Topic: Media Research Center
NewsBusters and the Media Research Center get all huffy when conservatives are taken out of context -- but they have no problem doing the same thing to President Obama. Read more >>
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
NEW ARTICLE: Damn the Context, Full Speed Ahead!
Topic: Media Research Center NewsBusters and the Media Research Center get all huffy when conservatives are taken out of context -- but they have no problem doing the same thing to President Obama. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:22 PM EDT
Huh? WND Quotes Jesus Criticizing America
Topic: WorldNetDaily An Aug. 12 WorldNetDaily article by Michael Carl carries the headline "Jesus to America: 'Why do you persecute me?'" Yes, that's in quotes. Yes, WND is claiming to directly quote Jesus talking about America -- highly unlikely since Jesus died a couple thousand years ago, well before the establishment of America.In the article itself --which does not quote Jesus -- Carl essentially defends brutal dictatorships in Syria and Egypt because they supposedly did not persecute Christians. That's a specious argument, which presumes that non-Christians are less than human and, thus, more expendable under dictatorships. Carl is not the only WND writer with an affinity for brutal Middle East dictators; Aaron Klein has sided with both Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Syria's Bashar al-Assad.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:08 PM EDT
CNS Quotes Anti-Gay Hate Group Leader to Attack Transgenders
Topic: CNSNews.com Reporting on how "The District of Columbia Office of Human Rights announced on Aug. 7 plans to launch a government-sponsored ad campaign to combat transgender discrimination in Washington, D.C.," an Aug. 10 CNSNews.com article by Patrick Burke gives a platform to a gay-basher:
LaBarbera's AFTAH is listed as a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its "often vicious" anti-gay activism. Burke did not inform readers of AFTAH's status as a hate group, nor did he permit anyone to respond to LaBarbera's attacks.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:00 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, August 15, 2012 12:02 PM EDT
Roger Hedgecock Still Lying About DHS Analysis of Extremists
Topic: WorldNetDaily Back in 2009, WorldNetDaily columnist and right-wing radio host Roger Hedgecock leaked an internal Department of Homeland Security report on right-wing extremism, insisting that it portrayed any and every critic of President Obama as a potential terrorist. That's simply a lie; it came to pretty much the same conclusions about the motivations of right-wing extremists and their interest in disgruntled military veterans as a similar assessment conducted during the Bush administration. Now that the DHS report seems to have been proven prescient, Hedgecock is back to repeat his lies. In his Aug. 12 WND column, Hedgecock concedes that "The assessment warned of the rise of 'Neo-Nazis' and 'militias,' a warning that some see as valid today in light of the Sikh temple massacre in Wisconsin. But the language went way beyond warning about violent hate groups." But then he goes back to lying about what the report said:
In fact, the report never claims that all opponents of Obama are "rightwing extremists," as Hedgecock suggests. From the report:
Hedgecock also claimed: "Worse, the assessment targeted all our returning war veteran heroes as potential terrorists, potential Timothy McVeighs, even though military training does not include making fertilizer bombs." But the report didn't do that either, stating that only "a small percentage of military personnel" might be attracted to extremist groups:
Meanwhile, Hedgecock seems to have gottten his desired result by leaking the study. After the right-wing outrage toward DHS that Hedgecock's leak provoked, the person who wrote the DHS analysis, Daryl Johnson, had his research team broken up, and he now claims that DHS devotes few resources to examining far-right extremism. Now that Johnson has been proven correct, Hedgecock doesn't want to hear it -- he only wants to fearmonger some more in order to push his anti-Obama agenda.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:24 AM EDT
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Newsmax Doesn't Bother to Prove That Debate Moderators Are 'Liberal'
Topic: Newsmax The headline of David Patten's Aug. 13 Newsmax article reads "Liberal Dream Team to Host Presidential Debates," but Patten doesn't prove the claim -- even when he's quoting the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell. Patten uncritically quotes Bozell claiming that one debate moderation, PBS' Jim Lehrer, "tilts strongly to the left," but no evidence is provided to back it up.Similary, Patten quotes Bozell saying that CNN's Candy Crowley will be "drinking from the CNN Kool-Aid, and they’re the ones who are going to prepare the questions for her," but again, no evidence backs up the claim. Patten himself grouses that CBS' Bob Schieffer "has a habit of asking questions on Face the Nation that suggest a point of view" -- but the evidence he provides is Schieffer asking Rep. Michele Bachmann, "Has the tea party made compromise a dirty word, and is that why Congress can't seem to get anything done?" Given that polls have suggested that tea party activists do not want congressional Republicans to compromise with Democrats, that's an entirely reasonable question to ask. Despite not proving that any "liberal" journalists were named as moderators, Patten groused, "No conservative journalists were named." He then quoted Bozell complaining that nobody from Fox News was named to take part:
We know Shepard Smith is a straight shooter, but is Bozell really suggesting that Baier doesn't have a right-wing bias? That simply isn't true.
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:16 PM EDT
WND's Corsi Would Rather Write About Gays Than His Birther Failure
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily has made it clear that it will hide the truth about the rapidly collapsing birther conspiracy from its readers. That goes doubly true for WND's Jerome Corsi, a de facto member of Joe Arpaio's birther posse. Sure, Corsi could be a honest reporter and explain how he and Mike Zullo used the wrong coding system to examine Barack Obama's birth certificate. But he's not, so he won't. Instead, Corsi has decided he'll write about gays. First, Corsi set the stage for harrassment of gays by publishing a list of "more than 250 openly LGBT (Lesbian-”Gay”-Bisexual-Transgender) professionals appointed by the Obama administration to federal government policy jobs," meaning that "the Obama administration has set a record for appointing more openly LGBT individuals to the federal government than all previous administrations combined." Corsi seems to think this is a bad thing, but he doesn't explain why. Then, Corsi grumbled that "LGBT (Lesbian, “Gay,” Bisexual, and Transgender) advocacy groups have declared war on Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, targeting him as a villain." Corsi claims that "by doing so, LGBT activists risk putting a spotlight on controversial issues high on the cultural agenda of the political left, including same-sex marriage and open LGBT behavior in the military, issues that might not fly as high in some less-liberal regions of the nation, including some swing states." Note the awkward placement of scare quotes around "gay" in both articles. That's a ridiculous, spiteful WND stylebook mandate. And thus, the blackout continues.
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:16 PM EDT
AIM's Kincaid Touts Andy McCarthy's Discredited Book
Topic: Accuracy in Media Cliff Kincaid uses an Aug. 9 Accuracy in Media column to tout Andrew McCarthy's "virtual indictment of top State Department official Huma Abedin as a security risk." Kincaid cites no direct evidence from McCarthy to back up his claim. Nevertheless, Kincaid talks up McCarthy's supposed credentials: "In addition to prosecuting terrorists, McCarthy wrote a book, The Grand Jihad, the title of which is taken from a Muslim Brotherhood document obtained by the FBI and which identifies front groups and collaborators in the U.S." In fact, as we've documented, McCarthy devotes a chapter of "The Grand Jihad" to claiming that Barack Obama, during a 2006 visit to Kenya, campaigned for presidential candidate Raila Odinga. In fact, he did no such thing: PolitiFact agreed that there is "no evidence to indicate that Obama 'openly supported' Odinga." Indeed, much of the book is dedicated to peddling the conspiratorial idea that Obama is an "Islamist." OF course, the facts don't really matter to Kincaid -- after all, McCarthy is reliably anti-Obama, and that's all that matters to Kincaid's anti-Obama agenda.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:45 PM EDT
WND Race-Baiting Watch: Colin Flaherty Gets Busted
Topic: WorldNetDaily Colin Flaherty is back at WorldNetDaily to fearmonger some more about alleged "racial violence," this time to suggest that because violent crime is not always reported to police, "racial violence" may be even much worse. Of course, Flaherty offers no evidence tha all -- or even any -- of the crime supposedly not reported is "racial"; instead, he serves up only anecdotal examples. Meanwhile, Flaherty's long, hot summer of race-baiting has gotten the attention of Salon's Alex Pareene, who portrays it as "the story of how and why the right suddenly became very, very frightened of black people":
Pareene also catches Flaherty in exaggerations and false claims:
Will WND make Flaherty correct his work -- and, more important, if it does, will it let readers know that corrections have been made? We shall see.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:54 AM EDT
Monday, August 13, 2012
MRC Still Defending Taking Obama Out of Context
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center has long defended taking President Obama's "you didn't build that" comments out of context. The latest excuse: grammar. In an Aug. 10 MRC TimesWatch post, Clay Waters berates a New York Times writer for accurately pointing out that Obama "was talking about roads and bridges, a point that was ignored" by his right-wing critics. Waters responded: "Really? If Obama really was talking about 'roads and bridges,' a plural phrase, why did he follow up with the word 'that,' which is singular?" That's right -- Waters has to nitpick on grammar to justify distorting Obama's remarks. Never mind the fact that Obama made his point clearer immediately after saying those words: "The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:10 PM EDT
WND Still Censoring Facts About Birther 'Investigation'
Topic: WorldNetDaily Just how far in denial is WorldNetDailiy about the fact that its highly touted cold case posse "investigation" of Barack Obama's "eligibility" to be president completely botched the facts? In his Aug. 9 column, WND editor Joseph Farah continued to insist that Obama's birth certificate was "found to be fraudulent by the only law enforcement investigation to examine it." In fact, that biased "investigation" was caught rehashing previously discredited WND birther conspiracies and, most recently, cold case posse leader Mike Zullo (and de facto posse member completely screwed the pooch by using the wrong coding system to examine Obama's birth certificate. Farah and WND have continued their blackout on Zullo's screw-up -- or any other factual criticism of the "investigation." It seems that WND's credibility is tanking along with the posse's (as well as Joe Arpaio, who WND manipulated into doing an investigation in the first place).
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:07 PM EDT
Noel Sheppard Roots For Censorship, Proud He Encouraged Gay-Bashing
Topic: NewsBusters Noel Sheppard is quite a piece of work. Sheppard wrote an Aug. 12 post headlined "National Review's Rich Lowry Destroys MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Meet the Press." In fact, all Lowry did is argue with Maddow over her accurate point that Paul Ryan's proposed budget has the same $700 million in cuts to Medicare that was in President Obama's health care reform plan. Sheppard followed that with a post proudly noting that his post was reposted on the Drudge Report, followed by Maddow tweeting that this will result in an "onslaught of ALL CAPS swearing misspelled tweets & emails informing me that I am gay." Rather than fret that he encouraged gay-bashing, he's proud of it: "Well, maybe if she had answered Lowry's simple question concerning whether or not she supports the $700 billion of Medicare cuts in ObamaCare she could look forward to praise for her appearance." But Sheppard wasn't done: He wrote another post rooting for censorship. In that post, he noted that CNN's Howard Kurtz asked "libtalker" Stephanie Miller if she was worried that she and "some of the few liberal national voices on talk radio be drowned out in this election" but right-wing radio hosts. Sheppard called it "a question that most right-thinking Americans pray the answer is 'Yes,'" adding: "you can rest assured millions of Americans across the fruited plain hope the fallacious propaganda being spread by the likes of Miller and Schultz will indeed be drowned out. I'm not sure based on the question that would make Kurtz happy, but count me amongst them." Remember, the Media Research Center employs Sheppard as NewsBusters' associate editor. Is rooting for censorship and encouraging gay-bashing really appropriate behavior from someone on the MRC payroll?
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:36 AM EDT
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Supersize WorldNetDaily Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily
-- Vox Day, July 29 WorldNetDaily column
-- Mychal Massie, July 30 WND column
-- Barry Farber, July 31 WND column
-- Aliza Davidovit, August 1 WND column
-- Joseph Farah, August 1 WND column
-- Michael Master, August 3 WND column
-- Vox Day, August 5 WND column
-- Chuck Norris, August 5 WND column
-- Barry Farber, August 7 WND column
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:28 AM EDT
Sunday, August 12, 2012
NewsBusters Pretends Limbaugh Ad Boycott Isn't Working
Topic: NewsBusters Remember last week, how NewsBusters' Matthew Sheffield -- while gloating that Carbonite's profits were down after wirthdrawing its advertising from Rush Limbaugh's radio show over his three-day misogynistic tirade against Sandra Fluke -- was insisting that the ad boycott against Limbaugh's show was "collapsing on itself"? Well, not so much. Media Matters notes that Cumulus Media -- which owns 10 major-market radio stations that air Limbaugh's show -- has essentially admitted that the Limbaugh ad boycott has hurt business and contributed to a loss of $5.5 million in revenue on "the top three stations" in Cumulus' portfolio. That presumably includes New York's WABC, Limbaugh's flagship station. As we've noted, Sheffield's MRC co-workers found nothing offensive in Limbaugh's misogyny, so they certainly can't understand why anyone would drop their ads from Limbaugh's show because of it.
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:10 PM EDT
CNS: 'Obamacare Mandate: Sterilize 15-Year-Old Girls for Free--Without Parental Consent'
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com presents a theoretical as fact in an Aug. 10 article by Sabrina Gladstone, under the salacious headline "Obamacare Mandate: Sterilize 15-Year-Old Girls for Free--Without Parental Consent." Of course, the claim that "Obamacare" does not mandate that 15-year-old girls be sterlized without parental consent -- which is what the headline claims -- is ludicrous on its face. What Gladstone's article actually claims -- that "Obamacare" allows 15-year-old girls be sterlized without parental consent -- relies on creating a theoretical and presenting it as fact:
That's how Gladstone arrives at her claim -- to the extent that her assertion has any truth whatsoever, it applies only in Oregon. She offers no evidence that anybody, in Oregon or anywhere else, has ever advocated that teenage girls be sterilized. Gladstone is being dishonest and deliberately provocative. But can we really expact anything different from a "news" organization that puts its hatred of President Obama before the facts?
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:54 PM EDT
Updated: Sunday, August 12, 2012 7:11 PM EDT
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Ellis Washington's Favorite Book Is Withdrawn
Topic: WorldNetDaily Over the summer, WorldNetDaily columnist wrote a series of columns based on David Barton's new book, "The Jefferson Lies." In one column, Washington called Barton's book "outstanding," adding that he "has once again presented an opus that shines the light of truth on the lies and propaganda of atheism, progressivism, liberalism, humanism and secular elites who possess a venal hatred for American exceptionalism." In a later column, Washington called Barton's book "revelatory." Now Washington will have to call Barton's book something else: discredited. Barton's publisher, Thomas Nelson, has withdrawn "The Jefferson Lies" from sale, concluding that the book contained material that was "not adequately supported":
At this writing, Barton's book is still available in the WND online store, and WND has not reported on the book's withdrawal.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:50 PM EDT
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