The story of Michele Bachmann’s migraines has been the sensation of the week in the political world, but the Media Research Center has had trouble dealing with one inconvenient fact: The story was first published by a conservative outlet, the Daily Caller.
A July 20 TimesWatch post by Clay Waters was in straightforward denial mode. While bashing the New York Times for latching onto the story, he acknowledged that the Daily Caller first reported it and denounced it as an “anonymously sourced report,” but he failed to note the Caller’s conservative ideology.
NewsBusters’ Mark Finkelstein, meanwhile, sought to distract from that inconvenient fact. Finkelstein conceded that “the story first appeared in the conservative Daily Caller,” but he attacked John Heilemann for pointing out that the story was not the product of a “liberal media conspiracy.” Finkelstein then declared that the story’s origin doesn’t matter: “And consider that even if the MSM didn’t originate the story, liberal outlets like the New York Times have gleefully sought to exploit it to Bachmann’s detriment.”
Such wholesale refusal to acknowledge, or insistence on distracting from, such an obvious fact shows that the MRC is much more interested in being a right-wing political website than a “media research center.”