Topic: CNSNews.com
Editor Terry Jeffrey leads CNSNews.com in dishonestly reporting on proficiency ratings for Wisconsin students in an apparent attempt to smear teachers fighting to keep union rights. Read more >>
Thursday, March 3, 2011
NEW ARTICLE: Trashing to the Test
Topic: CNSNews.com Editor Terry Jeffrey leads CNSNews.com in dishonestly reporting on proficiency ratings for Wisconsin students in an apparent attempt to smear teachers fighting to keep union rights. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:35 AM EST
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Newsmax Perpetuates Churchill Bust Falsehood
Topic: Newsmax A March 2 Newsmax article by Jim Meyers perpetuates a falsehood about President Obama and a bust of Winston Churchill that was in the Oval Office of his predecessor, George W. Bush. Discussing the controversy over Mike Huckabee's remarks on Steve Malzberg's radio show, Meyers writes:
In fact, Obama did not order the Churchill bust to be returned. The British Embassy confirmed that the bust was "uniquely lent" to Bush, and was scheduled to be returned at the end of Bush's term. According to the Associated Press, the bust is now in the White House residence -- in other words, it hasn't been returned at all. Why would Meyers embrace such an obvious falsehood? Perhaps because Newsmax is where the falsehood got started. As we detailed, a March 2009 Newsmax column by James Humes purported to quote Obama saying of the bust, "Get that goddam thing out of here." But there is no evidence whatsoever to back up Humes' claim that Obama said anything like this. Rather than retract the column and apologize, Humes merely edited his column to state that the claim "was never fully substantiated, despite frequent repetition on radio talk shows." But that's a lie too; Humes never identified any talk show host who made the claim, or where specifically he picked it up from. Humes even concocted the Mau-Mau theory to back up his illegimate claim: "Perhaps Obama, who grew up in Kenya, took umbrage at Prime Minister Churchill’s actions in 1953 of wiping out the Mau-Mau, the Kenyan terrorists who made a specialty of slitting throats of sleeping white and Black Kenyans." Humes, as far as we know, was never punished for his falsehood. To the contrary: Newsmax rewarded it by giving him a speaking slot on one of its cruises. No wonder Meyers thinks the Churchill bust story is true -- his employer let the perpetrator of the falsehood get away with it.
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:47 PM EST
Updated: Wednesday, March 2, 2011 6:51 PM EST
WND Embraces Huckabee's Kenya Remark; NewsBusters Tries to Spin It Away
Topic: WorldNetDaily Mike Huckabee's remarks on Steve Malzberg's radio that President Obama grew up in Kenya delighted WorldNetDaily, where Joe Kovacs devoted a March 1 article to repeating the remarks and how Huckabee thinks growing up in Kenya "has helped form the president's worldview." One thing Kovacs curiously doesn't do: explicitly state that the claim is false. While Kovacs does note that Huckabee's spokesman later said that he "meant to say the president grew up in Indonesia," at no point does he state that there's truth to Huckabee's statement that Obama grew up in Kenya. Even WND has not made that claim. Instead, Kovacs launches into standard WND birther boilerplate. But he's hiding facts here too; Huckabee himself later issued a statement saying that "I don't believe there is an issue with Barack Obama's birth certificate." While WND is trying to claim Huckabee as a birther, NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard is furiously spinning to deny any such link, howling in a March 2 post that MSNBC hosts "cherry-picked" Huckabee "in order to depict the possible Republican presidential candidate as a birther." But Sheppard doesn't explain how Huckabee's statement about Obama growing up in Kenya -- which, unlike WND's Kovacs, he concedes is "100 percent wrong" -- is not linked to Huckabee's statement about how Obama "probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather." That, of course, is the main thesis of Dinesh D'Souza's discredited book "The Roots of Obama's Rage." As Salon's Steve Kornacki writes:
The Washington Post adds:
Sheppard should explain why Huckabee's embrace of the Mau-Mau theory is a reasonable thing for a potential presidential candidate to believe.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:23 PM EST
WND's Kinsolving Tries His Imperial Attitude On New Press Secretary
Topic: WorldNetDaily We've detailed the history of WorldNetDaily's Les Kinsolving's whining that recently departed White House press secretary Robert Gibbs wouldn't call on him to his satisfaction -- as if he had some kind of noblesse oblige from merely being old and hanging out in the White House briefing room a lot. Kinsolving showed no apparent awareness that his frivolous questions had demonstrated beyond a doubt that he had not earned the right to be taken seriously as anything other than a right-wing partisan hack. The arrival of new press secretary, Jay Carney, has brought renewed whining from Kinsolving. A Feb. 25 WND article complains that Carney "allowed NBC and Fox to ask six questions each, CBS to ask four and AP, ABC and CNN to have three each" while Kinsolving, "the second-most senior correspondent" on "the White House beat," wasn't called on at all. As he has before, WND presented the question Kinsolving would have asked had he been called on:
Of course, Carney could not know what Kinsolving was going to ask, yet the banality and irrelevence of Kinsolving's questions, which justifies the decision not to call on him every time.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:34 AM EST
MRC Still Whining Media Isn't Covering Planned Parenthood Sting Hoax
Topic: Media Research Center Matt Philbin takes a stab at trying to revive a non-scandal in a Feb. 24 MRC Culture & Media Institute article complaining that Lila Rose's entrapment videos at Planned Parenthood offices involving "a man posing as a pimp about obtaining abortions and birth control for the underage foreign prostitutes he traffics" still haven't been reported in the media to his satisfaction. "NBC news has yet to even mention the subject," he groused. unmentioned by Philbin is the fact that there really is no scandal since -- as we noted the last time the MRC complained about this -- Planned Parenthood contacted the Justice Department after visits from Rose's activist group warning of possible sex trafficking, the very offense Rose's hired actors were trying to convince Planned Parenthood they were engaging in.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:38 AM EST
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Supersize WorldNetDaily Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily
-- Jane Chastain, Feb. 17 WorldNetDaily column
-- Erik Rush, Feb. 17 WorldNetDaily column
-- Larry Klayman, Feb. 19 WorldNetDaily column
--Barbara Simpson, Feb. 21 WorldNetDaily column
-- Pat Boone, Feb. 26 WorldNetDaily column
-- Barbara Simpson, Feb. 28 WorldNetDaily column
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:14 AM EST
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
SPLC Profiles Kincaid
Topic: Accuracy in Media The Southern Poverty Law Center has posted a profile of Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid, detailing how in his 30-plus years at AIM he has "cranked out reams of material — rife with innuendo and speculation but light on facts — aimed at buttressing his far-right, xenophobic and homophobic views."
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:55 PM EST
WND Launches Unsubstantiated Attack On Charter School Funder
Topic: WorldNetDaily A Feb. 27 WorldNetDaily article by Michael Carl is one long attack on Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish billionaire who lives a reclusive life in exile in the United States. Carl asserts that Gulen is helping to fund "a large network of jihad-preaching schools" across "the American landscape"; the headline of Carl's article states, "Islamic indoctrination on U.S. taxpayers' tab." But there's one thing missing from Carl's article: any actual evidence there is any "jihad-preaching" or "Islamic indoctrination" going on in any U.S. charter school connected to Gulen. Carl serves up no examples of that happening. In fact, evidence not tied to WND's fantasies appears to back that up: An August 2010 USA Today article notes that while there have been issues at some Gulen-linked schools regarding preferences for hiring faculty of Turkish descent and other issues in individual schools, "there's no evidence the schools teach Islam." Carl's main source for his attacks on Gulen is Paul Williams, who we last saw suing WND and its previous book-publishing partner over a retraction it issued for a claim in a WND-published book by Williams that resulted in a lawsuit against Williams by a Canadian university. So perhaps he's not the most credible source Carl could have chosen. Indeed, Carl quotes Williams as claiming that Gulen has "created a network of Islamic charter schools in Turkey," suggesting that maybe "jihad-preaching" is going on there. But Wikipedia notes that Gulen schools in Turkey were among the first schools there to insist that female students not wear headscarves. And the New York Times reported that Gulen-linked schools in Pakistan have a heavy emphasis on a Western curriculum and a moderate approach toward Islam that offers an alternative to Islamic extremists. With such a reliance on Williams -- a source with an apparent anti-Muslim ax to grind -- and opposing views all but ignored, Carl has servedup the severe bias that is apparently a requirement to be a WorldNetDaily reporter.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:05 PM EST
CNS Misleads Again on Planned Parenthood, Abortion
Topic: CNSNews.com As it is wont to do, CNSNews.com misled about Planned Parenthood, falsely implying yet again that federal money given to Planned Parenthood pays for abortions. Edwin Mora writes in a Feb. 28 CNS article: "In its most recent annual report, Planned Parenthood said it took in $349.6 million in government funds in fiscal 2008. That same year, the organization says, it performed 324,008 abortions." In fact, as we've previously noted, the federal Hyde Amendment prohibits federal funding for abortion except in cases of rape, incest or to preserve the life of the mother. The federal funding given to Planned Parenthood goes toward reproductive health services. Mora made no mention of this fact.
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:50 PM EST
WND's Kupelian, Boone Whitewash The Past
Topic: WorldNetDaily In a Feb. 17 WorldNetDaily column, WND managing editor David Kupelian spins a whitewashed version of mid-century America that was ruined by British music and long hair and ultimately destroyed by Barack Obama:
This same whitewashed version of history pops up in Pat Boone's Feb. 26 WND column:
Did Boone crib from Kupelian's column, or are they both in thrall to a past that didn't really exist except in their imaginations? Where minorities didn't exist or were conveniently out of sight -- and gays simply didn't exist at all? And funny how it all culminates with the election of a black president. What are Kupelian and Boone really saying here? We report, you decide.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:51 AM EST
Vox Day Details 'The New White Man's Burden'
Topic: WorldNetDaily Last year, WorldNetDaily columnist Vox Day declared that Americans needed to "reclaim their traditional white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture." Now, he is once again standing up for white culture by throwing his support for that historically maligned figure, the white male. From Day's Feb. 28 WorldNetDaily column:
We have nothing to add.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:02 AM EST
Monday, February 28, 2011
CNS Gives Platform to Anti-Gay Hate Group
Topic: CNSNews.com A Feb. 24 CNSNews.com article by Pete Winn gave voice to the head of an anti-gay hate group to attack executive orders in Massachusetts banning discrimination against transgendered people. Winn gives copious space in his article to Brian Camenker, head of the group MassResistance -- which Winn identifies only as among "conservatives" who oppose the designation -- to denounce the executive orders as a stunt "to promote this transgender rights and hate crimes bill that the homosexual lobby has concocted again this year to try to pass statewide," adding: "We’re talking gender identity disorder, we’re talking something that the mental health profession terms as a disorder, basically men who mutilate themselves and ingest hormone altering drugs and women who do similar things." As we've detailed, MassResistance is a virulently anti-gay group particularly popular at WorldNetDaily, which has used the group to fuel anti-gay sentiment there. MassResistance has no problem spreading falsehoods and making misleading claims to advance its homophobic agenda. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated MassResistance as a hate group. Such a designation and even an explanation of MassResistance's anti-gay agenda would be of interest to CNS' readers, but Winn apparently disagrees.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:12 PM EST
Newsmax, Gingrich Wrangle Over Interview Suggesting Obama Impeachment
Topic: Newsmax Newsmax got a bit of a blockbuster in a Feb. 25 article: an interview with Newt Gingrich in which he forwards the idea that President Obama could be impeached over his administration's decision to no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act. Gingrich said in the interview:
When interviewer Ashley Martella asked Gingrich when he would "recommend the House consider articles of impeachment for that," Gingrich responded: "I think first you'd ought -- you have to communicate. Look, I don't think these guys set out to cause a constitutional crisis. I think they set out to pay off their allies in the gay community and to do something that they thought was clever. I think that they didn't understand the implication that having a president personally suspend a law is clearly unconstitutional. This is an impossible precedent." Gingrich's remarks prompted something of a walkback from Gingrich's people -- which began by going to Politico to complain that Newsmax “inaccurately” suggested impeachment. Newsmax declined to back down, issuing astatement that "Newsmax stands by its story, which is based solely on the verbatim comments made by the Speaker during the video interview." But Politico also noted that Newsmax "conceded that, at the request of Gingrich's spokesman, it tweaked the published story to clarify his comments." Indeed, the article now includes this parenthetical note as the new third paragraph: "A Gingrich spokesman stressed after the interview that we are not currently in a constitutional crisis, nor was Gingrich calling for the direct impeachment of the president. His statements were meant to illustrate the hypocrisy of the left and the mainstream media." Meanwhile, over at U.S. News & World Report, Gingrich spokesman went further in defending the man who employs him: "Gingrich never raised impeachment nor did he say we were in a constitutional crisis. ... His remarks, as can be seen in the video, were to illustrate the hypocrisy of the media and the left. He explicitly says that Obama did not intend to spark a constitutional crisis but that the president is acting outside of his constitutional role, but that does not mean that there is a constitutional crisis."
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:16 PM EST
Ellis Washington Derangement Syndrome Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily
-- Ellis Washington, Feb. 26 WorldNetDaily column
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:13 PM EST
Attack on Wisconsin Teachers Spreads Inside MRC
Topic: Media Research Center Other Media Research Center divisions are picking up on CNSNews.com's dishonest reporting falsely smearing Wisconsin teachers: A Feb. 23 MRC Business & Media Institute article by Julia Seymour asserts:
Seymour did not note that Wisconsin's proficiency levels on both reading and math are above the national average, a fact CNS buried in its articles in favor of smearing teachers as incompetent.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:58 AM EST
Updated: Monday, February 28, 2011 11:43 PM EST
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