We’ve documented the Media Research Center’s callous disregard for the safety of journalists, viciously mocking them for being concerned when President Trump attacks them as the “enemy of the people” and even calling them self-centered for that concern.
The MRC’s Curtis Houck — who seems to have much of a problem with violence against journalists if they’re not rigidly pro-Trump right-wingers like himself — served up more anti-journalist hate in an April 13 post sneeringly headlined “WH Reporters: Obama Disliked Press, But Trump Bashing Us Poses ‘Serious Danger’ to Our Lives!” Writing about a broadcasters convention panel that included a few White House correspondents, Houck huffed that “ABC senior White House correspondent Cecilia Vega initially was blunt about being factual and not giving ‘them…that argument’ that they peddle fake news, but then she channeled CNN’s Jim Acosta by talking about how dangerous their lives are because of Trump.” Houck later complained that Vega said that “Trump has “unwilling…turned us into the story by the manner in which he speaks to us or the tone or the language or the words he’s used” but her mindset is to persist with the questioning.
Then, showing off more of his Acosta Derangement Syndrome, Houck grumbled: “But just as one thought it’d be an hour with moments of common sense and humility, things can evaporate with [CBS News Radio’s Steven] Portnoy rallying to Acosta’s side when the White House yanked his credentials.”
By contrast, Houck cheered when the moderator, a former Republican congressman, said that while he “decried the notion of the enemy of the people or the fake news and yet, a very distinguished, former supporter of mine — a Republican really chastised me afterward and said you must know that there is an unmitigated kind of bias against Donald Trump and that a lot of what he says is true.”
Houck was also in a journalist-mocking mood the day before as well, sneering at another part of the same panel at the same broadcasters convention (and being much less charitable to that GOP ex-congressman for committing the crime of saying something nice about journalists):
The 2019 National Association of Broadcasting convention wrapped on Thursday and, back on Monday, NAB CEO (and former Republican Senator) Gordon Smith waxed poetic love notes to four prominent White House correspondents on-stage as “heroes and icons” to “this younger generation” as the supposedly dastardly Trump administration has made journalism cool again.
And, to make matters sappier, the panelists hailed the journalism done by major newspapers pushing the Trump-Russian probe and collusion hunt as “nothing short of extraordinary journalism” and thus a topic that the press shouldn’t “beat ourselves up” on (even though, yes, they got A LOT wrong).
[…]Amusing how journalism awoke on Inauguration Day 2017 from an eight year slumber, huh?
Illustrating the media’s love of self, Vega replied by swooning that “in my lifetime, there has never been a better time to be a journalist” because of the “Watergate-level” content being churned out.
[…]After listening to any portion of this hour-long event, it’s difficult to come away without the conclusion that there’s no profession that loves itself more and sees itself as the glue holding America together than the journalism profession rather than the Constitution or her people.
Houck isn’t offering “media research” — he’s pushing unvarnished, ideologically driven hate and contempt.