Race-Baiter Colin Flaherty Pops Up At AIM To Promote New Book
Topic: Accuracy in Media

Colin Flaherty's new book, "Don't Make the Black Kids Angry," appears to be another race-baiting tome like his last, "White Girl Bleed A Lot" -- the rogue's gallery of mug shots of black men on the book's cover would seem to bear that out. It's also a self-published tome as his earlier book started as; the fact that Flaherty went this route again appears to mean that he's not expecting WorldNetDaily to pick it up, which it did with "White Girl."

So Flaherty must go downmarket to find someone to promote his race-baiting. Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid obliges in a March 19 article, in which he lets Flaherty rant that the racial situation in Ferguson, Mo., is about nothing more than traffic tickets:

Colin Flaherty, an award winning reporter and author of Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry: The hoax of black victimization and those who enable it, says that what happened in Ferguson was a carefully orchestrated hoax. He notes how in an amazing turnabout, the false claims about an unprovoked murder of a young black man became complaints about too many traffic tickets for black people.

“We now know the Ferguson riots were all about racist traffic tickets and not the relentless white racism and violence that killed yet another black person,” Flaherty notes. “The greatest bait and switch of our generation and few reporters even seemed to notice. Why would they? They are used to it by now.

“First they told us about ‘hands up, don’t shoot.’ When that turned out to be a lie, they told us about the Gentle Giant. It continued for months, one lie after another, each discarded, replaced and sometimes recycled.” Flaherty reminds us of several of the lies. We were told that Michael Brown was shot in the back, that he was minding his own business, and trying to surrender.

[...]

It turned out, according to the DOJ, that Ferguson was all about traffic tickets. “Funny: At the time, no one mentioned the traffic tickets that now stand with the firehoses and police dogs of Selma as icons of racist oppression,” Flaherty notes.

The facts were such that the Attorney General had to grudgingly admit what many others had been saying from day one. “The facts of the death and the fairy tale that followed were all concocted, spoon fed to a willing press corps that did nothing but ask for more,” he points out.

Then, suddenly, in another diversion from the essential truth of what happened, the media picked up on another narrative—that blacks were the victims of too many traffic tickets. “The day after the Attorney General’s confession, the manufactured outrage of Chris Cuomo of CNN was on full display as he and the Brown family attorney railed against the injustice of too many traffic tickets,” commented Flaherty.

Of course, like a lot of things Flaherty says, he's being dishonest to promote his race-baiting. Traffic tickets were the symptom; official racial bias was the disease.

The DOJ report showed that Ferguson police routinely violated the constitutional rights of black citizens by stopping drivers without reasonable suspicion, making arrests without probable cause and using excessive force. Ferguson police officers also sent out racist emails, including one showing a bare chested group of dancing women apparently in Africa with the caption, “Michelle Obama’s High School Reunion.”

Why do we get the feeling that's one email Flaherty would not have any reservations in sending out to his friends?

The fact that people like Flaherty pretend that the only racists in America are black is one reason things like Ferguson happened. But as long as Flaherty can find an outlet, however increasingly far-right that it may be, he'll continue to spout his racial know-nothingness and pretend he's some kind of expert.

Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Accuracy in Media Edition
Topic: Accuracy in Media

The Obama years will be forever known as the Dark Ages of US history, a time of political, cultural and economic deterioration. We have yet to see if they will lead to the fall of the American republic.

In the Obama years, the lie became not only a campaign strategy or a means to enact damaging policies, but an institution of government; the Presidency itself, a lie of monstrous proportions guarded by the complicit and the willingly ignorant.

In the Obama years, the Congress finally clearly demonstrated that although we have elections, there is no longer a government representing its citizens, but an entity serving itself, operating outside of Constitutional constraints and unaccountable to the American people for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many.

[...]

Unless we undertake a thorough exposition of who Obama really is, what is his background and true agenda, what forces made his unprecedented rise to power possible and who has conspired to hide the truth, an American Renaissance will not be forthcoming.

We are in a new Dark Age. In such situations, the record of history is unequivocal; either we produce a Renaissance, that is, a rebirth of the fundamental principles upon which America was founded or our republic dies.

-- Lawrence Sellin, Feb. 2 Accuracy in Media column

 

AIM, MRC Have No Problem With GOP Governor's State-Run Media Outlet
Topic: Accuracy in Media

The ConWeb loves to echo Rush Limbaugh's contention that any media outlet that fails to bash President Obama to the satisfaction of right-wingers is "state-run media." But when confronted by actual state-run media -- run by a Republican governor, no less -- the ConWeb is much less disapproving.

In a Jan. 27 Accuracy in Media blog post, Don Irvine touts Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Pence's plans to start a "state-run, taxpayer-funded news outlet that would compete with the local media," proclaiming it a "decisive and bold measure" and that journalists who are complaining about it "have only themselves to blame" because their "biased reporting" all but forced Pence to do it.

The Media Research Center's Scott Whitlock approved of the move as well, trying in a Jan. 28 post to liken it to public broadcasting and chiding PBS host Charlie Rose for criticizing it.Whitlock huffed that "PBS received about $445 million in taxpayer money in 2012" and sneered that "Rose is worth an estimated $23 million, some of which came from his work on PBS."

Of course, unlike public broadcasting, whose mandate is to focus on educational, information and arts programming that mass media outlets ignore, the Pence's news service explicitly stated it would compete with established news outlets and would "function as a news outlet in its own right."

After all the negative criticism -- though not from anywhere in the ConWeb -- Pence endeavored to walk the plan back and eventually pulled the plug on his planned news outlet. Irvine and Whitlock are probably heartbroken.

(Photo of Pence: Indianapolis Star)

AIM Trots Out Rabid Obama-Hater To Trash GOP Benghazi Report
Topic: Accuracy in Media

WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein isn't the only right-winger who can't accept the results of the Republican-led House committee's debunking of right-wing Benghazi conspiracy theories.

Accuracy in Media -- home of the little kangaroo court of Obama-haters and birthers that calls itself the "Citizens' Commission on Benghazi" -- can't accept it either. So AIM has trotted out commission member Clare Lopez to rant that the House report is "a whitewash of the CIA" designed to "exonerate the Intelligence Community (IC), and, by extension, the Obama administration, of responsibility for intelligence failures prior, during, and after the terrorist attack that took the lives of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Information Officer Sean Smith, and CIA contractors Glenn Doherty and Tyrone Woods."

But Lopez has shown herself -- like much of the rest of AIM's commission -- to be a rabid Obama-hater with an agenda who cannot be trusted to fairly and objectively investigate Benghazi.

In an August WND interview, Lopez made her hatred of Obama very clear, asserting that President Obama is just like Osama bin Laden because they share the same goal of removing U.S. troops from the Middle East and putting jihadis in power.

Lopez also told WND that Obama had bin Laden killed only because he “thought it might look good,” and that Obama switched sides in the war on terror by endeavoring "to bring down the secular Muslim rulers who did not enforce Islamic law."

Does this sound like someone capable of being objective on anything involving Obama? Didn't think so.

Nevertheless, AIM's Roger Aronoff is touting Lopez's "debunking" of the House report in a Dec. 2 article, complaining that the conspiracy theories the report debunked -- and to which AIM still clings -- were described as conspiracy theories.

AIM, Newsmax Also Promoting Discredited Charlatan Joel Gilbert's New Film
Topic: Accuracy in Media

WorldNetDaily isn't the only ConWeb outlet that's strangely eager to promote discredited charlatan Joel Gilbert's new anti-Obama film, "There's No Place Like Utopia."

Cliff Kincaid slobbers over Gilbert's film in a July 17 Accuracy in Media column:

The film is both serious and entertaining. It makes you laugh and almost want to cry, as he skillfully describes what seems like the planned destruction of America.

[...]

Joel Gilbert is a brave filmmaker who is not interested in “debating” the likes of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn as they demand rehabilitation and acceptance. Gilbert wants to expose them and put them behind bars, where they belong.

Just as Gilbert bought Jerome Corsi's loyalty by putting him in his film, he did something similar to buy Kincaid's promotional skills: Much of his column is devoted to lovingly detailing how the late anti-communist obsessive (and Kincaid buddy) Larry Grathwohl is "one of the stars" of the film.

Gilbert appears not to have done anything to cozy up to Newsmax. Nevertheless, a July 15 Newsmax article by Andrea Billups serves as a fine press release for Gilbert. It's based in part on a WND article by Corsi; Billups doesn't disclose that the author of the article she's cribbing from is also in the film she's promoting.

Needless to say, neither Newsmax nor AIM make mention of the fact that Gilbert's previous anti-Obama film has been utterly discredited. Indeed, no alternative view of Gilbert is presented at all.

AIM's Kincaid Just Can't Stop Lying About Panetta
Topic: Accuracy in Media

Cliff Kincaid devotes a June 26 Accuracy in Media column to decrying the fact that former secretary of defense Leon Panetta is receiving an award named after Ronald Reagan.

In addition to his anti-defense record, Panetta had a relationship with Communist Party figure Hugh DeLacy, who had ties to Soviet and Chinese intelligence operatives. It was never clear if Senate investigators or the FBI, or both, investigated Panetta’s background.

DeLacy was one of only two congressmen exposed as a member of the Moscow-funded Communist Party.

Kincaid's attack is completely false. As we previously noted, Media Matters has documented how the correspondence between Panetta and DeLay occurred when Panetta was a congressman, and the "relationship" was nothing more than that of a congressman and a constituent.

That shoots a major hole in Kincaid's attempt to smear Panetta as a secret commie -- but Kincaid doesn't want to admit the truth.

Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Accuracy in Media Edition
Topic: Accuracy in Media

For Barack Obama speeches are not just motivational instruments or representations of a desired state of affairs, but feats of political transubstantiation, where, if he utters them, words become reality.

It is a behavior not dissimilar to Adolf Hitler maneuvering imaginary German divisions from his Berlin bunker while Russian troops rampage throughout the city above him.

-- Lawrence Sellin, May 29 Accuracy in Media column

AIM's Kincaid Is Still Promoting Falsehood-Prone Joel Gilbert
Topic: Accuracy in Media

WorldNetDaily's Jerome Corsi is not the only right-winger who's sticking with Joel Gilbert.

Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid follows in Corsi's footsteps by devoting a May 20 column to Gilbert's latest Obama-bashing film. Kincaid lionizes Gilbert as "the filmmaker who exposed Barack Obama’s Marxist background, and debt to a pro-Soviet Communist Party operative," and proclaims that Gilbert's previous film, "Dreams From My Real Father," "examined the hidden history of America’s first black president in a serious and matter-of-fact manner."

Kincaid, of course, refuses to acknowledge that "Dreams From My Real Father" has been utterly discredited and Gilbert himself exposed as a charlatan unconcerned with facts or reality. But Kincaid has always ignored that particular truth.

Kincaid works for an outfit called Accuracy in Media, yet he champions a filmmaker notorious for his inaccuracy. Funny, that.

Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Accuracy in Media Edition
Topic: Accuracy in Media

The resignation of Barack Obama would be a victory for the American people, create an opportunity for the restoration of the Constitution and the rule of law and allow citizens to regain control of the government. At the same time, the departure of Obama will elicit a torrent of revelations that will likely taint the highest officials in government, the leadership of both political parties and the upper echelons of the media.

Like Obama, the establishment considers itself too big to fail, but no government can survive if the interests of its officials conflict with those of the people.

It is time for Obama to resign and let a hopelessly corrupt government fail.

-- Lawrence Sellin, May 20 Accuracy in Media column

Meanwhile ...
Topic: Accuracy in Media
Right Wing Watch does an able job of shooting down James Simpson's Accuracy in Media column alleging that voter fraud is a massive, “existential threat to our American Republic,” despite the fact that he provides no examples of large-scale voter fraud.

AIM's Kincaid Touts Its Kangaroo Court, Suggests Germany's Merkel Is A Secret Commie
Topic: Accuracy in Media

Cliff Kincaid takes a victory lap in a May 5 Accuracy in Media column:

The announcement that the House will vote on a special congressional committee to investigate Benghazi is long overdue. Accuracy in Media’s two special conferences on Benghazi helped mobilize the public and the press to demand this outcome.

Well, actually, not so much. AIM's "Citizen's Commission on Benghazi" is nothing more than a kangaroo court stacked with Obama-haters and birthers, none of whom have any interest in objective analysis and all of whom have every motivation to smear the president.

Kincaid goes on to tout one of the conclusions AIM's kangaroo court came to:

At AIM’s second conference on Benghazi, held at the National Press Club on April 22, retired Admiral James “Ace” Lyons stated openly what many have been talking about privately—that the transformation of U.S. policy from opposing to supporting al Qaeda can only be understood in terms of Muslim Brotherhood “penetration into every national security agency of this government,” and “their carte blanche entry into the [Obama] White House.”

So will these agents of influence be named and exposed by the Benghazi special committee? That is why the public has to continue to be mobilized to apply pressure.

This leads to a defense of Joseph McCarthy dubious Red Scare tactics.

But Kincaid isn't done with the infiltration theme. He wrote a second May 5 column promoting the idea that German Chancellor Angela Merkel is some kind of secret Soviet agent (and, of course, brings Obama into it):

In the current context, with Putin continuing to destabilize Ukraine, the other notable case of alleged penetration is Germany. As we noted in a previous column, a book by Günther Lachmann and Ralf Georg Reuth published last year looks at the hidden communist past of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who spent 35 years of her life in East Germany, and concealed her work as an ideologue for a communist youth group.

The book grows increasingly relevant as we watch the Germans maneuver to avoid punishing Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. In the face of Russian aggression, Merkel says “…we want to continue having a reasonable partnership with Russia.”

“Germany is one of our strongest allies, and Angela is one of my closest partners,” said Obama. But since Russia is Germany’s partner, what does that say about Obama? The pieces of the puzzle are falling into place in front of our eyes.

The German book, The First Life of Angela M., only goes so far. It does not make the direct charge that Merkel is a Russian agent. That is a taboo topic, in the same way that an analysis of Obama’s grooming by Frank Marshall Davis is considered a form of “McCarthyism” directed against a civil rights activist. At least that is the rationale being offered by the media in the U.S. to avoid facing facts.

Remember, this kind of conspiracy talk is coming from the same organization that thinks its Benghazi kangaroo court is meaningful.

AIM Praises Right-Wing Media Who Promote Its Agenda
Topic: Accuracy in Media

Roger Aronoff writes in an April 28 Accuracy in Media column:

On April 22, the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi (CCB) released a report on the findings of its months-long search for the truth behind the Benghazi attacks of September 11, 2012. It has made its report public on its website.

New revelations in the case of Benghazi, Libya have made their rounds in the conservative media, but the mainstream media have failed to pay attention to this new information. The New York Times and Washington Post were invited to our media roundtable press briefing, but they declined to send reporters. CNN sent a camera and a producer, but failed to cover our revelations. You can now watch the press conference online. Part one is opening comments by the panelists; part two is Q&A.

But Townhall, Diana West, World Magazine, the Daily Mail, PJ Media, Front Page Magazine, Newsmax, WND, Renew America, LiveTradingNews, the Drudge Report, and, yes, even Russia Today are asking questions about Benghazi that the mainstream media apparently find less compelling. 

Those outlets have one thing in common: With the exception of Russia Today, all of the outlets Aronoff praised for its coverage of AIM's little kangaroo court are all right-leaning and could be counted on to regurgitate AIM's right-wing, anti-Obama agenda.

Aronoff acknowledges this in the final paragraph of his article, declaring that "We are pleased to see the excellent coverage this story has gotten, albeit mainly in the conservative media. A World Magazine piece, a Town Hall article, and Diana West column, among several others, serve as excellent resources for our story."

Because those "excellent resources" could be counted on to provide uncritical coverage, Aronoff knows they won't bring up uncomfortable  things, like the fact that the Citizens Commission on Benghazi is stacked with Obama-haters, birthers and conspiracy theorists who can't possibly be expected to bring any sense of fairness or objectivity to the issue.

Daniel Pipes Pretends He Didn't Help Inspire Norwegian Massacre
Topic: Accuracy in Media

Daniel Pipes uses an April 16 Accuracy in Media column to make a big deal out of left-wing writer Max Blumenthal getting praise in a post by alleged Kansas City Jewish center shooter Frazier Glenn Miller on a racist website as evidence that Blumenthal inspired Miller:

Daniel Greenfield suggests that Miller referred here to “a Blumenthal interview on Putin’s propaganda channel RT, which he has since defended, in which he claimed that Netanyahu was targeting Ron Paul and Obama.”

Greenfield further finds that “there are 382 results for [Max Blumenthal] on the Neo-Nazi VNN forum that the Kansas City killer patronized.” Participatnts at Stormfront, the premier American Neo-Nazi site, often mention Blumenthal approvingly.

Mondoweiss took a closer look at those references to Blumenthal and shreds that count:

Yet a closer look reveals that Google suspects the majority of the results to be duplicates, and that—after weeding out those duplicates—Google finds only “about 71” references to “Max Blumenthal.”

Even within those 71 references, I found several more duplicates, narrowing the count to 46.

…over 300 references praising Blumenthal’s criticism of the State of Israel and American-Jewish support of Israeli policy.

Wrong. Among the VNN Forum’s approximately 46 references to “Max Blumenthal,” many of them would not be considered “praise”—nor do they reference “criticism of the State of Israel” or “American-Jewish support of Israeli policy.”

For instance, the VNN Forum has a weird way of showing “praise” when its participants refer to Blumenthal as:

“Jew Max Blumenthal”

“Kike Max Blumenthal”

“Jewish propagandists including … Max Blumenthal”

“an avowed queer like Max Blumenthal”

“Max Blumenthal … a flamboyant, exhibitionistic anti-racist”

“that douche bag sodomite Max Blumenthal”

One page on the forum even links to an article that sarcastically refers to Blumenthal as “Country Music Expert Max Blumenthal.”

A different VNN page refers to “obvious biases and outright misinterpretations contained in Max Blumenthal’s article,” while another one accuses Blumenthal of “vicious character assassinations.”

The real purpose of Pipes' column, however, is to pretend this standard can't be applied to him and other anti-Muslim activists like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller for their repeated citations in the manifesto by Norwegian massacre perpetrator Anders Breivik:

Never mind the fundamental inaccuracies of these statements – that (1) Geller, Spencer, or I ever engaged in “eliminationist” rhetoric and (2) ignoring that Breivik cited leftists about as much as rightists and Muslims as often as counter-jihadis – what’s important is that Blumenthal exploited Breivik’s murderous rampage to score cheap points against fellow American analysts.

[...]

Breivik, it is now clear, intentionally sought to discredit counter-jihadis like me; but Miller gives every appearance of being a true believer inspired in part by Blumenthal’s ravings.

That's not true either. As Daniel Luban summed up: "So, to be clear, Breivik agrees with Pipes’s allies about the threat Muslims pose to the West, and merely disagrees with them about the desirability of mass deportation, revolution, and 'armed resistance' to deal with it."

Pipes cites as evidence that Breivik "intentionally sought to discredit counter-jihadis" his own speculation as well as that of other anti-Muslim activists about Breivik's alleged move toward a Nazi-esque outlook. But that does not mean his anti-Muslim outlook wasn't inspired by the likes of Pipes, and Pipes provides no evidence of a plausible motive for Breivik to intentionally discredit him.

P.S. We've previously highlighted how Breivik's concerns about Islam and multiculturalism are closely aligned with the editorial agenda of WorldNetDaily.

AIM Co-Sponsors Right-Wing Confab Filled With Rants, Racial Humor
Topic: Accuracy in Media

For the past several weeks, Accuracy in Media has had on the front page of its website a promotion for the Western Conservative Conference (see right), which was held in Phoenix this past weekend. AIM served as a co-sponsor of the event.

And what did AIM get for its co-sponsoring money? A lot of right-wing ranting and racially charged so-called humor.

The racially charged humor came from Arizona State Rep. John Kavanagh during a roast of sheriff Joe Arpaio:

Early in his tour de force monologue, Kavanagh riffed, “It’s okay. I’m not the federal monitor. How many Hispanics did you pull over on the way over here, Arpaio, huh?” The crowd roared.

Then he pivoted to an immigration joke, “Sheriff Joe is the kind of guy that you gotta love. As long as you have papers.”

Soon he was making light of the controversy around the “religious freedom” bill SB 1062, which would allow businesses to refuse service to gay and lesbian couples. Kavanagh, who supports the bill, dismissed the criticism with a joke at the expense of Muslims and Arpaio:

Now a lot of people claim that SB 1062 is gonna cause discrimination based upon religion in Arizona.

And I scoffed at that until tonight. When a Muslim waiter serving up here walked up to Sheriff Joe, wouldn’t give him his dinner ’cause he said ‘I don’t serve swine.’

The crowd reacted with some shock, but not about the Muslim remark. Arpaio covered his face with his napkin. Kavanagh quipped that it “wasn’t quite a burka.”

The entire Western Conservative Conference was a hub of activity for far-right activists. As Media Matters notes, the conference was hosted by Floyd Brown, who has turned the Joseph Farah-founded Western Journalism Center into a hotbed of Obama-hating conspiracists (not that Farah probably thinks there's anything wrong with that). The conference also included other far-right fringers like Trevor Loudon and Russell Pearce.

These are the kind of people AIM was hanging out with in Arizona this past weekend.

Alan Caruba Pretends Right-Wing Media Isn't Failing
Topic: Accuracy in Media

Professional bamboozler Alan Caruba is at it again in his Feb. 17 Accuracy in Media column, regurgitating right-wing shibboleths about the media.

Caruba is happy that the New York Times is not making very much money, noting that "Newsweek was sold for one dollar. In 2013 The Daily Beast was projected to lose $12 million."  He adds, "By contrast, The Wall Street Journal and Investors Business Daily are thriving."

But Caruba is making an apples-to-oranges comparison. The Journal and IBD are not general-interest news outlets like the "liberal" outlets he cites; their focus is on business and market news that is very much separate from the right-wing commentary they publish.

Further, they are not thriving. The privately held IBD is reportedly not a money-maker and is supported by other divisions of its parent company. Rupert Murdoch paid $5 billion for the Journal in 2007 -- which is the current value of all of News Corp.'s publishing assets, which include the New York Post and papers in Britain and Australia.

In noting that Newsweek was sold for $1, Caruba failed to note that the Washington Times was sold for $1 as well.

As we've documented, conservative media would have long ago failed in a free market were it not for deep-pocketed right-wing billionaires -- something Caruba fails to understand.