Mike Ciandella is a research analyst for the MRC's News Analysis Division. Before that, he was a senior analyst for MRC Business where he managed The Soros Project, the MRC's ongoing research effort into the influence of liberal donors.

Latest from Mike Ciandella
February 10, 2015, 2:35 PM EST

While promoting a curriculum produced by the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation, NBC anchor Brian Williams stated “now I’m cleansed, I’ve made my bias out in the open. We can all be honest here.” These statements became ironic in light of Williams’ now debunked claim that a helicopter he was in during the Iraq War came under RPG fire.

Williams hosted a panel in October 2013 which “focused on veterans who received a Medal of Honor, and what they can teach our students,” according to Education Week. Williams is “a member of the Board of Directors of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation,” according to his bio on the NBC News website. He has also promoted tributes to Medal of Honor recipients on “Nightly News.”

February 5, 2015, 12:18 PM EST

Oh, the irony … Brian Williams, the NBC “Nightly News” anchor who fabricated a story about being shot at by an RPG while in a helicopter in Iraq, is “a member of the Board of Directors of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation,” according to his bio on the NBC News website.

According to the 990 tax returns for the foundation, Williams has been on the board since at least 2005. He is also listed on the “Board of Directors” page on the foundation’s website.

January 28, 2015, 9:05 AM EST

Rich people are preparing to flee in case of social unrest, at least according to the head of one group founded and partly funded by George Soros.

Robert Johnson, the head of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), argued that many wealthy people feared an uprising because of “growing inequality.”

January 27, 2015, 3:30 PM EST

Soros gave $100 million to INET, used it to host a conference to remake the global economy.

January 22, 2015, 9:19 AM EST

The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is supposed to be a place where world leaders solve the world’s economic and social problems. But, for the president of one Soros-funded group, it’s also a place to make a sales pitch for her plan to remake the global economy. And the name for that plan is identical to one that Soros pitched back in 2009.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, president of the New America Foundation, told attendees in Davos that the answers for many of the economic questions that the world was facing could be found in Bretton Woods II, an initiative being pushed by her group.

January 19, 2015, 3:50 PM EST

As media outlets focused on the World Economic Forum’s plans to address climate change it ignored the hypocrisy of the huge number of private jets flying world leaders and celebrities to that conference.

Roughly 1,700 private planes will head to Davos, Switzerland for the 2015 World Economic Forum. That doesn’t include commercial air travel or any other method of transit to the conference. Ironically, the top article featured on the “Agenda” section of the World Economic Forum website on Jan. 19, boldly stated that “[d]ecarbonising the global economy in a matter of decades is the number one priority.”

January 15, 2015, 12:33 PM EST

The public may have little use for the IRS, but CBS rose to the federal agency’s defense on Jan. 15, 2015. National Correspondent Wyatt Andrews spun against budget cuts and accused Republican’s of political “payback” for the IRS targeting scandal.

CBS “This Morning” defended the IRS against budget cuts claiming they “could have serious consequences for Americans this tax season.” These cuts were Congressional Republicans’ “payback for the targeting scandal when IRS officials investigated mostly conservative groups applying for tax exempt status,” according to CBS.

January 14, 2015, 3:19 PM EST

A group of climate change alarmists has demanded that the media stop being so nice to those with different viewpoints on climate. The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry petitioned the media to drop the term “skeptic” in favor of “denier,” when referring to anyone who questions their views on climate change.

The petition ignored more than 400 scientists who have publicly questioned the extent of mankind’s influence when it comes to climate change.

January 9, 2015, 12:01 PM EST

Liberal billionaire Tom Steyer is considering running for Barbara Boxer’s U.S. Senate seat, according to Politico, and the media are thrilled. The media have pressured liberal billionaire Tom Steyer to run for office before, and as soon as Boxer’s seat opened up they began suggesting him as a viable replacement.

According to the Jan. 9 Politico piece, “[a]lmost as soon as Boxer announced that she would not seek reelection in 2016, Steyer began reviewing polling data and making calls to California labor and political figures, associates said. And he is consulting with the contacts he made while running two multi-million-dollar advocacy campaigns focused on statewide ballot measures in 2010 and 2012.”

December 30, 2014, 11:29 AM EST

When you’re coming up with New Year’s resolutions just in time for the start of 2015, you may want to exclude advice from certain people the news media turn to as experts, but who fail to live up to the hype. Despite being continually cited by the media, these five scientists, celebrities and journalist-wannabes have all been criticized, debunked or refuted in the past year.

December 24, 2014, 12:12 PM EST

Liberal billionaire Tom Steyer has had a really bad year.

He failed to get other left-wing donors to join his crusade to make climate change the No. 1 election issue. Then he wasted nearly $75 million backing liberal candidates. Four out of the seven politicians he and his NextGen Climate Action group backed lost. And the few races where liberals won owed little or nothing to Steyer’s bizarre and sometimes inaccurate campaign ads.

December 19, 2014, 4:00 PM EST

In an Associated Press article, a climate alarmist accused a female ABC meteorologist of being “more like a pornographer” than a weather forecaster – all because she didn’t tie weather events to climate change often enough for his liking. According to the article, discussing weather events without throwing in at least some climate change scaremongering is “weather porn.”

The Dec. 12, article, by AP Television Writer David Bauder, promoted this view held by “news consultant” and media analyst Andrew Tyndall. Tyndall called out ABC’s “Good Morning America” meteorologist Ginger Zee specifically, calling her “more like a pornographer.”

December 5, 2014, 4:17 PM EST

NextGen’s 7,637 attack TV spots show how not to run a hate campaign.

December 2, 2014, 12:35 PM EST

The U.S. National Debt reached a staggering $18 trillion on Nov. 28, 2014, but none of the three broadcast news networks covered the milestone.

That debt has increased by more than $7 trillion during Barack Obama’s presidency, Forbes said. According to The Blaze, “In the last fiscal year, the national debt increased by just over $500 billion, and that number is expected to rise again in the coming years.”

November 5, 2014, 10:55 AM EST

Liberal California billionaire Tom Steyer just learned a big lesson about changing climate. The investment BANKER? tried to make global warming the big issue in 2014. Instead, voters told him there was a chill in the air for his agenda.

As a result, he lost in nearly three out of four races he funded. Steyer had donated $73.8 million to this election cycle to fund more than 7,000 advertisements in seven key states. That made him the single biggest political donor this election cycle. However, out of the $30.8 million of that money that went to seven specific races according to Open Secrets, more than $22.4 million, 73 percent, went to candidates who ended up losing their races.

October 29, 2014, 12:13 PM EDT

Steyer, the left's "green hero," is a walking contradiction and an opportunist. On the one hand, he regularly campaigned against fossil fuels and spent millions of dollars backing politicians who agree with him. With the other, he stacked up piles of cash he made off those fossil fuels -- sometimes at the same time.

Intent on getting his people elected, Steyer has spent an incredible $74 million on the election just in 2014, more than anyone else. His campaign tactics have ranged from aggressive to obnoxious to simply inaccurate. According to the Oct. 2, 2014, Washington Post, his operation “has paid for 7,050 ads in Senate races in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan and New Hampshire and in the Florida governor’s race.” The newspaper gave one of those ads four out of four “Pinocchios” for being factually inaccurate.

September 24, 2014, 9:02 AM EDT

Those speaking at the UN Climate Summit 2014 traveled a grand total of 1,036,537 miles from locations as distant as China, India and Peru. That’s enough miles to circle the equator 41.6 times.

September 24, 2014, 8:55 AM EDT

ABC's pilot episode about a man who can't seem to die brings new life to a plot that ended up dying on Fox in 2008 after just 8 episodes. So far, ABC has managed to change some of the crucial plot flaws that hurt the original. Although not marketed as a reboot, the overarching storylines between both ABC's "Forever" and Fox's "New Amsterdam" are remarkably similar.

September 23, 2014, 4:43 PM EDT

On September 23, a group of liberal activists, socialists and “journalists” from MSNBC and The Nation will join UN delegates in deciding the future of the world’s environmental policy. Predictably, no skeptics or moderates will be joining this huddle of hubris. While the media are quick to hype the forum, they're not so quick to point out just how laughable some of the attendees are.

“The global warming movement has morphed into a coalition of ‘climate cause deniers.’ They deny the hundreds of causes and variables of climate change and pretend CO2 is the ‘control knob’ overriding all the others,” Marc Morano, Publisher of Climate Depot and producer of upcoming global warming documentary 'Climate Hustle' told the Media Research Center.

September 17, 2014, 12:46 PM EDT

Facts, people. They’re not that hard.

Naomi Klein, the best-selling author and columnist taken too seriously by American media, decried conservative groups for opposing “wealth redistribution.” Klein argued that North America and Europe need to pay reparations to poorer nations for causing climate change. Her new book, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate,” used flawed facts, exaggerations and misrepresentations to promote her brand of climate-change alarmism.