Media Research Center News

Conservatives Hate Gays, Boycott CPAC

10:31 am EST January 7th, 2011 | Conservative | 10 Comments

Conservatives once again show gays that they would rather they not be a part of their movement, as Media Research Center and the Heritage Foundation boycott CPAC because the group GOProud will be participating.

The tent over there is only for straight (or closeted at least) white males with wealth.

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Newsbusters & Media Research Center Make Up Story About “Ant-Covered Jesus” Art

5:00 pm EST November 30th, 2010 | Conservative | 49 Comments

Reality didn’t conform to their right-wing frame, so they just manipulated the facts to create a fake scandal and the media (Fox) and GOP lap it up.

Something about “homoerotic” and “ant-covered Jesus,” combined with a mention of the Christmas season, seems to have struck the right nerve among right-wingers. Drudge linked to it, and the Breitbart empire has weighed in. And it seems more than a little convenient that top congressional Republicans have told Starr they want the exhibit shut down, quickly followed by Starr’s boss, the Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell, demanding not just that the exhibit be killed but also that Congress investigate this “direct assault on Christianity.”

As Starr acknowledged in her article, the exhibit — like every Smithsonian exhibit — is not paid for by taxpayer funds. But Bozell doesn’t care because, as he wrote in one of his letters to congressional leaders, “[i]t is housed in a federal institution funded by the American people.”

Aside from the manufactured-outrage aspect, there’s also some anti-gay dog-whistling going on.

It’s groups like MRC that make liberals wince when so-called centrists try to play the “both sides” game. Both sides have activists that want their side to win, but the right favors making things up and doing it in a nakedly dishonest fashion.

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MRC’s Brent Bozell Supports Destruction Of Offensive Art

10:05 am EST October 24th, 2010 | Conservative | 8 Comments

Brent Bozell

Kathleen Folden was arrested in Colorado for destroying a piece of artwork that allegedly depicts Jesus engaging a sex act.

Here’s the reaction of Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell:

But what makes this story different is that Kathleen Folden, bless her heart, entered the gallery, broke into the artwork with a crowbar and ripped it to pieces. She didn’t really destroy the art, since it was one of several prints, but she did express a rebuttal of sorts to the constant artistic besmirching of Jesus. Someone offended back.

March 2001:

In Afghanistan recently, supreme Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar issued an edict against un-Islamic graven images, which means all idolatrous images of humans and animals. As a result, the Taliban are destroying all ancient sculptures. Explosives, tanks, and anti-aircraft weapons blew apart two colossal images of the Buddha in Bamiyan Province, 230 kilometers (150 miles) from the capital of Kabul.

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Why Conservatives Don’t Want Reporters To Do Fact Checking

5:14 pm EST July 10th, 2010 | Media | 11 Comments

A couple days ago I had an argument over Twitter with Dan Gainor of the conservative Media Research Center about whether reporters should make judgement calls about information. Gainor, and MRC, of course believe reporters shouldn’t do that. In fact Gainor told me that in the hypothetical of whether the sky was blue or not, reporters aren’t able to make this call because they aren’t “sky experts.” What’s the practical effect of this? Reporters, as too many have for the last twenty years or so, bend over backwards to report “both sides” of an issue rather than what is true or not.

In practice, this has benefitted conservative propaganda and misinformation because they are far better at pumping out noise than the left is. If reporters aren’t making calls and just regurgitating information regardless of its veracity, this benefits the loudest voices. For the last few decades this has been the right, and it’s an atmosphere that gave us the 2000 and 2004 election messes as well as the Iraq War and the endless scandals within the Bush administration.

Here is video of CNBC’s Mark Haines (via Digby) simply checking the facts against what a guest claimed on his show. Either his statements are true or they’re not, it doesn’t matter what ideology is behind it.

Is it true? Is it false? That’s what journalists should be doing. They don’t do it nearly enough.

(And yes, of course, I work at Media Matters for America, which some view as a competitor to MRC but we actually deal in facts and reality and verifiable data versus “bias”)

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Tim Graham’s “Bias” Is Just Silly

10:51 am EST May 25th, 2009 | News | 5 Comments

Here is Media Research Center’s Tim Graham:
tim graham

AP writer Douglass Daniel was enjoying the moderate Republican (and Obama Republican) response to conservatives on the Sunday talk shows.

How does Graham know the AP writer enjoyed anything? The writer never says anything of the sort in the story, and Graham links to no supporting materials. This is part of the reason people in journalism have a hard time taking MRC seriously vs Media Matters, FAIR, and others. MRC is emotion-based, all about imputing feelings and notions to reporters in order to further their mythology about liberal bias. MRC very rarely – if ever – refutes actual facts.

ALSO: Congrats to MRC on their new website. Imitation is surely the sincerest form of flattery.

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Nick Jr. Is Eating Your Baby’s Brain!

4:48 pm EST March 5th, 2009 | News | 2 Comments

According to Newsbusters. Well, I’m convinced now why we should take right-wing media critics totally seriously.

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I’m As Powerful As Ted Turner*

12:02 am EST March 2nd, 2009 | News | 11 Comments

ted turnerWell, it isn’t every day that I get compared to the founder of CNN. The proud know-nothings at Newsbusters are up in arms over this post I made on Ash Wednesday. In the twisted mind of Ken Shepherd, the post was somehow mocking of the entire concept of Ash Wednesday.

I thought for a second about taking this thing seriously, but I can’t really muster that up. I think all religion is weird, to varying degrees and in concert with my posts slamming the Catholic Church for its pro-pedophile activities, I’ve also hit Muslims for engaging in reactionary censorship (the Dutch cartoons) and atheists for being asses. I honestly don’t think I’ve written anything negative about Judaism, but I do own two yarmulkes by way of barmitvahs (I was called anti-semetic one time for attacking Joe Lieberman, but Joe Lieberman is a douchebag no matter what God he prays to). On the topic of religion its all weird, though not as weird as the bias fetishists on Newsbusters.

And yes, walking around with coal ash on your forehead is as weird when Bill Donohue does it as it is when Joe Biden and John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi do it. But this is America, a nation built on the idea of being free to be as weird as you want to, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

* Using the logic of Newsbusters.

Previous Newsbusters brilliance:
Newsbusters doesn’t understand how journalism works

More unintentional comedy from Newsbusters

Newsbusters accuses Media Matters of “defamation”; doesn’t seem to know what the word means

Also that unfunny comic strip they ran for a year and a half without a single laugh, and that internet TV show they have that isn’t funny to anyone with a brain.

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Gawd, Newsbusters Is A Joke

9:41 am EST February 22nd, 2009 | Media | 13 Comments

Newsbusters headline: “WaPo Hypes Homecoming Drag Queen at George Mason as ‘Glittering Moment of Inclusiveness’”

The Washington Post sub-headline in print: “Not Everyone Is Celebrating Glittering Moment of Inclusiveness”

So the Post headline is discussing the fact that not everyone is wild about the drag queen, and yet the Newsbusters version is that the Post is hyping it as a positive thing. How does Newsbusters reconcile this b.s.?

The real issue here is that the people at Newsbusters (and Media Research Center, who backs them) are so insecure in their sexuality that they don’t want the newspaper reporting on an event about a drag queen. It’s not that they seriously have an issue with the paper’s reporting — they just don’t want the story reported.

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How Newsbusters And Media Research Center Operate

12:37 pm EST January 27th, 2009 | News | 10 Comments

Headline: “PBS: ‘Obama Is Our First Truly American President’”

Wow, that’s crazy! PBS as an organization said that about President Obama? That’s super crazy bias–

Wait. Who actually said that?

Oh wait, it was a commentary by pundit and author John Ridley. On a local PBS affiliate.

Somehow the opinion of one commentator (not an anchor or journalist or anything) on a local PBS station offering his opinion is transmogrified by the geniuses at MRC into an official statement of support from PBS.

Oh, Ridley is also a contributor to conservative blog Big Hollywood.

So, to use the Newsbusters method we can write:

Conservative Blog Big Hollywood: ‘Obama Is Our First Truly American President’

Wow, writing right-wing b.s. is fun.

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Conservatives Can Only Lie

4:54 pm EST March 9th, 2008 | News | 8 Comments

Brent Bozell (real name: Captain Redbeard) is just up in arms over how Bill Clinton destroyed the military. You know, the same military that was able to invade Afghanistan, and at least militarily pull of an invasion of Iraq.

You gotta figure that at Casa Bozell when they play Clue it’s always Bill Clinton with the Candlestick and never Miss Scarlet.

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