FOX NEWS, RIGHT-WING MEDIA TARGET EL RRUN-RRUN

By Juan Montoya

Oct 6, 2022, 8:53 AM

Hi there,

I’m attempting to contact Juan Montoya, who is the apparent operator of this blog. Do you have his contact info or know of any way I can get in touch with him?

It began, innocently enough, as a request from a  media colleague, Kyle Morris, of Fox News Digital, to assist him in finding the operator of this blog. That, of course, is me. 

Deciding against my better instincts, I paid him the professional courtesy one does to a journalism colleague doing his job and I called him at the number he left.

This is not strange among news people. Even though there is a certain level of competition to "outscoop" one another, there is also a tradition of camaraderie of the profession to lend a hand to a working news person. That assistance was extended to me by a small tabloid in Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico when the U.S. embassy in Mexico City sent me there to throw me off the scent of the refugee camps of Guatemalans escaping persecution from the right-wing government there. 

Many ended on the U.S.-Mexico border and spilled over into South Texas. That's why the Brownsville Herald sent me there to get at the root of the migration that ended up on the border.

"No, colega," a reporter from the little newspaper in Tapachula told me. "They are not in this part of the state. They are at the other end, near Comitan, south of Tuxtla-Gutierrez and San Cristobal de las Casas. They led you down the wrong road."

Before that, when I arrived in Mexico City, Bob Rivard, then the correspondent for Newsweek covering the Salvadoran crisis and his wife graciously invited me to use a spare bedroom in El Hotel Cortez so I wouldn't have to rent a hotel room further from the airport. It was understood that we helped one another. Over the years since I first wrote for the Brownsville Herald starting in 1978, that sense of camaraderie had been extended to me many times in other newspapers, even competing ones, like in San Antonio when I was with the Light and covered the cop beat with arch-competitors who worked for the  Express-News

So when I received the email from the Fox News Digital guy I called him back and asked him how I could be of assistance.

He went right for the jugular. Did I know Jerry McHale, of the McHale Report blog? Had I ever reprinted any of his posts on El Rrun-Rrun? Did I know that he used the "N" word and other offensive terms? 

I answered truthfully. Yes, I know Jerry. In fact, we used to work together at the Brownsville Herald. No, I don't reprint his articles (either with his name or alter ego Dr. McHale-Scully) anymore because we had a falling out over that same issue. In fact, it had been years since, and I asked him not to use my posts on his blog. I found the egregious use of such offensive terms distasteful. He was, I tried to make Morris understand, an equal opportunity offender and no respecter of people. He was like a "shock jock" trying to shock and awe his readers with his outrageous statements and tried to give them a rise so they would come back for more.

Well, to my surprise, these statements were converted by Fox News reporter Morris to indicate that I had "amplified" and "shared racist remarks" printed in Jerry's blog, the one where he had attacked Republican U.S. District 34 congresswoman Mayra Flores. Guilt by association, anyone?

"A blogger who shared racist remarks about former President Obama was paid by Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez’s campaign for “advertising services” on two separate occasions.

In November 2014, Juan Montoya, who operates the El Rrun Rrun blog, amplified the insensitive comments that were penned by Jerry McHale, another blogger who was revealed in July to have made numerous racist and sexist remarks through his own blog that targeted GOP Rep. Mayra Flores.

In the post shared to Montoya's blog, McHale, who was also paid by the Gonzalez campaign for “advertising services” through his own blog, made racist comments through “one of his alter personalities” known as Dr. G.F. McHale-Scully."

Well, no, not really. The last time I "shared" a McHale post was on June 2020 and had to do with the removal of the Jefferson Davis Monument at Washington Park, because it touched on stuff that matters and it was well written. 

I never "shared a post" with Jerry on Mayra Flores where he calls her Miss Frijoles, or any other ethnic or racial slurs. In fact, the post Morris linked to show we "shared" posts was from November 2014 – eight years ago and long before Flores was on the scene – and had to do with a satire on local politics. In fact, we  warned our readers of the offensive nature of some of Jerry's rantings right at the top with an editor's note: "The following was penned by Jerry and we warn those with more sensitive constitutions that some of his opinions are colorful, if not downright ripe. Read at your own risk."

But that's not what the Fox News reporter was after. They were attempting to paint El Rrun-Rrun with the same brush they used on Jerry's story about Flores to show that she was being "victimized" when the post linked had nothing to do with her. This is Flores after she was "victimized" by Jerry.

And the fact that Gonzalez has bought a campaign advertisement on El Rrun-Rrun was painted as "proof" that Gonzalez was paying us for attacking Flores.

Those of us who have known Jerry since he published hard copies of El Rocinante (in yellow paper, even), know he is an equal opportunity offender and has come up with some choice sobriquets, many distasteful to us, for local politicians and personalities. Miss Piggy, the Black Vagina, Santisima Putisima, Eddie Panocha, etc...

But to say that we aided and abetted McHale on his attacks on Flores is quite a reach. In fact, it's fantasy. We tend to focus on issues and find that we happen to be against the Republican stand on many of them. A slim hook, indeed.

We, in fact, have let it be known that we oppose Flores, Janie Lopez, and other Republican standard bearers because they have not disavowed the Republican agenda on secession of Texas from the Union, the book banning in Texas schools, gun safety, their stand on giving a woman control over her own body, minority voter suppression, and the continued adherence to the Big Lie that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential elections.

In fact, we have let Republicans know that until they abandon those QAnon conspiracies and far-right notions that are dividing the people of our country, this blog will not accept advertisements from anyone associated with their party.

But you won't see a retraction of the article by our "colega" on Fox News Digital – now "amplified" across the right-wing press such as the New York Post and others. They got their splash and satisfied their conservative sponsors, which was their sole intent and purpose.