The deception and omission of facts from NewsBusters is becoming so obvious these days that you can see it coming from a mile away.
In a November 11 posting, Scott Whitlock documents a segment on MSNBC’s Hardball with “unhinged” host Chris Matthews, who brought one guest in favor of the recent “right to work” legislation (being pushed in Michigan) and one not in favor. Apparently, the host was so rude that he “berated” the guest in favor of RTW by asking a simple question that wasn’t being answered (emphasis theirs):
An unhinged Chris Matthews on Tuesday berated a representative of Americans for Prosperity with the same question 13 times. Talking to Scott Hagerstrom, the Hardball anchor didn’t seem to hear the answer, despite Hagerstrom repeating it over and over. Matthews fumed, “Well, who’s paying your salary?”
[…]
A calm Hagerstrom appeared on the show to discuss the just-passed right-to-work law in Mighican. He explained, “I work for Americans for Prosperity…This is about freedom for everybody.” Matthews repeated over and over: “Who’s paying your salary?…No, but who’s paying your salary to do it? Who’s paying your salary to do what you’re doing right now?…Who’s paying your– to do this today?”
Does Whitlock even wonder why the question is being asked, and/or why it’s being repeated? Knowing him, and his agenda as a partisan media critic, he purposely plays dumb enough (not a particularly tough task) to chalk up Matthews’ repeated questioning as not “hear[ing] the answer“. This ends up being a clever attempt at playing defense for the guest, Scott Hagerstrom, a representative of Americans for Prosperity, which is a front group pretending to be a grassroots organization in support of workers rights, among other radical initiatives.
In reality, what Whitlock (and Hagerstrom) doesn’t want people to know is that AFP is funded by the highly-influential and corporate friendly David and Charles Koch, who are known as the Koch Brothers. This is precisely the point Matthews was trying to get Hagerstrom to admit, for the curiosity of his viewers, and the exact reason why he repeatedly asked the question of who pays Hagerstrom’s salary. I guess that subtle cue went over Whitlock’s empty head. If anything, Matthews was going easy on Hagerstrom by not flat out saying that the billionaire brothers are the ones lining his pockets, seeing as it is a well known fact.
As for the literal impact in political advocacy the Koch Brothers have, Slate’s Dave Weigel put it bluntly in an article earlier this year, when he said AFP is “one of the most powerful conservative organizations in electoral politics“.
Going into the subject of what was discussed in the segment (just for those of you not caught up on recent events), the legislation of “right to work” has made its way into the political landscape, again. The law has already been passed in 23 states, and today the 24th state followed suit. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, a Republican, who on countless occasions previously stated that the RTW legislation is divisive, suddenly, swiftly and secretly decided to sign the bill into law after it was passed in a lame duck congress, which had lost its Republican majority in both houses in the election last month.
That brings me to two things which are fascinating here: First, the Republicans in the states’ legislature decided to pass a bill so quickly out of the blue, fittingly right after losing their legislative majority no less… and second, the rhetoric of a Governor on one single issue had changed so drastically before he could even finish the first half of his first term. If that doesn’t raise someone’s radar in showing political opportunism, I don’t know what does.
But, I’m sure the Governor and Republicans would say that both occurrences are pure coincidence.
It’s also convenient how the video displayed on the NewsBusters article edits out all the questions asked of the President for the United Auto Workers (UAW), Bob King, who is against the “right to work” legislation. If you watch the full segment, you would see how Matthews actually kicks things off by asking him three pressing questions, starting with, 1)”why should a worker be forced to join a union?“, which he then proceeds to interrupt Mr. King mid-sentence (seemingly unsatisfied with the response) to ask 2)”in other words, you have to pay the equivalent of the dues even if you’re not a member of the union, right? you’re forced to do it in order to work.“, following up by asking, once again, 3)”why should you be forced to pay the equivalent of union dues in order to work?”
But, of course, Whitlock had to leave all of that out to try and paint Matthews as only repeating his questions to one side, when the video shows he did so with both sides, and actually started off the other guest with challenging questions. But come on, who needs context when you can easily edit the video? That’s something Whitlock and his crew have mastered at MRC/NewsBusters. If you don’t believe that, proof of his pathological editing is made clear when he went through the great effort of posting a well-appreciated “partial transcript” (his own words), which in translation basically shows that he only wants to post what he knows will be red meat for the readers to complain about being “liberal bias“. It’s possible that the readers of the article didn’t even know that Matthews asked tough questions of Hagerstrom’s counterpart, Mr. King.
To his credit, Whitlock did post a transcript from one part (of several parts) of the interview where the Koch Brothers are mentioned in an exchange, but avoided emphasizing this in bold. Again, I’m sure that wasn’t meant to happen.
Just to put the icing on the cake, host of “The Young Turks“, Cenk Uygur, brilliantly details the “right to work” law, how it has become such a wet dream for conservative and Republican lawmakers and how they have been able to leave it under the radar, then eventually passing it while having large majorities in the state legislatures.
None of these facts (or any other relevant facts) about legislation like this are of any concern to the great media researchers at NewsBusters, though. No, their concern is counting how many times the host of a program asks a question, ignoring to address why the question is being asked so many times, and why the guest won’t answer accordingly. Without doing this, they continue to accept the dumbing down of their already dumb readership.
We all know Scott Whitlock is an expert in that department, which is probably why he wrote this article in the first place.
