The Fox News Defense Center vs. Dominion, Part 1The Media Research Center is one of Fox News' biggest cheerleaders -- which means it had to find ways to distract from unflattering revelations about the channel in the defamation lawsuit filed by voting-tech company Dominion.By Terry Krepel The Media Research Center is, in no small part, the Fox News Defense Center. On the rare occasions the MRC actually does criticize Fox News, it's usually in the form of Heathering -- for example, hating Shepard Smith for reporting facts instead of right-wing narratives or for a single news segment that didn't hate transgender people enough. It almost never criticizes Fox News for the same reasons it criticizes the "liberal media" regarding bias, even though it's much more biased than any of those channels. Indeed, the MRC is must more comfortable serving as Fox News' PR division and cheerleader than its critic. Throughout 2022 and early 2023, for example, it published numerous posts that were essentially Fox News press releases:
The MRC also lashed out at anyone who would dare to criticize the channel and its bias. A May 2022 post by Alex Christy attacked a former Fox News correspondent for arguing that people like Tucker Carlson could be imprisoned for spouting replacement theory conspiracies that the racist Buffalo massacre: Former Fox News chief political correspondent Carl Cameron joined MSNBC Deadline: White House on Tuesday to discuss the aftermath of the mass shooting in Buffalo by a white supremacist. According to Cameron, it is time to consider throwing certain, current Fox personalities in jail. Of course, the MRC defended Carlson and insisted that replacement theory wasn't racist and wasn't a conspiracy. Three days later, Christy complained that "Cameron was at it again, suggesting Tucker Carlson has lost his First Amendment rights and that Fox should be deplatformed," grousing further that he "tied Fox to foreign disinformation campaigns." Christy failed to mention that Carlson is very much a pro-Russia, anti-Ukraine propagandist. In June 2022, Tim Graham whined that NPR reported on an effort to discourage advertisers from using Fox News: National Public Radio has made it clear over the years that it despises Fox News. On June 9, the morning before the primetime Pelosi Panel hearing, Morning Edition promoted a radical leftist group of censors that wants Fox News beheaded. Of course, NPR never called them "leftist" or anything ideological on air as they aim to starve Fox News of digital ads. (The online story uses "left-leaning" in paragraph nine.) Graham didn't disclose that the MRC runs a very similar operation designed to deprive non-conservative media of revenue, and he sure didn't describe that as an attack on democracy. The same day, Aidan Moorehouse grumbled: After an hour of marketing his own aggressive brand of no-holds-barred progressivism, MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan decided to conclude his eponymous Sunday evening show with a snide and staged exchange with fellow radical Ayman Mohyeldin, comparing Fox News to state-run Middle Eastern propaganda networks. Note that Moorehouse would only concede that Fox News is "right-leaning" while attacking both Hasan and Moyheldin as "radical" based on nothing more than merely criticizing Fox News and, apparently, sharing a certain previous employer. In an Oct. 12 post, Christy got mad that late-night host Seth Meyers called out Fox News fearmongering over inflation, desperately playing whataboutism in response: "It was notable that Meyers did not go after any of the Air Heads on CNN or MSNBC and their embrace of the Democratic agenda, which is sad considering CNN thinks Dum Dums are anyone who opposed The 1619 Project." When MSNBC commentator David Jolly similarly called out Fox anti-government fearmongering -- calling it "heroin" in the veins of Fox News viewers -- Mark Finkelstein ranted in a Jan. 7 post: But, as seems apparent, if the FBI and other government agencies conspired with Big Tech and other media to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story, and silence the voices of conservatives, using Twitter and other social media platforms as their cats' paws, then those agencies have shredded their own integrity. That needs to be exposed so that necessary reforms can be made. Christy played Fox defender yet again in a Feb. 11 post: MSNBC’s host of The 11th Hour Stephanie Ruhle was not happy that Fox News reacted to President Biden’s State of the Union by calling him a liar and to help her in her quest against this narrative, she welcomed professional Fox News watcher Juliet Jeske to claim Fox viewers are in a “cult” who need “deprogramming” Christy lied by omission by ignoring the fact that Republicans have a long history of publicly expressing their desire to cut Social Security and Medicare. The Dominion lawsuitWhen filings by election-tech company Dominion in its defamation lawsuit against Fox News showed that the channel's hosts knew that Donald Trump's claims of election fraud were lies but instead chose to spread those lies on the air rather than tell viewers the truth -- a much larger scandal than anything the MRC has ever accused any "liberal media" outlet of doing -- the initial response by the MRC was to censor it as best it could. In the first couple weeks after the revelation of the scandal, references to it were oblique or buried:
This followed the pattern Fox News itself used regarding the scandal, in which it not only censored the story, it expressly forbade its media reporter, Howard Kurtz, to talk about those revelations. The MRC censored all mention of that censorship, though Kevin Tober wrote a Feb. 26 post unironically touting how Kurtz "used the opening monologue of his Sunday media analysis show MediaBuzz to call out the media's double standard and selective outrage in how they deal with controversial comments from conservatives and leftists." Meanwhile, Graham was playing the same whataboutism card on Twitter in a way he wouldn't commit to writing in an MRC post -- though he still clung to the whataboutism narrative in arguing with NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. A March 1 tweet by Graham admitted the Fox News revelations were "scandalous" but instead complained that "CNN puts on David Zurawik to lecture Fox has never, ever been a 'news channel.'" He then complained that Folkenflik said that Fox News "really a business operation around which is wrapped a highly ideological and political shop, around which is wrapped the public face of a news operation." Rather than disputing anything Folkenflik said, he played Hunter laptop whataboutism: GRAHAM: This is a scandal, to be sure. But you work in a highly ideological and political shop, wrapped in the face of a news operation. Your ardor to Get Fox is part of it. Folkenflik refused to respond, presumably because he saw that arguing with Graham would be futile. As Media Matters' Matthew Gertz pointed out about Graham regarding this exchange: "Devote your career to working the refs over liberal media bias --> the right-wing outlet you prop up against it turns out to be filled with liars deliberately working to elect Republicans. Maybe just sit this one out?" Finally, two weeks after the scandal broke, the MRC finally did something on one of its own websites regarding the scandal. Graham's promotion for his March 3 podcast offered no judgment whatsoever against Fox News -- weird given its usual love of hot takes -- even though he would be ranting hard had a "liberal media" outlet done only a fraction of what happened here: The Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News has uncovered an embarrassing collection of messages underlining that Fox's owner and stars had contempt for wild claims about Trump winning the 2020 election, but aired lawyers like Sidney Powell, who pledged to "release the Kraken" of truth....that never arrived. Tucker Carlson, for one, called her out on TV. In the actual podcast, his focus was not on what Fox News did, but that CNN reported on it: "It's been a glorious week at CNN. Now, I don't mean in the ratings department -- they are firmly in third place -- I mean the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News has revealed a scandal I think we can call Krakengate." He then summed up the scandal as Fox News having Trump lawyer Sidney Powell making claims of election fraud I dare say that in real time, most of us listening to her thought she sounded, um, implausible?" If so, Graham and the rest of the MRC made little effort to tell their readers that, indeed, no post by Graham from that time referenced Powell. A Nov. 20, 2020, post by Mark Finkelstein complained that MSNBC's "Morning Joe" noted that right-wingers criticized Fox News for the few times it reported facts instead of right-wing spin, ironically citing as an example then-Fox reporter Kristin Fisher doing a "takedown of yesterday's press conference featuring Rudy Giuliani"; Dominion's filings revealed that Fisher was criticized by her bosses for not "respecting our audience" by fact-checking Giuliani, and Fisher said she lost on-air opportunities as punishment for it. Finkelstein waited until the final paragraph to mention that a reference "an FNC primetime host 'bewildered' by yesterday's press conference with Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell was presumably a reference to Tucker Carlson, who questioned the absence of evidence supporting Powell's assertions." Three days later, however, the MRC was portraying Powell as a victim in a post by Kayla Sargent noting that Powell was dropped by Trump's legal team," which Twitter saw as the perfect opportunity to suspend her account for twelve hours." The following month, Finkelstein was complaining about criticism of reports that Trump was considering "the possible appointment of Sidney Powell as a special counsel to investigate the election"; the next day, Finkelstein did concede that "In this NewsBuster's opinion, President Trump would have been better advised not to have invited Michael Flynn or Sidney Powell into the White House over the weekend," but he did not specifically criticize Powell. Later in the month, Kristine Marsh groused that MSNBC employed "hyper-partisan spin" in naming Powell to a year-end list of dishonors. In January 2021, however, it was back to playing the victimhood card for Powell; a Jan. 4 post by Corinne Weaver whined that video clips of Powell on Trump's Twitter account were among those that were "censored," and a Jan. 12 syndicated column by Cal Thomas huffed that Powell's Twitter account was "permanently banned as Twitter announced a purge of 'accounts dedicated to sharing content related to the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory.'" Graham went on to whine that CNN's Oliver Darcy reported on all this, then tried to give credit to Carlson for briefly calling Powell out. Graham then shockingly criticized Fox News and Trump, albeit only barely mentioning them by name and framing that criticism as coming from the "liberal media": But conservative media outlets also have to consider that whatever good faith they've built up with people who are not as conservative could just get wiped out when the big liberal media can all unite and show that they have the same regard for the truth that Donald Trump has. Conservative media will not be credible if doesn't have the courage to stick with what journalism is supposed to be: Do you have a story that will stand up, or doesn't it? Is it underbaked, half-baked? Is it a compost heap? It is absolutely defensible to question election results, for a news company to let the Democrats or the Republicans challenge the results in the weeks after an election. That is part of democracy. But the bottom line of election is if you lose in court, the election is over. You can't riot your way into the presidency or a second term of the presidency, or you don't really have a democracy. Trump's lawyers couldn't win in any state, so it was over. Now, from November to December you can be a news channel and put on Republican lawyers or Democrat [sic] lawyers and hash it out -- I'm sure that Hillary Clinton's people would have wanted to hash out the idea that Trump stole the election with the help of the Russians. But we should all want to question wild claims of voting machines somehow stealing millions of votes from Trump or anyone else.
Graham continued: "We want to root for Fox News. We root for the conservative media. The liberal media in this country needs balancing. One of the things that's most important about it is the way the other news media want to say, 'X will not be a story. None of us are going to talk about it. When Fox talks about it, that's for your crazy uncle at the Thanksgiving Day table.' This is the game that is played." Graham went on to complain that right-winger Jonah Goldberg, "who took many dollars from Fox News as a contributor and now takes dollars from CNN," criticized the Fox News scandal, then whined again that the scandal let CNN credibly criticize Fox News: But for many of us, the worst part here is how this set of texts and emails enables Oliver Darcy and company to mount their high horses and suggest that Fox News has never, ever been a news channel. CNN, next to Jonah Goldberg, put on screechy liberal David Zurawik, who said this whole Fox News channel thing has been fraudulent since is was founded in 1996. And then comes this puke-tastic part about how [speaks in hoity-toity voice] so-called mainstream journalism, they only provide information for the citizenry and let them make good choices. This is not really a definition of what they're doing on CNN. Graham then went on a lengthy anti-liberal media whataboutism tangent, name-checking the pee tape, Michael Avenatti and the Steele dossier, then defended political operative Roger Ailes running Fox News as OK because Tom Johnson, who was once an adviser to President Lyndon Johnson, used to run CNN (but he didn't mention that the guy who ran the MRC's "news" division CNSNews.com, Terry Jeffrey, was a political operative for Pat Buchanan's presidential campaigns in the 1990s). Then it was back to whining that CNN has a point in criticizing Fox News: Now, for us at NewsBusters, it's most distressing when Oliver Darcy touts the Bulwark trashing the conservative media critics. He wrote in his little newsletter, "Mona Charen has an excellent piece on how conservative criticism about the press gave birth to a propaganda machine. Charen, quote: "The channel that debuted with the tagline 'fair and balanced' has become completely untethered to any standard of integrity. Its own bias bears no comparison to that of the 'mainstream media.'" At least she put "mainstream media" in quotes. But come on. She knows better. Mona Charen used to come repeatedly to the MRC to help her construct several books about media bias. She knows how the liberal media performed. So to sit her now and say 'Fox News is so, so much worse than then places I show up now' ... So perhaps when there's a conservative propaganda machine in this equation, Mona Charen should be whipping herself for this into a frenzy. Graham then disavowed any role the MRC played in creating Trump and the Fox News propaganda monster (which currently employs several former MRC workers, something Graham didn't disclose): Now, you can be a anti-Trump conservative. But what we too often see is Trump somehow turning conservatives into liberals, now suggesting that the media bias monitors caused Trump. This is just a classic liberal schtick. I hated it when Politico's Tim Alberta threw it at us years ago in an interview. Came into the building, shut the door -- oh, this is kind of off the record; oh, is it? Well ... This idea that somehow NewsBusters or Brent Bozell created the Trump monster, I hated it then and I hate it now. It's not true. What you're basically saying with that whole argument that, well, obviously, you people should never have criticized the liberal media in the first place. Note that at no point did Graham explicitly criticize Fox News for any specific actions it was revealed to have committed per the Dominion filings, and that he made sure not to put what little criticism he did in writing in a way that would be easily findable in a Google search. And given that ConWeb Watch has documented numerous falsehoods forwarded by the MRC, it's clear Graham is not holding his co-workers to those same standards he's now demanding that other right-wing media follow (otherwise, Nicholas Fondacaro would not still be employed there and Jay Maxson would have gone away a lot sooner than he did). And if Graham and the MRC really cared that much about how conservative media is perceived, they would not have waited until two weeks after the story broke to speak about the scandal. It should be the easiest thing in the world to criticize Fox News over this scandal -- you would never hear the end of it from the MRC if a non-conservative channel like CNN was involved. But Graham and the MRC still wants to be able to have its people appear on the channel and Fox Business to promote its narratives, so it will never perform that easy layup -- it will instead pontificate and play whataboutism to protect Fox News from actual, direct criticism and preserve the right-wing media bubble. The MRC attempted a couple more defenses after that. Jeffrey Lord spent his March 25 column rehashing a op-ed written by former Trump attorney general William Barr defending Fox News by claiming that the media should be able to "report on these matters without incurring liability for defamation because existing laws give them wide latitude to do so to encourage uninhibited discourse on matters of public concern," to which Lord harrumphed: "Exactly. They have latitude to draw conclusions based on the facts of the moment as we know them." But has the Washington Post's Aaron Blake pointed out, "there were certainly times when they went beyond treating them as 'unproven allegations' and even seemingly endorsed them." Lord endorsed another statement by Barr, that under the "actual malice" standard established under current libel law, "a media speaker isn’t liable for defamation, even for a false statement of fact, unless he knows when he makes the statement that what he is saying is false or gravely doubts its truth." Lord added: "Again, exactly" -- but he didn't mention how it was revealed that Fox News hosts did, in fact, know the Trump campaign's claims of election fraud were bogus but promoted the bogus claims on air anyway. When a Fox News employee stepped forward to claim she was pressured by Fox News lawyers to lie during testimony for the Dominion lawsuit, a March 30 post by Nicholas Fondacaro portrayed her as a liar (and "disgruntled" too) while playing a lame bit of whataboutism to draw needlessly draw CNN into the picture: As a preview to a segment that’s going to air on Thursday night’s NBC Nightly News, NBC’s Today show hyped an interview between correspondent Cynthia McFadden and a disgruntled former Fox News guest booker, Abby Grossberg. Brushing over why the behind-the-scenes employee was fired without any details, the network lionized her lawsuits against cable’s number one news station. Something they refused to do when CNN fired their primetime poster boy Chris Cuomo and he sued them for $125 million. Fondacaro didn't mention the difference between the two lawsuits -- Cuomo's involved personnel matters while Fox News was being sued for defamation -- but he continued on the whataboutism path anyway: "What’s the difference? Fox outperforms NBC’s sister network MSNBC, while CNN is in a distant third place behind them." He concluded by huffing: "It will be interesting to see what more NBC chooses to share on air from McFadden’s interview. And also what got left on the cutting room floor." Fondacaro apparently found nothing objectionable (or at least nothing that could the twisted to Fox News' benefit) in the interview, because Grossberg has been almost completely ignored by the MRC since. |
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