The Media Research Center has long nursed a case of Acosta Derangement Syndrome, triggered by his failure to be a right-wing shill during his stint as the White House reporter for CNN during the first Trump presidency. We’ve caught more MRC meltdowns over Acosta since then. So triggered was the MRC by Acosta that Tim Graham had a March 2023 meltdown over a TV character who purportedly merely sounded like him:
Two of the most arrogant groups in America are the “news” media and the entertainment media. When Hollywood glorifies the liberal media, they can’t just celebrate journalists, they demonize anyone who would dare to criticize them as dangerously anti-democratic.
ABC’s journalism drama Alaska Daily sounded like a pompous 2017 Jim Acosta commentary about how Republicans attacking “fake news” were endangering lives. The show’s central hero, newspaper reporter Eileen Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), is taken hostage one night in the newsroom.
The hostage-taker is an unemployed oil worker who spouts angry conservative rhetoric about Alaska being ruined by the “woke mob.” He’s shown listening to a talk radio host saying the media are quick to label someone “fascist, racist, or homophobic” if they disagree with them.
Is that not what Graham believes about the (non-right-wing) media? When CNN gave Acosta a weekday show in early 2024, Curtis Houck served up his own meltdown under the petulant headline “Rewarding Idiocy”:
On Monday morning, the seemingly constant shakeup of CNN’s fledgling, ratings-starved lineup continued as the network revealed the disastrous CNN This Morning will be axed as part of a new morning schedule that’ll include CNN’s former White House correspondent and pompous shill Jim Acosta being promoted to mid-morning weekdays after just over three years hosting late-afternoon weekend editions of CNN Newsroom.
Acosta’s smug brand of punditry masquerading as news will take place at 10:00 a.m. Eastern and remain under the CNN Newsroom banner. For years, we’ve chronicled at NewsBusters how his hours of anchoring on weekends featured eager promotion of liberal conspiracies, juvenile rhetoric and stunts, partisan flag-waving for liberal journalism, and outright lies and exaggerations.
Change “liberal” to “conservative,” and you have a good description of what the MRC does on a daily basis.
The MRC continued to be triggered by things Acosta said on his show:
- Acosta Cues Parkland Dad: Forget Woke BS, Florida ‘The State Where People Go to Die’
- CNN’s Jim Acosta Lets Lefty Journalist Accuse Fox of Inciting Trigger-Happy Whites
- Acosta: Trump Appeals Go ‘Against What Our Judicial System’ Stands For
- ‘I’m Sorry, What?” Acosta Whines Butker Not ‘Banned’ Like Kaepernick
- Acosta Delighted Trump’s Speech to Libertarians ‘Blew Up in His Face’
- CNN’s Acosta Tosses Softballs at Mayorkas to Downplay Terror, Crime
- ‘Don’t Talk About the Press’: Acosta Fights With Former Trump Advisor
- Acosta Shames Netanyahu For Calling Protestors ‘Iran’s Useful Idiots’
- IRONY ALERT: Jim Acosta Denounces Division After 2nd Trump Assassination Attempt
- ‘She’s Not Lazy’: Acosta, Dale Rush To Defend Harris After Trump Event
- CNN’s Acosta Frets Trump ‘Radical Ultranationalist Agenda’ with Dem Congressman
Acosta is just one victim of the politics of personal destruction and demonization practiced by the MRC and the right-wing media in general. Anyone who doesn’t go along with the right-wing bubble is targeted for annihilation for wrongthink.