The Media Research Center just loves to play work-the-refs by attacking presidential debate moderators — something it never does when the moderators are from Fox News. It pushed that partisan strategy again ahead of the debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Geoffrey Dickens ranted in a Sept. 6 post:
David Muir and Linsey Davis are set to moderate Tuesday night’s presidential debate but don’t expect a fair and balanced effort from the ABC anchors.
If their past reporting is any indication of how Muir and Davis will perform, debate viewers should expect their questions to frame Trump as a “racist” “white supremacist” who will restrict abortion “rights.” They will also set up Kamala Harris to position herself as a “glass-ceiling” breaker as well as a protector of “reproductive freedom.”
The following are just a few of the most obnoxious outbursts from Muir and Davis via the MRC’s archives:
Dickens didn’t dispute the accuracy of any claim that was made — indeed, Dickens was so desperate to smear that he raged against Muir daring to say nice things about former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev upon his death.
Alex Christy demanded that ABC asks Harris and Trump its laundry list of biased questions in a Sept. 8 post:
For the Dana Bash interview on CNN, we made a list of 30 questions we’d recommend to Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. CNN only touched on five of them, especially the fracking-ban question. Bash asked a very open-ended question on Harris and Biden’s mental decline.
Before Tuesday’s night’s big presidential debate, we’d like to reprise most of these questions and add a few ones based on the latest news. Harris-Walz is arguably the most liberal ticket ever, but they are trying desperately to cover that up, so here are a wide variety of 25 questions that moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis could ask that might actually help voters make an informed choice in a couple of months.
Christy’s questions were all button-pushing BS like “How can you claim to unite the country when you were named the most liberal senator in 2019?” and “How can voters trust you on the economy when even liberal Washington Post columnists are attacking your price control plan?” and “Did you really work at McDonald’s? You never mentioned it until you decided to run for president?”
Rich Noyes served up yet another garbage “study” in a Sept. 9 post:
Vice President Kamala Harris will meet former President Donald Trump tomorrow night for a debate hosted by ABC News, and she could not have chosen a friendlier forum for their first encounter. A new study by the Media Research Center finds that, of the Big Three evening newscasts, ABC’s World News Tonight — run by debate moderator David Muir — has been the most positive towards Harris and the most hostile to Trump.
MRC analysts reviewed all 100 campaign stories that aired on ABC’s World News Tonight from the day Harris entered the race (July 21) through September 6, including weekends. Our analysts found 25 clearly positive statements about Harris from reporters, anchors, voters or other non-partisan sources, with zero negative statements — none. That computes to a gravity-defying 100% positive spin score for the Vice President.
As for Trump, our analysts found just five clearly positive comments, vs. 66 negative statements, for a dismal 7 percent positive (93% negative) spin score.
As we’ve documented every time the MRC does one of these dishonest “studies,” Noyes’ work is slanted because, as he admits, it deliberately excludes “neutral statements” of the candidates — an omission seemingly designed to falsely inflate numbers, and it falsely portrays news coverage is being either positive or negative.
MRC chief Brent Bozell ran to right-wing Fox business to peddle his employees’ dishonest work, as lackey Tim Graham detailed:
On Debate Day, MRC founder and president L. Brent Bozell appeared on the Fox Business program Varney & Co. to discuss our latest research into ABC News coverage of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. On moderator David Muir’s newscast World News Tonight, MRC’s Rich Noyes found Harris drew 100 percent positive coverage (not including soundbites of partisans) and Trump’s coverage was 93 percent negative (by the same measure).
Fox host Stuart Varney said, “That doesn’t sound like it’s going to be a fair debate. What do you say?”
BOZELL: This is ABC, not necessarily David Muir. This is ABC, the network — and 93% negative on Donald Trump 100% positive to Kamala Harris. Why the Trump campaign agreed to do this debate on ABC, I simply don’t understand. Because It’s the worst, it’s the absolute worst network. The question is can David Muir be fair, tough, and even-handed in the debate?
I’ll give you an example of how easy it is to do it. Everyone is focused on immigration right now. If I were David Muir, I would turn to Donald Trump and say, “President Trump, you have advocated returning illegals back to Mexico. Explain yourself.” And when he did, turn to Kamala Harris and say “Vice President Harris, what’s your response to that?”. Then turn to Vice President Harris and say “You’ve advocated de-criminalizing people crossing the border illegally, explain yourself.” Then turn to Donald Trump and say “President Trump, respond.” Now this is just very simple and that would be a fantastic debate if they were to do it that way. Unfortunately, if past is prologue, it’s not going to happen.
Then Varney posited: “You can skew the debate by the issues you choose. I’d expect ABC tonight to skew heavily in favor of abortion. Several abortion questions because they think that’s a strong suit of Kamala Harris and skew the debate like that.”
Bozell responded that abortion is not an issue that most Americans care about (or prioritize), compared to other radical stands Harris has taken we found in our MRC poll of Biden voters, both Democrats and independents:
Of course, Graham amd Bozell are not going to concede that Noyes’ study is completely bogus, or that “our MRC poll of Biden voters” was conducted by Trump’s own election pollster, McLaughlin & Associates — which raises legitimate questions about its accuracy and bias — and was a push poll that raises questions about the MRC’s adherence to the guidelines on political activity that govern its IRS nonprofit status.