Topic: WorldNetDaily
You already know that Joel Gilbert and WorldNetDaily can't defend Gilbert's anti-Obama film, "Dreams From My Real Father," in an honest manner.
An Oct. 26 WorldNetDaily article notes the "strong reaction from establishment media" to Gilbert's film, but it ignores the substantive criticisms lodged against it.
For instance:
Barack Obama’s official website issued a response to Gilbert’s film Tuesday, charging it “peddles ridiculous conspiracy theories about President Obama.”
Gilbert told WND the campaign website falsely claimed Ann Dunham, the president’s mother, was only 15 years old in the nude photos, “copying a liberal blogger’s factually flawed attack on the film.”
In fact, this is what the Obama campaign actually said about the film:
Gilbert makes disgusting and false claims about graphic photos he says depict the President’s mother; they do not. In fact, the photos were published before she ever moved to Hawaii when she would have been only 15 years old.
See the difference? The campaign never acknowledged the pictures Gilbert used are of Obama's mother; it points out that that the only way Gilbert's claim could be true is if Ann Dunham was 15 years old when the pictures were taken and had arrived in Hawaii two years earlier than she did. And if you've seen the pictures, it's clear that the woman is much older than 15.
The campaign also links to the Orlando Sentinel article featuring Loren Collins pointing out that the pictures were published in fetish magazies two years before Gilbert claimed Frank Marshall Davis purportedly took them.
Gilbert offers no evidence to back up his claim that Collins' claim is "factually flawed" -- or even that Collins is a "liberal blogger." In the Sentinel article, Collins describes himself as "a conservative libertarian who does not support Obama politically."
Indeed, it seems that at this point, given Collins' detailed debunking, the onus is on Gilbert to prove Collins wrong, not just whine that he's getting fact-checked.
WND also states:
Gilbert granted an extensive interview and provided a DVD to The Daily Beast at the request of reporter Michelle Goldberg.
“I was amazed that in her article she had the audacity to call the president’s mother a ‘whore,’” Gilbert said.
Gilbert said he presented to the reporter personal photos of Obama’s mother at Frank Marshall Davis’ house to establish the possibility of an intimate relationship.
“The photos are covered up with black bars to be respectful,” Gilbert said. “I respect the right of women to choose to pose for personal photos, I would not judge someone in a sexist way as Michelle Goldberg has done in the Daily Beast.”
In fact, Goldberg did not call Obama's mother a whore -- she was describing how Gilbert and otherswere describing her. From Goldberg's article:
After four years of invective, four years during which the right has called President Obama a traitor, a communist, a fraud, an affirmative-action case, a terrorist-sympathizer, and a tyrant, its shrillest voices have been reduced to the most primal insult of all. They are calling Obama’s mother a whore.
WND makes no effort to correct Gilbert's false depictions of what others have said about him. This makes WND a full partner in Gilbert's dishonesty.
Amid all this dishonesty, WND quotes Gilbert laughably talking journalists to task for ignoring his sleazy, dishonest film:
Gilbert noted that he challenged journalists in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on July 19 with a reading from the “The Journalist Creed,” a code of ethics for reporters.
The creed requires journalists to be unbiased public trustees, accurate and fair, and maintain a single standard of truth.
“Unfortunately, I have experienced first hand what we all knew – the media has collapsed as a public watchdog, and only propagates misinformation,” he said.
“How is this different than Pravda’s reporting in Soviet Russia?” he asked.
How indeed. With WND, Gilbert has his own personal Pravda.And he certainly doesn't expect WND to abide by "The Journalist's Creed," since doing so would further discredit him.
