The Media Research Center has long hated the Southern Poverty Law Center. For instance:
- An Oct. 6 post by Tom Olohan complained the Google “promote[d] the Southern Poverty Law Center’s far-left agitprop” on Stephen Miller “while he was fighting to secure a potentially historic peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians and engaged in a high-stakes battle to reopen the federal government.”
- Gabriela Pariseau whined in an Oct. 20 post that “Google elevated her ‘Extremist Files’ profile from SPLC’s website as the top search result, above the Libs of TikTok Wikipedia page” for information on right-wingers like Stephen Miller, Jack Posobiec or Chaya Raichik. Pariseau cited nothing that the SPLC got wrong, nor did she prove that any of these Trump supporters are not the “extremists,” “white supremacists” and “bigots” they have been claimed to be.
When President Trump’s Department of Justice indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center on various charges, — first celebrated with a CNSNews.com propaganda piece by Craig Bannister that refused to contact the SPLC for a response. This was followed by complaining that non-right-wing coverage of the indictment lacked a right-wing spin:
- OMISSION: The Networks Fall SILENT on the Indictment of the SPLC
- ABC’s ‘GMA’ Covers SPLC Indictment, Frets DOJ Targeting ‘Prominent Civil Rights’ Group
- NOT SO HARD: CBS Breaks the Ice, Offers Full Report on SPLC Indictment
- Without Details, MS NOW Condemns SPLC Indictment as Threat to Democracy
- Associated Press Frames SPLC Indictment as ‘Political Weapon’
- MS NOW Defends SPLC Indictment as Political, as it Airs Their Ads
Alex Christy groused about one of the MRC’s favorite targets in an April 22 post:
Former CBS reporter Scott MacFarlane hailed his departure from CBS for the liberals at MeidasTouch as a win for “independent journalism,” but when it came to discussing the Southern Poverty Law Center’s indictment on Wednesday’s show, he proved that “independent” really means “left-wing.”
Introducing a clip of SPLC interim President and CEO Bryan Fair, MacFarlane hailed the group, “Speaking of investigations, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group which has done work to try to break open and take down hate groups, says it is now the subject of an investigation by the Department of Justice. They spoke about it in a video they curated and posted earlier this week.”
[…]In the clip, MacFarlane wondered, “It’s really easy. I mean, really easy to look at the headlines and grow concerned about what you see coming out of the Department of Justice. If you’re somebody who’s concerned about the weaponization of government… you have today the Southern Poverty Law Center announcing they are the subject of a criminal investigation by the Department of Justice. They surmise it’s about them using informants and paying informants to help break into and expose hate groups.”
As hard as it may be for Fair and MacFarlane to understand, 99.9 percent of Americans do not need the SPLC to give money to have a Nazi informant in order to “expose” the fact that Nazis are bad.
Christy offered no proof that this, in fact, actually happened.
Joseph Vazquez huffed the same day:
Outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook’s resignation came at a funny time.
The Department of Justice announced April 21 that the leftist extremist Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted on multiple fraud charges for financing the very white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups it was claiming for years to be crusading against, to the tune of $3 million.
Following this, MRC Business recounted that Cook made a big, news-capturing stink to employees following the Charlottesville “Fine People Hoax” affair in 2017 that Apple was retaliating by donating $1 million into SPLC’s coffers. How does that look now? If our math is correct, that amounts to one-third of the funds SPLC is accused of having doled out on fraudulent grounds to extremist groups.
But the 2020 post to which Vazquez linked to prove that Charlottsville was a “hoax” doesn’t even mention the “fine people” statement that Trump made — and taken in full context, Trump arguably was defending white supremacists. Vazquez went on to whine that ” Apple already positioned itself as one of the wokest, anti-conservative enterprises in America today” and that Apple News didn’t run enough right-wing propaganda.
Bill D’Agostino grumbled in an April 23 post:
The April 21 indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) doesn’t just threaten a major organ of the left’s lawfare machine; it also puts in jeopardy one of the corporate news media’s favorite sources of activist data.
For decades, but particularly since the first Trump administration, the SPLC has enjoyed a perverse symbiotic relationship with the left-wing press. Their absurd “hate group” designations provided the media with ammunition against their right-wing targets, and the media in turn held up the SPLC as the gold standard of analysis and objectivity.
[…]Given the corporate press’s incessant, gullible (or perhaps cynical?) regurgitation of the SPLC’s assertions, this indictment draws into question a large chunk of their prior reporting. So far, most of the media have attempted to downplay or dismiss the allegations against their favorite shakedown outfit.
D’Agostino and the accompanying graphic called the SPLC “discredited,” but they offered nothing to substantiate the claim.