Planned Parenthood’s newly released " 2015-2016 Annual Report " says that the organization performed 328,348 abortions in the year that ended on Sept. 30, 2015, and received $554.6 million in "government health services reimbursements and grants"--money that came from U.S. taxpayers--in the year that on June 30, 2016.
Cohen conveniently -- and dishonestly -- omits the important fact that none of that "money that came from U.S. taxpayers" paid for any of those abortions because federal law prohibits it.
Cohen similarly repeated right-wing talking points in a June 1 article, claiming that "The 2017 hurricane season begins today, June 1--a record 139 months after the last major hurricane made landfall in the continental United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration."
As we've pointed out, CNS narrowly defines this as a Category 3 hurricane that made landfall, which conveniently ignores Category 3 hurricanes that grazed the U.S. coast before weakening and making landfall as well as 2012's Superstorm Sandy, which still caused substantial damage despite not being a Category 3 hurricane at landfall.
It looks like Cohen is well on his way to becoming a highly biased right-wing reporter. Congratulations, or something.
WorldNetDaily's anonymously written May 29 article on Jeremy Christian's anti-Muslim stabbing rampage in Portland, leaving two dead, is an odd creature.
While the headline calls Christian an "murderous Muslim-hater" and the article itself noted that the incident began "when he began verbally assaulting a woman wearing a Muslim head covering, known as a hijab" using "what would be characterized as hate speech or bias language," the article curiously fails to quote any of that alleged language, instead playing up Christian's "felonious neo-Nazi" past.
One witness said that "He was saying that Muslims should die. That they've been killing Christians for years."Christian was also reported as shouting "Die Muslims" at a rally in April. On Facebook, Christian wrote that "If we're removing statues because of the Civil War, we should be removing mosques because of 9/11."
Christian's rhetoric isn't really all that more extreme that the Islamophobia WND has been peddling.
WND reporter Leo Hohmann has written an entire anti-Muslim book malliciously portraying Muslim refugees escaping war and poverty to come to the U.S. as engaging in "civilization jihad." Hohmann has endeavored to portray all Muslims as potential terrorists and ranted that Muslims "really don't value what we value," complete with shadowy images of armed Muslims. WND has told lies about a measles outbreak in a Somali-American community in Minnesota, falsely blaming it on the Quran instead of their fellow anti-vaxxers who spread their conspiracy theories among thte community, and invoked the vision of scary Muslim hordes in order to promote the right-wing candidate in the French presidential election. And WND has attacked Muslims for making use of the very same religious-freedom laws it has praised Christians for invoking.
It seems Christian was acting on the Muslim-hate WND has been expressing both implicitly and explicitly and putting those hints into action.
Even as Christian sounded even more WND-esque at his arraignment hearing -- where he ranted, "Free speech or die Portland. You've got no safe place. This is America. Get out if you don't like free speech ... Death to the enemies of America. Leave this country if you hate our freedom" -- has devoted no more original coverage to this story. We can probably guess why.
MRC, Bad At Its Job, Launches Revenge Campaign Topic: Media Research Center
Apparently driven by envy at liberal groups like Media Matters for being effective in raising legitimate concerns about Fox News hosts like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity in a way that caused advertisers to flee their shows, the Media Research Center is now lashing out at TV hosts it doesn't agree with.
In other words, a revenge campaign.
The MRC explains the plan in a name-calling May 31 post:
Media Research Center (MRC) President Brent Bozell today announced a new campaign that will focus on informing the American public and corporate advertisers about leftist shows and on-air personalities who use their programs to spread vicious lies and hate.
“We are putting the radical left on notice that we are on to them. We know the inside-outside game that radical organizations are playing with their leftist allies in the "news" media. The radical left’s effort to silence conservative media by targeting their advertisers with coordinated smear campaigns has gone unanswered, but today is the day the conservative movement fights back, but with a big difference: We'll tell the truth. And we'll take no prisoners.
“Every network and cable news channel is today on notice that the MRC will be closely monitoring their leftist opinion programs and informing their advertisers and the American public when these programs and hosts go beyond political commentary and engage in smear, hate and political extremism. The difference between our effort and what the left is engaged in is that we will demonstrate to the advertisers of these programs how the hosts of these shows are not simply engaged in disagreeable political discussion but rather outright hate and personal character assassination.
"Today we are putting ten shows, and their major corporate sponsors on notice that we are watching their every move. Additionally, we will be publicly listing the advertisers of these programs and asking them to defend their decision to continue airing ads on these shows. Every time one of their on-air personalities go beyond political commentary and engage in smear and hate, we are going to unleash an army of activists to contact these advertisers by phone and through social media to ask them why they are advertising on programs that are so biased, repulsive and morally bankrupt."
But isn't this kind of monitoring what the MRC's job is supposed to have been for the past 30 years? Is the MRC admitting that it's terrible at its job?
The MRC also whines about "smear campaigns" against cpnoservative hosts, but it never explains how it is a "smear" to point out that O'Reilly paid millions of dollars to settle sexual harassment lawsuits, or that Hannity is peddling discredited conspiracy theories about a murder victim even after the victim's family begged him to stop.
The fact that the MRC can't even mention Seth Rich's name while defending Hannity tells us just how cynical and spiteful this campaign is. It knows Hannity is being as repulsive and morally bankrupt as it claims liberal hosts are, but it will never admit that in public because Bozell's buddies must be defended no matter how blatant the cynicism and hypocrisy in doing so.
Even the MRC's target list is lame. The first show on the list is Al Sharpton's MSNBC show, which got busted down from daily to weekly some time ago and the which MRC itself hasn't written about in two months.
Bozell kept up the dishonesty in a June 1 appearance on (where else) Hannity's Fox News show, where he touted his revenge campaign and once again complained about conservatives being smeared. Again, Bozell failed to explain how pointing out Hannity's malicious conspiracy-mongering is a "smear."
Unless Bozell and the MRC can resolve their hypocrisy in defending Hannity, this new revenge campaign will not be taken seriously -- like the rest of the MRC.
WND Raising Money To Push Seth Rich Conspiracy Theories, Dishonestly Suggests Rich Family Supports It Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's latest round of Seth Rich conspiracy-mongering start with a pair of meaningless stories:
An article by Alicia Powe complaining that Washington, D.C., hospitals wouldn't release any information about Rich -- an outcome she certainly knew would happen because federal law bars hospitals from publicly releasing data about any patient. Powe grudgingly admits this, even quoting the right-wing ambulance-chasers at Judicial Watch pointing out that hospitals must follow "strict patient privacy regulations."So there was no legitimate journalistic value whatsoever in this story -- it's just to pad out WND's story count on Seth Rich.
Powe also reported on a completely unrelated gun-theft case, uncritically repeating the assertions of politically motivated lobbyist Jack Burkman, who surprisingly admits he has no information linking the case to Rich. Powe aldo quoted Burkman whining: “I don’t understand why they are withholding key information. We simply don’t know what their motives are. Is there a cover-up? Is there something they don’t want out? They seem to want this in the cold-case file. No new information has been released in this case since late October.” It could be because the police know Burkman is a political hack seeking to exploit Rich's death for his own partisan purposes.
Meanwhile, WND has reached the begging-for-money stage of the Rich story. Another article announced that WND has started a GoFundMe page "to raise support for rewards for new evidence that would lead to a conviction, for funding for a private investigator to uncover the truth and for more resources for investigative reporting."
But on that GoFundMe page, WND is dishonestly suggesting it has the blessing of Rich's family. It states (boldface in original):
We support the GoFundMe campaign of the Rich Family and commend anyone to donate to that cause. Seth Rich’s brother, Aaron, is right when he writes: “One thing that no one tells you, and something we weren’t prepared to hear when we lost Seth, is that if a case isn’t solved immediately, it could take months or years before justice is served. Worse, to keep the investigation active, to seek leads and to follow up on investigations, to make sure that every possible angle is covered – it’s expensive.”
Like that campaign, we seek “to raise and maintain public awareness of Seth's unsolved murder.” Most of all, we want to see this case solved.
WND gives no indication it sought Aaron Rich's permission to quote him, let alone that the Rich family supports WND's efforts. In fact we can assume quite the opposite: The Rich family begged Sean Hannity to stop spreading conspiracy theories about Seth's death, so it's highly unlikely that the family has anything to do with WND, which has spreadevenmoreconspiracytheories about it and is simply exploiting the story to feed its lengthy history of anti-Clinton animus.
Further, WND's history in seeking money from the public is one of complete lack of transparency -- and WND offers no specifics about how much money it needs to accomplish what it claims to want to do -- so there's no reason to trust WND to be accountable.
MRC's Graham Distracts From Confederate Statues By Whining About A Random Lenin Statue Topic: Media Research Center
In the grand Media Research Center tradition of complaining about media coverage by pointing to some random, vaguely related thing, Tim Graham complains in a May 21 MRC post that Washington Post reports about the removal of Confederate statues in New Orleans don't mention a statue of Lenin in Seattle:
Black Americans can obviously look at the history of slavery and Jim Crow and argue the Confederate generals represent oppressors. But what about other oppressors? A friend of mine named Wayne from Texas pointed out another monument The Washington Post could campaign against if they were all about cheering on the removal of men who embody oppression. Seattle has a large bronze statue honoring Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the mass-murdering Soviet regime installed in the Russian revolution of 1917. How does the Post strike a pose on that?
Graham misses the obvious point that the Lenin statue is in Seattle -- rescued from the scrap heap in Czechoslovakia -- as something of an art project, complete with the irony of being located in the midst of a capitalistic business district. It's also for sale and can be moved and/or melted down for the right price. The statue is simply tolerated; nobody stakes it seriously. Graham acknowledges this, whining that the statue as viewed from the lens of "ironic detatchment."
The Confederate statues, by contrast, were installed for the express purpose of celebrating a cause rejected by the rest of the country that was driven by the oppression and even slavery of an entire race.
Graham would be hard pressed to find anyone who will celebrate Lenin the man in Seattle, while racists and white nationalists are fighting -- unironically -- to keep Confederate statues.
If Graham wants to see the Lenin statue go, all he has to do is pay the family that owns it $250,000. But it seems he'd simply sit around and invent specious arguments.
MRC Declares Victory in Hannity Boycott Fight, Finally Mentions Why There Is A Boycott Topic: Media Research Center
After days of attacking insurance company USAA for pulling its ads from Sean Hannity's Fox News show in response to an ad boycott over Hannity's insistence on pushing false, malicious conspiracy theories regarding the death of Seth Rich -- but without telling its readers the reason why the boycott existed -- USAA reversed its decision. Needless to say, the MRC was more than happy to declare victory.
A May 30 post by Curtis Houck repeated MRC chief Brent Bozell's smug declaration: “It goes without saying that USAA has not experienced this kind of customer outrage in its entire history.”
Houck went on to grumble that "USAA withdrew its advertisement spots on Thursday from Hannity’s FNC show after pressure from far-left organizations running a smear campaign in hopes of causing Hannity to lose his job." But curiously, Houck never explains how, exactly, Hannity was being "smeared."
It's only in an excerpt from that AP article farther down in his post that Houck inadvertently reveals the reason behind the boycott: As stated by the AP, Hannity was "reporting a discredited story involving the death of a Democratic National Committee staff member."
There. Now, was it that hard to tell the entire truth to your readers that you couldn't have mentioned it before now?
WND's Farah Proving Himself Wrong About WND's Mission Topic: WorldNetDaily
Remember when WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah railed against the cozy, symbiotic and unhealthy relationship developing between the corporate press and state power" and that he "vowed WND would never fall prey or be seduced by that temptation"? Yeah, not so much.
Farah himself provides the latest example of WND's fealty to the Trump administration in a May 21 Q-and-A column headlined "A guide to understanding the Trump-Saudi deal" but may as well be called "A guide to understanding how totally awesome Trump is." Farah gushes:
In addition, the Arab and Muslim world respects strength, which they see in President Trump. There’s one more thing: In the past, the Saudis have sought to buy favor with U.S. presidents with millions of dollars in endowments after they left office. These include Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. They are wise enough to know Trump, a billionaire, cannot be bought off this way.
[...]
All the earmarkings of these meetings and speeches suggest he hit the right tone. It’s imperative to show strength in dealings with the kingdom. It’s imperative not to show subservience. It’s imperative to develop the proper quid pro quos based on national interests, not personal interests. Trump has seemingly done this more artfully than most of his predecessors. He really does understand negotiations, having authored “The Art of the Deal.” Another good sign was the king’s treatment of the women in the U.S. entourage – with Melania and Ivanka Trump and other women being treated with respect and dignity. This is something “feminists” should note, but probably won’t because most are leftist ideologues who have a conflict in their gut between “multiculturalism” and the inherent rights of women.
Farah concluded with one final bit of fawning:
Question:How would you sum up the success of Trump’s first major foreign trip?
Answer:Masterful. He pulled no punches, but showed the necessary diplomacy and respect.
Written like a man who has been seduced by state power.
That was joined by an anonymously written writeup of Trump's speech in Saudi Arabia cheering the "optimistic and hopeful" tone of the speech, which was "delivered to a rousing ovation."
Farah, of course, would never admit any of this is cozy, symbiotic and unhealthy. His guy's in office, and he'll do everything he can to advance Trump's agenda.
Newsmax gave Trump sycophant Ronald Kessler (whom it once again failed to identify as a former Newsmax employee) a platform on Newsmax TV to complain about the "dishonest" media coverage of President Trump, using a bizarre sematic argument to claim a Washington Post story was a "hoax":
"Last week, The Washington Post also ran a story saying . . . the FBI has determined that an aide close to Donald Trump is a person of interest in the Russian investigation. Anybody knows anything about the FBI knows they don't use that term at all in any investigation – certainly not counterintelligence, except for violent crime and kidnaping. It simply doesn't exist. They do not use that term.
"Apparently nobody at The Washington Post knows enough about the FBI to recognize that which obviously means that that story is a hoax. Someone made up the story. That is the Post."
The same day that Newsmax published the writeup on Kessler, it also published an article stating that "President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser, is under scrutiny by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the Russia probe." The next day, the Post reported that according to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Kushner tried to open up a secret communication backchannel between Russian officials and the Trump transition team.
Persona of interest? Under scrutiny? Semantics aside, a distinction without a difference. The Post is correct, and Kessler is wrong.
Kessler is rather odioiusly putting his loyalty to Trump before the facts -- a terrible, discrediting situation for someone who portrays himself as a fair and balanced journalist.
WND's Weekend of Seth Rich Conspiracies Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily had a busy holiday weekend of trying to perpetuate those Seth Rich conspiracies.
First, WND served up a Seth Rich timeline from birther dead-ender and former WND columnist Diana West that tries to wrap in other conspiracies like the death of John Ashe, whom WND writes "had been scheduled to report to court shortly after this date, along with Ng Lap Seng, as part of a fraud case alleging payola"; Seng was linked to alleged Clinton administraiton corruption, which somehow makes this an entry on the discredited "Clinton body count." But as we pointed out a year ago, legal action against Ashe had nothing to do whatsoever with any Clinton.
WND also touted claims made by "private detective" Rod Wheeler without mentioning the important fact that Wheeler has since retracted much of what he has said about the Rich case.
Another article, by Alicia Powe, pushed unsubstantiated speculation by agenda-driven "private investigators" like sleazy lobbyist Jack Burkman tnat Washingtion, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser "has ordered a halt to the investigation" into Rich's death.
WND columnist Gina Loudon then jumped aboard the Rich conspiracy train, asserting that "I am beginning to change my mind upon studying the behavior and psychology of the left." Loudon, if you'll remember, made an armchair diagnosis of Barack Obama as a mentally ill psychopath but proclaimed Trump's narcissism and egocentricism to be "great attributes for a true leader" and that he "seems mentally sound," so her proclamations about psychology shouldn't exactly be trusted.
WND then took comfort that a fellow fringe-right media outlet has joined the conspiracy, touting how tiny cable TV channel One America News is "boosting the reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the slain Democratic National Committee employee’s killer or killers by an additional $100,000 and issuing a step-by-step report on why the mysterious death is more than a 'conspiracy theory.'"
WND also cheered the appearance of another right-wing ally, with Bob Unruh happily writing that "The chief of the government-accountability group Judicial Watch contends there’s 'credible evidence' that needs to be addressed in the murder investigation of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich." This from an organization obsessed with President Obama's vacation expenses but are somehow less concerned with the mounting costs of Trump's weekends at Mar-a-Lago.
So the conspiracy continues -- as does the plunging of whatever credibility WND and Judicial Watch might have at this point.
The MRC's Most Dishonest 'Study' Yet Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has been cranking out the dishonestmedia"studies" lately in support of the Trump administration. The latest one, however, may be the most dishonest yet.
In covering the President’s proposed budget this week, network reporters unanimously claimed it “cut” or even “slashed” federal spending. An MRC analysis of ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news coverage since Monday (May 22) finds that not a single reporter ever told viewers that overall federal spending would actually RISE under President Trump’s planned budget — just not as much as forecast under the budget baseline Trump inherited from President Obama back in January.
But Noyes is making an apples-and-oranges comparions. Nearly every example Noyes cited referred to cuts in specific programs, while Noyes is referring to growth in the overall budget. Noyes also grumbles that "The only way journalists can claim Trump is cutting spending is by comparing his plans to the baseline of federal spending" -- which, again, is not what journalists were doing.
Noyes offers no clear example in which an evening news report unambiguously stated, in full context, that the overall budget was going to be cut.
Noyes waited until the final paragraph of his post to admit some of this -- then stayed the dishonest course anyway:
It’s accurate to say that Trump plans to reduce the extravagant increases in spending incorporated in current law, and some programs will see an actual reduction in their spending (after years of increases under Obama). But to repeatedly suggest that there will be “deep cuts” or some kind of “slashing” of federal spending creates a false narrative designed to bully politicians into backing away from a responsible spending plan.
If it's "accurate to say" that Trump is planning to cut some programs, why is Noyes attacking journalists for saying exactly that?
Also note Noyes' pro-Trump bias in declaring the Trump budget to be "responsible" while dismissing budget s during the Obama years as containing "extravagant spending" -- while providing no evidence to support either claim.
Speaking of lack of evidence: As usual, Noyes refuses to provide the full data from his so-called study, just undated anecdotes.
WND: Impeach Judges Who Make Decisions We Don't Like! Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily wants to rid the bench of judges who make decisions its writers don't like.
Jane Chastain starts her ranting May 24 column this way:
When the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus closed on Sunday it marked the end of an era. But never fear – those ever-popular clowns are still with us. They lack the grease paint, rubber noses and orange hair that made us laugh. In fact, these clowns aren’t funny at all. They sit on the federal courts at virtually every level.
Perhaps the best-known are the clowns on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals who refused to overturn a federal clown in Seattle who barred President Trump’s travel ban and are now wrestling with essentially the same issue from a clown on the bench in Hawaii involving travel ban No. 2.
After hearing arguments, they are currently preforming twists and turns, like those high-flying circus trapeze artists that entertained us under the Big Top for more than 146 years, sans the tight sequined outfits.
Chastain made it clear her solution for keeping Trump's Muslim ban on the books is to impeach any judge who rules against it:
How do you remove a judge for bad behavior? Through impeachment. This is the responsibility of our duly elected representatives in Congress. However, the people’s representatives have grown lazy. They prefer not to “rock the boat.” They simply want to skate through the next election by avoiding controversy.
Unfortunately, the clowns in the judiciary are only surpassed by the clowns in the media, who make their living not by reporting the truth, but by fanning the flames of controversy.
Clowns are funny in the circus. However, they are a disgrace in the media and have no place on the bench.
The only "bad behavior" Chastain identifies is ruling against the Muslim ban: "Clearly, the weight of law and history is on the president’s side when it comes to his right to issue a temporary travel ban from these nations. ... Therefore, it was not only Trump’s right to do so, it was most reasonable."
Meanwhile, in a May 26 column, Joseph Farah vented his anger at a judge who sanctioned the anti-abortion activists at the Center for Medical Progress for releasing a video despite being prohibited from doing so -- a video that WND eagerly reposted -- and ordered the video pulled down from WND and other right-wing sites.
Like Chastain, Farah then went into rant mode, spewing personal attacks on a judge simply for issuing a decision he didn't like:
There’s a term for this and what the judge did with WND’s content. It’s called prior restraint. It’s against the law. It defies the Constitution and American judicial tradition.
And that’s why it’s time for the Congress of the United States to take action against one of these left-wing political activists masquerading as all-powerful, objective federal judges committed to impartial readings of the law.
Here’s the astonishing record of William Horsley Orrick III.
It almost goes without saying he was a Barack Obama appointee. But he may have bought that appointment by raising $200,000 for the Obama campaign and personally donating $30,000 to committees supporting the campaign. After those lavish donations, in 2013, Orrick was appointed by Obama and confirmed by the Senate to the same seat his father, Judge William Orrick Jr., held from 1974 to 2003. In other words, it was his turn to inherit this lifetime job.
Did you think American justice had become this corrupt?
[...]
This is why I am calling on members of the House of Representatives to make an example out of Orrick and sponsor a bill of impeachment against him. It may not go anywhere – even in the Republican House. It surely won’t result in a conviction for abuse of authority as long as disgraces like Flake, Murkowski and Collins remain in the U.S. Senate.
But it’s time to take the fight to phonies like Orrick who make a mockery of our judicial system.
We'd argue Farah is the real phony for turning his WND into a Trump sycophant while trying to find the next conspiracy theory to latch onto, but you know us, we don't like to complain...
CNS Stenography -- And Factual Failure -- on Trump Budget Topic: CNSNews.com
The Trump stenographers at CNSNews.com have been busy promoting President Trump's official budget. CNS' reporters were busy uncritically touting the stuff they liked in a series of articles:
CNS also rushed out a couple of op-eds praising Trump's budget proposal. A trio of Heritage Foundation employees wrote one with the praiseworthy headline "Trump Budget Proposal Would Jump-Start Economy, Rein in Size and Scope of Gov’t." Another Heritage writer's op-ed proclaimed: "Trump Budget Reduces Government’s Role in Higher Ed, Will Curtail Runaway Tuition Prices."
They were joined by CNS editor in chief Jeffrey himself, praising the proposed elimination of "unwarranted" programs like the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Legal Services Corporation, ranting that "America is headed toward bankruptcy because it has become a welfare state where increasing numbers of people are dependent on government for the basics of their lives."
The Trump sycophancy is so entrenched at CNS that it can't even be bothered to fact-check anyone in the administration. A May 24 blog post by Craig Bannister uncritically repeated Mulvaney's claim that money to public television can be cut because big Bird is a fat cat that does "extraordinarily well" and besides, the corporate tax cuts will help his creator, Henson Associates.
In fact, the rights to Big Bird and other "Sesame Street" characters were sold to Sesame Workshop, the show's producer, in 2001, and the Henson company is no longer connected with them. While merchandising revenue from the "Sesame Street" characters does generate significant revenue, Slate reported, Sesame Workshop spends much more than that on production and development of TV shows. The New York Times added that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting spends only about one-fourth of its budget on programming; two-thirds of it goes to support public radio and TV stations across the country, representing about a quarter of the funding from public TV and radio stations in rural America.
But Mulvaney got facts wrong in the advancement of a conservative narrative, so it's highly unlikely any correction will be forthcoming from Bannister.
WND Promote Anti-Gay Group's Harassment of Teacher Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh writes in a May 20 WorldNetDaily article:
A Florida school district delivered an “unsatisfactory” response to a legal team representing several Christian students who claimed they were bullied in class by a teacher because of their faith.
Among other things, the teacher repeatedly ordered students wearing cross necklaces to cover them up or take them off.
So lawyers with Liberty Counsel are giving the district another chance, this time in a letter with a specific list of instructions for officials at Hillsborough County Public Schools.
The influential legal organization warns it is willing to “take further action to prevent irreparable harm to the rights of our clients.”
WND reported last month Liberty Counsel officials said the teacher, Lora Jane Riedas, a member of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network’s Leadership Institute, had gone overboard in her LGBT advocacy.
She featured classroom décor that “blatantly promotes a pro-LGBT agenda,” reportedly retweeted during the school day “favorite queer web series for kids” and prohibited “at least three students from wearing Christian cross necklaces because she views them as ‘gang symbols.'”
Because Unruh is simply writing a Liberty Counsel press release, he doesn't report that the group's attacks on Riedas have been discredited.
As an actual news organization reported, Riedas says she never banned students from religious jewelry: "I'm a Christian myself. I would never do that because I would be hurt if someone would tell me not to wear my cross." And rosary beads are, in fact, considered gang symbols.
That news organization also reported that Liberty Counsel's anti-Riedas campaign is prompting students to harass her:
As the story circulates, students in one class have taken the opportunity to challenge her. Some came to class with rosary beads. They drew crosses and wrote Bible verses on the back of their math papers.
"They're starting to pull other kids in who either don't care or just want to be part of the drama," Riedas said. "Some of them think it's a game, that it's fun. It's affecting our school like a virus."
Two years ago Riedas was recognized by her peers as Riverview's Diversity Educator of the Year. Now she just wants to quietly teach. She blames adults, not kids, for the disruption.
"I'm just annoyed that they're using my students," she said. "They're manipulating them. They're getting kids as teenagers to lie for their agenda."
Unruh went on to uncritically promote Liberty Counsel's harassment campaign against Riedas -- which even extends to attacking her Facebook and Twitter posts made on her personal time -- and its censorious demands to the school district that employs her, which include removal of anything signifying that her classroom is a safe space for LGBT students or others who need a sanctuary and even buttons on her desk that say "proud public employee" and "safe schools for all." A picture of the buttons accompanies Unruh's article, with the caption, "Teacher's classroom agenda." Unruh doesn't explain how having pride in being a public employee can be a "classroom agenda."
Needless to say, Unruh includes no response from Riedas or the school district to Liberty Counsel's attacks, instead whining how the school once left him in on-hold purgatory. Unruh could have included that response as reported by actual news organizations, but he chose not to -- which further illustrates that Unruh is much more interested in conforming to Liberty Counsel's agenda than being a journalist.
NewsBusters Co-Creator Now Writing At Liberal Website Topic: NewsBusters
Matthew Sheffield, along with brother Greg, created the NewsBusters blog for the Media Research Center in 2005. Before that, the Sheffields had run a blog attacking Dan Rather, which led to the MRC job.
Sheffield left the MRC in 2014 to work on other projects, which include a media strategy consulting firm. But one other project is unlikely to be mentioned -- or, if so,c ertainly not in a positive way -- when MRC employees are talking about him these days.
Sheffield is currently writing about media, politics and technology for the liberal-leaning site Salon, which Sheffield's former compatriots at NewsBusters like to dismiss with intended epithets as "far-far-left" and "uber-liberal." What's more, some of his articles are calling out the behavior of his fellow conservatives.
In April, for example, Sheffield reported on the network of sock-puppet blogs controlled by former Fox News chief Roger Ailes, which were used to attack Fox News critics, and that this Fox News black-ops group helped subsidized the work of pro-Fox News blogger Mark Koldys and his Johnny Dollar's Place blog.
He's also written about the financial woes of iHeartMedia, the radio station owner that syndicates the shows of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity; the protest by torch-wielding alt-right folks opposing the removal of Confederate monuments; how the never-Trump rantings of Louise Mensch, former editor of the right-wing, Murdoch-owned blog Heat Street, may just be an act to trap gullible liberals; and the creeping moderation at generally liberal-leaning MSNBC, which has added conservative commentators and former Fox News host Greta Van Susteren.
You'll never be reading about any of this at any MRC website. And for all we know, that may be why he left. We've noted a previous attempt to sneak in (albeit perhaps not intentionally) a little truth at NewsBusters, in a 2013 post implicitly conceding -- by begging conservative billionaires to invest in media outlets -- that conservative newspapers need deep-pocketed, ideologically driven sugar daddies to stay afloat. This was proven further last year when the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review shut down its print edition to become an online-only publication following the death of conservative benefactor Richard Mellon Scaife, who had sunk $300 million into the paper's operation.
So, congratulations to Sheffield for discovering balanced journalism. It's too bad he had to leave the MRC to do it -- for both him and the MRC.
MRC Pretends Trump's (And Its Own) Rhetoric Didn't Play Role In GOP Pol's Attack on Reporter Topic: Media Research Center
While the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell and Tim Graham were providing wink-and-a-nod approval to Montana Republican candidate Greg Gianforte's assault of reporter Ben Jacobs, their MRC minions were assigned a different task: trying to shout down the idea that Gianforte's assault wasn't part of increased hostility toward reporters cheered on by President Trump -- and fomented in part by the MRC.
Curtis Houck -- clearly not knowing what his bosses were doing -- prefaced his May 24 post by saying that "Importantly, any assault of anyone (reporter or non-reporter) isn’t okay. This should be common sense" before laying into "supposedly right-leaning blogger" and frequent Heatheringtarget Jennifer Rubin for speaking the inconvenient truth that Gianforte's assault is the end result of Trump's (and, by extension, the MRC's) anti-media rhetoric since "the fish rots from the head":
So, Jennifer, let’s talk about your fish analogy. If you don’t want to blame the President for all this, here’s two examples of things you’ve said that haven’t exactly been helpful to creating a healthy discourse. On December 11, 2016, you referred to people selected for Trump’s cabinet as not just “billionaires” and “generals” but “ignoramuses” as well. How classy!
On March 9, you insinuated the President should be blamed for future U.S. terror attacks if his budget shrinks the size of the federal government. How responsible!
To broaden it out to The Washington Post, their cartoonist depicted Ted Cruz’s daughters in December 2015 as toy monkeys with Cruz holding an organ grinder.
If “[t]he fish rots from the head,” how’s Donald Trump the sole person responsible, Jennifer?
That's what's called distracting from the issue. Making his way back to the subject at hand, Houck huffed further (after another disclaimer that he doesn't approve of Gianforte's behavior):
However, solely blaming one flawed human being’s actions on someone else (President Trump) is a bridge too far. Further, the instant drive to connect everything to the President is tiresome.
Same goes for suggesting that the media bias movement was to blame here. The crusade against liberal media bias has been going on for decades. Heck, the Media Research Center is marking its 30th anniversary in 2017.
So, this idea that, suddenly, criticism of the media has become anti-American, uncalled for, or violent is exactly what the left wants people to believe. Turns out, one can be against assaulting reporters and for fighting liberal media bias. Who would have thought!
Houck followed up with another attack post, this one at CNN's Dylan Byers for explicting citing "anti-media rhetoric" leading to Gianforte's behavior:
Let’s not stick to the person who’s alleged to have lost their cool and attacked a reporter. No, let’s attack people (like the ones on this site) that have pushed the issue of media bias for decades (without violence).
[...]
In the world of folks like Dylan Byers, they’re firmly opposed to President Trump and anyone who stands in their way. Instead of looking at the incivility being promulgated by CNN, NPR, or The Washington Post, it’s sites like this one that are supposedly the problem for suggesting the media are not the angels they paint themselves to be.
Nevermind the reality that NewsBusters has been around for 12 years and not promoting violence (with parent organization Media Research Center being around for 30 years), but this space is here to argue it’s quite easy to be against physical assault and believe the media have a liberal bias.
Except, you know, we have the example of the MRC attacking NBC's Katy Tur for not being a Trump sycophant, closely followed by Trump doing the same thing to Tur in person at his campaign rallies -- resulting in the Secret Service having to walk Tur to her car to protect her from Trump fans ginned up on hate.
Kristine Marsh, meanwhile, cheered CNN conservative Ben Ferguson's attempt to distract from the issue at hand by irrelevantly talking about Anthony Weiner.
Scott Whitlock sneered at NBC's Andrea Mitchell for bringing it up, bizarrely arguing that Trump couldn't possibly be responsible because he's out of the country:
Guilt by association. That’s what Andrea Mitchell believes. Despite the fact that Donald Trump is on another continent, the Andrea Mitchell Reports anchor thinks that the assault against a journalist by a Montana congressional candidate is an “extension” of the President. Talking about Greg Gianforte’s attack on Guardianreporter Ben Jacobs, the MSNBC host connected, “There is so much hostility, frankly, to the press, a lot of it generated by the Donald Trump rallies.”
Kyle Drennen highlighted former Republican Rep. Joe Walsh offering a strange it-was-only-words defense -- "Trump has called out the media, he's never body-slammed the media" -- then dismissed any attempt to link Trump to violent attacks on journalists as a "left-wing line of attack."
MRC VP Dan Gainor was also on spin patrol in a Fox Business apperance, harrumphing: "The American media are so thin-skinned, so narcissistic, that any criticism, any attack, becomes this great metaphor for everything going on in the world."
It's almost as if the MRC has forgotten that it promoted conservatives who directly linked rhetoric from President Obama to later violent acts:
A 2014 post by Jack Coleman highlighted Rush Limbaugh claiming that Obama's remarks regarding racially charaged incidents in Ferguson, Mo., as "inane ramblings that were designed subtly to feed the rage."
The MRC published a 2014 column by Rush's brother, David Limbaugh, asserting that Obama "has fanned the flames of racial tension in this country " and is "fomenting further distrust between the black community and law enforcement."
Tom Blumer touted a poorly written Associated Press headline on unrest in Baltimore, "Obama pledges help to riot," as containing "more truth than the wire service and the headline's actual creators will ever admit."
A May 2015 column by Jeffrey Lord lamented that "There is no way in the world that the liberal media - the Times in this case - will contribute to the bonfire by blaming Obama or Clinton much less the liberalism that has run Baltimore lo these several decades."
Blumer returned to cheer how Bill O'Reilly blamed "leftists, up to and including President Obama" in part for "the violent records and actions" of Black Lives Matter.
The MRC would rather you not point out its hypocrisy.
Gage Cohen is a summer intern for CNSNews.com, and already he's picking up CNS' dishonest ways.
WorldNetDaily's anonymously written May 29 
Apparently 
WorldNetDaily's latest round of Seth Rich conspiracy-mongering start with a pair of meaningless stories:
In the grand Media Research Center tradition of complaining about media coverage by pointing to some random, vaguely related thing, Tim Graham complains in a May 21 MRC 
After 
Remember when WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah 
Newsmax 
WorldNetDaily had a busy holiday weekend of trying to perpetuate those Seth Rich conspiracies.
The Media Research Center has been cranking out the 
WorldNetDaily wants to rid the bench of judges who make decisions its writers don't like.
The 
Bob Unruh writes in a May 20 WorldNetDaily 
Matthew Sheffield, along with brother Greg, created the NewsBusters blog for the Media Research Center in 2005. Before that, the Sheffields had run a blog attacking Dan Rather, which led to the MRC job.
While the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell and Tim Graham were 
