Bozell Thanks A (Very Rich) Old Friend (Who Has Given Big To The MRC) Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell's Nov. 9 column is dedicated to his "old friend" T. Boone Pickens, with whom Bozell spent time in his skybox at his alma mater, Oklahoma State University, to which Pickens has given hundreds of millions of dollars. Bozell touts Pickens other acts of philanthropy as well, mainly as a way to bash critics of the rich: "Think about this charity, you Occupied Do-Nothings, the next time you bash the 1 percent that have been so instrumental in helping you in more ways than you'll ever know - or appreciate."
Bozell curiously doesn't mention, though, how much of Pickens' largesse has made its way to the organization he runs, the Media Research Center.
And he has donated a lot. Most notably, as detailed in the MRC's 2007 annual report, Pickens gave a $1.5 million challenge grant to the MRC for the creation of its Business & Media Institute. As a result of that donation, MRC vice president Dan Gainor -- last seen obsessing over the philanthropy of George Soros -- holds the title of T. Boone Pickens Fellow.
You'd think that Bozell, who loves to pass judgment on the journalistic sins of others, would want to fully disclose his financial interests in what he writes about.Then again, Bozell has been loath to disclose that he's a personal friend of Herman Cain, the man the MRC has been directed to defend to the point of sliming Cain's sexual harassment victims.
Farah Doesn't Mention WND's Business Interest in Publisher's Sale Topic: WorldNetDaily
In his Nov. 8 WorldNetDaily column, Joseph Farah laments the purchase of Christian book publisher Thomas Nelson by publishing giant HarperColllins, claiming that the result will be "more pseudo-Christian, pop theology like "The Purpose-Driven Life" and less of the prophetic, hard truth the world has been dependent upon genuine Christians to produce." Farah also self-aggrandingly touts "independent efforts like my own with WND and WND Books."
Farah failed to mention, however, his personal and business stake in this story: Thomas Nelson was WND's original partner in the WND books venture in 2002.
Farah goes on to lament that "too many Christian businessmen are more interested in making a fast buck than in spreading the good news." So what's motivating WND to do things like defend an online stalker? It certainly doesn't involved "spreading the good news"; the stalker's victim would likely beg to differ.
NewsBusters' 'Ultra' Double Standard Topic: NewsBusters
In a Nov. 6 NewsBusters post, Brad Wilmouth complained that MSNBC political analyst Richard Wolffe "labeled Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain's supporters as 'ultraconservative.'"
Wilmouth might have had a point if, 21 minutes earlier, Tim Graham hadn't written a NewsBusters post in which he described the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne as "ultraliberal."
Aaron Klein Is Still A Coward Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein puts on a show of faux bravery in a Nov. 6 WorldNetDaily article, in which he "accused seasoned radical activists and organizations of being behind the Occupy Wall Street protests and has invited those very activists, including billionaire George Soros himself, on his program to explain their ties to the anti-capitalist movement."
This is nothing but a self-aggrandizing stunt designed to promote his new guilt-by-association book.
Of course, Klein is still afraid of me -- I remain prohibited from doing something so innocuous as following his Twitter account on the ConWebList. If Klein was really a man, he would invite me on his radio show, where we could discuss his history of lies, guilt-by-association smears, and shady anonymous sources.
But he hasn't. It must've gotten lost in the mail or something.
Noel Sheppard, Lazy and Incompetent Researcher Topic: NewsBusters
We've previously noted that NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard, as part of his barrage of sycophancy in defending Herman Cain, claimed that, according to his headline, "MSNBC Runs More Stories on Cain 'Scandal' Than it Did Obama's Ties to Ayers, Rezko and Wright Combined."
But looking more closely at Sheppard's Nov. 7 post in which he announced that claim, it looks even more fishy. He writes:
At press time, the Obama-loving outlet had aired at least 30 segments involving the now growing Cain scandal since it broke late last Sunday.
Yet according to LexisNexis, in the over 20 months between the time Obama announced his candidacy in February 2007 to Election Day 2008, MSNBC offered viewers seventeen stories concerning Ayers, nine involving Wright, and none dealing with Rezko.
At no point did Sheppard describe how he searched in Nexis for these results. A real researcher would have disclosed his search parameters.
And then there's this note at the end of his post:
Readers are advised that MSNBC doesn't transcribe all of its programs.
That's right -- Sheppard has been portraying his search results as encompassing all of MSNBC when he concedes that it covers only what's in Nexis, and he apparently doesn't even know exactly what MSNBC shows are or are not in Nexis.
Sheppard goes on to call MSNBC a "so-called news network." Does that mean we can call Sheppard a "so-called media critic"? And the Media Research Center a "so-called media watchdog group"?
Chuck Norris' Nov. 6 WorldNetDaily column largely ignores reality in trying to ramp up fearmongering about how vaccines are linked to autism.
Norris concedes that Centers for Disease Control and the Institute of Medicine, which he called "the nation's bastion of authoritative health and medicine advice," have declared that there's no link between vaccines and autism. But he responds by citing ... PRNewswire. Yes, he's citing press releases to respond to authoritative medical research.
This is just the latest anti-vaccine activism by WND, which has been of late raging against Gardasil.
UPDATE: An actual scientist examines Norris' fearmongering in detail, and finds it full of crap.
Newsmax's Root Gets Facts Wrong on Government Employees Topic: Newsmax
In his Nov. 4 Newsmax column blaming public-sector employees for "why we are suffering the Obama Great Depression," Wayne Allyn Root cites one example: "According to USA Today and the New York Post, Firemen in Las Vegas average just under $200,000 per year."
We couldn't find any instance in which either USA Today and the New York Post made that claim -- perhaps because even if they had, it would be false.
What actually happened, according to a Las Vegas TV station, is that some fire department employees in another city in Nevada -- not Las Vegas -- were making more than $200,000 a year by racking up overtime. Not an "average," not by salary alone.The fire chief in that town said it was cheaper to pay someone overtime than to hire and train additional personnel.
In fact, Las Vegas firefighters recently signed a new labor deal in which they will not receive a cost-of-living raise for the third year in a row and see their health insurance costs increase. A Las Vegas councilman said that the city "didn’t have the same problems" with overtime as other cities did.
Not having his facts straight, however, doesn't keep Root from ranting anyway:
When Obama creates new government jobs, he’s just created a massive new obligation for taxpayers. Not just an expense for this year, but an expense for 50 or more years (until the day each government employee dies). In somecases, it’s even worse. When a government employee dies, their bloated pension is paid to the surviving spouse until they die.
So Obama isn’t helping us by creating government jobs. He’s killing us. For every new government job he’s putting taxpayers on the hook for $100,000 a year for the next 20 to 30 years, plus $100,000 a year for 30 or more years after they retire, plus free healthcare for life.
Why is America broke? It’s the bloated number of government employees. It’s their wages (salaries 40 percent to 70 percent above the private sector) and their pensions that are destroying the U.S. economy and creating a lifetime of unsustainable debt for future generations.
Actually, there isn't a "bloated number of government employees." The number of executive-branch employees per capita in the U.S. population has been steadily decreasing over the last 50 years.
NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard is nothing if not a loyal, uncritical parroter of the Media Research Center's right-wing agenda. With marching orders to defend Herman Cain, the personal friend of his Media Research Center boss, Brent Bozell, Sheppard runs with it.
Sheppard dutifully repeats criticism by fellow right-winger Liz Cheney of the coverage of Cain's sexual harassment scandals, declaring her "the voice of reason" in asking why the media is covering "irrelevant issues" instead of "the economy is going off a cliff." Sheppard didn't mention thatcongressional Republicans are a major contributor to promoting issues irrelevant to the economy, such as last week's GOP-promoted resolution “reaffirming ‘In God We Trust’ as the official motto of the United States.”
Sheppard then highlighted criticism of Cain coverage by, of all people, Kathleen Willey, who according to Sheppard accused Bill Clinton of "sexually assaulting her back in 1993." Sheppard huffily writes that "everyone involved should be asking themselves why unnamed, unspecific accusers create such a media firestorm today when women that actually stepped forward with far more serious charges in the '90s were almost totally ignored by comparison." That supposed ignoring of Clinton's accusers, of course, is a lie.
Sheppard also laughably insists that conservatives really aren't playing the race card by claiming that liberals are playing the race card on Cain:
The racial element being expressed by the Right is that blacks are not allowed to be conservatives. We've seen this in the treatment of right-leaning blacks for decades.
As such, conservatives aren't playing the race card per se. Instead, they are rightly pointing out that black Republicans are treated extremely poorly by the Left and their media minions.
[...]
This issue isn't that Cain's black. It's that he's a black conservative.
Of course, "playing the race card per se" is still playing the race card. Plus, the argument that reporting the truth about Cain's sexual harassment is racially motivated was severely undercut by Cain himself, who blamed one of his fellow Republicans, Rick Perry, for leaking the story.
Missing of course -- as it is from pretty much every MRC analysis -- is any mention of how many stories Fox News has run about the Cain "scandal."
Then, in a Nov. 8 post, Sheppard launches a personal attack on one Cain accuser, Sharon Bialek:
CNN's Piers Morgan on Monday did the first interview with Herman Cain's accuser, but failed to ask Sharon Bialek - who was in the company of her liberal activist attorney Gloria Allred - any questions about her two bankruptcies, the paternity lawsuit her former husband filed against her shortly after their child was born, or exactly why she was terminated by the National Restaurant Association a month before the alleged actions by Cain took place.
[...]
So, a woman with two bankruptcies, a history of financial troubles as well as difficulty holding a job is now accusing someone of inappropriate sexual conduct fourteen years ago.
[...]
Wouldn't this have been a great opportunity to ask her about her current financial position as well as her history of not being able to hold a job and the two bankruptcies?
[...]
As you can see, Morgan chose not to ask Bialek why her previous husband filed a paternity suit against her shortly after this child was born.
Why were such topics ignored? Was it part of the terms of the interview set forth by Allred?
We don't recall Sheppard insisting that the pasts of Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey or Juanita Broaddrick be discussed upon the disclosure of their alleghations against Bill Clinton. Indeed, in the above-mentioned Kathleen Willey post, Sheppard made sure not to mention her credibility problems, which include repeatedly changing her story about what happened with Clinton to actually lying to the FBI. Even independent counsel Robert Ray didn't find Willey credible.
But that would have been too close to responsible journalism, which Sheppard doesn't do. He is, after all, a loyal lackey for Brent Bozell, and Cain is Bozell's personal friend, who must be defended no matter what.
WND Columnist: Cain Harassment Charges Are The Work of Family Planning 'Cartel' Topic: WorldNetDaily
Mark Crutcher peddles quite the conspiracy theory in his Nov. 4 WorldNetDaily column:
It is important to understand that, by this point in history, population control – especially black population control – had become a virtual religion for America's power structure. And that remains true to this day. Whether it's liberal social engineers, or wealthy elitists, or the media establishment, or the academic community, these people have created a "Population-Control / Family-Planning Cartel" that does not tolerate dissent. If you cross them, or if you appear to be a threat to their agenda, they will chop you off at the knees. It is also true that they have been especially ruthless about this when it comes to African-Americans. Early on, the leaders of the eugenics movement had figured out that it was best for them to keep their racial intentions hidden. They also understood that it would be hard to pull this off if a lot of "uppity" black opinion molders started challenging their actions and questioning their motives.
[...]
In the last few weeks, Cain began pointing out that the Cartel is still alive and well in the form of organizations like Planned Parenthood. He also reminded the public that this particular organization was founded as an instrument of eugenics while being politically and financially backed by ultra-wealthy racists and eugenicists. He then correctly pointed out that Planned Parenthood, as well as other eugenics organizations, have disproportionately placed their facilities in minority communities with results that have been both disastrous and predictable. Finally, he called for Planned Parenthood to be stripped of its one-million-dollars-a-day in taxpayer funding. (You heard correctly ... $1,000,000 a day.)
The fascinating thing is that, within hours, anonymous people start dropping out of the trees to claim that Herman Cain sexually harassed them. As we have seen in the past, this is a very convenient charge because it is one that is virtually impossible to refute. The reality is that, in the minds of many, the accusation itself is evidence of guilt. Once the charge is made, the target has to prove a negative and, for all practical purposes, that cannot be done.
[...]
So while I have no way of drawing conclusions regarding the merit of these accusations, it is their timing that is suspicious. From the beginning, it seemed too coincidental to actually be coincidental that Cain's attack on the Population-Control / Family-Planning Cartel was immediately followed by sexual harassment charges against Cain.
A Nov. 7 Associated Press article was sent out with the headline "Obama to promote ways for veterans to find work."
Run that through CNSNews.com's bias machine, and you get the pejorative headline "Going After the Veterans' Vote? Obama Plugs Jobs for Vets."
CNS also manages to drag its biased rewriting into the MRC's disparagement of the alleged victims of Herman Cain's sexual harassment. A Nov. 7 AP article carries the headline "Allred says new woman to accuse Cain."
But CNS changed it to "Fame-Seeking Lawyer Says Another Woman Will Accuse Cain of Sexual Harassment Monday."
We're pretty sure that the MRC never described Larry Klayman or John Whitehead as "fame-seeking lawyers" for their role in legal action against the Clinton administration.
Can CNS keep rewriting AP headlines to add right-wing bias without AP taking action against it? After all, CNS is damaging the AP brand by injecting bias where it didn't exist before.
WND's Farah Defends Walid Phares, But Doesn't Say From What Topic: WorldNetDaily
In his Nov. 4 WorldNetDaily column, Joseph Farah runs to the defense of Walid Phares by bashing criticism of him that he claims is coming from the Council on American-Islamic Relations:
What's bugging CAIR is that Phares is one of presidential candidate Mitt Romney's national security advisers. So the organization is touting Phares as an "extremist" (one of its favorite terms for anyone with whom it disagrees) and calling on Romney to let him go.
The anti-Phares campaign by CAIR was originally initiated by "civil rights" operative Randall Todd "Ismail" Hoyer, who began the attacks against Dr. Phares and was later jailed for terrorism offenses.
Mitt Romney may not be my choice for the Republican nomination, but his selection of Phares is a credit to his own discernment about national security issues.
While Farah references Phares' "extremism" and "terrorism," he fails to elaborate on the charges, nor does he link to any article in which those charges are detailed.
In fact, as we've noted, Phares -- a Newsmax columnist and a frequent interview subject at WND -- was a top official in a Lebanese sectarian religious militia responsible for massacres during that country's civil war.
Farah goes on to complain that CAIR "is smearing Walid Phares" -- but, as with WND's similar claim that right-wing anti-Muslim activists are being "slandered," there's nothing to explain exactly what the "smear" is.
As with the other story, it appears that the "smear" is that the truth is being told about Phares. And Farah hates the truth when it conflicts with his right-wing agenda.
MRC Now Disparaging Cain's Latest Accuser Topic: Media Research Center
Dan Gainor isn't the only Media Research Center official disparaging the alleged victims of Herman Cain's sexual harassment as being out for money.
MRC Culture & Media Institute managing editor Matt Philbin weighed in tweet-wise on Monday's press conference in which a woman represented by Gloria Allred made sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain:
Meanwhile, Gainor is continuing his campaign of denigration, repeatingallegations about the woman's background:
We don't recall Gainor pointing this kind of stuff out regarding Bill Clinton's accusers of sexual impropriety.
Then, Gainor tweets: "Journalists ethical code says journalists should: Always question sources’ motives before promising anonymity." But that's what journalists did regarding Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broddrick, and Gainor's employer did not like that.
Apparently, a little consistency is too much to ask from the MRC.
An unbylined Nov. 5 WorldNetDaily article slips in this statement amid yet another attack on the Council on American-Islamic Relations, this time on CAIR official Dawud Walid's criticism a prayer gathering that he called anti-Muslim:
As WND reported, Walid was a headliner at a conference in Detroit recently along with the co-author of a report that slanders critics of radical Islam, including Spencer, Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson.
This is in reference to a report by the Center for American Progress that detailed how the above named writers, as well as David Horowitz and WND columnist Pamela Geller, promote anti-Muslim attitudes on the right.
WND, though, never explains exactly how these people were "slandered." (Plus, WND misuses the word "slander," defined in law as verbal, not written like the CAP report.) Instead, it links back to an Oct. 14 article (also unbylined) similarly stating that the report "slanders critics of radical Islam." But it this article too, WND never states how the right-wingers were "slandered."
If WND is going to make such a serious allegation such as slander, it should be able to back up its claim. So far it hasn't.
Further, the WND article tries to downplay claims that the prayer event, scheduled for next weekend in Detroit, has an anti-Muslim bent to it, repeating denials from event organizers and suggesting that the only evidence to the contrary is "a video posted on YouTube of a conversation with two church leaders he said were associated with the prayer event."
In fact, as Rachel Tabachnick writes, there are numerous conversations posted online in which even organizers discuss the anti-Muslim nature of it. One pastor claims that "We are literally dropping in a Delta Force" with the intent of raising "awareness of the Islamic threat." Another pastor says, "We need the harvest of the Muslim people. We can't just sit by and let them continue the on the way they are, worshipping their false god." One of the lead organizers of the event, Lou Engle, has repeatedly claimed that the event will be used to convert Muslims.
CNS' One-Sided Attack on Teachers Topic: CNSNews.com
A Nov. 1 CNSNews.com article by Elizabeth Harrington is a one-sided attack on teachers that largely regurgitates a study by the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute claiming that teachers are overpaid "if you take into account benefits, job security, summer vacations and other factors." Harrington makes no apparent effort contact anyone who might take issue with the study's findings.
That wouldn't have been hard to find. Media Matters details numerous studies finding that teachers are paid less than comparable workers, and their wages have fallen when adjusted for inflation. Politico quotes reform-minded former Washington, D.C., schools chief Michelle Rhee as stating that "we do not agree that teachers are overpaid."
That's just lazy reporting on Harrington's part, though it may also be that CNS isn't interested in reporting criticism of a study whose findings obviously serve its right-wing agenda.
WND Columnist Joins Emergency System Freakout Topic: WorldNetDaily
Patrice Lewis writes in her Nov. 4 WorldNetDaily column:
On Wednesday, Nov. 9, federal authorities will shut off all television and radio communications simultaneously at 2 p.m. Eastern to complete the first-ever test of the national Emergency Alert System (EAS). The test is supposed to last no more than two or three minutes. "In essence," notes The Blaze, "the authority to seize control of all television and civilian communication has been asserted by the executive branch and handed to a government agency." Officials later backed the test down to a more conventional 30 seconds after people expressed their concerns.
While some folks will applaud the warm fuzzy benefits of such a test – after all, who can argue the need to disseminate critical national-security information to everyone? – there are others who have darker suspicions. Why 2 p.m? Why not 2 a.m.? As one commenter said, "This is not a test – it is a demonstration. A test would be done at 4 a.m. so it would inconvenience as few as possible."
Yes, a demonstration. Our government is apparently eager to make evident its supremacy in our communications systems. "Now we know in the event of a major crisis, the American people will be told with one voice … about an emergency. All that's left to determine is who will control the EAS when that day comes, and what their message will be." One voice. No others allowed.
We're from the government, and we're here to help. Now shut up, sit down and do what we say.
Lewis conveniently doesn't mention that this system is the result of a bill introduced by a Republican congressman, Jim DeMint, received near-unanimous congressional support, and signed into law in 2006 by a Republican president.
