The MRC Plays Politics With A Tragedy

After a train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in Ohio, the Media Research Center blamed Pete Buttigieg for being gay, falsely accused the Biden administration of racism and even attacked ESG policies -- anything but calling out the railroad itself.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 5/24/2023

On February 3, East Palestine, Ohio was rocked by a train derailment carrying a host of toxic chemicals, leading to a five-day-long evacuation order for nearly 5,000 Ohio and Pennsylvania residents. Three days later, the rail operator triggered a controlled burn of the toxic chemicals to prevent an explosion and declared the operation a success.

But the fallout is far from over. There have been widespread reports of chickens and fish dying, new chemicals discovered, pets falling ill, and residents complaining< of health complications. Unfortunately, the liberal broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) have completely moved on from the story.

[...]

For the broadcast networks to revisit East Palestine now would be to admit that their prior abandonment of it was an error born out of laziness and a lack of curiosity.

Unfortunately for East Palestine, their demographics and location in a red-tilting state like Ohio make them a wholly unappetizing topic for the corporate liberal media. According to the latest breakdown, East Palestine is 93.5 percent white, three percent Hispanic, and only 0.36 percent black.

But at least not all of the TV news media lost interest so quickly. Along with CNN, the Fox News Channel, MSNBC, and NewsNation, even the taxpayer-funded leftists at PBS have had their priorities in order.

Houck and D'Agostino didn't explain why they and the MRC had totally ignored the derailment until now. The next day, however, the networks resumed coverage of the derailment, and Houck was desperate to claim credit:

On Tuesday, NewsBusters reported that the broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC had abandoned the environmental fallout from the February 3 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio on their flagship morning and evening shows with zero seconds on ABC and only a minute and 42 seconds on CBS and NBC after an evacuation order was lifted on February 8.

But since the study’s publication and public outcry about the threats posed to the community’s air, food, residents, and water supply, the liberal networks rediscovered the issue Wednesday morning for a combined six minutes and 42 seconds with Tuesday’s CBS Evening News having a 31-second brief.

Houck offered no evidence that the MRC had anything whatsoever with the networks resuming coverage of the story. Nevertheless, Tim Graham also hyped the lack of coverage in his Feb. 15 podcast.

Alex Christy spent a Feb. 16 post being mad at a late-night TV host for noting how train safety rules were rolled back during the Trump administration:

NBC Late Night host Seth Meyers has a theory on Wednesday as to why the train carrying toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio, derailed: Donald Trump. This theory was basically a retelling of the talking points being spouted off by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

During his “Closer Look” segment, Meyers declared, “And by the way, rail workers and their unions have been warning for years about deteriorating safety conditions and demanding better work standards. Instead, these massively profitable rail companies poured money into stock buybacks and dividends and lobbied for safety regulations to be repealed. For example, in 2018, the Trump Administration rolled back a train braking rule meant to keep oil tankers from exploding near communities. I mean, of [bleep] course he did.”

Christy then tried to give Trump a pass: "Rule or no rule, since 1990 there has been an average of 1,704 derailments per year." Which, of course, raises the question of why the MRC is so desperate to give this particular one coverage.

Indeed, Houck served up a Feb. 17 post complaining that the networks weren't giving sufficient coverage to the derailment, then going on to defend comparing coverage to that of Fox News:

Oftentimes, NewsBusters will point out a contrast between networks with the Fox News Channel on cable conveying the seriousness of a story either downplayed or ignored on the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC). In this case, take notice of how radically different two broadcast networks were in their framing compared to the third.

Houck is being dishonest. The actual reason the MRC does this is because Fox News is a leader is establishing right-wing narratives -- after all, it wouldn't cover a story if those narratives weren't served. The MRC can then use Fox News' coverage of that story as a cudgel to attack the "liberal media." That's how the right-wing media bubble works.

When the New York Times pointed out right-wingers' obsession with politicizing the derailment story for partisan purposes, Clay Waters complained in a Feb. 19 post:

Stuart Thompson, who patrols the “online information flows” beat for the New York Times, hit out at “right-wing” outlets for not trusting the Environmental Protection Agency’s response to the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio earlier this month that spewed the carcinogen vinyl chloride and resulted in evacuations for miles around. Thompson dismissed concerns, at least those by conservatives on Friday: “‘Chernobyl 2.0’? Feverish Speculation After Derailment, Fire and Toxic Smoke.”

Yes, the same paper trying to make you terrified of gas stoves is downplaying the crash of a train carrying toxic materials and criticizing those who question the federal response. And perhaps Thompson of all reporters shouldn’t jump too soon and immediately dismiss accusations as right-wing conspiracies?

[...]

The Times seemed more concerned about conservatives gaining traction against the Biden administration's response than the actual unfolding ecological disaster.

And the MRC is more concerned with exploiting a disaster for partisan gain than the disaster itself. Meanwhile, Christy lashed out at another late-night host while serving as an apologist for the rail company that caused the derailment:

CBS's The Late Show host Stephen Colbert admitted on Monday that he doesn’t know if deregulation and capitalism are to blame for the East Palestine train derailment, but that did not stop him from encouraging Sen. Bernie Sanders to use the situation to hype his book It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.

Starting the third segment with Sanders, Colbert proclaimed that, “There were some regulations that were put into place under the Obama Administration. They may or may not have had any effect in this case but they were definitely rolled back all during the Trump Administration, after heavy lobbying from Norfolk Southern and other railroads.”

Colbert does not appear to realize that he broke his own embargo on the word “Trump,” but more seriously, buried near the bottom of a fact-check of Occupy Democrats on the claim “Obama imposed stricter rules on trains carrying toxins. Trump killed them,” that PolitiFact declared “mostly true,” were two sentences that would suggest the opposite, “The Facebook post includes an image of the aftermath of the train derailment in Ohio. However, this rule, if it had remained in effect, would not have applied to that Norfolk Southern train as it was not categorized as ‘high-hazard.’”

Houck spent a Feb. 21 post complaining that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was not being personally blamed for causing the derailment:

The East Palestine, Ohio train derailment entered a new phase this week as the liberal media blamed Donald Trump for the toxic dump of hazardous chemicals into the air and water supply, and painted the semi-present Biden administration and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as heroes for this working-class town who’ll crack down on the train operator, Norfolk Southern, for any mishandling of the clean-up.

[...]

Among the critics last week, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) called for him to resign (which led to some pathetic spin from Buttigieg’s media allies), the area Congressman gave Buttigieg a failing grade, and many noted it took Buttigieg ten days to even comment on the derailment. Even the far-left magazine The Nation panned his response to the crisis.

But because Stephanopoulos gingerly went about presenting the blowback, Buttigieg ran out the clock by saying he “plan[s] to go and our folks were on the ground from the first hours” nd suggested his presence would interfere with an investigation into the derailment’s cause.

“[W]hen I go, the focus is going to be on action. Look, I was mayor of my hometown for eight years. We dealt with a lot of disasters, natural and human,” he stated, adding that he’d be a man of action and not someone “there to look good and have their picture taken.”

We thought right-wingers like Houck opposed government intervention in local matters. From there, it was more whining from Kevin Tober that Trump administration policies were called out as possible contributors to the disaster, followed by a gleeful post from Joseph Vazquez that PolitiFact (which the MRC normally despises for committing the offense of fact-checking conservatives) found that the Trump-era regulation rollback did not factor in the cause of the derailment, which "flies in the face of liberal media outlets infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome trying to use the deregulated 2015 Obama rule as a cudgel to wantonly blame Trump for the derailed train." Vazquez didn't explain why he found PolitiFact so trustworthy all of a sudden.

Mark Finkelstein, meanwhile, was annoyed that MSNBC's "Morning Joe" highlighted how Fox News defending President Biden for not immediately rushing to the scene of the derailment -- which is to day, it did what his co-worker Vazquez had done regarding PolitiFact:

Fox News is the network that Morning Joe loves to hate. Similar to the way the show will often refuse to even mention Donald Trump by name, referring to him only as "the former president," Morning Joe will often make a sneering reference to "certain networks," while obviously targeting Fox.

So it was what we could call a Sudden Respect moment when today's Morning Joe praised Fox News in general, and Brit Hume in particular, for their defense of President Biden's trip to Ukraine before making a possible visit to East Palestine, Ohio in the wake of the train derailment there.

Morning Joe played a clip of Bret Baier mentioning that it has not been historically common for Transportation Secretaries to visit the site of train derailments, especially when there are no fatalities. Baier pointed out that during the Trump administration, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao didn't visit train-disaster sites, including ones involving loss of life, whereas there was no loss of life in East Palestine.

Morning Joe then played an extended clip of Hume opining that a president's key duty is to the security of the United States, and in that context, Biden's visit to Ukraine took precedence over a visit to East Palestine.

"Morning Joe" is, of course, the show that Finkelstein loves (and gets paid) to hate.

False framing

The exploitation extended to the MRC's ongoing misogynistic war against "The View." Nicholas Fondacaro used a Feb. 23 post to falsely frame a co-host's statement as claiming the town's residents deserved the disaster because they supported Donald Trump:

After 20 days, the vile coven of ABC’s The View finally decided that the train derailment and ecological disaster in East Palestine, Ohio was finally worth mentioning during their Thursday Hot Topics segment. Of course, this was only after Pete Buttigieg, the absent-at-the-wheel Transportation secretary finally arrived in the town. But the joyless Joy Behar took things to a disturbing place when she proclaimed that the residents got what was coming to them because they supported former President Trump.

“Let’s talk about regulations for a second. Because it seems to me that the Republicans are obsessed with the notion of the free market. And they don't like a lot of regulations,” Behar announced.

After hysterical Sara Haines falsely blamed Trump for the derailment (despite the fact that the final report hasn't been released), Behar shouted at the residents of East Palestine through the camera (pictured above) and blamed their voting history for the disaster in their town:

I don't know why they would ever vote for him. For somebody who – By the way, he placed someone with deep ties to the chemical industry in charge of the EPA’s chemical safety office. That's who you voted for, in that district. Donald Trump, who reduces all safety. He did, in those days.

“Do they realize that?” racist Sunny Hostin asked of self-described conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin.

But as a more honest observer reported, Behar simply pointed out that the town's residents should be taken in by optics and pay attention to Trump's actual record. Being the highly dishonest "media researcher" he is, Fondacaro never bothered to correct the record. (And, yes, he's still smearing Hostin as a "racist" because he doesn't understand metaphors.)

Fondacaro, joined by Houck, spread this lie anew in their Feb. 24 podcast, which featured Fondacaro ranting that it "grinds my gears ... to weaponize politics in that way" -- never mind, of course, that the only reason the MRC is interested in the derailment in the first place is to weaponize it -- and denouncing people who tried to correct his dishonesty by insisting that what he claimed she said is "implied."

Houck then appeared on Fox News three days later to parrot Fondacaro's lie about Behar:

Shifting to Behar, she said Thursday on The View that East Palestine residents got what they deserved with potentially long-term health problems via the train derailment because they voted for Trump.

Gallagher couldn’t believe it, saying she “says more offensive things than anybody on television.”

Houck pointed out this was par for the course as, she said recently “that people who own firearms have a mental health problem.”

“[I]t’s hard to find a show more repulsive than The View. Imagine if someone on this network in this studio said something like that. CNN and MSNBC, they’d be talking about this forever,” he concluded.

Because at the MRC, narrative is more important than facts -- an odd stance for an organization that claims to be all about "media research."

But the MRC was far from done with exploiting this tragedy to score political points. A Feb. 24 post by Jorge Bonilla complained that one Spanish-language newscast "suggested that “the power of suggestion” is to blame for any symptoms that people might be feeling, rather than the effects of huge chemical fire after a catastrophic derailment" -- odd, since the MRC believes that the power of suggestion turns people gay or transgender. The same day, Tober declared that "ABC's World News Tonight anchor committed a random act of journalism and challenged Biden on a number of controversies from his administration's abysmal handling of the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio to Biden's irresponsible handling of classified documents in his multiple homes and offices." At the MRC, it's only "journalism" if it advances right-wing narratives.

Tober returned to complain in a Feb. 26 post:

Three weeks after the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio created an environmental disaster for the working-class residents in town, the leftists on ABC's This Week are finally getting around to second-guessing whether their ally President Joe Biden made a mistake in not visiting and touring the damage and comforting the people who are suffering with the aftermath of the disaster. Of course, the focus of the debate is not on the well-being of the people in East Palestine who are overwhelmingly white working-class Trump supporters. Instead, their only concern is Biden's reputation.

Tober didn't mention that no Trump official visited the site of a train derailment during his administration.

When the Washington Post called out right-wing exploitation of the derailment to score political points (as well as homophobic attacks on Buttigieg), P.J. Gladnick complained in a March 2 post while adding more partisan attacks to the mix:

Despite even some Democrats criticizing Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg's response to the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment, the Washington Post chose to ignore that and focus in on Republicans who are "seizing" (formerly "pouncing") on the accident to attack poor Buttigieg. Reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb, Ian Duncan, and Justine McDaniel acted more as a Buttiegieg defense team than as journalists on Wednesday in "Republicans seize on train derailment to go after Buttigieg."

[...]

The reporters on the Buttigieg defense team conveniently avoided mentioning that long before both the derailment and his term as Transportation Secretary, Mayor Pete even failed to perform the basic task of mayors, namely to fill in potholes on the city streets of South Bend.

During some future presidential primary, you can bet that Buttigieg's Democrat opponents will be "seizing" at the opportunity to slam him for his many failures as Transportation Secretary.

The MRC hates it whenever the bad-faith partisan nature of their attacks are exposed.

The MRC has almost completely ignored the derailment story since then -- apparently, its value as a partisan attack line has been exhausted, so it no longer cares about those affected by the disaster.

Vazquez's conspiracy theories

Another part of the MRC's exploitation strategy was to send writer Joseph Vazquez out to say wacky things. A Feb. 16 post by Vazquez tried to manufacture a conspiracy theory by dragging in right-wing-mandated anti-ESG talking points currently popular on the right:

ABC’s, CBS’s and NBC’s premature abandonment of coverage of the environmental disaster in East Palestine, Ohio may have been a gambit to protect the leftist pro-environmental, social, governance (ESG) standard giants tied to the incident.

[...]

It turns out that ESG-obsessed investment giants like The Vanguard Group, JPMorgan Investment Management and BlackRock Fund Advisors, are Norfolk Southern’s largest shareholders. The combined stake between the three shareholders is valued at a sizable $9,392,760,704 as of Feb. 16.

“It truly is incredible, the lackluster coverage that the train derailment and subsequent evacuation in East Palestine, Ohio has received from the Big Three,” asserted MRC Free Speech America & MRC Business Director Michael Morris. “Can you imagine if the same sort of ecological disaster had occurred under the Trump administration? Undoubtedly, the Big Three would be doing all that they could to somehow pin the blame on the former president of the United States. But now, with the Biden administration at the helm — not much more than crickets.”

[...]

Strikingly, both Vanguard (Norfolk Southern's largest shareholder) and BlackRock have been at the center of a leftist movement to radically change American culture through the force of ESG standards in corporate America.

ESGs provide a smokescreen for left-wing bigwigs in C-suites to force radical leftist politics onto shareholders, according to former McDonald’s CEO Edward Rensi. Utah State Treasurer Marlo Oaks called ESG “the greatest threat to our freedoms in America today without question,” during an< exclusive interview with MRC Business.

The fact that ESG-obsessed companies are tied to the Norfolk Southern disaster blows their eco-virtue signaling on sustainable investment completely out of the water and makes the Big Three prematurely dropping the coverage look even more despicable.

Could it be that the Big Three are doing everything they can to protect their shareholders’ investment in Norfolk Southern?

But doesn't the fact that these funds invest in Norfolk Southern actually prove that they are, in fact, not "ESG-obsessed"? Despite all of the right-wing ferarmongering on the issue, nobody's actually being forced to invest in ESG against their will -- it's simply an option being made available for those who care about it.

In a Feb. 17 post, Vazquez showed the MRC's political agenda again and manufactured another conspiracy theory:

The Big Three networks ignored news that the Biden administration denied disaster assistance to Ohio’s pro-Trump Columbiana County following the toxic train derailment in East Palestine.

Fox News reported Feb. 16 that Governor Mike DeWine (R-OH) spokesperson Dan Tierney said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) denied federal aid because it “believed the [train derailment] incident didn't qualify as a traditional disaster, such as a tornado or hurricane, for which it usually provides assistance.” The incident led to a controlled explosion and the spewing of hazardous fumes into the atmosphere, with reports of groundwater damage, dead animals and health issues circulating. Newsweek even reported the turmoil could evolve into a “Full-Blown Ecological Crisis.” The denial of aid calls into question why the U.S. government is willing to commit more than $24.9 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration but not an American town in turmoil.

Additional context may provide some insight as to why Biden’s FEMA did not pursue providing aid for that particular area, and why the ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news shows chose to ignore the story between Feb. 16 - Feb. 17.

Biden released details on a new executive order advancing racial equity on Feb. 16, the same day as the Fox News report. Biden claimed his goal was to “advance an ambitious, whole-of-government approach to racial equity and support for underserved communities and to continuously embed [racial] equity into all aspects of Federal decision-making.” According to the latest breakdown, East Palestine is 93.5 percent white, three percent Hispanic, and only 0.36 percent black.

In addition, Columbiana County, where East Palestine is located, 71.7 percent of the vote went overwhelmingly for former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

Vazquez went on to rehash his bogus ESG conspiracy and concluded by huffing: "By ignoring Ohio being denied disaster aid by a partisan, racially-charged Biden administration, now the media look even more asinine." That's right -- a guy who spreads asinine conspiracy theories thinks everyone but him looks "asinine."

When the Associated Press reported that Russian-linked Twitter accounts spread conspiracy theories about the derailment that echoed conservatives' own talking points, Vazquez had another freakout in a March 20 post:

The Associated Press attempted to blame Twitter owner Elon Musk and “pro-Russian” Twitter accounts for Americans’ distrust of Big Daddy Government and liberal media gaslighting about the toxic Ohio train disaster. Talk about a ridiculous attempt at a stretch.

AP whined in a Mar. 18 story — “Pro-Moscow voices tried to steer Ohio train disaster debate” — that “anonymous pro-Russian accounts” used “Elon Musk’s new verification system” to spread “misleading claims and anti-American propaganda” about the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment. The train’s derailing led authorities to create a controlled explosion that released toxic fumes into the atmosphere.

“The accounts, which parroted Kremlin talking points on myriad topics, claimed without evidence that authorities in Ohio were lying about the true impact of the chemical spill,” AP complained.

Apparently AP didn’t learn anything from the Twitter Files. Just because left-wing talking heads call an account “pro-Russian” doesn’t mean it is, and a deeper dive into AP’s sources just makes its propaganda seem more like a pathetic attempt to protect government talking points.

Actually, Vazquez is the one trying to protect talking points -- in this case, right-wing and anti-Biden talking points that have been opportunistically used to exploit the derailment. Indeed, he dragged out other faulty talking points to attack the AP:

AP said London, U.K.-based group Reset identified the “pro-Russian” accounts. Ben Scott, the group's executive director, was “the technology policy advisory group” lead for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign — the same campaign that served as the genesis of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, which AP itself mindlessly promoted.

AP didn’t bother mentioning this in its write-up, and neither did CNN has-been Brian Stelter plastered the story on his Twitter feed. Journalist Glenn Greenwald raked Stelter over the proverbial coals for his thin veneer of media analysis bonafides and lack of critical thinking skills.

Vazquez offered no evidence that Reset was involved in the "the Trump-Russia collusion hoax" (which, by the way, wasn't a hoax). And it appears that Vazquez is suffering from Stelter Derangement Syndrome like his fellow MRC employees.

Vazquez then invoked the MRC's own alleged "media research":

AP was content to throw spaghetti at the wall and see if something would stick. Some of the so-called “verifiably false” “pro-Russian” claims that AP tried debunking included the “suggestion that the news media had covered up the disaster.”

But a recent, non-Russian affiliated MRC study revealed that the Big Three broadcast network’s morning and evening news shows all but dropped coverage of the Ohio disaster once the county permitted residents to return home Feb. 8. All six shows fell just shy of spending a combined 30 minutes on the topic between when the incident first occurred on Feb. 3 and when the evacuation order for East Palestine was lifted on Feb. 8.

The networks regurgitated the public relations gaslighting by the Norfolk Southern Corporation, the owner of the railway responsible for the derailed train. The Big Three rediscovered the topic Feb. 14 - Feb. 15 – nearly a week after the evacuation ended – once it became clear that they were the three most prominent networks that had stopped covering it.

But in AP’s world, the notion that the media provided lackluster coverage of the Ohio train disaster is a “verifiably false” and “pro-Russian” claim.

Insisting that the MRC study was "non-Russian affiliated" is something someone affiliated with Russians would say (and he offers no evidence or reason to trust his word). But, again, the very first article the MRC published about the derailment promoted that study -- 11 days after the derailment occurred. Why? Who did the MRC strategize with to determine that this tragedy needed to be exploited for political purposes? Did they have Russian accents? And why is the MRC so comfortable pushing the same narratives that Russian bots are?

Vazquez's post actually raises more questions than it answers -- questions he clearly doesn't want to answer. He seems to be protesting a bit too much about the Russian stuff.