Media Research Center

Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center is very, very, very angry at the media’s coverage of the Supreme Court’s marriage cases. In fact, he is so angry that he is accusing the media of pushing “full-blown fascist propaganda.”

After calling the comedy The New Normal a “propaganda show,” Gainor told the American Family Association’s news service that the media “are going to have almost no voices [from the other side] because they don’t believe that anybody should have a right to think otherwise.”

Dan Gainor, vice president of business and culture for MRC, said from the Post to the big three broadcast networks, the mainstream media is actively lobbying the American public.

“They even talk about the media component, how the media have propagandized our ‘media culture,’ in the words of [NBC news anchor] Brian Williams,” notes Gainor. “So they talk about it and they show Ellen DeGeneres, they show Modern Family clips, they show Will & Grace. They show a very tiny snippet The New Normal, which conveniently is NBC’s propaganda show.”

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And Gainor tells American Family News that NBC has been the biggest violator of pushing its own gay agenda, citing its report that he says was “filled with images of TV’s gay icons.”

“That’s their strategy,” he remarks. “They’re going to have almost no voices [from the other side] because they don’t believe that anybody should have a right to think otherwise. It’s beyond bias; it’s actually I would even say beyond censorship. It is full-blown fascist propaganda.”

The MRC spokesman says while the Supreme Court may not be able to come to an agreement, the elite media has determined the issue to already be decided.

Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell appeared on The Janet Mefferd Show to discuss the demands he made alongside other conservative activists, including Marjorie Dannenfelser, Alfred Regnery, Richard Viguerie, Jeff Bell and Jenny Beth Martin, for Republican leaders in Congress to step down after their election defeats. According to Bozell and others, the GOP suffered humiliating losses because the party wasn’t conservative enough. He told Mefferd that figures calling on House Speaker John Boehner to compromise with President Obama are really asking Republicans to “surrender our principles” and that Obama should be the one who should succumb to the Republican position. “Why isn’t he compromising with us?” Bozell asked, “We have a larger vote than he received.”

Listen:

We have to surrender our principles, what they’re saying is: John Boehner, surrender that which got you elected, that which brought you to Washington, the beliefs of the people who voted you in, surrender them. No, why not say, wait a minute, we’re the ‘people’s House,’ we are on par with the President of the United States according to the Constitution, why isn’t he compromising with us? We have a larger vote than he received. He has no mandate on this, he got eight million votes less than he got last time.

Unfortunately for Bozell, President Obama received over 62,608,181 votes while just 53,402,643 votes were cast for Republican House candidates. In fact, Democratic House candidates garnered 53,952,240 votes, about a half a million more votes than their Republican counterparts, who heavily benefited from gerrymandering.

Yesterday during In The Market, Dan Gainor of the right-wing Media Research Center and host Janet Parshall are the latest conservative activists to deny their movement’s history of supporting boycotts in order to attack gay rights groups protesting Chick-fil-A, agreeing that “conservatives generally are against boycotts” while freedom-hating liberals just can’t help themselves:

Gainor: This is a line in the sand for everybody listening, for every American right now: what country do we want to have, do we want to have people just say ‘well I don’t like what you believe so we’re going to destroy your business’?

Parshall: Exactly. Dan let me pick up on that point because I think it’s a great one. Paradoxically, in the midst of this brouhaha with Chick-fil-A comes the announcement that Amazon.com CEO and his wife give $2.5 million to Washington state for the same-sex marriage battle going on there. I tell you what, I get an awful lot of press releases all day long and I’m still waiting, I have yet to hear a Christian group that’s saying we’re going to boycott Amazon.com because their founder and CEO has decided to make a multimillion dollar contribution to battle against something that I happen to hold dear and believe in. So this tactic, unfortunately, seems to be one sided, one the one hand I guess I can understand it, and on the other hand, it’s just not the way Christians behave in the marketplace.

Gainor: Conservatives generally are against boycotts. We’ll boycott occasionally for something that’s really extreme. But we accept that people have different values and different opinions, that’s called democracy, we tend to like that and like our Constitution and like our freedom of speech.

Parshall: I couldn’t agree more.

Huh, that’s odd since the National Organization for Marriage is boycotting Starbucks and General Mills, and the American Family Association and the Catholic League are boycotting countless companies. In fact, the AFA’s One Million Moms has said “so long Amazon.”

Concerned Women for America, Parshall’s former employer which recently urged shoppers to stop shopping at Macy’s and once endorsed a boycott of Disney, just today sent an email to members warning them about shopping at…Amazon.com! While they claimed that the group “does not participate in boycotts,” they suggested members shop at their website instead of Amazon.com due to their CEO’s pro-gay rights contribution:

Now Amazon.com Founder and President Jeff Bezos is wading into the moral morass by offering 2.5 million investor dollars (unlike Amazon.com, Chick-fil-A is privately owned) to same-sex "marriage" advocates in Washington state in retaliation for the Cathy's religious stance. (We're also taking it personally, as Maureen Richardson, State Director for CWA of Washington, has fought like a lioness against the efforts of liberal legislators to redefine marriage.)

Concerned Women for America (CWA) is supporting the Chick-fil-A Day of Appreciation on August 1, 2012, in defense of a Christian family that is being absolutely excoriated by the mainstream media, public officials, private companies, and irate liberals for honoring their faith.

While CWA does not participate in boycotts, we understand that the brazen, politically correct move of Amazon.com's founder and president may trouble some of our members and supporters. If you feel uneasy shopping at Amazon.com, we would like to take this opportunity to remind you that our own store, www.shopcwfa.org, carries over 170,000 Christian titles, and part of every purchase goes back to CWA so we can continue to be your voice on Capitol Hill and in the culture.

Gainor’s MRC promoted boycotts against McDonalds and Ford that were organized by anti-gay groups, denouncing journalists for not giving them enough attention, and MRC head Brent Bozell lauded the Southern Baptists Convention’s boycott against Disney as the “correct” decision:

The Mouse answered with a spit in the face. The Disney-owned production company Touchstone, along with Disney-owned ABC television, brought America the most hyped, high-profile homosexual happening in entertainment history: "Ellen." To no one's surprise, on June 18 the 1997 SBC overwhelmingly voted to undertake an all-out boycott of Disney and its subsidiaries.

Bozell also said that boycotts are an important tool for pressure groups and commended groups like CWA for joining the cause:

It certainly grew on August 27 when Dr. James Dobson announced that his organization, Focus on the Family, would join the SBC, the Catholic League, Concerned Women for America (CWA), the American Family Association (AFA), and several smaller groups. The SBC claims 16 million members; Focus on the Family four million; the Catholic League, the AFA, and CWA several hundred thousand each. Add those numbers up and you've got an awful lot of parents whose entertainment dollars have bought a lot of Disney products for their children.

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A Disney executive has said his company thinks of the boycott as analogous to "a gnat on an elephant." But remember this: gnats are persistent, and if you've ever been plagued by a cloud of them, you know you'll do almost anything to make them leave you alone. If the boycott reaches gnat-cloud proportions - which it probably will given the tenacity of the boycott's leaders - Michael Eisner, et al, will want to shoo it away, and fast. The good news is that Disney can do so simply by returning to the family-friendly product that won it a special place in American cultural history.

But forget all that, conservatives don’t boycott!

Media Research Center’s Tim Graham talked to Janet Mefferd yesterday where he claimed that opponents of same-sex marriage can’t get on TV, a point which he then undercut when he admitted that anti-gay activists like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Harry Jackson actually made the rounds on TV to respond to President Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality. Graham called Obama’s announcement a “tragic,” “dark” and “depressing moment” for America, and declared that he “would like to see what would happen” if pastors like Jackson could speak about same-sex marriage during interviews just as “he does at his church”:

Graham: I think for a lot of people Obama saying, ‘I think this should be the way it is in America,’ was really a tragic moment for the country, it was a very dark moment, a very depressing moment. Those people, like me, who have that opinion, try getting on television!

Mefferd: That’s what I was going to ask you, as you were surveying the landscape of the media over the weekend and since the President made this stand on his new evolution, which was really an old evolution that he brought out again, did you see many conservatives or many people who were in favor only of traditional marriage getting a say so on TV?

Graham: A little bit, I mean the most prominent one of course has been Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, and he has made the rounds a bit, I think some of the best things he said is again, in a political context they’re not really having a moral discussion, the media wants to discuss this in political terms. I think the hard thing for people to do, I saw Bishop Harry Jackson on News Hour on PBS, he doesn’t really do in the studio what he does at his church. He doesn’t reach for the Bible, he doesn’t make a testimony, I think people get intimidated saying ‘I’m here in this secular place and I’m going to say secular things.’ I just wonder, I would like to see what would happen, if you try to engage these people, because you have to explain this is where the opposition comes, it’s from a religious, traditional point of view.

Graham may be on to something, as TV interviews might be much more candid and exhilarating if Harry Jackson told the hosts at PBS or MSNBC that demonic forces, specifically the Queen of Heaven, are responsible for gay rights, just as he preaches in church:

Or if Perkins went on CNN or Fox News and said gays are “held captive by The Enemy”:

Tim Graham, the Media Research Center’s Director of Media Analysis, appeared on Truth in Action Ministries’ flagship radio program Truth that Transforms today, where along with host Carmen Pate, he railed against the media for not giving more attention to “ex-gay” activists or promoting the “idea that someone can change, that someone can choose their sexuality.” Later in the interview, he twisted the recent statements of actress Cynthia Nixon, who said that while the way she identifies herself is a choice her sexual orientation is bisexual. Graham also criticized Glee and The Voice for “promoting the gay lifestyle” and accused the media of trying to “constantly exclude the conservative view on marriage,” which is par for the course for the MRC, which has a long record of attacking “gay propaganda” on shows like Glee and defending “reparative” therapy.

Pate: I think about the debate on marriage when you see the major news media talk about the issue they only present one side, they very seldom if ever talk to former homosexuals, people who left the lifestyle who are now enjoying heterosexual marriage. You don’t hear that side of it, you only hear one side, so that leaves the audience thinking there is no other side and that does change opinions over a time period when the truth is silenced.

Graham: I think the narrative they’ve tried to establish, and one of the reasons why they constantly exclude the conservative view on marriage, is that they want to present this as all historically inevitable, basically it’s already happened, let’s move on, why are we even discussing this anymore, it’s all done, there’s no need for debate, it’s over. What’s really intriguing, as long as we’re talking about the broadcast networks, is most of the news media coverage of this issue now will say, of course this is going to happen because you can see it on Glee, you can see it last night on The Voice, you can see it on all these television programs that are promoting the gay lifestyle. They’re using Hollywood and New York promoting these things as a reason for why this is going to happen and there’s no reason, just surrender, there is no way this is going to lose. It’s not just bias, it really becomes intimidation, you better come around to this point of view. And you’re absolutely right, one of the things that is so wildly controversial that you can’t even discuss it on television is the idea that someone can change, that someone can choose their sexuality.

CNSNews’ Penny Starr caused an uproar in 2010 when she published a story titled, “Smithsonian Christmas-Season Exhibit Features Ant-Covered Jesus, Naked Brothers Kissing, Genitalia, and Ellen DeGeneres Grabbing Her Breasts.” Starr’s story, a breathless review of a groundbreaking National Portrait Gallery exhibit on the gay and lesbian experience in American art, started a textbook case of the right-wing controversy machine, ultimately resulting in the Smithsonian’s removal of a work from the exhibit.

Apparently encouraged by last Christmas’s triumph, Starr is at it again. Her new target: a National Portrait Gallery exhibit on Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. That the Smithsonian would twice in a row acknowledge the existence of gay people during the winter months is too much for Starr:

For the second year in a row, the federally funded National Portrait Gallery (NPG), a part of the Smithsonian Institution, held an exposition during the Christmas season focused on the homosexual lifestyle.

“Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories,” an exhibition appearing at the NPG from Oct. 14, 2011 through Jan. 22, 2012, focuses on lesbian activist and writer Gertrude Stein.

The exhibit, set up in five rooms at the taxpayer-funded museum, highlights Stein’s lesbian relationship with Alice B. Toklas and Stein’s “second family” of homosexual men, some of whom collaborated with Stein on various projects.

On the wall at the entrance to the exhibit, Stein is described as “one of America’s most famous writers.” It gives brief descriptions of each of the five stories, including “Domestic Stein,” which “looks at the lesbian partnership of Stein and Alice B. Toklas, focusing on their distinctive dress, home décor, hospitality, food and pets.” The “Art of Friendship,” the introduction says, “explores Stein's relationships and collaborations after World War I with the neoromantics, a circle of international artists who were young, male, and gay.”
 

Last week, the Culture and Media Institute released a report entitled "Baptism by Fire" which complained that media outlets were covering the faith issues as they relate to the Republican primary battle in a different manner then it was covered during the Democratic primary battle in 2008:

With the 2012 elections less than a year away, the liberal media are attacking President Obama's potential opponents on a number of fronts, but especially on religion.

ABC, CBS and NBC have used religion in two ways, either painting the field of GOP primary challengers as a God Squad of religious zealots or playing up differences in their faith. Whether they're letting viewers know that "Rick Perry's gonna have to answer some questions about the people" he prays with, fretting that God "told Michele Bachmann," to enter politics, or devoting no less than 40 segments to the question of whether Mormonism is "a cult" or if "Mitt Romney is a Christian," the networks have repeatedly used faith against the GOP field.

Media preoccupation with the GOP candidates' faith is the exact opposite of how they covered (or didn't) candidate Obama's 20-year attendance at the church of a racist, anti-American pastor who subscribed to "black liberation theology," or Obama's half-Muslim heritage.

The Media Research Center's Culture and Media Institute studied network news reporting on the GOP candidates and religion from Jan. 1-Oct. 31, 2011, and compared it to coverage of the Democratic presidential primary candidates over the same period in 2007. The discrepancy, in both the amount and tone of the coverage, was striking. Network reporters, so disinterested in the beliefs of Obama and his rivals for the 2008 nomination, took every opportunity to inject religion into their coverage of the GOP field.

The obvious response to this allegation would be to point out that the media probably writes a lot more about the faith of Republican candidates because Republicans candidates regularly use their faith as part of their campaigns.

After all, Rick Perry just released two ads about his faith and organized a massive public prayer rally earlier this year, while Michele Bachmann was just on James Dobson's radio program talking about the importance of a "biblical worldview."  For his part, Newt Gingrich regularly uses his faith as part of his campaign while Mitt Romeny's Mormonism continues to be an issue to various Religious Right activists.  In fact, just last month, most of the Republican contenders gathered for a "Thanksgiving Family Forum" hosted by several Religious Right groups where they spent several hours discussing nothing but their faith.

So the reason the press writes more about the faith of Republican candidates probably has a lot to do with the fact that Republican candidates make faith a large part of their campaigns ... but admitting that would pretty much undermine the entire premise of CMI's report, which is why, when CMI's Matt Philbin was on The Janet Mefferd Program yesterday and she raised this rather obvious point, he struggled to explain that it was still a double standard because Democrats are "supposedly" just as religious as Republicans:

Mefferd: Now I wonder if that fact that you have a number of GOP hopefuls who are very, you know, open about their faith - you have Michele Bachmann, you have Rick Perry, you have Herman Cain (you have Herman Cain,) you have Mitt Romney - could it be construed that faith is more of an issue in this election because they are more candidates talking about it?

Philbin: Well, in any GOP primary battle, they do talk about it more, certainly, then Democrats do. In Iowa, they're going to evangelical conservatives and they certainly are not going to be reticent about their faith. But the problem is that the Democrats are, supposedly, just as religious, they have a need to appeal to almost the very same people, so for the networks not to cover the religion of the Democrats while they are covering the religion of the Republicans is a strange double standard.

One of CMI's recommendations in this report is that "reporters should refrain from injecting religion where it doesn't belong" ... but apparently reporters should also be writing a lot about the faith views of Democratic candidates even if those views tend not to play nearly as prominent a role in their campaigns as compared to Republicans. 

Conservative activists continue to vehemently attack Chaz Bono and ABC over Bono’s upcoming appearance on Dancing With The Stars. Both Bono, a transgender man who has completed female-to-male gender transition surgery, and Carson Kressley, who is openly gay, have been the subject of attacks from Religious Right activists who warn that the two are “LGBT rights advocates and promote this destructive lifestyle.”

Today, Media Research Center president Brent Bozell is out with a column slamming ABC for casting Bono and Kressley. Bozell charges that “the entire transgender propaganda movement is confused”, and says that nothing will ever make “make Bono a real male.” “Nowhere in any of this celebration is the hard reality,” Bozell writes, “Despite ‘his’ low voice, and his sideburns and his awful decision to amputate his own breasts, Bono remains a woman”:

If Chaz Bono were going to perform the entire season as a man, with no reference to "his" actual gender, then ABC wouldn't be offering that LGBT educational opportunity. It is why no one should have any doubt that Chaz Bono is going to be instructing America about the need to overcome their "transphobia" -- on the show and everywhere else.

On ABC's "Good Morning America" on Sept. 6, the network used the opposition of the American Family Association, AFA, as a foil to promote the show. "It's made me realize I'm really glad I'm doing this because America really needs to see this," Bono said. "You know, it just kind of shows why for me it's important to be on the show, because so little still is known about what it means to be transgender, and there's so many just completely inaccurate stereotypes and thoughts that people have."

Four days earlier, ABC put on gay publicist Howard Bragman to call the AFA a "hate group" inspiring "hate opinions on email" that are like "people writing on a bathroom wall." AFA may as well write on bathroom walls. It's not getting a lick of airtime on ABC.

This is Bono's year of media activism, complete with a book last spring called "Transition," promoted all over the news channels and with a promotional one-hour Oprah Winfrey Network special called "Becoming Chaz," hailed as the story of a "valiant struggle of a sensitive individual to become who he really is."

Nowhere in any of this celebration is the hard reality. Despite "his" low voice, and his sideburns and his awful decision to amputate his own breasts, Bono remains a woman. It's ridiculous for ABC to argue children won't be confused by this political-correctness crusade. The entire transgender propaganda movement is confused. Indeed, there is a new sexual category to go alongside G, L, B and T --"Q" for questioning.

ABC and the rest of the media universe can do all the pretending they want, but that's not going to make Bono a real male. It's not a completely inaccurate stereotype for people to say so. Silly, old-fashioned me; I'm stuck on human beings made as males and females.

Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center is complaining that former President George W. Bush should have more credit than Obama for killing Osama bin Laden because Bush wanted it more. In a column for MRC, Bozell lambasts Obama because he described his administration’s fruitful efforts to locate and kill bin Laden and for being “rude” by not hailing Bush. In a show of incredible partisanship, Bozell says that the news of bin Laden’s death would’ve been better if it occurred during Bush’s presidency rather than as a result of the Obama administration’s successful operation: “My one regret is that Bush 43 didn't get this scalp,” Bozell writes, “he deserved it more than anyone”:

Unfortunately, while the president spoke for the whole country in remembering the pain of 9/11, his remarks left a gaping hole. He made no generous bow to all the efforts of his predecessor George W. Bush as well as his team. My one regret is that Bush 43 didn't get this scalp. He deserved it more than anyone.

Instead, Obama played subtle and wholly undignified games. He underlined that Osama had “avoided capture” under Bush and “continued to operate” during his tenure. But “I directed” CIA director Leon Panetta to make getting Osama the “top priority” (as opposed to?), and “I” gave the go-ahead to the final mission. Obama also avoided Bush in a Medal of Honor ceremony on Monday afternoon. Even in a Monday night “bipartisan” event at the White House, Obama honored the “military and counter-terrorism professionals” and “the members of Congress from both parties” who offered support to the mission....but no credit for Bush.

If the roles had been reversed, you know Bush would have been more generous. It’s what Bushes do.

What about our media? No one in the media wondered if Obama was being rude. No one seemed in any hurry to give Bush credit, either. In the media’s mind’s eye, Bush just doesn’t deserve it. They didn’t like him then, they don’t like him now.