The MRC vs. Oliver Darcy, Part 1
The Media Research Center really hated the media writer during his tenure at CNN -- and was even more incensed that he escaped the right-wing media bubble in the process.
On his personal Twitter account, Media Research Center writer Curtis Houck regularly smears media reporter Oliver Darcy as a “Benedict Arnold” of conservative media. Houck finally took his war against Darcy to the MRC itself, in an October 2019 post that begins by smearing Darcy as a “hack” in the headline and then attacks him as a “conservative media reporter-turned-liberal charlatan.” Later, Houck further rants his irrational disgust and contempt for Darcy:
For those of us in conservative media, it’s another reminder of how a man who was a Red Alert 30 Under 30 recipient and worked at Campus Reform and The Blaze now wakes up everyday trying to ruin the lives of the same kinds of people who gave him his start in politics.
All this, by the way, in a post complaining that Darcy reported on a battle between Joe Biden and the New York Times in which he had noted that “right-wing polemicist” Peter Schweitzer was “discredited” for pushing the bogus Hillary Clinton-Uranium One non-scandal. At no point does Houck offer any evidence to contradict Darcy here.
Back to Houck’s whining: So being conservative is a suicide pact, and nobody in the movement is allowed to leave or even question it and anyone who does is a “Benedict Arnold” for committing the offense of escaping the right-wing media bubble? We had no idea.
This kind of ultra-rigid thinking is all too common in the conservative movement and particularly at the MRC where, we assume, nobody is allowed to question the great Brent Bozell. (Example: After Matthew Sheffield, who co-created the NewsBusters blog for the MRC, left the organization and began to speak about how the MRC cares more about raising money and pushing an ideological anti-media narrative instead of actually trying to fix media to make it more conservative-friendly, Bozell denounced him as “a repugnant human being.”)
Houck is simply following in Bozell’s footsteps by making the personal political; remember, he’s also the MRC’s basher-in-chief of CNN’s Jim Acosta. Either he hasn’t figured out that petty, juvenile insults of people he personally despises are not the same thing as substantive “media research” — or the MRC has indoctrinated him to believe that they are.
Houck raged at Darcy again in a May 2020 post:
Former conservative media writer-turned-CNN media quack Oliver Darcy pinch hit Wednesday night for Brian Stelter in the daily media newsletter and, predictably, it was dominated by his deep hatred for Fox News.
Even worse, Darcy’s falsely claimed that Fox News “largely ignored the virus in the afternoon and into its primetime programming” due to the declassified unmasking list on Michael Flynn. FNC devoted over two hours of programming to the virus since the list came out, but facts were in short supply for the #FactsFirst network.
Darcy’s lead headline set the table: “Fox dumps virus coverage for conspiracy.” In other words, Darcy showcased CNN’s despicable attempts to shame any and all news outlets who go about their news gathering and presentation differently than Zuckerville.
Read: CNN is not as biased like Fox News.
More attacks on Darcy
Houck isn’t the only MRC writer to go on Darcy-bashing sprees. In a July 2018 post, Ashley Rae Goldenberg bizarrely takes offense that Darcy asked Facebook executives why Infowars still has a presence on Facebook despite its current campaign to purge fake news. Goldenberg concedes that Infowars is “known to many for peddling extreme conspiracy theories,” but she never details that those claims are beyond offering a link detailing some of them.
Goldenberg then laughably accuses CNN of being no different than Infowars:
CNN’s complaint to Facebook cited three separate types of charges against InfoWars. Those included: items that were “demonstrably false”; “conspiracy theories”; and stories that have “smeared” news subjects. Here’s how CNN has run afoul of similar criticisms[.]”
Regarding “demonstrably false” stories, Goldenberg cited only two: a story CNN later retracted and that “CNN perpetuated the false “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown.” For “conspiracy theoires,” Goldenberg cited idle speculation in the immediate aftermath of big stories as facts were coming in.
Tim Graham and Brent Bozell huffed at Darcy in an October 2019 column:
CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy is warning the public about a “right-wing media machine” that has demonstrated “zero willingness to abide by any traditional rules of engagement.” That shameless “machine” opposing President Trump’s impeachment and removal is, of course, composed of Fox News, talk radio, conservative websites and an “army of trolls” on the internet.
We’re all shameless manure spreaders in the eyes of CNN (and its shrinking band of die-hard fans). “The next few months will test the power of this right-wing media machine,” Darcy says. “To succeed, it will not only have to suspend reality for its audience, but also feed the millions who watch, listen, and read a counter-narrative to fill actuality’s void.” Trump’s survival depends on this reality-denying machine, Darcy insists: “If Trump sees support on Fox or talk radio erode, it would help shift the tide and give Republicans wiggle room to turn on him.”
Darcy, who graduated from college in 2011, is perhaps young enough to have no idea what the left-wing media machine — especially CNN — did to protect and defend Clinton, his lying in court under oath, his lying to the public about his affair with “that woman, Miss Lewinsky” and his attempts to instruct others to lie on his behalf. At a recent panel discussion in New York, Darcy’s colleague Brian Stelter yelled that Clinton “was crushed by the media,” just “destroyed by the press corps!”
Wolf Blitzer should really take these youngsters out to lunch and tell them how CNN fiercely smeared Clinton’s opponents and denounced itself for having reported anything about Clinton’s scandalous behavior.
At no point do Graham and Bozell actually address what Darcy said, let alone rebut the claim of a “right-wing media machine” or admit he’s a major part of it. Indeed, their MRC has been engaging in machine tactics by aggressively defending Trump in the face of an impeachment inquiry, even embracing conspiracy theories in the process. It’s also so eager to make money off defending Trump that it’s boldly proclaiming that the facts don’t matter.
Instead, they play whataboutism, cherry-picking anecdotes about what the claim the media allegedly did in 1998 during President Clinton’s impeachment. One typically lame retort: “Clinton wasn’t indecent; the media were. In the Trump era, CNN insists this president is a morally unfit tyrant and the media are the heroic enforcers of fact, oozing integrity in every article and interview.”
Graham and Bozell then unironically write: “It’s easy to portray your opponent as operating a nefarious ‘media machine.’ It’s easy to say your opponent is ‘weaponizing’ information or specializes in ‘disinformation.’” Instead, that statement leads to a rant that “nobody should put up with the leftist media’s duplicity.”
But Bozell and Graham never explain why anyone should have to put up with theirs.
Graham took his own shot at Darcy, as well as his once-and-future CNN media guy Brian Stelter, which the MRC has its own derangement syndrome over, in a July 2020 post:
David Rutz at the Washington Free Beacon took the time to confirm what everyone conservative could suspect: CNN’s Media Unit obsesses over conservative or “far-right” media, and defends the left-wing press as somehow non-ideological.
[…]
Stelter defended this result by telling Rutz that “Right-wing media plays an outsized role in our politics and society. It is the most important story on the media beat right now.”
That’s preposterous. Fox News is an outlier in a sea of Democrat-enabling media, but that makes them “outsized” only in the sense that there’s any pushback on a tremendously hostile media establishment. The Left seems outraged that anyone dares to define “news” differently than they do, and refuses to bury stories or narratives they want buried.
Darcy also defended their approach. “The president of the United States watches large volumes of right-wing media, hires people from right-wing media, and seeks out the advice of personalities in right-wing media,” he argued. “Ignoring this—or covering it through a bothsidesism lens—would be doing a disservice to our audience.”
Obviously, the CNN audience defines “service” as defeating the conservatives.
Graham lashed out at Darcy again in a September 2020 post:
Curtis Houck demonstrated that CNN put on a transparently friendly “town hall” event with Joe Biden last night. They placed it in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which Biden always touts as his birthplace, the source of his “working class roots.” The questions slanted dramatically toward self-identified Democrats. At least there wasn’t a fraudulent talk of “uncommitted voters” who sound exactly like Democrats (as in ABC on Tuesday)
About two hours after the event, Oliver Darcy put out the company talking points in CNN’s “Reliable Sources” email newsletter, touting it as “A town hall like no other.” This is because they held it in the parking lot of a minor-league ballpark, drive-in-movie-style. Darcy didn’t note Biden was enthusiastically applauded when he came on screen, and in the middle of some answers at the event. This felt like a Democrat campaign stop.
But Darcy dismissed any notion of liberal favoritism toward Biden as ludicrous, because Trump is America’s greatest liar[.]
Graham did not attempt to disprove that notion — perhaps because he knows how much of a liar Trump is.
Graham used a July 2021 post to grouse some more at Darcy:
When CNN’s Oliver Darcy takes the wheel of their “Reliable Sources” newsletter, it seems to begin with a raging editorial. On Friday night, it came under the headline “How Fox race baits.”That’s interesting. This came about 24 hours after CNN’s Don Lemon suggested to President Biden the Republicans wanted to make black voters count jelly beans before they could vote.
Darcy’s theory was Tucker Carlson wasn’t the only horrible race baiter at Fox:
Graham didn’t prove that idea wrong; instead he whined that “Darcy used the Left’s official leading Fox-banning organization to claim Fox was over-covering critical race theory in our schools.” He further huffed:
Naturally, Darcy also pointed out Fox’s audience is overwhelmingly Caucasian: “When watching Fox, it’s worth remembering that most of its audience is made up of one racial group. White people made up 94% of Carlson’s audience from January 1 to July 7. Only 2% were Black. For comparison, over the same six-month period, CNN’s 8 p.m. hour had an audience that was 25% Black and the audience for MSNBC’s 8 p.m. hour was 27% Black. Both of those audiences were 66% White.”
Again, no factual dispute from Graham. He spent an October 2021 post being mad that Darcy pointed out Fox News’ obvious right-wing bias:
Oliver Darcy of CNN’s Media Unit attempted to tattle on Fox News Channel in their so-called “Reliable Sources” newsletter on Tuesday night. His headline was “Guess which network didn’t carry the 1/6 proceedings.” Oh horrors, “over on Fox, the channel whose top host has mocked the very fact there was an insurrection on January 6, coverage was nowhere to be found.”
CNN complains whenever Fox doesn’t do everything the way CNN would.
A network asks what will their viewers watch? What will their viewers tune out? Fox News executives know that a very stilted Democrat committee is not their audience’s cup of tea. That committee is all Democrats, plus Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. In other words, it’s unanimously out to get Trump. There’s no balance from a pro-Trump Republican inside this committee. Surely, CNN and MSNBC will suffice.
Isn’t Graham complaining that CNN doesn’t do everything CNN would? Seems a bit hypocritial of him. Graham grumbled further:
Then, Darcy was back in Thursday night’s newsletter complaining about Fox. This time, it was covering a Merrick Garland hearing too much. And CNN couldn’t be blamed for skipping it.
This time, the headline was “Garland hearing shows the power of Fox.” He complained “The right-wing network took large portions of Garland’s testimony before the House and much of it featured Republicans grilling the AG on the topic. Frankly, it was like a Fox News fanfic.” It was fictional?
Again, Graham didn’t dispute the accuracy of Darcy’s observation.
Nicholas Fondacaro called Darcy the “henchman” of Stelter in a January 2022 post after they pointed out Fox News’ obsession with violent crime, which Fondacaro framed as “reporting on the fact that violent and other forms of crime were on the rise throughout President Biden’s America.”
Graham groused that Darcy defended the New York Times from a malicious right-wing sting oeration in a March 2022 post:
When Project Veritas released an embarrassing sting video displaying New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg denouncing the “woke” youngsters at his newspaper and talking about which reporters are terrible writers, CNN’s Oliver Darcy knew just how to handle it. He wrote a story defending the liberal paper on Friday headlined:
Right-wing group targets New York Times reporters who have aggressively reported on its spy tactics
As usual, the political battle is between right-wingers and those non-ideological nonpartisans.
Graham served up yet more Darcy-bashing in his podcast the next day:
As the news turns dark under Joe Biden, CNN’s Media Unit of Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy are aggressively spinning in defense of the liberals. Darcy cannot stand the Project Veritas expose of The New York Times, describing it on CNN.com as a right-wing “harassment and intimidation campaign.” They can never imagine that anyone on the wrong side of a New York Times attack might feel they’re targets of a left-wing “harassment and intimidation campaign.”
On his Sunday show, Stelter claimed conservative media outlets like Fox are “exaggerating” terrible gas prices, as if CNN didn’t spend the Trump years wildly exaggerating everything, like the kooky notion that Trump was comparable to murderous dictators and mass-suicide cult leaders. CNN can’t ignore the gas prices, but they must complain that it’s somehow totally unfair to blame Biden for this. They marshal “fact checkers” to blame everything but Biden for rising gas prices. They certainly can’t admit that their left-wing base wants to make fossil fuels so expensive that everyone flocks to “renewable” energy.
[…]
Notice one side is a “right-wing group” and the other side is “perceived liberals.” One side is conducting a “harassment and intimidation campaign” and the other side is “reporting extensively on the inner workings.” Obviously, the targets of negative Times reporting end up feeling like they’re facing a “harassment and intimidation campaign.”
Everything in this story had the working assumption that journalism equals liberalism, and conservative attempts at reporting on liberal media outlets are mere propaganda.
A partisan sting is not “reporting,” and neither are Graham’s kneejerk right-wing attacks on the Times.
Bashing Darcy to defend Musk
The MRC really doesn’t like it when non-right-wing media expose the manipulation Elon Musk is trying to do with his selectively released “Twitter files” to handpicked journalists, and Joseph Vazquez whined quite loudly in a December 2022 post when Darcy did exactly that by pointing out the fact that the FBI paid Twitter to fulfill document requests, not “censor” anyone:
CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy acted like a flunky for the FBI, throwing a conniption over Twitter owner Elon Musk’s revelations that the bureau paid the platform millions to “censor” Americans.
Darcy flailed in a Dec. 20 so-called “analysis” that Musk was “misleading the public — again.” He editorialized that “[t]he embattled billionaire, perhaps seeking to distract from the chaos he has wrought at his social media company, is making grossly misleading claims about Twitter and the FBI.” Darcy couldn’t handle Musk’s criticism that the FBI paying Twitter $3.4 million through a “reimbursement program” for staff time dedicated to “processing requests from the FBI” was related to censorship.
Darcy tried to portray Twitter as some kind of symbol of transparency. “Twitter’s guidelines for law enforcement, posted publicly on its website, openly disclose: ‘Twitter may seek reimbursement for costs associated with information produced pursuant to legal process and as permitted by law (e.g., under 18 U.S.C. §2706).’” This is the same platform that lied to the public about its shadowbanning.
Darcy painted himself as a legal savant by preaching how the “law” he cited effectively meant “the money Twitter collected had nothing to do with censoring anyone.” Rather, “The money was simply given as reimbursement for the processing of legal requests, similar to how a journalist might have to pay a fee for a government agency processing a Freedom of Information Act request.”
That Darcy managed to equate a journalist paying to get information from government via FOIA to government placing pressure on a Big Tech platform over gaining access to user data and processing “requests” on flagged accounts is appalling at worst and outright idiotic at best.
Vazquez is acting like a flunky for Musk by perpetuating a lie. Is that appalling or idiotic on his part? Also, there was nothing secret about its “shadowbanning” given that Twitter’s terms of service specifically state that it may “limit the distribution or visibility” of any content on its site. Still, Vazquez desperately clung to his lie, this time with added boldface:
Darcy called the $3.4 million “reimbursement” a typical feature of “mundane procedures” that companies exercise when working with government entities. [Emphasis added.]
Newsflash Darcy: The FBI wasn’t “simply” paying Twitter for acquiescing to “mundane” government “requests.” In fact, the FBI’s “requests” may have violated the First Amendment. Heritage Foundation Senior Legal Fellow Hans von Spakovksy told Fox News that “when a private company is censoring information based on direction, coordination and cooperation with the government, then legally it may be considered to be acting as an agent for the government, and it may be found to be violating the First Amendment.” [Emphasis added.] […]
The FBI should have never communicated with Twitter about private user data outside of standard legal procedures. Period.
Vazquez concluded by spewing more anger at Darcy for letting reality intrude on his right-wing pro-Musk narratives:
But Darcy injected his own definitions of “facts” and “information,” letting readers know he’s supposedly concerned about both of those things. “Facts be damned in the world we now live in. Musk’s claim [about the FBI paying Twitter for censorship] has absolutely saturated right-wing media,” Darcy wrote. “[T]he poisoning of that information well is also confusing others, who hear the nonsense and aren’t sure what to believe.”
Given Darcy’s sordid history of “poisoning” the “information well” with his ongoing leftist drivel, it’s unclear why anyone would take him seriously as a truth gatekeeper anyway. This is the same guy who flailed that Fox News as a network “works to cater to the fears of White America.” He would have us all believe that he’s a keyboard warrior for plebeians against misinformation, a self-aggrandizing image that is confusing others, who hear and read his nonsense and aren’t sure what to believe.
Vazquez made no effort to disprove Darcy’s assertion that Fox News “works to cater to the fears of White America.”