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Friday, February 19, 2010
Joseph Farah Still Doesn't Get It
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Joseph Farah's Feb. 18 WorldNetDaily column is yet another round of fraudulent self-aggrandizement designed to obscure the truth about him and WND. He writes:

When I started WND back in 1997, I had hoped that it would lead to a renaissance of good journalism on and off the Net. Just the opposite has happened. Traditional American journalism has all but collapsed. What stands in its place today, whether it's the New York Times, MSNBC or the Huffington Puffington Post, quite resembles the institutions known as Pravda and Izvestia back in the Cold War days – without the official government control.

Unstated by Farah: That's pretty much how WND operates. One need only go back as far as its fawning tea party convention coverage that ignored or whitewashed actual news about the convention -- after all, Farah was speaking at it and didn't want any reality to intrude.

Farah continues:

Yet today there is still nothing like WND anywhere else – on the Internet, on TV, in print or in any other venue.

[...]

WND really is different from any other website out there. Yes, there are other news-oriented imitators. But they don't have the reporters and the editors and the professional experience and the standards WND has. That's a plain fact. Nobody, but nobody, does what we do.

He is correct there, though not for the reasons he imagines. There are indeed no other "news" outlets with the toxic brew of determination to slant the news, lie to its readers, libeling those it disagrees with, and embrace hate and far-right extremism that WND embodies.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:15 PM EST
Jackie Mason Tells Evan Bayh To Leave the Country
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Hate-filled "comedian" Jackie Mason spent his Feb. 18 WorldNetdaily video ranting against retiring Sen. Evan Bayh for not being the moderate he claims to be:

This is the biggest lie ever told. This goes down in history together with the whole fraud that Abraham Lincoln was never a president or Hitler was never a Nazi. What, are you gonna tell me that this man is not a leftist? He went along and voted for every leftist bill that Barack Obama and every other Democrat wanted. He voted almost practically and completely and totally the Democratic Party line. He diverted once or twice for security issues, but on every other issue, he was a total Democrat with a leftist program who went along with every part of those programs while he was claiming he doesn’t believe in it, he was against it, and he voted for it. So he’s not only a leftist, but he’s a leftist hypocrite, and it was pretending he’s a moderate and he never was.

[...]

He went along with the stimulus bill, which was the biggest fake in the world, with 800, 900 billion dollars that went nowhere, which was supposed to create all kinds of employment, that created nothing but misery all over the country. Everything is 10 times worse than it was before, except for the fact that it cost us 50 times the money. Then he went along with the estate tax, they were trying to cut the estate tax and make an exemption for the estate tax, and he went along with the vote to vote against the cut in the estate tax. There’s nothing more unfair in the history of the world than the estate tax.

[...]

Why is the whole press taken in by the fraud of this man? He’s a liar and a fake, and he putting on a pretention and a posture that has nothing to do with him. And the truth of the matter is, he made a whole speech – he loves America, he loves the people, but he doesn’t love Congress because Congress is not working. The problem is Congress is working, and it’s working his way, and it’s exactly the opposite of what it claims. If it was not working, it would be a great gift to America, and we would have saved the economy and saved the country.

You are a fake, a fraud and a liar. And stop blaming anybody else. It’s your fault, and you walked out of there because you’re a hypocrite and you’re posturing as a pretention of principle. You got no principle. You’re creating a fake and a fraud for the whole company. Everybody is buying it because the rest of the country must be idiots or stupid or it serves their purpose to believe it. I know the difference. You can’t fool me, and you can’t fool anybody else who has any intelligence. So stop lying to the people and put on that fake act in another country.

Yes, he told a sitting senator to leave the country.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:32 AM EST
WND Proves Farah Wrong Again
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Remember how Joseph Farah was falsely insisting that he and other birthers aren't questioning Barack Obama's citizenship?

So, what explains this teaser headline that appeared at the top of WND's front page for pretty much the entire day Feb. 18?

"Undocumented," of course,has long been a euphemism for "illegal" when applied to immigrants. Which means, yes, WND is questioning the citizenship status of Obama.

Does Farah want to venture an explanation of how calling Obama "undocumented" is not questioning his citizenship?

Posted by Terry K. at 12:20 AM EST
Thursday, February 18, 2010
CNS on CPAC: Wow!
Topic: CNSNews.com

You had to know that CNSNews.com's coverage of the Conservative Political Action Conference would be fawning, but check out these two headlines:

Scott Brown Wows CPAC Crowd: ‘We Have Changed Politics in America’

Insurgent Rubio Wows National Conservative Gathering

Wow, indeed. CNS published those articles and three others from CPAC -- all of which were fawning accounts of the speeches they covered, and none of which mentioned the anything bad. Like, for instance, JasonMattera's racially tinged, sneering attack on President Obama.


Posted by Terry K. at 11:14 PM EST
Newsmax Thinks John Gibson Is Still on Fox News
Topic: Newsmax

A Feb. 18 Newsmax article by Dave Eberhart on an interview with John Gibson describes him as a "Fox News anchor" and "host of Fox News's 'The Big Story." In fact, "The Big Story" was canceled in March 2008.

Meanwhile, in the accompanying video, Kathleen Parker got it right, correctly describing Gibson as a "Fox News Radio host and former Fox News anchor."


Posted by Terry K. at 6:45 PM EST
Updated: Thursday, February 18, 2010 6:47 PM EST
Breitbart Thinks We Need A Hug
Topic: Media Research Center

From MRC employee Jeff Poor's Twitter feed:

Haha @andrewbreitbart to Terry Krepel of @conwebwatch : "You need a hug."

Looks like someone's a little sensitive about being called out on his history of inaccuracy.


Posted by Terry K. at 5:18 PM EST
CNS Selectively Attacks 'Anti-Catholic' Remarks
Topic: CNSNews.com

A Feb. 17 CNSNews.com article by Karen Schuberg is the latest to attack Obama adviser Harry Knox, this time asserting that Knox "has a record of making anti-Catholic statements."

But the statements by Knox that Schuberg provides, while repeatedly critical of the Catholic Church's stance of homosexuality, are hardly "anti-Catholic." They focus on a specific issue, and Knox is not quoted as denigrating the mission and tenets of the church outside of how it pertains to homosexuality.

By the same standard, Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid -- who has been bashing Catholics for being too liberal -- is "anti-Cahtolic."

And so is Dennis Miller, who ridiculed the ashes on Vice President Joe Biden's forehead for Ash Wednesday on "The O'Reilly Factor."

Somehow, we suspect that CNS won't be dedicating an article to Miller's and Kincaid's "anti-Catholic statements."

On top of that, Schuberg failed to disclose to her readers that her boss, Brent Bozell, has signed a letter demanding that "anti-Catholic bigot" Knox lose his job.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:46 PM EST
Kupelian's New Book On Its Way
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily started promoting WND managing editor David Kupelian's new book "How Evil Works" this week, kicking off with an appearance by him on Sean Hannity's radio show. Interestingly, it's not published by WND -- he found a "real" publisher for it, the Threshold Editions imprint of Simon & Schuster (run by Mary Matalin).

It appears to be a sequel to Kupelian's last book, "The Marketing of Evil," which, as we pointed out at the time, essentially blamed everything he doesn't like on '60s hippies in general and the Clintons in particular. The book contains factual errors (such as treating anti-Kinsey activist Judith Reisman as credible), and he appeared to have partnered with the right-wing legal group Alliance Defense Fund to hype a lawsuit that tangentally involved the book in order to boost sales.

"How Evil Works" appears to be more of the same. The list of subjects in the book includes:

  • What's really going on in Washington, D.C., today? (The Marxist strategy of manufacturing and exploiting crises is the central operating principle of the Obama presidency.)

    How does terrorism really work? (It's intended not just to frighten and intimidate, but to reprogram our beliefs, per the Stockholm Syndrome.)

    Why are big lies more believable than little ones? (Everyone tells little white lies, but not big, bold, audacious ones, and so they assume others wouldn't either – an assumption world-class liars use to their great advantage. More importantly, big lies possess an inherent power to upset us – triggering a key control mechanism.)
  • Why do we treat mental-emotional-spiritual problems like rage and depression with drugs? (We've been seduced by secular medical "experts" who tell us what all egos love to hear: "It's not your fault.")

Regarding that last subject: We're guessing he plans to rehash the case of Andrea Yates, who killed her five children. As we detailed in 2007, when he first wrote about it, he blamed Yates' condition on the antidepressants she was taking, failing to mention the fact that she and her husband were under the sway of a fundamentalist Christian minister, under whose influence Yates home-schooled the children and who harshly judged mothers he considered to be too permissive with their children, claiming that if the mother was going to hell, her children would too.

We'll try to get a hold of the book and see if Kupelian's incomplete, factually challenged analysis still stands. 


Posted by Terry K. at 12:30 AM EST
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
WND Ignores Double Standard In Attack on Brennan
Topic: WorldNetDaily

A Feb. 16 WorldNetDaily article cites "calls for President Obama's homeland-security adviser John Brennan to step down " following "Brennan's recent appearance at a New York University assembly and his comments that having a percentage of terrorists released by the U.S. return to terrorist attacks 'isn't that bad,' since the recidivism rate for inmates in the U.S. prison system is higher."

WND doesn't mention that, as we've pointed out, Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a similar argument about recidivism during an AP interview in 2005


Posted by Terry K. at 9:23 PM EST
New Article: A Blizzard of Bamboozlement
Topic: NewsBusters
Noel Sheppard and the boys at NewsBusters seize on back-to-back snowstorms in Washington to push their discredited claim that there's no such thing as global warming. Read more >>

Posted by Terry K. at 2:02 PM EST
AIM To Honor Inaccuracy at CPAC
Topic: Accuracy in Media

A Feb. 16 Accuracy in Media press release announces that AIM will give "Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Awards" to Andrew Breitbart and Marc Morano during the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference. That's hilarious, because neither Breitbart nor Morano are known for their accuracy.

We've detailed how Morano has repeatedly lied and misled in his attacks on global warming. And Breitbart has forwarded numerous false and misleading claims in pushing what AIM calls his "groundbreaking investigation into rampant corruption at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now."

AIM is honoring the antithesis of its name. That's how depraved and irrelevant AIM has become.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:47 AM EST
Updated: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 10:14 AM EST
NewsBusters Covers for Palin's Hypocrisy
Topic: NewsBusters

Kyle Drennen runs to the defense of Sarah Palin and Fox News in a Feb. 16 NewsBusters post, dismissing suggestions that Palin should quit her job as a Fox News contributor in order to follow through on her criticism of Fox Broadcasting's "Family Guy" for having "tangentially mocked her son with Down Syndrome."

Drennen does so by making this stunning statement: "Of course, Fox News has no connection to the Fox broadcast channel or any of its entertainment programming."

Except, you know, being owned by the same company. Other than that, there's no connection.

Media Matters' Karl Frisch has more.

Drennen and NewsBusters are echoing Palin's hypocrisy on the issue by criticizing "Family Guy" while giving Rush Limbaugh a pass on using the word "retard" because it was satirical. As we noted, Noel Sheppard attacked Stephen Colbert for following Limbaugh's satire exception -- but not Limbaugh himself.

And, yes, Sheppard freaked out about the "Family Guy" joke but continued to remain silent about Limbaugh. But then, protecting Limbaugh no matter what offensive thing he says is simply what the MRC does.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:24 AM EST
CNS Ignores Teleworking In Bashing Snowed-Out Federal Workers
Topic: CNSNews.com

A Feb. 16 CNSNews.com article by Penny Starr asserts that "When the federal government closed for four days and two hours last week because of snow and ice in the Washington area, U.S. taxpayers still had to shell out an estimated $425 million to $670 million in wages and benefits to those workers."

Starr makes no mention of the fact that approximately one-third of federal workers in the Washington area logged on to federal servers from home, meaning that, contrary to Starr's suggestion, some work was indeed getting done during the snowstorms.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:29 AM EST
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Meanwhile ...
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Over at Media Matters, we examine how WorldNetDaily columnist Jill Stanek has gotten blogging gigs at NewsBusters and Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism despite 1) admitting she knows little about media analysis and 2) her long history of misleading and inflammatory statements (like essentially condoning the murder of George Tiller).

Posted by Terry K. at 9:16 PM EST
Then and Now
Topic: Accuracy in Media

A Feb. 14 Accuracy in Media blog post by Don Irvine highlights Obama White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan's pointing out that the recidivism rate for released detainees from Guantanamo is lower than that of those released from U.S. prisons. He adds, "So exactly what is a bad recidivism rate for terrorists that want to blow up planes and kill Americans?"

We don't recall Irvine being upset when Bush secretary of state Condoleezza Rice similarly compared the rates of recidivism among enemy combatants with those of American criminals back in 2005.


Posted by Terry K. at 7:20 PM EST

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