References at the Media Research Center to Mark Judge — the prep-school classmate of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh who was reportedly in the room at the party where Christine Blasey Ford claims Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her — are scant. At the MRC’s NewsBusters, almost all references to Judge are in passing or limited to mentions in transcripts, except for one article that attacked a “massive error” in a New York Times story about Judge. At the MRC’s “news” division, CNSNews.com, Judge is similarly mentioned only in passing.
The MRC has almost completely hidden the fact that Judge used to be an employee. From mid-2015 to early 2017, Judge was a “blog reporter” for CNS. Access to Judge’s archive has been blocked by CNS, but the Internet Archive lists his archive through January 2017 (he left shortly thereafter).
None of those NewsBusters items mention Judge’s MRC employment. The only CNS article or column referencing Judge that discloses it is a Sept. 19 article by editor in chief Terry Jeffrey admitted that Judge “used to be a writer for CNSNews.com,” albeit not until the 15th paragraph of his story.
Much of Judge’s CNS blog work focused on entertainment, celebrities and pop culture as seen through CNS’ right-wing mission — which is to say, praising conservative values and mocking what are portrayed as liberal values. Typical was an item featuring author S.E. Hinton denying any gay subtext in her classic teen novel “The Outsiders.”
We’ve documented how Judge gushed over Mel Gibson, touting his then-new film “Hacksaw Ridge” and helped him tease his plans for a sequel to his Christian film “The Passion of the Christ” while hiding Gibson’s ugly past. Since the MRC’s playbook on Kavanaugh is to protect him and attack his accusers, you likely won’t read much about at any MRC website about Judge’s days as a heavy-drinking prep student, or of the fact that Judge’s memoir of said days references a “Bart O’Kavanaugh” who passes out drunk and throws up in a car.