against his imaginary version of DEI by emphasizing "the nuptial dignity of male and female as God created us -- which has nothing to do with what actual DEI is.
MRC's Joke Policeman Makes Kimmel A Target Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center actually pays Alex Christy to hate-watch late-night comedy shows so he can loudlycomplain that right-wingers like him get made fun of too much (which is to say, at all). He did this again in an April 14 post:
ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! conducted a series of man-on-the-street interviews for Thursday’s how where a reporter asked a series of men questions about women’s bodies that they naturally did not know the answers to. The point was not just to laugh at men who can’t identify cat toys or confuse the rectum for the ovaries, but to attack pro-lifers.
At the end of his monologue, Kimmel introduced the segment, “It's getting extra crazy between the Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade and the judge who ruled against the abortion pills. There are a lot of people, mostly men telling mostly women what they can and can't do with their bodies which got us thinking about how little men know about the female anatomy.”
Kimmel added, “Speaking for myself, I don't know a whole lot of it. We did this once before. The results were not surprising but with all the new focus we decided to try it again. We went out on Hollywood Boulevard, we asked men walking by questions about women's bodies and then, well, here's what they had to say.”
What followed was a massive non-sequitur.
[...]
One man could not tell the difference between the uterus and the bladder or between the ovaries and the rectum. Another had no clue how tampons work, while another thought that a cat toy was something that was inserted into the vagina. The segment ended with the failed tampon explainer detonating a tiny firecracker under the impression is was an “ultra” tampon.
Of course, Christy was not at all amused by any of this. Rather then understand that the point was to note that men who generally know little about women's bodies are trying to regulate women's bodies, he white about the who man-on-the-street process and insisted it was all irrelevant anyway:
Man-on-the-street interview are always suspicious because there is no way of knowing who is truly clueless and who was willing to play a role in exchange for being on TV or how many people knew the correct answer, but who were naturally not shown. Either way, a man (or woman) not knowing how many eggs a woman is born with has nothing to do with abortion opinions. People know what an abortion is and that has nothing to do with the length of the vaginal canal.
Should a man with such an obviously deficient sense of humor -- and clearly believes his and his employer's political beliefs must be exempt from being made fun of -- really serve as an effective joke policeman? Are his techniques state-of-the-art training at joke police academy?
Victoria Jackson Resurfaces At WND To Spread Election Conspriacy Theories Topic: WorldNetDaily
Former "Saturday Night Live" comedian Victoria Jackson has spent the past several years sliding toward the far right, and her Obama derangement is what helped make her a WorldNetDailycolumnist for a while. She has only slid further right since then, and WND still likes her, to the point that an April 13 article by Bob Unruh tried to defend outrageous behavior from her:
Veteran "Saturday Night Live" star Victoria Jackson appeared at a public meeting in Franklin, Tennessee, this week to share her opposition to gay pride events being supported by the municipality.
She instantly became the target of jokes and vitriol by intolerant commenters who appeared unwilling to allow her to have, and express, her own beliefs.
[...]
Jackson took to the podium to comment on a planned gay pride parade, noting that God "hates" sodomy, sexual immorality and pride.
"Like, one of the things he hates most is pride," she explained, citing the Bible.
Proverbs 11:12: When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. The Lord detests all the proud of heart. Be sure of this: They will not go unpunished. … Proverbs 16:18: Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall."
Recalling the Bible's account of Sodom and Gomorrah, Jackson said that clearly documents that "God hates sodomy, and sexual immorality and pride."
Barely a minute into her comments, she was gaveled into silence by officials running the meeting.
[...]
The SNL veteran added: "The reason I was shouting at the end of my speech isn’t because I was on a ‘homophobic rant,’ as TMZ said, but because the mayor was pounding his gavel on my most important last sentence: ‘I want to encourage this generation not to be brainwashed and go to Becket Cook’s YouTube channel!’
WND was apparently sufficiently impressed by this performance that she was given space to write her first column for it in six years (and just her second column for WND since 2011) the next day, in which she further demonstrated her limited grip on reality:
Why aren't people talking about the 2020 election anymore? Is it old news?
Millions of us believe it was rigged – which raises the question: Why vote again if the system is rigged?
On Nov. 3, 2020, our votes for president were counted. Our choices were 1) pro-abortion (senile) Joe Biden who drew no crowds to his rallies and stayed in his basement, and 2) pro-life (energetic) incumbent Donald Trump who drew huge crowds to his rallies and who in only four years had boosted our economy, lowered unemployment, strengthened our military and protected our borders. The choice was a no brainer. We watched the count reported on TV. Trump won.
In the middle of the night, however, everything mysteriously changed. "The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do." (Josef Stalin)
Recounts were demanded. Lawsuits. Hearings. On January 6, I joined a crowd of a least a million in Washington, D.C., to support the truth, that Trump won.
There's a lot wrong here, but we'll just note two things: 1) Trump lost, and 2) the crowd at the pre-riot rally was closer to 10,000. But she had more misinformation to impart:
Since our biased media is radical left, it was hard to find truth. Every election-fraud article I found, I posted on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. The posts got wiped, and I got banned.
Patriots scrambled to find and share truth. I have no insider info, but I'll tell you what I've found.
Election machine "servers are overseas," says Col. Phil Warden in the documentary "Absolute Truth," produced by the MyPillow guy Mike Lindell. At the 19:48 mark of the film, he says there was a coup involving foreign and domestic enemies of the U.S. At the 28:29 mark, Russell Ramsland of Allied Security Operational Group in Dallas said, "… there is no effective security at all for your votes. Your votes are stored overseas where they can be easily manipulated. …"
Lindell's discredited conspiracy film is actually called "Absolute Proof," and the guy who's ranting about overseas servers is actually named Phil Waldron, who loves to spread election fraud conspiracy theories.
Jackson went on to declare that "I highly recommend every American watch the documentary 'Absolute Truth'" -- getting the film's name wrong again -- and adding, "Another recommendation: If you care about the future of your children, you must watch Dinesh D'Souza's documentary '2000 Mules.'" Yes, another debunked conspiracy film.
Jackson concluded by declaring, "Let's start talking about Election Integrity. All of our freedoms depend on it." It's difficult to take advice from someone who can't even get simple, basic facts correct.
MRC's Jean-Pierre-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Watch: Doocy Defense Edition Topic: Media Research Center
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stood up to the biased questioning of Fox News' Peter Doocy, and the Media Research Center's Curtis Houck -- an enthusiastic Doocy-fluffer -- spent his writeup of the May 2 press briefing freaking out over his man-crush being besmirched and framing it instead as Jean-Pierre being "triggered":
The Fox News Channel’s Peter Doocy triggered ever-inept White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Tuesday for the basic crime of fact-checking her after she falsely claimed during Monday’s briefing that illegal immigration had plummeted 90 percent since Joe Biden became President. While other White House reporters chose to ask process questions about the banking system, the border, and the debt limit, Doocy came to correct the record on a bold-faced lie.
As he usually does, Doocy started with a short, simple question: “If the border is secure, as the administration has said, then why would we need to send 1,500 active-duty U.S. troops down there?”
[...]
Doocy shifted to her comments from Monday: “You said yesterday that, when it comes to illegal migration, you've seen it come down by more than 90 percent. Where did that number come from?”
Doocy started to explain that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has told Fox the number for this fiscal year so far has been up 136,000 people, but Jean-Pierre tried to shout him down and keep the facts from coming to light by saying she would “answer” him.
Jean-Pierre came out of left field by trying to rattle Doocy’s cage by twice telling him to have “the dramatics...come down just a little bit.”
Doocy was incredulous and attempted to ask what was “dramatic about asking a question”(and seeing as how he wasn’t channeling Jim Acosta).
Jean-Pierre’s answer made little sense as she insisted she was referring “the parolee program” the Biden regime had “put in place...to deal with certain countries on — on ways that we can limit illegal migration” and “the data has shown us, that is gone down by more than 90 percent.”
Kevin Tober took the hate baton for his writeup of the May 8 briefing, again maliciously smearing Jean-Pierre as an "incompetent diversity hire":
At Monday's White House press briefing, the incompetent diversity hire press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre took fire from all sides over President Biden’s ineffectiveness to push his agenda through Congress and his lack of focus on the issues that matter to the American people. First out of the gate was CBS News Radio’s Steve Portnoy who chastised KJP over Biden’s lack of engagement in the left’s war on the Second Amendment in light of a recent shooting in Texas.
“The President’s position is known, but can you describe his engagement on this crisis today? What’s he doing about it today?,” Portnoy asked. “Because many Americans, they’re certainly happy to hear that he’s engaged on airline prices and airline compensation, but what about this issue that many Americans agree with you is a crisis?”
“The President has signed more than a dozen executive actions to deal with this issue, more than any other President,” KJP responded. “This is a President that has worked on this issue as a Senator, as Vice President, and as President. He has done everything that he can, using the tools that are in front of him, to deal with this issue,” she proclaimed.
Houck returned to write up the May 9 briefing, in which he put the spotlight on a Doocy colleague for dutifully spouting Republican talking points:
In an otherwise pedestrian questioning Tuesday of White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on the looming debt battle, Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich actually made something out of the gathering by grilling her on her rhetoric smearing 260 members of the House and Senate as domestic extremists and threats to the country for either supporting or voting spending cuts tied to raising the debt ceiling.
Heinrich’s first question had serious bite: “43 Republican senators signed onto a letter opposing raising the debt ceiling without budget reforms, and 217 members in the House voted for that bill to raise the debt limit with cuts to spending. Does the White House consider all of those members to be dangerous, MAGA Republican extremists?”
Jean-Pierre replied that many members of Congress are, indeed, dangers to the country, arguing House Republicans have “voted for cuts that's going to hurt American families...22 percent cuts to veterans, healthcare, schools, that's what they voted for.”
Heinrich recognized the divisive tact against tens of millions of Americans.
[...]
Jean-Pierre doubled down, accusing Republicans of “cut[ting]...programs that are incredibly important for the American family.”
Heinrich interjected with a fact-check: “Their bill would raise the debt limit. They passed a bill to raise the debt limit.”
The ever-inept press secretary displayed her lack of a grasp of basic English:
They've connect — I hear you, but they are connecting passing — whatever — this debt limit, to cuts — 22 percent cuts to veterans, to seniors — that's what they are threatening — cuts to our schools. That's what the — that's what is connecting — that's what their budget plan is.
Heinrich responded with even more fact-checking: “The bill doesn't have any appropriations in it, actually and the — the Speaker has, you know, ruled out a number of those things including defense, veterans benefits, senior entitlement programs.”
She then concluded with this outstanding query:“I mean, you have Mitt Romney saying there's got to be a conversation here. Is he a MAGA Republican extremist?”
Houck concluded by gushing over yet another Fox reporter: "The Fox Business Network’s Edward Lawrence followed immediately after and asked whether Biden even possess the ability to travel outside his silo."
Remember, Houck cares only that right-wing talking points were advanced and Jean-Pierre was made to look bad -- not that anything important happened.
An April 18 Newsmax column by Scott Powell started with a lot of lofty language about the founding of America before getting to his main point:
What has set America apart from so many other countries in the world up until recently has been the honesty and integrity of our electoral system.
And perhaps because of the "normalcy bias" that has been long established in the hearts and minds of so many Americans, it’s difficult for them to fathom that the 2020 election was compromised and fraudulent due to a myriad of ineffective and corrupt processes.
Actually, there are many significant examples of vote fraud in America’s past.
[...]
Vote fraud has happened and defending election integrity starts by accepting the fact that fraud occurs.
What is both surprising and disturbing about getting a hearing and trial on the evidence of voting irregularities in the presidential election of 2020 — much of which includes vast amounts of sworn testimony and camera video records — is how difficult that has been.
That stark reality alone suggests our country is in deep trouble from: corruption and compromise — that it's deep and broad, making some states’ judicial institutions and political machines so impenetrable as to make correction and adjudication impossible.
Truth and trust go hand in hand.
The trustworthiness of our election system has been considered the backbone of our political system — a sense of national identity connected with our freedom, rights, and equality under the law.
Evidence keeps growing that irregularities took place in multiple states in the 2020 national election.
That has had huge ramifications.
In fact, the primary cause of our most pressing problems today can be traced back to the 2020 election of Joe Biden:
[...]
The second president of the United States, John Adams, said, "Liberty once lost is lost forever." We desperately need a turning point in the trajectory of political corruption in America.
Let us hope and pray that will soon come, perhaps with Kari Lake’s lawsuit exposing vote fraud and election polling place organized crime that subverted Arizona’s gubernatorial election.
Needless to say, Powell offered no proof of the "vote fraud" he alleges took place. And so eager was Newsmax to distance itself from this column that an "editor's note" was added to the end of it:
The opinions expressed by this writer do not necessarily reflect Newsmax’s position. Newsmax believes the 2020 election results were both legal and final. Newsmax does not accept claims the election was stolen.
Newsmax is still facing defamation lawsuits from voting-tech companies Dominion and Smartmatic regarding claims of election fraud it promoted after the 2020 presidential election, and it's slightly desperate to explain why the issues in those lawsuits are "materially different" from the lawsuit Dominion fiiled against Fox News, which resulted in Fox News paying Dominion $787 million to settle things before the start of a trial.
MRC Tried To Falsely Conflate Carlson, Lemon Firings Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center had a sad when Fox News fired Tucker Carlson, but it rejoiced when CNN fired Don Lemon the same day. But the MRC also wanted to create a false equivalence between the two firings -- even though Carlson was a highly rated (for cable news) host in charge of the flagship show on a highly partisan TV channel while Lemon had been, as the MRC repeatedly reminded us, "demoted" to a morning-show slot on a more straightforward news channel. As a result, it complained with non-right-wing outlets wouldn't embrace that narrative. Kevin Tober huffed in an April 24 post:
The cable news landscape was shaken to its core Monday with the stunning newsthat cable news star and host of Fox News Channel's Tucker Carlson Tonight was out at the network. A short time later, CNN announced that CNN This Morning co-host Don Lemon was fired as well. DuringCBS Evening News's coverage of both developments, anchor Norah O'Donnell resorted to labeling Fox News as a conservative network, while seeing no need to use the liberal label for CNN.
While it's accurate to label Fox a conservative network in terms of its opinion-side programming, it wasn't honest or fair reporting to refuse to label CNN a liberal network when that's clearly what it is.
In fact, Fox News' "news" side is just as biased as its opinion side -- not a surprise given how many former MRC employees work in that "news" operation. And CNN's failure to not be as far-right as Fox News does not make it a "liberal" network; that's just the view from Tober's ideological position, which was made even more clear when he laughably called O'Donnell a "left-wing anchor."
Joke policeman Alex Christy complained that late-night comedians told too many jokes about Carlson's firing and not enough about Lemon's (and, yes, he counted them):
The Monday news media news surrounding Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon provided the late night comedy shows a golden opportunity to show they aren’t just liberal partisans. However, they would fail this test as individual jokes about Carlson outnumbered jokes about Lemon 32-to-2 with five additional jokes about both men.
Comedy Central’s The Daily Show temp host Desi Lydic came in with a 6:1 ratio. Her most notable jabs at Carlson included, “I can't believe that a network that’s so opposed to gender-affirming surgery just cut off their own dick. Though, apparently, Tucker was forced out by Rupert Murdoch, which is pretty ironic. Tucker spent so many years saying that Mexican people were coming to take our jobs away. Turns out, he should have been worrying about Australians.”
An April 25 post by Tim Graham brought the MRC's hypocritical labeling complaints into the debate, grousing that the New York Times wouldn't portray Lemon as being as "far left" as Carlson is far-right:
William Donohue of the Catholic League pointed out the Tuesday New York Times demonstrated an obvious labeling contrast. On page A1 came the headlined "Fox News Ousts Carlson, a Voice Of the Far Right." But on B-1, there was no label in the header "Lemon Out At CNN; He Says He Is ‘Stunned’. "
In the piece by Michael Grynbaum, John Koblin, and Benjamin Mullin, Lemon was only "fiery" and "spiky," not liberal or far-left:
[...]
But the Carlson story by Jeremy Peters, Katie Robertson, and Grynbaum began: "Fox News on Monday dismissed Tucker Carlson, its most popular prime-time host, who became one of the most influential voices on the American right in recent years with his blustery, inflammatory monologues on immigrants, Black civil rights activists, vaccines and national identity."
There were five mentions of conservatives and their media in the piece, and two "far-right" uses in the copy:
He then cited a purported analysis by dishonest Catholic Bill Donohue claiming that "We found over 200 examples of Carlson being called 'far right,' but only a few instances of Lemon being called 'far left.' PBS, NBC and MSNBC referred to Carlson as 'far right' but none referred to Lemon as 'far left.'" But neither Graham nor Donohue provided any evidence that Lemon is "far left" or that Carlson is not "far right."
(Graham also didn't disclose that his boss, Brent Bozell, sits on the board of advisers of Donohue's right-wing Catholic League.)
Mark Finkelstein played the whataboutism card in an April 26 post, referencing Graham's post as a starting point:
Yesterday, our Tim Graham called out the New York Times' double standard when it came to the paper's descriptions of Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon. The former "Gray Lady"—now the home of red-hot wokeism—branded Carlson "far right." But when it came to Lemon, the Times merely called him "fiery," and "spiky," with no mention of his consistently left-wing views.
That same sort of double standard was on display at CNN itself today. In a CNN This Morning segment on Fox's firing of Carlson, repeated mentions were made of an alleged culture of misogyny and sexism at his show.
Fair-'n-balanced journalistic standards would have made it incumbent on CNN to discuss serious allegations of sexism and misogyny against its own fired host, Lemon. But not a peep about Lemon's transgressions out of his former co-hosts, Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins, or from CNN media reporter Sara Fischer. The focus was exclusively on Carlson's alleged misdeeds.
However Carlson might have transgressed respectful norms, it would appear to have occurred behind the scenes. In contrast, Lemon unleashed some of his feminist-frown material on the air, for all to see and hear.
Finkelstein didn't explain why Carlson is somehow less of a terrible person because he didn't display it on air.He then dismissed claims made about the working environment on Carlson's show made by a former show producer Abby Grossberg -- whom the MRC previously attacked as "disgruntled" -- as "not the most outrageous allegations imaginable," as if that makes it OK.
NEW ARTICLE -- Out There, Exhibit 85: CNS Obsessed Over Biden's Words Too Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com's excessive concern with specific words President Obama did or didn't say spread to President Biden -- and it never stopped nitpicking what Obama said. Read more >>
In Contrast With Carlson, MRC Cheered Don Lemon's Firing Topic: Media Research Center
In contrast with the reverential fanboy treatment it gave to fellow right-wing ideologue Tucker Carlson, the Media Research Center has long despised Don Lemon -- it repeatedly attacked him after he came out as gay, spread bogus allegations of sexual assault even after the allegations were proven to be false, and baselessly insisted that Lemon moving from an evening newscast to CNN's morning show was a demotion. Here are some of the attacks the MRC launched on Lemon just since the start of this year:
Of course, Lemon did not help himself at times. The MRC hurleda lotof abuse at him for describing Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley as "past her prime,:" and there were alleged conflicts with co-hosts, which the MRC eagerlyateup (for maximum mockery, of course, with one item regarding it carried the sneering headline "SAD TROMBONE" -- not that it actually cares about the women since they work for CNN and thus presumably deserve what they get).MRC writers lapped up gossip about whether Lemon's days at CNN were numbered, with one podcast asking, "Is It Time to Fire Don Lemon?"
The MRC's Kevin Tober cheered in one February post: "CNN’s low-rated morning host Don Lemon has a history of on-air outbursts and privately berating his co-hosts for interrupting him. On Thursday night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson got in on the fun by mocking “diva Don Lemon” for his apparent fragile mental state."
Which made for an interesting bit of irony when both Carlson and Lemon lost their respective cable-news jobs the same day. And where Curtis Houck reported on Carlson's dismissal with sadness and reverence, in the same post he rehashed old attacks cheered Lemon's firing: "In contrast, Lemon’s ouster had been in the works for months given his demotion to the morning from his primetime slot Don Lemon Tonight where he had spent eight years smearing conservatives, being a race hustler, and spouting off conspiracy theories."
Carlson smeared poeple and spouted conspiracy theories too, but he conformed to right-wing ideology and thus would not be criticized for doing so.
Don Lemon is gone! The longtime CNNer took to Twitter on Monday to announce he was fired. While Lemon claimed he was “stunned” by the move, the dismissal shouldn’t have been too surprising ever since he was demoted to the mornings back in November.
At NewsBusters the longtime CNN anchor has left a large footprint of biased outbursts. In fact the ex-CNN anchor has won our “Quote of the Year” award for two-years running.
Lemon may have worn out his welcome at CNN but don’t be surprised to see him picked up by another leftist outlet. Until then let’s take a stroll down memory lane and look back at Lemon’s heinous remarks that the network would prefer were memory-holed.
NewsBusters Media Editor Bill D’Agostino put together this brief montage of Lemon’s blathering.
The MRC did publish a couple more articles related to Lemon's firing:
Tim Graham demonstrated his employer's tonal split on the firings in his April 24 podcast:
The Tucker news seemed shocking, considering how it's been a ratings juggernaut for Fox. Media reporters suggested that somewhere in the "treasure trove" of internal messages that Dominion Voting Systems forced into view in their lawsuit, the Murdochs were less than pleased with how they were discussed.
The Lemon firing just seems delayed. The demotion to morning-show duty never seemed like it would work. There was no "chemistry," just chilly exchanges that demonstrated Lemon's diva tendencies. Other than his race and sexual orientation, it would have seemed logical for him to catch the bus out of CNN with Brian Stelter, John Harwood, and Chris Cillizza.
The tonal split continued in an April 26 post rehashing media appearances by MRC staffers opining on the firings in right-wing safe spaces:
On Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning, the Media Research Center led the way in providing reaction to and instant analysis at NewsBusters, online, and on the radio about the bombshell firings of Tucker Carlson by Fox News and Don Lemon at CNN.
This included three spots from MRC Founder and President Brent Bozell, NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham, and NewsBusters Managing Editor Curtis Houck on NewsTalk 105.9 WMAL in the Washington D.C. market, the leading conservative station in the nation’s capital and an oasis for conservatives in the Swamp.
Bozell cropped up on Tuesday morning’s O’Connor and Company and didn’t hold back. After exclaiming “what a day” Monday was, he declared “the narrative” around Carlson’s axing seems to be Fox executives “just wanted him out.”
Bozell jokingly called out the alleged internal dismay over Carlson’s personal messages: “What a crock that would be. A private email is a private email...If there is a single person who worked at the Media Research Center who has not sent an email criticizing me, I’m going to dismiss that person.”
As for Lemon, Bozell cut to the chase: “What a trainwreck of a network this is...Licht was brought on to fix a sinking ship and he’s just been poking more holes.”
That was followed by Graham making a bizarre claim:
Earlier in the show, Graham noted the ideological diversity between Fox hosts:
It’s really obvious this is Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News...Things can change depending on that the Murdochs want...It is interesting that you had...dramatic changes or differences of opinion from hour to hour. You don’t tend to see that on MSNBC. You don’t tend to see that on CNN.
“I think you can look at this and say, yes, it seems like a big deal, but it’s not something that’s really a threat to Fox in the sense that they let go of Bill O’Reilly, Tucker moved into the space, and then people tend to forget,” he said.
Huh? There's "ideological diversity between Fox hosts"? Needless to say, Graham offered no example of this purported "diversity," given that one must obviously be a committed right-winger to even be considered for a Fox News hosting spot.That was followed by the expected Lemon-bashing:
Graham then tied the two together:
With Don Lemon, everybody kind of gets the idea. He was a big diva. You know, everyone gets tired of him...I think, in this case, the tea leaves suggest that all of the internal e-mails and texts that came out in the Dominion case...probably angered them with his imperiousness or something.
As for Lemon, Graham quipped that something “we all wanted to hear” was Lemon “was past his prime” while, at CNN, “it’s the same” from under Jeff Zucker and “has not changed.”
That was followed by Houck serving up rote Lemon-bashing while similarly insisting there is ideological diversity on Fox News:
Houck said the longtime CNN host’s firing arrived like “a snowball rolling down the hill, gaining steam — an incoming avalanche” to illustrate CNN boss Chris Licht’s reign thus far as “an absolute failure.”
On Carlson, Houck called it “a difficult story” for Fox with plenty of backlash, especially with subscriptions to its popular streaming site, Fox Nation.
“I don’t think liberals or conservatives...don’t do enough introspection and realize...that people tune into Fox News at 8:00 for Tucker Carlson. They tune in. A lot of young people...tune in...for Tucker Carlson,” Houck said, noting how Fox created “a healthy media ecosystem” with differences of opinion between Carlson and even the host in the next hour, Sean Hannity.
Houck identified none of these purported "differences of opinion."
CNS Obsessed Over NYC Murders To Attack Prosecutor For Indicting Trump Topic: CNSNews.com
We've documented how CNSNews.com expressed concerned about crime in Chicago -- though only sporadically, when it advanced right-wing narratives to do so. In its final days before being shut down, CNS started to do the same thing about crime in New York City, presumably driven by another right-wing narrative, a desire to smear Manhattan-based district attorney Alvin Bragg for indicting Donald Trump. We've already noted how CNS was quick to frame Bragg as "soft on crime," but the sudden interest in New York crime continued after that.Editor Terry Jeffrey wrote in an April 13 article:
There were 100 people murdered in New York City in the first 99 days of 2023, according to data published by the New York Police Department.
The NYPD’s latest “CompStat” report, which was for the week that ran from April 3 through April 9, indicates that there were 7 murders in New York City that week. It also indicates that there were 30 murders in the last 28 days and 100 from the beginning of 2023 through April 9. (April 9 was the 99th day of the year.)
The 100 murders committed in New York City through April 9 of this year is down from the 111 that were committed in the city through April 9 of last year, according to the CompStat report.
In addition to the 100 murders committed in New York City through April 9 of this year, the NYPD reports that in that same period there were 408 crime complaints for alleged rapes, 4,102 for alleged robberies, and 6,742 for alleged felony assaults.
Yes, Jeffrey managed to work in a reference to 100 murders in each of the first four paragraphs of the article. Also note that Jeffrey hyped overal numbers instead of the murder rate -- he did that because New York City's murder rate is actually the second-lowest among the nine U.S. cities with a population of more than 1 million.
Jeffrey hyped raw numbers agan in an article published on April 20, the final day of CNS' operation:
Ten people were murdered in New York City last week, according to a report released by the New York Police Department.
In the seven days from Monday, April 10, through Sunday, April 16, ten people were murdered in the city, according to the NYPD’s weekly CompStat report. That works out to an average of one murder every 16.8 hours.
In addition to the ten people who were murdered in New York City last week, there were also 18 rapes, 317 robberies and 566 felony assaults.
In the first 106 days of 2023 (January 1 through April 16), 113 people have been murdered in New York City, according to the NYPD report.
During those 106 days there were also 429 rapes, 4,417 robberies and 7,338 felony assaults.
Those 7,338 felony assault in the first 106 days of this year work out to about 69 per day—or one every 21 minutes.
Jeffrey did add -- reluctantly, one must presume -- that "On March 20, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office put out a statement saying that “ New York remains one of the safest big cities in the U.S." But he refused to prove the numbers that prove it.
It's clear that if CNS had not been shut down, Jeffrey would be churning out weekly updates on murders in New York -- and censoring the fact that New York is a safe city.
FLASHBACK: MRC Loved Tucker Carlson's Cherry-Picked Capitol Riot Clips Topic: Media Research Center
As we show how the Media Research Center had a sad when Fox News fired Tucker Carlson, it's worth noting how much it was in Carlson's thrall -- even gushing over how he promoted misleading, cherry-picked video footage of the Capitol riot. In a Feb. 22 post, Nicholas Fondacaro spewed his usual misogyny in attacking "The View" for noting concerns about Kevin McCarthy giving unedited riot footage to Carlson:
The cackling coven of ABC’s The View was outraged on Wednesday after news broke that Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) gave Fox News host Tucker Carlson all 44,000 hours of footage from January 6. The gaggling gals were off the rails from the get-go with accusations that Carlson was a security risk who would reveal “evacuation points,” “safe rooms,” and security camera locations which would end up enabling another January 6 or 9/11.
“So, exactly how dangerous is it to let Tucker Carlson reset the narrative on January 6?” Joy Behar asked the hysterical faux conservative, Alyssa Farah Griffin.
Without evidence, Farah Griffin proclaimed that Carlson’s possession of the footage “raises huge safety and security concerns for the Capitol.”
[...]
Farah Griffin’s ridiculous suggestions about security threats were something the entire cast latched on to. “The biggest thing here is what Alyssa said before. The security risks, exposing the inside of the White House,” Sara Haines declared.
Insisting that Carlson had “nefarious intentions,” Haines also pushed the long-debunked accusation that Republican members of Congress had helped rioters scout the Capitol beforehand:
But they proved that they were giving tours – Congress people were giving tours before to show people exactly what we just – what was just now handed over to someone. And where there can be nothing good coming from it, they've investigated we’ve done everything we need to do. It's not only not going to add good, it actually only has bad intentions. It's – Nefarious intentions drive this request.
The cast of The View knew perfectly well those accusations were busted last year. Back in June 2022, they cried foul when the Capitol Police exonerated Congressman Barry Loudermilk (R-GA).
As we noted when Fondacaro originally attacked "The View" over this, Loudermilk originally falsely claimed there was no tour at all and subsequent evidence showed that tour participants -- at least one of them took part in the Capitol riot the next day -- took photos of non-touristy things like hallways and security checkpoints.
On Feb. 27, P.J. Gladnick falsely claimed that the media was not interested in obtaining video footage from the riot until it was given to Carlson:
Remember all the incessant demands by the liberal media for the security camera video footage of the Capitol ever since January 6, 2021? No? Perhaps because it never happened... until now. On the heels of the new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy turning over 40,000 hours of that video to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the liberal media suddenly has an urgent desire to see those videos right away.
In fact, the media have repeatedlysought access to video from the riot before it was given to Carlson.
When Carlson did release cherry-picked video from the stash, Tim Graham hyped them in his March 8 podcast while uncritically embracing the Tucker-endorsed narrative downplaying the riot:
The unglued freakout over Fox host Tucker Carlson airing Capitol Police clips of the January 6 riot underlines that the Left cannot stand any attempt to undercut the Pelosi-Picked Plotline. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer told Rupert Murdoch he shouldn't allow Carlson to air a second night of January 6 counter-testimony.
One of the most obnoxious critics was PBS star filmmaker Ken Burns, who compared Carlson (and Ron DeSantis) to both the Nazis and the Soviets. Burns said the videos in Carlson's hands were a "huge threat" to the Republic. Does this sound like someone who has even the most tenuous grasp of history?
These programs were not a momentous rewrite of history. The clips were not epic. But the media have clearly oversold January 6. The best clips were from the media and Democrats. Just hearing Vice President Kamala Harris compare it to Pearl Harbor and 9/11 shows how overwrought the Democrats are. On Tuesday, Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at the podium: "The President has been very clear: January 6th was the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War." That implies 1/6 is worse than 9/11 and worse than Pearl Harbor.'
The Capitol riot was a very bad, violent day, and one we shouldn't forget. But it was not a "deadly insurrection." It wasn't like, for example, the Tree of Life synagogue mass shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018. The only person shot on January 6 was a protester named Ashli Babbitt. Does anyone remember her shooting by a Capitol policeman being discussed by the House panel in their curated hearings? No.
Tucker Carlson did raise alternative narratives and questions. Why were the Capitol Police so unprepared? Why was the "Q-Anon Shaman" sentenced to almost four years in jail when he wasn't violent? Why would the Pelosi Panel mislead the public on Sen. Josh Hawley seemingly running alone out of the Capitol? That’s not dangerous. That’s democracy. Why is the Left so arrogant that they cannot countenance anyone presenting an opposing view?
Says the guy whose job it is to attacking any view that opposes right-wing narratives. Also, Babbitt was a domestic terrorist who was part of a mob trying to enter through a broken door. We thought the MRC believed all mobs were violent and posed imminent danger to law enforcement.
Graham then spent a March 9 post ranting that a fact-checker pointed out that Carlson's video was indeed cherry-picked. He started with a gratuitous attack on the fact-checker for fact-checking things:
Tucker Carlson is clearly a hate figure in the offices of PolitiFact. Over the years, this is his "Truth-O-Meter" record: one "Mostly True," one "Half True," and 26 "Mostly False" or worse ratings(five "Mostly False, twelve "False" and NINE "Pants On Fire").
Now compare that to the other cable hosts in his hour. Chris Hayes, who's hosted an MSNBC show since 2011, has one "True" and one "Half True"(that one from 2011). CNN's Anderson Cooper, who's had a prime-time show from the founding of PolitiFact in 2007....doesn't have a page! That's zero "fact checks."
Graham didn't dispute the accuracy of any of those previous act-checks on Carlson. Then came the attack on the fact-check itself:
Unsurprisingly, the latest "Pants On Fire" from PolitiFact takes Carlson's January 6 riot videos, specifically the footage of the "Q-Anon Shaman" Jacob Chansley wandering the halls of the Capitol facing no visible resistance from police. Carlson said they basically acted as "tour guides" -- mocking the appearance without audio.
PolitiFact's Madison Czopek makes the point that what you don't hear is that the cops were trying to get Chansley to vacate the premises. "Capitol Police officers repeatedly asked Chansley and other rioters to leave the Capitol building, according to the plea agreement."
Graham then pushed a conspiracy theory that Chansley was set up to be a scapegoat:
Carlson was underlining that Chansley was non-violent, even if he wanted "justice" (whatever that means) for Mike Pence. "If he was in fact committing such a grave crime, why didn't the officers who were standing right next to him place him under arrest?" Why did they throw the book at non-violent Chansley with a 44-month jail sentence? Because he was "the face" of the riot.
We've noted that prosecutors pointed out how Carlson's selectively edited videos "did not show Chansley, who was sentenced to 41 months in prison for his actions on January 6, facing off with officers for half an hour outside the Senate chamber or when Chansley refused to be escorted out of the Capitol by an officer and only left after being forcibly removed," adding: "Chansley was not some passive, chaperoned observer of events for the roughly hour that he was unlawfully inside the Capitol. ... He was part of the initial breach of the building; he confronted law enforcement for roughly 30 minutes just outside the Senate Chamber; he gained access to the gallery of the Senate along with other members of the mob (obviously, precluding any Senate business from occurring); and he gained access to and later left the Senate floor only after law enforcement was able to arrive en masse to remove him.” But Graham would rather push a conspiracy theory that fits his narrative than tell the full truth.
The MRC also published columns by Cal Thomas and Ben Shapiro touting Carlson's edited videos.
Last month, the House Ethics Committee closed its investigation into Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell over allegations he had a relationship with a woman who turned out to be a Chinese spy, making no findings of wrongdoing. Swalwell had never been credibly accused of any wrongdoing, and he cut off all ties to her when he learned about her spy activity in 2015.
Is Newsmax suddenly ashamed of taking money to publish propaganda?
Unsurprisingly, WorldNetDaily was unhappy that Fox News fired Tucker Carlson, a fellow right-wing cosnpiracy theorist. A month before Carlson's firing, for instance, WND was 
When it wasn't 
Jerry Pokorsky, like 
The Media Research Center actually pays Alex Christy to hate-watch late-night comedy shows so he can 
Former "Saturday Night Live" comedian Victoria Jackson has spent the past several years sliding toward the far right, and her Obama derangement is what helped make her a 
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stood up to the biased questioning of Fox News' Peter Doocy, and the Media Research Center's Curtis Houck -- an enthusiastic Doocy-fluffer -- spent his writeup of the May 2 
An April 18 Newsmax 
The Media Research Center 
In contrast with the 
We've documented
As we show how the Media Research Center 
