Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah used his Feb. 2 WorldNetDaily column to grace us with the reason he turned down an interview on "The Daily Show":
About a week ago, WND Jerusalem bureau chief Aaron Klein, the author of “Manchurian President” (This one is such an important book on the subject I am making it available to you for a limited time for only 99 cents!) and “Red Army,” contacted me about pinch-hitting for him on the show. “The Daily Show” needed someone stateside to deal with this pressing question. When the WND marketing team talked to producers, it was agreed that “The Daily Show” interviewer and crew would conduct the shoot in our corporate offices in the Washington area.
But there was just one condition we insisted upon. Since it would be recorded for television in my office for an hour of which 30 seconds or one minute would be used, we informed the producers that WND would be simultaneously and unobtrusively recording the entire interview as well. My purpose was clear: I wanted to be able to show what was left on the cutting room floor.
Surprise, surprise – that was a deal-killer.
Farah is misleading, of course. As his admission that the interview was to take place at WND's "corporate offices in the Washington area" (Why so vague about where WND's offices are, Joe? The address is on your website) this wasn't going to be a sit-down in-studio interview with host Jon Stewart -- whose name Farah misspells -- which are almost always posted in their entirety on the "Daily Show" website. The show was apparently going to put together a humorous segment about people who insist that Obama is a socialist.
Farah then rants:
People often ask me why I am not on television much any more. This is part of the reason. It’s one thing to do live television, where the deck might be stacked against you, but there’s no editing. It’s another to subject yourself to the not-so-subtle manipulations of creative video propaganda. If Americans eager to see their mugs on TV were willing to lay down some ground rules before appearing, we might be able to bring some balance and fairness to the media.
This whole argument is utterly disingenuous of Farah. Does WND allow its interview subjects to record their interviews so they can show what was left on WND's cutting room floor? Probably not. More often than not, it simply chooses not to interview at all anyone who's not sympathetic to WND's far-right agenda, as Bob Unruh's one-sided articles demonstrate.
So, Mr. Farah, let's not pretend that your website has any meaningful journalistic standards, because it doesn't. WND's plagiarism epidemic alone proves that.
