The MRC-Fox News Pipeline Grows (And One MRCer Quietly Disappears)

The Media Research Center pipeline to Fox News continues, as two more MRC staffers have followed in the footsteps of Lindsay Kornick and Gabriel Hays to peddle their right-wing bias at a presumably more lucrative employer.

Alexander Hall, the MRC’s chief crier of “censorship” by “big tech” and its one of its Elon Musk fanboys, left the MRC at the end of May to become and “associate editor” for Fox News Digital, where he started in mid-June. interestingly, the MRC has disabled Hall’s archive in an apparent attempt to keep people like us from perusing them for even more examples of bias.His Fox archive, however, doesn’t disclose that he used to work for the MRC — all the better to maintain the “fair and balanced” fiction, it seems.

Around the same time, Kyle Drennen similarly decamped for Fox News to become an editor at Fox News Digital. His departure could be considered something of a surprise because he had been at the MRC since 2007, where he was associate editor of NewsBusters and had the title of “senior news analyst” at one point; his association with the MRC actually began in 2005, when he was an intern. Drennen’s MRC archive hasn’t been disabled, so the bias he brings to Fox News is available for all to see. One his main jobs at the MRC before his departure was choosing daily “Editor’s Picks” of media attacks from other website; it may or may not be coincidence that in the month or so before he left the MRC, three of those picks were from Fox News.

That’s quite a pipeline. No wonder the MRC so vociferously defends Fox News from any criticism — can’t afford to offend a future employer, after all. The pipeline is such, however, that the MRC really should disclose the conflict of interest of so many Fox News employees being former MRC workers, and that Fox News can’t claim to be “news” with the hiring of so many obviously biased “editors.”

Meanwhile, another longtime MRC employee also went away — but under more mysterious circumstances. Dan Gainor was a loyal MRC apparatchik who who was also a vice president who ran its Free Speech America operation that was dedicated to crying “censorship” whenever right-wing extremists were held accountable for their words. Just a year ago was the beneficiary of a fluffy profile from the right-wing Washington Examiner, and as recently as April he was appearing on Fox News shilling whatever MRC “study” had been released. But sometime in May, Gainor and the MRC parted ways; he describes himself on his Twitter page only as a “freelance opinion editor for Fox,” which we suspect is not a full-time job, and an occasional Fox News columnist. His Fox News archive has the same new bio, while his MRC archive, like that of Hall, has been disabled.

It’s unclear what happened — neither Gainor nor the MRC are talking. Gainor clearly did not leave for a more lucrative opportunity, and he also did not retire, since he didn’t get the same fawning treatment Rich Noyes got. But it seems Gainor’s loyalty has gone for naught if he can be disappeared from the MRC so quickly and quietly. He has a lot more time to spend on Twitter, though, judging by his feed.