NEW ARTICLE: Joseph Farah's Thin Skin, Part 2
Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's editor further demonstrates his utter inability to handle criticism without hurling petulant insults. Count the falsehoods among the invective! Read more >>

MRC's Gainor Thinks Woman Was 'Slimed' By the Truth
Topic: Media Research Center

Dan Gainor headlined his April 2 MRC Business & Media Institute article, "ABC’s Avila Slimes Mother Whose Son Died from E Coli." And how did Avila purportedly "slime" this woman? By telling the truth.

Gainor has been been attacking ABC for reporting on the use of "pink slime" -- beef scraps treated with ammonia -- used as filler in meat products, while trying to put the best possible face on the use of this stuff. What has Gainor's panties in a bunch this time is that ABC reporter Jim Avila shifted his focus to Nancy Donley, founder of a group called STOP Foodborne Illness, whom Gainor depicts as "a mother whose 6-year-old son died from E coli." Donley's group hascome to the defense of BPI, the company that makes "pink slime."

What did Avila do that so offended Gainor? He pointed out that Donley's organization is funded in part by BPI. That's it.

Yet, Gainor insists on portaying Donley as the victim:

Donley said she is "very grateful" for the support from BPI and other companies.

"BPI has never asked for a single thing, ever. We will never be compromised in our position of protecting consumers from pathogens in the food supply. My goal is to put my organization out of business so there are no foodborne victims any more.

The funny thing is, Gainor engages in this same sort of "sliming" all the time. Gainor has repeatedly attacked certain news organizations for taking money from George Soros-linked groups (despite the fact that the money Gainor cites as being donated by Soros over a decade is much less than what one right-wing billionaire spends to keep one conservative newspaper in business for one year).

What's the difference between that -- for which Gainor established no quid pro quo -- and Donley's group being funded by a company she's now defending? None, really, except the apparent quid pro quo is much more obvious with Donley's group. Gainor's double standard couldn't be more blatant.

Gainor is just upset that facts were reported. Sad, isn't it?

WND Columnist Rants Against Science
Topic: WorldNetDaily

As demonstrated by its anti-college magazine issue, WorldNetDaily isn't all that big on book-learnin' (all the better to keep its readers ignorant enough to believe birther conspiracies, one must presume). WND takes that anti-intellectualism to the next level with a black-is-white approach so bizarre that it portrays people who believe in science as anti-science.

In a March 31 column, Tom Flannery rants that there is a "left-wing war on science" taking place, citing as his first exhibit ... evolution.

There is the leftist pseudo-science of evolution and a universe which was the product of a massive unsupervised explosion – yet, ironically it would seem, somehow produced a whole world filled with beauty, order and complexity. When was the last time any explosion, even a controlled one, did that?

For the longest time, they told us there never was a creation event as described in Genesis 1:1, because the universe always existed. Furthermore, they insisted that the universe was the result of this unguided explosion and other random events, which occurred entirely by chance. Then it was conclusively proven that the universe did have a beginning and that there are at least dozens of equations governing the universe which, if any single one of them were altered in the slightest, would make Earth uninhabitable.

So it turned out that the opening declaration of Genesis, “In the beginning …” was an accurate scientific statement after all. Not only that, but the characteristics of our intelligently designed universe revealed the awesome handiwork of an infinite mind (as opposed to the complete chaos we should find in the aftermath of random events arising by pure chance). That means the second part of this verse is true as well: “God created the heavens and the earth.”

As far as evolution is concerned, the fossil record has been a bust, the transitional fossils Darwin’s theory demanded have never been found and the “simple cell” Darwin described – before man had the ability to actually look inside the cell – turned out to be complex beyond anything he could have ever comprehended or imagined.

Never mind, of course, that evolution has been copiously documented by science, or that evolution is not necessarily linked to the creation of the universe, or that it's entirely logical to believe in both God and evolution.

Nevertheless, Flannery continues:

Then there is the leftist pseudo-science of embryonic stem cell research. In their never-ending mission to destroy human life, liberals have demanded the destruction of human embryos for research purposes, predicting that this research would lead to cures for myriad diseases. To this day, they continue to willfully distort the truth by lumping all questions surrounding the topic under the singular heading of “stem cell research,” when they know quite well that there are two separate issues at stake here. The first is adult stem cell research, which is fully supported by pro-life advocates and other conservatives because it does not require the destruction of life and has been shown to have significant medical benefits, and the other is embryonic stem cell research, which the controversy is all about since it does destroy life and has shown zero potential for medical use.

Flannery ignores the fact that adult stem cell research has been going on a lot longer than embryonic stem cell research. It's disingenuous for Flannery to claim that embryonic research "has shown zero potential for medical use" because research is ongoing. That's why you do research, dude.

Flannery goes on to rant about "the leftist pseudo-science of global warming," "the leftist pseudo-science of abortion" and "the leftist pseudo-science of birth control and green energy."

Flannery appears not to understand what the word "pseudo-science" means. Just because you are opposed to scientific claims for political reasons -- and that's the ultimate gist of Flannery's ignorant rant -- does not mean that the documented science behind it does not exist.

Flannery's WND bio states that he "has won two $10,000 awards for opinion writing." Perhaps those organizations that gave him those awards should demand their money back in the wake of this stunningly ignorant tirade.

NewsBusters Calls Spike Lee's Apology 'Self-Serving' -- But Not Limbaugh's
Topic: NewsBusters

In a March 31 NewsBusters post, Ken Shepherd chastises the Washington Post's Erik Wemple for approving of Spike Lee's apology to a Florida couple whose address he mistakenly tweeted as that of George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin. Shepherd griped that "Lee has NOT apologized to Zimmerman or the Zimmerman family," adding: "Isn't Lee's apology simply self-serving as it was extended to a party he never intended to harm in the first place?"

Shepherd, by the way, is an employee of the Media Research Center, where his co-workers saw nothing offensive in Rush Limbaugh spending three days denigrating Sandra Fluke and whose boss, Brent Bozell, declared Limbaugh's so-called apology -- buried on the weekend, limited to his use of two words and ignoring the dozens of other denigrating insults he hurled at her, and made in the face of a growing advertiser boycott -- to be perfectly adequate, despite the fact that it was the very definition of self-serving.

If Shepherd didn't think Limbaugh's so-called apology was self-serving, why, would he apply that descrption to Lee, who has done much more to atone for his wrongdoing -- like calling the couple personally and paying them a monetary settlement -- than Limbaugh has?

Aaron Klein Anonymous Source Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily

What's been happening lately with Aaron Klein's excessive use of anonymous, unverifiable sources to make dubious claims? Let's take a look.

A Feb. 24 article claimed that "NATO countries are strongly considering the possibility of an international deployment to Syria if the Syrian opposition does not make major advances in the next few weeks," citing "informed Middle Eastern diplomatic and security officials." Klein did not explain how these "officials" were "informed," making that modifier essentially meaningless.

A March 4 article claimed that "Turkey has been arming al-Qaida organizations as part of its aid to opposition targeting the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad," citing "Egyptian security officials." As we've detailed, Klein was unusually friendly with the corrupt Mubarak regime, so much so that his reporting last year was aimed at keeping Mubarak in power and bashing the popular uprising against him.

A March 11 article claimed that "Iran has been pressing jihadist groups in Gaza to continue firing rockets into Israel," again citing "Egyptian security officials."

A March 15 article claimed that "An internal Hamas investigation has found that Iran is paying off Hamas members to form independent militias to do Tehran’s bidding against Israel," citing "sources in Hamas." Klein has long been hostile to Hamas, so there's no reason any Hamas "source" would dare trust him.

A March 26 article claimed that "The U.S., Turkey and NATO have held high level military meetings the past few days to discuss options regarding Syria, including the possibility of a military campaign targeting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad," citing only "informed Middle Eastern security officials." 

A March 31 article claimed that "President Obama has been engaged in secret, back-channel talks with Iran in which he informed Tehran’s leaders he is completely opposed to any Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities," citing only  "informed Middle Eastern officials." Again, no explanation was offered regarding how these officials were "informed."

NewsBusters Finds 'Liberal Bias' In A Peeps Diorama
Topic: NewsBusters

How much is the Media Research Center obsessed with The Washington Post? NewsBusters is even scouring the Post's contest entries for signs of "liberal bias."

IN a March 28 NewsBusters post, Ken Shepherd takes offense to an Occupy-themed display won the top prize in the Post's annual Peeps diorama contest:

Just when you thought Occupy D.C. was dead and gone and, with it, the Washington Post's gauzy coverage, the paper has resurrected it's puffery of the leftist movement just in time for Easter.

This time, the Post fondly remembered the left-wing squatters' camp by awarding its sixth annual Easter Peeps Diorama Contest to Cori E. Wright of Falls Church, Va., for her "OccuPeep D.C." display.  Wright, a decorative painter who works for the Architect of the Capitol told the Post that she "[doesn't] necessarily agree with the occupiers, but I agree with the right to occupy." [see photo of diorama below page break]

"I didn’t want to be disrespectful. I didn’t want to fill the signs with puns. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t one-sided," Wright noted.

"In the Post newsroom, her sincerity and objectivity reigned," Post staffer Katherine Boyle gushed.

Shepherd didn't mention the fact that the Occupy diorama really is balanced, down to the depiction of rats, which the Post described as its "favorite accessory":

Shepherd also seems to have ignored the possibility that the Occupy diorama was. you know, the best entry and deserved the reward.

But that would have required Shepherd to be fair and objective, and the MRC isn't paying him to do that.

WND's Movie Reviewer: Obama Is An Evil Fairy-Tale Queen
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily's Drew Zahn uses his March 31 review of the film "Mirror Mirror," a takeoff of the Snow White story, to slap together some Obama-bashing by likening the film's "evil queen" to President Obama:

The queen has lived in isolation from the people for years (Columbia, Harvard, the White House, vacationing in Hawaii and Paris – if you catch my hint) and slowly finds herself in charge of a financially crumbling kingdom (the U.S. isn’t a kingdom, but the parallel is still there, yes?).

Her answer to this dilemma? She’s going to spend lavishly in a scheme to fix her country’s financial fortunes (stimulus package!).

“But, my queen,” her advisor explains, “you’re broke.”

Her answer? “Then go collect more taxes!”

Sounds quite a bit like the plan proposed by Obama – spend the nation into oblivion, then raise taxes to pay for it.

Later, the local magistrate balks at surrendering the people’s money to the queen’s czar, I mean, assistant. But tax day just so happens to arrive right after the kingdom is devastated by news of Snow White’s death.

“Are you seriously going to argue about money,” the queen’s assistant asks, “on this day of grieving?”

No sooner were the words out of the assistant’s lips, than my wife and I turned to one another in the theater and said in near unison, “No, because you should never let a crisis go to waste.”

Of course, the words we quoted weren’t actually spoken in “Mirror Mirror,” but by Obama’s former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Later in the film, Snow White learns the bandits have stolen what the thieves call “the queen’s gold,” but what is really the collected tax money.

“Did you break into the queen’s palace to steal it?” she asks.

“No, we got it outside the village,” she’s told.

“So you stole the people’s gold,” she responds.

Wait! Wait! You mean tax money is actually the people’s money? Hmm … sounds like “Evil Queen Obama” could learn a few things by looking in the “Mirror.”

Zahn has a bad habit of injecting WND's far-right agenda into his reviews. For instance, he didn't like the animated film "Tangled" because it teaches that children can think for themselves, and he used his review of a Transformers" film to opine that Obama is a Decepticon.

CNS Is STILL Falsely Framing Planned Parenthood's Federal Funding
Topic: CNSNews.com

We've long detailed how CNSNews.com falsely suggests that federal funding for Planned Parenthood pays for abortions. Thomas Cloud does this yet again in a March 30 CNS article:

According to its latest annual report, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) received $487.4 million in tax dollars over a twelve-month period and performed 329,455 abortions.

In fact, those two numbers have nothing to do with each other. The federal money Planned Parenthood receives cannot and does not pay for abortion services.

WND Loves Foreign, State-Controlled Media Reporting On Birther Claims
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily's Chelsea Schilling -- she of the long history of factually deficient reporting -- has apparently decided to fully embrace her love of state-controlled and/or obscure foreign media that latch onto WND's birther obsession.

A March 29 article by Schilling touts how "Media from former communist nations are once again breaking through the veil of silence surrounding President Obama’s eligibility for office – even when the U.S. media refuse to investigate what is being called the 'largest scandal in American history.'" Of course, the outlet calling it that is Pravda, the former propaganda mouthpiece for the Soviet Union, so it's not exactly what one could call reliable.

Schilling adds the state-controlled Voice of Russia item she reported on previously, as well as "Neviditelný pes (The Invisible Dog), a popular news website from Prague." Schilling offers no evidence that this website is credible, let alone "popular."

Indeed, Schilling offers no reason why any of these organizations should be treated as credible. They're certainly no more so than WND, which is so motivated by Obama-hate that it refuses to acknowledge the existence of John Woodman, who has written a book debunking birther claims.

If anything, if these outlets are simply regurgitating WND's birther conspiracies, they're no more trustworthy than WND, which has repeatedly lied in order to push its anti-Obama birther agenda.

WND is also turning to second-rate rock stars to push its birther agenda as well. Another March 29 WND article highlights how "Megadeth singer and guitarist Dave Mustaine believes Barack Obama was born somewhere outside the United States."

Do WND really have much of a case on the birther stuff when the only supporters they can dredge up are Soviet-linked websites and washed-up rock singers?

UPDATE: WND also loves foreigners who opine in approved ways on birtherism. A March 28 article details how Lord Monckton bot "a first-hand look at evidence collected by Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his investigative team" and said "he is convinced that the document presented by the White House as Barack Obama’s birth certificate is fraudulent." 

We've previously noted how Monckton has presented himself as an anti-global warming expert despite having no scientific credentials.

MRC's Graham Tries Guilt-By-Association to Attack NPR
Topic: NewsBusters

Tim Graham tries a bit of guilt-by-association against NPR in a March 25 NewsBusters post, claiming that "This American Life" -- which Graham calls a "trendy public-radio show" that "airs on many NPR stations" -- which recently retracted a episode about a factory in China that produces Apple products for inaccuracies, "caused a black eye for NPR (by their one-degree association)."

Graham offers no evidence that NPR was harmed by the "This American Life" controversy -- perhaps because, despite Graham's insistence, there is no "one-degree association" between them.

"This American Life" is produced by Chicago Public Media and distributed by Public Radio International. both of these entities are completely separate from NPR. Also, there are no "NPR stations" per se. NPR operates no radio stations; rather, NPR provides news and other programming to independently owned public radio stations. While many public radio stations air NPR programming, to call them "NPR stations" as Graham does is something of a misnomer since they also run programming from PRI and other sources.

This is just lazy writing that permits Graham to make a lazy smear.

WND Devotes Issue of Magazine to Bashing College Education
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily is not big on book-learning, it appears.

As a March 30 WND article describes, the April issue of WND's Whistleblower magazine has the theme of "The College Illusion," dedicated to denigrating the value of a college education. Why? Because your child might be exposed to non-conservative ideas and the possibility of sex (also, Obama is to blame as well, somehow):

Even as Barack Obama attempts to buy off the youth vote by promising ever more government student loans and promoting college as a virtual civil right for the masses, a new reality is taking hold: For many, college is not the smartest thing to pursue after high school.

Obviously, to go into medicine, law, engineering or similar fields requiring standardized formal training and professional certification, higher education is still a must. But the idea, unquestioned for generations, that college is the ideal destination for all high-school graduates – that even those who have no particular interests or career focus should just go to college anyway, take courses, meet people, enjoy the wild social life, and try to obtain some sort of four-year degree while racking up crushing debt – is increasingly being questioned … and rejected.

[...]

Then there is the jarring reality that the vast majority of professors lean left – many far left. This is no trivial matter, and predictably results in the ongoing indoctrination – some call it brainwashing – of millions of students every year. Indeed, the leftwing, secular-socialist orientation of the modern university has played a gigantic role in the steady transformation of the American mind.

“When young people’s values and common sense are hammered and manipulated for four or more years by authority figures bent on propagating a leftist worldview,” says Whistleblower Editor David Kupelian, “many students emerge from college profoundly changed – for the worse.”

Alongside the far-left politics is an almost surreal level of in-your-face sexual anarchy – often openly and officially celebrated on campus. And the flipside of such a hyper-sexualized and “tolerant” campus culture is an extreme intolerance toward traditional Judeo-Christian moral and religious values and the students that hold them.

Remember, WND is a huge promoter of homeschooling -- it seems to be a requirement to work there -- and Joseph Farah and Co. are not interested in anything that will undo the indoctrination they've performed on their own children. They apparently don't want anyone else's children to get a fully rounded education, either.

Is The MRC Really Harrassing Comcast Board Members At Home?
Topic: NewsBusters

An unbylined March 29 NewsBusters post finds the most newsworthy aspect of a recent Ed Schultz radio segment to be that he kinda-sorta portrayed Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell as a "pig" for leading a campaign to get him fired from MSNBC, taking this as evidence that "we're getting to him it seems."

Unremarked upon, meanwhile, was another  thing Schultz said: "[Bozell] wants Phil Griffin fired. I mean, Comcast, they're calling Comcast board members at home. That's the rumor that I'm hearing. I haven't confirmed it but that's what I'm hearing."

Is that true? Seems a bit stalker-y if it is. Then again, given MRC official Tim Graham's seeming acquiescence to beligerent and distasteful tactics as long as the goal is worthy enough, this might actually be happening.

The MRC might want to explain exactly what it's doing to force Comcast, which now owns the majority of NBC, to fire Schultz and Al Sharpton.

WND's Mercer Cites VDARE to call Trayvon Martin Shooting a 'Statistical Anomaly'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Ilana Mercer has a few issues with black people, as we've detailed. In her March 29 WorldNetDaily column, Mercer weighs in on the Trayvon Martin shooting, and says pretty much what you'd expect her to, complete with a cameo from the white nationalists over at VDARE:

Don Lemon, a (pi—poor) prime-time reporter for CNN and a pillar of the RIC, gave the hoodlum from Congress a most sympathetic hearing. Lemon’s RIC comrades in the corporate media were careful to air only images of a cherubic-looking Trayvon, aged 12.

Taken off his Twitter account, however, Trayvon’s image is much more menacing, with a Twitter feed to match.

“@NO_LIMIT_NIGA,” as Trayvon called himself, tweeted and retweeted about “ThickD-ckThursday,” a favorite “PickUpLine”: “My you have a longue tongue..What do you use it for?” And, having dispensed with the poetry, got dirty: “f–k a b–ch, any b–ch, who you want? Take yo pick, but you gone have to take yo time.”

Granted, Trayvon’s tweets are not germane to the facts of his slaying. They are, nonetheless, telling.

[...]

Courtesy of Patrick Buchanan’s “Suicide of a Superpower” come the FBI’s crime figures for 2007: “Blacks committed 433,934 violent crimes against whites, eight times as many as the 55,685 that whites committed against blacks. Interracial rape is almost exclusively black-on-white, with 14,000 assaults on white women by African-American males in 2007. Not one case of white sexual assault on a black female was found in the FBI study.” (Page 243)

“In the same time period as the Trayvon Martin incident,” documents VDARE’s Peter Bradley, “a multitude of anti-white attacks by blacks occurred that remained strictly local news.”

[...]

On the facts, an honest conversation about race would quickly dispense with the canard that blacks are habitually persecuted by whites. They are not.

Such a dispassionate, contextualized discussion of the reality of crime in the U.S. would invariably lead to the conclusion that the alleged “white” offender in the Trayvon travesty must be regarded as a statistical anomaly.

MRC's Graham Apparently OK With Anti-Abortion Activists Targeting Children
Topic: NewsBusters

Tim Graham doesn't seem to care much for the idea that turnabout is fair play.

In a March 30 NewsBusters post, Graham suggests there was nothing at all wrong with anti-abortion protesters targeting the 11-year-old daughter of the Maryland landlord who leased space to an abortion clinic by picketing at her middle school, calling them merely "aggressive," and besides, they were "near (but not on) the property of the middle school his daughter attended."

Again: Anti-abotion protester didn't target the abortion doctor or his family. They targeted the 11-year-old daughter of the doctor's landlord. And Graham is apparently perfectly fine with that. He did concede, however, that "Most pro-life activists prefer protesting at a clinic location than near a school, which can (and did) lead to bad publicity, or worse." But he didn't condemn the protest; instead, he played the equivocation game by pointing out "what happened to James Pouillon when he repeatedly protested abortion outside Owosso High School in Michigan. He was shot dead in 2009."

The landlord's response to such intrusive attacks, however, has drawn Graham's ire. He's really unhappy that, as the Washington Post reported, the landlord is collecting the names and phone numbers of anti-abortion protesters who made harrassing calls to his home "by the dozens, at all hours," and formed a network of supporters who called them back and “In a very calm, very respectful voice, they said that the Stave family thanks you for your prayers.”

Graham huffed that the Washington Post let the landlord "present himself as perfectly tolerant of peaceful pro-life protests as a First Amendment exercise," adding:

Do we know every pro-abortion caller is "calm and reasoned"? More "calm and reasoned" than the protest calls they receive? Dvorak saves words like "tormentors" for the people who oppose ripping out the limbs and vacuuming out the skulls of unborn babies in the third trimester of development. "Turnabout is fair play" is the headline. So Dvorak and the Post don't take the position of "two wrongs don't make a right." They find it "clever" that if you called Stave once, you deserve "up to 5,000 calls in return."

But Graham has made it clear he doesn't really see targeting an 11-year-old girl for something her father did is "wrong." He's just upset that the landlord is fighting back against invasions of his family's privacy by using like-minded tactics against the protesters. Apparently, anti-abortion protesters can be as "aggressive" as they want, but their targets aren't allowed to respond.

CNS Misstates Cause of Sandra Fluke's 'Notoriety'
Topic: CNSNews.com

In a March 29 CNSNews.com article on a Feminist Majority Foundation summit, Penny Starr describes Sandra Fluke as "the Georgetown Law student who gained notoriety in recent weeks for telling members of Congress that she and other students were suffering because their birth control costs were not covered in their health insurance plans."

Um, no.  Her "notoriety" comes from being smeared as a "slut" and a "prostitute," among many other denigrating things, by Rush Limbaugh.

Starr also falsely states that Fluke said she herself was "suffering because their birth control costs were not covered in their health insurance plans." In fact, Fluke never discussed her sex life or her financial situation during her congressional testimony.

Gee, wonder why Starr didn't mention any of that?