The Media Research Center did what it could to boost the credibility of Nick Shirley, the right-wing video guy who made one of those videos about purported fraud in Minnesota. A Dec. 29 post by Jorge Bonilla complained that Univision did only a brief on it:
While greater, in substance, than anything aired on the other broadcast networks, the brief lacked any of the details reported by independent journalist Nick Shirley. There was no telling viewers about the billions of dollars diverted to day care centers with all manner of violations and with dubious enrollments.
Mark Finkelstein followed the next day:
It was a breathtaking bit of brazen blame-shifting.
On Monday’s Morning Joe, Mara Gay, a MS NOW analyst and member of the New York Times editorial board, claimed that Somalis in Minnesota are being “scapegoated” over the massive social program fraud that has taken place on Governor and former Kamala running mate Tim Walz’s watch.
[…]Mara, it ain’t scapegoating if Somalis were convicted of doing it. It wasn’t Somalis as an ethnic group, but it was connected Somalis as a political class.
And the overwhelming weight of the evidence points that way, the most recent coming in the viral video from independent journalist Nick Shirley “depicting visits to multiple Minnesota childcare facilities that appeared largely inactive despite receiving millions in state funding.”
Bill D’Agostino used a Dec. 30 post to grouse that one evening news broadcast “largely avoided the story until independent journalist Nick Shirley’s video investigating apparent childcare fraud in Minnesota garnered over 100 million views online.”
Note the “independent journalist” label all three writers gave to Shirley. In fact, he’s a right-winger who got his start making prank videos in high school. His allegations had not been verified at the time the MRC ran to his defense, and his methods have been questioned, such as visiting daycare centers after hours. Nothing “independent” about that.
Still, the MRC continued to defend Shirley. Bonilla returned to rant in another Dec. 30 post:
Telemundo found a way to report the massive fraud exposed in Minnesota by independent journalist Nick Shirley. In so doing, they reveal the extent to which Shirley embarrassed the media.
Watch as climate propagandist Vanessa Hauc quickly goes to the “far-right YouTuber” card, as a reverse appeal to authority against what she is forced to report:
[…]In one paragraph, Hauc got off “far-right YouTuber”, “identifies as an independent journalist”, NBC News getting the silent treatment, and the virality of the report by indicating that it garnered over 100 million views (127M as of this writing). The rest of the report treads lightly over Shirley’s findings.
There is no substantive mention of the staggering scope of the fraud that was uncovered, either across agencies or in dollars stolen. There is no apparent interest in holding Minnesota elected officials, mostly Democrats, accountable for years of broken oversight.
And there is a simple explanation for this. The Somali fraud story is, at its core, an immigration story. We are all witnessing in real time what happens when there is no effort to encourage the assimilation of large numbers of immigrants who bring their idiosyncrasies and tribal divides with them to America.
Bonilla didn’t explain how Shirley was not a “far-right YouTuber,” nor did he bother to fact-check his claims.
Steve Malzberg continued the MRC’s anger that Shirley was accurately described — in this case as someone “shared anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim videos in the past” — in a Jan. 1 post:
Last Friday YouTuber Nick Shirley posted a video alleging mass fraud at children’s daycare centers in Minnesota which includes some in the Somali community. The video went viral and has resulted in a federal investigation, led by DHS and ICE. This comes on the heels of what is believed to be $9 billion of social services fraud over many years in the same community of Minnesota. Many in the liberal media have had a hard time reporting on that story properly, and the same seems to be happening with the latest scandal.
Speaking on Fox News’s Big Weekend Show, Shirley predicted that other journalists might not want to handle the story out of fear of being labeled “Islamophobic” or “racist.” One way to remedy that is to attack the messenger and it looks like that’s what Telemundo attempted to do by labeling Shirley a “far-right YouTuber”.
And during several shows on Tuesday, CNN was even worse.
[…]This kind of phrasing suggests that immigrants and Muslims should never be negatively covered, no matter what the actual facts are. This betrays wokeness, the kind that made all of this fraud possible in the first place.
Mattingly gave no further information on the alleged racist videos. He then addressed Law Enforcement Correspondent Whitney Wild in Minnesota “And, Whitney, what are you hearing from officials there?” And she then added to the smear.
“Well, there’s one agency saying basically today that they are concerned about some of the tactics that the video shows, but at the same time, they take all allegations of fraud seriously.”
Yes, Malzberg also joined in trying to pretend that there was a racial aspect to Shirley’s video. When it was pointed out that there was “little evidence to back up those claims, and Shirley has previously created and shared anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim videos,” Malzberg huffed: “Simply irresponsible and outrageous!” But he offered no evidence that this context should not be considered.