Roger Aronoff

On Thursday’s Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann mixed up NewsBusters parent organization the Media Research Center with the group Accuracy in Media, as he linked MRC Founder and President Brent Bozell to an article written by AIM’s Roger Aronoff. In the article, titled "Olbermann’s Fuzzy Math on Race," Aronoff had responded to Olbermann’s Monday "Special Comment" in which he asserted that a scarcity of minorities at Tea Party events amounts to evidence of racism by Tea Party activists. The MSNBC host mistakenly referred to Aronoff and AIM editor Cliff Kincaid as "henchmen" of Bozell, and associated all three men with "racists in the right wing."

Olbermann:

Anchor Rick Sanchez used another crazed gunman’s rampage to blast conservative media during CNN’s Newsroom program on Thursday, and brought on Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert as his aide to bash talk radio and Fox News. He hinted that the white supremacist who killed a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, might have been “motivated to move by right-wing pronouncements...on some TV and radio outlets.”

Sanchez began his panel discussion with Boehlert and Accuracy in Media’s Roger Aronoff at the end of the 3 pm Eastern hour of the CNN program with his indicting line of questioning against conservative radio and TV: “Was there a tone in this country that was actually started with the election of our first black president that is bringing the crazies out of the woodwork, and are they being motivated to move by right-wing pronouncements, like he’s dangerous- he’s a socialist- he’s a Muslim, and he isn’t even a U.S. citizen? This is what we hear on some TV and radio outlets.”

After introducing his two guests, the CNN anchor let the left-wing partisan Boehlert “start with the premise” which, of course, echoed the preceding introduction: “I don’t think there’s any doubt since Barack Obama’s been elected, there’s been a complete unhinged reaction from the conservative movement in America, and sort of this vigilante and- and militia-style rhetoric has become a cornerstone of the movement, and certainly of conservative media.”