Topic: WorldNetDaily
The latest addition to WorldNetDaily's "Taking America Back" conference, Michael Savage, has one key advantage over dumped speaker Ann Coulter: He may hate gays even more than Joseph Farah does.
Media Matters has the details.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
WND Finds Suitably Homophobic Replacement for Coulter
Topic: WorldNetDaily The latest addition to WorldNetDaily's "Taking America Back" conference, Michael Savage, has one key advantage over dumped speaker Ann Coulter: He may hate gays even more than Joseph Farah does. Media Matters has the details.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:25 PM EDT
WND's Klein Gives Quran-Burning Pastor The Softball Treatment
Topic: WorldNetDaily A Sept. 5 WorldNetDaily article promotes an radio interview by WND's Aaron Klein of Terry Jones, pastor of a Florida church who plans to stage a burning of Qurans on Sept. 11. The attached audio shows that Klein conducted a softball interview, not really challenging any of Jones' claims, not even the nonsensical one that the burning is geared toward "radical Muslims" and not "moderate Muslims" -- who just happen to follow the same Quran. Klein is also much more interested in the death threats Jones claims he has received over the planned burningthan Jones' lack of concern that the burning might provoke an attack against American interests. As Klein and WND rush to defend and promote Jones, others are backing away from him. Richard Bartholomew details how the publisher of Jones' screed "Islam Is Of the Devil," Creation House, has scrubbed the book from its catalog and website. Meanwhile, Little Green Footballs notes that Jones has posted a video insisting that the N-word is not racist.The video was posted before Klein interviewed Jones, indicating that Klein either did insufficient research before his interview or that he knew about it and chose not to bring it up. Heck, even Gen. David Petraeus thinks Jones' Quran-burning is a bad idea. So, Aaron and WND: Is this a guy you really want to be defending?
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:33 AM EDT
CNS Columnist Takes Ginsburg Out of Context
Topic: CNSNews.com In a Sept. 4 CNSNews.com column touting the anti-abortion film he made, "Maafa 21," Mark Crutcher writes:
In fact, Ginsburg did no such thing -- she attributed that view to others, adding that "There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore" and that a law restricting abortions "affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don't know why this hasn't been said more often." Meanwhile, Crutcher's "Maafa 21" has its own issues. Michelle Goldberg writes that the the film takes Margaret Sanger out of context to falsely claim she specifically targeted blacks for abortion, as well as tells outright lies about Nobel-winning economist and family planning advocate Gunnar Myrdal as some who "believed that not only could blacks not help themselves, he felt that nobody could help them, and the only solution in his eyes was to get rid of them"; in fact, he opposed racism.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:43 AM EDT
WND's Welch Conflicted Over Beck
Topic: WorldNetDaily Dave Welch is conflicted over Glenn Beck in his Sept. 4 WorldNetDaily column. While Welch appears to appreciate some of the things Beck has done, there is the issue of him being a Mormon:
Welch goes on to affirmatively cite a pastor who wrote that 'Mormonism is correctly categorized as a CULT." Welch adds, "Mormonism is not Christianity, and anyone who asserts differently is either ignorant or dishonest." Welch concludes: Glenn Beck could certainly be a follower of Jesus … but which Jesus? It matters. Regardless, he can be a patriotic, God-fearing American who understands the vision of our founding fathers and has given a voice and platform to strong, dynamic Christians like David Barton, Jim Garlow and others who present the real Jesus.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:15 AM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, September 7, 2010 8:47 AM EDT
Monday, September 6, 2010
CNS' Revolving Door
Topic: CNSNews.com The Media Research Center has long complained about the supposed "revolving door" for people whose jobs shift between news organizations to liberal groups or Democratic administrations. It has even kept a list of "major media journalists who have joined the Obama administration." What the MRC doesn't want to admit is that there's also a revolving door to conservative advocacy at its news operation, CNSNews.com. Here is an incomplete list of CNS staffers who have made the leap from right-wing journalism to right-wing advocacy (like there's a difference): Scott Hogenson: He made significant use of CNS's revolving door. He worked for the Republican National Committee before joining CNS, where he eventually became editor, was CNS editor until 2004, when he left to be radio services director for the RNC during the 2004 presidential campaign. After briefly returning to CNS after the election, he left again in 2005 to become deputy assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Veterans Affairs. He's now at the PR damage control firm Dezenhall Resources and hangs out at the right-wing Leadership Institute. David Thibault: Like Hogenson, Thibault worked for the RNC prior to joining CNS, as well as working for Republican Sen. Judd Gregg. He filled in as editor during Hogenson's 2004 sabbatical and ascended to the post after Hogenson left for good. He died in 2007. Marc Morano: Like Hogenson, Morano was a right-wing activist before joining CNS, having worked for Rush Limbaugh's TV show. Morano left CNS in 2006 to join the press office of Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, where he regularly peddled (often in a factually challenged manner) the position of global warming skeptics. Morano now runs the Climate Depot website for the right-wing think tank Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. Jim Burns: He was a CNS reporter until leaving in 2003 to become press secretary for Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.). He had to leave that job after it was revealed that he copied large parts of a op-ed issued under Pearce's name from the Heritage Foundation. Nathan Burchfiel: He didn't have to go far to move from news to activism -- in fact, he didn't have to leave MRC headquarters. After serving as a CNS reporter, he moved on to other MRC divisions and is now an assistant editor for MRC's Culture & Media Institute. Robert Bluey: He's a former CNS reporter -- where he was an early promoter of the Swift Boat Vets attacks on John Kerry -- who left to join Human Events. He's now at the Heritage Foundation, as director of its Center for Media and Public Policy.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:50 PM EDT
WND Conference Is 'All About Debate'?
Topic: WorldNetDaily A Sept. 5 WorldNetDaily article announces that WND's Joseph Farah will debate Christopher Barron, head of the "homosexual activist group" GOProud, at WND's upcoming "Taking Back America" conference. Farah goes on to explain:
Huh? The conference "has always been about debate"? So why not debate Ann Coulter, whom WND instead dumped as a speaker over her scheduled speech to GOProud? Farah tries to explain:
That still doesn't explain why WND dumped her instead of turning her GOProud speech into a teachable (albeit anti-gay) moment. On the other hand, as we've detailed, the water has now been poisoned between Coulter and Farah to the point where they will never appear in the same place at the same time for the foreseeable future, if ever. (Farah will still run Coulter's column at WND, though, for the traffic it brings in.) Meanwhile, we're still awaiting our invitation to debate the issues of the day -- well, actually, we'd like to debate WND's brand of journalism -- at this conference. Must've gotten lost in the mail...
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:26 AM EDT
Sunday, September 5, 2010
WND's Attack on Removed School Filters Sets Off Reisman
Topic: WorldNetDaily A Sept. 3 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh is mostly a rewritten press release, this time from the UK's Christian Institute, about a school system in Scotland that allegedly lifted its Internet filtering so that students could access government health websites regarding sexual health. Unruh makes no apparent attempt to verify anything the Christian Institute stated, nor did he apparently contact the school system for a response. Unruh also whitewashed the Christian Institute by repeating its own description of itself as promoting "the furtherance and promotion of the Christian religion in the United Kingdom" as well as "the advancement of education." The Wikipedia page for the group, meanwhile, describes it a a "fundamentalist Christian" group that is anti-gay. If you think Unruh's article was full of distortions, wait 'til you see what Judith Reisman did when she got her hands on it. In a Sept. 4 WND column, Reisman asserts that Unruh's article was about "Scotland's opening up internet pornography to school children at lunch break thanks to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, currently un-ratified by the repressed USA." In fact, neither Unruh nor the Christian Institute offer evidence that the school's Internet filters were modified to permit access to any "sexually explicit" site other than the government health sites. Reisman then goes on a tirade about the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, offering up her own -- shall we say -- creative interpretations:
Reisman added: "So a Scottish pedophile educator organizes access to 'all' media for any age, one to 18. Free 'expression … regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media,' it's a child's choice." That's right -- Reisman called some Scottish school official (she has no idea who, since Unruh's article did not name any officials) a "pedophile" for allowing students access to sexual health websites. Reisman's fanciful screeds -- and she has a history of them -- make one wonder about the factual veracity of her WND-published book.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:24 PM EDT
Ad on WND Calls for 'Civil War'
Topic: WorldNetDaily This interesting ad popped up on WorldNetDaily (via Google ads) over the weekend:
That's right -- it's claiming that "Only A Civil War Will Save America -- But Only If It Comes Soon!" The ad links to a website promoting a book called "It's Over" by R. Keith Martin, aka Ron Martin. Martin reprints the book's introduction, which includes this:
Martin's book has chapter titles such as "Homosexuals," "The Second Reconstruction," "White Racism Is Rare, Black Racism Is Raging," "The Madhi Cometh," "Body Count Thus Far," "The Final Solution," "The Coming Demicide," and, yes, "Why Obama Must Murder You." There appears to be little about Martin on the Internet; the Southern Poverty Law Center notes that he distributed a flyer that discussed subjects such as “Race-Based Tyranny” and “Our Black Imbroglio.” The SPLC called such rhetoric "inspired" by the racially charged attacks on Obama by Fox News; we would add that WND arguably had a hand in shaping Martin's Obama-hate worldview.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:44 AM EDT
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Shoebat Falsely Claims Rauf Wrote of Judenrein Israel
Topic: WorldNetDaily Walid Shoebat’s September 3 “open letter” to Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, published by WorldNetDaily, is a barely coherent mess of right-wing anti-Islam talking points and unexplained allusions. In the middle of it, Shoebat sticks in this slur: You have worked tirelessly for peace. All you wanted was: "an icon [Cordoba Mosque]." My mother asked me: On God's green earth, there is no other place you can put a mosque except by the 9/11 rubble? And since we rejected the mosque idea, will the pool at your center allow Jews to swim, or were you kidding when you wrote the N.Y Times that Israel will be Judenrein (free of Jews)? “Judenrein” was a term used by the Nazis to describe areas from which Jews had been “cleansed.” (Cross-posted at Media Matters.)
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:08 PM EDT
WND's Double Dose of Getting A Name Wrong
Topic: WorldNetDaily Remember WorldNetDaily's sad attempt to tie Discovery Channel building gunman James J. Lee's extremist environmental views to Al Gore, despite the fact that 1) Lee also shares WND's view on the undesirability of "anchor babies" and 2) WND's Bob Unruh couldn't get Lee's name correct ("Jason Jay Lee")? Turns out that was preceded by a column by Brian Sussman -- extensively quoted in Unruh's article -- attempting to make the same connection. And now we know where Unruh's name screw-up came from:
Sussman's inability to nail down basic facts like the gunman's name raises red flags about the veracity of Sussman's WND-published book purporting to expose "the global warming scam." And Unruh's copying-and-pasting of Sussman's wrong name for his own article demostrates what a complete hack he has become at WND.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:10 AM EDT
Friday, September 3, 2010
CNS Obsesses Over Troop Deaths in Afghanistan Under Obama
Topic: CNSNews.com Over the past several months, CNSNews.com has strangely obsessed with the number of U.S. troop deaths in Afghanistan while Obama has been in office. Here are some of the headlines of stories, all written by Edwin Mora:
Most recently, Mora wrote an Aug. 31 article headlined "2010 Already Deadliest Year for U.S. in Nine-Year Afghan War." As with the other articles, Mora conveniently omits any comparison to the fatality rate in Iraq at the height of the war there. It's not that he could not easily obtain those numbers -- in fact, a fellow CNS writer noted them less than a month ago. The Aug. 5 article by Patrick Goodenough -- headlined, in a contrast to Mora's parade of death, "U.S. Casualties in Iraq Dropped to All-Time Low in July" -- notes:
All of those numbers are approximately twice that of the peak monthly deaths in Afghanistan that Mora has been reporting:
Mora gives little attention to the fact that the reason there have been more troop deaths in Afghanistan is because there are more troops in Afghanistan. It's unclear why CNS has gone the body-count route, but we don't recall it doing this when President Bush was in office, certainly not to this extent.
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:13 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, September 3, 2010 5:53 PM EDT
The MRC Runs to Palin's Defense
Topic: Media Research Center If there's one thing the Media Research Center really can't abide, it's unflattering articles about conservative icons. So when Vanity Fair published an article depicting Sarah Palin as the center of "a place of fear, anger, and illusion, which has swallowed up the engaging, small-town hockey mom and her family," the MRC swiftly went into defense mode. First up was the MRC Culture & Media Institute's Nathan Burchfiel, who dismissed the article as "a list of ill-sourced, hearsay attacks on Palin designed to depict her as a raging psychopath" and "managed to cite just one person to criticize Palin on the record." Burchfiel claimed the article "fits right in with previous coverage of Palin," citing a CMI study as evidence. But as we detailed, the study confuses negative coverage with bias and had a severly limited scope of a time in the 2008 campaign in which Palin very much earned the negative coverage she received. Next was Noel Sheppard, who touted at NewsBusters how Palin "went after impotent, limp, gutless reporters that quote anonymous sources to attack her" in a sycophantic interview with Sean Hannity. He was followed by Kyle Drennen, who was annoyed that CBS' "The Early Show" had on the author of the Vanity Fair "article slamming Sarah Palin with outlandish accusations." The CMI's Burchfiel returned to scowl at the author's appearance on "Morning Joe" talking abouthow he "depicts Palin as a volatile, vengeful, mean-spirited figure." Burchfiel portrayed the writer as an "antagonist" who may not be telling the truth when he claimed that "he set out to defend the former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate, but that the resulting article 'was forced on me by the facts.'" Tim Graham then chimed in, complaining that "Morning Joe" covered "anonymously sourced hit jobs against alleged serial liar Sarah Palin in Vanity Fair. That's the MRC's job -- attack the messenger and not once challenge the facts.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:36 AM EDT
WND Can't Tell Difference Between Domestic Violence, Hate Crime
Topic: WorldNetDaily Bob Unruh uses a Sept. 1 WorldNetDaily article to serve up a bit of concern trolling from a "family group" that merely wants to hate gays. Unruh writes about a purported epidemic of "lesbians attacking lesbians," and quotes Diane Gramley, president of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, asking why these aren't being charged as hate crimes. In fact, the three cases of "lesbians attacking lesbians"cited by Unruh appear to instances of domestic violence, not anti-gay hate crimes. Unruh then brings on anti-Kinsey fanatic Judith Reisman to spout unsupported claims:
Reisman went on to portray a book "Men Who Beat the Men Who Love Them," as describing "the commonality of homosexual and lesbian battery as reflecting a generally violent lifestyle." In fact, the book appears to do no such thing -- rather, it merely focuses on the then-taboo issue (at the time of its 1991 publication) of domestic violence in gay relationships, and Reisman offers no evidence that violence in gay relationships is any more "common" than in heterosexual relationships, let alone endemic to the lifestyle. Indeed, the authors, David Island and Patrick Letellier, write:
Needless to say, Reisman blames all of this on Alfred Kinsey, and Reisman just happens to have written a new smear book about him. Unruh, meanwhile, just can't stop lying about the hate-crimes bill:
In fact, as we detailed, since the federal government's definition of "sexual orientation" already excludes pedophilia and the other "philias" Unruh is hinting at, the amendment was redundant, and the law does not protect pedophilia.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:31 AM EDT
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Meanwhile ...
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily has touted an affidavit by retired Lt. Gen. Thomas G. McInerney in the case of Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, who's currently throwing away his military career to satisfy the birther movement. McInerney is also a Fox News military analyst with more than 200 appearances over the past eight years. Media Matters has more. McInerney is not the only birther to have popped up on Fox News, as Media Matters goes on to note -- WND's Aaron Klein and Jerome Corsi have as well.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:17 PM EDT
WND Quick to Link Discovery Gunman to Gore, Ignores Own Links to Extremism
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily has gotten into politicizing the hostage crisis at the Discovery Channel headquarters with a Sept. 2 article by Bob Unruh trying to portray the hostage taker, James Lee -- whose name Unruh gets wrong -- as merely channeling Al Gore's environmental views by citing so-called "experts." Needless to say, Unruh fails to note that Lee dovetails nicely with WorldNetDaily's right-wing anti-immigration agenda by denouncing "anchor baby filth." WND has published several rants against "anchor babies." WND has a longtime aversion to introspection when the perpetrators of violent acts have agendas that parallel its own. We've detailed how WND was quick to dismiss Scott Roeder, convicted killer of abortion doctor George Tiller as "allegedly suffered from mental illness" and "not associated with the mainstream pro-life movement" even though WND had long published articles sympathetic to anti-abortion extremists. WND later published several columns by Jack Cashill praising Tiller's murder as "frontier justice." WNd has also failed to acknowledge that it shared several viewpoints with Holocaust Museum shooter James Von Brunn, including Obama birtherism and hatred of the Federal Reserve.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:08 PM EDT
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