Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah spends his Aug. 8 column complaining about a poll purportedly dominated by "ultra-liberals" that "put most of their trust in “news agencies” supported by big government – public television, the BBC, NPR and PBS, four of the six highest rated for credibility." He went on to sneer that "I guess that’s what one should expect when a graduate school of journalism does the research, with a professor in charge."
Farah then implied his own website was more trustworthy than any of them because it's allegedly popular: "Wouldn’t it make sense that the real standard of “most trusted” news sources would have something to do with traffic? Do people general go to news sources they don’t trust? And how do they know what they don’t trust if they don’t go there?"
The irony here, of course, is not only that WND has published reams of fake news, it's remained silent about its latest fake-news scandal.
As we documented, WND's Bob Unruh conducted a purported interview in May with "Nicole Minsey," who claimed to be an Obama Democrat-turned-Trump Republican who opened a website selling pro-Trump merchandise. It's become increasingly clear that "Minsey" doesn't exist at all and appears to be either a stolen or made-up identity to promote the store (which apparently didn't even fulfill its orders).
Unruh either got fooled badly by taking "Minsey" at her word and not even bothering to verify her identity because her story was too good to fact-check, or he and WND did the article as a promotion for the (bogus) store in some sort of monetary exchange -- a payment up front or a cut of the revenue generated by the article.
Wouldn't a trustworthy news operation move quickly to clear the air over this issue and admit any mistakes it made? Instead, WND has gone totally silent, and Unruh's bogus article remains live and unaltered.
Farah concluded his column by making his usual self-aggrandizing claim that WND is "seeking truth no matter what the cost." That's never been true, of course, and it gets even less true each day Farah, Unruh and WND let their "Minsey" fiasco fester.
