At the Media Research Center it’s not just White House press secretary Jen Psaki who must be abused and denigrated on a daily basis — anyone who doesn’t treat her with that same off-the-charts level of contempt must be targeted as well. In that vein, we have a June 6 item by ragebot Nicholas Fondacaro that is one giant screed against CNN’s Brian Stelter for refusing to hate Psaki as much as he does:
As a feature during Sunday’s so-called “Reliable Sources,” CNN host Brian Stelter flaunted a pre-taped interview with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki where he came off as a bootlicker for the Biden administrations. Stelter ultimately embarrassed himself with softball question after softball question that added up into a huff piece for the Press Secretary. He even invited her to lash the media for getting stuff wrong with their reporting on the administration.
Stelter’s first question out of the gate was him asking Psaki to rip the press of inaccuracies in their reporting about Biden. “Busy summer ahead, infrastructure, election reform, what does the press get wrong when covering Biden’s agenda, when you watch the news, when you read the news what, do you think we get wrong,” he begged her.
It was just last year that Stelter and the rest of the liberal media would treat Trump Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s criticisms of the press as a threat to the First Amendment.
Either way, Psaki suggested that the media’s journalistic “muscles have atrophied a little bit over the last few years” because of former President Trump. She even quipped that the media had a bad long-term memory for how legislation got passed. Of course, Stelter just sat there and laughed.
[…]But Stelter was now proud CNN had an insider as part of the Biden press office. And Psaki credited “sitting on set” with partially helping her to prepare for the role. “So, I tap into a lot of things. I had the honor and pleasure of doing in the past, including being a CNN commentator, including serving at the State Department and I know that helps me in the briefing every day,” she said.
The most critical Stelter got was when he was groveling for Biden to do more press conferences and asked if the lack of them was a strategy to project normalcy.
This is CNN.
Of course, McEnany’s criticisms of the press” were actually abject hatred for any non-right-wing media outlet who tried to hold the Trump administration accountable — and the MRC got off on it every single time she ranted about the scrutiny. This is the MRC, and Fondacaro won’t admit it.
For the June 7 NewsBusters podcast, Fondacaro and Curtis Houck — who had a major crush on McEnany — continued to spew hate against McEnany and Stelter. Houck ranted that the interview was “cockamamie BS” and “bat guano nonsense,” adding,
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say these people don’t care about you. this is what they do with their free time instead of asking substantive questions here. … I think this rhetoric is really dangerous — and I want to talk about this — because I think it could really get someone hurt. Because these people go on and on and on bellyaching about the need for conservatives to watch our tone and our words matter. Fine. But we at NewsBusters condemned what happened at CNN when they had bombs sent to them by a Trump supporter. And I don’t even want to see people like Jim Acosta threatened. We’re gonna make fun of them, but we don’t want anything bad to happen to them. And I said this at the time, and it’s still true: These goobers deserve to live in peace. Their politics are messed up as it is, they should just be allowed to live their lives. But we’re not Maxine Waters here, people. That’s thte kind of thing we call out here at the MRC and NewsBusters. That’s who they are; again, that’s not who we are.
The problem is these people assume the worst and assume the worst motives of people they disagree with. You know, they seem to really enjoy this notion that families are tearing themselves apart, people cutting themselves off from family members and co-workers and what have you because they disagree with them.
Well, let’s look at the record: The MRC was much more interested in shielding President Trump from responsibiility for inspiring the attempted bombing than denouncing the bombs themselves. Houck himself ranted at CNN for having “lashed out at Trump, insinuating his guilt and deeming his remarks insufficient” (though he did concede that “it’s inexcusable and unacceptable for that to happen to anyone in this country”). He also whined that CNN commentators “smeared conservative media for overwhelmingly being responsible for our country’s worsening discourse,” insisting that right-wingers like himself merely “bring you the latest liberal media bias,” not their actual job of trashing and denigrating them day in and day out.
Nevertheless, Houck continued: “Do they even see their political opponents as human beings? Do they believe in and relish the free exchange of ideas that Chris Matthews believed in?” Well, we know Houck and his MRC co-workers don’t see non-right-wing reporters as human; their response to reporters being concerned about their safety after years of Trump (and, yes, MRC) demonization was to mock them as self-centered. Yes, thinking someone might murder you for doing your job does tend to make one “self-centered.” Houck concluded by suggesting that any TV host who doesn’t sound like Fox News doesn’t love America — so much for relishing the free exchange of ideas.
Houck even more laughably defended the MRC’s attacks on CNN because “it’s important to lower the temperature by identifying what’s wrong.” But accusing your ideological opposites of hating America is a temperature-lowering claim?
Speaking of lowering the temperature, Houck’s buddy Fondacaro amply demonstrated in a June 17 post that the MRC isn’t actually interested in doing that by absolutely loving a profane tirade by podcaster Joe Rogan:
During a very fiery segment on Thursday’s edition of The Joe Rogan Experience, the prolific eponymous podcaster and progressive YouTuber Kyle Kulinski tore into CNN media journalist and Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter for his bootlicking interview with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki a couple of weeks ago. The two also teed off on CNN in general for not acting like “real people” and also calling for the “censorship” of their opponents.
Speaking about Stelter’s interview, Rogan was flabbergasted by what he saw. “Brian Stelter talking to the press secretary saying ‘what are we doing wrong?’ What are we doing wrong,” he exclaimed to Kulinski. “Like, hey motherfucker, you’re supposed to be a journalist!”
[…]Rogan went further and thrashed CNN for thinking “they’re entitled to viewers” and failing to get them. “This is because the market has spoken and your show’s fucking terrible,” he chided. “That’s right. They suck. They’re terrible at it,” Kulinski agreed.
And despite Rogan comments going viral online, by the publication of the piece, Stelter had not publicly responded.
Why would Stelter respond to such a vile, obscene, vicious tirade? And why does Fondacaro think he’s turning down the temperature by hyping Rogan calling Stelter a “motherfucker”?
Then, the next day on the podcast, Fondacaro gushed that Rogan “made a fool of Brian Stelter,” while Houck added, “that was something else.” No mention of any of that temperature-lowering he was lecturing about a week or so earlier. Apparently conservatives never raise the temperature with anything they say, no matter how vile. Perhaps Houck can explain some time how that works.
Houck and Fondacaro inadvertently demonstrated why nobody should ever take the MRC’s bad-faith “media criticism” seriously.