MRC Continued to Manufacture Right-Wing Outrage Over ESG Investing

Last year, we detailed how the Media Research Center obediently followed the right-wing agenda playbook and started obsessing about corporate policies and investing strategies that take environmental, social and governmental issues into consideration. Unsurprisingly, the MRC has continued to pile on the manufactured and agenda-mandated anti-ESG outrage throughout the rest of 2023. Typical was a March 20 post by Kevin Tober merging the agenda with the MRC’s usual “non-right-wing media isn’t promoting our right-wing agenda” narrative (while, of course, praising Fox News for advancing that narrative):

On Monday, President Biden issued the first veto of his presidency when he killed a bipartisan bill to prevent pension fund managers from making investment decisions based on the left’s woke social and environmental justice agenda, also known as ESGs. To help cover up this embarrassing blunder by Biden rejecting a bill supporting sound investment practices, the big three evening newscasts (ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News) completely ignored the story. 

Instead, the networks wasted air time on an alarmist report from the United Nations declaring we have limited time to solve “climate change” before the earth becomes unlivable (ABC & NBC), and a recall of a specific brand of Gerber baby food (CBS). 

Back in reality, Fox News Channel’s Special Report covered Biden doubling down on his party’s out-of-touch woke agenda by vetoing the GOP bill to end ESG investing. 

Unsurprisngly, this continued through the rest of 2023, mostly through business blogger Tom Olohan:

• PUT ON NOTICE: New Text Service ‘Woke Alert’ Warns Consumers of Corporations’ Nutty ESG Goals
• Bloomberg LP Insanely Boasts About Its Latest Anti-American ESG Push on Companies
• Big Three Ignore Explosive Hearing Exposing Dangers of Woke ESG
• Big Three Nets Unfazed by Illinois State Treasurer’s Ridiculous Defense of ESG
• Bloomberg Opinion Executive Editor Lectures Faith-Based Investor Over Opposition to ESG
• CNN Whines About Companies Not Following Radical ESG Goals
• Economist Tells ESG-Obsessed BlackRock CEO How to Avoid Further Embarrassment
• ‘Don’t Buy the Rebrand’: Vivek’s Warning About ESG Coverup on Fox Business
• OOPS! Bloomberg News Celebrates ESG, Omits Parent Company’s Obsession
• Big Three Nets Ignore Four Bills Aimed at Curbing Anti-American ESG Two Nights in a Row
• EXCLUSIVE: Old Glory Bank Co-Founder Responds to ESG Threats

There were also numerous agenda-driven articles by Craig Bannister reprinted from the right-wing blog the MRC turned its former “news” division CNSNews.com into (continuing his obsession from when CNS was a going concern):

• Politically-Neutral Companies Outperform ESG-Driven Firms, Study Reveals
• Pro-ESG Biden Vetoes Resolution Requiring Max Profit Investing
• Coal Industry Outperforms Overall Energy Sector Despite ESG Embargo
• Most Americans Don’t Know What ESG Is, Would Rather Invest Purely for Profit
• Jordan Subpoenas Radical ESG Group as ‘Collusion’ Probe Intensifies
• Rep. McHenry WARNS: Average American’s IRA, 401(K) Threatened by ESG
• Biden Taps New ‘Climate’ Czar to Unleash ESG Agenda
• Are Corporations Abandoning ESG? Report Gives Answers
• House GOP Unleash Bills to Fight Biden ESG Tyranny
• GOP Rep. Vows to Block Biden from Weaponizing Treasury to Unleash ESG

Bannister also used a Nov. 8 post to hype how American Energy Institute CEO Jason Isaac said in a congressional hearing that “ESG-activist investment managers aren’t just hurting Americans’ retirement savings, their also likely violating antitrust laws.” He didn’t mention that the institute is a lobbying group for fossil-fuel interests who stand to benefit from attacks on ESG.

The regular MRC crew got to push the ESG agenda on occasion as well. Clay Waters complained in an Aug. 30 post:

On Tuesday, the PBS NewsHour explored how some investment firms and state comptrollers who have built their clients’ financial portfolios around the hip liberal philosophy of “ESG” (environmental, social, and governance factors) are facing “backlash.”

ESG investment standards could include investing in companies that fight so-called climate change, or in companies that make “equity and diversity” a priority, while divesting from “harmful” energy companies. Yet many stockholders increasingly believe such investment priorities are coming at the expense of profits, and those firms’ fiduciary duty to their clients.

Waters offered no proof that anyone is being forced to invest in ESG investments, nor did he explain how forcing investors to attach their money to fossil fuels is any less of a “tyranny” or “anti-American” then what he and his fellow MRCers claim ESG is.