MRC's Jean-Pierre-Bashing Watch Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck hadn't had Peter Doocy to man-crush over for a while, so when he returned to Fox News after a month of paternity leave, Houck was ready for some serious Doocy-fluffing in the writeup for the March 1 White House press briefing:
Though he had been back for a few weeks since the February 1 birth of his daughter with wife and Fox Business correspondent Hillary Vaughn, Wednesday marked Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy’s first White House briefing since January 27. Not surprisingly, he was still prepared as he grilled the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on whether President Biden is “afraid of China.”
Doocy started with that very question: “Why is President Biden afraid of China?” Jean-Pierre insisted that he’s not and her evidence was comical as she invoked Biden’s visit to Ukraine.
“Look, this is not a President who's afraid of anything. It was a historic trip that many of you said was brave, so clearly, this is a president that's not afraid to go to a war zone,” she said, arguing that Doocy’s question was bunk because...journalists loved Biden in Ukraine?
Doocy countered that, along with China being allowed to fly “spycraft over the U.S.” and nothing happened to them, Biden hasn’t shown a willingness to punish them when they “may have created something that has killed more 1.1 million people in this country”.
Jean-Pierre said a whole lot of nothing as, on the balloon, Biden “did take that down...collected information from it...protected on national security information on the ground, and “protected the American people.”
Houck then gushed that Doocy "dropped the hammer" with a question about the origins of COVID, then whined that "A meandering essay later about Biden’s “leadership” ensuring “the economy is growing again” and “tak[ing] on COVID” and Biden showing leadership by having “the intelligence community” discuss amongst themselves, she moved on."
Houck was still fanboying over Doocy's return in a second post on that day's briefing:
Along with the return of Fox’s Peter Doocy on Wednesday to the White House Press Briefing Room and some tough questions for the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on TikTok, there were a host of other topics that piqued our interests, including Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) revoking Disney’s self-governance status, the D.C. City Council attempting to rewrite their criminal code, the murder of a Catholic bishop, and the alleged bigotry from the Richmond, Virginia FBI field office.
Then Houck got lazy again, summing up several succeeding briefings in a single March 7 post:
With briefings on Thursday, Friday, Monday, and Tuesday, the ever-inept Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has had a lot of camera time as of late and the liberal media came at her with questions of substance and activism. Most notably, they’ve hit her from the left on the D.C. crime bill, Florida and Texas addressing the Biden border crisis, illegal immigration, Tennessee passing legislation to protect children from graphic sexual content, and Tucker Carlson.
Thankfully, others showed up with questions about the anti-cop riot in Atlanta, energy independence, green technology hypocrisy, government surveillance, and Russian sanctions.
Below are the five worst and then the five best questions from the last four briefings. Each category is presented in chronological order.
Needless to say, the "best" questions advanced right-wing narratives and the "worst" questions didn't. and the top "best" question is from Doocy.
Kevin Tober popped up to once again smear Jean-Pierre as an incompetent diversity hire in a March 12 post for the sin of not speaking as glibly as he demands:
On Friday night, President Biden’s thoroughly unqualified diversity hire press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre appeared on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes for a wide-ranging interview. While to any competent Democrat press secretary, this would be an easy interview to get through, but as she has proven before, that is not the case with Jean-Pierre who even on her best day is seemingly incapable of putting a coherent sentence together.
Due to recent reports that have been circulating in the press that the Biden administration is considering a return to the Trump-era migrant detention policies, Hayes simply asked for a confirmation of whether these reports have any merit.
The result was a meandering, incoherent response that barely sounded like English: "So, what I want to be very clear here and I've answered this question, as you know Chris many times in the briefing room, and we as a administration has as well."
[...]
You have to wonder if this somehow is a second language for her. She is in way over her head and should never have been hired for this job. If the Biden regime wasn’t so obsessed with diversity, she wouldn’t be the Press Secretary.
Houck then trotted over to Fox News to slag Jean-Pierre some more for a March 19 TV hit:
With the topic in his wheelhouse, NewsBusters Managing Editor Curtis Houck was back on the Fox News Channel late Friday/early Saturday forFox News @ Night to sound off on the latest antics from White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and the White House’s purposeful restricting of press access to President Biden amid a litany of domestic and foreign crises.
Reacting to a mini-skirmish from Thursday’s briefing in which even friendly liberal journalists blasted Jean-Pierre and her team for keeping Biden from even traditional press conferences with foreign leaders, Houck said the issue “shouldn’t be partisan” and certainly at a time when people “want to hear from the President.”
Oddly, Houck didn't find the Jean-Pierre "antics" he described so egregious that he could be bothered to write about that for his employer.
NEW ARTICLE -- Classified Document Double Standards at the MRC: The Biden Flip Topic: Media Research Center
After defending Donald Trump over a raid on Mar-a-Lago to retrieve classified documents, the Media Research Center went on the attack when documents were found at offices belonging to Joe Biden ... until it was revealed Mike Pence had some too. Read more >>
MRC Mad People Said Nice Things About Biden's Visit To Ukraine Topic: Media Research Center As it regularly does, the Media Research Center got mad again when people say nice things about something President Biden does -- in this case, paying a surprise visit to Ukraine. Kevin Tober was first up in a Feb. 20 post, which also issued another regularcomplaint that historic things are being called "historic" (and, of course, a dash of whataboutism):
On Monday night, the three evening network broadcasts went ga-ga over President Biden's "historic" trip to Ukraine. Each of the three networks (ABC's World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, & NBC Nightly News) got weak-kneed over the trip and made no snide comments or said anything at all negative about Biden or his Ukraine visit. This is in stark contrast to how they treated both former Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump when they visited the U.S. troops overseas.
ABC's World News Tonight anchor David Muir drooled at "President Biden's secret and historic trip into Ukraine, a daring act by a sitting president visiting a war zone. And one where no American troops are serving." Muir added that "the journey planned in secrecy and unannounced, playing out in the overnight hours, and it comes just as the world is set to witness the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine."
Contrast this with how ABC's former Good Morning Americaco-host Charles Gibson framed Bush's 2003 Thanksgiving visit to the troops in Iraq:
Tober seems to have missed the fact that Biden was not visiting U.S. troops stationed abroad but, in fact, the war zone of an American ally that was being targeted by a hostile invader.
A couple hours later, Tober whined further about a "phony historian" who praised Biden but still knew more than Tober:
On Monday night, MSNBC's The ReidOut continued an all-day theme in the leftist media of swooning over President Biden's trip to Ukraine, which he took despite failing to pay a visit to his own citizens suffering in the working-class town of East Palestine, Ohio that had been poisoned by a toxic train derailment. Regardless, MSNBC's pseudo-historian Michael Beschloss wants you to believe Biden's trip to Ukraine was the bravest thing a president has done since Abraham Lincoln visited a Civil War battleground in 1864. Yes, the same Biden that took five deferments from serving in Vietnam was brave according to Beschloss.
When asked by host Joy Reid what he thought of Biden's Ukraine excursion, Beschloss pompously claimed "what Biden did today goes straight through two centuries of proud American history."
"To find a day of this kind of presidential bravery in a war zone, you got to go all the way back to 1864, July, when Abraham Lincoln as President went to see confederate soldiers were firing on Washington, D.C," Beschloss claimed.
[...]
The idiocy of Beschloss's comparisons should be self-evident. For those who don't grasp it, comparing a presidential visit in the year 2023 with all the modern-day Secret Service protection and other protective measures to Lincoln, Madison, and Washington's visits to battlegrounds where there was little to no security is like comparing apples and oranges.
The same Joe Biden who refused to fight for his country in Vietnam wasn't going to risk his life to visit a country engulfed in a war the United States has little to do with, other than giving billions in aid.
Funny, Tober didn't note that Trump also got five military deferments and refused to fight for his country in Vietnam when praising him for visiting the troops.
Mark Finkelstein joined the whine-fest the next day:
Morning Joe was all aboard the Sycophant Express today, turning the gush meter to 11 as it unleashed a string of superlatives to praise Biden's visit to Ukraine.
Joe Scarborough twice put Biden's bravery in the same category as that of Lincoln visiting Union troops during the Civil War.
At one point, Scarborough emoted over Biden's "excruciating 10-hour train trip." You want an excruciating train trip, Joe? Try riding the NYC subway at rush hour, with the ever-present danger of being pushed onto the tracks by a maniac.
When Scarborough noted that even Fox News defended Biden's trip, Fibnkelstein returned in a Feb. 23 post to complain about that too:
Fox News is the network that Morning Joe loves to hate. Similar to the way the show will often refuse to even mention Donald Trump by name, referring to him only as "the former president," Morning Joe will often make a sneering reference to "certain networks," while obviously targeting Fox.
So it was what we could call a Sudden Respect moment when today's Morning Joe praised Fox News in general, and Brit Hume in particular, for their defense of President Biden's trip to Ukraine before making a possible visit to East Palestine, Ohio in the wake of the train derailment there.
Morning Joe played a clip of Bret Baier mentioning that it has not been historically common for Transportation Secretaries to visit the site of train derailments, especially when there are no fatalities. Baier pointed out that during the Trump administration, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao didn't visit train-disaster sites, including ones involving loss of life, whereas there was no loss of life in East Palestine.
Morning Joe then played an extended clip of Hume opining that a president's key duty is to the security of the United States, and in that context, Biden's visit to Ukraine took precedence over a visit to East Palestine.
Scarborough and Willie Geist praised Hume's comments, with Scarborough saying that Hume had made a "very good point," and Geist saying that Hume understood the importance of Biden's visit to Ukraine and Eastern Europe since "he's been around for more than five minutes."
MRC employees are generally not allowed to criticize Fox News (lest it jeopardize their chances of getting on the channel), so Finkelstein didn't actually criticize Hume for deviating from the right-wing hate-Biden narrative.
Tim Graham devoted his Feb. 24 column to a full-on whine about historic (non-conservative) things being called historic (by non-conservatives):
One of the worst glorifications of journalism is to call it “the first rough draft of history.” At least old Washington Post boss Philip Graham once blustered about “our inescapably impossible task of providing every week a first rough draft of history.”
Some events are so catastrophic – think September 11 – that you know it’s historic in real time. But most of history cannot be proclaimed within the day it occurs. The adjective “historic” is often used to boost leaders and themes in a way that sounds like advertising instead of journalism.
When Kevin McCarthy took over as Speaker of the House a few weeks back, that wasn’t “historic.” On PBS, Washington Week host Yamiche Alcindor spoke discouraging words about his “rocky, rocky week” with Republican “hardliners.” But Hakeem Jeffries and the Democrats who lost the majority were boosted as the “new historic group leading the Democratic Party in the House.”
When President Biden made a surprise trip to Kiev, MSNBC quickly put these words on screen: “Biden Makes Historic Trip to Ukraine.” How on Earth do they know this is dramatic history in the making? Will this be seen as “historic” in two years? Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is historic, but we don’t know whether Biden’s five hours in the capital are crucial.
Graham cobncluded by huffing: "This is why cable 'news' sounds more like hour after hour of partisan spin control rather than an objective recounting of facts. We have no idea when or whether Russia will admit defeat and withdraw from Ukraine, but we do know Biden will be painted as a heroic G.I. Joe well into 2024." You can be sure that Graham is not accusing Fox News of serving up "hour after hour of partisan spin control" in his indictment of "cable 'news'."
MRC Gushes Over Joe Rogan Smearing Stelter As 'Prostitute' For Hanging With WEF 'Lizard People' Topic: Media Research Center
We've shown how the Media Research Center's Brian Stelter Derangement Syndrome didn't fade after he left CNN, then intensified after he took part in a panel at the World Economic Forum, a regular target of right-wing conspiracy theories. That happened again in a Feb. 18 post by right-wing movie critic Christian Toto, which began with the usual partisan attacks on Stelter:
Podcaster Joe Rogan hasn’t forgotten Brian Stelter’s reign of error at CNN.
Stelter, former host of the far-Left channel’s “Reliable Sources” program, got fired last year after new CNN CEO Chris Licht allegedly vowed to bring balance to the news network.
Conservatives routinely skewered Stelter for his cartoonishly biased approach to the news. The analyst focused much of his ire against Fox News, for example, while all but ignoring the Left’s ideological network, MSNBC.
The Free Press’s Bari Weiss skewered Stelter, and his inability to call out the media, to his face during a 2021 appearance on “Reliable Sources.”
Toto eventually got to the point of his derangement -- complaining that Stelter didn't go away after leaving CNN and repeating Rogan's attacks on Stelter for taking part in that WEF panel:
Now, he’s landed a gig at Harvard University as the school’s Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow. He also snagged a high-profile moderating gig at last month’s World Economic Forum.
The subject? Battling misinformation in the modern age, a subject Stelter knows all too well. Except he’s incapable of calling out his sins, or those committed by his former employer or a media landscape that buried the biggest news story of the 2020 presidential election.
The Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
Instead, Stelter tag-teamed with other WEF officials to demand more censorship, not less. And that’s why Rogan and journalist Matt Taibbi let him have it.
The two pounded Stelter on the latest episode of the “Joe Rogan Experience,” heard exclusively on Spotify.
“[Stelter] looked very comfortable there, didn’t he?” said Taibbi, a left-leaning journalist aghast at mainstream media corruption.
“Of course he does. He’s with evil lizard people that are trying to control the world. That’s his bosses… I’ve been around the evil lizard people,” Rogan said.
“He looked as happy as maybe he’s ever been,” Taibbi said.
“He’s supposed to be a journalist, but he’s not even good at that. So what he’s doing now is, he’s holding water for the evil leaders of the world who want to institute hate speech policies nationwide and centralized digital currencies, and they want everybody to eat bugs, and you will own nothing, and you will be happy,” Rogan said. “This is the f***ing people he’s working for now. He’s basically a prostitute.”
Tot is apprently cool with Rogan promoting the fringe "lizard people" conspiracy theory and maliciously smearing Stelter as "basically a prostitute." He didn't explain why misinformation shouldn't be countered, and he certainly didn't mention that Rogan has a history of spreading misinformation (which the MRC vociferouslydefended).
And because Toto and the rest of the MRC are Stelter-haters and Rogan-defenders, they censored the fact that Stelter shot down Rogan's attack on him. Mediaite reported:
Former CNN host Brian Stelter shot back at podcaster and comedian Joe Rogan after being accused of working for the “lizard” people behind the World Economic Forum.
Rogan discussed the global summit in Davos, Switzerland held last month with journalist Matt Taibbi when Stelter’s name came up, both men mocking Stelter’s appearance on a panel, which came just shortly after his Reliable Sources was canceled at CNN.
According to Stelter, he had no “bosses” at the panel like Rogan’s mocking suggested. Stelter went to Davos at his own expense.
“Joe Rogan got it all wrong, again. The World Economic Forum did not ‘hire’ me to ‘work’ in Davos. I went there on my own dime to write about the conference,” Stelter tweeted in response to a Mediaite article covering the Rogan and Taibbi interview.
Stelter also responded to a story from the New York Post about Rogan’s comments, telling Rogan to “call” him if Rogan “wants to tell his listeners the truth.”
“I normally ignore Rogan’s rants. But the @nypost wrote a story and asked for comment, so I said, if Rogan wants to tell his listeners the truth, he can call me,” he tweeted.
But telling the truth doesn't advance MRC narratives, so Toto doesn't want his readers to know about it.
MRC Kicked Off The New Year With More Transgender Hate Topic: Media Research Center
In addition to promoting a discredited attack on a transgender clinic (which it refuses to retract or correct), the transphobes at the Media Research Center found other ways to lash out at transgender people since the beginning of this year. Chief transphobe Tierin-Rose Mandelburg ranted in a Jan. 10 post:
Don’t let that door hit ya on the way out.
Rynn Willgohs, a 50-year-old transgender woman, is trying to figure out ways to leave the United States and seek asylum abroad due feeling targeted and attacked within the nation. WIllgohs started TRANSport to help others do the same.
Willgohs told VICE that theres “like 30 states” that he would not feel comfortable driving in due to the “increasingly hostile national climate.” He also added, “All you need to do is look at the news and see how bad it’s going to get in the country. We’re accused of being pedophiles and of grooming children. We’re being accused of being a social contagion that makes every child think they are in the queer community. That’s the farthest from the truth.”
Maybe he’s disregarding the plethora of transgender/lgbtq teachers who specifically target their students to be part of the gender spectrum. I’d consider that a “social contagion” but maybe that’s just me. I'm sure TRANSport's European destinations are more enlightened.
[...]
Presently the group has about 30 people who have expressed interest in seeking asylum abroad. Running as a non-profit organization, TRANSport can accept donations, which it plans to use to help people legally change their gender prior to fleeing the U.S, as well as help with passport and travel fees.
I’d be lying if I said that I hate this idea … it’s not terrible and I’ve always been an advocate for the mentality of leaving a place if you hate it so …
Mandelburg went into mocking mode in her Jan. 11 "Woke of the Weak" podcast:
This week we got to witness a transgender lady complain about feeling “sick.” Essentially he had to call out of work after feeling ill and thinks that the pain he’s experiencing is due to a sort of menstrual cycle. He’s a biological man getting pumped with female hormones and is now complaining about cramps.
Kinda funny considering he’ll never get a period or be an actual woman, not to mention asked for some sort of negative affect on his body when he chose to try to medically change his gender.
For a Jan. 30 post, Mandelburg hyped a claim by "Ex-prisoner Amanda Benson" who "revealed she was terrified of being raped by violent transgender females during her time behind bars." Mandelburg didn't mention why Benson was in prison -- according to a UK source Mandelburg cited, she has previous convictions for assault, so it's likely she would have been able to adequately defend herself (unless she's the kind of person who delights in bullying and assaulting poeple she thinks are weak).
Matt Philbin had a freakout over fictional transgender people in a Feb. 1 post:
They’re just not gonna let kids grow up normal. If the groomers can’t get ‘em in school, they reach out and get ‘em in video games.
According to Fox News Digital: "'The Sims 4,' which calls itself 'the ultimate life simulation game' on its website, announced Tuesday that it would allow players to give characters 'top scars' that come from breast removal surgery."
Here’s the best part: the game is for kids as young as 12, so tweens can contemplate double mastectomy scars, binders, “shapewear” (tucking or stuffing, I guess) and something called “medical wearables.”
All this makes sense, given that the kiddies have been able to use “they/them” pronouns since last May. Now, in the words of Libs of TikTok, “They’re teaching young healthy girls that it’s ok to chop off their breasts.”
It’s a depraved new world.
Philbin didn't mention that the Fox News Digital article was written by Jeffrey Clark, one of the parade of former MRC employees who now works for Fox News. Looks like all that Fox News-fluffing pays off for the MRC!
Mandelburg spent a Feb. 3 post raging that transgender people would like a refuge from hatred spewed by people like her:
What could be better than a Trans mommy/daddy having two trans kiddos? Pretty much anything else.
A transgender “mother,” Amber Mum, recently testified in front of the Minnesota House regarding House File 146 to advocate for ... transgender services for kids.
Ms. Mum testified in a pink shirt that said something about trans rights, a pink necklace that looked like it was from the dollar store, a Walmart hoodie and hot pink lipstick. He was a real sexy lady.
In his speech he said, “I am also a proud trangender woman but more importantly, a mother of two wonderful transgender and gender expansive children.”
Pause right there. A transgender having two transgender children?! Projecting much? What a Rockwell painting that house must be.
We'll pause further to note that we don't recall Mandelburg attacking women who adopt children because they can't or choose not to have biological children. You may continue your rant, Tierin-Rose:
Mum wants to castrate children, and we’re the barbaric ones.
We're so backward that Mum and his “trans partner” have discussed plans to “flee the country.”
Toodles!
Towards the end of Mum’s spiel, he explained that it was “barbaric” and “morally repugnant” for parents and healthcare providers to get in trouble for helping innocent children transition. Yeah, the ones who don’t want kids getting mutilated are the “morally repugnant” ones. GOT IT!
This MAN needs to shut up for one, stop advocating for child abuse and have his own kids taken away. He, and people like it, are the emulation of the threat of the left on our kids.
Yes, Mandelburg thinks any action a parent takes toward helping their child that strays outside the rigid heteronormative ideology she follows is "child abuse." She offers no evidence that Amber Mum is a bad parent outside of her existence as transgender.
Elise Ehrhard whined about more fictional transgender people in a Feb. 7 post:
Last night, NBC'sQuantum Leap reboot pushed a radical trans agenda, promoting inclusion of biological males in girls' sports and female locker rooms.
Monday's episode, "Let Them Play," was a full hour of trans propaganda. The show ignored, dismissed or derided the pain felt by young female athletes who have had their sports and privacy invaded by biological males.
[...]
This woke turn is disappointing for a show which had seemed to be avoiding the reboot curse and actually produced interesting story lines with engaging narrative arcs.
Let's hope the show returns to what makes it work and does not repeat another week of left-wing lecturing.
Philbin spent a Feb. 8 post repeating an evidence-free claim from the right-wing Daily Caller that plastic surgeons oppose anti-transgender laws because they make too much money performing genbder-affirming surgery, sneering, "Nice bread if you can make it."
On Feb. 10, Kathleen Krumhansl huffed that a Spanish-language interviewer promoted an transgender musician:
The need to remain relevant is so pressing for Univision's veteran anchor Jorge Ramos, that he has now incorporated the erasure of women under the cover of 'trans visibility' to his campaign against the traditional values of the public he claims to champion and represent.
This became evident in an interview with Puerto Rican trans urban music performer Villano Antillano (Antillian Villain), that aired over Ramos's Al Punto talk-show last Sunday, February 5th, where the key take-away was: Feminism’s new frontier lies at the threshold of the (100% machista) reggaeton -- and in the hands of women -- like her.
Watch how women- possibly Univision's most valuable demographic -- get swiftly canceled by Ramos in the name of “trans visibility”:
[...]
Reggaeton is notorious for lyrics that objectify women, something that to 'her' credit, Antillano rectified with “(reggaeton) is not very much for empowering women”, adding that “It's us women who are now like taking it in that direction.”
In what direction, we wonder. For while Ramos elevated deep-voiced Antillano to the level of feminist trailblazer- “a reggaeton and urban music singer who is breaking stereotypes and who by raising her voice with great courage, is opening spaces in music and a society that until very recently were closed to many,” it turns out that 'her' courage stems from elsewhere: revenge.
Yes, Krumhansl really is mad that a transgender artist is trying to make reggaeton less misogynistic. She needs to rethink her priorities.
NEW ARTICLE -- Classified Document Double Standards at the MRC: The Trump Defense Topic: Media Research Center
When the FBI searched Donald Trump's compound to collect classified documents he had taken, the Media Research Center reflexively came to his aid. Read more >>
MRC Tried To Distract From Michigan State Shooting By Attacking A Prosecutor Topic: Media Research Center
It's standardpractice for the Media Research Center to distract from gun massacres by focusing on anything else but guns and lashing out at anyone who points out the central role of the gun in the massacre. When a shooter killed three people on the campus of Michigan State University, the MRC followed that pattern again, beginning with a Feb. 14 post by Kevin Tober:
Late Monday night, a deranged gunman opened fire on students at Michigan State University, killing three and leaving five others in critical condition. On Tuesday evening, the three evening news broadcasts were quick to jump to their usual playbook of overblowing how frequent mass shootings in the United States are and turning to guests or victims to plea for gun control.
All three networks used completely dishonest and inflated statistics that there have been 67 mass shootings in the United States in 2023. Yet ABC's World News Tonight, CBS Evening News & NBC Nightly News had no interest in reporting that the gunman had his prior gun charge dismissed by a George Soros-backed prosecutor in the name of "race equity."
The only mention of the gunman even having a criminal history that banned him from owning a weapon came from NBC Nightly News when Maggie Vespa reported that "investigators highlighting Mcrae's record, most recently pleading guilty to a misdemeanor weapons charge in 2021."
The "completely dishonest and inflated statistics" Tober is referring to come from the Gun Violence Archive, which describes its methodology for the numbers it uses so it cannot possible be dishonest; the MRC has attacked the GVA numbers before because it makes gun activists look bad. (Also, it's the height of irony for an organization that made up "secondhand censorship" to complain about someone else's "dishonest and inflated statistics.")
Tober uncritically quoted the right-wing Free Beacon in accusing the prosecutor in question, Carol Siemon, of reducing Anthony McRae's original felony charge of concealed carry of a gun without a permit to a misdemeanor charge in which he served probation. (Conservatives actually favor permitless concealed carry, so you think the MRC would be cheering this.) The Free Beacon article put "race equity" in quotes as a reason McRae's charge was reduced, but at no point did it quote Siemon or anyone else saying those exact words in relation to McRae's case (or at all, in fact, raising questions about the article's overall credibility). As Siemon has pointed out, McRae was a first-time offender, who typically see reduced sentences, and plea bargains are commonplace, meaning that what she did was not out or the ordinary. But because she had tangental links to Soros -- whom the MRC constantlydemonizes -- she too became a target for right-wing demonization even if her attackers can't identify any deviation from standard procedure.
Alex Christy served up the gun-distraction narrative in a Feb. 15 post, complaining that Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost (whom the MRC weirdly hates) "continued the old tradition of claiming that the only reason why major gun control legislation fails in Congress is because of the National Rifle Association."
Nicholas Fondacaro opened a Feb. 15 post by grumbling that "In the wake of the tragic shooting at Michigan State University earlier this week, the unhinged gaggle of gals on ABC’s The View unleashed some truly crazy takes. Joy Behar was so unhinged that she seriously blamed Republicans wearing gun-shaped lapel pins for causing mass shootings." As we noted, the MRC didn't think it was "unhinged" to accuse members of Congress of acting "demonic" for wearing lapel pins expressing support for abortion rights.
Fondacaro returned to the blame-the-prosecutor angle in a Feb. 16 post:
During a Thursday appearance on CBS Mornings, Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio put liberal co-hosts Gayle King and Nate Burleson in their place after the former tried to suggest he was fine with continued mass shootings, and the latter misrepresented his stance on gun laws. Of course, this was all in service of the anti-gun rights narrative.
The topic of guns in America was sprung on Rubio as he was there speaking about the Chinese spy balloon and “objects” breaching American airspace. Near the end of the hostile encounter, King hinted that Rubio might not be tired of seeing mass shootings and only gave him 30 seconds to respond:
Senator Rubio, aren't you tired of this story, too? In less than 30 seconds. It's clear what we have on the books now isn't working. Aren't you tired of these stories, as we all are?
He immediately shot back; calling out “the reasons why it's not working is because we don't enforce these laws” and pointed to the Michigan State University shooter’s 2019 felony gun charge was dropped by a progressive prosecutor for a less one, allowing him to still have access to buying a gun.
Fondacaro went on to uncritically quote Rubio claiming that McRae "actually had gun charges in the past," suggesting there were multiple cases; in fact, there was just the one. He also didn't note that conservative gun activists support permitless concealed carry, the charge McRae originally faced.
MRC Gushes Over Gutfeld -- But Excludes Him From Its Late-Night Analyses Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center just loves right-wing Fox News late-night host Greg Gutfeld, and it continues to tout how much better ratings reportedly are compared with other late-night hosts:
A Sept. 13 post by Elise Eharhard complained that the Emmys ignored "non-woke" late-night hosts: "Notably absent from the list of nominees was the man whose late-night talk show ratings beats them all, Fox New's Greg Gutfeld."
An Oct. 8 post by Tim Graham touted how "Joseph Wulfsohn at Fox News reports that audiences are leaving the Old Media late-night "comedy" shows now the Trump era is over," going to quote Wulfsohn whoring for his employer by noting that Colbert is "losing his title as King of Late Night in recent months to Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, whose show 'Gutfeld!' has edged out the CBS rival with 2.2-2.4 million viewers as of late." (Of course, the MRC would never call out Fox News for this blatant example of corporate whoring that it routinely attacks non-right-wing networks for doing.)
An Oct. 16 post by Kevin Tober whined that CBS noted how Jon Stewart was a trailblazer for liberal-leaning late-night hosts: "This is obviously comical since the left is even failing in the late-night ratings to the new king of late-night Greg Gutfeld."
The MRC's Curtis Houck gushed in a Dec. 11 appearance on Fox News that the "venom" shown by the likes of Jimmy Kimmel "is exactly why your lead-in, Greg Gutfeld, is just destroying the competition. ... [Y]ou look at the ratings. Kimmel down 28 percent. You have Fallon down 48 percent. Colbert down 17 percent as of late. You know, as my colleague Alex Christie said, you can take Kimmel out of The Man Show but you can’t take The Man Show out of Kimmel."
Chrstian Toto complained in a Dec. 31 post that an end-of-year New York Times review of late night TV ignored Gutfeld: "Gutfeld! quickly established itself as a sly alternative to the other, hard-Left showcases. This year, Greg Gutfeld’s showcase finished either first or second in the late-night ratings race. A cable-based show with no A-list stars or fawning media coverage became the format’s biggest news story since David Letterman hung up his mic."
So if Gutfeld is such a late-night powerhouse that his presence shouldn't be ignored, why does the MRC studiously ignore Gutfeld when it purports to evaluate late-night content? A Nov. 14 post by Alex Christy complained about late-night guests being too liberal:
The late-night comedy scene has been reliably liberal for a long time, but the 2022 midterm election was a regular messaging machine for the Democrats, a NewsBusters study has revealed.
MRC analysts found that during the fall campaign, from Labor Day through the Monday night before Election Day, liberal guests outnumbered conservative guests 47 to 0. It was 100 percent liberal and/or Democrat.
The study looked at the daily six late night comedy shows: ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and The Late Late Show with James Corden, and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Fox's Gutfeld! was not included.
Christy did not explain why he refuse to evaluate the highest-rated late-night show. He did, however, take time to explain why he listed Anthony Fauci as a partisan: "despite serving under both parties, [he] was listed as a Democrat due to him taking on a new role as President Biden’s chief medical advisor." Which is nonsensical because being a medical adviser is about as nonpartisan as it gets.
Christy repeated his selective exclusion for a Feb. 6 post:
The late-night comedy shows ended 2022 with a unanimously liberal guest count and that trend continued until the very last day of January, a NewsBusters study has revealed.
MRC analysts found that from Labor Day through January 31, liberal guests outnumbered conservative guests 93 to 1. It was 99 percent liberal and/or Democrat. The one exception was My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell who Jimmy Kimmel put on to mock.
This is follow up to MRC’s late night guest election campaign study.
The study looked at the daily six late night comedy shows: ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and The Late Late Show with James Corden, and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and 2023 guest hosts. Fox's Gutfeld! was not included.
Again, Christy refused to explain why the highest-rated late-night host was deliberately excluded from his analysis. But he did explain that "George Conway and Adam Kinzinger are identified as liberals for their active opposition to Republicans" -- never mind that they apparently remain Republicans though they harshly criticize Donald Trump and his apologists. Apparently, criticizing Trump in any way makes one a "liberal."
Thus, once again, narrative trumps facts at the MRC. Adding Gutfield to its late-night evaluation would skew the guest disparity numbers and make them much smaller, and the MRC needs that distorted number for clicks (just like the made up "secondhand censorship" metric). Gutfeld is useful only for ratings fodder, not for "media research."
Indeed, Christy's research blind spot was followed by a Feb. 10 post by Joseph Vazquez chortling over how "Fox News host Greg Gutfeld had a field day roasting the leftist C-suite hacks at the disenchanted Walt Disney Company for their ongoing obsession to out-woke themselves despite their bottom line taking a financial beating." That was followed by a Feb. 13 post by P.J. Gladnick mocking "Daily Show" creator Lizz Winstead over "the very true fact that Gutfeld leads in the late-night ratings for comedy" and because she inadvertently exposed how including the show in MRC "research" would skew things, noting that if she ever appeared on Gutfeld's show, she "would just get trolls in your Twitter field from here to eternity." Gladnick huffed in response: "You know what else is gross, Lizz? Your Daily Show which are in the basement, which is why you have such rage against Greg Gutfeld who has overwhelmed your old TV show in the late-night ratings."
Gladnick didn't mention that Winstead hasn't been involved with "The Daily Show" since 1998, though she did appear as a guest last month.
Comedy: MRC Exec And Fox News Lover Graham Frets Over Decline Of Media Objectivity Topic: Media Research Center
It always makes for great unintentional comedy when the Media Research Center -- which runs the highlybiased "news" operation CNSNews.com -- demands objectivity from all media outlets outside the right-wing bubble, and Tim Graham did jsut that in his Feb. 1 column:
The establishment media have shuffled forth to announce that their Objectivity is dead. They don’t realize that it’s like announcing that Jack Benny is dead. It’s not “news.”
Former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie was the announcer, proclaiming that he and former CBS News president Andrew Heyward surveyed 75 sources in the media elites and found a “generational shift.” Voila, no one is objective any more.
The headline was “Newsrooms that move beyond ‘objectivity’ can build trust.” Objectivity is in scare quotes because it was always corrupt, according to this enlightened white male.
The people who loathe “bothsidesism” are fervent believers in “one-sideism,” and seek to enforce the media norm that there should be no space or respect granted to the “wrong side” of climate change, LGBTQ+, “Black Lives Matter,” and so on, and so on. There’s no right and left, only Right and Wrong.
[...]
Downie laments that the Old Media are “coping with economic and digital disruption” and “increasing competition from misinformation on cable television and the internet.” This is how the “mainstream” media define the conservative media – they are bluntly categorized as “misinformation” that is harming their market share.
Obviously, when you make everyone painfully aware you will avoid “false balance” and exclude the “wrong side” from your “news” stories -- unless you’re destroying them and their favorite leaders -- the “wrong side” goes out in search of journalism that addresses their concerns.
Note that Graham never references right-wing media like Fox News when he demands "objectivity." That's because he actually doesn't want objectivity -- he wants all media outlets to have the same right-wing bias as Fox News. He'll never genuinely call out Fox News -- even when they are caught red-handed lying to its viewers -- because he and his MRC subordinates appear on the channel and need the PR from it, but it will nitpick the "liberal media" for every perceived slight. And if Graham really cared about media objectivity, he would marching down the hall at MRC HQ to CNS' newsroom and demand that Terry Jeffrey and crew clean up their act and start following the rules of objectivity he demands of others.
Instead, Graham concluded by whining:
The more they’ve dumped objectivity, the more the public trust in the press has plummeted. Last October, Gallup found only 34 percent of Americans trust the mass media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly,” and that’s because 70 percent of Democrats say they trust them.
Earth to the media: You spurned the “wrong side” as undeserving of your attention, and you received the distrust that you wanted. Try to make profits by only serving the “marginalized.”
Graham didn't mention that his employer spends millions of dollars every year to undermine trust in the media and to hype biased media like Fox News that pushes the same right-wing narratives it endorses. No sane media observer agrees that Fox News covers things "fully, accurately and fairly," amd Graham is certainly never going to criticize it for doing so -- indeed, it lashes out anytime Fox News inadvertently deviates from those narratives.
You want us to believe you care about media objectivity, Tim? Criticize right-wing media for having a right-wing bias. Of course, we already know he'll never do that because fealty to the partisan narrative that pays his salary is more important than intellectual consistency.
After Years Of Feuding, MRC Makes Up With CPAC, Uses It To Promote Its Agenda Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has had hot-and-cold relations with the conservative political gathering CPAC over the years -- one year MRC chief Brent Bozell withdrew all his subordinates from the conference in a snit becuase CPAC wouldn't give him a prominent enough speaking slot. Over the past several months, though, the MRC has been on good enough terms to promote CPAC and bestow victmhood on it over perceived slights -- and censor bad news about it from its readers.
We've already documented how the MRC was an apologist for Hungarian strongman Victor Orban ahead of his speech at a CPAC gathering last August. AFter YouTube removed video of CPAC speechs for hate and misinformation, Brian Bradley awarded victimhood in a Sept. 29 post:
YouTube on Friday removed “an entire day” of content posted by the Conservative Political Action Conference with no warning, CPAC said in a statement Wednesday.
A CPAC event in Dallas that took place Aug. 4-7 featured “high-profile conservatives,” including former President Donald Trump, Fox News host Sean Hannity, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).
CPAC spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer told MRC Free Speech America in an email Thursday that YouTube told his organization it removed the video because of so-called “misinformation.”
“YouTube continues to operate as an arm of the Democratic Party,” Pfeiffer said in a brief interview. “It shuts down all dissent. But they’re not going to win. We’re going to continue to talk about election integrity. Those fascist dorks in Silicon Valley won’t succeed.”
Bradley made no attempt to contact YouTube for comment -- presumably because doing so would distract from his victimhood narrative. (The MRC also complained when YouTube deleted CPAC videos from earlier in the year because they spread lies about election fraud.)
But a couple days later, when CPAC's Twitter account referred to areas of Ukraine that Russia's Vladimir Putin illegally annexed as "Ukrainian-occupied territories" -- prompting some serious backpedaling on CPAC's part -- the MRC was silent.
A Nov. 22 post by Kathleen Krumhansl (also in Spanish) complained that a Spanish-language channel planned Donald Trump speaking to a CPAC gathering in Mexico:
Univision, where journalists routinely advocate for abortions, transgender rights, the sexualization of grade school children, same sex marriage, et. al, has now become the watchdog of virtue – that is, Donald J. Trump's, who “does not practice any religion and has five children by three different women'', yet dared urge a group of supposed ultraconservatives gathered in Mexico City, to "defend God, Family, and Country."
The virtue signaling came in the form of a story published in Univision.com, under a generic Univision byline, regarding a pre-recorded message from Trump that was aired at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held in Mexico City this past weekend.
Krumhansl also complained that the newscast "cast aspersions" on CPAC Mexico chief Eduardo Verástegui because he got his start as an actor.
In a Dec. 22 post, P.J. Gladnick rushed to defend Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh for attending a Christmas party at the home of CPAC leader Matt Schlapp with a lame bit of whataboutism: "These reporters and their appointed experts never cared when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was being celebrated by leftists at the Sundance Film Festival or the Glamour magazine "Woman of the Year" awards."
As the main CPAC gathering approached, Curtis Houck gushed in a Feb. 27 podcast how he and fellow MRCer Nicholas Fondacaro "teased the MRC’s presence at CPAC and told listeners to be sure to come say hi if you’re making the trip to National Harbor!" Fondacaro followed in a March 1 podcast: "And once more, be sure to check out the MRC’s presence at CPAC including the panel discussion with our Founder and President Brent Bozell!"
There was no mention of the fact that a month earlier, CPAC leader Schlapp had been slapped (or Schlapped, if you'd like) with a lawsuit accusing him of "unwanted groping" by a male staffer on Herschel Walker's doomed Senate campaign. That would have created drama between the MRC and CPAC, and the MRC was planning to milk CPAC for all it was worth.
Bozell apaprently finally got that prime speaking slot he demanded, so Kevin Tober served as servile stenographer for the March 2 speech:
During the first official day of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Media Research Center (MRC) founder and President Brent Bozell tore into the dishonest and corrupt media for the way they cover (or don’t cover) the news. Bozell declared that they are no longer liberal, they are full-blown Marxists.
Joined WMAL radio host Larry O’Connor, TownHall senior columnist Kurt Schlichter and Libs of TikTok founder Chaya Raichik, on a panel aptly titled “Don Lemon is past his primetime,” Bozell expertly tore apart the media and explained how their bias has gotten so much worse in the years since the MRC was founded in 1987.
Looking back to when the MRC was founded, O’Connor observed to Bozell that “back then it was a quaint notion of media bias. I think we’ve come a long way from just media bias haven't we?”
“When we started in 1987, we went after this thing called liberal media bias. It doesn't exist anymore,” Bozell explained. “We're not talking about a liberal media, you are talking about a media that could care less about the news. They don't report the news. They’re weaponized. They’re Marxist! Many of them are Marxist,” Bozell added.
He pointed out that if they want to do what they do as “opinion writers” then they can go ahead but from them “to say that they are CNN, that they are CBS News, NBC News, ABC News, that’s an insult to America to do this.”
Garbriela Pariseau touted more MRC propagandizing in another post that day:
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody told MRC Free Speech America & MRC Business Vice President Dan Schneider at the CPAC Big Tech panel Thursday that Big Tech is “one of the most relevant issues to our daily lives right now.”
Schneider led a panel entitled, “Big Tech- Break ‘em Up, Bust ‘em Up, Put ‘em in Jail.” Schneider and Moody were joined by Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) and Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes to discuss just how big Big Tech is, the harms it causes and whether the industry of giants still needs Section 230 liability protections.
Paiten Iselin had a gushy post headlined "EXCLUSIVE: Backstage at CPAC ft. Bozell, Libs of TikTok, O’Connor & More!" Catherine Salgado served up more stenography in a post touting how Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt "slammed Big Tech censorship and issued a call to protect free speech at CPAC 2023 Thursday." Anti-abortion extremist Tierin-Rose Mandelburg also worked the CPAC floor as well by doing an interview with (who else?) a fellow anti-abortion activist.
When CPAC was criticized, the MRC snapped to defense mode, such as is this March 3 post by Alex Christy:
ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel reacted the first day of the Conservative Political Action Conference with his usual hurling of insults as he labeled attendees as both “fascist” and “racist.”
During his monologue, Kimmel declared that, “In Washington, the fascist and the furious have gathered to praise their lord and savior, Donald Trump, at the annual CPAC convention. This is a convention for all your worst aunts and uncles.”
[...]
Getting back to CPAC attendees, Kimmel claimed that, “This CPAC event, it’s kind of hard to explain, every, like, low-rent radio host and podcast racist with a dye job and a fleece vest shows up to try to out-crazy each other.”
Clay Waters similarly complained in a March 5 post:
PBS NewsHour anchor Amna Nawaz introduced an unfriendly segment on the Conservative Political Action Conference's (CPAC) annual gathering in the Maryland suburbs of DC. Laura Barron-Lopez’s solemnly intoned field report on Friday evening was interspersed with her own opinions about the “white grievance politics” and the so-called “false belief” about teaching Critical Race Theory.
[...]
She noted many potential candidates were sitting out CPAC, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and interviewed Al Cardenas, the former chairman of the American Conservative Union, which organizes the annual conference. Cardenas now has the same liberal politics as his wife, Ana Navarro.
Neither Waters nor Christy disclosed the conflict of interest that their employer had a major presence at CPAC. Waters' post, however, contains the only reference by ther MRC to Schlapp's sexual misconduct scandal, though buried in a transcript at the end of the piece and not otherwise highlighted or remarked upon.
Jeffrey Lord spent his March 4 column defending CPAC against more reporting he didn't like:
It is an amazing thing to watch. In the lead-up to the annual winter convening of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) just outside of Washington, there was the Associated Press running a story headlined:
Trump set to headline diminished gathering of conservatives
As this is written, I am at CPAC. And there is nothing “diminished” about it. Thousands of energized conservatives are surging through the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in Maryland. They have been listening to all manner of speakers -- U.S. Senators and House members, presidential candidates and, on Saturday, former President Trump himself. Yet what occurs in reading that Post article is that yet again the liberal media is simply unable to report fact.
But Lord quoted nothing from the AP article outside the headline; the article explained how the gathering is "diminished" due to the absence of former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Gov. and presumed presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, as well as "congressional leaders and governors, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, and several potential presidential prospects, including Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has been building buzz among some donors." The article also pointed out thatthe right-wing Club for Growth "will hold a competing event, a donor summit in Florida, that is attracting DeSantis, Pence and others."
Instead, Lord unironically criticized the "mainstream media" for purportedly not engaging in "'just the facts' jorunalism."
MRC Is Mad Scientific American Isn't Pushing Right-Wing Narratives Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Clay Waters devoted a Feb. 10 post to ranting that the magazine Scientific American failed to advance right-wing narratives:
Scientific Americanmagazine has been around since 1845, evolving into a reader-friendly purveyor of hard science, a respected, slightly intimidating denizen of supermarket checkout lines. But judging by the recent ridiculous trend of stories and editorials, it’s been wholly captured by the woke blob.
On the surfacethe monthly still does what it says on the label in providing long articles, short reviews, and cool photographs for an intelligent audience, with almost-comprehensible stories on the physics of black holes for science buffs, and stunning photos of deep-sea creatures for the rest of us.
But then there’s the ludicrously left-wing ideology that seeps into every issue. A NewsBusters perusal of the contents of each 2022 regular-release monthly issue revealed 34 stories grounded in liberal assumptions and beliefs, nearly three per issue. That’s even after skipping stories with liberal themes that were nonetheless science-based -- for example, a cover story on melting glaciers in Antarctica wasn’t included.
Of course, the COVID pandemic in particular tugged the magazine toward government interventionism and the smug rule of health “experts.”
Following scientific consensus on COVID makes one "smug"? Apparently it does in Waters' right-wing media bubble. His analysis got dumber from there:
So what’s the solution? Surely Canada wouldn’t recommend banning blacks from the National Football League for their own protection?
But plenty of bizarre pieces fill the print edition. Here’s a headline from the July 2020 issue of this purported science magazine: “The Racist Roots of Fighting Obesity.” Yet a June 2019 SAarticle argued that the nation’s “biggest health problem” was obesity. So is Scientific American, for being concerned about obesity, by its own bizarre standard racist as well?
One can be concerned about obetity while also being concerned that society discriminates against obese people, just as it can also be pointed out that football is a violent sport and that blacks, which make up a majority of NFL players, are disproportionately affected by it.
Waters also whined about an article that advocated accurate teaching of American history because it criticized the right-wing war on critical race theory: "The movement against teaching Critical Race Theory in schools was dismissed in hysterically biased terms: 'This regressive agenda threatens children’s education by propagating a falsified view of reality in which American history and culture are outcomes of white virtue. It is part of a larger program of avoiding any truths that make some people uncomfortable, which sometimes allows in active disinformation, such as creationism.'" Note that Waters didn't say this view was inaccurate.
Waters also complained that the magazine failed to spew hate at transgender people:
A notorious September 2017 magazine story with graphics and text by Amanda Montanez was seemingly conjured to enable the most biologically ignorant trans-activists to pretend that the clear binary of male and female was actually a spectrum of disorders of sex development (DSD), “which, broadly defined, may affect about one percent of the population -- represent a robust, evidence-based argument to reject rigid assignations of sex and gender.”
So much for basic reproductive anatomy knowledge at SA (testes produce sperm, ovaries produce eggs; there is no “spectrum”). Montanez concluded: “I am hopeful that raising public awareness of intersex, along with transgender and non-binary identities, will help align policies more closely with scientific reality, and by extension, social justice.”
Indeed, many Scientific American articles boil down to “social justice,” not science.
In Waters' world, not hating transgender people and arguing that gender is not binary for some people makes one "notorious."
MRC Helps Launch Ramaswamy's Presidential Campaign Topic: Media Research Center
Right-wing financier Vivek Ramaswamy recently announced his presidential campaign -- but he had a head start in building name recognition thanks to helep from the Media Research Center. He first popped up at the MRC in a June 2021 post by Gabriela Pariseau:
Philanthropy Roundtable board member and author Vivek Ramaswamy gave Big Tech an ultimatum for its Section 230 protections: Uphold the First Amendment or lose immunity privileges.
Ramaswamy, founder of Roivant Sciences and a Philanthropy Roundtable board member, tweeted: “It’s time to amend Section 230. Either you operate like a normal company, without the federal blanket of immunity, or you agree to abide by the First Amendment in return for that immunity. Tech companies can’t have it both ways.”
He has pushed back against Big Tech censorship multiple times leading to the release of his forthcoming book, Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.
In addition to quotinghiminseveralposts, the MRC continued to promote Ramaswamy's pontifications:
In October, the MRC hyped Ramaswamy reacting to its bogusresearch purporting to show pro-Democratic Google search bias:
Woke Inc. author Vivek Ramaswamy reacted to a new MRC Free Speech America study by ripping Big Tech giant Google for manipulating search results to favor Democrats in highly contested senate races.
The Strive Asset Management executive chairman unleashed on Google during the Oct. 26 edition of Fox Business Tonight: “We hear alot about the threats to our democracy. Well, guess what! I think this is a big threat to our democracy,” he said. To give “one autocratic actor the chance to tilt the scales of what the public can and cannot see about the candidates that they’re asked to vote for in November” is a "threat to democracy.”
A Nov. 3 post by Jeffrey Clark gushed over Ramaswamy spouting his talking points on CNBC:
Woke Inc. author Vivek Ramaswamy crushed CNBC hosts for railing against freedom of speech in what turned out to be a heated debate — even a two-on-one cage match — over a basic Constitutional right.
Ramaswamy unleashed an onslaught of arguments in defense of free speech and free markets on the Nov. 3 edition of Squawk Box. “First rule of the road is no viewpoint-based discrimination,” Ramaswamy said. “Spam, porn content, moderate that — get it out of the feeds. But that means no viewpoint discrimination and here’s the rub, that means hates speech goes away as a category, because as heinous as it may be, hate speech is just someone else’s opinion.”
[...]
Ramaswamy continued on to school the CNBC hosts for using “misinformation” as an excuse to censor Americans. “If you’re going to take down false speech, I believe a cardinal rule is that the company bears the obligation to prove that the speech was false before removing it, and then if in doubt, here’s a tiebreaker, give the power back to the user,” he said. “Let the user decide what protocols they opt into and not.”
More Ramaswamy worship followed under the gushy headline "Vivek Ramaswamy Rips Centralized Digital Currency as 'Cancer' Symptom of 'New World Order'." But interestingly, the day Ramaswamy's candidacy was announced, Feb. 21, was also the day a post by Pariseau touted a "three-part series" of interviews between Ramaswamy and her boss, Brent Bozell, in which tjhey "discussed how anti-Americanism has infected American society and plagued American institutions including Big Tech." But nowhere in Pariseau's post did she mention that Ramaswamy was a presidential candidate -- instead, there was a disclaimer at the beginning of the accompanying video: "The Media Research Center is a 501c(3) non-profit and does not endorse any candidates or campaigns. This video was recorded on 2/16/2023."
A March 3 post touted an interview Ramasway did with MRC podcaster Paiten Iselin -- part 2 of the series -- in which they "discussed the question: 'Is there hope for America?'" Again, there was no disclosure in the post, just a disclaimer at the beginning of the video but changing the interview date to Feb. 17. Renata Kiss touted what was apparently part 23 in a March 8 post:
In an exclusive interview with MRC Business Vice President Dan Schneider, Woke, Inc. author Vivek Ramaswamy condemned ESG efforts and offered a free market alternative based “exclusively on an excellence centric vision.”
Ramaswamy warned the public of how companies that subscribe to woke environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards use American citizens’ money to try to push “one-sided political agendas,” and “correct” so-called societal “injustices.” He also explained why the need for alternative solutions motivated him to create Strive Asset Management.
Once again, the post did not disclose Ramaswamy's candidacy but stuck a disclaimer at the beginning of the video. That disclaimer is disingenuous, of course -- it's unlikely that the MRC didn't know Ramaswamy would announcehis candidacy a few days after the interviews, and the first video appearing on the day of the announcement was no coincidence. It is indisputably coordinated promotion of his candidacy and looks more than a little shady. Someone should probably alert the Federal Election Commission about this.
NEW ARTICLE: Pelosi Derangement Syndrome At The MRC Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center not only greeted Nancy Pelosi stepping down from House Democratic leadership with more hate, it attacked her daughter for making a film about her. Read more >>
MRC' Vazquez Spreads Wild Anti-Biden, Anti-ESG (And Russian) Conspriacy Theories Over Ohio Train Derailment Topic: Media Research Center
As part of the Media Research Center's strategy to exploit a train derailment strategy in Ohio to advance partisan agendas, a Feb. 16 post by Joseph Vazquez tried to manufacture a conspiracy theory by dragging in right-wing-mandated anti-ESG talking points:
ABC’s, CBS’s and NBC’s premature abandonment of coverage of the environmental disaster in East Palestine, Ohio may have been a gambit to protect the leftist pro-environmental, social, governance (ESG) standard giants tied to the incident.
[...]
It turns out that ESG-obsessed investment giants like The Vanguard Group, JPMorgan Investment Management and BlackRock Fund Advisors, are Norfolk Southern’s largest shareholders. The combined stake between the three shareholders is valued at a sizable $9,392,760,704 as of Feb. 16.
“It truly is incredible, the lackluster coverage that the train derailment and subsequent evacuation in East Palestine, Ohio has received from the Big Three,” asserted MRC Free Speech America & MRC Business Director Michael Morris. “Can you imagine if the same sort of ecological disaster had occurred under the Trump administration? Undoubtedly, the Big Three would be doing all that they could to somehow pin the blame on the former president of the United States. But now, with the Biden administration at the helm — not much more than crickets.”
[...]
Strikingly, both Vanguard (Norfolk Southern's largest shareholder) and BlackRock have been at the center of a leftist movement to radically change American culture through the force of ESG standards in corporate America.
ESGs provide a smokescreen for left-wing bigwigs in C-suites to force radical leftist politics onto shareholders, according to former McDonald’s CEO Edward Rensi. Utah State Treasurer Marlo Oaks called ESG “the greatest threat to our freedoms in America today without question,” during an< exclusive interview with MRC Business.
The fact that ESG-obsessed companies are tied to the Norfolk Southern disaster blows their eco-virtue signaling on sustainable investment completely out of the water and makes the Big Three prematurely dropping the coverage look even more despicable.
Could it be that the Big Three are doing everything they can to protect their shareholders’ investment in Norfolk Southern?
But doesn't the fact that these funds invest in Norfolk Southern actually prove that they are, in fact, not "EDG-obsessed"? Despite all of the right-wing ferarmongering on the issue, nobody's actually being forced to invest in ESG against their will -- it's simply an option being made available for those who care about it.
In a Feb. 17 post, Vazquez showed the MRC's political agenda again and manufactured another conspiracy theory:
The Big Three networks ignored news that the Biden administration denied disaster assistance to Ohio’s pro-Trump Columbiana County following the toxic train derailment in East Palestine.
Fox News reported Feb. 16 that Governor Mike DeWine (R-OH) spokesperson Dan Tierney said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) denied federal aid because it “believed the [train derailment] incident didn't qualify as a traditional disaster, such as a tornado or hurricane, for which it usually provides assistance.” The incident led to a controlled explosion and the spewing of hazardous fumes into the atmosphere, with reports of groundwater damage, dead animals and health issues circulating. Newsweek even reported the turmoil could evolve into a “Full-Blown Ecological Crisis.” The denial of aid calls into question why the U.S. government is willing to commit more than $24.9 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration but not an American town in turmoil.
Additional context may provide some insight as to why Biden’s FEMA did not pursue providing aid for that particular area, and why the ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news shows chose to ignore the story between Feb. 16 - Feb. 17.
Biden released details on a new executive order advancing racial equity on Feb. 16, the same day as the Fox News report. Biden claimed his goal was to “advance an ambitious, whole-of-government approach to racial equity and support for underserved communities and to continuously embed [racial] equity into all aspects of Federal decision-making.” According to the latest breakdown, East Palestine is 93.5 percent white, three percent Hispanic, and only 0.36 percent black.
In addition, Columbiana County, where East Palestine is located, 71.7 percent of the vote went overwhelmingly for former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
But in pushing this wacky conspiracy theory that the Biden administration wants white Trump voters to die, Vazquez omitted the one relevant piece of context: The derailment falls outside of federally mandated definitions for a disaster in which FEMA can assist -- namely, it was caused by a private company, not natural forces, and no property damage occurred in the immediate aftermath. Vazquez also censored ther fact that other federal agencies have provided assistance and that President Biden contacted Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine to pledge federal help.
Vazquez went on to rehash his bogus ESG conspiracy and concluded by huffing: "By ignoring Ohio being denied disaster aid by a partisan, racially-charged Biden administration, now the media look even more asinine." That's right -- a guy who spreads asinine conspiracy theories thinks everyone but him looks "asinine."
When the Associated Press reported that Russian-linked Twitter accounts spread conspiracy theories about the derailment that echoed conservatives' own talking points, Vazquez had another freakout in a March 20 post:
The Associated Press attempted to blame Twitter owner Elon Musk and “pro-Russian” Twitter accounts for Americans’ distrust of Big Daddy Government and liberal media gaslighting about the toxic Ohio train disaster. Talk about a ridiculous attempt at a stretch.
AP whined in a Mar. 18 story — “Pro-Moscow voices tried to steer Ohio train disaster debate” — that “anonymous pro-Russian accounts” used “Elon Musk’s new verification system” to spread “misleading claims and anti-American propaganda” about the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment. The train’s derailing led authorities to create a controlled explosion that released toxic fumes into the atmosphere.
“The accounts, which parroted Kremlin talking points on myriad topics, claimed without evidence that authorities in Ohio were lying about the true impact of the chemical spill,” AP complained.
Apparently AP didn’t learn anything from the Twitter Files. Just because left-wing talking heads call an account “pro-Russian” doesn’t mean it is, and a deeper dive into AP’s sources just makes its propaganda seem more like a pathetic attempt to protect government talking points.
Actually, Vazquez is the one trying to protect talking points -- in this case, right-wing and anti-Biden talking points that have been opportunistically used to exploit the derailment.Indeed, he dragged out olther faulty talking points to attack the AP:
AP said London, U.K.-based group Reset identified the “pro-Russian” accounts. Ben Scott, the group's executive director, was “the technology policy advisory group” lead for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign — the same campaign that served as the genesis of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, which AP itself mindlessly promoted.
AP didn’t bother mentioning this in its write-up, and neither did CNN has-been Brian Stelter plastered the story on his Twitter feed. Journalist Glenn Greenwald raked Stelter over the proverbial coals for his thin veneer of media analysis bonafides and lack of critical thinking skills.
Vazquez offered no evidence that Reset was involved in the "the Trump-Russia collusion hoax" (which, by the way, wasn't a hoax). And it appears that Vazquez is suffering from Stelter Derangement Syndrome like his fellow MRC employees.
Vazquez then invoked the MRC's own alleged "media research":
AP was content to throw spaghetti at the wall and see if something would stick. Some of the so-called “verifiably false” “pro-Russian” claims that AP tried debunking included the “suggestion that the news media had covered up the disaster.”
But a recent, non-Russian affiliated MRC study revealed that the Big Three broadcast network’s morning and evening news shows all but dropped coverage of the Ohio disaster once the county permitted residents to return home Feb. 8. All six shows fell just shy of spending a combined 30 minutes on the topic between when the incident first occurred on Feb. 3 and when the evacuation order for East Palestine was lifted on Feb. 8.
The networks regurgitated the public relations gaslighting by the Norfolk Southern Corporation, the owner of the railway responsible for the derailed train. The Big Three rediscovered the topic Feb. 14 - Feb. 15 – nearly a week after the evacuation ended – once it became clear that they were the three most prominent networks that had stopped covering it.
But in AP’s world, the notion that the media provided lackluster coverage of the Ohio train disaster is a “verifiably false” and “pro-Russian” claim.
Insisting that the MRC study was "non-Russian affiliated" is something someone affiliated with Russians would say (and he offers no evidence or reason to trust his word). But as we documented, the very first article the MRC published about the derailment was that study -- 11 days after the derailment occurred. Why? Who did the MRC strategize with to determine that this tragedy needed to be exploited for political purposes? Did they have Russian accents? And why is the MRC so comfortable pushing the same narratives that Russian bots are?
Vazquez's post actually raises more questions than it answers -- questions he clearly doesn't want to answer. He seems to be protesting a bit too much about the Russian stuff.
MRC Hasn't Retracted Discredited Attack On Transgender Clinic Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's chief transphobe, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg, hyped in a Feb. 10 post:
The left needs to consider this a warning.
In an op-ed for The Free Press, Jamie Reed, a queer woman with a trans husband, explained her deep regret and guilt after treating transgender kids with life altering medicines and procedures. Her piece titled, “I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I’m Blowing the Whistle,” should serve as a wake-up-call to the left that thinks gender-affirming procedures aren’t harmful.
Reed worked as a case manager at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. She claimed that the center’s “working assumption” was that the sooner you treat kids' gender dysphoria with life altering measures, the better. Reed’s specific role at the clinic was patient intake and oversight and she saw around 1,000 confused kids during her four year employment at the center.
After seeing the kids leave with “life-altering consequences — including sterility,” Reed quit. “I could no longer participate in what was happening there. By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to ‘do no harm.’ Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care,” she said.
Reed claimed her testimony puts her at personal and professional risk but noted that what’s happening to kids is “morally and medically appalling” and is “far more important than” her “comfort.”
As it turns out, Reed is also at "personal and professional risk" because her story appears not to be true. As Erin Reed wrote in a detailed debunking of Jamie Reed's claims:
Delving into Jamie Reed’s allegations and story makes it clear that she is not an ideologically neutral individual on the care and respect of transgender people. Her statements and omissions reveal a clear ideological bias, and the organizations and representation she has chosen to work with contradict her claim that she “supports transgender people.”
Throughout her story, she frequently misgenders her patients. In fact, I am not aware of a single case where she genders her trans patients correctly. Out of the thousand or so patients she has seen, she only references a half dozen specific anecdotes of what she relays as poor experiences for transgender youth patients - anecdotes I will cover in detail. Even in these anecdotes, she often omits long term net harm. She leaves out the stories of what must be the rest of the thousand patients who, as we have seen in numerous testimony in hearings this year, saw their mental and physical health improve dramatically. Ultimately, she calls for stopping gender affirming care for trans youth - something that would result in actual harm and death to this patient population.
She is not a doctor, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, and does not have direct medical diagnostic experience with patients. She is a case worker, someone who navigates insurance claims and takes intake calls. Throughout her story, she places her own interpretations of events above those of medically educated providers, therapists, and the families and patients that work with them. She claims to know better for these patients, and has acted to sabotage their care.
Mandelburg hyped Jamie Reed claiming that "many of the patients were on the autism spectrum or claimed that they had other disorders like Tourette syndrome, tic disorders or multiple personalities, all of which she said they didn’t." Erin Reed responded:
Here Jamie repeats anti-trans talking points here blaming gender dysphoria on all other things than being trans. Bizarrely, she includes obesity here. While many transgender people have concurrent disorders, there is no established research showing being “trans” is caused by anything else. Furthermore, research into autistic transgender individuals has stated that being prevented from transitioning due to an autism diagnosis could “cause increased levels of depression and anxiety.” The idea that autistic individuals cannot be LGBT+ unfairly targets autistic people who have pushed back hard against the idea that their diagnosis means they cannot experience genuine gender identities or seuxal orientations.
Mandelburg repeated Jamie Reed's claim that "The center literally prescribed a cancer drug as a puberty blocker for boys who wanted to be girls"; Erin Reed responded by pointing out that the drug in question, bicalutamide, "is also used to treat hair loss and excessive facial hair in cisgender females."
Mandelburg also repeated Jamie Reed's claim that "She encountered a situation where a mother convinced her daughter that she was trans when the child's father protested, the woman went to court in a custody battle over the 11-year-old after . A doctor at the center sided with the mother and so did the court." Erin Reed responded that "Jamie is upset that the doctors testified on a patient’s behalf that the best medical practices were followed. An entire court case happened around this proceeding where a judge weighed all of the evidence and statements and came to a verdict. We are supposed to put all of that aside because of a vendetta that Jamie has with her own place of employment."
Even the parents of children who attended the clinic have debunked Jamie Reed's claims.
Mandelburg concluded by claiming: "At the end of the op-ed, Reed pointed out that this isn’t a political matter. This shouldn’t be a divisive issue. This deals with the safety of our children and shouldn’t result in culture wars." In fact, as Erin Reed pointed out, Jamie's testimony was withheld in order to have maximum impact on anti-trans bills in the Missouri legislature, meaning that Jamie is totally cool with playing politics with this issue -- just as Mandelburg is.
Mandelburg has not updated her post to reflect how Jamie Reed's claims have been discredited, nor has she written a new one retracting her earlier post. Remember, narratives are more important than facts.
The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck hadn't had Peter Doocy to man-crush over for a while, so when he returned to Fox News after a month of paternity leave, Houck was ready for some serious Doocy-fluffing in the writeup for the March 1 White House press briefing:
As it 
We've shown how the Media Research Center's 
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It's 
The Media Research Center 
It always makes for great unintentional comedy when the Media Research Center -- which runs the 
The Media Research Center has had hot-and-cold relations with the conservative political gathering CPAC over the years -- one year MRC chief Brent Bozell 
The Media Research Center's Clay Waters devoted a Feb. 10 
Right-wing financier Vivek Ramaswamy recently 
As part of the Media Research Center's 
The Media Research Center's chief transphobe, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg, hyped in a Feb. 10 
