In January 2006, we noted that conservative blogger Cinnamon Stillwell, in embracing right-wing Jewish extremists and whitewashing their violent backgrounds, was acting not unlike WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein.
Now, as Sadly, No! reports, Stillwell has fulfilled her destiny by serving up a fawning review of Klein's new WND-published book detailing his gimmick of talking to terrorists who just happen to say things that rile up his conservative readers.
In a Sept. 19 NewsBusters post, Noel Sheppard responded to criticism by Time's Joe Klein of a banner headline on the Drudge Report describing Hillary Clinton's proposed health care plan as "HEALTH INSURANCE PROOF REQUIRED FOR WORK" though the Associated Press article Drudge linked to didn't say that such a requirement was a component of the plan. Sheppard writes:
Klein concluded: "How stupid does he think we are? Answer: Extremely dumbolic."
Actually, Joe, if this is what Drudge thinks of your intellectual capacity, I have to agree with him.
After all, here's the money quote from Hillary that I suggest you read veeeerrrry sllllooowwwly: "you have to show proof to your employer that you're insured as a part of the job interview - like when your kid goes to school and has to show proof of vaccination."
Honestly, Joe: What don't you get about that?
If in the future, prospective employees are going to have to show proof of insurance to a prospective employer, wouldn't that indeed mean "HEALTH INSURANCE PROOF REQUIRED FOR WORK?"
Seems pretty simple to understand, so much so that even a third grader would.
Want me to get you a third grader to help you with this in the future?
Sheppard curiously leaves out what the AP article reported immediately before quoting Clinton as saying, "you have to show proof to your employer that you're insured": "She said she could envision a day when..."
We'll type very slowly so Sheppard understands: "envision" refers to something that has not occured. If Hillary Clinton is "envisioning" that "you have to show proof to your employer that you're insured as a part of the job interview," that means she has not made that a requirement of the health care plan she is proposing now. Drudge's putting those words in a banner headline suggests that such a thing is imminent when it is not.
Noel, honey, current events are not the same as events that might happen in the future. Even a third-grader can tell you that.
A Sept. 18 NewsBusters post by Ken Shepherd repeats a claim by InsideCatholic.com blogger Mark Shea that "the mainstream media" has called Pope Benedict XVI "medieval" 169,000 times. Shepherd changed "mainstream media" to "biased secular media."
The problem is, the only evidence Shea and Shepherd offer in support is a Google search. Shea offers no indication that he narrowed Google's search parameters to focus on only "mainstream media," nor does he indicate that he weeded out articles in which the word "medieval" is not specifically describing the pope. Indeed, Shea appears to have done nothing more than plug "Benedict XVI" and "medieval" into the general Google search engine, which pulls in much more than the "mainstream media" (or even the "biased secular media").
Given the MRC's laxresearchstandards, though, that appears to be good enough for Shepherd to declare "bias."
New Article: Aaron Klein's Hebron Hijinks Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Jerusalem reporter again hides the right-wing extremist backgrounds of the people he's writing about -- and won't admit they're linked to the "outlawed" extremists he purports to deplore. Read more.
From a Sept. 18 Family Security Matters column by Mike Cutler, reprinted at Accuracy in Media, about the DREAM Act, which would would provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrant students and permit them to be eligible for in-state college tuition rates:
So what would the provisions of this amendment provide?
1. In-state tuition for illegal aliens, a benefit that even our own US citizen college kids do not have.
Actually, "US citizen college kids" who attend college in the state where they live do, in fact, receive in-state tuition rates (which would seem to be the self-evident point of it). Further, the benefit is not for all "illegal aliens," as Cutler appears to claim, but for those who meet certain criteria -- foremost among them having arrived in the United States as a child.
According to his bio, Cutler "is a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and a well-respected authority on immigration and border security issues." On what planet are such absurd, non-factual claims considered "well-respected"?
Knight: 'Inaccurate' to Call Gay Marriage Ban a Gay Marriage Ban Topic: NewsBusters
A Sept. 18 NewsBusters post by Robert Knight (a version of a Culture and Media Insitute item) is headlined, "Post Can’t Disguise Disgust for Pro-marriage Maryland Ruling." In it, Knight claimed that the Washington Post showed "bias" by calling a law upheld by a Maryland appeals court defining marriage as between one man and one woman "the state’s ban on gay marriage": "That’s as inaccurate as describing the law as 'the state’s ban on polygamous marriage,' or 'the state’s ban on incestuous marriage' or perhaps 'the state’s ban on interspecies marriage.'"
Well, no. Knight is playing the longtime conservative rhetorical game of treating homosexuality as akin to incest and bestiality. Can Knight identify any significant movement supporting "incestuous marriage" or "interspecies marriage" in Maryland? No, he can't.
Conservatives weren't forcing the passage of "defense of marriage" laws out of fear of "incestuous marriage" or "interspecies marriage"; they feared gay marriage. Thus, since the motivation behind the law was to stop gay marriage, and it does in fact ban gay marriage -- which is exactly what Knight wants -- it's hardly "inaccurate" to call it a "ban on gay marriage."
UPDATE: Knight might want to send a memo to his co-workers at CNSNews.com, who headlined a Sept. 18 article on the case "Maryland Court Says No to Same-Sex Marriage."
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:50 AM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, September 19, 2007 2:19 PM EDT
Shocker: WND Prints Substantive Criticism of Its Reporting Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily typically pretends that criticism of its reporting comes from people who are ideological enemies and don't get their brand of journalism (even though bias, false claims and plagiarism are universally understood journalistic failings). Also typically, the only criticism of WND that it highlights is of the most extreme type in order to paint that as representative of all criticism of it.
So it was a surprise to see WND run a critical letter that focused on WND's journalistic failings, regarding a Sept. 15 article on a study purporting to show that "some homosexuals can change their 'orientation' through religiously mediated guidance." Since WND refuses to archive its letters and it will cycle out after a week, we'll reprint it here:
I am extremely disappointed at your extreme bias in the report of conversion therapy for gay people. While quick to tout the report as a success and demonize those who were criticizing it, you failed to mention key aspects of the report according to Dr. Throckmorton. There were 25 participants who failed to continue the study. The failure to follow up with these people would automatically disqualify it from any legitimate psychological journal. If you include those 25 people to make up a total of 98 participants in the study, there was only an 11 percent success rate of conversion from identifying as gay to identifying as straight. Of those reporting heterosexual feelings, the following statement was part of the study:
"Most of the individuals who reported that they were heterosexual at Time 3 did not report themselves to be without experience of homosexual arousal, and did not report heterosexual orientation to be unequivocal and uncomplicated. … We believe the individuals who presented themselves as heterosexual success stories at Time 3 are heterosexual in some meaningful but complicated sense of the term."
You also falsely stated that the study disputes the contention by the American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association that change is not possible. Neither association has ever made such a claim. Of course your readers ate up your story and responded to your poll in kind. Why are you afraid to report the truth, the whole truth? Are you afraid that your own basis for being against gay people is rooted in hatred?
Micah Bergdale
Of course, there's no indication that WND has actually done anything to correct its shoddy reporting. Pushing its ideology on its readers is much more important than fulfilling the journalistic mission of telling them the full truth.
Of Cherry-Picking and Censorious Desires Topic: NewsBusters
In a Sept. 15 NewsBusters post promoting his cherry-picking attack on the Huffington Post, Tim Graham criticized "leftist Web sites like MoveOn.org" for "demanding" that the Democratic Party "provide no bow of respect or prestige to Fox News, since it was a 'mouthpiece for the Republican party, not a legitimate news channel.'" Graham added: "Leftist bloggers like Matt Stoller of MyDD.com were explicit in their censorious desire that Fox News should not exist: 'The lies of FOX News and Roger Ailes have no place in public discourse, journalism, or the Democratic Party presidential debates.'"
First, note Graham's conflation of Stoller's comment about "the lies of FOX News and Roger Ailes" to an "censorious desire" that all of Fox News be muzzled. Of course, Stoller never said that, unless Graham is admitting that everything on Fox News context is a lie.
Second, by applying similar conflation to Graham's work: By attacking Huffington Post, isn't he expressing a similar "censorious desire"? Isn't it Graham's sweetest dream to see HuffPo shut down? Graham, through his study, is trying to use a tiny fraction of objectionable post to tar the entire operation -- the best way to accomplish such a thing, even if he won't say the words.
And cherry-picking is exactly what Graham does, by the way: Out of the tens of thousands of posts made on HuffPo over the past two years, Graham specifically cites just 19. Graham then claims: "These blogs may not be typical, but they are common." Since Graham did no statistical analysis of objectionable content in HuffPo blogs -- that is, comparing the number of posts with objectionable content to the total number of posts made on the site -- he has no factual basis for that statement.
Graham makes his bias clear in his "study" by his disparaging attacks on HuffPo's bloggers as an "all-star far-left cast of celebrity dilettantes," "celebrit[ies] toasted by the leftist elites" and "Arianna’s cast of hate-speech specialists." Remember, Graham is making this judgment on the content of just 19 posts out of thousands.
Would Graham and his MRC compadres be similarly offended if, say, the entirety of NewsBusters was judged by objectionable content by commenters on a single post? You bet they would. That's why we accuse NewsBusters of forwarding false or misleading claims and smears, we don't merely cherry-pick hither and yon. Webackitup.
And remember, NewsBusters has run ads from a company that sells a T-shirt that says, "Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some Assembly Required." Does Graham find that more or less offensive than what he plucked out of HuffPo?
Apparently, hatin' on Michael Sulick is what all the cool conservative kids are doing these days.
Joining the Washington Examiner's Rowan Scarborough in Sulick-bashing is NewsMax's Kenneth Timmerman in a Sept. 17 article. Like Scarborough, Timmerman depicts ex-CIA chief Porter Goss as a noble reformer and Sulick as a career agent who threw a fit over it. Also like Scarborough, Timmerman hurls unsubstantiated allegations at Sulick and his co-worker Stephen Kappes:
As I will reveal in my upcoming book, "Shadow Warriors: Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender," Kappes had been implicated in a serious security breach at a CIA station overseas, but was never disciplined by the Agency.
Furthermore, both he and Sulick were engaged in activities to lobby members of Congress in their own districts that violated U.S. law. When Goss tried to discipline them, the two men resigned in protest.
Timmerman offers no evidence for these claims -- apaprently, NewsMax readers don't need to have claims substantiated. Might sell a few more copies of that book.
Timmerman then goes on to claim that Sulick’s rehiring "sends a 'terrible message' to CIA officers who are trying to do their job and stay out of politics, and suggests that the CIA bench is so thin they have no other candidates for the critical job as head of the Clandestine Service." He attributes this claim to "former agency officers." He also relays a complaint by Republican Rep. Peter Hoekstra, former chairman of the House intelligence committee, that he wasn't consulted when Kappes was rehired as CIA deputy director.
Both Scaborough and Timmerman are so eager to defend Goss that they don't mention who was CIA executive director -- the agency's No. 3 position -- under Goss: Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, currently under indictment for corruption. Neither of them explain why Sulick and Kappes are worse hires than Foggo.
Clinton Derangement Syndrome Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
In a Sept. 17 WorldNetDaily column headlined "Hellary's chilling honesty," Doug Powers uses the obligatory unflattering photos of Hillary Clinton to illustrate his semi-entertainingly paranoiac version of Hillary's camapign:
Here's the Clintons' philosophy on national security: Your enemies usually won't want to harm you as long as there are still cheap goodies available in your national garage sale.
[...]
Ads that ran in Iowa and elsewhere featured Hillary touting what will happen if she's elected: Americans "will no longer be invisible to their government." Well I don't doubt it – she's got our FBI files and a heck of a bright flashlight.
Graham Attacks Anti-War Protesters, Ignores Popularity of Withdrawal Topic: Media Research Center
In a Sept. 13 NewsBusters post and Sept. 14 MRC CyberAlert item, Tim Graham wrote to the Washington Post quoting "radical left" anti-war protesters as saying, "The antiwar movement 'is far from where Bush would like you to think we are, that we are the fringe. They are the fringe. We are the mainstream." Graham asserts that the Post "help[ed] far-left protesters" by doing so.
In fact, when one defines "anti-war" not by the actions of a relative handful of extremists or Graham's subjective labeling but, rather, the opinion of Americans on whether to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq -- and polls show that a majority of Americans favor a withdrawal of at least some U.S. troops -- the anti-war protesters are, indeed, in the mainstream.
First, it was the hiring of a gay-porn actor as its Iraq correspondent. Now, WorldNetDaily's standards slip further as, according to a Sept. 17 article, managing editor David Kupelian plans to make a appearance on "Mancow's Morning Madhouse."
This is a show that WND itself criticized in 2003 for rejecting an attempt by a man to purchase a "pro-God" ad during the show. Mancow also has a history of obnoxious and offensive behavior.
By contrast, WND stopped linking to Salon.com articles in 2001 because if offered "galleries of erotic art and photography."
Is Kupelian so desperate to peddle his book that he will team up with a smut merchant like Mancow to do it? Yep. It's the second time this month WND has done so; on Sept. 6, WND news editor Joe Kovacs made an appearance.
Of course, there's a couple of mitigating factors that WND doesn't mention in its Kupelian promotion.
First, as the 2003 WND article noted, Mancow has "usually conservative or libertarian political views" and offers a "staunch defense of the U.S. Constitution. Second, Mancow is syndicated by Talk Radio Network, with which WND has a synergistic relationship.
For a news outlet that has made a big deal about having a certain set of standards, WND is sure eager to violate them.
Human Events' Jeffrey Joins CNS Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com announced in a Sept. 17 article that Terence P. Jeffrey, editor of Human Events, has joined CNS as editor-in-chief. This doesn't bode well for CNS' recent attempts at balanced reporting, given his record of advancing conservative misinformation:
He has falsely asserted that Hillary Clinton has "high negatives in her own party."
He has misleadingly claimed that the White House and Congress examined the "same information" on the Iraqi threat during the buildup to war in late 2002.
He claimed in March that "we also didn't have ... a careful enough debate in Congress about the potential consequences" of invading Iraq, though in 2003 he asserted that claimed that "people have a very realistic and well-informed opinion about our policy towards Iraq."
In the CNS announcement article, Jeffrey is quoted as saying: "I am honored to join CNSNews.com. ... Its ability to debunk liberal bias by delivering legitimate news is unsurpassed. I look forward to seizing new opportunities to perpetuate the mission of Cybercast News Service and the Media Research Center." So it looks like he may not be terribly interested in forwarding CNS' actual stated mission to "fairly present all legitimate sides of a story" and will boost the conservative propaganda function instead.
Freedom's Watch Funder Has NewsMax Ties Topic: Newsmax
How lazy of a reporter is NewsMax's Ronald Kessler when it comes to reporting non-fluff about conservatives? He didn't bother to pass along what NewsMax itself had reported on the funding behind Kessler's new favorite conservative group.
As we noted, Kessler wrote in an Aug. 23 article promoting the pro-war group Freedom's Watch that "the total assets of the organization and the largest sources of funds are not being disclosed," but he made no attempt to explain why (though he attacked George Soros for funding liberal groups). A Sept. 7 article by Kessler about Freedom's Watch was similarly uninterested in delving into the group's funding, though he claimed the group "has more funding than MoveOn.org and other George Soros operations."
But Kessler could have found out by looking at ... NewsMax.
The same day Kessler's first article ran, NewsMax reprinted an Associated Press article about Freedom's Watch, which listed some of the people behind it:
Freedom's Watch was organized as a nonprofit organization under IRS rules and is not required to identify its donors or the amounts they give. The group named some of its financial backers but Blakeman said others wished to remain out of the public eye.
Among those publicly behind the effort are billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a fundraiser for Bush and chairman and CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., and conservative philanthropist John M. Templeton Jr. of Bryn Mawr, Pa. Both men have been major contributors to conservative causes. Also backing Freedom's Watch are top Republican donors Anthony Gioia, Mel Sembler and Howard Leach, all former ambassadors in the Bush administration. Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer is a founding member of the group.
One of those names should sound quite familiar to NewsMax readers. John Templeton Jr. is the son of John Templeman, whose financial analysis NewsMax has been touting for years -- as far back as 2005, as this promo for NewsMax's Financial Intelligence Report shows.
An Aug. 17 article by Christopher Ruddy at NewsMax's MoneyNews site shows that the relationship between NewsMax and the elder Templeton is not just casual:
Back in later 2004, I was invited to see Sir John Templeton in the Bahamas. It was my second visit with the legendary investor.
Templeton saw it all coming. A massive liquidity boom had been fueled by artificially low interest rates. The Fed under Greenspan had created the largest bubble in history. As night turns to day, it would inevitably pop. Go here now to read our exclusive interview with Templeton.
Templeton didn't know the "when" moment. But it would arrive.
FIR readers were warned in February 2005 of my meeting with Templeton about the impending residential home decline and were advised to take defensive actions: avoid housing stocks, sell residential REITs, mortgage, finance and banks linked to the residential boom.
In fact, the relationship between Ruddy and Templeton Sr. goes back even further. A March 2001 profile of Templeton by Ruddy is very fawning, calling him "an extremely unpretentious and robust man" and proudly noting that Templeton's philanthropic foundation has John Templeton Foundation in Radnor, Pa. "assets [of] $235 million." Ruddy added: "In 1995, Templeton's son, Dr. John M. Templeton Jr., left his successful surgical practice to serve full time as president of the foundation."
So, there's some linkage here, through Templeton, between Freedom's Watch and NewsMax that NewsMax should have disclosed in some form (though it didn't disclose its funding from Richard Mellon Scaife to its readers until we started calling them on it). Kessler, meanwhile, should demonstrate a little less fealty to his conservative buddies and show a little more journalistic initiative.
Sheppard: Warbloggers Are 'Extreme Right' Topic: NewsBusters
In a Sept. 16 NewsBusters post, Noel Sheppard praised the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz for calling it "a step forward" that President would meet with conservative pro-war bloggers even though, as Sheppard wrote, "it seemed almost a metaphysical certitude the President would be lambasted for catering to the extreme right."
Is Sheppard really calling warbloggers "extreme right"? By applying Sheppard's own logic -- as demonstrated by a Sept. 15 post in which he declared that Keith Olbermann's questioning of why John Edwards ran an ad immediately after President Bush's address on Iraq, adding, "I don't think I'm saying anything unknown to the audience, I don't think he would have gotten a hard time from this particular network," as an admission that MSNBC is liberally biased -- the answer is yes.
Sheppard also ignored that Kurtz's praise of conservatives isn't as surprising as he depicted: last week, he declared that Fox News is "entitled" to "pose[] as a news organization and puts out dangerous misinformation [and] is a cheerleader for the Bush administration, that it is misinforming our society."
