The Media Research Center continued its Trump Regime Media routine on the Trump-Russia document dump continued with a July 29 “study” by Curtis Houck:
On July 18, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified bombshell findings about the role of the Obama administration played in late 2016 and early 2017 to manufacture the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. Unsurprisingly, ABC, CBS, and NBC — which spent 2,284 minutes on their flagship evening newscasts salivating over every turn — have devoted only two minutes and 17 seconds on Gabbard’s disclosures.
To put that in perspective, the networks have dedicated just over 1,000 times more airtime on a story used to bludgeon the first Trump presidency than on revelations that they were not only dubious, but a manufactured lie.
As our Tim Graham wrote Saturday at FoxNews.com, the CBS Evening News was the only nighttime newscast on July 23 to mention Gabbard’s appearance hours earlier in the Brady Briefing Room to detail the findings and answer questions. That was the last mention on the evening shows.
Neither Houck or Graham counted up how much time Fox News and other right-wing channels have devoted to the story for comparison purposes, and neither permitted mention of a contradictory view. In his safe-space Fox News piece, Graham huffed that “The networks don’t take off their partisan hats for a second. They pretend only their critics look like partisans.” That’s something he has never said about Fox News — or himself.
The next day, Jorge Bonilla continued to whine that non-right-wing wasn’t going all Fox News on the story by, yes, citing Fox News:
Another explosive Russia Hoax revelation was revealed to the public today. And, as predictable as the Sun rising in the East, the legacy media completely avoided the story.
Per Fox News:
[…]No time was accorded to this issue on any of the legacy newscasts airing the day of the report (July 30th), to wit: ABC, CBS, NBC. We even took a look at Univision and Telemundo. No dice. Not a single second was given to the discovery of a potentially explosive and heretofore hidden trove of documents.
ABC was so devoted to suppressing the story that they didn’t even run the customary White House roundup! No Mary Bruce or Rachel Scott! Nothing out of DC whatsoever!
Sadly, this was too easy to predict. We called it.
Strangely, Bonilla refused to tell us how much time his beloved Fox News devoted to it. It’s as if he’s hiding something.
It was then Nicholas Fondadaro’s turn to whine — though he did tout Fox News’ right-wing coverage:
On Thursday, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) made headlines by declassifying the appendix to Special Counsel John Durham’s probe into the Russia Collusion Hoax, a document loaded with bombshells. But contrary to their years of pushing the hoax, the flagship morning (Friday) and evening (Thursday) newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC, tapped the mute button on their remotes and pretended like it wasn’t something that required national media attention.
Instead of covering the declassification of the annex, ABC’s World News Tonight spend three minutes on the weather and 20 seconds on a local Virginia story about an attempted abduction at a mall. CBS Evening News spent over three minutes (3:22) hyping how more Americans were getting interested in astrology. NBC Nightly News spent 22 seconds on a local story from Saudi Arabia about an amusement park ride breaking.
In stark contrast to how the liberal broadcast networks would cover literally anything other than the bombshells damaging to Democrats, Fox News Channel’s Special Report kicked off their evening newscast with the revelations.
Fondacaro didn’t explain why Fox News’ report shouldn’t be considered right-wing propaganda given how close the network is to the Trump administration.
Alex Christy spent an Aug. 2 post grousing that Gabbard’s document dump was questioned:
HBO’s Bill Maher returned to Real Time after more than a month off on Friday and, against the backdrop of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard claiming that assessments that Vladimir Putin preferred Donald Trump to win in 2016 were false and politicized, tried desperately to cling to the Mueller Probe, insisting there was something there.
During the panel discussion with New York Times opinion writer James Kirchick and Democratic Rep. Jason Crow, Maher tried to cast doubt on Gabbard’s conclusions, “Russia-gate was not a nothing burger. It was a burger. Maybe it wasn’t a juicy steak, but it was a burger. I would like to show you one little piece of tape, and we can talk about it that I remember because their contention is that, you know, Putin had no preference in the election. That’s why we know this was a conspiracy of Obama. I remember this from Helsinki. This is—they’re asking Putin directly in Helsinki.”
It shouldn’t have to be said in 2025, but apparently it does, but just because Putin says something doesn’t make it true.
Christy then tried to obfuscate the issue:
The three men would go on to agree on a couple of things. First, that critics of Russia-gate confuse the concern of Russian meddling with concerns Trump colluded with Russia, claiming they’re two different things. But, that’s not quite right. Most people are willing to accept Russian meddling as a fact. The controversy is over whether Putin wanted Trump or to sow chaos, and a soundbite from a former KGB hack does not answer that question.
Second, Maher insisted that nobody ever claimed that Russia hacked the election in the sense of hacking machines and altering the results. However, polls showed two-thirds of Democrats agreed with the statement “Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected President.”
We don’t recall the MRC ever admitting that Russia meddled with U.S. elections for Trump’s benefit — all it serves up is “Russia Hoax!” without defining or clarifying it.