Topic: The ConWeb
The ConWeb takes President Obama's remarks on religious schools in Northern Ireland out of context -- and they find themselves getting called on it by an unlikely critic. Read more >>
Thursday, June 27, 2013
NEW ARTICLE: Getting Schooled On Context
Topic: The ConWeb The ConWeb takes President Obama's remarks on religious schools in Northern Ireland out of context -- and they find themselves getting called on it by an unlikely critic. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:09 AM EDT
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
ConWeb Takes Gay Marriage Decisions Poorly, As Expected
Topic: The ConWeb The ConWeb reacted to the Supreme Court decisions overturning the Defense of Marriage Act dismissing a challenge to the overturning of California's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 pretty much the way you'd expect. Accuracy in Media chairman Don Irvine tweeted, "The country just went to hell in a handbasket.'
Purportedly objective CNSNews.com reporter Penny Starr ranted: "Sad day for our nation -- already on the path to a fallen civilization. If Obama gets another left-wing SCOTUS judge America is doomed." WorldNetDaily responded with a heavily biased article by Bob Unruh, with the demeaning headline "Black robes 'delegitimize' Supreme Court," that quotes a plethora of anti-gay activists lamenting the decisions.It's not until the final four paragraphs of his 39-paragraph article that Unruh bothers to quote anyone expressing support for the decision. And WND editor Joseph Farah whines:
But Farah is a bigot who demeans homosexuals (except for that one he hired to cheerlead for the Iraq War). Remember his paranoid rant about "the forced homosexualization of America" that came in response to a critic who called him out on WND's dishonest reporting on LGBT-related bills in California? Farah appears to be demonstrating one again that there's no reasoning with a person who thinks anyone who issues a legitimate criticism of his and WND is out to get him.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:43 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, June 26, 2013 10:44 PM EDT
WND's Gun Columnist Tries To Bring Back Waco to Attack Hillary
Topic: WorldNetDaily Jeff Knox -- who we last saw promoting "pork-infused" bullets as a final insult to dead Muslims -- goes back to the '90s to try and dig up some dirt to attack Hillary Clinton in his June 20 WorldNetDaily column:
Knox doesn't explain why Clinton is responsible for the deaths of people so brainwashed by cult leader David Koresh that they didn't have the sense to flee a burning building.
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:56 PM EDT
NewsBusters Doesn't Think Fox News Is Biased
Topic: NewsBusters In a June 22 NewsBusters post, Tom Blumer takes offense at the idea, forwarded by Salon's Alex Seitz-Wald in the wake of the channel hiring Howard Kurtz as a media critic, that Fox News has become "a stable for journalists who have fallen on hard times." Blumer then confirms what we've suspected all along, that nobody at the Media Research Center thinks Fox News is biased:
If that's true, the the opposite must be as well: What looks "liberal" to Blumer is more often than not "fair and balanced." Blumer then goes on to prove just that, as he defended Sean Hannity's attacks on Rep. Keith Ellison:
Blumer offers no evidence to back up any of this, of course. To the contrary: While Ellison did some work for Farrakhan's Nation of Islam in support of its Million Man March, he pointed out that he has "long since distanced myself from and rejected the Nation of Islam due to its propagation of bigoted and anti-Semitic ideas and statements, as well as other issues." Further, numerous Jewish organizations have defended Ellison against Hannity's Islamophobic attacks. Apparently, in Blumer's eyes, every Muslim is a radical.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:39 PM EDT
WND Discovers Bono Is A Christian
Topic: WorldNetDaily Most casual music fans were aware of this a long time ago, but it's apparently news to WorldNetDaily: U2 singer Bono is a Christian. A June 24 WND article by Drew Zahn sure treats this as a massive revelation:
This is all news to Zahn? Apparently, for he also includes referenes to some of the band's "many songs that include lyrics about God and His coming kingdom," like "Gloria" and "40." As for Bono sounding like C.S. Lewis, that's nothing new either. In the video for U2's 1995 song "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" (which includes Bono's devil-inspired alter ego, MacPhisto), a cartoon Bono is shown reading Lewis' "The Screwtape Letters" (about a demon's advice to his apprentice nephew) as he gets hit by a car. Bono and U2 have injected spiritual and Christian elements into their music all along. We're surprised it took WND this long to notice.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:06 AM EDT
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Alan Caruba's Passel of Discredited Claims
Topic: Accuracy in Media Alan Caruba is a longtime anti-global warming bamboozler, and the bamboozlement continues in his June 24 Accuracy in Media column, in which he rants (boldface his):
In fact, as we've previously documented, the claim that "there has been no warming for almost seventeen years" relies on cherry-picked data and an arbitrary starting point for examining the data; the long-term trend demonstrates continued global warming, no matter what Caruba says. Caruba also declares of efforts to reduce carbon dioxide levels: "Carbon dioxide is not 'pollution'; it is, along with oxygen, the other gas most vital to all life on Earth." As Caruba certainly knows, nobody's attacking the mere existence of carbon dioxide as a pollutant -- the question is whether elevated levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is contributing to global warming (which appears to be true) and other effects on life on earth. It's simply dishonest and ignorant of Caruba to say such a thing. Caruba also rants:
In fact, the stolen emails that were the basis for "climategate" uncovered no evidence that climate models were falsified or manipulated. But Caruba is not content to lie and mislead just about global warming. He asserts that the stimulus bill "wasted billions of dollars that accomplished nothing to reduce unemployment and avoid economic stagnation." In fact, the Congressional Budget Office found that as many as 3.3 million jobs were created by the stimulus. Caruba rants about "the revelation that the IRS engaged in a deliberate program against Tea Party, patriot groups, and even Jewish organizations." But it turns out the IRS also targeted groups with "progressive," "occupy" and "medical marijuana" in their names. So much for that scandal. Caruba also ranted that thet Obama administration "has reduced and degraded the U.S. military with programs to permit homosexuals to serve and women to be in combat units. An outbreak of sexual assaults—26,000 and most men-on-men—in the military has resulted." In fact, there is no link whatsoever between increased sexual assaults and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Even the Washington Times admits that experts say few of the perpetrators in male-on-male sexual attacks are gay. The funny part of all this? Caruba's lies were spewed in a column denouncing Obama as "the World’s Greatest Liar."
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:40 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, June 26, 2013 12:51 PM EDT
Santorum Says Goodbye to WND
Topic: WorldNetDaily It was just a little over six months ago that Rick Santorum started writing a column for WorldNetDaily, whose editor, Joseph Farah, had endorsed Santorum's run for president (which, curiously, WND was loath about promoting, a rare case of WND turning down an occasion to engage in self-promotion). Now, he's going away. Santorum used his June 23 WND column to engage in a round of self-congratulation before stating that it would be his last:
Santorum could have kept a column going under his name whether he actually wrote it or not (and his use of the third person in discussing "using our pen for this weekly column" indicates he wasn't), but instead he's pulling the plug completely. That's a curious decision. Did Santorum realize he was being tainted by his association with WND, which so discredited itself in its Javert-esque pursuit of Obama that nobody believes it? Perhaps.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:22 PM EDT
MRC's Gainor Dishonestly Takes Obama's School Remarks Out of Context
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center's Dan Gainor is a loyal right-wing apparatchik, and he's not about to let facts get in the way when he's bashing President Obama. Gainor wrote a June 20 NewsBusters post complaining that Obama "used a town hall meeting for youth in Belfast to show his contempt for religious education" and "criticized separate religious schools for promoting 'division.'" Gainor went on to complain that "ABC, CBS and NBC all skipped the story, even though it made the rounds in conservative media especially on Wednesday." Of course, the reason it "made the rounds in conservative media" and not the media in general is because conservative media took Obama's quote out of context. As we've documented, Obama was speaking specifically to the situation in Northern Ireland, which has a lengthy history of animus and violence between Catholics and Protestants. The faux outrage from Gainor and other right-wingers also ignores one of the core reasons there is an extensive Catholic education system in the U.S. in the first place -- the public schools were dominated by Protestants. But such facts don't matter to Gainor. He simply went on to rant how "The Obama administration has angered people of faith" by citing the manufactured controversy of "hiding a cross when Obama was speaking at Georgetown." But then, Gainor is not being paid to pay careful consideration to facts that interfere with his agenda, is he?
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:38 AM EDT
WND Won't Report Exodus International Shutdown (But Will Let Anti-Gay Activist Lament It)
Topic: WorldNetDaily You won't find any news articles at WorldNetDaily announcing the decision of Exodus International, which once championed the idea of intense therapy to "change" a homosexual into a heterosexual, to shut down. You will, however, find a column from an anti-gay activist attacking the decision. Since WND published no news articles about the shutdown of Exodus -- not even stealing an article from another website, as it did last year when Exodus renounced reparative therapy -- the first mention of it comes from a June 21 column by Scott Lively, whose anti-gay operation is considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In Lively's mind, the problem with Exodus was not its mission but that its leader, Alan Chambers, made an "unfortunate capitulation to the world" by renouncing reparative therapy and stopped being as anti-gay as Lively is:
WND hates reporting on things it doesn't like until it can find a way to spin it. That's why you haven't read about anti-immigration activist Chris Simcox's arrest on child sex charges at WND (but you have read about child-sex charges filed against some random Muslim).
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:43 AM EDT
Monday, June 24, 2013
Brent Bozell's Suspiciously Deep Video Game Knowledge
Topic: Media Research Center Brent Bozell devoted his June 21 column to attacking the idea that there aren't enough female characters in video games. Then, suddenly, Bozell writes like he's been writing about video games (aside from complaining about how violent they are) for years: In many "role player" games, characters can be customized by their gamers; and in many games, there is the option for a female character.
Call us overly suspicious, but we seriously doubt that Bozell became this deeply conversant about video games on his own. Just four months ago, he was mindlessly blaming violent video games for the Sandy Hook massacre -- with the sort of right-wing bluster that's more Bozell's style -- and now all of a sudden he's defending in a detailed fashion video games against charges of sexism? The answer may very well be found elsewhere in the column, where he cites "a Wikipedia page where it reports on 110 entries on female characters." Which is ironic, since Bozell wrote a 2007 column denouncing Wikipedia for allowing an allegedly false claim about him to go uncorrected (so he and his attorney corrected it themselves, thus demonstrating how Wikipedia is supposed to work).
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:08 PM EDT
WND's Cashill Ramps Up Anti-Trayvon Bias For Zimmerman Trial
Topic: WorldNetDaily Jack Cashill has made his anti-Trayvon Martin bias abundantly clear in the trial of George Zimmerman, and Cashill's fretting that Zimmerman might be held responsible for Martin's death is growing. In a June 20 WorldNetDaily article, Cashill frets that the racial makeup of the Zimmerman jury means that his "likely" acquittal will be challenged:
Cashill also frets that "The year has been an existential nightmare for the [Zimmerman] family." Of course, it has been even more of one for the Martin family, but Cashill has already convicted Trayvon in his fevered little brain, so he is incapable of feeling the Martin family's pain. And in a June 24 WND article, Cashill cheered that experts for the prosecution will not be able to testify that they believe screams on an audio recording of the Martin-Zimmerman encounter came from Martin. He complained that the experts' report, which used "software called Easy Voice Biometrics to determine whether it was Zimmerman who cried out for help on that fateful night in February," was "chock-a-block with arcane pseudo-scientific patois that no jury would ever have been able to understand, to wit, 'Audio CD and 911 data-logging recording both have 16-bit amplitude resolution, which divides the vertical amplitude scae (sic) of the digital signal into 2^16 =65,526 amplitude gradations.'" Yet Cashill had no problem with arcane software examinations when he was trying to prove that Bill Ayers ghost-wrote Barack Obama's first book.
Posted by Terry K.
at 5:05 PM EDT
MRC Rants About 'Heavily-Tattooed, Androgynous Lesbian' WNBA Player
Topic: Media Research Center It wouldn't be the Media Research Center if it wasn't denigrating anything that's even remotely non-heterosexual, so of course the MRC is having a fit over WNBA star Brittney Griner. Lauren Enk whines in a June 18 MRC Culture & Media Institute item: "If you’re looking for a new role model for your daughter, USA Today has a suggestion: heavily-tattooed, androgynous lesbian Brittney Griner." Enk huffed that "USA Today’s Scott Gleeson lauded her as both 'the face of WNBA' and as a 'role model.' He simpered over her sense of humor as she picked out new tattoo ink with her current girlfriend, and hailed the moment of an example of how Griner is 'finally free to be herself' after coming out last April." Enk's disgust for Griner becomes even more thinly veiled as the piece concludes:
This is the kind of anti-gay agenda we've come to expect from the MRC, and Enk is certain doing what she's being paid to do.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:27 AM EDT
WND Takes the Birther Bait Again
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily has toned down its birther coverage since President Obama's re-election proved its four-year anti-Obama jihad to have no effect whatsoever beyond discrediting itself, but even WND will still swallow easy birther bait. Thus, we have a June 22 WND article by Drew Zahn taking very seriously how Yahoo! News briefly and erroneously claimed Obama was born in Kenya. Zahn tries to peddle a conspiracy theory by pondering if Yahoo!'s mistake was "a sign of something more," then rehashes all the old discredited conspiracy theories about the "purported copy of Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate" released by the White House. Zahn, as is WND policy, can't be bothered to point out how Mike Zullo's Cold Case Posse has been discredited, and he certainly won't say anything about these conspiracies in the way Dr. Conspiracy has summed it up:
The fact that Zahn -- and everybody else at WND -- deliberately ignores facts that don't comport with its anti-Obama agenda despite being repeatedly caught in the act is just one more reason why (c'mon, say it with me) nobody believes WorldNetDaily.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:56 AM EDT
Sunday, June 23, 2013
CNS Takes Putin's Side on Syria
Topic: CNSNews.com WorldNetDaily isn't the only ConWeb component siding with Bashar Assad's murderous regime in Syria. A June 16 CNSNews.com article by Patrick Goodenough promotes Russian leader Vladimir Putin's attack on a reporter who repeated a statement by British leader David Cameron that "those supporting the Syrian leader had the blood of Syrian children on their hands," and his mention of of a video purportedly showing "a jihadist rebel leader cutting out and making as if to eat the heart of a Syrian soldier." While Goodenough admits the video has been promoted by a "pro-Assad group," his article is clearly tilted toward those who advocate against the U.S. arming Syrian rebels and makes only a passing mention of the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons. The fact that CNS is apparently taking sides with Obama is another piece of evidence showing how deep the anti-Obama hate is at the "news" website. regime’s use of chemical weapons against its own people - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/putin-cites-syrian-rebel-mutilation-video-are-these-people-you-want-support#sthash.hIx588GX.dpuf a video clip circulating last month apparently showing a jihadist rebel leader cutting out and making as if to eat the heart of a Syrian soldier. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/putin-cites-syrian-rebel-mutilation-video-are-these-people-you-want-support#sthash.hIx588GX.dpuf those supporting the Syrian leader had the blood of Syrian children on their hands, Putin reacted angrily. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/putin-cites-syrian-rebel-mutilation-video-are-these-people-you-want-support#sthash.hIx588GX.dpuf those supporting the Syrian leader had the blood of Syrian children on their hands, Putin reacted angrily. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/putin-cites-syrian-rebel-mutilation-video-are-these-people-you-want-support#sthash.hIx588GX.dpuf those supporting the Syrian leader had the blood of Syrian children on their hands, Putin reacted angrily. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/putin-cites-syrian-rebel-mutilation-video-are-these-people-you-want-support#sthash.hIx588GX.dpuf those supporting the Syrian leader had the blood of Syrian children on their hands, Putin reacted angrily. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/putin-cites-syrian-rebel-mutilation-video-are-these-people-you-want-support#sthash.hIx588GX.dpuf those supporting the Syrian leader had the blood of Syrian children on their hands, Putin reacted angrily. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/putin-cites-syrian-rebel-mutilation-video-are-these-people-you-want-support#sthash.hIx588GX.dpuf
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:19 PM EDT
WND Columnist Takes Obama's Remarks On School Out of Context
Topic: WorldNetDaily Patrice Lewis rants in a June 21 WorldNetDaily column:
Well, let's think about where Obama was speaking, Ms. Lewis. He was in Northern Ireland, which -- as we pointed out when CNS' Terry Jeffrey similarly pulled Obama's statement out of context -- has a lengthy history of violence between Catholics and Protestants. Lewis also forgets that one reason there is a large system of Catholic schools in the U.S. is because the public schools were largely controlled by Protestants. But Lewis doesn't care about context or history, because she's in the middle of a massive anti-education rant:
Is Lewis denying that private schools indoctrinate their children like public schools do? Surely not -- she believes education is indoctrination and brainwashing, but that the parents are the ones who should do it.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:11 AM EDT
|
Find more neat stuff at the ConWebWatch store! Buy through this Amazon link and support ConWebWatch!
Entries by Topic
All topics « Accuracy in Media Capital Research Center CNSNews.com Free Congress Foundation Free Republic Horowitz Media Research Center NewsBusters Newsmax The ConWeb The Daily Les Washington Examiner Western Journalism Center WorldNetDaily
Watchers
Media Matters for America County Fair The Daily Howler LGF Watch SullyWatch Fact-esque Malkin(s)Watch Reading A1 (NYT) John Gorenfeld (Moonies) NewsHounds (Fox News) Media Watch CJR Daily The Counterpoint (Sinclair) BlatherWatch (Seattle Radio) Watching OlbermannWatch
Blogs
Talking Points Memo Eschaton Suburban Guerrilla World O'Crap Sadly, No! Oliver Willis Angry Single Mom Orcinus Bartholomew's Notes on Religion PFAW's Right Wing Watch Altercation Max Blumenthal
Support Bloggers' Rights! |