For months, the Media Research Center spewed at at the “Noo KIngs” protests and anyone associated with it:
- GASLIGHT: ABC’s Muir Oversells Driver Incident at ‘No Kings’ Protest
- NBC Does Damage Control For ‘No Kings’ By Covering Up Anti-American Speakers
- MSNBC Compares ‘No Kings’ Critics To Nazis
- Networks Grant Leftist ‘No Kings’ Protests 18 Times the Air Time as March for Life
- Networks Still Fawning Over No Kings Protests as Ground-Breaking, Ignoring Ugly Signs
- Late Night Shows Gush Over ‘No Kings’ Rallies
- Colbert and Wagner Gush Over No Kings, Dems’ Government Shutdown
Tim Graham whined about some of this in his Oct. 22 column:
One of the more tiresome mantras of leftist media coverage is Trump allegedly paging through his “authoritarian playbook.” The media have their own protest playbook, as you could tell when leftists organized another mass protest titled “No Kings,” as if we’ve ever had a king.
The network newscasts slobbered all over this Saturday event, using very similar language. “Millions” took to the streets! A “massive” nationwide turnout to oppose “what they call creeping authoritarianism.” They sound like they’re reading a press release. “More than 2,700 rallies in all 50 states,” as “organizers estimate seven million people” turned out.
All of these newscasts carried no ideological labels – no “liberal,” no “leftist,” no “progressive,” and no whisper of extremism. You can tell from the crazy signs, like “Impeach Trump Again,” and also “Impeach, Remove, Convict, Repeat,” that these are some furious radical lefties.
[…]These networks aired happy press releases, and left any negative or hate-filled video clips out. Some mentioned House Speaker Mike Johnson predicting it would be a “Hate America rally” – just so they could quote protesters earnestly professing their patriotism.
Graham refused to include Fox News among the networks he examined — presumably so Fox’s presumably relentlessly negative coverage of the rallies wouldn’t skew the numbers he desired to promote.
With all this hostility targeted at the protest, you’d think Trump’s vulgar reaction to it — an AI-generated video of him dumping feces on these very same protesters — would generate some kind of negative reaction from the MRC. But no — it was mostly mad the video was covered at all. The only post to mention it was an Oct. 19 post by Jorge Bonilla, who was incensed coverage of Trump’s reaction to the protests overshadowed a presumably more newsworthy story:
The shocking discovery of a tree stand outside the Palm Beach International Airport, with a clear line of sight to where President Donald Trump steps off Air Force One, was at or near the top of the ABC and NBC Sunday Night Newscasts. This was not the case at CBS, amid some questionable editorial choices.
[…]CBS, on the other hand, failed to include the tree stand in their Washington roundup. Instead, the Evening News focused on the war of words between President Trump and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro and on the “No Kings” march. And with regard to “No Kings”, by “focused” I really mean “whined” given reaction to some of Trump’s post-march memeing.
CBS concluded the roundup and never went back, focusing instead on other items such as sumo wrestling at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Thus the former Tiffany Network found time to whine about memes while omitting news of, at minimum, continued concerns regarding the security of the President of the United States.
Bonilla refused to explain why Trump’s reaction video did not warrant any coverage whatsoever, especially given that it shows what Trump really thinks of anyone who dares to criticize him.