Newsmax has a history of playing games with the circulation numbers of its magazine; we've noted, for instance, that it once claimed it had a "paid circulation" of 250,000 when in fact it was only 59,000.
It does so again in a Feb. 14 article touting how "Newsmax.com has soared in Web traffic," in which it claims that Newsmax magazine has "a paid readership of 600,000." The problem is, "paid readership" is a meaningless metric; the only one that really matters is paid circulation, since readership is difficult to quantify.
In November 2005, Newsmax declared that the magazine's audited paid circulation was 102,695, then added: "NewsMax Magazine estimates this paid circulation gives it a monthly readership in excess of 400,000 persons each month – making it the largest read independent news monthly with a conservative perspective." In other words, Newsmax is claiming that an average of four people read each copy of the magazine.
Factoring that into Newsmax's new claim of "paid readership of 600,000," this apparently means the magazine's paid circulation is around 150,000.
New Article: Liberally Insulting Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has trouble finding anything offensive about an NBC reporter claiming that Chelsea Clinton was being "pimped out" by her mother's presidential campaign. But then, it's totally down with Ann Coulter's litany of insults. Read more >>
When FBI agent George Piro recently described debriefing Saddam Hussein for seven months after his capture, he disclosed that the Iraqi dictator admitted his intention to re-start his weapons of mass destruction program within a year.
That plan included developing nuclear weapons capability, according to Saddam.
The revelation should have hit Page One of every newspaper.
Why? Kessler answers: "It would have further justified President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, a key issue in the coming presidential election. But many in the mainstream media could not bear to hear that Bush may have done something right."
Plus, since this little revelation first appeared in Kessler's recently published book, he would have benefitted from the sales bump.
What's missing here is any mention of whether Saddam had the capability to do what he intended. Intent is amorphous; everyone intends to do things. But did Saddam have the capability to do anything about his intentions? Kessler doesn't say.
Instead, Kessler whines that his little scoop didn't get blanket coverage in all media. He finally concludes:
Today, we have press censorship similar to what existed in the old Soviet Union, except the censors are journalists themselves, and it’s in reverse: News favorable to the government is suppressed.
Ironically, a day later, a Newsmax article trumpeted how "Newsmax.com has soared in Web traffic."
How, exactly, is Kessler being "suppressed" and censored? Indeed, Kessler has engaged in a bit of self-censorship of his own by reporting only flattering news about the Bush administration. (He probably should have engaged in a little self-censorship, though, when he was creepily fawning over Mitt Romney's wife).
And we can lay pretty good odds that if a Democrat wins the presidency later this year, Kessler will be whining shortly thereafter that "news unfavorable to the government is suppressed."
Newsmax likes to promote its own meaningless opt-in polls (as it did most recently on Feb. 7). Now it's promoting the opt-in polls of others. From a Feb. 13 article:
GodTube.com today announced that despite last night's sweeping victory for John McCain, a stunning new GodTube.com poll reveals that if McCain wins his party's nomination, Christian Conservatives would rather vote for one of the two Democratic candidates.
With a slim 9.1% support for McCain, and Huckabee a long shot for the nomination, Obama has become a viable choice for many Christian Conservatives with 26.3% of the Christian vote, up 8% from last week.
[...]
With religion taking center stage in this year's Presidential election, the GodTube.com (http://www.godtube.com/election), is voted upon by registered users and received more than 40,000 votes within the first week and the number of participants continues to grow with an astounding 11,075 new voters registered this week. GodTube.com is utilizing internet survey techniques to ensure fairness and only includes the leading primary candidates.
To translate that last paragraph: It's an opt-in poll that reflects only the opinions of GodTube users, not "Christian Conservatives" as a whole as it claims. The reference to "internet survey techniques to ensure fairness" appears to be little more than a limit on the number of times a person can vote; as a note on the GodTube election page states, "Votes are limited to ensure quality." There's no indication of what the limit is or how it is limited (login, email, IP address, etc.).
Like Newsmax's poll, the GodTube poll is non-scientific because it is opt-in. Therefore, it has no real applicability outside of the people who chose to participate in it.
Graham Obscures Matthews' Non-Liberal Streak Topic: NewsBusters
A Feb. 14 NewsBusters post by Tim Graham looks at a Washington Post profile of Chris Matthews, kicking off by claiming that Matthews' assertion that the Bush administration has "finally been caught in their criminality" was evidence of "how frankly Matthews dislikes Team Bush." As we noted the first time the NewsBusters crew got their collective knickers in a twist over this, Matthews' statement is not an inaccurate one.
Graham rather quickly glosses over the article's chronicling of "harsh Matthews comments about Hillary" to relate that Matthews' wife has donated to Hillary Clinton's campaign, adding: "This might help people conclude that there's more than sheer emotion when Matthews starts comparing Bill Clinton to Jesus." But Graham fails to note that the article also said this:
Matthews is a Roman Catholic with a strong moralistic streak, which became clear in his constant denunciations of Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky affair.
"I spent a year going after Clinton because he just wasn't straight with the American people. He used the presidency to protect himself," Matthews says.
Graham should know about this because the MRC promoted Matthews' attacks on Clinton at the time. Still, Graham complained that the article "professed that Matthews isn't easily identified, although many conservatives would disagree."
A Feb. 14 CNSNews.com article by Evan Moore notes the 10th anniversary of "the controversial Eve Ensler play, 'The Vagina Monologues,'" adding that "conservatives have decried it as a crude production that degrades women -- the exact opposite of what Ensler intended." And indeed, Moore quotes conservatives saying just that. But nowhere does Moore or any of the conservatives he quotes cite any specific content of the play that puroprtedly "degrades women."
Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America is quoted as saying that the play "is intended to push the envelope, and the way it pushes the envelope is by degrading women." Wright again claims the play "egrades and demeans women" and adds, "The role of the feminist movement was to ensure that women were judged by their merits, their capabilities, their experience. Yet 'The Vagina Monologues' reduces women to their private parts, as if that's the only thing that matters." No specifics are given.
Allison Kasic, director of collegiate studies at the Independent Women's Forum, is quoted as saying, "The play is blatantly anti-male [and] glorifies promiscuous behavior ... [This] is not empowering but actually demeans women." But Casic never cites any specific dialogue from the play other than noting that there is "someone on stage yelling 'c--- over and over again."
While Moore quotes supporters of the play, he apparently did not give them an opportunity to respond to Wright's and Kasic's claims that it "demeans women."
WND Admits False Claims, Settles Lawsuit Out of Court Topic: WorldNetDaily
Remember how WorldNetDaily was portraying the $165 million libel lawsuit filed against it by Tennessee businessman Clark Jones as determining "the future of investigative journalism in the United States"? Remember Joseph Farah's longtime claim that "this lawsuit would be dropped in a flat second if Al Gore wanted it to be dropped. Understand also that WND did nothing wrong and libeled no one in the publication of this exhaustive series"? Remember Farah's insistence that WND "has made every effort to ensure that its reporting in this series –- and in everything it has covered – was fair, honest, truthful, balanced and accurate"?
Well, never mind.
A Feb. 13 WND article states that the lawsuit has been settled out of court for undisclosed, confidential terms. The article also includes "the text of the settlement statement jointly drafted by all parties in the lawsuit. Both sides agreed to limit comment on the lawsuit to this statement":
"A lawsuit for libel, defamation, false light and conspiracy was filed by Clark Jones of Savannah, Tennessee against WorldNetDaily.com, Tony Hays and Charles H. Thompson II arising out of a press release issued by WorldNetDaily.com on September 18, 2000, and articles dated September 20, October 8, November 24 and December 5, 2000, written by Tony Hays and Charles H. Thompson, II, posted on WorldNetDaily.com's website.
"The original news release by WorldNetDaily.com of September 18, 2000, and the article by Hays and Thompson of September 20, 2000, contained statements attributed to named sources, which statements cast Clark Jones in a light which, if untrue, defamed him by asserting that the named persons said that he had interfered with a criminal investigation, had been a 'subject' of a criminal investigation, was listed on law enforcement computers as a 'dope dealer,' and implied that he had ties to others involved in alleged criminal activity. These statements were repeated in the subsequently written articles and funds solicitations posted on WorldNetDaily.com's website. Clark Jones emphatically denied the truth of these statements, denied any criminal activity and called upon the publisher and authors to retract them.
"Discovery has revealed to WorldNetDaily.com that no witness verifies the truth of what the witnesses are reported by authors to have stated. Additionally, no document has been discovered that provides any verification that the statements written were true.
"Factual discovery in the litigation and response from Freedom of Information Act requests to law enforcement agencies confirm Clark Jones' assertion that his name has never been on law enforcement computers, that he has not been the subject of any criminal investigation nor has he interfered with any investigation as stated in the articles. Discovery has also revealed that the sources named in the publications have stated under oath that statements attributed to them in the articles were either not made by them, were misquoted by the authors, were misconstrued, or the statements were taken out of context.
"WorldNetDaily.com and its editors never intended any harm to Clark Jones and regret whatever harm occurred. WorldNetDaily.com has no verified information by which to question Mr. Jones' honesty and integrity, and having met him, has no claim or reason to question his honesty and integrity. WorldNetDaily.com wishes him well."
As we detailed, WND admitted that it never fact-checked Thompson and Hays' reporting before it published their Gore-bashing article, nor did it even know who the anonymous sources were that made the false claims against Jones -- bad journalistic practice by any definition. As late as Feb. 5 -- nine days ago -- WND wouldn't even concede that Jones denied the claims.
We wonder: Given WND's admission that Thompson and Hays' false claims were "repeated in the subsequently written articles and funds solicitations posted on WorldNetDaily.com's website," will it be going back to each of these articles and adding a prominent correction, or will it simply make them disappear from its archives without explanation? We'll be watching.
This is yet another black eye for WND's reporting. It retracted twoarticles in 2005 for making false claims and has a longhistory of shoddy journalism.
The funny thing is that at the end of the article, it links to the donation page to WND's legal defense fund, which states that "WND has never lost such a lawsuit." Time to update that, guys.
UPDATE: One other funny thing we noticed: WND curiously didn't attach a Digg tag to the story, like it does on the rest of its original news articles, so it can't be tagged (well, not easily, anyway) at the social aggregator site.
Coulter's Not So Marvelous to MRC After All? Topic: NewsBusters
We previously noted that a Feb. 9 NewsBusters post called Ann Coulter's CPAC-related speech "marvelous." We just checked the post again, and the word "marvelous" has mysteriously disappeared as a descriptor of Coulter's speech.
It formerly stated that "Townhall.com has the entire marvelous video" of Coulter; now it rather blandly stated that "Townhall.com has the entire speech on video." The original has cycled out of Google Cache, but Wikio still lists the text of the original (here's a screen capture of the Wikio page).
Could it be that even the MRC is tiring of Coulter's antics, which it has defended in the past -- including, in this speech, claiming that Barack Obama's "first big accomplishment" was "being born half-black" and that he is "one of the least dangerous people I know named Hussein"? Or did she cut too close to the bone on John McCain -- the candidate the MRC will support in the general election despite the current conservative bellaching -- such as claiming that the big difference between McCain and Adolf Hitler was that Hitler "had a coherent tax policy"?
Why is Coulter's speech suddenly no longer "marvelous" in the eyes of the MRC? Inquiring minds want to know...
CNS' Jones Still Ignores Full Story of GOP Earmarks Topic: CNSNews.com
Last week, we noted that CNSNews.com's Susan Jones wrote about "a Republican call for an immediate moratorium on taxpayer-funded earmarks" without noting that Republicans, when they controlled Congress, had no such concern about earmarks and, in fact, the final GOP-controlled Congress in 2006 approved more earmarks than the Democratic-controlled 2007 Congress.
Jones does it again in a Feb. 13 article, in which she writes about a new GOP "earmark reform" website without noting the Republicans' record on earmarks, which would seem to be germane to the debate.
A Feb. 13 NewsBusters post by Kristen Fyfe calls a Washington Post article on polyamory "public relations material for destructive behavior' and "a game plan for redefining marriage" that "can only be described as a Valentine to immorality and provocative behavior." Fyfe concluded by calling it a "promotion of destructive behavior."
Fyfe is invoking the Depiction-Equals-Approval Fallacy; because the article didn't include "comment from social scientists and family experts to discuss the impact of such behavior especially as it relates to children and their overall developmental health," Fyfe appears to have declared -- without evidence -- that the writer, if not the entire Post organization, approves of such behavior.
WND Finally Prints Farah's CPAC Speech Topic: WorldNetDaily
Remember when we noted that CNSNews.com had scooped WorldNetDaily in reporting on WND editor Joseph Farah's appearance at CPAC? Well, WND has finally done something on it -- in the form of Les Kinsolving's Feb. 12 column. In fact, Farah's speech was almost the entirety of Kinsolving's column.
That's odd. Why put in Kinsolving's questionable hands -- where he did little more than copy and paste the speech -- instead of doing it as a news article?
A Feb. 12 NewsBusters post by Tim Graham follows Noel Sheppard in playing the equivocation card on David Shuster's "pimped out" comment regarding Chelsea Clinton, suggesting that it was OK because NBC has used it in other contexts, such as a tech-loaded bathroom that was a called a "pimped out john" and a reference to a couple who planned to "pimp out" their minivan.
Graham seems to be overlooking one minor detail: Chelsea Clinton is not an inanimate object.
Why is Graham (not to mention the rest of the NewsBusters crew) looking for reasons to say it was perfectly acceptable for Shuster to say "pimped out" instead of condeming him for it?
Clinton Derangement Syndrome Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
It's time for Hillary to hoist up the trousers of her sansabelt suit, stiffen the old upper lip and make the iron maidens and harridans of the world proud. Hillary possesses all the charm of Grendel's little sister, would he have had one – a trait that would not go unnoticed in dealing with radical Islamic factions, should she employ her true nature.
Newsmax Ignores Analyst's Offensive Hillary Hate Topic: Newsmax
A Feb. 11 Newsmax video (video can't be linked directly) featured an interview with "veteran political consultant" Roger Stone, in which Stone spoke of a "death struggle" for the Democratic presidential nomination resulting in "deep fissures" in the Democratic Party. He went on to call Hillary Clinton "very polarizing in the country" and Barack Obama "a shadow. I can't find anything that he's ever really accomplished."
But at no point did host Ashley Martella identify Stone as a cosnervative, nor did he mention Stone's anti-Hillary activism -- most notoriously, his creation of the alleged group Citizens United Not Timid (put the initials together).
Is Stone a man who can offer credible analysis? Then again, Newsmax thinks Dick Morris is a credible analyst (not to mention financial adviser) ...
Sheppard Eqivocates on Shuster-Chelsea Topic: NewsBusters
Noel Sheppard has a name for the controversy over NBC's David Shuster's suggestion that Hillary Clinton had "pimped out" Chelsea Clinton for her presidential campaign: He declared in a Feb. 10 NewsBusters post that the contretemps is "destined to be called 'Pimp Gate.'"
In other words, Sheppard is invoking the Clinton Equivocation, in which the Clintons are held to a different standard than other people -- in this case, permitted (if not required) to be insulted with impunity.
Sheppard goes on to assert -- without evidence, of course -- that "employees of MSNBC are allowed -- nay, encouraged! -- to debase a Republican whenever the whim overcomes them." But couldn't the same thing be said of Media Research Center employees and liberals? Given Sheppard's own track record, the answer appears to be yes.
In a Feb. 11 post, Sheppard purports to offer "another example of this hypocrisy" -- not his own, mind you, what he purports MSNBC is engaging in -- a tongue-in-cheek 2006 segment by Keith Olbermann about the Bush twins' partying ways in Argentina. Sheppard haughtily adds: "I ask you: If David Shuster suggesting that Hillary's campaign is pimping out Chelsea is so offensive that he should be suspended, how can this report by Olbermann not have met with similar disdain from the top brass at MSNBC and NBC?"
Sheppard curiously fails to mention that the Bush twins have a long history of party-hearty behavior; as we documented, Jenna Bush was busted for underage drinking on multiple occasions (which the ConWeb did their best to blame everyone but Jenna).
Sheppard then adds: 'Well, shouldn't it be just as irresponsible and inappropriate to insult a family member of the current president? Or, is that okay if the current president is a Republican?" But will Sheppard refrain from insulting family members if said president were a Democrat? He doesn't say.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:07 AM EST
Updated: Wednesday, February 13, 2008 11:52 PM EST
