Media Research Center writer Curtis Houck’s embarrassing fawning over NewsNation for purportedly being objective (which actually having some right-wing bias) continued in a Sept. 27 post:
On Tuesday night, NewsNation continued its commitment to real journalism by holding a town hall with primetime host Chris Cuomo in East Palestine, Ohio on continued fallout from the February 3 toxic train derailment. Put aside whatever one might think about Cuomo and his past for a moment and what’s left was a true example of what journalism should be.
In this case, it’s keeping the spotlight on the lack of answers from all levers of government power and the economic, health, and societal impact its had on residents, something few in the media of all stripes have done.
As became mmediately clear, though, Houck’s idea of “real journalism” involves bashing government in general and the Biden administration in particular:
Cuomo ended with the simple fact that “President Biden has still not come” despite smirking and smiling on March 2 that he would “be out there at some point.”
In contrast, Cuomo responded by painting East Palestine as “like a lot of small places in America” that seem “easy to forget” though, “as you drive through here and you talk to the people, they know that they’ve been forgot and what matters to them, they will never forget.”
Throughout the hour, Cuomo called on longtime investigative reporter Rich McHugh, who said at one point that residents were “so confused about the messages” from agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and thus “not sure who to trust.”
[…]Despite having an hour, Cuomo told viewers that officials from the White House to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on down to the state level were invited to participate, but no one agreed.
[…]Cuomo turned back to Biden to close out the hour, challenging him to sign “an emergency declaration” from months back that’s still “on his desk.”
And yet, Biden not only hasn’t moved, but he flew over Ohio on Tuesday “on his way to Detroit”:
We’ve documented how the MRC weaponized the derailment for partisan purposes to attack the Biden administration for purportedly not sufficiently reacting to the derailment, while remaining nearly silent about the railroad’s central role in the derailment. If Cuomo talked about the railroad’s responsibility for the derailment and the cleanup afterward — as the EPA ordered it to do — Houck did not mention it.
If Cuomo and NewsNation are pushing right-wing narratives, it’s not doing “real journalism.” But Houck is too biased and too desperate to embrace those narratives to understand the difference.