The MRC Parrots Trump's War on Journalists

The Media Research Center isn't imaginative enough to do any "media research" -- it's just transcribing and gushing over the president's attacks on reporters during his coronavirus briefings.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 4/30/2020
Updated 5/4/2020

Let's look at who Trump -- and, thus, the MRC -- has deemed to be their enemies, complete with fawning, hyperbolic stenography on the part of the MRC.

Yamiche Alcindor

On March 18, the MRC's Kyle Drennen complained that PBS NewsHour reporter Yamiche Alcindor "worked together" with another reporter "to claim that President Trump’s use of the term 'Chinese virus' was 'racist' and 'puts Asian Americans at risk.' Alcindor even touted rumors of an unknown administration official using an offensive term to describe the disease." Drennen further complained that Alcindor force a "biased line of questioning" to Trump.

Two days later, Curtis Houck sneered that Alcindor was a "taxpayer-funded reporter" and insisted that her question to Trump about the message he sends to other countries by lashing out at reporters was "another entry into the NewsBusters files and provided yet another audition tape to be deemed the female Jim Acosta." Houck lectured: "This may seem crazy to some, but it is entirely reasonable and possible to set aside whatever you want to believe about the President rhetorically smacking reporters and still think that there’s no profession that loves itself more than the liberal media. And, beyond that, one can also set aside the President and conclude that many journalists are incredibly thin-skinned when presented with criticism from outside their Statist bubbles in New York and Washington D.C."

When Trump had a meltdown March 29 over a question from Alcindor, Houck was practically orgasmic:

The White House Coronavirus Task Force was back Sunday with a briefing and, after a lull, the fireworks also returned as President Trump tussled with multiple reporters, most notably another throwdown with PBS NewsHour White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor.

Alcindor asked about his comments to Sean Hannity about New York’s ventilator requests, but the President wasn’t having it. Instead, he told her to “be nice,” “don’t be threatening,” and reminded her that, despite how some in the liberal media behave, “we’re all on the same team” in hoping to defeat the virus.

She started to ask the first of two questions, but she didn’t get to finish before the President interjected, so here’s what she did get out: “ [Y]ou said repeatedly that you think some of the equipment that governors are requesting they don't actually need. You said New York might need --- might not need 30,000.”

Trump claimed that he never said that and when Alcindor brought up Hannity, the President grew upset and thus cross-talk ensued with Alcindor saying “Mr. President, my question is” on a loop while Trump implored her to be “a little more positive” and drop the “get you” attitude.

He added her attitude was “why nobody trusts the media anymore”:

[...]

Alcindor again brought up his comments on the Fox News Channel and the President responded by telling her to rewatch it because something was up [w]hen I hear facemasks go from 10,000 to 300,000 and they constantly need more and the biggest man in the business is, like, shocked.”

Houck is not going to tell you that Alcindor was correct that Trump said what he now denied saying. After all, it's an article of faith at the MRC that Trump never does anything wrong and his criticism of reporters who challenge him is honest and insightful and not mean and petty.

Houck also called her a "lefty" in his headline, but made no effort to prove that asking questions of Trump that he didn't want to answer equated to her being a "lefty."

The next day, Scott Whitlock chose to interpret a comment by Alcindor about solidarity among journalist as an expression of anti-Trump bias:

Basking in another contentious coronavirus White House press briefing, PBS reporter Yamiche Alcindor on Sunday night told MSNBC’s Ali Velshi that covering Donald Trump is a “team sport” for the press and that journalists must “have each other’s back” in opposition to the President. Much of the interview was spent lamenting that Alcindor only initially got one question out at the briefing before a CNN journalist used his question to allow her to ask another.

Speaking of Jeremy Diamond, she described the team dynamic as journalists vs. Trump: “I have to say thank you to Jeremy of CNN for giving me the opportunity to ask my second question. We know now that covering President Trump sometimes is like a team sport. We have to have each other's back in the press corps and Jeremy had my back today.”

In a way, it’s refreshing for a reporter to admit that they see themselves as on the opposite team of Trump.

That's not what she said, Scott, but you be you.

That same day, Drennen laughably described Alcindor's questioning of Trump as "hostile" and complained that other reporters were coming to her defense. He further deliberately misinterpreted Alcindor's words, insisting that she "proudly proclaimed that bashing Trump during White House briefings was a 'team sport' among the press corps."

Drennen returned on April 10 to attack NBC's Seth Meyers for refusing to repeat the MRC's anti-media attacks while having Alcindor as a guest. he huffed that Meyers was "pushing the laughable fantasy that ego-driven journalists never want to make the news about themselves" and "talked about how much he liked watching reporters gang up on the President during the pressers" (never mind that he didn't actually say that)," finally grousing: "Reporters know that they be as incendiary and irresponsible in the briefing room as they want because the rest of liberal media will always be there to defend them and cheer them on."

Drennen and the rest of the MRC hate journalists like Alcindor so much -- and they are so dedicated to their anti-media agenda -- that they must manufacture a caricature of her that conforms to their preconceived, agenda-driven notions of what a journalist is.

Jim Acosta

Jim Acosta

On Monday, CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta stepped back in the ring for Monday’s White House Coronavirus Task Force daily briefing and, as usual, he made a fool out of himself.

Fortunately for our collective sanity, the ordeal lasted less than two minutes and ended with President Trump torching Fake News Jim for his “nasty, snarky question” about the President’s past statements at what was then a disturbing but evolving pandemic.

[...]

The President didn’t initially fire Acosta into the sun. Instead, he chose to answer the question, noting that he still does believe the coronavirus will go away, that Americans should “stay calm,” and that everyone’s “doing a great job.”

“[W]e're going to have a great victory and it's people like you and CNN that say things like that, that it's why people just don't want to listen to CNN anymore. You could ask a normal question,” Trump added.

Taking a jab at the wider notion of intentionally causing panic (e.g. much of CNN’s coverage), the President quipped that, if he wanted to, he “could cause panic much better than even you” that’d make the CNN carnivalbarker “look like a minor league player.”

It's indicative of the MRC's highly skewed sense of politics that Houck dropped a reference to "Real Clear Politics White House correspondent Philip Wegmann (who’s a real reporter)" -- never mind that Wegmann has a history of writing for biased conservative outlets such as the Daily Signal and the Washington Examiner and is very much a conservative operative, having received the 2018-19 Tony Blankley Fellowship for Public Policy and American Exceptionalism from the conservative Steamboat Institute. Blankley was the onetime editorial page editor for the conservative Washington Times.

Houck served up more Acosta derangement -- and held tight to pro-Trump talking points -- in an April 3 post:

Acosta inquired at 6:03 p.m. Eastern about the whereabouts of the NIH’s Dr. Tony Fauci, likely seeking to follow up on a CNN report flashing as a chyron during the briefing that Fauci had been purposefully sidelined from appearing.

Trump clearly sensed what Acosta was up to and promptly drove a stake through the heart of the manufactured tension, lamenting that “every time you ask a question,” reporters think there’s “a problem.” In reality, Trump replied that there’s “no problem” and “we’re doing great together.”

Fake News Jim gave up and asked if he could change subjects, which Trump quipped: “We're covering a different subject? Okay, go ahead, Jim. Try another one.”

Acosta used his second chance to further ram down our throats the media-fed notion that the Trump administration’s failures to deal with the pandemic date back at least a year.

[...]

Get work, Jim. Trying to place blame on the U.S. when the blame should belong to China (and only China).

The idea that "China (and only China) should be blamed for the severity of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. is a Trump talking point that the MRC has dutifully parroted.

Houck further showed that Acosta lives rent-free inside his head by dedicating yet another post to Trump being unable to handle Acosta's questioning (not that Houck would ever admit that, of course), perversely proud that he could use violent metaphors in claiming Trump "nuked" and "obliterated" Acosta:

It was Good Friday, but the White House Briefing Room saw quite the duel when President Trump nuked CNN chief White House correspondent and opposition party figure Jim Acosta for taking issue with what he felt was too much hope and optimism amidst the coronavirus pandemic and not enough negativity.

At one point, the President obliterated Acosta with the seemingly obvious, which is that these briefings are “not happy talk” “sad talk” and “the saddest news conferences that I’ve ever had” because “this is the real deal” having to deal with matters of life and death.

Starting at the beginning, Acosta started not with a question but an opinion that CNN “hear[s] from a lot of people who see these briefings as sort of a happy talk briefings” and that really no hospital or state has even close to what it needs.

Trump asked for names and when Acosta couldn’t answer after a tense back-and-forth, Trump called CNN’s coverage “fake news” to Acosta’s dismay. Trump added that of course Acosta’s hearing nothing but negativity because guests “always say that because otherwise you're not going to put them on.”

The President then turned on the afterburners, trashing Acosta’s nonsense and putting in perspective how difficult this has been and will continue to be, including the fact that “this is the real deal” and finding the safest time to reopen the economy will be “by far the biggest decision of my life”[.]

Houck also inserted pro-Trump talking points here too, declaring that "Obviously, Trump said he would listen to [experts], but he had to repeat it over and over so as to debunk the liberal media notion that Trump would put money over lives."

Houck's Acosta obsession continued even when he didn't appear at the briefing. In a April 14 post, Houck sneered that Acosta is a "liberal hack" for pointing out Trump's obvious distractions from criticism over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and self-aggrandization about his performance that was so blatant that Acosta called him "Baghdad Bob"-- which, of course, only served to incense Houck even more, actually claiming that he had "sided with communist China" by pointing out Trump's distractions.

That's the state of "media research" at the MRC these days -- if you don't hand out unquestioning praise of Trump, you're a dirty commie.

Peter Alexander

Another victim of the MRC's biased, fanciful portrayal of journalists is NBC's Peter Alexander. Here's how Kyle Drennen described Alexander's reasonable March 30 questioning of Trump, under the hyperbolic clickbait headline "Trump SMACKS DOWN NBC’s Alexander for Being ‘Terrible Reporter’":

During Friday’s coronavirus press conference at the White House, NBC correspondent Peter Alexander decided that it was more important to get into an argument with President Trump than actually keep the American people informed about the global pandemic. The reporter began his nasty line of questioning by accusing the President of spreading “false hope” – until Trump shut him down.

“Is it possible that your impulse to put a positive spin on things may be giving Americans a false sense of hope by misrepresenting the preparedness right now?,” Alexander hurled at the President, referencing experimental medical treatments for COVID-19. Trump sarcastically remarked, “Such a lovely question,” before explaining: “Look, it may work and it may not work....I feel good about it, that’s all it is, just a feeling.”

Moments later, still seemingly upset by the President’s sense of optimism, Alexander decided to play on people’s fear to create a headline: “What do you say to Americans who are scared, though, I guess. Nearly 200 dead, 14,000 who are sick. Millions, as you witnessed, who are scared right now. What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared?”

The President had clearly had enough and let Alexander have it:

[...]

None of those questions were actually about eliciting important medical or safety information for the American people. The only purpose of those questions was to point fingers of blame and start a fight with President that would make good television.

In other words, Drennen is complaining that Alexander wouldn't be a stenographer for Trump and push whatever the talking point of the day was.

In case you didn't really believe that the MRC thinks that merely questioning Trump makes a reporter a liberal egomaniac, a post the same day by Houck cited Alexander as the purveyor of "another embarrassing display of self-centeredness by groaning journalists about how President Donald Trump doesn’t like them,"going on to sneer that "there’s no profession that loves itself more than the liberal media" and "many journalists are incredibly thin-skinned when presented with criticism from outside their Statist bubbles in New York and Washington D.C."

Houck, of course, is ensconced in his own right-wing media bubble in which any journalist who isn't a Trump shill is an enemy.

Never mind that Alexander was tossing Trump a softball question, as he pointed out later, "an opportunity to reassure the millions of Americans, members of my own family and my neighbors and my community and plenty of people sitting at home." That Trump's response was as unhinged as it was, Alexander wrote, showed that "this is a president whose experiences in life are very different than most Americans across this country right now," not someone who has ever worried about finances or his future or paying bills.

Nicholas Fondacaro, meanwhile, lost it when CNN's John King called Trump's unhinged behavior against Alexander a "bullshit attack," going on to huff that "Alexander’s question was an underhanded attempt to accuse the President of spreading “false hope” in a time of crisis. As things got heated, Trump responded by accurately noting Alexander was engaging in sensationalism." Fondacaro went on to sneer: "Without evidence, [CNN's Dana] Bash also suggested Alexander was an 'objective reporter,'" then touted a profanity-laced attack on Alexander by right-wing Fox News commentator Brit Hume, who huffed, "Legitimate question my a**. It was the kind of bullsh*t gotcha question which hack WH reporters have been asking for decades." Fondacaro laughably claimed that Hume was "bringing a taste of reality back to the situation."

Tim Graham served up his own version of the Alexander-Trump exchange:

When reporters challenge Trump, they are presumed to be brilliant. NBC’s Peter Alexander asked about potential drug treatments to inhibit the virus: “Is it possible that your impulse to put a positive spin on things may be giving Americans a false sense of hope by misrepresenting the preparedness right now?” Trump admitted he was talking about “a feeling” he had. Then Alexander insisted “Nearly 200 dead, 14,000 who are sick. Millions, as you witnessed, who are scared right now. What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared?”

Alexander claimed this was a “softball,” but it clearly exaggerated the number of “sick,” since thousands have recovered, and not every “confirmed case” even gets symptoms. That’s when Trump called him a “terrible reporter.” Alexander’s question was loaded, and so was the aftermath. NBCNews.com posted this headline: “Trump, promoting unproven drug treatments, insults NBC reporter at coronavirus briefing.”

That's the story the MRC has to tell themselves and their followers: Every question that sets Trump off is "loaded," and Trump is always justified in being set off.

Weijia Jiang

Also joining these folks on the MRC's enemies list is CBS White House correspondent Weijia Jiang. On April 3, Houck complained that Trump moved from the "manufactured nonsense" of Acosta to Jiang:

Jiang came four questions later and wondered why senior adviser Jared Kushner referred on Thursday to “the federal stockpile” (containing Personal Protective Equipment and ventilators) as “our stock pile,” as if to suggest states wouldn’t have access.

Trump also diagnosed this attempt at creating controversy. Repeatedly groaning about her “gotcha” question, he explained that Kushner clearly meant the United States had access to it when he said “our,” but it would be dispersed at the federal government’s discretion.

Jiang didn’t accept his explanation, so the President called her out and moved on[.]

In fact, as Jiang pointed out in her questioning (per the transcript that Houck didn't otherwise quote from), Kushner served up a very different definition of the the national stockpile that what has been traditionally accepted, and after Kushner made his statement, the longstanding Department of Health and Human Services website page on the stockpile was altered to align with Kushner's new definition. But in Houck's eyes, Trump is perfect and Jiang is evil and biased for daring to question Dear Leader.

In an April 20 post, Houck showed how deeply he has drunk of the anti-media, pro-Trump Kool-Aid the MRC has on tap:

During Sunday’s White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing, President Trump clashed with two usual suspects in CBS’s Weijia Jiang and CNN’s Jeremy Diamond after loaded, snarky questions on behalf of their fellow liberal media firefighters, acting with supposed bravery and perseverance.

Things ended poorly for both with the former being told to be “relax” and stop shouting and the latter being called “pathetic,” having questionable levels of brainpower, and working for a “fake news” network with “terrible ratings.”

Starting with Jiang, she sunk herself by fretting that while Trump expressed anger with China for not doing enough at the onset, many Americans are saying the exact same thing about you that you should have warned that the virus was spreading like wildfires through the month of February instead of holding rallies with thousands of people.”

“Why did you wait so long to warn them? And why did you not have social distancing until March 16,” Jiang added.

Eventually, Trump began by talking about the China travel ban, Jiang griped that it didn’t also ban American citizens.

[...]

Jiang continued to interject, so Trump told her to “keep your voice down, please.” Yikes.

Houck should have been saying "Yikes" about Trump's embarrassing, hostile display, but he and the MRC can't get enough of Trump's embarrassing, hostile media-bashing. They share a fantasy world in which Trump is never wrong and the media is never right to challenge him.

They get paid well to push this partisan nonsense, and Houck's hyperbolic language and overenthusiastic bolding suggest he may be getting a thrill from it that borders on the sexual.

The rest

ABC's Jonathan Karl got targeted a couple times. Kyle Drennen complained on March 19 that "Karl attempted to scold President Trump for having “lashed out” at Democrats who were politicizing coronavirus. Trump shut down the line of questioning by pointing out he has to “respond” since liberal politicians “have the media on their side.” Drennen added: "Missing from Karl’s question was any acknowledgment of how Democrats have worked to politicize the pandemic response."

On April 22, Curtis Houck wrote that "Karl found himself in a shouting match with President Trump about whether the media would ever praise him on testing and their coverage on the increased production of ventilators," then cheered Trump's attack on him while defending Trump's "imperfect" analogy:

Trump drew Karl’s ire with a litany of “that’s not true” and when he insisted in a hypothetical that even if every American were to be tested ten times for the virus, the press would ridicule him for not giving Americans an 11th test.

While perhaps imperfect, the President’s analogy works out when considering how, even when he does something the press might have lobbied for, they insist it wasn’t enough.

Trump’s response? He jabbed Karl for being “one of the leaders of the bad reporting.”

Needless to say, Houck made no effort to fact-check Trump's claim.

The President was fiery, but hadn’t resorted to calling her “fake” or any other name. That would change as he punched back:“Look, look. You know you’re a fake. You know that. Your whole network, the way you covered is fake and most of you --- not all of you but the people are wise to you. That's why you have a lower --- a lower approval rating than you ever have before times probably three.”

Continuing to show that any liberal media claims that they only want to inform the public and move the country forward, Reid continued to berate Trump about the death toll and unemployment numbers as if to --- again --- suggest this were of his making because of some inaction that the liberal media themselves had pushed for.

Houck postively gushed over Trump attacking another reporter the MRC has historically hated, Brian Karem:

Having seen Yamiche Alcindor, Jim Acosta, Peter Alexander, and even Paula Reid make scenes during White House Coronavirus Task Force briefings, CNN political analyst and Playboy writer Brian Karem reasserted himself Tuesday over the press corps and sought to remind Americans of his nonsense. Naturally, it ended with President Trump calling him a “loudmouth” and “showboat” and threatening to end the briefing early.

Before even asking a question, Karem sunk his case with an antagonistic and unnecessary lead off with “600,000 cases, 25,000 deaths” in the U.S. as of Tuesday and lamenting that “I know you want to blame the [World Health Organization]” for the pandemic.

Only then did he claim without evidence that he’s “spoken with hundreds of people across the country in the last few weeks who say they still can't get tested and that they aren't social distancing” when Trump cut him off.

Trump stated that “the governors are supposed to do the testing,” but Karem kept shouting about how that wasn’t his question.


The President tried to move onto NBC’s Hans Nichols, but Karem wasn’t done.

So much for collegiality, Brian[.]

[...]

Seeing as how Karem couldn’t ask a question without extraneous information and was interrupting a colleague, the President had plenty of leeway to shut Karem down and call out his nonsense, leaving Karem with a look of pure sadness[.]

The usual MRC hallmarks are there: failure to fact-check anyone, especially Trump; the mind-reading of the purported state of mind of the journalist asking the question; the assumption that Trump is always right and the correspondents are always wrong.

Houck offered even more creepily fawning praise of Trump's unhinged media attacks under the headline "Phil Rucker Gets LEVELED by Trump":

Ahead of Thursday’s NFL Draft, there was a rhetorical pummeling at the White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing as the horribly biased Washington Post White House bureau chief, Philip Rucker found himself flattened by President Trump as “total faker” after he insisted that it was “dangerous for you to” encourage people to go outside as the temperatures warm up despite the presence coronavirus.

And less than ten minutes later, “fake news” CNN was panned as the creators of a “fake report” about North Korea dictator Kim Jong-un being in "grave danger.”

Houck, of course, offered no evidence that Rucker is "horribly biased"; he only whined that Rucker's question was "obnoxious."

Touting how Trump insulted journalists is not "media research"; it's stenography.

Update 5/4/2020: As if to prove our point, a May 1 item by Houck and Bill D'Agostino summarized these Trump tirades under the headline "Here Are the BEST Trump Smackdowns of Journalists at Coronavirus Briefings," attacking the reporters as "camera-hawking, far-left egotists" and gushing that "conservatives found it refreshing that a President would take on the press directly. They touted how "MRC analysts combed through our archives of the briefings to resurrect the most amusing and stinging responses Trump lobbed at the suddenly mealy-mouthed media elites."