Farah Doth Protests Too Much
Topic: WorldNetDaily
In a Feb. 14 WorldNetDaily column, Joseph Farah takes umbrage at a North Carolina newspaper critical of its coverage of a North Carolina speech by NAACP president Julian Bond.

Farah is real sensitive to the fact that WND got a quote by Bond wrong. Relying on an eyewitness report, WND reported on Feb. 2 that Bond was "equating the Republican Party with the Nazi Party" when he allegedly said that "The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side." In fact, Bond said "Confederate swastika," which puts a different spin on things. WND didn't report that until Feb. 7 -- five days later -- forcing it to backtrack a bit and state that Bond "did not directly equate the Republican Party with the Nazi Party."

Yet somehow, according to Farah, the local paper, the Fayetteville Observer, is to blame for not reporting Bond's "swastika" comment at all, insisting that it was "the most explosive quote Bond uttered at the speech." Farah further defended WND's reporting on the event by claiming the quote was reported "almost completely accurately."

Well, when you've had to retract two articles in the past year because of the false information contained in them, like WND did, and have been caught red-handed plagiarizing news, as Farah was, "almost completely accurately" seems like a reasonable jouralistic standard by comparison.

And if you're going to bash "the Old Media" for allegedly "deny[ing] their dwindling number of readers, viewers and listeners the truth," it's best if you don't have a history of not reporting inconvenient facts. As ConWebWatch has documented, WND's Jerusalem reporter, Aaron Klein, has a history of whitewashing the terrorist history of the right-wing extremists he writes about, it couldn't be bothered to report on Republican political scandals, its coverage of the Terri Schiavo case was highly biased, it painted a soft 'n' cuddly portrait of an anti-abortion extremist, it falsely portrayed the admitted killer of an abortion doctor as innocent ... we could go on.

Before Farah starts criticizing the journalism of others, he needs to stand up and admit -- and then fix -- his own journalistic shortcomings.