Media Research Center executive Tim Graham began his Aug. 18 column by declaring, “No one in the media elites today is alarmed at a ‘revolving door’ between the ‘objective media’ and partisan politics. Politics seems more like a qualification than a disqualification.” Graham is being utterly hypocritical about this, of course, given that there is a revolving door between the MRC and Fox News; as we’ve documented, several former MRC staffers are currently employed as writers and editors at Fox News, many of whom were hired directly out of the MRC. Since Graham is censoring that news, we don’t get to hear him explain how Fox News could possibly be “fair and balanced” when it’s hiring so many partisan activists. Instead, Graham played guilt-by-association in attacking new NBC “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker because her parents donated to Democrats:
Welker registered as a Democrat in Rhode Island and then D.C., and her mother and father Julie and Harvey, have donated tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates. It’s close to $20,000 to Barack Obama alone. There was also $3,300 for Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign and $2,100 for Hillary Clinton’s doomed 2016 run against Trump. Her mother unsuccessfully ran in the Democrat [sic] primary for Philadelphia City Council in 1999.
Graham did not explain what possible relevance Welker’s parents’ political donations have to her work. And he’s being hypocritical here too; during the 2016 presidential campaign, the MRC complained a lot that the extremism of Ted Cruz’s father was pointed out (as well as a rumor that he hung out with Lee Harvey Oswald).
Graham went on to whine about former Democratic White House press secretaries getting TV jobs, then claimed that Republican press secretaries are different:
MSNBC is becoming the home of former Biden-Harris spokespeople. Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki hosts a show on Sunday, and former Kamala Harris spokeswoman Symone Sanders has a show on Saturday. Alicia Menendez, the daughter of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) has a show on both weekend days. Rev. Al Sharpton never actually revolved – he keeps his racial ambulance-chasing job on weekdays.
CNN must be jealous. They just hired Biden communications director Kate Bedingfield right out of the White House, and also picked up Jamal Simmons from the Kamala Harris press shop. CNN reported in February that Bedingfield was “expected to be a consultant to Biden’s anticipated reelection campaign,” but they talked her into a different kind of public relations.
Republicans do this, too, but differently. Bush White House press secretary Dana Perino joined Fox News – after Bush left office. Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany joined Fox News – after her president left office. All of these newly arriving Bidenites are salted in cable news to share the Democrat [sic] talking points while their Biden-Harris team runs for re-election.
Graham is lying via cherry-picked examples. He avoided noting that Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, got a Newsmax show in March 2020, while his former boss was still in office, and that his successor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, got a Fox News commentator gig in August 2019, just two months after leaving the White House. Graham also conveniently omitted the fact that both Perino and McEnany worked through the end of their respective White Houses (though not quite in the case of McEnany, who abandoned her job after the Capitol riot), making it impossible for them to get a TV gig to advocate for an active administration.
Graham also complained about the daughter of former Obama White House adviser Valerie Jarrett getting a job as a co-host of NBC’s “Today.” But he was silent not only about how the daughter of former Republican President George H.W. Bush, Jenna Bush Hager, is also a “Today” co-host (check out her queso recipe!) but about another in-house example: The daughter of the editor of the MRC’s former “news” division CNSNews.com, Terry Jeffrey, works for right-wing Republcan Sen. Ted Cruz, which resulted in CNS publishing dozens of articles promoting Cruz before its shutdown earlier this year.
Graham concluded with one more hypocritical whine: “The only real question is whether the former Biden publicists sound any more like Biden publicists than the ‘objective’ folks who came up the ranks in an ‘old-school’ way, with a decade or three inside the ‘news’ business. It’s often hard to tell the difference.” But Graham and the MRC do not practice what they preach, which makes Graham’s partisan moralizing even more hollow.