The Media Research Center is not terribly interested in the truth — not when it doesn’t conform to its right-wing agenda, anyway.
In a Nov. 15 NewsBusters post, the MRC’s Scott Whitlock huffs that TV networks “have yet to investigate Barack Obama’s arrogant assertion that America has gotten ‘lazy’ in regard to foreign investments.” In a Nov. 16 MRC item, Kyle Drennen asserted that President Obama “call[ed] America ‘lazy'” in a speech, then criticized an NBC reporter for having “dismissed the gaffe.” Geoffrey Dickens followed up the next day by lamenting that Obama’s “‘lazy’ gaffe” received “grand total of just 36 seconds on the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) morning and evening news shows.”
Just one little problem: Obama didn’t call Americans “lazy.” As FactCheck.org details in reporting the full statement Obama made: “Obama didn’t call you lazy. He said the U.S. has gotten lazy about promoting and attracting new business to America. In fact, he called you ‘outstanding U.S. workers.'”
The MRC’s Matt Hadro mostly gets it right in a Nov. 18 NewsBusters post referencing “President Obama’s statement that Americans have ‘been a little bit lazy’ in getting foreign investors to come to America,” but tries to twist things anyway after it was discussed on CNN: “What [CNN’s Erin] Burnett did not admit was that President Obama was still tossing blame at certain Americans for a slow economy which could doom his re-election bid in 2012.”
When the facts don’t fit the agenda, the MRC must twist them. That’s a partisan political operation, not “media criticism.”