As jury deliberations began in Donald Trump’s New York trial, it was time for the Media Research Center to summarize its Trump victim narrative. Rich Noyes and Curtis Houck served up an updated coverage count (which, of course, censored any mention of Fox News) that played the victim card in spades:
Jury deliberations have begun in Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of former President Donald Trump. Regardless of the verdict, Trump’s Democratic opponents have already received a massive media bonus from the flimsy legal case. Unlike the jury in the courtroom, millions of citizens have seen the evidence only as depicted by the liberal news networks — an often skewed version that seemed more designed to embarrass and antagonize the Republican presidential candidate than to scrutinize the merits of the case against him.
Noyes and Houck claimed to be surprised that Trump’s apparent affair with porn star Stormy Daniels — the hush money paid to her being a central component of the case — would get a lot of attention:
Instead of scrutinizing the case against Trump, the networks (especially ABC and CBS) reveled in the tawdry, tabloid testimony against him — even though they had been previously reported years earlier, and had little to do with the question of business records at the heart of the case.
On 91 occasions (sometimes more than once per story), evening news viewers heard allegations that Trump engaged in extramarital sex. Most, but not all, of these references were accompanied by a perfunctory, one-sentence reminder that Trump had denied all such charges.
The word “porn” was used 47 times, compared with 35 instances when the slightly-less vulgar “adult film” modifier was used to describe Stormy Daniels’ profession. Fourteen times, viewers heard that another accuser, Karen McDougal, was a “Playboy” model.
Houck and Noyes didn’t explain why people shouldn’t be told that Trump had an alleged affair with a porn star when that’s central to the crimes that were allegedly committed. They concluded by whining: “So even if the trial doesn’t give liberals the Trump conviction they’ve yearned for, it’s still been an election-year bonanza for Democrats, who’ve enjoyed watching their nemesis getting pilloried by the press.” As if they wouldn’t be doing the exact same thing if a Democrat had done something similar.
The head of the MRC ranted about all of this in a radio appearance:
On the Thursday edition of WMAL’s O’Connor & Company, Media Research Center Founder and President Brent Bozell laid waste to ABC, CBS, and NBC for their “completely biased coverage of Donald Trump” as revealed by our latest study of the sham trial by Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg interfering in the 2024 election.
Speaking to co-hosts Larry O’Connor and Mercedes Sclapp, Bozell said “the networks have no right to steal elections this way” with a mammoth 640 minutes since jury selection began and rank bias by omission with only three minutes during their evening shows on Michael Cohen’s perjury conviction and zero seconds on Judge Juan Merchan’s liberal ties.
Most significantly, Bozell implored listeners at the end of the interview to remember these “broadcast airwaves are owned by the American people” and with this “deliberate attempt to interfere with the election” by “deliberately” withholding key facts about the trial, “it’s high time for Congress to hold hearings” because they “have no right to steal elections”.
Earlier in the interview, he conceded the trial’s significance is “so serious that you should expect the networks to treat it seriously” and while “I’ll agree with you completely” that the 640 minutes wasn’t surprising, but a “look inside that coverage” reveals a murderer’s row of bias.
[…]Bozell also brought up the lack of mentions for Merchan’s conflicts of interest (including his donations to President Biden and an anti-Republican group) as well as how “[o]n average, more than one time every [evening] story, they’ve said that [Trump’s] a criminal.”
When a man is on trial for committing a crime, that’s a logical assumption — and, again, one Bozell himself would be making if a Democrat was involved.
When Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts — which would seem to undermine the MRC’s assertions that the trial was “flimsy” and a “sham” — a lot of right-wing whining followed. Alex Christy huffed in a May 30 post:
The cast of characters that made up the Thursday edition of Deadline: White House were provided the opportunity to give MSNBC’s first response to the news that former President Donald Trump had been convicted in New York. Host Nicolle Wallace and panelists Rachel Maddow and legal analyst/former Mueller probe prosecutor Andrew Weissmann all reacted by waxing poetic about democracy’s “shining moment” and how it withstood attempts by Trump and his allies to delegitimize the rule of law.
Maddow had the first reaction, “Listen, it’s a unanimous jury verdict, unanimous on all counts. This is a definitive and, you know, this is an irreversible verdict. He can appeal. I’m sure he will appeal. But this is everything that the prosecution asked for, from a jury that by all counts took this thing very, very seriously. We counted the deliberation hours down here.”
[…]Still, Maddow repeated herself, “Those efforts are the test we now have as a country. The people involved in bringing this case have been threatened and intimidated and had everything brought to bear against them in a way that was designed to delegitimize the process in the eyes of the American people. It’s now in the hands of the American people to decide if we will accept those efforts or whether we will stand by the rule of law and recognize this as a fair proceeding.”
Needless to say, Christy and his MRC co-workers disagree with that sentiment since Trump was found guilty.
Nicholas Fondacaro was surprisingly non-hateful in evaluating another TV show’s coverage:
In the wake of the consequential ruling that saw former President Trump convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, CNN’s tone was mostly sober as they went through the play-by-play of what happened in the courtroom and what procedures needed and were to unfold in the coming days, weeks, and months. However, legal analyst Karen Friedman Agnifilo had a pretty major concern: that Trump would get special treatment and not be imprisoned.
[…]On the lighter end, she said Trump could be sentenced to “probation. He could do community service where he has to pick up trash on the subways … He could do home arrest.”
Houck was more typical in looking at CBS’ coverage:
Thursday’s CBS News Special Report on the guilty verdict for former President Trump reveled in the sham trial brought by far-left Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg as “an extraordinary moment” of “enormous gravity” in which “everything about politics and law and our orientation to both are convulsed as never before”, but bemoaned the incoming “grievance war” from the Trump team and took exception to longtime correspondent Jan Crawford’s reality check.
After it became known Trump was guilty on all 34 counts in the so-called “hush money” trial that’s interfered in the 2024 election, CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell paused to collect herself before saying in hushed tones, “this is an extraordinary moment.”
Chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett concurred, saying “to hear you read what you just read is a moment of enormous gravity for this country” and something “we cannot overlook” as America has entered “completely uncharted territory”.
[…]Before she irked the rest of the CBS panel, Crawford noted Trump “set the groundwork” for doubt about our system on Wednesday “saying that Mother Teresa would not have even beaten these charges and that the system was rigged” and that “people will believe that”.
Despite saying that and arguing “many people say that Donald Trump caused” Americans to lose “faith in our institutions”, she nonetheless faced serious pushback from O’Donnell and January 6 correspondent Scott MacFarlane when she simply stated the fact that Manhattan is an extremely liberal part of the country[.]
Houck pretended to read the minds of employees at another network:
Not surprisingly, Disney-owned ABC went gaga Thursday over former President Trump being found guilty on all 34 counts brought by far-left Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg relating to the 2016 election, basking in the “incredible verdict” from New Yorkers that they claim had not only “broken” Trump in spirit, but will cause “a significant percentage” of voters to not vote for Trump. In tern, they argued, this could help President Biden — whose campaign broke out in literal “cheers” — secure a second term.
[…]Three-time bestselling anti-Trump author and longtime correspondent Jonathan Karl opened the doors to what would be a common theme on the ABC News Special Report, which was polling indicates this will be fatal for Trump’s chances.
“Donald Trump is now a convicted felon. Will that affect how voters will view him? And we have seen, David, a lot of polling, including one of our ABC News polls just in the past month, that suggests that upwards of 20 percent of people who have said that they plan to vote for Donald Trump…would reconsider…if he were…convicted of a felony,” he boasted.
Muir concurred and acknowledged “some political pundits will say this was sort of baked in,” but spent the next few moments implicitly arguing this will matter given “how tight the race is” which “will be decided at the margins.”
ABC’s coverage wouldn’t have been complete without chief White House correspondent and chief Biden apple polisher Mary Bruce, who delivered with the revelation that “there were cheers inside the Biden headquarters in Wilmington as the verdict was read” and “these guilty verdicts are a political gift to Democrats, a political gift to the President” to be “running against a convicted felon.”
Hilariously, Bruce tried to cover for her friends by also claiming no one should “expect the President to completely upend his campaign messaging because of this,” and they don’t “want to be overly celebratory and feed into that narrative that this was somehow a witch hunt concocted by President Biden” when he’s “been adamant that he had nothing to do with this.”
Houck offered no actual evidence that Bruce was “covering” for anyone or that she’s a “Biden apple polisher.”
Apparently because her employer’s transphobia narrative must be injected everywhere, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg freaked out over an incident outside the courthouse during jury deliberations, when “A grown transgender woman walked up to a gate surrounding the court and pulled up his T-shirt to expose his black bra. Then, in order to escalate things even more, he popped off his bra to expose his bare DD’s (or honestly probably GG’s),” going on to huff, “No matter what side you’re on, for the love of God, keep your clothes on or stay home.”