ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatch

MRC Shutting Down TimesWatch

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:35:13 -0500

The Media Research Center has announced that today is the final day for its TimesWatch blog:

The Media Research Center will be consolidating products and, as a result, TimesWatch posts and the TimesWatch Tracker will be rolled into our other sites and e-newsletters.

TimesWatch Tracker e-mail subscribers will receive their last edition on Friday, May 17. Starting on Monday, May 20, TimesWatch Tracker subscribers will automatically begin receiving the MRC’s CyberAlert e-mail which will include the New York Times’ liberal bias in its mix of daily documentation.

The MRC was silent about whether TimesWatch writer Clay Waters would remain with the company.

The very concept of TimesWatch was always a dubious proposition. Its stated goal was "documenting and exposing the New York Times' liberal political agenda," solely by cherry-picking 10 or so items out of the hundreds of pieces of original content the Times generates per week, thus failing to provide any sort of comprehensive content analysis. But such analysis was never the goal -- spreading the meme that the Times is hopelessly liberal was.

It didn't help that Waters' idea of "liberal bias" at the Times involved things like complaining that the Times referred to conservatives as "conservatives" or that it told the truth about something about which he would rather not have the truth told. And Waters' contribution to research is to measure bias on political scandal stories by how far up in the article a person's political party appears, not size and placement of the article -- ridiculous methodology even by the MRC's low standards.

What may have actually doomed TimesWatch, was that even the cherry-picking couldn't hide the fact that the Times was not as slavishly liberal and Waters and the MRC would have you believe. In a 2010 column, then-Times public editor Clark Hoyt conceded that the the Times' editorial pages skew liberal then added:

But if The Times were really the Fox News of the left, how could you explain the investigative reporting that brought down Eliot Spitzer, New York’s Democratic governor; derailed the election campaign of his Democratic successor, David Paterson; got Charles Rangel, the Harlem Democrat who was chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, in ethics trouble; and exposed the falsehoods that Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, another Democrat, was telling about his service record in the Vietnam era?

Waters' incredibly lame response: "Of course, as the Times is always reminding us, the Republican Party has been decimated in the Northeast in recent years, meaning the region is dominated by Democrats, meaning most political scandals will involve Democrats."

Such lameness may have gotten too embarrassing for even the MRC -- it certainly didn't fall over itself promoting TimesWatch in recent year -- so it was time for TimesWatch to go.

WND Laughably Claims SPLC Is 'Linked to Domestic Terrorism'

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:30:31 -0500

Bob Unruh writes in a May 14 WorldNetDaily article:

An organization that for 30 years has promoted religious liberty, championed the nation’s foundational Judeo-Christian values, worked to protect marriage and defended human life is challenging Duke University to keep its reputation unsullied by avoiding an entanglement with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which was linked to domestic terrorism through a recent court case in Washington.
Officials with Traditional Values Coalition wrote a letter to Duke President Richard H. Brodhead and Provost Peter Lange after it was revealed the school agreed to take the archives of the SPLC and store them.

How is the SPLC linked to "domestic terrorism"? Not for anything it did or any act of violence it committed. Unruh eventually gets around to explaining: Floyd Corkins, who shot a security guard at the Family Research Council headquarters, claimed to have gotten information on anti-gay groups from the SPLC's website. That's it.

If that's being " linked to domestic terrorism," then anti-abortion group Operation Rescue is even more closely linked to domestic terrorism through its actual physical contact with Scott Roeder, who murder abortion doctor George Tiller.

Unruh uncritically repeats the TVC's attacks on the SPLC and its false claim that the SPLC's "hate group" designation for the FRC and other anti-gay groups is used "to label anyone with whom they disagree on biblical morality. ... “If you are pro-life, if you oppose gay marriage, if you stand up for religious freedom … you’re counted among the hate groups."

In fact, the SPLC has explained:

The SPLC has listed the FRC as a hate group since 2010 because it has knowingly spread false and denigrating propaganda about LGBT people — not, as some claim, because it opposes same-sex marriage. The FRC and its allies on the religious right are saying, in effect, that offering legitimate and fact-based criticism in a democratic society is tantamount to suggesting that the objects of criticism should be the targets of criminal violence.
As the SPLC made clear at the time and in hundreds of subsequent statements and press interviews, we criticize the FRC for claiming, in Perkins’ words, that pedophilia is “a homosexual problem” — an utter falsehood, as every relevant scientific authority has stated. An FRC official has said he wanted to “export homosexuals from the United States.” The same official advocated the criminalizing of homosexuality.

Unruh also fails to mention the TVC's conflict of interest: It's also on the SPLC's anti-gay "hate group" list for repeating many of the same lies about homosexuality that the FRC does:

In 1985, Sheldon suggested forcing AIDS victims into “cities of refuge.” In 1992, columnist Jimmy Breslin said that Sheldon told him that “homosexuals are dangerous. They proselytize. They come to the door, and if your son answers and nobody is there to stop it, they grab the son and run off with him. They steal him. They take him away and turn him into a homosexual.” Sheldon later denied that he made the comments, but his website today includes strikingly similar language: “[S]ince homosexuals can’t reproduce, they will simply go after your children for seduction and conversion to homosexuality.” Elsewhere, it claims that “[t]he effort to push adult/child sex … is part of the overall homosexual movement.”
The TVC also asserts that “it is evident that homosexuals molest children at a far greater rate than do their heterosexual counterparts” — a falsehood based on conflating male-male molestation with homosexuality. Gays, it says, molest children at “epidemic rates,” adding: “As homosexuals continue to make inroads into public schools, more children will be molested and indoctrinated into the world of homosexuality. Many of them will die in that world.” With regard to LGBT teen suicides, TVC, under the headline “Homosexual Urban Legends,” claims that “[t]he cold, hard fact is that teens who are struggling with homosexual feelings are more likely to be sexually molested by a homosexual school counselor or teacher than to commit suicide over their feelings of despair.”

Unruh doesn't seem to find the truth very interesting -- but then, WND is not paying to tell the truth, is it?

Newsmax Deceptively Promotes Its Web Traffic

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:00:39 -0500

Newsmax touts in a May 13 article:

Newsmax Media, a leading independent publisher, has announced that its flagship website, Newsmax.com, has reached the No. 1 position in comScore’s News/Politics category.

Of the 61 million Americans comScore tracks seeking political news across all digital platforms, more than 13 million monthly unique visitors turned to Newsmax.com's political sites, exceeding such competitors as HuffPost Politics and Fox News Politics in March.

See what Newsmax did there? It's comparing its entire site against parts of other websites. But Newsmax has a "politics" vertical as well, the traffic which the article does not see fit to break out despite the fact that it would be a much more direct comparison.

Newsmax also has dedicated sites for world news, financial news and health stuff, but Newsmax does not indicate whether traffic for those sites are counted as part of Newsmax's overall total.

WND Promotes Anti-Muslim Fearmongerer

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:44:59 -0500

Anita Crane writes in a May 8 WorldNetDaily article:

A noted specialist on Islamic law and ideology from the Center for Security Policy, who has been cited as an expert for the Pentagon, says a coalition of Islamists and Marxists is working to destroy the United States.

The comments come from Stephen Coughlin, a lecturer for leading Department of Defense institutions such as the Naval War College, Marine Corps HQ-Quantico and for the FBI. Coughlin is a retired major in the U.S. Army reserves and was assigned to USCENTCOM, with a military intelligence specialty.
His assignments included the Pentagon’s National Military Joint Intelligence Center, the National Security Council’s Interagency Perception Management Threat Panel and the intelligence staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, so he has the credentials required for such assessments.

Crane doesn't mention the fact that Coughlin has been criticized for the rabidly anti-Muslim content of those Department of Defense presentations.

Wired reported that according to attendees of one Coughlin presentation, the take away was that "Islam is out to take over the world and there is no such thing as a loyal American Muslim." Wired also wrote:

During a presentation at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2010 — in which he shared a stage with Spencer and Geller — Coughlin asserted that the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the geopolitical organization of Muslim nations, has a “ten-year plan” to make “defamation of Islam a crime” worldwide. One of his briefing slides read, “The SILENCE in the mainstream media on this DIRECT ASSAULT is DEAFENING! — not just on speech — but on thought itself!!” Coughlin’s 2007 master’s thesis at the National Defense Intelligence College claimed that President George W. Bush’s reassurance that the U.S. was not at war with Islam had a “a chilling effect on those tasked to define the enemy’s doctrine by effectively placing a policy bar on the unconstrained analysis of Islamic doctrine as a basis for this threat.” In 2008, his Joint Staff contract wasn’t renewed after a staffer for Gordon England, then the deputy secretary of defense, raised concerns about his work.

Crane doesn't mention any of that, but she does slavishly regurgitate Coughlin's attacks on Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan, whom he dismissed as "a protégé of 'Rules for Radicals' author Saul Alinsky" who "wasn’t allowed in the United States because he was on the terrorist watch list."

In fact, Ramadan -- who has repeatedly condemned terrorism -- had his visa revoked because the Bush administration cited tenuous ties between Ramadan and a charity later linked to Hamas as a justification for revoking his visa, and, it seems, for criticizing Bush administration policies. Due to that visa revocation, Ramadan was unable to take the position he had been hired for as a professor at Notre Dame, a school not exactly known for its Islamic radicalism. State Department officials have since said that Ramadan is not seen as a threat to the United States.

Despite all this, Crane still wants us to believe that Coughlin is a "noted specialist on Islamic law and ideology." Instead, it seems that Coughlin is a specialist in anti-Muslim fearmongering.

MRC's Graham Thinks It's Lame To Report That Bush Did Same Thing Obama Is Accused Of Doing

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:44:12 -0500

Tim Graham titled a May 15 NewsBusters post "NPR Legal Reporter Lamely Tries to Spread Bush Into the AP Phone-tapping Scandal." He continues:

NPR legal correspondent Carrie Johnson reported on the IRS scandal on Tuesday’s Morning Edition displaying an urgent need to spread some Bush administration into the story. First she mentioned a 2004 FBI probe that improperly acquired phone records from New York Times and Washington Post reporters without going through proper channels.

Then she concluded with how the last secret subpoena for a reporter’s phone records came in 2001.

Graham never explains exactly what is so "lame" about reporting facts. The implication, of course, is that history throws a wrench into the right-wing narrative that Obama is History's Greatest Monster for doing the exact thing his Republican predecessor did.

WND Still Hiding How Christian Extremists Incited Muslim Violence

Thu, 16 May 2013 20:15:28 -0500

A May 14 unbylined WorldNetDaily article overheatedly states:

A federal judge has issued a startling ruling that suppressing Christian speech is allowed when Muslims threaten violence because they’re upset over the message.

The ruling from Judge Patrick J. Duggan in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan granted Wayne County’s motion for summary judgment of a lawsuit brought by a team of Christians who were badgered, bullied and targeted with garbage thrown by Muslims who disliked their message at last year’s Arab Fest in Dearborn, Mich.
[...]
The violence developed at the 2012 events when Christian evangelists walking on public sidewalks surrounding the event while carrying signs with biblical messages were assaulted with stones, bottles and debris by attendees of the festival.

The signs that brought on the attack included “Know the God of the Bible” and “Trust Jesus.”

Several of the Christian demonstrators walked away bruised and bloodied from the attack. Ruben Israel, the leader of the group, pleaded with law enforcement officials to intervene so that the demonstration could continue peacefully.

However, the officer refused and demanded the Christians leave the premises or face arrest for disorderly conduct.

As it has before, WND is leaving out a lot -- namely, the fact that the Christian extremists, led by street preacher Ruben Israel, deliberately provoked the Muslim crowd with offensive signs and shouting.

As we've detailed, WND originally began touting this case last year by featuring a heavily edited video of the incident. In fact, the full video shows that Israel's group was shouting things like "You’re a disgusting Muslim. You’re on your way to the devil’s hand" and "You're a wicked Muslim," and carrying signs in addition to the innocuous ones WND cited that read "Muhammad is a liar, false prophet, murderer, child molesting pervert."

Israel's group was also carrying a severed pig's head on a pole -- as Israel explained to police, that's because Muslims are “petrified” of pigs and so it “keeps them at bay.”

WND does concede that the pig's head was "angering the Muslim crowd," but it quotes none of the inciting statements that Israel's Christian extremists shouted at the Muslims.

WND provides only one quote from the summary judgment dismissing the case, but otherwise devotes the vast majority of the article to uncritically forwarding the heavily spun account peddled by Israel's attorneys at the right-wing American Freedom Law Center.

It's not fair, it's not balanced, and it's not even the truth. Sounds like another thing Joseph Farah should repent for at his rogue-infested 9/11 Day of Prayer.

Newsmax's Hirsen Can't Find Humor in 'SNL' Benghazi Sketch

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:24:05 -0500

James Hirsen used his May 13 Newsmax column to have a meltdown over a "Saturday Night Live" skit lampooning the congressional hearings on Benghazi. The skit's central joke was that nobody was paying attention to the hearings, so Republicans were bringing in TV-hyped convicted murderer Jodi Arias to boost ratings, but Hirsen failed to see the humor:

“Saturday Night Live” sunk to a new low in the content of its most recent opening sketch.
The Lorne Michaels-created late-night television show was once recognized for its fresh, brash sketches that combined comedy with commentary.
That was then, this is now. Apparently, SNL producers and writers prefer to be politically correct in their commentary and aggressive in the expression of their liberal biases rather than just plain funny.
[...]
The SNL comedy writers took great pains to depict the Republicans as engaging in purely partisan theatrics. The sick sketch had the chairman of the congressional committee calling convicted murderer Jodi Arias to testify. Also waiting in the wings to be sworn under oath as the next witness was suspected Ohio kidnapper and rapist Ariel Castro.
Although the opening of the bit implicitly acknowledged that the media had failed to properly cover the Benghazi hearings, the humor that was incorporated into the piece came in the form of mockery of GOP committee members, with negligible pokes at the media and zero ribbing of the Obama administration.
SNL’s Bill Hader portrayed Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee. Kenan Thompson, who played Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings, telegraphed the SNL writers’ mindset, when in character he declared, “Everyone knows that this [the hearings] is just a partisan witch hunt and a chance to attack the president and Secretary of State Clinton.”

Is Hirsen really saying with a straight face that Republicans have no partisan motive in pursuing alleged Benghazi scandals? If so, he's deluding himself; he offers no evidence to back up his suggestion.

Hirsen is described in his end-of-column bio as a "media analyst." With such biased and humor-challenged "analysis," Hirsen should be working for the Media Research Center.

NEW ARTICLE: Erik Rush's Rampage

Thu, 16 May 2013 08:31:16 -0500

If you think Rush's Obama-derangement-heavy work for WorldNetDaily is crazy, wait 'til you see what he writes for other fringe websites. Read more >>

AIM's Kincaid Can't Stop Defending Joel Gilbert

Wed, 15 May 2013 21:51:28 -0500

Cliff Kincaid, it seems, is still all in for Joel Gilbert. He writes in his May 14 Accuracy in Media column:

Gilbert directed the blockbuster film, “Dreams from My Real Father,” which was heavily criticized by the left before the November 2012 presidential election because of the Obama campaign’s fear it could alert voters to Obama’s communist connections and Marxist philosophy.

False -- Gilbert was criticized because his flim is demonstrably untrue, a fact Kincaid refuses to acknowledge.

In all of the columns Kincaid has written lionizing Gilbert, not once has he acknowledged the work of blogger Loren Collins, who definitively proved that Gilbert's claim that Obama's mother posed nude for Frank Marshall Davis is utterly fraudulent.

If one major claim in Gilbert's film can be so conclusively demolished, why should anyone trust any of the other claims he makes? That's a question Kincaid should answer for his AIM readers before he slobbers over Gilbert again.

And while he's at it, Kincaid should also ask Gilbert who funded the mass mailing of his discredited film to swing states, and exactly how many copies he mailed out.

Those are just a few of the things Gilbert is hiding, despite Kincaid having once laughably claimed that Gilhert "demonstrat[ed] that he has nothing to hide."

It's not that Gilbert has nothing to hide; it's that Kincaid has absolutely no interest in looking. So much for Kincaid's title as head of AIM's Center for Investigative Journalism.

Reza Kahlili Unverifiable Story Watch

Wed, 15 May 2013 20:16:17 -0500

"Reza Kahlili" writes in a May 13 WorldNetDaily article:

Iran has given the go-ahead to operatives of three terrorist groups that have infiltrated the United States to carry out missions, including what is expected to be a Mumbai-style attack on a hotel where innocent bystanders would be killed, WND has learned.

A full report with many details of the missions has been passed on to U.S. officials.

Three targets have been chosen within America for imminent attack, and the terror teams have now cut communications with the operational center in Iran, a sign that they are moving ahead with the attacks, according to a high-level intelligence officer within the Islamic regime.

If only one of the attacks occurs, the regime will consider the operation a success, the source said. Tehran believes, he said, an attack would not be traced back to Iran due to the nationalities of the operators.

Remember that Kahlili asserted in 2010 that Iran had planted "a thousands suitcase bombs" across Europe and the U.S." with the goal to "commit the most horrendous suicide bombing in human history." Also remember that this is one of many reasons that people in the intelligence community liken him to Ahmed Chalabi, who peddled the false claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Keep those two things in mind, and that should tell you all you need to know about the veracity of Kahlili's trying to peddle now.