The Media Research Center’s complaining that President Trump’s links to Jeffrey Epstein ise a news story continued in a Jan. 21 post by Mark Finkelstein:
Joe Scarborough is obsessed with “Rape Island.” He climbed up on that hobby horse no fewer than seven times in Morning Joe‘s opening segment today.
Scarborough’s motive, revealed at the end of his spiel, was to claim that President Trump is falling into a trap by asserting that Denmark has no legal right to Greenland other than having landed boats there hundreds of years ago..
[…]Meanwhile, is there a more boorish, big-footing, liberal media TV host than Scarborough? He embarrassed Mika [see screencap] with his multiple mentions of Rape Island, and arrogated to himself Mika’s traditional role of introducing the show, inducing head-shaking exasperation from his wife.
Finkelstein concluded: “There’s a more apt term for the likes of Joe Scarborough, but NewsBusters being a family-friendly site, we’ll stick with ‘boor.'” So what’s the apt term for Finkelstein?
Jorge Bonilla merged its disdain for Epstein coverage with Clinton derangement in a Feb. 3 post:
After much wrangling, the Clintons will stave off a Contempt of Congress referral by appearing for a closed-door deposition before the House Oversight Committee, to answer questions regarding their relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Two of the three broadcast network nightly newscasts did not deem this to be sufficiently newsworthy to air.
The sole network to cover the Clinton reversal was CBS.
Jorge Bonilla spent a Feb. 3 post chortling that Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed to a deposition on Epstein:
After much wrangling, the Clintons will stave off a Contempt of Congress referral by appearing for a closed-door deposition before the House Oversight Committee, to answer questions regarding their relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Two of the three broadcast network nightly newscasts did not deem this to be sufficiently newsworthy to air.
[…]Scott MacFarlane’s weird D.C. roundup interviewed the brother of the late Virginia Giuffre, and ended with the investigation of the Fulton County, GA elections office. That concluded the most substantial reporting on the nightlies.
ABC’s World News Tonight had no time for the Clinton collapse, because they played corporate synergy and ran a nearly 10-minute item on Disney’s New CEO. The NBC Nightly Newsallocated that A-block time to Jill Biden’s former husband, as he faces charges of murdering his current wife. Weird and salacious, but not to the point of bumping the Clinton Cave off of A-block.
Bonilla didn’t explain why the Clintons face a deposition while President Trump, whose relationship with Epstein was at least as similar, does not.
Nicholas Fondacaro did a highly selective examination of who in TV has been linked to Epstein in a Feb . 4 post:
A NewsBusters investigation of the Epstein Files discovered that cast members of ABC’s The View were mentioned nearly four dozen times. Despite the files being a major topic of discussion on the show, as they tried to tie President Trump to criminal activity, none of the cast members addressed their names appearing in the same files. One cast member was seemingly interested in borrowing one of Epstein’s infamous private jets.
A search of the cast members’ names on the Department of Justice website returned nearly four dozen (46) references.
Moderator Whoopi Goldberg led the way with 21 references, co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin clocked in with 20, Joy Behar had three, and Ana Navarro had two. Fortunately for co-hosts Sunny Hostin and Sara Haines, they weren’t mentioned at all (as of the release of the latest batch of files).
The search for references did take into account Goldberg going by just her first name, Farah Griffin’s maiden name, and Hostin’s maiden name (Cummings) and real first name (Asunción; with and without the accent mark).
Fondacaro didn’t explain why he examined only “The View” and not, say, any broadcaster on Fox News. He expanded his search somewhat for a post the next day:
Would you go to an intimate dinner party hosted by a man who was a convicted child sex offender? How about one hosted by his fixer? Or hang out with one of them on the weekend? A NewsBusters investigation of the Epstein Files has revealed that numerous liberal media elitists faced those very scenarios just years after Jeffrey Epstein was convicted, and they answered yes to such invitations. Names such as Katie Couric, Charlie Rose, George Stephanopoulos, Matt Lauer, and Chris Cuomo appear several times.
Epstein and his fixer felt so comfortable in the media elitist crowd that they had no second thoughts about sending out invitations to dozens and dozens of them.
Several of the e-mail chains examined by NewsBusters involve publicist Peggy Siegal, who had been described as Epstein’s “fixer” by The Daily Beast co-founder Tina Brown, who found herself on the receiving end of Siegal’s ire.
All spelling and grammatical mistakes in the quotes belong to their sender.
On August 10, 2010 (two years after Epstein was convicted), Siegal sent Epstein an e-mail under the subject line “Sept. 16 dinner.” The e-mail contained a massive list of over 120 names that included journalists, writers, editors, commentators, actors, and directors.
Some of the standout names included: Dan Abrams, Jill Abramson, Christiane Amanpour, Katie Couric, Donny Deutsch, Maureen Dowd, Gayle King, Cynthia McFadden, Peggy Noonan, Samantha Powers, Jane Fonda, Charlie Rose, George Stephanopoulos, Jeffrey Toobin, Barbara Walters, Brian Williams, and Fareed Zakaria just to name a few.
Again, Fondacaro failed to mention the conservatives whose names also appear in he Epstein files, including Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, Trump commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, “Melania” documentary director Brett Ratner — and, of course, Trump himself.
Fondacaro went after a reformed news presenter in a Feb. 12 post:
“I have to tell you something. I’m all about the Epstein Files,” proclaimed NewsNation host Chris Cuomo to his colleague Elizabeth Vargas during the Tuesday night hand off to his show. Cuomo blustered about the files were “our best chance to see and expose and maybe change the two-tiered reality that we all know we live in.” But while Cuomo would go on to talk about the six names that were called out by House Democrats in the files, there was one name in the files he didn’t want to talk about: his.
A NewsBusters investigation of the Epstein Files released last week covered that not only was Cuomo discussed in the emails, he was on the short list of different dinner parties and events for Epstein. Epstein’s fixer Peggy Siegel also spent a weekend with Cuomo and his family.
[…]If Cuomo’s righteous indignation over the release of names couldn’t get any more ironic, he would go on to declare: “Remember, this isn’t just about what can be prosecuted, but we do have to figure that out. But it’s not some gotcha game about people’s sex lives, okay? This is a far lower bar of humanity. Alright? Who participated and/or knew about assaulting females may be as young as nine years old.”
Reacting to a soundbite of a British journalist defending her name being in the files because she was someone important who had written about the Epstein case, Cuomo put himself on the high ground: “Listen, if you’re in the files because you covered this story, it’s not what we’re talking about. And to casually dismiss it like that, shows exactly why this matter so much. They know they’ll get away with it.”
Again, Cuomo was in the files and not because he was covering Epstein.
Fondacaro didn’t mention how his MRC colleagues had virtually banned criticism of NewsNation and its hosts — including Cuomo, whom Fondacaro loved to mock as “Fredo” when Cuomo worked for CNN. And again, he failed to reference the right-wing TV folks who are similarly linked to Epstein.