The Media Research Center largely stayed away from the right-wing conspiracy-mongering surrounding murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But no more, apparently. MRC bigwigs Tim Graham and Brent Bozell devoted their Jan. 4 column to attacking Khashoggi over something else.
In a CYA effort, the pair graciously concede that killing journalists is bad: “The gruesome murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi shredded the idea that Saudi Arabian royalty should be praised for reforming itself. Princes who chop political opponents into little pieces are not nice people.” Having got that nicety out of the way, they grouse: “That said, puh-leeze stop it with the adoration of a man who deserves none of it.”
Graham and Bozell’s bone of contention is that the Washington Post, for whom Khashoggi wrote columns criticizing Saudi Arabia, was apparently collaborating with officials from Qatar, which the duo make sure to inform us is “a nemesis of Saudi Arabia,” and that the Post “buried these facts in paragraph 19 on page A-14, in a massive 5,000-word story,” when it “deserved to be the lede.” They then huff: “So Khashoggi was railing against one set of authoritarians … with the research assistance and ‘drafting’ and “shaping” of another set. This doesn’t make his ruthless murder any less heinous. But it ought to curtail all the ‘Free Thinker Just Bearing Witness’ rubbish.”
It sure sounds like Graham and Bozell are trying to justify Khashoggi’s murder, if only because they hate the Post so much.