Apparently driven by envy at liberal groups like Media Matters for being effective in raising legitimate concerns about Fox News hosts like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity in a way that caused advertisers to flee their shows, the Media Research Center is now lashing out at TV hosts it doesn’t agree with.
In other words, a revenge campaign.
The MRC explains the plan in a name-calling May 31 post:
Media Research Center (MRC) President Brent Bozell today announced a new campaign that will focus on informing the American public and corporate advertisers about leftist shows and on-air personalities who use their programs to spread vicious lies and hate.
“We are putting the radical left on notice that we are on to them. We know the inside-outside game that radical organizations are playing with their leftist allies in the “news” media. The radical left’s effort to silence conservative media by targeting their advertisers with coordinated smear campaigns has gone unanswered, but today is the day the conservative movement fights back, but with a big difference: We’ll tell the truth. And we’ll take no prisoners.
“Every network and cable news channel is today on notice that the MRC will be closely monitoring their leftist opinion programs and informing their advertisers and the American public when these programs and hosts go beyond political commentary and engage in smear, hate and political extremism. The difference between our effort and what the left is engaged in is that we will demonstrate to the advertisers of these programs how the hosts of these shows are not simply engaged in disagreeable political discussion but rather outright hate and personal character assassination.
“Today we are putting ten shows, and their major corporate sponsors on notice that we are watching their every move. Additionally, we will be publicly listing the advertisers of these programs and asking them to defend their decision to continue airing ads on these shows. Every time one of their on-air personalities go beyond political commentary and engage in smear and hate, we are going to unleash an army of activists to contact these advertisers by phone and through social media to ask them why they are advertising on programs that are so biased, repulsive and morally bankrupt.”
But isn’t this kind of monitoring what the MRC’s job is supposed to have been for the past 30 years? Is the MRC admitting that it’s terrible at its job?
The MRC also whines about “smear campaigns” against conservative hosts, but it never explains how it is a “smear” to point out that O’Reilly paid millions of dollars to settle sexual harassment lawsuits, or that Hannity is peddling discredited conspiracy theories about a murder victim even after the victim’s family begged him to stop.
The fact that the MRC can’t even mention Seth Rich’s name while defending Hannity tells us just how cynical and spiteful this campaign is. It knows Hannity is being as repulsive and morally bankrupt as it claims liberal hosts are, but it will never admit that in public because Bozell’s buddies must be defended no matter how blatant the cynicism and hypocrisy in doing so.
Even the MRC’s target list is lame. The first show on the list is Al Sharpton’s MSNBC show, which got busted down from daily to weekly some time ago and the which MRC itself hasn’t written about in two months.
Bozell kept up the dishonesty in a June 1 appearance on (where else) Hannity’s Fox News show, where he touted his revenge campaign and once again complained about conservatives being smeared. Again, Bozell failed to explain how pointing out Hannity’s malicious conspiracy-mongering is a “smear.”
Unless Bozell and the MRC can resolve their hypocrisy in defending Hannity, this new revenge campaign will not be taken seriously — like the rest of the MRC.