Aaron Klein Anonymous Source Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein loves his anonymous sources. He proves it again in an Oct. 10 article in which he cites only a "a senior Egyptian security official" to claim that "Turkey is providing direct intelligence and logistical support to the ISIS terrorist organization."

As usual, Klein provides no reason why anyone should believe what his anonymous sources have to say, and he offers no on-the-record corroboration of his anonymous source's claims.

MRC's Double Standard on Critical Memoirs By Ex-Presidential Officials
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center is quite hurt that former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is being criticized for releasing a book critical of President Obama while still in office.

Ken Shepherd declared in an Oct. 7 NewsBusters post that Panetta is an "elder statesman" who "has done Americans of all political stripes a favor by giving his honest assessment -- whether you agree with it or not -- of the deficiencies of the current administration." Tom blumer lamented that CNN "let long-time Obama loyalist Bill Burton smear Panetta as 'sad,' 'dishonorable,' and 'small and petty.' Burton also came within inches of accusing Panetta of betraying his country because we are now 'at a time of a lot of instabilities around the world.'"

But when it came to a different official who was critical of the administration he served, the MRC had a much different view.

When former Bush administration press secretary Scott McClellan published a memoir in 2008 while Bush was still in office, the MRC rushed to attempt to discredit. It grumbled that McClellan's publisher "is a liberal whose publishing house is affiliated with the far-left The Nation magazine and the publisher of The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder" and was offended at Katie Couric's suggestion that McClellan's critics were reading from "coordinated talking points," but not denying it by adding, "As if that's somehow improper."

The MRC later dismissed McClellan's book as an "anti-Bush screed" and that his publisher "had no interest in a pro-George W. Bush book." It also attacked one commentator for pointing out that memoirs by McClellan and other former Bush staffers show a pattern of "demanded loyalty and suppressed dissent," which the MRC insisted was merely "iberal-leaning psychoanalysis."

The MRC's NewsBusters made sure to publish the Bush White House's response to McClellan's memoir that called him "disgruntled," and Noel Sheppard demanded that "the first question McClellan is asked in any interview" be about whether he believed at the time he was spouting "propaganda" when he defended the runup to the Iraq War. Tim Graham whined that Newsweek was hailing McClellan as a "truth-teller," and Mark Finkelstein called him a "turncoat" and asked, "Was it all worth it, Scott?"

Presumably, that's a question the MRC will not be asking of Panetta.

WND's Chief Ebola Hysteria-Maker Blames Obama For Ebola Histeria
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Joseph Farah writes in his Oct. 8 WorldNetDaily column:

When it comes to Ebola, the greatest fear of the American statist, liberal establishment is not the deadly plague itself but rather what they describe as “hysteria” over its potential consequences.

Yet, in closely examining the very slow, lax and nonsensical official response to an outbreak that occurred many months ago, it’s clear a politically driven agenda rather than public health-driven action is stirring most of the well-grounded fear, anxiety and, yes, even hysteria in a frustrated citizenry that understand that the primary role of the federal government is to protect its people.

Unmentioned by Farah: WND is doing its best to fan the flames of Ebola hysteria. As we've documented, WND loves to push the false idea that Ebola is an airborne virus in order to scare readers.

WND's latest fearmongering attempt is an Oct. 6 column by fringe physician Lee Hieb who warns of, yes, an "Ebola jihad":

Now ISIS has declared it will wage “Ebola Jihad” against America by purposely infecting people, then flying them into our country. They certainly have the capacity to do this and to do it without being detected. And these “Ebola Jihadists” could be from Amsterdam or London or Madrid, thus eliminating our ability to do screening by point of origin. Multiple sick Ebola patients on multiple airlines will expose thousands and thousands of fellow airline travelers, most of whom will not get the disease, but the sheer numbers of contacts will exceed the ability of our medical system to identify and track them.

Actually, there's no substantive evidence ISIS ever made such a claim; dubious fringe sources such as Walid Shoebat are insisting it happened, which should raise red flags.

Yet to Farah, all of this is President Obama's fault somehow:

Just as Barack Obama waited to deal with ISIS, he has waited to deal with Ebola. In both cases, his plan is too little, too late.

Now let’s compare the liberal response to Ebola with the liberal response to the phantom threat of “climate change.”

With Ebola, we shouldn’t panic. We shouldn’t take any drastic measures to protect ourselves from the disease. It would be somehow counterproductive – a notion that has not been rationally developed by any of those making this suggestion.

But with “climate change,” a fanciful, highly speculative threat that defied all evidence it even exists, liberals want to reorder the entire economic and political structure of the country and the world. In fact, officials use the most hysterical language imaginable to hype the threat it poses to the planet. End-of-the-world scenarios are constantly being spun. They tell us the time for drastic, even draconian, action is past. Alternate views are not even tolerated, only derided.

When I see such bad judgment made by our liberal, statist, political and cultural establishment, I worry. I think this kind of irrationality is inducing panic and hysteria. And the more the spokesmen for that liberal, statist, political and cultural establishment tell me there’s nothing to worry about, the more I worry.

But Farah wants you to believe that WND's fearmongering is credible.

Pot, Kettle, Black: Gay-Obsessed Tim Graham Accuses NY Times Of Being Gay-Obsessed
Topic: Media Research Center

Tim Graham takes a break from his transgender obsession to spend an Oct. 6 NewsBusters post accusing the New York Times of -- wait for it -- being obsessed with gays:

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. The gay-obsessed New York Times is letting a gay columnist whack away at the Catholic church as having a “gay obsession.” No one obsesses about the gays as much as the gays, but you are only allowed to be “obsessed” if it’s relentlessly, propagandistically positive.

"No one obsesses about the gays as much as the gays"? Graham doesn't read his own writing, does he? Pot, kettle, black indeed.

Oh, but that's not all. Get a load of this:

Openly gay columnist Frank Bruni calls it “persecution” for Catholic schools to dismiss employees who flagrantly, publicly dissent from church teaching by getting married to a person of the same sex (currently dramatized by Hollywood in “Love Is Strange”). Bizarrely in contradiction of the facts, Bruni says this political activity is not political and that the activists are not “calling any special attention to themselves.”

Same-sex marriage is "political activity"? Huh?

Graham's not done ranting, however:

The art in the Sunday Review section is at least appropriate, with a big rainbow target on a Catholic church. That’s exactly right. They’d like to blow a big rainbow-colored hole in Christian tradition.

Remember, Graham doesn't think he's gay-obsessed.

WND's Unruh Censors Full Story Of 'Transgendered Killer'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Anti-gay reporter Bob Unruh used his powers of selective reporting once again in an Oct. 1 WorldNetDaily article:

Students across America whose schools take part in “LGBT History Month” soon will be hearing praise for a transgendered killer who recently got out of prison.

According to a website promoting the observance, the personality spotlighted for Oct. 25 is CeCe McDonald, who was accused of second-degree murder and accepted a plea bargain of second-degree manslaughter after fatally stabbing a man with scissors.

McDonald is presented in LGBT History Month as a “prison reformer” who brought attention to the plight of transgender inmates.

“It is almost unbelievable who these activists think should be held up as role models,” said Brad Dacus, the president of Pacific Justice Institute, which issued a statement on the controversy.

Attorneys at the organization are calling on parents to pay attention to their public schools throughout October to see what is being taught as part of LGBT History Month.

“Every year, this celebration gets more disturbing and bizarre, but telling kids that a killer is a hero represents a new low,” Dacus said.

Unruh completely omitted the circumstances of the crime to which McDonald pleaded guilty.

As Rolling Stone details, McDonald was being taunted by a gang of bikers, one of whom threw a glass tumbler at McDonald, smashing her in the face. Another member of the biker gang, who was under the influence of cocaine and meth, charged at McDonald, who stabbed the biker in self-defense.

Those are details that belie Unruh's simplistic description of McDonald as a "transgendered killer." But because he is such an outrageously biased reporter, Unruh didn't think you needed to know all the facts.

Newsmax Pushes Morris' New Book, His False Claims
Topic: Newsmax

Dick Morris has made himself toxic enough that few in political media want anything to do with him, but Newsmax has dutifully led Morris' image rehab, to the point of publishing his new book. Now, that book must be promoted, and unsurprisingly, Newsmax is taking the lead there as well.

An Oct. 1 Newsmax article by Melissa Clyne touted Morris' claim on a Newsmax TV show that "President Barack Obama has missed 58 percent of the national security intelligence briefings during each of his terms in office."

Because Clyne is in promotion mode instead of journalism mode, she couldn't be bothered to tell her readers that Morris' claim is bogus. The Washington Post reported two years ago that Obama always reads the intelligence briefing and discusses it with advisers in a daily foreign-policy meeting. Thus, he does not need to attend a briefing for an oral report.

Nevertheless, Clyne parrots Morris' conspiratorial assertion that "Obama does not really care about foreign policy because his ultimate goal is a one-party system."

An Oct. 3 article finds Greg Richter similarly in stenographer moe, promoting Morris' appearance on a Fox News show to again claim that "Obama is implementing an agenda to destroy two-party rule in America."

Richter also uncritically repeats Morris' unsupported assertion that Hillary Clinton, while working as a lawyer for the Watergate committee, "stole documents to try to prejudice Nixon's case to make it impossible for Nixon to have a lawyer represent him in impeachment proceedings if they had been held." That's a claim that originates with another Watergate staffer, Jerry Zeifman; as we've documented, Zeifman has paraded himself as a Democrat who bashes Democrats, and he has made contradictory claims about firing Clinton from the committee.

None of what Morris is saying is trustworthy, but Newsmax won't tell you that because it has books to sell.

NEW ARTICLE: Tim Graham's Transgender Freakout Syndrome
Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center official just can't deal with the fact that transgenders appear in the media from time to time. Read more >>

Another Lying WND Headline: No, 4-Year-Olds Aren't Being Taught How To Behead
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily has no qualms about spreading lies to advance its fringe agenda, especially in headlines. WND does this again in an Oct. 3 article by Chelsea Schilling headlined "Canada mosque teaches 4-year-olds how to behead":

As Richard Bartholomew points out, the article does not support the headline's claim. The children are acting out a play depicting the martyrdom of Muhammad’s grandson and brother, which means the the character carrying out the beheadings is the villain of the story; while the chararcer stands poised next to the victim with a toy sword or stick, the act itself is not depicted. Bartholomew adds: "This makes as much sense as saying that children playing Roman soldiers in a Passion Play have been taught how to nail someone to a piece of wood."

WND, it seems, just can't stop giving people reasons to not believe anything that appears on its website.

NewsBusters' Blumer: It's 'Too Easy' To Vote
Topic: NewsBusters

In the midst of using a Sept. 29 NewsBusters post to whine about coverage of the upholding of an Ohio early-voting law, Tom Blumer demonstrates his hostility to early voting:

Ohio had no early voting of any kind until 2006. The system was simple: Vote on Election Day or vote absentee if you had a valid excuse out of a list about ten possible reasons for doing so. No one complained until a George Soros-backed group attempted to impose an early-voting and redisctricting regime on the state through the initiative process. The "Reform Ohio Now" initiatives went down by 2-1 margins.

Nevertheless, Ohio's current voting regime is about as easy as can be — too easy, in yours truly's opinion[.]

Blumer does not expaned on how difficult he thinks voting should be.

Blumer also complains about an "activist judge" who supported "having 28 days of early voting instead of 35." But he doesn't explain that, according to the Associated Press article he's complaining about, there was 35 days of early voting until the Republican-controlled Ohio legislature reduced it to 28. The court ruling in question denied an attempt to restore the original early-voting schedule; Blumer sneered that the civil rights groups who supported the restoration were "misnamed" and that "During the 41 years after the Voting Rights Act's passage, no court ruled that Ohio's election system violated [it]."

WND's (And Larry Klayman's) Latest Birther Fail
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Bob Unruh does his best to lionize the latest stunt by WorldNetDaily's favorite failed lawyer in an Oct. 3 WND article:

He has sued the National Security Agency, and won at the district court level.

He has sued to get Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

He has sued Hugo Chavez on behalf of torture victims.

He has sued journalists.

He has sued the Taliban and al-Qaida.

He sued Cuba and won a multimillion-dollar judgment.

Now Larry Klayman, the former Justice Department lawyer and founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, is suing to get President Obama deported.

Shipped out. Sent back. Removed.

“In sum, deportation proceedings should be immediately commenced, an investigation undertaken, a full evidentiary hearing held, and Barack Hussein Obama should be removed from the United States,” Klayman writes in his deportation petition.

But because Unruh is a stenographer and not a reporter, he only regurgitates Klayman's birther-centric claims and fails to do even the most cursory investigation into the latest evidence disproving them (of course, WND has always censored the evidence that disproves their birther conspiracies).

Klayman's petition shows he's simply repeating all the old discredited birther arguments. For instance, he asserts that Obama "was not born in the United States of America, indicated by the inference that Obama would not have used a clearly falsified birth certificate, whose falsehood is easily established and by the testimony of Barack Obama's grandmother who claims to have been present at his birth in Mombasa, Kenya and other witnesses to his Kenyan birth."

Wow, so much fail in one sentence. As we've previously reported, the so-called anomalies birthers insist exist in the PDF copy of Obama's long-form birth certificate released by the White House are easily reproduced though the use of a Xerox office scanner.

And it was never true that Obama's grandmother claimed to be present at his birth in Kenya; as we've noted, that claim came from an anti-Obama minister who asked the woman a leading question through a translator and when the nature of the question was made clear, PolitiFact noted that "it was immediately and clearly corrected -- repeatedly.” Further, the grandmother was later asked the question in a more straightfoward manner, and she unequivocally stated that Obama was not born in Kenya.

Finally, Obama's birth certificate has been validated by the state of Hawaii, something Klayman refuses to accept.

We could go on, but we'd be repeating things we've written ad nauseum.

Unruh could have demonstrated himself to be a real journalist by reporting all the contradictory evidence that exists to discredit Klayman's politically motivated rantings masquerading as a legal action. Instead, he demonstrates yet again that he's nothing but a stooge for right-wing ideologues who couldn't report a story fairly and completely if his life depended on it -- and why nobody believes WND.

Meanwhile, Klayman promoted his incompetent petition in his Oct. 3 WND column, with added Obama derangement:

As set forth in a deportation petition I filed just today, it’s time that he be deported back to his native country and for him to leave us alone. He has no legitimacy to be president, and he must be tried, convicted and removed from our shores before he destroys everything the Founding Fathers bequeathed to us.

Perhaps Klayman should be removed from the legal profession before he destroys the legal system with his aggressive incompetence.

CNS Unemployment Numbers Distortion Watch
Topic: CNSNews.com

It's a new month, and you know what that means: Time for CNSNews.com to bury the good news and cherry-pick any bad news about the latest unemployment numbers.

For September, the unemployment rate dropped to 5.9 percent with 248,000 jobs created. By contrast, this is what CNS reported:

• Record 92,584,000 Not in Labor Force; Participation Hits 36-Year Low
• Record 55,553,000 Women Not Participating in Labor Force
• 1 in 5 Teens Are Unemployed in U.S.

Only one of these articles noted the drop in the unemployment rate (and even then not until the sixth paragraph), and none mentioned the fact that 248,000 jobs were added. All three articles were written by Ali Meyer

That first story, by the way, is a lazy rewrite of an article from last month by Meyer, which carried the suspiciously similar headline "Record 92,269,000 Not in Labor Force; Participation Rate Matches 36-Year Low." That's a demonstration of how CNS reports an agenda instead of reporting the news.

WND Can't Stop Fearmongering About Ebola
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily just loves to fearmonger about the purported threat of Ebola in America, and the facts aren't about to get in their way.

In an Oct. 3 WND column, Dr. Jane Orient of the right-wing-fringe Association of American Physicians and Surgeons insists that, contrary to pretty much every other medical opinion on the subject, Ebola is an airborne virus:

Officials are frequently reassuring people that the virus is not “airborne” and that “direct contact” with a sick person is required to get infected. It is not possible, we are told, to get Ebola from a person who does not have symptoms. We just need hand-washing and other “simple, basic precautions.”

Meanwhile, CDC officials are in full hazmat gear, and some say that you need a buddy to make sure that every square millimeter of your skin is covered at all times. A tiny pinprick through your glove, and you’ve got Ebola.

The official website of the Public Health Agency of Canada stated that “airborne spread among humans is strongly suspected, although it has not yet been conclusively demonstrated.”

As we noted when Orient's AAPS-linked colleague Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet made the same claim, that's just the medical-scaremongering equivalent of doctor-shopping, clinging to an anomalous finding that contradicts all other established medical opinion on the subject.

Further, Vox points out that the Canadian study that was the basis for this finding examined if Ebola can travel from a pig to a primate and is not necessarily applicable to human transmission of Ebola.

Orient goes on to freak out that "sometime between Oct. 1 and Oct. 2 the Agency actually changed the language of their Pathogen Safety Data Sheet on Ebola to softer, less alarming language on airborne transmission, including the removal of citations to key scientific literature." Perhaps the Agency realized that people like Orient were cherry-picking their report in order to scare people and decided to make it more accurate, but Orient seems not to have considered that possibility.

A separate Oct. 3 WND article by Leo Hohmann featured the claims of Dr. Gil Mobley, who claims that the Centers for Disease Control is "not leveling with the public about the potential for Ebola to spread in the United States" and who "gained notoriety Thursday when he showed up at the Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport in a hazmat suit with the words 'CDC is lying!' across his back." Hohmann uncritically quoted Mobley:

“Yesterday on the front page of USA Today the CDC said we’re at a low risk because of our advanced healthcare and sanitary systems and because we are screening at airports,” he said. “Yet I had just come through Customs the day before, and they didn’t screen me.

“They didn’t ask me where I’d been, they didn’t ask me if I’d been sick, they didn’t ask me if I’d had a fever, and they didn’t thermo-scan for my temperature. That was two days ago.”

That may because customs officials knew that Mobley was coming from Guatemala, which has no Ebola outbreak.

This being a WND article, Hohmann couldn't be bothered to contact anyone to respond to Mobley's stunt.

Such fact-free fearmongering is just the latest reason why nobody believes WND.

More Logrolling: MRC Gives Mark Levin An Award
Topic: Media Research Center

The logrolling between right-wing radio host Mark Levin and the Media Research Center has reached a new level: The MRC has given Levin its highest award.

At last week's MRC's "DisHonors Awards" dress-up ball, Levin received the MRC's William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence. MRC chief Brent Bozell delivered a fawning introduction, followed by Levin himself delivering what the MRC described as "remarks about the path to success shown by Buckley and Ronald Reagan."

While Bozell and Levin touted their friendship with each other, not once in their combined 18 minutes of remarks (which included Levin getting interrupted by applause from the right-wing audience for a childish reference to "The Washington Compost") did they mention one crucial fact: the MRC is paying Levin to promote the MRC on his radio show.

This raises the question of whether the MRC's award to Levin is part of their business arrangement.

Meanwhile, the MRC keeps up its longtime conflict of interest regarding Levin:

• A Sept. 24 NewsBusters post by Jack Coleman slobbers over Levin as "a widely respected constitutional scholar, author and lawyer" whose reputation was being besmirched by Lois Lerner.
• A Sept. 25 CNSNews.com post by Michael Morris notes how "Levin says he sincerely believes that 'World War III has begun.'"
• An Oct. 2 CNS post by Katherine Rodriguez proclaimed how "Levin ripped into the dangers of President Obama's weak stance on immigration when news of the first CDC-confirmed case of Ebola virus in the U.S. broke on his show."

None of these posts mention the MRC's business arrangement with Levin.

Oops: WND Confuses Abbie Hoffman, Anti-Abortion Activist
Topic: WorldNetDaily

You simply can't make up anything about WorldNetDaily because it provides so much derangement and fail on its own. Take, for instance, a promotional email of anti-abortion products WND sent out on Oct. 2. Among the things promoted is a book by former Planned Parenthood-turned-anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson. And how does WND promote this book?

"What I have told people for years, what I've believed and taught and defended, is a lie. What if I'd known the truth and what if I'd told all those women?"

Those are the heart-wrenching words of Abbie Hoffman. 

No, really. WND referred to Abby Johnson as '60s radical Abbie Hoffman. Here's the screenshot:

Like we said, you can't make this stuff up, folks.

MRC Latino Upset That Hispanic Media Is Helping Its Audience
Topic: Media Research Center

Ken Oliver-Méndez, head of the Media Research Center's project attacking the Hispanic media for being insufficiently conservative, complains in an Ot. 1 NewsBusters post:

Univision is out with another ad in partnership with the Obama administration. This time, U.S. taxpayer dollars are being spent for Univision morning show weatherwoman Ximena Córdoba to exhort beneficiaries of President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to renew the permits exempting them from deportation proceedings for another two years.

“If you are a young undocumented and fulfill the following requirements, you are on time to apply for DACA and obtain your work permit,” says the network’s glamorous weatherwoman, who ticks off the eligibility requirements and points viewers to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website for more information.

Oliver-Méndez insists that this attempt to inform viewers is a "highly questionable expenditure of taxpayer dollars," huffing, "The use of such talent in government ads is considered, with good reason, as compromising both the talent’s and their media outlet’s impartiality and credibility in discussing or reporting on government policies and programs."

Oliver-Méndez also repeats an earlier attack on Univision,claiming that "liberal advocates of ObamaCare were cited nearly five times as often as conservative opponents of Obamacare" but ignoring response to that earlier criticism from a Hispanic media expert who pointed out that Republicans generally refuse to appear on Hispanic media outlets.

Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" handled that earlier criticism, and it applies here as well: "Bastardos! How dare a cable network use its reach to help the audience comply with the law!"