WND: Media Reporting On Birther Banner Fail, Therefore It Was A Success Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily is in full spin mode on its epic birther banner fail.
If you'll recall, last weekend WorldNetDaily spent an undisclosed amount of money to fly an airplane over Cowboys Stadium carrying a banner reading, "Where's the real birth certificate?" But as was clear from the video WND posted to document the event (shot from another aircraft that WND presumably spent even more money to hire), the banner was clearly flying over an enclosed stadium, and the mostly empty parking lots indicate that it few well before the start of the evening game. All told, few people who attended the game even saw it.
But that's not what WND wants you to think. A Dec. 17 article forwards the mostly optimistically possible take on this embarrassment, in response to CNN's Anderson Cooper joining the numerous others who have ridiculed this effort: "[Cooper] didn't mention that the roof of the dome typically is open during the pregame time period when the banner flew, and even as it closed, those fans presumably walked from the vehicles in the parking to the stadium before the game when the banner was flying."
But WND offers no evidence that the stadium's roof was ever open during the time WND flew its banner -- indeed, the video evidence WND provides shows conclusively that it wasn't.
WND then shifted into there-is-no-such-thing-as-bad-publicity mode:
Joseph Farah, WND CEO, noted that while CNN was lamenting the fact that the video was of a banner to "nowhere" and it was a waste of money to fly banners no one would see, CNN was, in fact, publicizing that video, and putting it before viewers.
"Isn't that funny – as CNN airs video footage of the stunt! I know CNN's ratings are hurting, too, but Cooper provided a virtual infomercial – including pitching 'Where's the real birth certificate?' yard signs on sale in the WND Superstore," Farah, who originated the banner idea, said.
Shorter Farah: Sure, we look like creepily obsessed Obama-haters, but we got our message out!
UPDATE: Farah keeps up this up-is-down attitude in his Dec. 17 column, asserting without evidence that "not only did most of the 95,000 or so fans see the banner because they arrived early to the game for tail-gate parties and the best parking spots, but, thanks to the media reports like Olbermann's and dozens of others, the banner was actually viewed by millions."
Farah adds: "When people are sniping at you, you probably must pose some threat to them." We feel that way when Farah snipes at us.
Newsmax's Hirsen: Gingrich Is Just As Cool As 'Big Bang Theory' Topic: Newsmax
James Hirsen seems a little desperate to praise Newt Gingrich in his Dec. 13 Newsmax column. Straining for a suitable pop-culture reference, Hirsen declares that Gingrich has the same sort of "geeky intellectualism" as the cast of the sitcom "Big Bang Theory."
No, really:
The plotline of "Big Bang" revolves around two roommates, experimental physicist Leonard Hofstadter and theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper, who are friends with aerospace engineer Howard Wolowitz and astrophysicist Rajesh Koothrappali.
The intellectual prowess and comic geekiness of the four characters have transformed them into pop icons that amazingly share quite a few traits with former House Speaker Gingrich.
The GOP presidential candidate has a Ph.D. from Tulane and has worked as a professor of both history and geography. He famously co-authored and initiated the "Contract with America," which resulted in the Republican revolution of the 1990s.
It is also true that at think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute and Hoover Institution, Gingrich is a well-respected policy wonk.
That being said, his bona fide coolness comes from the same genuine curiosity about the world that attracts television audiences to the Sheldon character on "Big Bang." It turns out that, just like Sheldon, Gingrich has a deep love for science, particularly quantum physics.
[...]
The GOP presidential front-runner emanates a coolness that the current culture understands and admires, thanks to the achievements of real-life uber-nerds Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and the like.
Gingrich’s campaign would be well served to check into whether a Star Trek convention is scheduled any time soon in Iowa.
MRC's Graham Still Mad At the Smothers Brothers After 40 Years Topic: NewsBusters
Feel the bitterness in Tim Graham's Dec. 13 NewsBusters post:
George Clooney just can't get over the glory days when CBS was a powerful disseminator of left-wing propaganda. First, he fictionalized the glories of stone-faced anchorman Edward R. Murrow fighting the red-baiters. Next up is glorifying the Smothers Brothers and their CBS comedy hour and how they "spoke truth to power" with communist musicians like Pete Seeger singing "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" against the Vietnam War.
Unlike Graham, we have actually read the David Bianculli book upon which Clooney will base his movie.The Smothers Brothers were actually pioneering the use of political satire on network TV (and, this being the late 1960s, network TV was pretty much all the TV there was). And CBS, far from being "a powerful disseminator of left-wing propaganda," did everything it could to water down or scuttle the show's political statements and ultimately canceled the show because of it.
Amazing that Graham is actually paid to spew such ignorant hatred, but there you go. This stuff happened 40 years ago, Tim! It's time to move on!
CNS Screws Up Pelosi's Reference To 'Macroeconomic Advisers' Topic: CNSNews.com
A Dec. 15 CNSNews.com article by Edwin Mora went after Nancy Pelosi for saying that an extension of unemployment insurance "is not only good for individuals. It has a macroeconomic impact. As macroeconomic advisers have stated, it would make a difference of 600,000 jobs to our economy." Mora added, "Pelosi did not name those 'macroeconomic advisers.'"
In fact, as Media Matters detailed, Pelosi was not speaking generically. Macroeconomic Advisers is the name of an independent consulting firm whose research states exactly what Pelosi said.
CNS has done this sort of thing before. Last year, it repeatedly misinterpreted then-Obama administration nominee Erroll Southers' reference to the far-right Christian Identity movement, falsely claiming that Southers thought groups having a "Christian identity" were security threats.
MRC Condones Sexist Behavior As Long As It's Not Worse Than What Muslims Do Topic: Media Research Center
In the midst of a Dec. 14 TimesWatch tirade criticizing New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman for committing the offense of saying something less than laudatory about Israel, the Media Research Center's Clay Waters takes things in a weird direction.
After quoting Friedman pointing out that ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel have persuaded local bus companies to create segregated buses in which "women are required to enter through the bus back doors and sit in the back of the bus, as well as 'dress modestly,'"Waters retorts: "As if much harsher kinds of repression of women aren’t an everyday occurrence in other Middle Eastern countries."
Really? That's Waters' standard? Such blatant discrimination is OK since it supposedly is not worse than what "other Middle Eastern countries" -- read: Muslims -- do?
A more sane response would be to criticize discrimination in all its forms, no matter who is perpetrating it. But MRC employees are not exactly known for their sanity, are they?
AIM Article at Breitbart Site Featured Nazi-Era Anti-Semitic Image Topic: Accuracy in Media
A Dec. 14 Accuracy in Media article by Logan Churchwell opined on the supposed "increased risk of bias" in the Associated Press' new drive for "distinctiveness." But when the article was reposted at Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism site, it received an extra feature: Nazi-era anti-Semitic propaganda.
As Media Matters details, the image is based on an anti-Semitic cartoon in a Nazi-era magazine (which explains why the big guy looks more than a little stereotypically Jewish). The image has since been deleted without explanation and replaced with another image.
It's unclear whose fault this is, but the image appears in at least two other Big Journalism posts, according to Media Matters.
UPDATE: Big Journalism is sort of taking responsibility for the image, claiming it was removed after Breitbart editor-in-chief Joel Pollak ("an Orthodox Jew with a degree in Jewish Studies, so he tends to pick up on these things") noticed it. But Media Matters first noted Big Journalism's use of the image back in March.
Should someone who holds the title of T. Boone Pickens Fellow really be spending his time complaining about that some other billionaire spends money to further his favorite causes?
Newsmax Just Can't Stop Fluffing Trump Topic: Newsmax
After Donald Trump burned Newsmax by abandoning their planned joint debate of Republican presidential candidates, why the heck would Newsmax continue to engage in Trump-fluffing?
We don't know, but that's what Newsmax has decided to do. A Dec. 15 article touts how "Donald Trump’s new book 'Time to Get Tough' is garnering praise from Rush Limbaugh, America's most-listened-to talk radio host.
The article is credited to "Newsmax Wires," but one has to wonder what self-respecting news wire would publish such something that is nothing more than a press release.
Then again, Newsmax's willingness to engage in more Trump-fluffing after Trump so publicly and humiliatingly dissed it doesn't exactly serve as a display of self-respect, does it?
Criticism of A Clinton Proves MRC Thesis Wrong (Not That MRC Will Admit It) Topic: Media Research Center
In a Dec. 13 NewsBusters post, Ken Shepherd highlights how the Washington Post panned Chelsea Clinton's debut as a TV correspondent on NBC. The reviewer "clearly didn't pull his punches in his December 13 review," Shepherd wrote, "hitting the former president and his long-suffering consort the Secretary of State."
Um, doesn't this harsh review discredit the entire raison d'etre of NewsBusters' parent organization, the Media Research Center, that "the media," and the Washington Post in particular, has an ingrained liberal bias? If the paper was truly biased, wouldn't it have not published the review in the first place?
Alas, Shepherd doesn't seem interested in answering that question -- he's too excited by the Clinton-bashing to care.
Right Wing Watch catches Brenda J. Elliott on Phyllis Schlafly's radio show promoting the book she co-wrote with WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein, "Red Army," which according to WND documents how "a radical socialist movement has been quietly infiltrating the major institutions of American power: our schools, our military, our economy, our media, and Congress itself."
On the show, Elliott called President Obama a "useful idiot" who is nothing more than a tool for said socialist conspiracy. She continued: "Honestly, folks, it is a conspiracy. Two people is all it takes for a conspiracy and an intent to make something happen, that’s a conspiracy. The word conspiracy theory has been really distorted, it’s been made to sound like something loony, and it’s not loony, it’s not loony!"
MRC Complains About Accurate Statement by David Frum Topic: Media Research Center
In a Dec. 12 Media Research Center item, Matt Hadro complained: "Faux-Republican David Frum took a shot at Fox News viewers on Sunday when he told CNN's Howard Kurtz that 'people who watch a lot of Fox come away knowing a lot less about important world events.'"
Hadro didn't mention that there's evidence to back up Frum's claim. Last month, a Fairleigh Dickinson University poll found that Fox News led people to be even less informed than those who say they don’t watch any news at all.
Hadro also grumbled about Frum's assertion that through the conservative media, "conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics." Of course, the MRC has a horse in this game (unmentioned by Hadro) through its "news" operation, CNSNews.com, and its Obama-hating editor Terry Jeffrey.
Still, Hadro grumbled:
So Frum thinks that the conservative media are presently worse off in this regard than the liberal media, who are nevertheless catching up to them. Apparently, Frum has not seen MSNBC's "Lean Forward" promos which incessantly tout the network's liberal values of its prime-time lineup – including new host Al Sharpton laughably blaming Republicans for the down economy.
Meanwhile, the MRC has moved this year to promoting CNS' conservative bias, complete with banner ads right-wing radio hosts singing its praises:
Newsmax is trying to salvage its Republican presidential debate -- but it's not telling Newsmax readers about it.
When Donald Trump pulled out of serving as moderator for the planned Dec. 27 debate, Newsmax editorial director Steve Coz made only a non-committal statement about the future of the debate at Newsmax itself -- which, at this writing, is the most recent article containing the "Trump Debate" tag at Newsmax. He has, oddly, been more forthcoming with other news outlets about Newsmax's plans.
Coz told CBS News, "We're full steam ahead. ... We're obviously disappointed more candidates didn't come forward... [but] what everyone is ignoring is that we have the frontrunner."
Coz told the Huffington Post's Michael Calderone: "We, Newsmax and ION Television, are actively exploring having a forum for candidates on the 27th or at a later date. ... Obviously with Trump bowing out the situation has changed."
Why isn't Coz reporting any of this at his own website? Should Newsmax be the go-to site for news about Newsmax's debate?
Then again, Coz used to be editor of the National Enquirer, so maybe he's a little unclear about how this "news" stuff actually works.
Obama, without question, voiced the most unambiguous endorsement and affirmation for communism ever made by an American president. It is yet another demonstrative proof that Obama embraces communism and that his primary goal is to turn America into a communist nation. Republicans (and quite frankly, Democrats, too) who are standing by silently allowing this Erebusic megalomaniac to spew his detestable and divisive rhetoric to the impressionable and malleable minds of children, are, in effect, openly supporting a terrorist attack on minds of America's children. It is enough that public-school teachers teach such messages; the children do not need said message reinforced by the president of the United States.
Words fail to express the contempt I have for Obama as the leader of our nation. He condemns the very thing that made America great - and specific to that point, America was great before there was an Obama. It should be a punishable offense to allow him to undermine that greatness.
America is in denial to believe that he is not a communist doing everything in his power to forcibly and insidiously transform the nation into a communist state. It is misinformation for the media, political pundits and writers of opinion to report his actions in any other way. He is a manifestation of evil that threatens America in a way the KKK and al-Qaida could but hope to.
[...]
There remains another question astute individuals will ask: "Why did Obama choose Osawatomie to deliver such a transpicously Marxist speech - considering that he and his ilk do nothing that isn't meticulously calculated?" The answer to that question is another question. Could it be because Osawatomie was the Weather Underground newspaper published by Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in the 1970s, or did it have to do with the abolitionist John Brown whose nickname was Osawatomie - unless you believe it was all just a coincidence?
Then there is the eerie similarity between the Weather Underground organization logo and the Obama 2008 campaign logo. There is also their use of "audacity" to bring about "socialism" in America, in the original newspaper written by Ayers and Dohrn. While it is unknown for a certainty who wrote Obama's "The Audacity of Hope," Ayers, himself, referred to it as more of a "political hack book," suggesting that it was a disingenuous feint to the center written by committee. I reference it because language found in "Audacity of Hope" closely parallels that found in the Ayers-Dohrn communist newspaper.
CNS' Jeffrey Whiffs Again In Kagan Recusal Effort Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey is getting increasingly desperate in his efforts to get Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan to recuse from deciding the constitutionality of President Obama's health care reform plan.
Internal Justice Department email communications made just days before the House of Representatives passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act show that then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan was brought into the loop as DOJ began preparing to respond to an anticipated legal complaint that Mark Levin and the Landmark Legal Foundation were planning to file against the act if the House used a procedural rule to “deem” the bill passed even if members never directly voted on it.
Levin's complaint involved a procedural maneuver used to pass the bill -- which the case before the Suprement Court will not address, given that the "deem and pass" procedure was never actually used -- and did not address the content of the legislation.
Strike one.
Jeffrey brought up another irrelevant issue in a Dec. 13 article, trying tomake a big deal about how Neal Kaytal, Kagan's deputy when she was solicitor general, the position she held before being appointed to the Supreme Court, "had written her a memo informing her that she had 'substantially participated' in Golden Gate Restaurant Association v. San Francisco—a case that Kagan’s own office tied to Obamacare." Jeffrey continued:
On May 28, 2010, 15 days after Katyal sent Kagan this memo informing her that she had “substantially participated” in the Golden Gate case--and a month before Kagan’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings started--Kagan’s office submitted a 26-page brief to the Supreme Court in the case. The brief cited PPACA by name 12 times and referred to it more generally as “the federal legislation” or “the new federal legislation” an additional 6 times.
Additionally, the brief cited the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (HCERA), the reconciliation bill enacted with PPACA, 7 times.
Sounds serious -- except it's not. As Jeffrey eventually concedes, the brief Kagan's office issued in Golden Gate Restaurant Association case argued that it "should not be taken up by the Supreme Court at that time because the full federal regulatory framework in which that question could be properly answered could only be seen once all the new regulations needed under Obamacare had been written by the federal agencies responsible for them."
Again, Jeffrey provides no evidence that Kagan offered an opinion on the constitutionality of health care reform. Far from it -- the brief Jeffrey is citing argues that the case not be take up until federal law is settled as health care reform is implemented.
Strike two.
Jeffrey then condenses that article in his Dec. 14 column, complete with suggestion that Kagan's participation in this case means she lied to Congress when she said she hadn't ruled on legal issues regarding Obamacare. Again, advocating that the Golden Gate case be put on hold until federal issues are resolved is not an opinion about the legal merits of Obamacare.
NewsBusters Complains That Conservative Group Is Accurately Identified Topic: NewsBusters
Matthew Balan writes (and sporadically boldfaces) in a Dec. 12 NewsBusters post:
ABC, CBS, and NBC's morning shows on Monday all used news briefs to highlight how home improvement giant Lowe's is "facing a backlash" after it pulled its ads from TLC's "All-American Muslim" reality TV series. All three noted that the company reacted to a complaint from a "conservative" or "Christian" group who threatened a boycott. CBS's Early Show played up how Lowe's "critics call that bigotry."
NBC's Natalie Morales stated in her brief that the chain is "sparking outrage after its pulled its ads from a reality show about American Muslims. The retail giant bowed to pressure from an evangelical Christian group, which called for a boycott against the chain of home improvement stores." Morales added that a "California state senator, meanwhile, says he is considering a boycott and legislative action if the company does not reverse its decision."
Josh Elliott on ABC's Good Morning America used the "facing a backlash" line and continued that "Lowe's pulled the ads from TLC's 'All-American Muslim,' after a conservative Christian group complained that the show, which follows families from a Detroit suburb, is Islamic propaganda."
What's Balan's problem? We're not sure. The group that is leading the boycott against "All-American Muslim," the Florida Family Association, is a conservative evangelical Christian group. That's entirely accurate. There's nothing ambiguous about the group's agenda.
The closest Balan gets to an actual, substantive complaint is lamenting, "By contrast, when the Big Three networks first covered the Occupy Wall Street protests during the first 11 days of October 2011, only once did one of their reporters label them 'liberal.'" Which, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with this story.
