NEW ARTICLE: The MRC Lies To Stop Scrutiny Of Disinformation, Part 2 Topic: Media Research Center
Spearheading a falsehood-filled campaign to stop a proposed government "disinformation governance board" wasn't enough for the Media Research Center -- it continues to smear and lash out at the woman who was to run it. Read more >>
MRC Can't Stop Denying That Univision's Trump Interview Was A Puff Piece Topic: Media Research Center
When we last left off, the Media Research Center's Jorge Bonilla was trying to insist that Univision's softball interview of Donald Trump (which he won't admit it was) was a great thing -- but somehow also meaningless because he has to keep up the narrative of Univision being left-wing reprobates. But as the criticism of the softball interview continued to grow, other MRC writers felt the need to weigh in. Jeffrey Lord spent his Nov. 25 column complaining about the critics, with a dash of whataboutism:
The Hispanic network Univision is getting whacked by liberals. Why? Because they had the temerity to sit down for an interview with the former President of the United States who also happens to be the leading-by-a-lot candidate for the 2024 GOP nomination.
That would be, of course, Donald Trump.
[...]
Univision was created to model the left-leaning American broadcast networks. Which are nothing if not leftist propaganda machines. Univision was specifically designed, according to its ex-president, to be a Spanish-language version of those left-wing propaganda networks.
And now? Now the new leadership of Univision chose to arrange an interview with…..Republican former President Donald Trump. Ohhhhhh, the horror.
On top of which Blaya accuses Univision and Trump of spreading -- you guessed it -- propaganda. As if he's never watched an American network slobber over Barack and/or Michelle Obama.
[...]
It is not news to note that Democrats view the Hispanic community not as a diverse, thoughtful community but rather as the political property of progressives. In which contrary thought to the progressive mindset is not allowed. Univision, in that mindset, was built to be on the liberal plantation. And with this Trump interview the network had the audacity to step off of that plantation.
The all-American holiday season is now officially upon us. Serious politics will emerge once past the Christmas rush.
Lord ignored the fact that much of the criticism comes from the softball nature of the interview, not that it was done at all.
Bonilla returned for a Nov. 26 post whining that longtime Univision anchor Jorge Ramos pointed out the softball nature of the interview:
It was a matter of time before Univision senior anchor and Special Editorial Advisor to the CEO Jorge Ramos weighed in on the controversy surrounding Televisa’s interview of former President Donald Trump. And, in a manner similar to his own interactions with Donald Trump, he made it all about himself.
The Trump interview happened nearly three weeks ago, but the Ramos response ran on Ramos’ website during a holiday weekend. Was The New York Times pitched but not interested? Or did Ramos wait for the holiday to drop his column? Weird timing.
The column, titled “The Danger of Not Confronting Trump”, wastes no time in going to the heart of the matter, which is Jorge Ramos.
When Ramos pointed out that he has never interviewed Trump but was limited to asking a couple questions at a 2015 campaign stop in Iowa, Bonilla huffed that it was "a performative confrontation" -- as if Peter Doocy and other right-wing reporters don't do the same in the White House briefing room. Meanwhile, Bonilla still wouldn't admit that the crux of the issue was that it was a softball interview, and he again tried to insist that it means nothing to his designated anti-Univision narrative:
The media’s narrative surrounding the Televisa interview of Trump is not one of a corporate parent trying to restore balance to a property gone horribly wrong that has lost significant trust within its own viewing cohort, but of Univision’s brave struggle for editorial independence. But again, and so we’re crystal clear, by “independence” we mean the independence to remain a repository of Democrat [sic] talking points. Nothing else.
When actor John Leguizamo used a "Daily Show" segment to point out the softball nature of the interview, Bonilla again ignored that salient criticism and clung even harder to his Univision-is-evil narrative in another Nov. 26 post:
Leguizamo, who last made news by race-whining over actor John Franco’s casting as Fidel Castro, saw fit to post a video somewhere and call for a boycott of Univision over its deviation from its normal editorial standards, which is to be a reliable Democrat talking point regurgitator. And now, we suffer this obnoxious rant which aired on the desiccated husk of The Daily Show.
The media ran with Leguizamo’s initial video, oohing and aahing at these calls to counter an editorial shift THAT NEVER HAPPENED. There is no shift at Univision. There may be the perception of a shift, but there is no actual shift. And the fact that the media continue to amplify denunciations of a nonexistent shift means that none of these people that supposedly care so much about Univision ever even watch Univision. In fact, the Venn diagram of people who saw Leguizamo’s dopey rant and watch Univision regularly is two circles, a thousand miles apart. The woke anglos in the studio whooped and hollered, but no one who might actually be affected by an editorial shift at Univision actually saw any of this nonsense.
In the end, this is just a tantrum meant to create the illusion of an editorial shift. Don’t believe the hype of a shift unless Jorge Ramos and President of News Daniel Coronell either tender their resignations or are the subjects of a press release wishing them all the luck in their future endeavors.
Bonilla was still cranking out performative outrage at anyone daring to point out the softball Trump interview. He played whataboutism in a Dec. 4 post:
There’s been a lot of recent Acela Media and Professional Latinx outrage over 2024 presidential candidates doing what they perceive to be softball interviews with Spanish-language media. Case in point, the kerfuffle over former President Donald Trump’s interview with TelevisaUnivision. Not surprisingly, they don’t share the same concern for President Joe Biden’s interview with a radio network owned and operated by the foundation previously overseen by his campaign manager.
[...]
This interview of Joe Biden aired just before Thanksgiving on a radio network owned and operated by the family of his campaign manager, as the left were still in full meltdown mode over the Trump-Univision interview. This whining is not about “disinformation”, but about the left’s perceived loss of monopoly power and control over what Spanish-dominant audiences see and hear as news content.
Note that Bonilla still refuses to admit the Trump interview was softball-laden, conceding only that it was "perceive to be" a softball interview (while ignoring that this perception is correct).
When Univision President of News Daniel Coronell defended the Trump interview, Bonilla hyped it another Dec. 4 post (while, of course, still clinging to the corporate anti-Univision narrative):
Coronell defends both the style and substance of an interview, and explains the history behind the interview. He explains Enrique Acevedo’s approach to the interview, which was to get full answers from Trump. Coronell also addresses the issue of Joe Biden’s ads.
The record reflects, with crystal clarity, that we are no fan of Coronell. Much of Univision’s descent into open partisanship happened under Coronell’s watch, and I don’t think that a one-shot interview with Trump will suddenly undo years of institutional decay. The left are making much ado about nothing.
The whole episode is a reminder that the left only care about having the power to decide what news and information Hispanics see and hear. The perceived loss of control, although having no basis in fact, is what triggered the left's manic outcry over this interview.
We publish Coronell’s remarks here because they are relevant to the controversy, they address critics’ concerns, and are therefore in the public interest. Furthermore, the Acela Media parachuting into this story wouldn’t even know where to begin to look for Coronell’s remarks. You’re welcome.
More than a month after the interview, Bonilla was still at it, this time raging in a Dec. 12 post at a New York Times article on the interview:
The idea that the onetime home of Walter Duranty should be taken seriously on anything pertaining to an editorial shift, or concern over an editorial shift at any other media outlet, is laughable. But, alas, here we are. The Old Grey Lady is the latest to weigh in on the Acela Media’s collective panic over Univision’s interview of former President Donald Trump specifically, and over a perceived editorial shift at Univision generally.
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As with the other pieces, this article conveys the left’s sense of mourning over an ongoing Hispanic shift away from the Democrat Party. Is Univision’s shift real? As I’ve stated before, personnel is policy, and it’s hard to imagine Univision completely shifting to the center with the personnel that are currently in place- chief among them Jorge Ramos.
Univision’s so-called shift may come down to that old Michael Jordan proverb: “Republicans buy sneakers, too”. It turns out that they also buy ads.
Once more, Bonilla absolutely refused to admit the Trump interview was a puff piece and insisted that its existence doesn't change the anti-Univision narrative he's paid to spout.
MRC Attacks Film On Mosque Arson, Still Won't Admit Islamophobia Exists Topic: Media Research Center
Fresh off effectively denying that Islamophobia exists, the Media Research Center wants to make a documentary about a arson at a Texas mosque about anything but the actual arson. Clay Waters complained in a Nov. 26 post:
The latest PBS Independent Lens film program, “A Town Called Victoria,” was a three-hour report on the January 2017 firebombing of the Victoria Islamic Center mosque in the small town of Victoria, Texas. Predictably, there was a deeper left-wing political message within this documentary, part of the “Exploring Hate” series by NYC-based public television station WNET.
[...]
Documentary director Li Lu tried the usual film-making moves, opening with an audio montage of former presidents mentioning Islam (like President G.W. Bush after 9-11). But she snuck in partisan and ideological jabs with her source seelction, going beyond the awful crime itself to score political points against President Trump or Republicans in general -- blaming Trump’s temporary ban on travel from seven majority-Muslim countries for the arson attack.
Waters whined that the film was allegedly "going beyond the awful crime itself to score political points against President Trump or Republicans in general -- blaming Trump’s temporary ban on travel from seven majority-Muslim countries for the arson attack" -- but he didn't mention the fact that the arson occurred literally just hours after Trump signed that ban, making it a reasonable point to bring up.
Waters went on to complain that the film portrayed the crime as an act of white supremacy even though a Latino man committed the arson, then took a couple irrelevant shots at longtime MRC target and Texas politician Beto O'Rourke:
Lu was much nicer to Democrats, like Sen. Cruz’s failed 2018 Democratic opponent Beto O’Rourke. Documentary star Omar Rachid introduced O’Rourke at a local rally.
Rachid: When asked if I would introduce Beto, I said, are you kidding me? I mean this is like a dream come true! And it gives me the microphone! Beto O'Rourke!
Rachid took Beto’s eventual loss hard, and petulantly blamed the anti-Muslim atmosphere among his neighbors before leaving town for good. Apparently not voting for a liberal Democrat with who's served just three terms in Congress makes one automatically anti-Muslim. (And Beto went on to lose a presidential bid, and a gubernatorial bid.)
What Waters didn't do, however, was condemn the arson in any meaningful way or explain the Islamophobic motivation of the perpetrator Marq Vincent Lopez, as federal prosecutors did:
Testimony at trial detailed how Perez conducted what he described as “recon” by breaking into the mosque a week before he set it on fire. Evidence presented at trial showed Perez communicated with someone through Facebook about breaking into the mosque a second time, the same night of the fire. A witness who was with Perez on the night of the fire described how Perez used a lighter to set papers on fire inside the mosque and how excited Perez was upon seeing the mosque in flames just minutes later.
The witness testified that Perez said that he burned down the mosque, because he wanted to “send a message.”
During the execution of a search warrant, federal agents recovered stolen property taken from the mosque the night of the fire in Perez’s home. Several witnesses at trial also testified about Perez’s animus towards Muslims and that he often used anti-Muslim slurs.
Of course, Waters and the MRC don't think Islamophobia exists, so these facts would have caused cognitive dissonance with their narratives -- which is why Waters chose to lash out at O'Rourke instead. Indeed, Waters' hit job was so sloppy that he couldn't even be bothered to get the name of the documentary right in the headline -- it's "A Town Called Victoria," not "A Town In Victoria," which doesn't even make sense.
MRC Defends Univision's Softball Interview Of Trump -- But Still Wants You To Believe Univision Is Still Liberal Topic: Media Research Center
A couple months back, Univision did an interview with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in which he faced no tough questions and was fawned over by interviewers. The Media Research Center's Jorge Bonilla spent a Nov. 10 post claiming to be shocked by the interview -- but, as a right-winger, the softball nature of it was a good thing ("totally normal," he called it in his headline), though it blew up his narrative that Univision has a liberal bias:
I sat down and watched TelevisaUnivision’s interview with former President Donald J. Trump, expecting fiery exchanges and contentiousness and I am in complete shock for there were no such things. Instead, viewers watched a calm, rational dialogue between Trump and Televisa N+ anchor Enrique Acevedo. And I can't quite figure out why.
[...]
This was the tone throughout the entire interview. History, too extensive to get into here, suggests that this should not have been the case. From the moment Trump descended the gilded escalator at Trump Tower, Univision (at the time not a wholly owned subsidiary of Mexico’s Televisa but owned by a private equity group headed by Hillary Clinton megadonor Haim Saban) set out to cast him as a monster, and depict him as such to their viewing audience. And this was the editorial course that Univision charted right up until they were bought out by Televisa in 2022.
I was always told, by sources within Univision, that the network wanted to pursue a different editorial tack so as to avoid being perceived as a foreign-owned Democrat talking point regurgitator. But the on-screen product never quite caught up to those lofty promises. Until tonight's apparent shift.
I was struck by the choice of anchor. Enrique Acevedo is no stranger to the MRC, and we’d covered him extensively both as Univision anchor and as 60 Minutes correspondent. He recently returned to Mexico, post-merger, and took over as anchor of Televisa’s prime time evening newscast. There were plenty of people at Univision HQ in Doral (OK, a handful) who could’ve done the interview but the choice of Acevedo intrigued me. I began to suspect that the whole op was run from Mexico City.
[...]
One thing to watch for going forward: will Trump (or Republicans in general) begin to garner different coverage on Univision, or is this a one-off for both Trump and Univision? And, if so, why?
Another thing: exactly how much “internal grumbling” is there within Univision’s news division, which has now been very publicly and visibly defenestrated?
In a Nov. 15 post, however, Bonilla was in narrative-salvaging mode, insisting that the softball interview (though he still won't call it that) was a one-off and that Univision is still as purportedly left-wing as ever:
One constant throughout my conversations with those who work in local media (particularly local media serving Hispanic communities) is the contemptuous tone reserved for the “parachute media”: that is, members of the elite Acela Media (“media reporters” and such) who “parachute” into a subject matter they know nothing about, fart out their reports, and then return to D.C. or New York. I’ve thought about that quite a bit as I consider the quality of reporting subsequent to Televisa’s interview of former President Donald Trump.
The common thread to emerge from coverage of the interview and subsequent reaction is that the interview is somehow representative of Univision shifting to the right. I assure you, this is the fakest of fake news.
[...]
One swallow does not a summer make, despite both the irrational exuberance of my MAGA friends and the irrational anguish of my friends on the left. One interview, planned and executed by Univision’s corporate parent, does not constitute a major editorial shift. But Acela “media journalists” unable to distinguish between Doral and Mexico City would have you believe that.
Univision has not shifted to the right, and is not suddenly willing to grant a fair hearing to conservatives. Univision is still the same corporate immigration client of the Democratic Party, and is as willing as ever to foist the rest of the leftwing policy pupu platter upon its viewers. That’s my assessment of the facts as they stand today. So long as [Univision anchor Jorge] Ramos and [Televisa news director Daniel] Coronell are in place and in charge, Noticias Univision will remain what it has always been- a reliable left-wing cesspool.
When former Univision anchor María Celeste Arrarás pointed out that the softball, unchallenging nature of the interview misleads voters, Bonilla chose in a Nov. 19 post to dishonestly frame that has her claiming that "Latinos are unable to view and process facts as presented to them, without media 'context' and 'nuance'":
Let me translate this for you. When she says “no matter how intelligent they are”, Arrarás really means that Hispanics are “not intelligent enough” to be trusted to analyze the news of the day for themselves, and therefore need it spoon-fed and filtered to them with a Democrat lens through approved gatekeeper institutions. Although one always suspects that the media have deep-seated contempt for their viewing public, it is nonetheless surprising to hear someone express that contempt out loud.
This is the main argument against the Televisa-Trump interview- this perceived loss of air supremacy on a cornerstone institution of the Latino Grievance Industrial Complex. What Arrarás is arguing for is for Spanish-language media to continue to alter the perceptions (and therefore, the reality) of their viewers; unchecked, unabated, and unopposed.
Arrarás’ bit on foreign undue influence is also hilarious, primarily because no one bothered to complain about “undue foreign influence” when Univision was out there doing all the disinformation on behalf of Democrats. But book ONE interview with Donald Trump and everyone loses their minds.
Funny how Bonilla was demanding balance when he claimed that Democrats were dominating Univision, but he wants no such balance for a softball Trump interview.
As people continued to question why Trump was given such a softball interview, Bonilla continued to whine about the complainers. He did that in condescending fashion in a Nov. 20 post:
As I’ve stated many times, the Latinx Grievance Industrial Complex is up in arms over the perceived (and, perhaps, imagined) loss of air supremacy on one of its cornerstone institutions- Univision. Which is how we end up with Ana Navarro, on The View, DEMANDING to know how and why this is happening.
After having to endure this segment, I’ve gained an even greater appreciation for our friend Nick Fondacaro, who watches this nonsense on a daily basis so you don’t have to. Anyway, heeeeeeere’s Ana:
[...]
Univision, a reliable Democrat talking point regurgitator for decades, is both a gatekeeper institution into the Latino community, as created and organized by the left, and an approved purveyor of information to the community. Thus, the Trump interview is seen as a major breach. Univision is perceived to have breached its fiduciary responsibility towards the rest of the Professional Political Latinx class, by having the temerity to allow Donald J. Trump to sit down with a journalist and answer questions in a normal, conversational tone.
This is the basis upon which Navarro, John Leguizamo, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, along with the rest of the Latinx Industrial Complex, have demanded that Univision reverse course and go back to being a reliable Democrat talking point machine- which it never stopped being in the first place. Had the shoe been on the other foot, these very groups would be denouncing these activities as a gross attack upon a free and independent press.
I use such words as “imagined” and “perceived” because there is no actual editorial shift at Univision, and no substance to the conversation beyond what I described in the previous paragraph. And so it is that we have to endure five minutes of the Viewteratti’s discourse on Univision- which, honestly, felt like five hundred.
Yes, Bonilla is still defending the softball interview while insisting it doesn't change his narrative. He did it again in a Nov. 21 post:
It’s the dopiest of dopey cycles, this Acela Media and Professional Latinx crusade against the most reliably left-wing outlet in all domestic news media, which is Univision. And yet, here we are. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has now joined the fray, and exposes the real rationale behind this attack against Univision.
Watch as Maddow reveals the truest, purest victim of a so-called “rightward shift” at Univision: Joe Biden’s electoral prospects.
[...]
This isn’t about “preventing disinformation”, because as we reported at the time, a study showed that Univision is one one of the biggest purveyors of misinformation to the Hispanic community. It isn’t about protecting freedom of the press, because the Acela Media and Professional Latinx are actively trying to interfere with Univision’s editorial decision making processes. Adding fuel to the fire, the Congressional Hispanic Censorship Caucus is now demanding to meet with Univision executives.
What this episode proves conclusively is that none of the people howling about Univision have never once sat down and actually watched Univision’s news product. If they did, MSNBC would promptly begin taking notes on how to leftwing bias harder.
Bonilla's professed concern about misinformation in Spanish-language media is rather cute, given that he was briefly employed by one of the biggest Hispanic media misinformers -- Americano Media, which tried to be the Latino Fox News until its financial collapse -- for a few months as a talk show host before returning to the MRC. And that "study" he cited was actually just a poll conducted by a right-wing Latino group.
(Tim Graham repeated Bonilla's complaints on his Nov. 22 podcast.)
Bonilla has made it clear that the only interviews with Republicans he wants to see are softball ones, even if he refuses to use that accurate term to describe what happened in the Univision interview.
MRC's DeSantis Defense Brigade Watch, Gavin Newsom Edition Topic: Media Research Center We've shown how the Media Research Center's softball interview with Ron DeSantis in early November -- effectively an in-kind donation to his presidential campaign -- landed with such a thud that it basically ignored him for the rest of that month (even its very own DeSantisDefenseBrigade). The Brigade didn't come alive again until after DeSantis' Nov. 30 Fox News debate with Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom. A Dec. 1 post by Curtis Houck served up the usual complaint that non-right-wing networks didn't sound like Fox News when talking about DeSantis:
Friday’s CBS Mornings did its best to all but ignore Thursday night’s fiery debate on the Fox News Channel between Governors Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Gavin Newsom (D-CA) by stashing it in the Eye Opener (which we at NewsBusters don’t formally account as most of it’s teases for segments), but the others stepped up to the plate with full stories on ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today.
They took different approaches, however, as ABC used three-time bestselling Trump author Jonathan Karl to trash Trump’s lead 2024 GOP primary opponent while NBC’s Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker largely treated it like a substantive debate.
Karl began with the platitudes, boasting “it was billed as the red state versus blue state debate” and “preview[ing] perhaps of some of the issues, if not the candidates, we could see debated in next year's general election campaign.”
The professionalism ended there as Karl quickly dismissed the entire event and channeled both Newsom and DeSantis’s opponents, which made sense given how financially lucrative Trump has been for him in terms of book sales.
“At the start of the debate, California Governor Gavin Newsom, who isn’t running for president, taunted Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is running, but trailing badly with a reminder that neither of them would likely be on the ballot next fall,”“neither of us will be the nominee for our party in 2024.”
Karl briefly touched on the fact that each candidate represented their party’s message on the economy, but went back to trashing DeSantis, who took on his employer’s parent company, Disney.
Despite his insinuations, Houck offered no proof that Karl is a Disney lackey, nor did provide evidence that anything in Karl's Trump-related books is false.
Tim Graham used his Dec. 1 podcast to nitpick a fact-check of the debate:
The Sean Hannity-moderated debate between Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis drew a predictable outcome from PolitiFact. They tried to ignore the raw numbers on Californians leaving Florida (and the reverse) and proclaim Newsom wasaccurate by using a "per capita" measurement for America's most populous state. That's playing with "alternative facts."
In all of PolitiFact's checking since they started in 2007, Newsom has 29 fact checks, and DeSantis has 54. But Newsom has 13 of 29 (almost half) that are True or Mostly True. DeSantis has 12 of his 54 (22 percent) True or Mostly True. Newsom has only 6 of his 29 as Mostly False/False/Pants on Fire, DeSantis has 32 of 45 (or almost 6o percent). This is what PolitiFact does, writ large. Republicans are 60 percent wrong, Democrats are 20 percent wrong. That’s why Newsom is excited to see the report!
Meanwhile, Jeffrey Lord ranted in his Dec. 2 column:
The event of this past week that drew a great deal of attention was Fox’s Sean Hannity hosting a debate between the Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis and California’s Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom.
One of the striking features of this face-off was the regularity with which the two governors accused each other of lying. Which raises an obvious couple of questions. Where is the media? And will the media do their job in 2024?
It surely can’t be that difficult for journalists to dig into the obvious question. That would be: Was DeSantis really lying about this or that? Or was Newsom? As President John Adams famously said in the long ago, facts are stubborn things. And that they are. But if journalists are going to ignore and not report on facts because they are uncomfortable or make Democrat X (can you say Joe Biden?) look bad then suffice to say the 2024 campaign will not be a good one, with each party held accountable for the facts of their record.
Alex Christy spent a Dec. 14 post complaining that Newsom went on late-night TV to talk about the deabte and DeSantis, complaining that he said that DeSantis is "out there talking about anti-woke, and I mean this, for me it's not anti-woke, what he really means is anti-black he's out there censoring historic facts, he's rewriting history. He was out there, you know, he eliminated AP African American Studies. He said slavery was somehow a workforce development program and he doubled down on that." Christy huffed in defense that "Florida’s standards say that slaves learned skills that were later useful in life, not that slavery was some sort of benign job training program." As we've noted, most examples served up by Florida education officials in defense of DeSantis' claim about this were either people who were never enslaved or who never actually used skills learned in slavery later in life.
The fact that the MRC didn't talk much about the contents of the debate itself is a likely indicator of how it knows how badly it went for DeSantis -- indeed, Newsom shredded DeSantis in discussing how their respective states responded to the COVID pandemic.
MRC Ignores More Musk Troubles, Still Serves As His PR Shop Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center would rather whine that a comedian made fun of Elon Musk than engage in any serious discussion about how he's mismanaging Twitter (well, X). Thus, you'll hear no mention at the MRC over these recent controversies:
His attempt to counter criticism of his anti-Semitic turn (which the MRC couldn't be bothered to criticize despite its normally strong stance against anti-Semitism) by meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He tweeted a meme supporting the false Pizzagate conspiracy theory, though he was sufficiently shamed online that he eventually deleted it.
When Musk claim of a journalist being allegedly tortured in a Ukrainian prison was debunked -- becaue the guy is actually an online dating coach who was arrested in Ukraine for spreading Russian propaganda -- Musk raged about the Community Notes system that he introducted on his own website when it pointed out his falsehoods. He has a history of deleting Community Notes that correct his false or misleading tweets.
Musk not only restored the account of discredited conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, he appeared in an audio chat with Jones (along with Vivek Ramaswamy).
Despite all of that, the MRC still insists on working as Musk's PR shop. Thus, we have things like a Dec. 13 post by Catherine Salgado hyping another Musk-fluffer:
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) denounced multiple brands that pulled their advertising from X, but have refused to address the national security risks of Chinese-owned TikTok.
Rubio issued a press release announcing he sent letters to 18 companies that were too squeamish to advertise on Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter), but remain active on TikTok, which has Chinese Communist government ties. “I am appalled by the double standard of boycotting an American social-media application while maintaining a presence on a social-media application controlled by America’s greatest adversary,” Rubio wrote in the letter. He pointed out the biased censorship and prolific pro-terrorist content on TikTok, along with its ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government through its parent company, ByteDance. As the senator noted, China’s national security laws require all companies to share data with the government.
Salgado made sure not to bring up the fact that anti-Semitic content on Twitter and from its owner -- and that ads are being placed next to such content -- are the main reasons companies are fleeing from the platform.
It was Tom Olohan's turn to engage in Musk toadyism in a Dec. 21 post:
Independent journalist Tucker Carlson made clear that any chance of a free and fair election in 2024 rests on keeping Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) platform free of censorship.
When entrepreneur and tech investor David Sacks suggested to Carlson that the media would put Biden “over the top” in the 2024 election, Carlson pointed out that there is one large gap in the leftist monopoly on media and social media. On the Dec. 1 edition of All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg, Carlson responded, “Assuming that we have the same media that we had in 2020, that’s true. But that’s why you just gotta pray every night for Elon’s health.” He added, “I mean it, too. I mean it. [X is] the only platform at scale in the world that’s pretty — there’s censorship on it — but there’s not mass censorship actually, there isn’t and that’s the only platform of its kind, at scale, that’s the only one.”
Throughout the episode, Carlson continued to defend Musk, including by mocking CNBC anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin as a “fussy little douche” for his behavior during a since-viral interview with Musk. During this interview, Sorkin pressed Musk on his response to an anti-free speech advertiser boycott, but struggled to respond after Musk told anyone pressuring him to “go f*** yourself.”
First, the idea that a right-wing conspiracy-mongerer like Carlson should be considered an "independent journalist" -- as Olohan apparently wants us to believe -- is laughable. Second, Olohan failed to disclose that Sacks is a longtime Musk booster and part of his team of "yes men" to help Musk run Twitter following his takeover, so he's not exactly offering unbiased analysis. Third, Olohan, like Salgado, failed to mention that anti-Semitic conduct on Twitter and by Musk is what's causing advertisers to flee, not an "anti-free speech advertiser boycott"; of course, then he would have to explain how anti-Semitism must be consindered "free speech."
Rather than engage in honest reporting, Olohan chose to fluff Carlson some more:
Earlier in the podcast, Carlson cited Musk’s professed commitment to protect free speech on X as a potential reason behind the desire to bring more censorship to the Musk-owned platform. Tucker also pointed out that there are relatively few large media outlets, such as the three big broadcast channels and three large cable networks, presumably CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. He added that social media is dominated by a few giants “and they were all locked down.”
Carlson went on to mention that even his own former employer tried to control what information Americans could access, adding, “I’m not going to beat up on Fox News but there was kind of a fairly narrow band of acceptable views allowed on that channel. Is that control? Yes, it is. And so there really was no remaining place with scale where someone with a dissenting view could give it voice and that’s just crazy.”
This, Carlson explained, made him greatly appreciate Musk’s social media platform.
Jorge Bonilla similarly trieds to suggest that hate is "free speech" in a Dec. 31 post:
During a year-end wrapup segment on Face The Nation, CBS Senior Business and Technology Correspondent Jo-Ling Kent lamented that “the arguments and protections of free speech” prevent social media companies from engaging in further censorship and viewpoint suppression. Additionally, Kent took a shot at Elon Musk for his free speech reforms at X, formerly known as Twitter.
Watch as Kent also bemoans Musk’s gutting of the fed-embedded Twitter Trust and Safety Team, as aired on CBS Face The Nationon Sunday, December 31st, 2023:
[...]
The giveaway here is the intentional singling out of Elon Musk’s reforms at X. Kent cites the recently reinstated Alex Jones as a “conspiracy theorist” platformed by Musk- but conveniently leaves out those who were suspended but proven right over time, such as vaccine skeptics Robert Malone and Alex Berenson, and the continued platforming of Libs of Tik Tok despite the left’s repeated cancellation efforts.
Both Malone and Berenson are proven liars and misinformers who have not, in fact, been "proven right over time." And privately run social media platforms have every right to remove the accounts of those who promote hate, lies and misinformation.
MRC Wants You To Know That Person Who Caused Hockey Player's Death Is Black Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center's Jorge Bonilla whined in a Nov. 14 post:
In a bizarre throwaway report, the kind that is used as a timestuffer towards the end of a newscast, NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt goes through the trouble of mentioning the arrest of a suspect in the gruesome death of an American hockey player, but has a most difficult time identifying the suspect.
Watch the report in its entirety, as aired on NBC Nightly News on Tuesday, November 14th, 2023:
LESTER HOLT: In England, an arrest in the death of an American hockey player who died after the blade of an opposing player's skate cut his neck. Adam Johnson, who once played for the Pittsburgh Penguins, was on a British team when the incident happened. Police did not identify the suspect but said he was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.
The report is opaque, and goes to great lengths to bifurcate the fatal slashing of Johnson from the manslaughter arrest. Was the arrestee, mayhaps, someone other than the opposing player who kung fu-kicked Johnson in the neck?
The problem here is that local authorities didn't really name a suspect. But that didn't deter Bonilla's whine:
The events were a kung-fu kick across the throat. South Yorkshire clearly identified a suspect before making an arrest, so it isn’t so much a lack of identification as a refusal to publish.
Even if the suspect wasn’t identified by South Yorkshire, the whole world knows that Matt Petgrave is the one who slashed Adam Johnson. Surely, Holt could’ve spared a second or two to provide that context. Reports like these, with critical information missing, do little if anything to inform the public.
Why is Bonilla so desperate for you to know that Petgrave was arrested in Johnson's death? Presumably because Petgrave is black.That's something that other right-wingers have seized upon has well; Petgrave gas been targeted with racist hate since the incident, portraying him as a murderer; Bonilla leaned into that narrative by accusing him of having "kung fu-kicked Johnson in the neck," heavily implying it was deliberate despite a lack of evidence to support that conclusion. Even though hockey fans love a good bad-guy enforcer, this tends not to apply to black players. Indeed, one writer argued that the situation would likely not be the same if the races were reversed: "If Petgrave had been killed by Johnson’s skateblade, do you believe he would have gotten arrested and charged with manslaughter, too?"
Bonilla doesn't want to actually say any of this out loud to keep a veneer of plausible deniability. His implication of racist motive is enough.
MRC's Jean-Pierre-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Watch: New Year, Same Old Hate Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center started off a new year with the same old hatred of White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Curtis Houck spent a Jan. 2 post complaining that non-right-wing outlets that interviewed her didn't heap Houck-esque slurs and abuse on her:
On Tuesday morning as more Americans returned to work, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN This Morning, and MSNBC’s Morning Joe partnered with their allies in the Biden administration to forcefeed viewers White House propaganda in the form of softball interviews with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
ABC shamelessly had a Jean-Pierre predecessor — co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos — interview her and billed it as a chance “to discuss President Biden’s priorities and challenges in the year ahead.”
[...]
Thanks to Stephanopoulos refusing to interject on her tome-sized answers, the Clinton official allowed her to run out the clock and left time for not a question, but acknowledgment of the border crisis: “Also tied up in those negotiations, border security. Many American cities now overwhelmed with this immigration crisis.”
Given the lack of time remaining, Stephanopoulos did nothing to challenge her answer ripping Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) for making American less safe by bussing and flying illegal immigrants to major cities away from his state (which would, therefore, be an admission that illegal immigrant criminals should be taken off the street).
CNN presented the only sorts of challenges and, not surprisingly, they came from the left as fill-in co-host Audie Cornish brought up student loan debt and urged Biden to use more executive orders.
Tim Graham regurgitated all this in his Jan. 3 podcast:
The White House sent out press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for a round of softball TV interviews on ABC, CNN, and MSNBC on January 2. George George Stephanpoulos began: "A lot of the polls show him — especially in the battleground states — trailing or tied with Donald Trump. What does the White House think about that? How can you turn it around?"
As often happens, KJP unspools an answer for more than a minute, without interruption. Salesmanship is given space. She can claim Biden “has accomplished more in three years than any other President has been able to do in two terms,” and no one objects.
Sometimes, the host didn't even ask questions, just a sentence to move things along. How can anyone see this and think these networks do "news" instead of just offer publicity and spin? NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck explains the press-White House partnership.
CNN's Audie Cornish only wanted to challenge her from the left, that somehow "young voters" thought Biden wasn't doing enough to forgive their student loans without any authorization from Congress. Who cares about the balance of powers!?
Houck and Graham seem to have forgotten that they tossed nothing but softballs when they had the chance to interview former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany , so their ciomplaint here is utterly hypocritical.
Houck delved into gossip in a Jan. 5 post, cattily touting an Axios report that "the impressively incompetent Karine Jean-Pierre seems to be jealous and upset with having to share so many briefings with National Security Council spokesman John Kirby":
Why? It’s obvious as Kirby, unlike Jean-Pierre, has a grasp of the English language and shown a basic level of competence in handling of issues in his portfolio, such as Israel vs. Hamas war. And it doesn’t hurt that he’s even smacked down a few reporters for their pro-Hamas takes.
“They share a podium — and a mutual frustration. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and the National Security Council's John Kirby frequently split the podium at media briefings, but behind the scenes their relationship is fraught with tension, White House sources tell Axios,”Thompson began.
[...]
Kirby, for his part, has reportedly become “frustrat[ed]” by Jean-Pierre still calling on reporters for him to take questions from with Thompson’s sources stating another obvious point, which is it’s a sign of Jean-Pierre’s “insecur[ity].”
Instead of wondering if this was due in large part to Jean-Pierre’s incompetence, Thompson carried water and fretted Kirby’s role really hadn’t existed in previous administrations[.]
Houck offered no evidence for Jean-Pierre's purported incompetence that isn't grounded in his personal and partisan hatred of her.
As for the content of actual briefings, Houck lazily rolled them into a Jan. 8 post that made sure to repeat that cattiness:
Last week featured only two White House press briefings (Wednesday and Thursday), but it brought about more of the same as the National Security Council’s John Kirby helmed much of both installments when taking questions about foreign policy and the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre began 2024 with nothing but venom for Biden’s opponents on domestic issues.
Not so coincidentally, the two briefings came prior to a hilarious Axios item on Friday that revealed Kirby and Jean-Pierre reportedly have an icy relationship.
Houck then listed "the best and worst questions from the week"; unsurprisingly, the "best" questions were all from right-wing reporters, whom Houck refused to identify as such.
MRC Wants You To Think There's Too Little Islamophobia To Care About Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has long discounted the existence of Islamophobia. In a September 2021 post, for example, Kyle Drennen complained that on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, "MSNBC decided it was a good time to remind viewers how racist America has supposedly been toward Muslim citizens since that horrific day" by interviewing "a panel of six Muslim Americans, many of whom were longtime left-wing activists." He called one panelist's claim that anti-Muslim sentiment has increased since then a "wild assertion," but he made no effort to actually disprove the claim.
After the war between Hamas and Israel started, the MRC again felt the need to downplay Islamophobia. A Oct. 13 post by Alex Christy complained that a fact-checker wanted to separate Muslims as a whole from alleged Hamas atrocities:
Former Al Jazeera producer turned Snopes fact-checker Nur Ibrahim warned on Thursday that discussions of Hamas beheading Israeli babies should be taken with a grain of salt and that “people should be wary of claims that echo Islamophobic rhetoric.”
[...]
Ibrahim was just getting started, “People should be wary of claims that echo Islamophobic rhetoric, or statements that compare the violence in Kfar Aza to ‘ISIS-style’ killings — i.e., beheadings that have taken place in a different context and were committed by a different group. Such rumors that emphasize specific, unverified acts of brutality against infants and that attempt to connect them to patterns of violence carried out by unconnected Islamist groups have the potential to become dangerous propaganda.”
How in the world is being outraged at beheadings “Islamophobic”? And what “context” is Ibrahim referring to? Terrorist beheadings are terrorist beheadings; it really is that simple.
Christy, however, wouldn't explicitly state that Hamas shouldn't be lumped in with Muslims as a whole; instead, he whined about "the hair splitting that seeks to discredit Israel and silence its supporters by crying Islamophobia by differentiating between different types of baby murder is appalling and no one should accept it." Christy sure seems to want to accept Islamophobia, though.
IN an Oct. 17 post, Tim Graham insisted that Islamophobia was a "narrative," not an actual thing:
After the shock of 9/11 wore off, the American media turned toward their natural disposition of worrying about Muslims being discriminated against -- and brutalized -- by ignorant Americans. Now, after what some call Israel's 9/11, we've reached the phase where the media turns once again to that American Islamophobia narrative.
One sign was Palestinian activist Rula Jebreal being invited on Jake Tapper's CNN show immediately after a story on the vicious stabbing death of a 6-year-old Muslim boy outside Chicago, now being investigated as a "hate crime." They want to blame it on talk radio.
Tapper explained it was an important time for Americans to distinguish between Hamas and all Muslims:
JAKE TAPPER: How important do you think it is for people in the media, for our political leaders, religious leaders to make this incredibly important distinction between Hamas, and not only the Palestinian people, but Arabs, and Muslims, all other people who somehow might unfairly and wrongly be lumped in with us?
Is that really a question? How important is it that we make this incredibly important distinction? It's a prompt.
Graham, of cousre, hasno interest in not acknowledging that the vast majroity of Muslims are not violent terrorists, because that doesn't fit his narrative.
Curtis Houck served up his own whine that Islamophobia was acknowledge alongside anti-Semitism in a Nov. 3 post:
This week on NBC’s Today, they went through quite the transformation from caring about anti-Semitism on college campuses (with only passing, almost faux attempts at bothsidesism with Islamophobia) to Thursday creeping toward bothsidesism to Friday pouting with pro-Hamas students being identified in public as terrorist sympathizers.
[...]
Reporting from Emory University, correspondent Blayne Alexander said she had “spoken to a number of students who say they have experienced a range of actions from chants being shouted across campus to troubling social media posts, even the defacing of a poster with Israeli hostages”.
Alexander then introduced bothsidesism (even though it’s only one side where students are being assaulted, chased, and signs being torn down):
Houck further complined that "The rest of the story painted Islamophobia as an equal problem," though he offered no evidence that it wasn't.
Clay Waters ranted in a Nov. 5 post that it was "offensive moral equivalence" to acknowledge that both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia exist:
Thursday’s PBS NewsHour indulged in offensive moral equivalence, pretending that Islamophobia in the United States was as big if not a bigger threat to public safety than the current wave of violent anti-Semitism hitting progressive big cities and college campuses, while also sliming Fox News hosts as endangering Muslims.
Host Geoff Bennett’s segment led with “Islamophobia,” even while Jews are under attack in America.
[...]
The White House’s warped priorities neatly cleaved with the bizarre news emphasis of tax-funded PBS. Not even a month after the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, the left is chasing the convenient phantom of “Islamophobia” to attempt to change the subject from anti-Semitism in the streets.
The idea that Islamophobia is "phantom" and can be ignored because there is also anti-Semitism runs counter to another MRC narrative -- that of making a point of denouncing late-term abortions even though there are so few of them. For instance , when one commentator pointed out that "third-trimester abortions are vanishingly rare," Brad Wilmouth huiffed in a Nov. 11 post that "the fact that Democrats support abortion at any time for any reason is a fact they can't acknowledge is real, or that it matters." If late-ter, abortion matters even though there are so few of them, Islamophobia should matter as well though there is allegedly more anti-Semitism.
But, of course, that's not the way the MRC thinks -- Muslims exist to be hated for a partisan agenda, after all -- so it continued to whine about Islamophobia being discussed. Graham returned for more complaining in a Nov. 12 post:
CBS News can often be described as a megaphone for the Left. But some times, it gets incredibly lazy. On Thursday afternoon, CBSNews.com published an article that can only be described as a press release for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim lobbying group that's been attached to Hamas. The headline was:
"Unprecedented surge" in anti-Arab, anti-Muslim bias incidents reported in U.S. since Israel-Hamas war, advocacy group says
[...]
CBS and its reporter/repeater Emily Mae Czachor made no attempt to seek an opposing view on Islamophobia, or how it compares to the surge in anti-Semitism everyone can see in big cities and leftist college campuses. Is every "request for help" or "report of bias" taken at face value?
Graham didn't explain what kind of "opposing view" he was after -- is it a fellow Islamophobe to claim all this anti-Muslim hate is "phantom"? Of course, Graham himself made no effort to disprove anything in the report despite suggesting it was false.
A Nov. 29 post by Waters actually seemed to argue that not hating Muslims means you're "pro-Hamas":
Who had Parents magazine on their bingo card as running one of the most one-sided stories on the Israel-Hamas war? The magazine of child-raising tips, online-only since 2022, has grown-up to be a home of ignorant rants like a smear against Moms for Liberty, “How 'Klanned Karenhood' Is Infiltrating Schools.”
Contributor Syeda Khaula Saad didn’t try to disguise her slant in “How To Talk to Kids About Islamophobia.” The sub-head served as a sample of Hamas-denial: “As attacks on Palestine intensify, anti-Muslim rhetoric and violence have increased worldwide. Here's some guidance on how to explain Islamophobia to children.” It’s a clumsy piece of pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli propaganda under the guise of one of those sensitive “how to talk to your children” pieces.
Saad led with dubious statistics from one of the most notorious Islamic pressure groups, the Hamas-linked CAIR.
[...]
Saad skipped right over the terrorist attacks of 2001 to get to the true victims: Muslims in America. Not even comedian Amy Schumer was spared in her ridiculously thin and tiny roundup of Islamophobia from celebrities.
Waters not only made no effort to back up his assertion that the numbers from CAIR were "dubious," he didn't explain why we are apparently supposed to hate all Muslims because of Hamas and deny that Islamophobia even exists.
MRC Tried To Dishonestly Blame TikTok For Spread Of Bin Laden Videos Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's war onTikTok -- and its desire to shut it down despite purporting to hate censorship -- continued by blaming it for something its users did. Nicholas Fondacaro huffed in a Nov. 16 post:
Disney-owned ABC put their profits ahead of America on Thursday after they refused to report that TikTok, the social media app controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was promoting the writings of terrorist Osama Bin Laden. They ignored the story in order to promote their new amusement park in China themed after the movieFrozen. And not only did they ignore TikTok promoting the man behind 9/11, they actually ran a segment touting the app as a good thing.
On Wednesday night, the TikTok algorithm started promoting videos telling viewers to go read Osama’s “Letter to America” and that the 9/11 terrorist attack that killed nearly 3,000 innocent Americans was somehow justified. It was an intentional move that had possibly radicalized many impressionable American young people (along with other useful idiots) and created a national security concern.
Given Fondcaro's penchantforspreadinglies, it's no surprise that he offered no proof whatsoever that the TikTok algorithm allegedly promoting those videos was an "intentional move" -- indeed, his lies are the only thing that's demonstrably intentional here. He went to whine that ABC's"Good Morning America" highlighted a story in which TikTok played a positive role:
They were eager to praise the app because one user managed to find a kidney donor after posting videos about their struggle while waiting. “Back now with our Play of the Day. A lifesaving connection made on TikTok. Lara has the story,” washed-up NFL player Michael Strahan touted.
“It was this post that Katie Allen put up on TikTok that changed her life” added co-host Lara Spencer. “Katie finishes senior year and works as a reporter for the local radio station. She said she is so thankful to be alive, thanks to TikTok, everyone!”
One might have written off the segment as just a vapid human interest piece, but the fact that it paved the way for the network to be corporate whores for Disney’s new park in China arguably pointed to a need to downplay China’s poisonous influence as their dictator was touring America.
Apparently, Fondacaro would have been pleased to see this person die rather than benefiting from an app he irrationally hates for partisan purposes. Needless to say, he provided no evidence to back up his claim that ABC was following Chinese orders to promote this story.
Fondacaro followed up the next day by whining that a media outlet told both sides of the story -- specifically that TikTok pointed out how the bin Laden letter first started spreading on other platforms like, um, MRC favorite Elon Musk's Twitter/X:
After omitting the story on their morning and evening newscasts on Thursday, Friday was the day NBC’s Today finally decided that they should mention that the China-own social media platform TikTok had been promoting a letter written by late Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. But instead of piling on the criticism of the app used by the Chinese Communist Party to harm Americans, NBC senior Washington correspondent Hallie Jackson ran defense by parroting TikTok’s deflection to other platforms.
[...]
Stepping up to defend the Chi-Com app, Jackson added: “TikTok now stripping the hashtag #lettertoAmerica from its search function.”
In a statement on X, formerly Twitter, TikTok tried to claim the trend didn’t originate on their platform and tried to shift blame to their competitors (bolding theirs): “The number of videos on TikTok is small and reports of it trending on our platform are inaccurate. This is not unique to TikTok and has appeared across multiple platforms and the media.”
Fondacaro didn't dispute the accuracy of TikTok's defense -- he was just performatively outraged that TikTok was allowed to defend itself.
In antoher Nov. 17 post, Catherine Salgado hyped a right-wing congressman trying to exploit the story for his own partisan purposes:
As Communist Chinese government-tied TikTok spreads anti-Semitic hatred, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) emphasized the need to ban the popular app.
A fired-up Hawley joined Fox News's Hannity to blast TikTokers who launched a disturbing trend of promoting eliminated Al-Qaeda terrorist and 9/11 architect Osama Bin Laden’s anti-Semitic and anti-American “Letter to America” on the Communist Chinese government-tied platform. When host Sean Hannity asked Hawley why TikTok is even allowed in America at this point, the senator agreed, calling the social media platform an “espionage” and “propaganda” tool. “We ought to ban it,” Hawley declared.
Salgado was silent about the fact that Musk's Twiter/X is also a prolific spreader of anti-Semitism -- along with Musk himself -- but the likes of Hawley are not demanding that it be shut down.
The MRC also published a Nov. 19 column by Erick Erickson arguing that the bin Laden video controversy demonstrated that "TikTok really must be destroyed in its present form." Funny, we don't recall Foncacaro or Erickson demanding Twitter be destroyed because it's a fount of anti-Semitism.
As Liz Cheney Promotes Her New Book, MRC Heathers Her Again Topic: Media Research Center
Liz Cheney has long been a Heathering target of the Media Research Center because she refused to march lockstep with right-wing ideology, instead holding Donald Trump and other Republicans accountable for their role in inciting the Capitol riot. When Cheney returned to the spotlight with a new book, the MRC -- just as it did with Adam Kinzinger, another Republican who committed the similar offense of holding Repubicans accountable for their behavior -- lashed out with a new round of Heathering. Jorge Bonilla complained in a Dec. 3 post:
On CBS Sunday Morning, correspondent John Dickerson sat down with former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who has a book to promote. But they also have a shared interest in pushing the idea of Republicans as authoritarians. Predictably, the interview was pillow-soft.
Watch as Cheney dutifully takes Dickerson’s bait, and dutifully offers that Republicans defending Trump do not support the Constitution:
[...]
Oddly enough, and by “oddly” I mean quite customarily, you never hear Acela Media frame a vote for Joe Biden as a vote against the Constitution, despite the fact that his administration is currently being sued for literal First Amendment violations, and has tagged parents opposed to the sexualization of children in schools as “domestic terrorists”.
In this warped worldview, the only authoritarians are Trump and his supporters, who must be stopped by any means necessary. This narrative frame is then turned upon Speaker Mike Johnson, who Cheney singles out in her book. Here, she suggests that Johnson cannot be trusted to preside over an electoral count, and that only a Democrat House can guarantee the 2024 election.
Note that Bonilla made no attempt whatsoever to defend Trump -- perhaps because even he, a committed right-wing activist, cannot credibly do so -- and instead played whataboutism. He did use the outdated term "Acela media" twice, however, whining that "The Acela Media’s obsessions with January 6th and with the 'authoritarianism' narrative will ensure that Cheney remains in front of their cameras, long after her constituents decided that they’d already heard enough." He did not explain why Americans should suddenly stop caring about an attempted insurrection incited by the former president.
The next day, Tim Graham did his own bit of whining that Cheney is promoting her book like every other author does:
The Liz Cheney book tour has begun, and it’s very pleasing to Democrats to hear her demand everyone vote against Republicans. On the second hour of Monday’s Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie gave Cheney nine-and-a-half minutes of book promotion -- for this "staunch conservative," as she put it.
The first six minutes (and seven questions) were along the expected line of “please underline how dangerous Trump and his GOP enablers are.” This portion had all the “if Trump wins, democracy ends” bluster.
It was more interesting when Guthrie pressed her on just how much she wants Democrats to win. “You said the Republican Party of today has made a choice, has not chosen the constitution. Do you think Democrats, it would be better for Democrats to regain control of Congress in 2024?” Cheney said yes. Some "staunch conservative," pushing for an all-Democrat Washington.
Given that Graham's definition of "staunch conservative" is unquestioning support for a criminally indicted candidate -- even if he, like Bonilla, is too scared to publicly defend him -- Cheney is mor honestly owning that description that Graham or any other MRC employee.
In another Dec. 4 post, Bill D'Agostino complained that MSNBC "teed up faux Republican Charlie Sykes to amplify faux Republican Liz Cheney’s claim that if Donald Trump was elected, he would seize the White House for a third term." He at least attempted a defense, however lame: "Donald Trump is not imbued with some unique immunity to constitutional checks and balances, as we saw numerous times throughout his presidency." Graham returned to whine some more about Cheney in his Dec. 4 podcast:
It's not just another Republican Debate week. It's Liz Cheney Book Week, and it's going to be insufferable. CBS and NBC touted Liz Cheney as a big "conservative' even as she called for Trump and the Republicans to be denied office in 2024. The staunch conservatives want Democrats to win everything? How does that compute?
On CBS Sunday Morning, Jane Pauley introduced the feature with "Call her a very concerned conservative." On NBC's Today, Savannah Guthrie began by touting "a staunch conservative who voted with Trump 90 percent of the time"...while he was president.
CBS interviewer John Dickerson set the table just as Cheney wanted. Gee, Republicans can't back the Constitution and back Donald Trump, can they? Why, no. Only voting for the Democrats preserves democracy and the Constitution. Cheney said the country was "sleepwalking toward dictatorship," and later on Face the Nation, CBS host Margaret Brennan bizarrely presented that as a "fairly straight assessment."
Graham did not indicate in his writeup whether he attempted to defend Trump or just continued to whine about Cheney.
Nicholas Fondacaro picked up the whining baton for a Dec. 5 post as part of his daily hate-watch of "The View":
Tis the Christmas season, so naturally the liberal ladies would be praising the birth of their “savior,” but it wasn’t Jesus they were praising, on Tuesday. It was former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney who announced that she was thinking about running as a third-party candidate if former President Trump won the GOP nomination in 2024, with the goal of spoiling the election in favor of Democrats.
“Former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney continues to ring alarm bells about keeping you-know-who from ever getting back in the White House. She's holding members of her party accountable and claims she's even willing to split a third-party ticket,” announced moderator Whoopi Goldberg at the top of the show.
Faux conservative and former Trump staffer Alyssa Farah Griffin agreed with Cheney that the worst was coming for America. “If you thought the first term of Trump was bad, buckle up,” she warned.
She did disagree with Cheney on how imminent the danger was. “Liz Cheney said we're sleepwalking into dictatorship. I’d say we're careening into it,” she critiqued. “Donald Trump is telling us what he’s going to do in a second term and we need to listen to it.”
Like his co-workers, Fondacaro made no attempt to defend Trump.
Bonilla returned for more Cheney-bashing (and non-Trump-defending) in his own Dec. 5 post:
It was one thing to hear our friend Curtis Houck refer to MSNBC’s Deadline White House as “Rich Liberal Wine Mom Story Hour” but hoo boy, it’s entirely another to actually sit through an episode of this dreck. Beyond dreck, today's episode featured extremely dangerous rhetoric.
Today’s episode featured Nicolle Wallace hosting A HALF HOUR of Liz Cheney’s book tour: just a couple of Bush alumni doing the “look at us” meme, comparing the Capitol riot of January 6th, 2021 to the Al-Qaeda terrorist attack on September 11th, 2001, and as you’ll see in this clip below- bemoaning the lack of a domestic equivalent of the Patriot Act with which to persecute domestic political opponents.
Bonilla then tried to twist Cheney's words, bizarrely claiming that her warning of violence is itself incitement of violence:
The rhetoric advanced here is extremely dangerous, and the talk of violence will actually beget violence. It wasn’t that long ago that a deranged, MSNBC-binging Sandernista shot up a baseball field full of GOP congressmen, nearly killing Rep. Steve Scalise. The constant threat of violence and demonization of half the country as dangerous extremists may very well end up creating a permission structure for political violence towards conservatives.
Look very closely at the transcript. The proposal to emerge from this exchange is “tools” with which to “address the threat” from “enemies”, and “enemies” is defined as those who “collaborate with the former president”. That’s half the country. In very short order, we’ve gone from “bucket of deplorables” to denouncing half the country as domestic terrorists. Small wonder Cheney didn’t propose sending Trump voters to Gitmo.
Authoritarianism is already here, under the guise of “protecting democracy”. Chilling.
Bonilla, of course, was silent about the violent and bigoted words spoken by Trump himself and whether they will beget violence. Perhaps that's because he is such a committed right-wing activist, he sees Trump's hateful words as comforting instead of "chilling" like a normal person would. Also note that Bonilla offered no evidence whatsoever of inciting rhetoric on any MSNBC show that could possibly have incited the guy who shot Scalise; it's just a bogus version of the never-proven claim (which the MRC loves to make) that Rachel Maddow somehow inspired the shooter.
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC Lies To Stop Scrutiny Of Disinformation, Part 1 Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center melted down over plans for a "Disinformation Governance Board" -- so much so that it spread the lie that the board would act like an Orwellian "ministry of truth" and attacked the woman who would have headed it. Read more >>
The MRC then did another bit of rehashing by cranking out a second attack on Soros' son, Alex, in a Nov. 15 post that took Joseph Vazquez, Tom Olohan and Dan Schneider to write:
George Soros — the most notorious leftist billionaire in American politics — has chosen a successor to take over his $25-billion nonprofit empire. Thirty-seven-year-old Alex Soros is replacing his father and, based on his political history, he will be even worse.
The elder Soros named his self-proclaimed “more political=” son Alex as the new leader of the Open Society Foundations in June. This follows after Alex was= chosen to lead his father’s enormous political action committee — Democracy PAC — in 2022. Alex then oversaw at least $32,648,000 spent during the midterm elections to support leftist candidates.
Alex’s extreme views are evident because of the politicians and organizations he supports. He could well be more radical than his father on everything from abortion to climate change to the weaponization of race to demonize his political opponents.
As we pointed out after the MRC's previous attack on Alex Soros, his views aren't "extreme" -- they're pretty standard liberal takes. They only look "extreme" if you're as far-right as the people who work at the MRC. The post used the word "radical" 10 times, but no evidence was offered that anything or any view attached to that label actually was. All this ranting was made into a fancy-looking PDF, but there's no evidence that anything new or noteworthy has been added -- it's just more Soros derangement.
A Nov. 16 post by Luis Cornelio hyped the PR effect of the MRC's Soros derangement, courtesy of its buddies at Fox News:
Leftist billionaire George Soros and his heir Alex Soros came under further scrutiny by Fox News following the release of the second installment of an MRC Business exposé into the Soros empire 2.0.
During a segment on disturbing theft reports, Fox Business Washington correspondent Grady Trimble on Wednesday drew attention to Republicans attributing the alleged skyrocketing crime to extremist left-wing district attorneys, and most strikingly, the individuals financing their campaigns. Trimble — citing an MRCB report on Alex Soros — highlighted the empire’s new plan to interject itself into U.S. politics, in line with the elder Soros’ disturbing vision of bending the “arc of history” to fit his ideal:
[...]
Trimble’s reporting specifically cited MRCB’s bombshell report into Alex Soros’ demonstrably more draconian and grotesquely partisan nature. Notably, Alex Soros, who inherited the Open Society Foundations in June, admitted that he is “more political” than the elder Soros, potentially marking the beginning of a new era of even greater political meddling.
Again, the MRC demonstrated nothing beyond Alex Soros holding standard liberal views and certainly nothing "draconian and grotesquely partisan." It should be noted that Trimble couldn'rt be bothered to allowed Soros or anyone else to respond to his report -- so much for "fair and balanced."
Olohan hyped a new parson to spout anti-Soros talking points in a Nov. 22 post:
Spanish Vox Party President Santiago Abascal heavily criticized leftist billionaire George Soros’ activities in Europe during an interview with independent journalist Tucker Carlson.
Abascal told Tucker during a Nov. 17 interview that Soros had not only met with current Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sánchez but had also funded groups contributing to the flood of illegal immigrants into European countries. After Tucker asked why Soros had become so involved in Spanish politics, Abascal responded that, “George Soros is Hungarian. Not only is he unloved in Hungary, he’s not well regarded in other countries around the world, because he tries to exert his influence. George Soros was the first person to meet with the president of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, when he was elected.”
When Tucker responded with disbelief, Abascal added, “Exactly, that’s the news that was published in Spain and the government has never denied it. When I questioned President Sánchez about that meeting, he never answered before Parliament. He has never answered clearly.”
Sánchez also met with George Soros’ son, Alex Soros, at the United Nations in 2019. Alex Soros has spoken with at least 43 world leaders, including many European heads of state or government like Sánchez.
Olohan didn't disclose that Absacal and his party are on the far right, and he laughably portrayed Carlson as an "independent journalist" despite his unambiguous right-wing activism.
The same day, Schneider appeared on a far-right channel to screech about Alex Soros some more:
MRC Free Speech Vice President Dan Schneider warned of the threat posed by the new chair of the Open Society Foundations (OSF), Alex Soros on OAN's Real America Tuesday.
When Ball suggested during a Nov. 21 interview that Alex “was going to take the radical agenda to a whole new level with daddy’s money,” Schneider agreed, pointing out that Soros could have chosen someone else to run the OSF, even a different son, but George chose Alex. Schneider said, “Look, the father had different sons to hand the keys to and he chose the most radical, the most political of all his kids to say, here you go, here’s billions and billions, dozens of billions of dollars to go continue changing the world in the most heinous ways possible and Alex Soros is already on his path to do just that.”
[...]
Still, Schneider offered One America News viewers a bit of hope, “It is a disaster, but the good thing is that, while they’ve got all the money, we’ve got all the smarts. We’ve got people who understand common sense solutions so the people have to fight back against this radical empire.”
Only committed right-wingers like Schneider would think there's anything "heinous" about standard liberal opinions. And really, how smart can Schneider be if he's reduced to appearing on a tiny right-wing channel to spew his hatred of Soros?
Olohan returned for a Dec. 1 post dutifully taking stenography for a right-wing radio host's anti-Soros rant:
Syndicated radio host Dan Bongino called out Alex Soros, the son of leftist billionaire donor George Soros. for misleading his followers about the effects of his father’s destructive criminal justice goals.
Blasting Alex Soros as a “propaganda machine,” Bongino laid into a recent Soros post on X (formerly Twitter) that said, “Where Are Murder Rates Actually Higher? Not in progressive cities” on the Nov. 28 edition of The Dan Bongino Show. Bongino said that Alex Soros was “straight up lying and he knows it.”
Bongino cited the Community Note that was pinned to Soros’ post at that time, pointing out that five out of five of the cities with the highest murder rate, St. Louis, Baltimore, New Orleans, Detroit and Cleveland were run by Democrat mayors.
Bongino did not stop there, noting the role that Alex Soros and his father George Soros have played in making Americans less safe through funding leftist prosecutors across the country.
Soros was actually repeating an article from a progressive publication making that argument, and neither Olohan nor apparently Bongino addressed any specific claims made in that article. But Bongino is repeating all the right talking points, so Olohan stayed in stenography mode:
“They have this obsession, it’s a bizarre obsession with chaos in liberal cities. They love the idea of criminals running wild,” Bongino said of the Soros duo. Earlier in the show, Bongino drew attention to Alex Soros’ more active role in funding leftist politicians. “The son of George Soros, Alexander Soros, this guy is like a propaganda machine and he’s not as quiet as his dad. His dad was more kind of behind the scenes, influencing races, supporting this candidate and that candidate. The son is out there — like way out there — and he’s gonna take over for the dad, which is big trouble because they’ve got a lot of resources to make a lot of far-left stuff happen.”
Just another reminder that at the MRC, narrative is more important than facts. As long as Bongino stayed on narrative, Olohan was certainly going to make no effort to fact-check anything he said.
MRC's Toto Complains That People Are Offended By Right-Wing 'Comedy' Topic: Media Research Center
Christian Toto has been trying to portray hateful right-wing comedy as somehow brilliant and cutting-edge. He continued to do that in his Oct. 7 Media Research Center column, whcih began with this amazingly stupid claim:
“Lenny Bruce would be impossible today.”
So says Svetlana Mintcheva, the director of programs at the National Coalition Against Censorship. Mintcheva shares that observation in a compelling new docu-short called “Crossing the Line in Comedy.”
The video hails from the Free to Choose Network, a group established “to build popular support for personal, economic and political freedom.”
But there is not need for a Lenny Bruce today because there already has been one. And Toto, had he been around in the 1960s, would be among those reactionaries who relentlessly hounded Bruce for his profane anti-establishment humor.
The video Toto is promoting is from the Free to Choose Network, which complains that people are offended by certain comedians, which the implication that they are right-wing comedians who want to make fun of liberals. Toto himself emphasized that narrative:
The video arrives at a chilling time in western culture. The woke revolution has scared many people into silence, fearing the “wrong” opinion could cost them their jobs or make them social pariahs.
Just ask J.K. Rowling. Or Dave Chappelle.
Comedians are routinely censored by Big Tech platforms under dubious circumstances. Others face professional blowback for uttering the “wrong” jokes targeting the “wrong” demographics. Sometimes fellow comedians are the ones trying to shut them down.
But Rowling isn't a comedian -- she is a rich author who spews hate at transgender people. Chappelle's anti-transgender "humor" simply wasn't funny enough to overcome its offensive nature, and Toto offered no evidence otherwise. (Note that Toto's two poster people for violating "woke" standards involve people who intensely hate transgender people; he offered no explanation for why transgender people are acceptable targets.) Interestingly, we haven't seen Toto defend Chappelle when, a couple weeks later, when he made comments critical of Israel during one standup appearance that caused at least one member of the audience to leave.
Toto went on to huff that "Groups like PEN America railed against so-called 'book bans,' ignoring the obvious issues with sharing pornographic books in schools nationwide." His evidence here is a link to the right-wing Independent Women's Forum, which disonestly potrays all allegedly offensive content as "pornography" and evern denies that books are being "banned" -- thus furher showing that he would have been among the moral prude who censored and hounded Lenny Bruce. Meanwhile, Florida schools are removing dictionaries and encyclopedias from schools ("for further review," they claim) out of fear of purportedluy offensive content. Toto is probably not going to demand that comedians make fun of that. And despite all that, Toto made another conterfatual claim:
Free speech is now a partisan issue.
Conservatives, by and large, support more expression and less guard rails on speech. Progressives, many beholden to militant Leftists, demand censorship to suppress “hate speech” or “misinformation.” And, since the Left controls the U.S. government, the media, academia and Hollywood, it has a unique ability to suppress speech as it sees fit.
That's not really true. Conservatives don't want to be called out on the hate and lies they like to peddle, so they frame any criticism of them as "censorship" -- that's the entire premise behind the MRC's attacks on social media moderation. Further, inadvertently showing how far-right he has moved, Toto illustrated this point by embedding a tweet by Lara Logan, the disgraced former "60 Minutes" correspondent who has moved even farther right than him.
Toto closed by quoting Mintcheva saying, "'I'm offended' has become an argument for 'shut up.'" He won't mention that his fellow right-wingers are doing exactly that in an attempt to shut up anything they don't like.
MRC Trots Out Right-Wing Economists To Spout Talking Points Without Disclosing Their Bias Topic: Media Research Center
One of the things the Media Research Center loves to do when talking down the economy for partisan gain is to call on economists to repeat those right-wing talking points without explaining that they are also partisan actors as evidenced by their employment with right-wing think tanks. Joseph Vazquez dutifully did just that in an Aug. 24 post:
The Washington Post’s third-rate “fact-checker” Glenn Kessler butchered the facts when he claimed that the sky-high inflation brought on by Bidenomics barely made a dent in Americans’ spending power. Economists interviewed by MRC Business were having none of it.
Kessler went after presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) for his nuanced assertion during the GOP presidential primary debate that the average American family has lost “$10,000 of spending power” in President Joe Biden’s economy. “This seems wildly overstated,” objected Kessler. He then attributed Scott’s argument to an analysis by Heritage Foundation Research Fellow EJ Antoni, estimating that American families have lost roughly $7,000 in spending power since Biden first took office. Without being specific, Kessler vaguely pointed to some string of “economists we contacted [who] were dubious about the math, which relied on a change in purchasing power and a change in borrowing power.” But Kessler’s true-to-form retort to protect Biden would be fallacy-riddled and devoid of context that would actually blow up his argument.
MRC Business reached out to Antoni, who, in his response, didn’t mince words about Kessler’s shoddy argument. Kessler’s assessment of the numbers is “just flat-out wrong,” rebuked Antoni. Kessler “should know better,” Antoni reproached. “I literally explained [my calculations] to him both on the phone and via email in a previous conversation. I explained how these figures are actually calculated.”
[...]
Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Brian Riedl was blunt in comments to MRC Business that Scott was correct in his assessment and Kessler was wrong:
I understood Sen. Scott to suggest that inflation has cost the typical household roughly $10,000 in higher prices over the past two years. Using the economist rule of thumb that each 1% of higher inflation costs the typical household $650 annually (which renews the next year as prices remain elevated) produces a figure of roughly $10,000 in higher prices (compared to under the typical 2% inflation) since Biden took office. Sen. Scott is correct,[emphasis added].
Vazquez faild to disclose ythat both the Heritage Foundation and the Manhattan Institute are both right-wing institutions whose paid economists would be expected to follow right-wing talking points.
Vazquez pulled the same stunt again -- using one of those very same economists -- in a Sept. 19 post:
Philadelphia Inquirer national columnist Will Bunch gaslit the American public in an outrageous full-throated defense of “Bidenomics.”
Bunch’s Sept. 14 column headline speaks for itself: “The problem with ‘Bidenomics’? It didn’t go far enough.” The columnist doubled down on his absurd logic in the sub-headline: “New census data shows how ‘Bidenomics’ was helping America's working class and poor — until a key anti-poverty program was killed.” Economists interviewed by MRC Business showed why the argument was nonsense.
[...]
“If [not expanding the Child Tax Credit] were the only reason [for the increased poverty rate], then poverty rates would’ve simply returned to the level they were at before Biden’s expanded child tax credit,”Heritage Foundation economist EJ Antoni told MRC. “Instead, poverty rates greatly increased. What changed was inflation.”
Antoni ripped Bunch for deceiving readers into believing that anything other than the inflation crisis was responsible for the spike in poverty:
[...]
Center for Freedom and Prosperity President Dan Mitchell pointed MRC Business to three analyses he conducted illustrating why Biden’s “per-child handouts” Bunch haphazardly celebrated were a textbook case of government stupidity, not benevolence. “The bottom line is that the United States already has a big problem with government dependency. Per-child handouts will make a bad situation even worse,” Mitchell wrote in a June 27, 2021 blog post. Mitchell also directed MRC Business to an X post by American Enterprise Institute Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility Director Scott Winship<, who directly addressed the propaganda Bunch was pushing: “You'd be wrong if you think the expiration of the expanded CTC was the most important factor in raising SPM child poverty or if you think child poverty would have fallen had it not expired.”
The Center for Freedom and Prosperity is also a right-wing group, which Vazquez failed to disclose. He also included a quot from the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which of course is also right-wing -- and whose political slant went undisclosed.
Tom Olohan touted another right-wing economist repeating right-wing talking points in an Oct. 30 post:
Economist Stephen Moore pointed out Monday that despite government subsidies and companies pushing electric vehicles (EVs), Americans are rejecting them.
Moore told Fox Business anchor Stuart Varney on the Oct. 30 edition of Varney & Co. that extremely generous federal and state subsidies for electric cars have not been enough to push Americans towards them, simply because “car buyers do not want” electric vehicles. After mentioning that only 10% of cars being sold “off of lots” are electric vehicles, Moore said, “I’ve talked to dealers around the country, auto dealers, and they are telling me they have lots full of EVs, Stuart, and people come in and they say, ‘Wait a minute, I want to buy a gas car where are they?’ ‘Oh we don’t have many of those, but are you interested in this EV over here?’ And people say, ‘No, I don't want it.’”
As usual, Olohan didn't disclose Moore's partisan bias. Instead, he hyped how Moore used a separate column to "compare[] the present push to electric vehicles to the disastrous launch of the Ford Edsel Sedan." Olohan didn't bother fact-check Moore, otherwise he would have known Moore got basic facts wrong, starting with the name "Ford Edsel sedan." In fact, Edsel was a separate nameplate Ford tried to launch in the late 1950s; there was never anything called a "Ford Edsel," and the nameplate offered a full range of vehicles, not just sedans. In the column Olohan referenced, Moore falsely claimed only 10,000 Edsels were sold; in fact, about 116,000 were sold over the three years the nameplate existed. Moore also blamed Edsel's failure on company executives not "bother[ing] to ask car buyers what THEY thought of the new car"; more prominent factors include the fact that the cars were overhyped prior to launch, Edsel's place in Ford's brand hierarchy was not well defined, and the brand was introduced during a recession at a time the U.S. auto market was undergoing a brand shakeout.
Vazquez trotted out Antoni again in a Dec. 13 post for more recitation of talking points:
There seems to be no end in sight for the media gaslighting on President Joe Biden’s abysmal economy. One economist has had it.
Business Insider had the audacity to publish an asinine piece of economic propaganda Dec. 3 that reeked of a public relations stunt by Biden’s press team: “After 3 years of pain, America has finally achieved economic nirvana.” The author, Renaissance Macro Research Head of Economics Neil Dutta, celebrated how supposedly “[t]he signs of a well-balanced economy are everywhere.” He continued: “Current economic data is consistent with a soft landing for the economy — a situation in which inflation cools without causing a recession or sudden spike in unemployment.”
But Heritage Foundation Public Finance Economist EJ Antoni laid waste to Dutta’s argument in an exclusive interview with MRC Business: “Articles like that can only be written by those who are woefully ignorant of the data at every level.”
Antoni was right on target.
“The most obvious example” of Dutta’s illusory “nirvana” was “the slowdown in inflation,” cherry-picking how core consumer prices — which excludes food and energy — allegedly rose at “an annualized rate of 2.8 percent since June.” Of course, nowhere did Dutta mention that prices are still up 17.6 percent since Biden took office.
It's ironic that Vazquez called Dutta's piece "economic propaganda" -- even though he and Antoni are being paid to push their own economic propaganda that is deliberately designed to hurt President Biden's chances of re-election.
In none of these posts were the targets of the MRC and its favored economists given an opportunity to respond to their criticism.
We've shown how the Media Research Center's softball interview with Ron DeSantis in early November -- effectively an in-kind donation to his presidential campaign -- landed with such a thud that it basically ignored him for the rest of that month (even its very own DeSantis Defense Brigade). The Brigade didn't come alive again until after DeSantis' Nov. 30 Fox News debate with Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom. A Dec. 1 post by Curtis Houck served up the usual complaint that non-right-wing networks didn't sound like Fox News when talking about DeSantis:
The Media Research Center's Jorge Bonilla whined in a Nov. 14 post:
When we last left off, the Media Research Center's Jorge Bonilla was 
Fresh off effectively 
A couple months back, Univision did an interview with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in which he faced no tough questions and was fawned over by interviewers. The Media Research Center's Jorge Bonilla spent a Nov. 10 
The Media Research Center would rather whine that 
The Media Research Center started off a new year with the same old hatred of White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Curtis Houck spent a Jan. 2 
The Media Research Center has long discounted the existence of Islamophobia. In a September 2021 
The Media Research Center's 
Liz Cheney has 
The Media Research Center continued cranking out its anti-George Soros hits into November:
Christian Toto has been 
One of the things the Media Research Center loves to do when 