WND Still Ignoring Full Story in Gun Case Topic: WorldNetDaily
A May 4 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh repeats WND's usual bias of telling only one side of the story -- this time in a the case of a man convicted of illegally transferring a machine gun. True to form, Unruh relates only Olofson's side of the story -- that he merely "loaned" a "semi-automatic rifle" to a "prospective buyer," who then "unleashed several bursts of multiple rounds" upon which the gun "jammed."
U.S. District Judge Charles Clevert said Olofson knew or should have known the gun in question fired automatically.
"This was a man who has considerable knowledge of weapons, considerable knowledge of machine guns," Clevert said. "Mr. Olofson, in this court's view, has shown he was ignoring the law."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregory Haanstad noted that Olofson had two previous gun-related convictions, including carrying a concealed weapon with his children trick-or-treating. He also noted that Olofson was reprimanded for corrupting Army computers and perhaps providing militia groups access to sensitive information.
[...]
People can legally own fully automatic, military-type M-16 rifles, but they must have a federal license and cannot transfer it to someone else.
According to court records, Kiernicki turned the rifle's firing selector to the third position, pulled the trigger, and three bullets fired with each pull. Then the weapon jammed. The automatic gunfire was reported to police, who contacted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Kiernicki testified Olofson told him the third position was for automatic firing, but it jammed, court records indicate. He also testified Olofson told him he had fired the weapon on the automatic setting at that same range without a problem, according to the records.
[...]
Clevert said the key was not what parts were in the weapon but whether it operated in automatic mode. He played a video used at trial showing ATF agents firing Olofson's weapon in automatic mode. He also noted that in one ATF test, the rifle didn't fire automatically when military-grade ammunition was used.
Haanstad said Olofson had provided weapons and ammunition to so many people he couldn't keep track. A search of his home turned up books on converting rifles to fully automatic, and e-mail on his computer showed he bought M-16 parts, records show.
Olofson had contact with vigilante groups and professed to be part of the sovereign movement, which doesn't acknowledge federal laws as applying to them, Haanstad said.
Unruh has a bad habit of refusing to tell the full story in gun-related cases.
Journalist I.F. Stone died 20 years ago, yet Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid still feels the need to attack him.
Kincaid is doing this in a convoluted way, by bashing liberal blogger Glenn Greenwald for accepting an "Izzy Award" for his independent journalism. Kincaid wrote Greenwald, stating that "I am preparing a story about Stone and would like your comments and about receiving an award named for a Soviet agent. Are you considering disavowing or giving back the award?"
Greenwald wrote back; in his May 4 AIM column, Kincaid made sure to highlight the insults ("Don't you have Barack Obama's birth certificate to hunt down and Hillary Clinton's sex life to sniff around in?") but obscured what Greenwald wrote about Stone by paraphrasing: "Rather than directly dispute the evidence of Stone's service to the Soviet Union, Greenwald cited some alleged anti-Soviet statements once made by Stone, when he apparently had a falling out with the Communist dictatorship, as well as an article from the Columbia Journalism Review."
Kincaid curiously refused to directly quote what Greenwald actually wrote about accusations of Stone being a Soviet agent:
There is much dispute about what Stone thought in the 1940s and early 1950s, but what is not in dispute is that in one of his earliest newsletters, he wrote: "Whatever the consequences, I have to say what I really feel after seeing the Soviet Union and carefully studying the statements of its leading officials, this is not a good society and it is not led by honest men" and "nothing has happened in Russia to justify cooperation abroad between the independent left and the Communists." Those anti-Soviet statements resulted in the loss of numerous previous supporters, a courageous stance that dishonest propaganda rags like Commentary would never take.
A publication with some actual credibility, Columbia Journalism Review, conducted a comprehensive review of the evidence and thoroughly debunked these falsehoods.
By failing to directly quote Greenwald, Kincaid is doing what he accused Greenwald of -- refusing to directly address his evidence. Kincaid goes on to suggest that Stone was an active Soviet agent for many years.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. Kincaid touts a new Commentary magazine article as containing "additional evidence of Stone's work as a Soviet agent." But the article defines it very narrowly, debunking Kincaid's suggestion:
The documentary record shows that I.F. Stone consciously cooperated with Soviet intelligence from 1936 through 1938. An effort was made by Soviet intelligence to reestablish that relationship in 1944-45; we do not know whether that effort succeeded.
To put it plainly, from 1936 to 1939 I.F. Stone was a Soviet spy.
Kincaid makes no mention of the apparent fact that Stone's alleged work for the Soviets was limited to a relatively brief period of a few years. Nor does he acknowledge Stone's rejection of the Soviet system.
WND Perpetuates Hate-Crime Bill Lie Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily is now promoting an effort by documented liar Janet Porter to send letters to Congress opposing the hate-crimes bill, which it claims "would provide special protections for pedophiles."
As we've detailed, that is a lie -- pedophilia is not considered a sexual orientation, a disability or a gender identity, and thus is not protected under the bill.
We thought news organizations weren't supposed to lie to their readers. Do Porter and WND have the guts to tell their readers the truth, or would they rather perpetuate hate, lies and fear? So far, it's the latter.
Will Bozell Credit Obama for Dow's Rise? Topic: Media Research Center
In a March 11 column titled "Obama Sinks the Markets," Brent Bozell blamed the then-plunging stock market on President Obama:
Think about it. Obama’s inauguration speech? The market dropped. Obama’s first State of the Union-style speech to Congress? The market dropped. Obama’s Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner tried to explain their under-baked bank rescue plan in February? The market dropped almost 400 points. Even Obama’s most fervent fans – like Chris Matthews – have put on the tube a chart showing the stock market’s precipitous decline since Obama’s victory. That is a sober political and economic reality for Team Obama, and no happy talk is going to fix it.
Now, the Dow has returned to the level it was at on the day of Obama's inauguration.
Will Bozell credit Obama for the Dow's rise the way he blamed Obama for its fall? If fellow right-winger Sean Hannity is any indication, don't count on it.
Deep Thought Topic: Horowitz
If you're going to complain that "the Left rationalizes its positions by demonizing its opponents. Those who disagree with them are not wrong but evil," should you be working for an organization whose editor -- your own boss -- wrote a book demonizing "leftists" by claiming they are sympatico with terrorists and, thus, not just wrong but evil?
UK Bars One-Time Aaron Klein Source From Entering Country Topic: WorldNetDaily
British media have published a list of people who have been barred from entering the UK because they "promote hatred, terrorist violence or serious criminal activity." Among the Islamic extremists, racist skinheads and neo-Nazis -- as well as anti-gay pastor Fred Phelps and all-around hater Michael Savage -- is another interesting name: Mike Guzovsky.
As we've detailed, Guzovsky -- also known as Yekutiel Ben Yaacov -- is a one-time leader of the now-outlawed far-right Kahane Chai movement in Israel. The Anti-Defamation League has described how, under Guzovsky/Ben Yaccov's leadership, Kahane Chai signaled its support of 1994 incidents in which bombs were placed outside the New York offices of two American Jewish groups that supported the Middle East peace process. Guzovsky/Ben Yaacov also expressed his support for Baruch Goldstein, who in 1994 massacred approximately 30 Arabs at Hebron's Tomb of the Patriarchs; Goldstein "did what he did out of a love for the Jewish people ... We don't condemn anybody who is targeting the enemies of the Jewish people," the ADL quotes Ben Yaacov as saying.
Guzovsky/Ben Yaacov has been a trusted source for WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein -- so trusted that Klein endeavored to whitewash his extremism. In an August 2004 WND article, Klein endeavored to show that people like Guzovsky whom Israeli officials were portraying as "dangerous Jewish extremists" were just regular Joes and not prone to violence, and that "Jewish terrorism ... is considered extremely rare" -- even though Guzovsky has a history of supporting such violence.
Klein has quoted the man under both his Guzovsky (Guzofsky) and Ben Yaacov (Yekutel Ben Yaacov) names, failing to explain that they are one in the same. Klein has benignly described him as a "northern Samaria resident" without detailing his history of supporting far-right extremism.
Klein doesn't appear to have used Guzovsky/Ben Yaacov as a source since early 2006, but it's telling that whitewashing right-wingers like him has been a significant part of Klein's journalistic agenda.
A May 5 WND article about the list prominently features Savage -- not a surprise given WND's longtime ties with him -- but mentions Guzovsky only in passing, failing to note that the man has been a trusted source for one of its reporters.
Making the list was well is Mike Guzofsky, a leader of the ultra-nationalist Kahane movement, which seeks to ensure that Israel retains biblically-rich territories, such as the West Bank and Jerusalem. A BBC profile falsely claims Guzofsky is "actively involved with military training camps." The only camps Guzofsky currently runs are to train dogs to protect Jewish communities in the West Bank. Dogs trained at Guzofky's northern West Bank kennels recently prevented several terrorist attacks. Guzofsky previously was involved in leading workshops to teach self-defense to Jews. He has also pushed for Jews in the West Bank to cede from Israel and create their own state in the event the Israeli government seeks to evacuate that territory in a deal with the Palestinians.
Kahane only "seeks to ensure that Israel retains biblically-rich territories"? Please. It also seeks to expel Arabs from Israel. Why won't Klein mention that? On whose word is Klein asserting that "The only camps Guzofsky currently runs are to train dogs to protect Jewish communities in the West Bank"? And why won't Klein mention Guzovsky's alias, Yekutiel Ben Yaacov, even though he has quoted the man in his articles under both names?
With this continued whitewashing of Guzovsky/Ben Yaacov, Klein is demonstrating himself again to be little more than a far-right apologist.
UPDATE 2: WND unsurprisingly runs to the defense of Savage. Will it also defend Phelps, whose anti-gay crusade WND tiptoed into promoting a couple years back before learning that even WND readers think he's too extreme?
By repeatedly misleading and lying about President Obama, Newsmax has obliterated any sense of moderation suggested by Christopher Ruddy's rapproachement toward the Clintons. Now Ruddy himself is going all in with his promotion for Newsmax's May 7 "webinar" on -- well, we're not exactly sure what it's about.
One email signed by Ruddy takes a populist tone by being both anti-Obama and anti-corporate:
Dear Newsmax Patriot,
Our country is in dangerous hands. Over the last year and a half you’ve seen your 401k obliterated…your investment portfolio drained and the value of your home demolished. And despite the recent rally, I promise you dark times are ahead.
Instead of helping the 3.3 million people that have lost their jobs over the last 5 months (5.1 million since 2007)…President Obama is taking great effort to grant amnesty to 12 million illegal immigrants.
How can that possibly help your friends, family and neighbors that are getting laid off, forced to leave their homes, or even worse – left homeless altogether.
America has become the land of corporate welfare checks…taking money out of your pocket and handing it to greedy Wall Street crooks who ask for their bailout and then go cash a 7 figure bonus check.
In fact, Obama is not "taking great effort to grant amnesty to 12 million illegal immigrants" -- it's not even on the agenda for this year.
The webinar appears to be offering some sort of financial advice (boldface and red type in original):
You’ve spent your life working and scraping together every penny you could save and now it’s being paid out to these crooks two times. First with their corporate bailouts. And then with the 7 and 8-figure bonuses they have no problem cashing at your expense.
Don’t worry though! Our economy will correct itself because President Obama is going to fix our sweeping unemployment, right?
Well if you are one of the 12 million illegal immigrants he’s looking to find jobs for yes . . . but if you are an Average American . . . sorry you are out of luck.
I’m angry . . . and I’m guessing so are you.
But before today there wasn’t much you could do about it. How could your voice be heard over all of the cheering and celebrity praise for our “Rock Star” president?
No longer will our message fall on deaf ears.
Today I’m calling out for you to join me as I set forth a plan to retake the money and financial opportunities that have been stolen from you.
At noon, on May 7th, I’ll be hosting a National Webcast to reveal a blueprint for how you can save your nest egg and investments from utter oblivion.
I’m gathering the Nation’s best (and unbiased) minds on finance and together we’ll hand you a free roadmap to financial recovery. Former CNN anchor, Bob Losure will join me to help moderate this ground-breaking event.
Even Dick Morris, the famous Fox News analyst and renowned political strategist, will be joining us on air. Dick has some very important things to reveal.
This won’t be some retread of the garbage “solutions” you are fed by the mainstream media . . . I’ll be sharing specific points you can implement into your portfolio immediately to start to gain back everything you’ve lost.
And on this webcast, I will be making an announcement that will absolutely shock you into action . . . I promise it.
It seems that after adding Michael Savage and Alan Keyes as regular columnists, WorldNetDaily thinks that its commentary page is still not hateful (or crazy) enough. An you know what that means: Time for another column by Hilmar von Campe!
As we've detailed, von Campe has been one of WND's leadinghurlers of Nazi smears at Barack Obama, using his self-proclaimed background of being a former Hitler Youth as cover. While von Campe may have left the trappings of Nazi Germany behind, he's still using Nazi-esque Big Lie tactics with his smears.
He cranks up the smear machine again in his May 4 WND column, in which he is a year too late to the party by devoting much of it to bashing Jeremiah Wright.
A lot has been written about Obama and his relationships. Cliff Kincaid asks, "Is he a mole?" My answer to that question can only be "yes, he is."
[...]
Barack Hussein Obama has been a member of the Trinity Church of Christ church for 20 years. His daughters were baptized, and he got married there. I have seen and read about its liberation fundamentals: hatred and class war.
And it wouldn't be von Campe if he didn't throw in a Nazi smear:
What kind of Christianity did Wright teach Obama that this man can believe that a politician can be a Christian by tolerating hatred and making abortion part of his political platform? Barack Obama has a hidden agenda. He is closer to the Nazis than to our Founding Fathers[.]
WND Lies Repeatedly About Hate-Crimes Bill Topic: WorldNetDaily
Perhaps it's time to follow up our documenting of WorldNetDaily's lies about Barack Obama with one detailing WND's lies about the federal hate-crimes bill.
A May 4 WND article by Bob Unruh is a good place to start. It leads off with an obviously false claim -- that the bill protects pedophiles.Unruh's source for this is none other than knownliar Janet Folger Porter, who in her May 5 column asserts that Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings has "admitted that this bill will protect all 547 forms of sexual deviancy or "Paraphilias" listed by the APA."
That's right -- Porter, Unruh, and WND are taking the word of an impeached judge as the final authority on a legal issue. Porter and Unruh made no apparent effort to search for any other source of legal advice for an alternative (that is, reality-based) view.
In fact, the Minnesota Independent sums up the truth in a way that Porter, Unruh and WND appear incapable of: "pedophilia is not considered a sexual orientation, a disability or a gender identity, and is instead a criminal act."
Unruh goes on to repeat other falsehoods WND has previously "reported" about the hate-crimes bill:
He repeats claims that the bill will create "thought crimes," which it doesn't.
He repeats a description of Matthew Shepard as "a Wyoming homosexual who was killed in a horrific robbery and beating in 1998." -- a bit of revisionism which ignores the fact that one of his killers used a "gay panic" defense during his trial.
He asserts that "Similar state laws have resulted in persecution for Christians. In Philadelphia several years ago, a 73-year-old grandmother was jailed for trying to share Christian tracts with people at a homosexual festival." In fact, athe grandmother was part of a group of protesters that tried to interrupt a stage performance at the festival with their preaching, and were arrested only after they refused to obey police orders and go to an area on the edge of the event. The group was led by a preacher, Michael Marcavage, who has endorsed putting homosexuals to death simply for being homosexual.
At no point does Unruh make any effort to tell the full story, thus depriving his readers of the truth -- he's too invested in his pack of lies.
WND Repeats CRC's Dubious Attack on ProPublica Topic: WorldNetDaily
A May 3 WorldNetDaily article is a poorly done attack on the nonprofit journalism site ProPublica and its main funders, Herb and Marion Sandler. The article is, in turn, based on an even more poorly done Capital Research Center report on ProPublica.
The report, by Cheryl K. Chumley, asserts that ProPublica "churns out little more than left-wing hit pieces about Sarah Palin," repeatedly accusing it of having a liberal bias withoutnoting ProPublica's response to the accusation. For instance,editor-in-chief Paul Steiger has stated:
Coming into this, when I talked to Herb and Marion Sandler, one of my concerns was precisely this question of independence and nonpartisanship... My history has been doing 'down the middle' reporting. And so when I talked to Herb and Marion I said 'are you comfortable with that?' They said 'absolutely'. I said 'well suppose we did an expose of some of the left leaning organizations that you have supported or that are friendly to what you've supported in the past'. They said 'no problem'. And when we set up our organizational structure, the board of directors, on which I sit and which Herb is the chairman, does not know in advance what we're going to report on.
Evidence offered by Chumley and the CRC that ProPublica's news coverate is biased are largely limited to complaining that it didn't slavishly repeat right-wing talking points about Sarah Palin, ACORN or Barack Obama. For instance, Chumley writes:
On Oct. 16, ProPublica’s website linked to an ABC News story entitled, “Experts: McCain ACORN Fears Overblown.” The lead sentence of the story began, “Charges of potential voter fraud volleyed by Republicans, including Sen. John McCain himself, are out of proportion to reality, according to election experts.”
On Oct. 29, a ProPublica reporter ignored the ACORN voter fraud reports and wrote a story instead about the background of a public affairs group that had attacked ACORN in a prepared advertisement in the New York Times.
At no point does Chumley accuse ProPublica of not telling the truth -- just of not swallowing right-wing spin in its article (i.e., that the group attacking ACORN was merely a "public affairs group"; in fact, it is run by one of the harshest critics of organized labor, Rick Berman, whose own son has denounced him). The problem for CRC, it seems, is not that ProPublica got the facts wrong but, rather, that it told a side of the story the CRC didn't want told.
Chumley also complained that ProPublica reported on "pork spending by Sarah Palin." Again, Chumley offers no evidence that any of its reporting is factually deficient, only that it was reported at all.
WND, meanwhile, apparently loved this report so much that it couldn't be bothered to do anything beyond mining it for claims to fill out its article.
Chumley then appears to contradict her attacks by noting that "ProPublica reporters should receive high praise for their stories on Obama’s stimulus package and banking bailouts, on recent business and financial scandals, and on other issues related to open records and open government." But this is buried near the end of her article, Chumley refuses to elaborate, and she immediately moves on to yet another complaint that it didn't follow right-wingers by attacking "Barack Obama's personal associations." Can't have inconvenient facts get in the way of the argument she's being paid to make, y'know.
Like its attacks on Media Matters, the CRC's attack on ProPublica is unbalanced, factually deficient and more about advancing a partisan agenda than actual "research." But as we've repeatedly noted, WND doesn't care about facts; they care about destroying their enemies, so such half-assed "research" is plenty good enough for them.
Tapscott Repeats Inflated Tea Party Attendance Figure Topic: Washington Examiner
In a May 1 Washington Examiner blog post, Mark Tapscott uncritically repeats a claim that the April 15 tea party protests featured "1.2 million patriots."
As we detailed when WorldNetDaily did it, any million-plus figure is highly inflated. Even Americans for Tax Reform counts as of this writing 578,000 participants -- and even thatnumber can be reasonably assured of being inflated since ATR has an interest in a high number as well.
Tapscott pulled his number from the Tea Party Patriots website, which does not substantiate it.
What Tea Party Did James Walsh Go To? Topic: Newsmax
A May 4 Newsmax column by James Walsh asserted of the anti-Obama tea parties: "There were no insults of persons or groups, and even the messages critical of Congress and the president were respectful. There were no vitriolic attacks on elected officials, no name-calling, no hate signs, no slogans of racism."
Sheppard Won't Apologize to Gore, Will Still Mislead About Him Topic: NewsBusters
We appear to have an answer to our question of when Noel Sheppard plans to apologize to Al Gore for falsely claiming that Gore is profiting from his global warming activism: Never.
In a May 3 NewsBusters post, Sheppard finally noted that "Gore was asked about his financial interests in pending cap and trade legislation at a recent hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee." He then proceeded to misrepresent what Gore said by using a heavily edited transcript of the exchange taken from Fox News' "The O'Reily Factor" that misleads about what Gore actually said: that "every penny from the movie, from the book, from any investments in renewable energy" goes to a nonprofit group, the Alliance for Climate Protection.
Nevertheless, Sheppard goes on to assert that Gore has "personal investments in green companies that will benefit from cap and trade legislation" that "seems to debunk Gore's claim that his investments in such entities are exclusively through his non-profit organization" -- even though Sheppard, by quoting the selectively edited "The O'Reilly Factor" exchange, has never acknowledged that Gore gives his profits from those investments to the nonprofit.
Sheppard also selectively quotes a March 2008 Bloomberg article to suggest that the growth in Gore's net worth comes only from his global warming activism. In fact, the article goes on to note Gore's speaking fees, his holdings in the Current TV channel and possession of "pre-public offering Google stock options."
Amazingly, Sheppard then claims: "As I have maintained from my first article concerning this matter, it is not my suggestion that Gore is doing anything wrong." Oh, bull. By using selectively edited transcripts instead of telling the full truth, Sheppard is very much trying to suggest that Gore is doing something wrong.
Then again, if Sheppard wasn't doing that, he would lose a talking point, and he would cease to be a useful idiot for Marc Morano.
WND Puts Klein's Obama-Hate on Display Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has decided to let Aaron Klein's Obama-hate show after all.
An April 29 WND article touting Klein's new book "The Late Great State of Israel" repeats Klein's claim that "The Obama administration is a direct threat to Israel and Middle East regional stability" and that Klein "documents more than 10 ways President Obama's policies are likely to cause grave harm to the Jewish state."
WND goes on to note:
During the recent presidential campaign, Klein broke some of the most important stories about Obama, including the politician's associations with Weatherman terrorist William Ayers and anti-Israel personalities such as PLO supporter Rashid Khalidi. It was during an exclusive interview with Klein that the Hamas terrorist organization infamously endorsed Obama.
As we've detailed, Klein has refused to give a full public accounting of the interview in which Ahmed Yousef, "Hamas' top political adviser in the Gaza Strip,"endorsed Obama -- namely, why a member of a "terrorist organization" that Klein despises would willingly cooperate with Klein and advance his partisan anti-Obama agenda.
Klein also noted Obama's ties with Khalidi while largely ignoring John McCain's ties with him. Further, Klein has a longhistory of hurling dubious guilt-by-association claims in an attempt to smear Obama.
In an April 29 interview on fellow Obama-hater (and hateringeneral) Michael Savage's radio show, Klein claims that "one of the major issues that I really see coming up is whether Obama is going to legitimize Hamas terror." He fails to mention that Obama has long been opposed to direct negotiations with Hamas -- a stance Klein also largely neglected in his attempts to link Obama to Hamas.
Klein is obviously too blinded by his Obama-hate to be taken seriously about any claims regarding Obama and Israel. But Obama hatred is what WND is all about these days, so Klein will be well rewarded for his.
