When the National Rifle Association first faced scrutiny over its accounting and management practices, the Media Research Center issued its usual kneejerk defenses. Tim Graham complained in a March 2020 post:
On Tuesday, the PBS show Frontline debuted an hour-long documentary titled NRA Under Fire. It bashed the NRA for the whole hour, and wrapped up with bold little debate speeches by Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
New York state Attorney General Letitia James is the PBS hero, investigating the seamy finances of the NRA, and seeking the obvious political goal of weakening the Second Amendment forces.
Graham offered no proof to support that claim. Mark Finkelstein made similar unsupported claims in August 2020 post:
How’s this for chutzpah?
Less than three months before the election, Letitia James, the Democrat Attorney General of New York, who in 2018 called the NRA a “terrorist organization,” brings a lawsuit seeking to “dissolve,” i.e. destroy, the NRA. But she insisted on Morning Joe that “this lawsuit has nothing to do with politics.”
James also claims that when it came to bringing her suit at this crucial point in the election season, she in no way considered the political calendar.
Sure.
Brad Wilmouth groused a few days later “CNN legal analyst Laura Coates picked up on the New York lawsuit targeting the NRA to do a commentary in which she blamed the pro-gun group for mass shootings and mocked it for being defined as a ‘charity.'” He further complained that “Coates failed to identify” James “as a Democrat.” Wilmouth returned in a September 2021 post to complain about a CNN film that was “a nasty dig at the National Rifle Association that featured “harsh critics of the NRA who were given a forum to complain that the pro-gun group has been too successful in pushing its agenda.”
But as more evidence of mismanagement claims about the NRA surfaced, the MRC started backing off of that kneejerk defense. NIcholas Fondacaro threw the NRA under the bus in an October 2022 post so he could defend CNN hiring pro-gun blogger (and former MRC employee) Stephen Gutowski as a commentator, insisting he isn’t close to the NRA at all:
Simple research shows that Gutowski is not an “NRA-approved” reporter. In keeping with The Reload’s mission of “sober, serious reporting,” he has reported on the NRA’s rather embarrassing internal turmoil including the New York State lawsuit against the group and the battle for control of their finances when they faced bankruptcy, their drop in revenue, their plummeting attendance, and the internal pressure on EVP Wayne LaPierre to resign.
All of these are stories the NRA would prefer not to see the light of day.
But these are also stories that the MRC would also rather not see the light of day. When the NRA and executive Wayne LaPierre were found liable of the misspending of millions of dollars of NRA money, the MRC mentioned it only in the context of complaining about others talking about it. Wilmouth grumbled in a Feb. 25 post that in a CNN appearance, Michael Moore “rejoiced in the NRA’s legal problems and predicted that gun control activists would be more successful now that the pro-gun group with ‘blood on the hands’ has been weakened,” adding that host Abby Phillip “brought up the legal finding against former NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre that he had mishandled the organization’s money, cuing her liberal guest to rail against the conservative group’s past defense of gun rights, and predicted more gun control wins in the future.”
Wilmouth spent a Feb. 28 post complaining that a commentator bashed LaPierre:
On Saturday afternoon, MSNBC host Katie Phang allowed liberal activist Fred Guttenberg to indulge in a hateful rant against the NRA and Donald Trump supporters as he declared that he hopes that former NRA head Wayne LaPierre “rots in hell.”
It even sounded at one point like he excoriated Trump supporters as the “maggot vote” as he continued his bashing of conservatives.
Phang began the segment by recalling that a jury found LaPierre liable over how he used NRA funds, and then gently turned to Guttenberg for his reaction. The gun control activist immediately turned nasty as he began:
First, I hope Wayne rots in hell. My daughter was the cost of doing business for a lobby that he built for an industry that profited off of gun violence and death. And the verdict says to me that accountability is coming. Here’s the thing. That industry still exists, the NRA still exists. Other entities that are even more extreme than the NRA still exist.
America’s a free country, but this man makes it sound like some viewpoints shouldn’t exist. That no one should advocate for the Second Amendment. Guttenberg wants them at least voted out of existence: “America, if you’re as fed up as I am, you have a response that now comes in just nine months. It’s called election day. Vote, vote, vote, vote as if this is an issue that matters to you more than any other because it should.”
Note how Wilmouth whitewashed what LaPierre did, vaguely portraying it as being about “how he used NRA funds” while refusing to mention the millions of donor dollars that were involved. He also tried to dismiss Guttenberg is nothing but a “liberal activist,” censoring the fact that he was spurred into activism when his teen daughter was killed in the Parkland massacre, so he comes by his disdain for LaPierre honestly. Wilmouth did call Guttenberg a “grieving dad” in the headline, but that was the extent of it, and he seemingly did that in order to dismiss Guttenberg’s justified anger.