Poe, Part 6
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Today's WorldNetDaily article by Richard Poe is chock full o' non-disclosure. Poe's main task here is to fluff NewsMax leader Christopher Ruddy and his 1990s reporting on the death of Vincent Foster. Poe describes Richard Mellon Scaife only as the publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, which hired Ruddy as a reporter focusing mainly on the Foster death. Poe fails to inform his readers about Scaife's copious funding of conservative causes -- including Poe's employer, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture (the disclaimer remains at the end).

Poe also claims that "Ruddy exercised remarkable restraint in his reporting on Foster's death" in his 1997 book "The Strange Death of Vincent Foster," but fails to point out that even fellow conservative Ann Coulter (who whose defense Poe rushed after a newspaper dumped her column) dismissed Ruddy's book as a "conservative hoax book." Poe also fails to note that Scaife cut off funding to longtime beneficiary The American Spectator after it ran a negative review of Ruddy's book.

Finally, Poe fails to tell his readers that Ruddy's NewsMax has printed several of his columns and articles and that he is a contributing editor to NewsMax magazine.

(And since Poe goes after Media Matters in his article, I will do what Poe won't and disclose that I am a Media Matters employee, but Media Matters does not fund or have any editorial control over ConWebWatch.)

Also interesting to note: This is the first of Poe's series of commentaries that did not appear on the WND front page, only on the commentary page.