The business relationship between the Media Research Center and right-wing radio host Mark Levin is apparently so close now that Levin has a hand in the MRC’s editorial agenda.
On Feb. 28, Ted Cruz faced tough questioning from host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday,” who pressed Cruz on factually inaccurate claims he had made. You know MRC chief Brent Bozell is a big fanboy of Cruz; Levin is too, to the point that Levin’s fiancee’s son works for his campaign.
The MRC is also a big booster of Fox News, to the point that it deliberately excludes Fox from its TV analyses in order to avoid having to hold Fox accountable to the same standards it applies to other TV networks (on, for instance, Trump boosterism). So it would never criticize Wallace so directly for something it would have no problem attacking him for were he employed anywhere but Fox News.
However, it has no problem attacking Wallace while using Levin as cover. Hence, Randy Hall’s March 1 NewsBusters post:
One day after Ted Cruz was a guest on the Fox News Sunday program, conservative radio personality Mark Levin hammered that show’s host — Chris Wallace — for performing a “hit job” on that Republican presidential candidate after conducting a softball interview with Donald Trump, even though the GOP front-runner has made several of the same mistakes Cruz was accused of making.
[…]
Levin began the segment by stating that “Wallace went after Cruz” and is a person he’s “never liked” because Wallace is “a chip off the old block,” a son of longtime liberal CBS journalist Mike Wallace, which the radio host stated “is the problem” with his interviews and coverage of the news.
“And no, this isn’t journalism or anything of the sort,” Levin stated before airing Wallace’s first question to the senator from Texas.Levin noted that Wallace had conducted two “totally different interviews. That’s why I can’t watch these Sunday shows.”
“And it’s not a coincidence that Rupert Murdoch the other day tweeted out that Trump, Rubio, Kasich and the establishment need to unite to beat the Democrats,” he stated.
“Now who was left out of that?” the host asked. “Cruz … because Cruz is the true outsider, and he’s the true conservative.”
Judging from this incident, it appears that Levin has found a downside to the Fox News Channel being “fair and balanced.”
And it appears the MRC has finally found a way to Heather Fox News for insufficient adherence to right-wing orthodoxy without sullying its hands doing so.