Topic: WorldNetDaily
Does Joseph Farah have any control at all over what happens on his own website? It appears not.
As we've detailed, Farah's message of voting for "none of the above" -- that is, don't elect Barack Obama or John McCain -- is canceled out by WorldNetDaily's news coverage, which attacks Obama but uncritically peddles McCain talking points. McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as vice president makes the split even more clear.
Farah grudgingly admitted in a Sept. 4 column that "I have to admit, I like Sarah Palin. In fact, if she were at the top of the ticket, I would probably vote for her myself," but the problem is that "she's not on the top of the ticket. Sadly, she is window dressing for the ascension of John McCain to the presidency," who he insists is "a radical extremist on illegal immigration."
While Farah grumbled, WND's news pages went orgasmic over the selection of Palin.
- "A star is born," trumpeted the headline on a Sept. 4 article by Art Moore, who gushed that Palin "rose above the expectations birthed last week when John McCain stunned the nation by choosing the Alaska governor as his running mate."
- A Sept. 3 article by Moore uncritically reported that "six female Republican leaders denounced 'the outrageous smear campaign'" against Palin, failing to note that McCain's own national campaign co-chair, former eBay chairman Meg Whitman, said that it was "the right thing to do" for the media to dig into the background of someone who is "running for the highest office in the land" and that she didn't detect any sexism in the news coverage.
- A Sept. 5 article by Moore profiled members of Alaska's delegation at the Republican National Convention, who declared "bring it on" to "reporters probing every nook and cranny of their popular governor's life and work." Moore also defended the McCain campmaign against allegations that Palin was not properly vetted prior to her selection and downplayed claims that Palin fired the state's public safety commissioner "because he refused to dismiss the governor's brother-in-law, a state trooper going through a messy divorce with her sister," adding that "Other members of the state's delegation contend it's clear Monegan should have fired the trooper for gross misbehavior, such as driving drunk on the job and Tasing a young teen." Moore does not substantiate those claims.
WND has not been reticent in the past about manipulating news content on its website to promote a particular agenda, so there's no excuse for Farah to stop now. Does David Kupelian -- who has endorsed McCain -- have such an iron grip on news operations that Farah is afraid to cross him?
Or it could be that Farah is merely playing a cynical game and secretly wants McCain to win after all. Either way, it would seem to make him an extrordinarily dishonest journalist and businessman.
