Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax's Ronald Kessler took liberties with a Jewish leader's views on Obama, and got called on it -- so Kessler had to hunt for another Jewish leader to advance his anti-Obama agenda. Read more >>
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
New Article: Kessler's Wedge
Topic: Newsmax Newsmax's Ronald Kessler took liberties with a Jewish leader's views on Obama, and got called on it -- so Kessler had to hunt for another Jewish leader to advance his anti-Obama agenda. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:14 AM EDT
NewsBusters Still Defending Bush's Firing of Attorneys
Topic: NewsBusters In a July 14 NewsBusters post reporting that the "left-wing blog Talking Points Memo" has received funding from investors to hire additional reporters, Clay Waters notes that TPM "won the media's George Polk Award for legal reporting for his work on the Bush administration firing eight U.S. attorneys under what TPM and other liberals claimed were politically motivated circumstances -- a perfectly legal effort that was nonetheless considered scandalous by mainstream media." That ignores the controversy over why the attorneys were fired: reportedly for prosecuting too many Republicans and not enough Democrats and to make room for GOP political operatives. Any chance Waters or his MRC buddies will ever admit that President Clinton's firing of the Travel Office staffers was "a perfectly legal effort that was nonetheless considered scandalous by right-wing media"? Naaah....
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:22 AM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 1:42 AM EDT
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Why Won't MRC Mention McCorvey's Link to Randall Terry?
Topic: Media Research Center When last we saw MRC Culture & Media Institute writer Sarah Knoploh, she was suggesting that George Tiller deserved to be targeted for murder. Now in a July 14 CMI article, Knoploh is complaining that the TV networks failed to mention that one of the anti-abortion protesters who disrupted Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearing on July 13 was Norma McCorvey, the "Jane Roe" in the original Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion who is now an anti-abortion activist. "McCorvey’s outburst should have received more attention from the networks," Knoploh insisted. Knoploh goes on to fawn over McCorvey as someone "passionately working to overturn the ruling" and is "concerned about the lack of clarity on Sotomayor’s positions" on abortion -- though Knoploh doesn't explain how making a spectacle of herself at a congressional hearing is a suitable way to express concern about Sotomayor's "lack of clarity" on abortion. Speaking of lack of clarity, Knoploh is mum about one aspect of McCorvey's disruption, as well as that of three others who disrupted the hearing with anti-abortion statements. As the Washington Post reported in an article to which Knoploh linked:
As we've detailed, since Tiller's murder, the MRC and the rest of the ConWeb have been trying to ignore Terry, particularly after he essentially condoned the killing of Tiller. This means that McCorvey is far beyond the merely "concerned" and "passionate" activist Knoploh portrays; she's in thrall to an extremist who condones murder. We can see why Knoploh wouldn't mention that fact -- it destroys her narrative of McCorvey. UPDATE: Knoploh's article is posted at NewsBusters as well.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:55 PM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 10:06 PM EDT
Huston Smears Sotomayor
Topic: NewsBusters Warner Todd Huston has long been one of NewsBusters' more aggressively clueless writers, and he demonstrates his aggressive cluelessness once again in a July 14 post bashing Sonia Sotomayor. Attacking a CNN commentary by Jeffrey Toobin calling Sotomayor "a liberal in the cautious and careful mode" of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Huston retorted with a barrage of unsupported and undefined assertions:
Huston offers no evidence that either Sotomayor or Ginsburg are "extreme," let alone his definiton of "extreme" vis-a-vis his definition of an "average, conservative Democrat." Huston then takes on the "wise Latina" comment:
One must admire the chutzpah of Huston acknowledging complaints that Sotomayor's statement was taken out of context -- then going ahead and taking it out of context anyway. The context, of course, is that Sotomayor was referring specifically to "race and sex discrimination cases" -- which Huston mentions nowhere in his screed and conveniently omits from the speech excerpt he included in his post. Huston then made a big deal about how "five out the six cases that Sotomayor decided in lower courts that appeared before the Supremes were reversed by that court" -- even though he lists seven cases. Huston didn't mention that the Supreme Court typically reverses a large majority of the appeals court cases it considers, nor did he mention that prior to his elevation to the high court, at least four rulings Samuel Alito made as an appellate judge were overturned by the Supreme Court. If Sotomayor's reversal rate disqualifes her, Alito'sreversal rate should have disqualifed him, right? Huston can't be bothered by such trivia. He's too busy smearing Sotomayor as "A racist with low grades and a sense of entitlement that has been reversed or scolded in five out of the six cases of hers that have appeared before past Supreme Court sessions." Yes, it seems Huston really does graduating summa cum laude from Princeton is evidence of "low grades."
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:11 PM EDT
Meanwhile ...
Topic: NewsBusters Media Matters' Jamison Foser catches NewsBusters' Kyle Drennen, in a July 13 post, complaining that Harry Smith dared to challenge a Republican senator's talking points on Sonia Sotomayor -- namely, Sen. Jeff Sessions' assertion that Sotomayor is a "typical liberal activist judge." Drennen also fails to acknowledge that Session's conceded Smith's point that Sotomayor's "record is better than her speeches."
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:27 AM EDT
Newsmax Columnist Wants Americans to Sacrifice for Afghan War
Topic: Newsmax John L. Perry writes in his July 13 Newsmax column:
Um, when did any of this take place under the Bush administration's war against Iraq? Oh, that's right -- it didn't. Did Perry make note of this prior to 2009? We suspect not. It's no surprise to see Perry's column devolve into a fit of Obama Derangement Syndrome:
And, of course, no evidence that Bush sought the sacrifices from American civilians that Perry demands Obama seek.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:52 AM EDT
Monday, July 13, 2009
CNS, Newsmax Join in Misleading About Ginsburg
Topic: CNSNews.com WorldNetDaily and NewsBusters aren't the only ones misrepresenting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's remarks about abortion in a New York Times interview. A July 10 CNSNews.com article by Christopher Neefus asserted that Ginsburg "said she thought the landmark Roe v. Wade decision on abortion was predicated on the Supreme Court majority's desire to diminish 'populations that we don’t want to have too many of.'" In fact, Ginsburg was not referring to herself regarding that belief, which is clear from the interview transcript Neefus included in his article. Similarly, a July 12 Newsmax "Insider Report" misleadingly claimed that Ginsburg "says she thought the Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion was intended to aid population control among lower-income Americans."
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:23 PM EDT
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily In his July 13 WorldNetDaily column, Craig R. Smith repeatedly refers to President Obama as "Chairman Obama." Smith also throws in a reference to "Commandant Pelosi."
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:51 PM EDT
Is WND Editing Obama's Wikipedia Entry Again?
Topic: WorldNetDaily We've previously detailed how a person working under the direction of WorldNetDaily reporter Aaron Klein edited Barack Obama's Wikipedia entry so that Klein could write a WND article on how edits adding baseless speculation about Obama's birth were deleted. Is WND trying to manufacture another story like that? A July 12 WND article by Joe Kovacs details how a Wikipedia page on the "early life and career of Barack Obama" had "changed numerous times" and "displayed at least two countries the commander in chief may have been born in – the United States and Kenya." Kovacs doesn't state how it became aware of the edits or who did the editing. Thus, we don't know whether the editing was done by Kovacs, another WND emoployee or an outside person acting under the direction of WND (as was the case in Klein's article). (The edit-history section of the Wikipedia page in question shows that the edits Kovacs cited were made by a user posting under the name BenSpecter.) Kovacs goes on to call the reversion of BenSpecter's edits "blatant scrubbing" (though WND did the same thing to Klein's article after publication in removing all evidence that the person who made the edits to Obama's Wikipedia page for Klein's article did so under Klein's direction). Kovacs then goes on to add:
Do Kovacs, Joseph Farah and the rest of the WND agree with Trebe that Obama is an "evil illegal alien"? Given the prominence to which Kovacs has elevated her remarks, we'd have to say yes -- which, of course, disqualifies Kovacs and WND from reporting anything that can be trusted.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:09 PM EDT
Molotov's Obama-Hating Tea Party Rant
Topic: WorldNetDaily Molotov Mitchell has posted the video of his speech at the sparsely attended anti-Obama tea party July 4 in Charlottesville, Va., and it's not pretty -- Mitchell lets his Obama-hate shine through in a way that not even his WorldNetDaily videos capture. He starts his rant by telling the crowd, "I know how you feel -- like the underground." He continues:
Mitchell then engages in his usual denigrating of people he doesn't agree with: "A handful of pencil-necked, metrosexual socialists in Washington can't possibly defeat a nation of red-blooded, God-fearing patriots." He then endorsed a military coup against Obama:
Next, he embraced the birther conspiracy:
In fact, he's not imparting facts -- as we noted the last time he did this, most of the claims Mitchell makes have been discredited. Mitchell then lets the Obama-hate loose:
As we've noted, the pizza chef flew coach, his boss at the restaurant paid for his travel he was already making a business trip to Washington, and Obama himself picked up the tab, not the taxpayers.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:30 AM EDT
Updated: Monday, July 13, 2009 12:37 AM EDT
Sunday, July 12, 2009
WND Still Promoting Anti-Semite's Attacks on Obama
Topic: WorldNetDaily A July 9 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh keeps up WND's embrace of Andy Martin by uncritically repeating his latest legal action regarding Barack Obama's birth certificate. Unruh describes Martin onlyas a "Chicago activist," Martin's long history of anti-Semitism and questionable behavior.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:14 PM EDT
Examiner Misleads on Train Station Money
Topic: Washington Examiner A July 10 "Daily Outrage" item (print only) in the Washington Examiner attacked stimulus money going "to refurbish a passenger train station in Elizabethtown, a small town in Lancaster County, Pa." because it "has been abandoned for the past 30 years." In fact, as Media Matters notes, while the station building is closed for 30 years, the station's platform is open and serving passengers -- more than 80,000 a year. Further, the station has reportedly nearly doubled its number of passengers since 2003-2004 and, according to the Pennsylvania State Department of Transportation, has had the highest increase in ridership in the past two years of any station along the Keystone corridor. The Examiner failed to mention those facts, which contradict its depiction of the station renovation as a waste of money. The Examiner apparently cribbed its attack from a report issued by Republican Sen. Tom Coburn. Here's a scan of the item as it appeared in the Examiner:
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:09 AM EDT
Updated: Sunday, July 12, 2009 1:10 AM EDT
Saturday, July 11, 2009
O'Leary Baselessly Attacks NYT Poll, Puffs His Own
Topic: WorldNetDaily Brad O'Leary uses his July 10 WorldNetDaily column to attack a New York Times poll he didn't like -- and, of course, to promote his own skewed polls. O'Leary asserts that the Times"rigged the poll much like the Ayatollah rigged the Iranian election," claiming that it "heavily weighted the poll in favor of Obama, showing the gap between his personal approval rating and the public's approval of his initiatives to be much smaller than it actually is." O'Leary also complained that the poll "surveyed twice as many Obama voters than McCain voters, as well as a significant number of non-voters. ... Sixteen percent of those surveyed by the Times are not even registered to vote." By comparison, O'Leary asserted, "the O'Leary/Zogby poll used an honest and accurate sampling method by only surveying Americans who voted in the 2008 presidential election, and weighting that sample to reflect the actual outcome of the election." O'Leary's attack on the Times poll -- portraying it as "rigged" and "portrait of a mythical America that doesn't exist," while puffing up his own as "honest and accurate" -- is without substance. O'Leary doesn't explain why non-voters are somehow less qualifed to offer opinions on presidential policies -- last time we checked, they were American citizens and subject to all the same regulations as voting Americans. The Times' use of a different methodology than O'Leary doesn't make its results any less valid. As Janet Elder, the Times' editor for news surveys and election analysis, said in a July 24 CNS article, "Although some polling organizations do, The New York Times/CBS News poll does not weight by party ID. ... We weight by characteristics that are known from census data." O'Leary took the cop-out that "the Times failed to disclose the make-up of its sample in the article it published that detailed the poll's results" -- even though it could have been found by simple Googling -- thus avoiding having to respond to the Times poll's methodology. Further, as Slate points out, it's highly likely that the large disparity between declared Obama voters and declared McCain voters in the Times poll is because people aren't telling the truth to pollsters because they want to be on the side of the winning candidate (and don't want to be associated with a loser like McCain):
O'Leary then offered "a comparison of both the New York Times' and The O'Leary Report's findings on similarly asked poll questions." But as O'Leary surely knows, "similarly asked" does not mean the same thing as exactly asked; slight changes in wording can produce different responses. As we've detailed, the Zogby polls O'Leary pays for include questions tweaked to obtain the response he wants. O'Leary largely fails to provide the questions specifically asked by both polls, and the one example he provides shows O'Leary's bias:
By using phrases like "means of production" and "state owned" -- phrases long used in reference to socialism and communism -- O'Leary is using language that is clearly designed to strike a negative subliminal response, predisposing respondents to reject that option. Thus, it can be argued that O'Leary's sample is not only not "accurate," it's just as "manipulated" as the Times poll he denigrates. It's also worth noting that for as much as O'Leary complains about the Times' alleged failure to "disclose the full details behind its sampling method," at no point in his article does O'Leary offer a link to his own Zogby poll so we can examine the methodology and specific questions he asked for ourselves.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:03 AM EDT
Updated: Saturday, July 11, 2009 11:07 AM EDT
'Grotesque' But True
Topic: NewsBusters Mark Finkelstein, in a July 10 NewsBusters post, is upset that Ed Schultz, on his MSNBC show, "offered up an unpaid infomercial for GM's new Camaro. Most grotesque was Schultz's boast that the Camaro was outselling the Ford Mustang." Finkelstein failed to mention that Schultz's "boast," however "grotesque" it may be, happens to be true. UPDATE: Corrected name of NewsBusters writer.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:30 AM EDT
Updated: Sunday, July 12, 2009 12:37 AM EDT
Friday, July 10, 2009
Meanwhile...
Topic: NewsBusters We have a post up at Media Matters' County Fair blog noting that Tim Graham, in a July 9 NewsBusters post, makes a big deal out of reporters attending an off-the-record Fourth of July gathering at the White House but failing to mention that President Bush held an annual off-the-record barbecue for reporters at his Texas ranch during his presidency.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:45 PM EDT
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