The Media Research Center used to hate FBI director James Comey in the wake of his decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton over her emails:
- Brent Bozell and Tim Graham asserted that Comey’s decision not to prosecute Clinton was “bizarre.”
- Graham complained that the media wasn’t sufficiently reporting a poll showing “that a majority of Americans disagreed with the decision not to indict Hillary Clinton over her emailing of classified information.”
- Clay Waters pointed out that “Comey endured condemnation from conservatives for his weak-kneed decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton for gross negligence in handling classified documents as Secretary of State.”
- Nicholas Fondacaro touted how Comey faced a hearing “where Congressional Republicans unloaded on him for giving immunity to people they accused of being liars.”
- The MRC published a column by Cal Thomas asserting that “Comey’s refusal to recommend prosecution of Hillary Clinton for her deliberate mishandling of classified information seems to prove that the Obama administration is little more than an arm of her presidential campaign.” It published another column by R. Emmett Tyrrell complaining that “Comey outlined a list of flagrant violations against her and then gave her a pass.”
But now that Comey injected himself in the election process by announcing, a week and a half before the election, that the discovery of new emails meant he was reopening the investigation, the MRC has his back and his shocked — shocked! — that anyone would dare criticize him. Commence the whining, Geoffrey Dickens:
Ever since it was announced, on Friday, that the FBI was pursuing new leads into the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server scandal, the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks have gone into attack mode against James Comey, turning what should be a scandal about Clinton into a smear against the FBI director.
Beginning with the evening (October 28) of the announcement through Monday morning (October 31) MRC analysts reviewed all statements (by reporters, analysts, and partisans) that took a position on Comey and Clinton and found arguments against Comey (88) swamped those against Clinton (31) by a ratio of almost 3 to 1. There were a handful of statements that praised either Comey (10) or Clinton (4)[.]
So we’re supposed to take Comey’s word without question now after conservatives bashed him for months for failing to hew to the right-wing agenda?
Dickens is merely complaining that the media is covering both sides of the story, and he’s ignoring the fact that the story really is about Comey. It’s his announcement that’s driving the story, not any actual evidence of further Clinton wrongdoing. And there isn’t any — the FBI hadn’t even reviewed the emails, let alone obtained the proper legal permission to do so, at the time of Comey’s announcement.
In other words, the MRC has flipped again like it has throughout the 2016 presidential campaign. It shows that the MRC has no fixed priniciples other than bashing the media at every possible opportunity, even if it has to twist itself into knots to justify doing so.