When the story of plagiarism in Melania Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention broke, it was inevitable that the Media Research Center would complain about the coverage of it.
While the MRC’s “news” division, CNSNews.com, tried to bury the plagiarism story, the MRC proper was attacking news coverage of it, using seven MRC employees to call the coverage a “feeding frenzy” and grumble that “In contrast, ABC, CBS, NBC and FNC during these hours collectively provided a mere 1 minute, 48 seconds of coverage to Pat Smith’s emotional speech condemning Hillary Clinton’s inept handling of Benghazi.”
When the story wouldn’t go away — you know, because the Trump campaign couldn’t stop denying the obvious plagiarism — the MRC then went into distraction mode, led by Rich Noyes and Mike Ciandella:
It’s been a day and a half since the establishment liberal media sank their jaws into the Melania Trump “plagiarism” story, and they are showing few signs of letting go, with heavy coverage on the broadcast networks’ Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning news shows.
Eight years ago, however, when a similar flap threatened then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, the broadcast networks generated much less coverage — just 14 minutes of airtime, or barely one-fourth what they’ve churned out this week.
Complete with chart, of course:
Noyes and Ciandella wrote, “The questions about Melania Trump’s speech are legitimate and deserve coverage, but the networks have blown this all out of proportion.” Needless to say, they didn’t mention the key differences between the Trump and Obama incidents: Obama’s instances of plagiarized passages occurred in a campaign stump speech, not at the party’s national convention; the person from whom the passages were lifted, then-Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, is a friend of Obama’s and had no problem with it, whereas Melania Trump’s passages were lifted from a 2008 speech by Michelle Obama; and unlike with the Trump incident, the Obama campaign didn’t spend a day and a half denying that plagiarism took place.
That denial is the reason the story continued to be covered — and that dishonesty became the story. It seems that it took CNN’s Chris Cuomo calling Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort a liar after yet another denial that any plagiarism took place that the Trump campaign rushed out a statement from a staff speechwriter admitting plagiarism that the story finally was put to rest.
Complaining about something that was supposedly given too much coverage is meaningless if you ignore the real reason why the story dragged on as long as it did, as Noyes and Ciandella do.