-- headline on April 8 NewsBusters post by John Stephenson.
Wonder whose idea it was to schedule a Medal of Honor award ceremony at the White House at the same time as the Petraeus hearings?
All three cable nets broke away from hearings coverage to carry the ceremony live.
-- April 8 Talking Points Memo post by David Kurtz
UPDATE: Stephenson adds: "The media finally wakes up and starts covering this. I wonder how much Newsbusters had to do with that." We would guess nothing -- as noted above the cable news networks covered it live, and the newspaper websites that dominate his above-linked search would generally not have made the story available on their websites until the morning paper was published. Stephenson appears to have a fundamental misunderstanding about how the newspaper industry works -- and the broadcast media, since he ignores that the cable nets covered it live.
NewsBusters Slightly Less Bitter Over Pulitizers Topic: NewsBusters
Fresh off his not-so-breaking news about Fox News' cancellation of John Gibson's show, Matthew Sheffield starts of an April 8 NewsBusters post this way:
It's not often you'll hear a right-leaning media critic say this: I agree with the Pulitzer Prize committee this year, at least when it comes to the award the committee gave to Investor's Business Daily's Michael Ramirez for his excellent cartooning work.
Why would it be unusual for a conservative to praise an prominent award given to a fellow conservative? Sheffield doesn't explain.
Sheffield then prints excerpts of an April 2007 column by his boss, Brent Bozell, complaining that the Pulitzers are "biased against right-leaning columnists." But as we noted at the time about this bitter rant, Bozell misleadingly complained (and Sheffield repeats the section here) that there was only one female conservative who had won the Pulitzer for commentary. In fact, when the New York Times' Maureen Dowd won her prize in 1999, she was advancing anti-Clinton talking points in her columns that conservatives like Bozell and Sheffield could heartily endorse.
Shocker: Kessler Debunks Joe McCarthy Revisionism Topic: Newsmax
Here's a shocker: There appears to be one part of the conservative agenda Bush-fluffer extrordinaire Ronald Kessler won't sign on to.
In an April 7 Newsmax column, Kessler called attempts by some conservatives to "vindicate the late Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy and his campaign to expose Soviet spies in the U.S. government" -- he doesn't name names, but they include Ann Coulter, M. Stanton Evans and Accuracy in Media -- "dangerous." Why? "The FBI agents who were actually chasing those spies have told me that McCarthy hurt their efforts because he trumped up charges, unfairly besmirched honorable Americans, and gave hunting spies a bad name." Kessler adds:
The problem was that the people McCarthy tarnished as Communists or Communist sympathizers were not the real spies. Often, the information McCarthy used came from FBI files, which were full of rumor and third-hand accounts.
[...]
While McCarthy said he would protect the names of witnesses, their names were leaked to the press, [Senate associate historian Donald] Ritchie says. Only half a dozen of the witnesses turned up in the VENONA intercepts, all minor figures in McCarthy’s investigations, he notes.
In the end, says Ritchie, “Not one of the 500 witnesses went to jail for perjury or contempt of Congress, whereas a lot of people who testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Senate Internal Security subcommittee were investigated, prosecuted and convicted, and served jail time. Yet McCarthy was constantly accusing people of having committed perjury and urging the Justice Department to prosecute them.”
[...]
Efforts to vindicate McCarthy by people who have never caught a spy ignore the fact that rather than helping the cause of dealing with the spy threat, he harmed it.
By sanctioning McCarthy’s intimidating tactics and dishonest charges against innocent Americans, revisionists dangerously invite history to be repeated, imperiling all of us.
Ouch. How will Coulter, Evans, et al, handle this?
WND Misleads on Zeifman's Hillary-Bashing, Ignores His Conflicting Firing Claims Topic: WorldNetDaily
An April 7 WorldNetDaily article begins: "Details of Hillary Clinton's firing from the House Judiciary Committee staff for unethical behavior as she helped prepare articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon have been confirmed by the panel's chief Republican counsel."
Except that most of them weren't.
The article states that "Franklin Polk backed up major claims by Jerry Zeifman, the general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee who supervised Clinton's work on the Watergate investigation in 1974." According to the article, "Polk confirmed Clinton wrote a brief arguing Nixon should not be granted legal counsel due to a lack of precedent."
But, in fact, the article does not claim that Polk backed any of Zeifman's "major claims" -- that Clinton's brief was "fradulent," that "Clinton deliberately ignored the then-recent case of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who was allowed to have a lawyer during the impeachment attempt against him in 1970," that "Clinton bolstered her fraudulent brief by removing all of the Douglas files from public access and storing them at her office, enabling her to argue as if the case never existed," and that "Clinton was collaborating with allies of the Kennedys to block revelation of Kennedy-administration activities that made Watergate 'look like a day at the beach.'"
Indeed, the article states only that "Polk confirmed the Clinton memo ignored the Douglas case, but he could not confirm or dispel the claim that Hillary removed the files," adding that he considered Clinton's alleged exclusion of the Douglas precedent "more stupid than sinister."
Further, WND repeats the claim that Zeifman "fired Clinton from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation" without mentioning (as we've noted) that in 1998, Zeifman claimed that he didn't fire Clinton because he didn't have the power to do so.
WND also reprints an article by Dan Calebrese of North Star Writers, from which WND lifted the bulk of its article. Calebrese similarly claimed that Zeifman "sign[ed Hillary's] termination papers" without noting that Zeifman has previously claimed he didn't fire her because he didn't have the power to do so.
Indeed, none of Zeifman's major attacks on Hillary have been independently corroborated. And Zeifman's flip-flop about whether he fired Hillary would seem to make him an unreliable witness.
In an April 7 NewsBusters post, Matthew Sheffield solemnly informs us: "Fox News has canceled its long-running show 'The Big Story' which originally featured John Gibson."
But as the New York Times article to which Sheffield linked makes clear, the cancellation happened on March 12. Nowhere does Sheffield indicate that he's relating an event that happened nearly a month ago.
Insert snarky remark here about not keeping up with the news.
The Gore-Bashing Baton Passes At NewsBusters Topic: NewsBusters
Now that Noel Sheppard has apparently decided not to accept our challenge to support his unsubstantiated claim that Al Gore is into global warming activism only for the Benjamins, it was inevitable that someone else would pick up that misleading lilttle ball.
Enter Matthew Vadum, editor of Organization Trends and Foundation Watch, two newsletters issued by the conservative Capital Research Center. In an April 1 NewsBusters post, Vadum claimed that Gore was "profiteering" on global warming by heading a private equity firm that invests in "green" companies and technology. "Little is known about his shadowy firm’s finances, where it gets funding and what projects it supports," Vadum asserts, without explaining if all private-equity firms are, or should be, held to the same standard. He also derisively calls Gore "Saint Albert of Carthage, Tennessee."
Vadum kept up the hate in a April 6 post, starting with a false claim off the bat -- that Gore famously claimed to have invented the Internet." (We debunked this eight years ago.) Vadum claimed that a spokesman gave "a snotty response" when he denied Vadum's profiteering allegations.
Vadum went on to call Gore's global warming activism a "Chicken Little routine" and he suggests throughout that Gore is only doing this for the money. But correlation does not equal causation: because Gore is making some money related to his global warming activism does not mean that it's the only reason he's doing it. (We thought that conservatives believed making money was a good thing.) Nowhere does Vadum offer evidence that his beliefs are not sincere.
Vadum even attacks Gore's speaking fees:
And let’s not forget that Gore now makes $175,000 a speech. Are people paying Gore not to talk about global warming, his policy forte, in his speeches? He sure isn’t making that kind of money for his oratory by enthralling crowds with fascinating tales from his time as Vice President of the United States, an office a previous holder once described as not being worth “a bucket of warm p---.” By comparison, the rhetorical gifts of both Dan Quayle and Walter Mondale go for a more affordable $30,000 (per speech), or less.
We would argue that Vadum, as an employee of a right-wing think tank that has attacked Gore, is doing it for the money to a greater extent than Gore is.
UPDATE: Welcome, visitors from CRC. We respond to Vadum here.
Nowhere is it mentioned that WND admitted, as part of settling a libel suit by Al Gore supporter Clark Jones, printing false claims about him -- which undermines its assertion that its journalism is "honest." And nowhere does WND indicate how much of each donation to its "legal defense fund" goes toward the cost of paying a presumed financial award to Jones as part of that lawsuit settlement.
C'mon, WND, be honest with your readers and potential donors -- you're begging for donations to pay for the settlement to Jones, right? Oh, and while you're at it, how about a little transparency for that legal defense fund, making public its donors and disbursements?
An April 4 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh starts off with two falsehoods right off the bat.
The headline states, "Elementary lesson on 'gay' issues now tied to reading, social studies." Nowhere does Unruh specifically state that reading and social studies are a particular focus of purported " 'gay' studies."
Unruh began his article by referencing "The superintendent of a public school that sparked a federal lawsuit by teaching homosexuality to children as young as kindergarten." But as we detailed the last time Unruh "reported" on this story, the school was not "teaching homosexuality"; rather, his 5-year-old son brought home a book about families that "depicted at least two households led by homosexual partners."
And despite Unruh's sinister warnings of "indoctrination" and "teaching homosexuality" and "promotions of such alternative lifestyles," there's nothing of the sort going on here. Buried in Unruh's article is a mention that the school in question may assign reading to students that includes "stories that show same gender parents."
That's what Unruh's article is about -- fear that a school will show students that gay parents exist. The Depiction-Equals-Approval Fallacy strikes again!
Only Democrats Put 'On the Spot' Topic: CNSNews.com
As we noted last fall, one occasional feature CNSNews.com started under new leadership last year is "On the Spot," in which (mostly Democratic) members of Congress are ambushed with a question reflecting CNS' conservative bias, the apparent point of which is to catch a Democrat making a potentially awkward remark on tape.
The latest edition came in an April 4 article by Pete Winn, in which he asks "several members of Congress" whether they "agreeed with [Martin Luther King's] view that man's laws must comport with the laws of God." But all three listed interviewees are Democrats; Winn offers no evidence he asked the question of a Republican.
Will NewsBusters Report Zeifman's Conflicting Claims? Topic: NewsBusters
An April 1 NewsBusters post by John Stephenson reported the latest anti-Hillary allegations by Jerry Zeifman -- who, aswe'vedetailed, likes to go on right-wing websites and tout his self-proclaimed status as a "lifelong Democrat" as an excuse to bash other Democrats. Stephenson reprinted excerpts of a North Star Writers article in which Zeifman asserted that he "fired Hillary from the [House Judiciary] committee staff" investigating the Watergate scandal. Stephenson, of course, swallows Zeifman's claims without question; his headline on the post is "Will Media Give Story About Hillary's Unethical Past the Legs It Deserves?"
But as Media Matters details, Zeifman claimed back in a 1998 article that he didn't fire her and didn't have the power to do so.
So either Zeifman lied back then, or he's lying now -- which makes him a liar either way. Will Stephenson or anyone else at NewsBusters hold Zeifman accountable for his conflicting claims? Don't count on it.
FrontPageMag Writer Ignores Homeschool Family's Abusive History Topic: Horowitz
In an April 4 FrontPageMag article, the Ayn Rand Institute's Thomas A. Bowden writes about the California homeschooling case: "Education, like nutrition, should be recognized as the exclusive domain of a child's parents, within legal limits objectively defining child abuse and neglect."
Bowden fails to note that there was an issue of "child abuse and neglect" in the "Rachel L." case he cites. As we detailed, the California Dependency Court found that Rachel "has been physically and emotionally abused by father and mother did not take steps to protect her, Rachel was sexually abused by [a friend of the family] and the parents did not protect her from him." Further, the court found -- corroborated by Rachel's own testimony -- that the quality of the homeschooling Rachel was receiving was abysmal.
Is this enough "child abuse and neglect" for Bowden to intervene? Or does objectivist philosophy forbid that?
Huston Parrots Murdoch's False Attack on CNN Topic: NewsBusters
In an April 4 NewsBusters post, Warner Todd Huston uncritically repeated News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch's claim that CNN has "always been extremely liberal, never had a Republican or conservative voice on it." Huston adds: "One wonders what CNN will be saying about this? It isn't like it's a secret, though."
But as Eric Alterman has pointed out, this ignores regular CNN appearances by Tucker Carlson and Bill Bennett, not to mention Terry Jeffrey, Bay Buchanan, Amy Holmes, J.C. Watts and Glenn Beck.
Morris Hypes Non-Existent Clinton Scandal Topic: Newsmax
In an April 4 Newsmax column detailing how "Hillary Clinton has manifested a consistently low opinion of the intelligence of voters," Dick Morris lists among alleged Clinton scandals "the theft of White House gifts." Only that really didn't happen.
Morris has been making this less-than-substantiated allegation as far back as February 2001, as noted in a UPI article reprinted by Newsmax:
Sen. Hillary Clinton denied a report by former White House pollster Dick Morris that she kept gifts given to her during her eight years as first lady.
"There is a very specific system. You don't keep something; you don't disclose it," New York's junior senator told reporters Sunday after she attended three black churches in New York City. "It goes to the National Archives, and if it is below a certain value, you don't disclose it."
Her staff provided an accounting of at least 10 gifts mentioned in Morris' op-ed piece in Sunday's New York Post. "Hillary Clinton got many expensive and personal gifts during her eight years as first lady and never disclosed them, as required by law," Morris said.
[...]
According to Clinton's New York press secretary, Peter Kauffmann, the gifts described by Morris were returned to the giver, received before the Clintons entered the White House, sent to the National Archives or listed on a disclosure form.
"It's really regrettable that the people writing and publishing the story didn't call to get the facts," Clinton said. "It is a very unfortunate commentary on the way that these things are handled."
Further, a months-long investigation by congressional Republicans resulted in a 319-page report that found no apparent illegality, according to the New York Times:
The gifts were not disclosed by the Clintons because the couple turned them over to Bill Clinton's presidential library, the investigators said. Under federal law, gifts that the first family do not keep for themselves are exempt from the public disclosure requirement on presidential gifts, the investigators said.
All of this goes unmentioned by Morris -- perhaps because it shoots down the idea that this was an actual scandal.
Morris' column carries the headline "Hillary Counting on Gullible Voters." Sounds like Morris is counting on gullible readers.
NewsBusters Misleads on al-Qaeda in Iraq Topic: NewsBusters
An April 3 NewsBusters post by Kyle Drennen insisted that John McCain's claim that "Al Qaeda in Iraq" would be "taking" Iraq if the U.S. withdrew from the country was, contrary to what a CBS report claimed, not an exaggeration. Another NewsBusters post by Brian Fitzpatrick called the CBS assertion about the McCain's statement a "smear" and a "whopper" and that Katie Couric "told a lie" in "lump[ing] John McCain in with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as liars." Fitzpatrick added: "Apparently Katie Couric cannot distinguish between a prediction about a policy issue and a lie deliberately crafted to gain advantage in a campaign."
But neither Drennen nor Fitzpatrick explain the thing that made McCain's statement an exaggeration, if not a lie: McCain's conflation of Al Qaeda in Iraq with Al Qaeda.
Specifically, the two groups are not one in the same. As the Council on Foreign Relations points out (h/t Media Matters), "Established by the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an Arab of Jordanian descent, AQI rose to prominence after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. ... a number of experts say it wasn’t until 2004, when Zarqawi vowed obedience to the al-Qaeda leader, that the groups became linked."
Both Drennan and Fitzpatrick are silent on the difference between Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda in Iraq, which means they really don't have a basis upon which to defend the purported truth of McCain's statement.
An April 2 Media Research Center press release announces the official launch of Eyeblast, "a groundbreaking, interactive news and entertainment platform designed to transform the world of online video-sharing and networking – without the censorship or political agenda of YouTube." It's been in beta mode the past couple of months.
Um, wait. Doesn't the MRC's very own NewsBusted "comedy" webcast have its own YouTube channel? Why, yes, it does. And lookie here: an interview with Eyeblast executive producer K. Daniel Glover, also on YouTube.
That kinda destroys the argument that YouTube "censors" conservatives, does it not?
Nevertheless, the press release presses on:
“Eyeblast is a leapfrog in technology for the conservative movement,” stated Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center. “We have harnessed the capabilities of various online networks into one place that is free of censorship. Google, YouTube and the liberal media have squashed certain information due to its conservative bent. Eyeblast does not discriminate based upon political view. It is an online location where all sides are welcome to share. We especially hope to capture the attention of conservative college students and those under 30 who are longing for a place to connect with other conservatives.”
Strangely, this ulterior motive of targeting conservatives is nowhere to be found on Eyeblast's "about" page. But oops, it slips out big-time on the "be a contributor" page:
Have you grown weary of liberal bias in the mainstream media? Are you sick of the censorship and political correctness that attack conservative principles? So are we -- and you can help us combat liberal media bias and promote conservatism here at Eyeblast.tv.
You can be the media at Eyeblast. You can be a watchdog. You can be an activist. You can even be a star. We are recruiting an army of citizen video journalists to cover conservative events on campuses across America, to catch mischief-making liberals on film, to feed us video for special reports and to profile up-and-coming young conservatives. We're also looking for entertaining, video-savvy young conservatives to create mash-ups or even their own online shows.
How can Eyeblast "not discriminate based upon political view" yet also claim it's all about promoting conservatives and attacking liberals, thus suggesting that one particular political view is, at the very least, more equal than the others? We don't understand.
Similarly, the "about" page is coy about Glover's conservative bona fides, but they (along with his dislike for Barack Obama) are pretty clear in this interview with conservative blogger (and ex-CNSNews.com reporter) Robert Bluey.
We'll see how long that tissue of a non-discrimination vow lasts -- or, more to the point, how long the MRC's conservative funders tolerate paying the huge bandwidth costs of a video-heavy site with content that isn't exclusively conservative.
