Shocker: WND Engages In Actual Journalism! Topic: WorldNetDaily
Even WorldNetDaily, the least credible news operation in America, can stumble upon doing some actual journalism on occasion -- stopped clock, and all that -- and we would remiss if we didn't recognize it.
Art Moore traveled to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland -- since WND is a little short of funds these days, we suspect Moore lives close to Cleveland and went there on his own dime -- and interviewed a couple people, both of whom were critical of Donald Trump. Surprisingly, Moore let them have their say, portrayed their comments fairly, and even posted the full video of the interview:
A Colorado delegate pointed out that conservatives do not trust Trump and that he's willing to let Hillary Clinton win in 2016 in order to save conservatism.
A black Cleveland resident pointed out that the Trump campaign dragged out the Melania Trump plagiarism controversy much longer than it needed to go, that the convention was too negative about Hillary and that Trump himself was too negative. The resident also noted that contrary to "a lot of people" Moore cited, he didn't think racial relations have gotten worse during the Obama presidency, adding “With me being an African-American male, I’ve dealt with this all of my life."
Odly, neither interview was conducted at the convention site itself: The Colorado delegate was interviewed at the airport, and the Cleveland resident was interviewed "while traveling on a commuter train west of downtown after the Republican National Convention."
That's not to say Moore didn't try to guide the conversation WND's way -- which is, Hillary must be destroyed at all costs. Moore told the Colorado delegate:
There are some who would argue that we've had eight years of fundamental transformation, as Obama promised before he took office, and four years even -- let alone eight years of Hillary would more or less cement that fundamental transition for generations. We're talking about Supreme Court picks -- could be 30 years that one of those picks would serve in a court that right now is 4-4 divided. With Trump at least you can roll the dice and there's a chance. With Hillary there's no chance you'll get a Scalia. So how would you argue with somebody who's saying, look, we don't have another four years, we understand the whole concept of a war but the war could be over before the next four years is up?
See, WND? Actual journalism -- as opposed to the biased right-wing advocacy that normally passes for "journalism" -- isn't that difficult. You even have employees who are capable of doing it if they are allowed. Y'all should try it a little more often if you want to have any chance at all of restoring your credibility.
CNS Touts MIchael Vick Praising God, Ignore His History of Animal Cruelty Topic: CNSNews.com
Michael Morris writes in a July 27 CNSNews.com blog post:
For National Football League (NFL) fans it’s the offseason, but that doesn’t mean you won’t hear some players making a buzz in the media about games, stats, past performances and how they stack up against the competition.
In a recent interview on The Dan Patrick Show, NFL free agent and all-time NFL rushing leader for quarterback Michael Vick confessed that he felt bad for some defenders who had to play against him in the league and noted that he is “just thankful that God seen me through.”
According to Fox Sports, Michael Vick has rushed 6,109 total yards, averaged 7.0 yards per carry and 42.7 yards per game, picked up 343 first downs and scored 36 touchdowns on the ground.
But the 36-year-old doesn’t think he’s done just yet.
“You know, I’m just thankful that God seen me through up until this moment and still give me the passion to want to go play and want to perform at a high level,” said Vick. “And I still have the work ethic now, and even more, to, you know, try to put myself in that position, so, you know, I just got to be patient from here and wait for things to happen.”
Morris doesn't mention that Vick's God-guided football career was interrupted by a 21-month prison sentence for running a dog-fighting ring that also killed the dogs who didn't perform well.
It's odd that Morris would tout Vick's relationship with God without mentioning the defining event of his life, for which he has yet to fully apologize or take repsonsibility.
MRC's Utterly Dishonest Convention Speech Coverage Comparison Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Geoffrey Dickens writes in an Aug. 1 post under the headline "DOUBLE STANDARD":
Two weeks ago at the Republican National Convention (RNC) a grieving mother blasted Hillary Clinton for the debacle of the 2012 Benghazi attack. Last Thursday, at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), grieving parents gave a speech criticizing Donald Trump for his statements against Muslims.
While all the grieving parents deserve sympathy, the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) network evening and morning shows seemed to only care about the parents that showed up at the Democratic Convention. Khizr Khan and his wife Ghazla’s DNC appearance earned 55 minutes, 13 seconds of Big Three network coverage, nearly 50 times more than Pat Smith, whose RNC speech honoring her son earned just 70 seconds of airtime.
And, of course, there's a chart to illustrate the alleged DOUBLE STANDARD:
Dickens also huffs:
This is a textbook case of bias-by-agenda: One of these stories (the Khan story) matched the Democratic agenda, and the partisan media couldn’t push it hard enough. The other (the Smith story) reflected poorly on the Democratic nominee, so it was barely mentioned.
But Dickens is making a dishonest comparison. Smith's RNC speech got little coverage because nothing happened afterwards. Khan's DNC speech would have been the same -- had Donald Trump not felt the need to attack Khan and his wife. Thus, the story stopped being about the speech but about Trump.
Yet Dickens is including coverage of Trump's attack on the Khans as part of of the Khan speech coverage when it is, in fact, not about the speech. The two stories are not equivalent, and Dickens treating them as such makes his comparison utterly dishonest.
Also note that Dickens includes only the broadcast networks in his study and completely ignores the cable news channels -- another form of dishonest research.
No, Mr. Dickens, this is not "a textbook case of bias-by-agenda." It is, however, a textbook case of shoddyMRCresearch.
But Dickens' boss, Brent Bozell, loves this kind of statistical dishonesty. Shortly after the comparison was posted at the MRC, Bozell was ranting about it on Fox News: “For those keeping score at home, that's 50 times more coverage, a negative on Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton. How in the world can this be a press saying that is showing any modicum of fairness in this campaign?”
Of course, it's not like Bozell actually cares about fairness.
UPDATE: Mike Ciandella updates the numbers and touts how Eric Trump "brought up the MRC study on this topic during an interview on CBS This Morning, to point out the media’s double standard." He doesn't mention the lack of equivalence between the two stories. He echoes Dickens in huffing: "One of these stories (the Khan story) matched the Democratic agenda, and the partisan media couldn’t push it hard enough. The other (the Smith story) reflected poorly on the Democratic nominee, so it was barely mentioned."
WND's Corsi Dedicates His New Anti-Clinton Screed To a Convicted Criminal Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jerome Corsi's new WorldNetDaily-published anti-Clinton book, "Partners in Crime," is scheduled to be released today as part of WND's anti-Clinton jihad-slash-witch hunt. Given Corsi's penchant for promoting lies, there's a track record to consider, and thus, there's no reason for anyone to believe he's telling the truth in this book either.
Also of import regarding Corsi's book: It's dedicated to a convicted criminal.
That would be fellow Clinton- (and Obama-) hater Dinesh D'Souza. In a WND video, Corsi explains that he dedicated "Partners in Crime" to D'Souza because he is "a true U.S. hero and a personal hero of mine." Corsi falsely claimed that "Barack Obama tried to imprison Dinesh D'Souza for a technical violation of the FEC laws" -- an offense that, "if a Democrat had done the offense, would have been overlooked with a minor hand slap and a fine" -- in order "to politically silence him."
Corsi, needless to say, provides no evidence that Obama personally went after or "tried to imprison" D'Souza over the election law violation (for which he pleaded guilty, by the way). While D'Souza could have been imprisoned for up to two years for his crime, he was instead sentenced to eight months in a halfway house and five years probation. The judge who sentenced D'Souza noted that he had taken no responsibility for his actions and beleived his sentence needed to have some teeth.
The judge also found no evidence to substantiate D'Souza's claim that he's a political prisoner, adding that "the defendant’s claim of selective prosecution, legally speaking, is 'all hat, no cattle.'"
In other words, Corsi is lying again. If Corsi is putting that much work to creating lies to justify his book's dedication, that doesn't bode well for the rest of the book.
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC vs. The Truth Topic: Media Research Center
Because Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is an inveterate liar, the Media Research Center must defend him by attacking fact-checkers. Read more >>
The fail starts early in Robert V. Carl's July 29 Newsmax article on the upcoming remake of "Ben-Hur":
The first time "Ben-Hur" hit the big screen, the Cold War was raging and the Civil Rights movement was in full swing. The film's themes of faith, social upheaval, and redemption resonated powerfully with the audiences of the day, who jammed into theaters to watch it.
No, the 1959 film was not "the first time 'Ben-Hur' hit the big screen." It was first filmed in 1907 (but just the chariot race), and it got a more elaborate silent production in 1925.
But facts aren't the point of Carl's article -- spin is. Much of his article is devoted to how "Distributors Paramount and MGM have been screening the movie for influential Christian leaders" to avoid the plight of "recent big-budget biblical films that took so much liberty with the source material that they failed to attract the faith-based audience they sought."
But the real purpose of Carl's article is unspoken: to respond to the negative buzz surrounding the film.
The Hollywood Reporter states that "Early tracking suggests Ben-Hur will open in the $14 million to $15 million range over the Aug. 19-21 weekend, a sobering start for the faith-centric ancient epic, which reportedly cost just under $100 million to produce," adding that the film's projected opening date has slid from February. And even the conservative PJ Media notes that "the director, Timur Bekmambetov, is known for what are more or less flops: Wanted (2008) and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)."
It's an interesting bit of Hollywood spinning reminiscent of another Newsmax writer, James Hirsen, who consistently championed the increasingly erratic and vile Mel Gibson without disclosing his insider relationship with the actor or his heading a foundation that worked to advance the ultraconservative Catholic faith of Gibson's father.
WND's Coverage of Trump's Remarks on Khan Censors the Controversy Topic: WorldNetDaily
Is Donald Trump one of the contributors to WorldNetDaily's plea for cash to stave off its existential financial crisis? If he isn't, he should be.
The Trump campaign's PR flacks couldn't have written a better "news" article spinning away the firestorm of controversy over Trump's attacking a Muslim couple whose son died in the Iraq war for committing the offense of criticizing him at the Democratic National Convention than the unnamed WND writer who managed to address the controversy by ignoring it completely in his or her July 30 article:
Donald Trump wants to set the record straight about his interview with ABC News “This Week” in which he has been accused of diminishing the sacrifice of Humayun Khan, a Muslim U.S. soldier killed in Iraq, with others.
Trump Saturday night called Khan “a hero,” urged vigilance in defeating radical Islamic terrorism and attacked Hillary, again, for destabilizing the Middle East with her policies as secretary of state.
At the Democratic convention, Khan’s father, Khizr Khan, had leveled criticism at Trump in support of Clinton for president.
“Captain Humayun Khan was a hero to our country and we should honor all who have made the ultimate sacrifice to keep our country safe,” Trump said in his statement. “The real problems here are the radical Islamic terrorists who killed him, and the efforts of these radicals to enter our country to do us further harm. Given the state of the world today, we have to know everything about those looking to enter our country, and given the state of chaos in some of these countries, that is impossible. While I feel deeply for the loss of his son, Mr. Khan who has never met me, has no right to stand in front of millions of people and claim I have never read the Constitution, (which is false) and say many other inaccurate things. If I become president, I will make America safe again.”
Trump continued: “Further, Hillary Clinton should be held accountable for her central role in destabilizing the Middle East. She voted to send the United States to war against Iraq, helped lead the disastrous withdrawal of American troops years later that created the vacuum allowing the rise of ISIS, and has never met a regime change she didn’t like (which have all been disasters) – not to mention her invasion of Libya and her abandonment of American personnel in Benghazi. The loss of these lives in Libya is directly traceable to Clinton, but their families’ testimonials were rejected by the media. Clinton’s actions have been reckless and have directly led to the loss of American lives. And her extreme immigration policies, as also laid out by American victims in Cleveland, will cause the preventable deaths of countless more – while putting all residents, from all places, at greater risk of terrorism. As Bernie Sanders said on numerous occasions, Hillary Clinton suffers from ‘bad judgement.’ She is not qualified to serve as commander in chief.”
Below is the full, unedited transcript of Trump’s interview with George Stephanopoulos On “This Week.”
It's nothing more than a mild rewrite of Trump's own press release, which also includes the interview transcript.
WND doesn't seem to understand that stenography -- which is what reproducing a transcript is, especially when Trump is not disputing the accuracy of any of the things it was reported he said -- is not journalism. Nor is simply rewriting someone's press release to put it in inverted pyramid form while retaining the Trump campaign's dishonest spin.
Trump would normally have to pay a news outlet under the table (as it's alleged he has with Breitbart) to get that kind of fawning, uncritical coverage. Joseph Farah and WND could certainly use the cash right now, and we doubt Farah is above accepting money for favorable coverage.
In cash-strapped WND, Trump can buy himself an entire "news" outlet on the cheap -- if he hasn't already.
AIM's Kincaid Repeats Discredited Falsehoods About Margaret Sanger Topic: Accuracy in Media
Accuracy in Media's resident gay-obsessed, factually challenged Obama-hater Cliff Kincaid takes to AIM's sister site Accuracy in Academia to praise Dinesh D'Souza's Hillary-bashing film "Hillary's America," which also purports to detail the history of the Democratic Party. If Kincaid is any guide, the film is an ahistorical mess, playing on the fallacy that the Democratic Party of a century ago is exactly the same as the party today.
Kincaid writes of the film:
In one reenactment, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, is shown speaking to a women’s auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan. That’s followed by excerpts of a modern-day Hillary speech expressing her admiration for Sanger.
Liberals have tried to play down Sanger’s involvement with the KKK, saying she spoke to a variety of different groups. But Sanger’s own book, The Pivot of Civilization, included references to eliminating “human weeds” and sterilizing “inferior” races.
About Kincaid's first claim: Yes, Sanger spoke to a KKK women's auxiliary. But as we've noted, fact-checkers have pointed out that the KKK auxiliary was not the KKK itself, Sanger was not a KKK supporter, and Sanger pointed out in her autobiography that while she would speak on the issue of birth control to preetty much anyone who would have her, her KKK auxiliary speech was a surreal experience.
About Kincaid's second claim: As we've also documented, the term "human weeds" appears nowhere in "The Pivot of Civilization," and Sanger never called for "terilizing 'inferior' races."
If Kincaid is getting his information about Sanger from D'Souza's film, that kinda discredits the whole film, doesn't it? Not to mention further putting the lie to AIM's insistence that it cares about accuracy in media (or academia).
WND Buries Real Motive of German Gunman, Instead Plays Up Unverified 'Allahu Akbar' Angle Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's unbylined July 22 article on a mass shooting in Munich begins the way you'd expect it to: with a headline screaming "'Allahu Akbar' gunman slaughters children in Munich" and a lead paragraph stating "A gunman shouting “Allahu Akbar” burst out of a bathroom at a McDonald’s restaurant and opened fire on children before rampaging through a nearby shopping mall."
But if you read the article further, it's clear that the “Allahu Akbar” claim has not been substantiated -- WND cites only a single witness making the claim.
And it's not until the 30th paragraph of the unbylined article that what appears to be shooter Ali David Sonboly's real motive gets mentioned:
Sonboly’s apparent interest in mass shootings may possibly explain his choice of July 22 to carry out the attack.
The Mail noted the Munich shopping center shooting happened exactly five years after “far-right activist Anders Breivik” shot and killed dozens of people on a Norwegian island.
It was July 22, 2011, when Breivik exploded a car bomb in Oslo that killed eight people. He then drove to the island of Utoya where he gunned down 69 people, mostly teenagers, at a youth summer camp.
The scare quotes WND put around Breivik's description are kinda cute, considering that Breivik's manifesto followed WND's anti-Muslim, anti-multiculturalism and anti-feminist agenda so closely that he cited WND six times in it. WND has never told its readers about that, by the way.
Since then, it's been revealed that the Iranian-German Sonboly considered himself "Aryan," was proud that he shared his birthday with Adolf Hitler, hated Turks and Arabas and that all of his victims were immigrants. WND hasn't reported that yet -- perhaps because, as with Breivik, Sonboly's political views are basically those of WND taken to a murdrerous level.
Despite the fact that WND has never offered any evidence that the "allahu akbar" claim has been corroborated, WND repeated it in a July 29 article asserting that Sonboly "reportedly yelled the Islamic battle cry 'allahu akbar' while shooting." And again, that came before WND's admission that "authorities believe Sonboly was acting along [sic] and was simply obsessed with mass shootings."
CNS' Reaction to Hillary's Historic Nomination: Benghazi! Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com reacted to the historic news of Hillary Clinton being the first female major-party presidential nominee in its usual fashion: with partisan sniping instead of the fair and balanced journalism a real news operation is supposed to engage in.
The news of Democratic National Convention delegates affirming the nomination was mostly ignored by CNS, which ran only an Associated Press article and devoted no original coverage to it.
The day after the convention, though, CNS issued its mostly politically driven -- and, thus, journalistically suspect -- reaction: a story by Rachel Hoover describing how "In their 'Additional Views' supplement to the House Select Committee on Benghazi report, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas) conclude that 'the administration misled the public about the Benghazi attack,' which occurred on Sept. 11, 2012."
If you'll recall, the House Benghazi report came out a month ago. A month ago. In other words, there is no news value to Hoover's article -- it's a month-old story that CNS could have easily done at the time but apparently chose not to in order to play a political game.
Additionally, the fact that Jordan's and Pompeo's views are relegated to a supplement and not included in the report proper tells us that they were rejected by the Republican majority and should carry less weight. Indeed, the Jordan-Pompeo supplement appears to rely heavily on opinion, not fact, for its conclusions, such as its assertion that the Obama White House "misled the American people for political gain" immediately after the attack.
But Hoover also violates the dicate of her boss, Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell, who says that "The first rule of journalism is that if you don’t have two independent sources, you don’t have a news story." Hoover quotes only the Jordan-Pompeo supplement -- which is anything but "independent" -- and nobody else.
CNS hasn't figured out that stenography is not journalism, and uncritically repeating partisan attacks isn't either, and not even Bozell's own guidance is making a difference.
Barack Obama’s allegiance to Islam appears to trump everything else he supposedly values. The killer Mateen shot up a homosexual club on “Latin Night,” but even the horrific deaths of blacks, Latinos and homosexuals is not enough for Obama to call out Islamists.
[...]
In the last seven years, Obama has put our country on the brink of financial ruin. He’s divided the races like no other president in history. He has made the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) agenda his most important domestic issue – equating it to civil rights for blacks. This past week Obama announced he was designating the area around the Stonewall Inn in New York City as the country’s first national monument to LGBT rights.
Obama has done his best to undermine the greatest fighting force in the world by using it as his personal social experiment laboratory and lifting the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy. He also lifted the ban on women in combat, despite the fact that some 92.5 percent of women in the military do not want to be assigned to combat units.
While he’s been preoccupied with covering up for Islam and advancing the homosexual agenda, the black-on-black murder rate in Chicago (his hometown) shot through the roof. On Father’s Day weekend alone, there were 54 shootings and 12 murders! Yet we’ve heard nothing from Obama, Loretta Lynch, or Democrats in Congress about this bloodshed.
-- Jesse Lee Peterson, June 26 WorldNetDaily column
I’m not going to suggest that some months ago, Obama got on his infamous phone and told a minion to cultivate a cell of riled-up black activists, get them armed and insert them into the protest that would be ready to go on the next occasion that the police shooting of a black individual found its way into the national news cycle.
But for all practical purposes, it might as well have gone down in precisely that fashion.
The United States, Europe and the rest of the world is in violent upheaval. At home, fraudulently elected illegitimate President Barack Hussein Obama, along with with his black-Muslim friends like so-called Rev. Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, and Black Lives Matter allies, have finally succeeded in igniting a race war.
To add insult to very serious injury, President Obama refuses to use his powers as the commander in chief to destroy ISIS and other Muslim terrorists in a decisive way. The reason is obvious, and it’s time for people to just start saying it: The “Muslim King” does not want to go hard against his Islamic brothers and frankly, in my view, sympathizes with their quest to have allah reign supreme to further a worldwide caliphate.
[...]
So, I pose this question: How can the Muslim King be legally removed from office before he does even more irreparable damage in the next six months of his presidency? What would our Founding Fathers have done under these dire circumstances? I do not think that We the People can just sit back and hope for the best, particularly in light of the heinous terrorist attacks of the last weeks, the latest in Nice, France, and the race war Obama and his friends have caused to explode in Dallas and around the nation. Our lives and the lives of our loved ones are in mortal danger!
The man who is the American president, Barack Hussein Obama, jumped in quickly to decry the innocent victims but he continues to refuse to specify who the terrorists are and as always, he never, never makes any link between the terrorists and their Islamist religious beliefs.
He never uses the terms Islamist or Muslims, even when there is irrefutable proof that people of those believe are behind attacks of this kind – not only in France, but worldwide.
I don’t believe for a minute that Barack Obama is a stupid man, but I do believe that he is blinded by his beliefs founded in Islam. He was brought up in and around that faith, and he remains a believer, regardless of what he says he is now.
It is incomprehensible that a man who professes to be a “Christian” can constantly and consistently do things, say things and take actions that directly and negatively affect Christians and Christianity, in this country and worldwide, and yet never do or say anything that might even be slightly negative against Islam.
Given the atrocities perpetrated by Islamists across the world, the gruesome attacks and killings that we see more and more, it makes no sense that the leader of a world nation, a presumably well-educated man, can see all this and yet not have the courage to state unequivocally who is responsible.
Is he blind? Stupid? Stubborn? A liar? A traitor? Or is he really a Muslim bound to support that belief regardless?
Clearly, he’s not acting as a Christian, as an American, as a patriot.
Nor is he acting as an American president should according to his oath of office.
It’s also clear that what he is doing, or rather not doing, is hurting our country and the free world and putting every one of us in mortal danger.
Whites thought electing a black president was going to make things better between the races, but Obama has turned that dream into a nightmare.
Shock is a temptation to hate, and hate is evil. Hate makes one subject to evil and paralyzes people in fear. This hate has rendered people helpless and ineffective in their efforts to stop Obama’s wicked agenda.
[...]
Despite the political season, the real battle is not political – it’s a battle of good versus evil. If Americans were to truly wake up to this reality, Barack Obama’s evil power over our nation would collapse in that instant.
I give both political and business speeches all over America, and all over the world. I know a great speech when I see and hear one. Obama’s speech last night at the DNC was masterful. It was one of the greatest political speeches I’ve ever heard.
There was one problem: It was 100 percent fiction, fraud and fantasy.
If it were given by any CEO in America at a shareholders meeting, or a press conference in front of the media, that CEO would face life in prison for fraud and misrepresentation.
Any screenwriter in Hollywood could have made it up out of thin air and won an Academy Award.
It could have been a speech written by Bernie Madoff.
It could have been written by Lucifer himself, to be delivered by the anti-Christ.
[...]
Obama himself is the psychopath, sociopath and ego-maniac who rules as a tyrant, by issuing executive orders, ignoring the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law, and making believe Congress doesn’t exist. Every word directed at Trump described Obama, Obama’s last eight years of rule and Obama’s voters. Lucifer himself would be proud.
What LGBT Stuff Is The MRC Freaking Out About This Month? Topic: Media Research Center
There's too much anti-LGBT ranting at the Media Research Center to catch it all individually. So once again, we'll summarize the lowlights of the gay stuff the MRC freaked out about over the past month.
First up, NewsBusters coward "Bruce Bookter" mocked transgender athlete Chris Mosier after he appeared in ESPN's Body Issue for saying that he's finally comfortable in his own skin: "It must have been truly awful for Mosier. You know, forced to occupy the same body that was apparently good enough to become one of the greatest athletes in the entire world. The horror."
"Bookter" took even more offense to Mosier saying that, as a member of Team USA as a duathlete, "I sort of feel like I'm representing the good parts of the country":
Take that North Carolina! Isn’t it amazing that the same people who champion individuality, and don’t want to be judged, can seamlessly “transition” out of that façade and turn into social engineering overseers? Also, completely horrifying is the idea that Mosier sees the role on Team USA, not as representing the country and all people in it, but instead sees the role as a social and cultural model for an America as it should be.
[...]
So the liberals and their friends in the Rainbow Jihad can now take their place among such wholesome, family friendly institutions as Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Those who have used their Olympians, not merely as athletes, but as propaganda symbols for the way they think society should be.
So gays are waging "jihad" and are just like Nazis and commies? No wonder "Bookter" hides behind a fake name -- if we wrote such a thing, we'd be just as embarrassed to put our real name to it.
Tim Graham, meanwhile, is upset that a op-ed writer and "gay activist" Nico Lang correctly identified the anti-transgender American College of Pediatricians as a "right-wing advocacy group" for dismissing gender reassignment surgery as gender mutiliation -- and, while he's at it, the American Psychological Association for no longer considering being transgender as a mental illness:
So, according to Lang, science has progressed to the point where getting one’s penis or breasts removed is not “genital mutilation.” It’s a lifestyle choice? Who is stating a plain fact, and who is trying to empty words of their meaning?
The ACP is a “right-wing advocacy group,” but when the American Psychological Association (APA) bends to a left-wing lobbying campaign to proclaim political correctness about transgenders, that’s “science” progressing, not politics. Conservatism is a threat to “public health” – if you define “health care” as genital mutilation.
[...]
Lang is delighted that the APA has abandoned the term “gender identity disorder,” with simple “gender dysphoria” – and that term only applies to people who have a “temporary mental state” of upset about their er, fluidity. Being transgender is exactly the same as being left-handed.
Maggie McKneely has a finely honed freakout after learning that the Nickelodeon cartoon "The Loud House" will include a same-sex couple, declaring it to be part of an "agenda" to "indoctrinate children":
Variety excitedly wrote that the episode “makes no hoopla over the appearance of the married gay couple” and it’s “definitely not treated like a big deal.” Well, isn’t that the point? To make kids believe that it’s perfectly normal for their friends to have two dads? The Misters McBride, voiced by comedians Wayne Brady and Michael McDonald, are painted as being just like any set of heterosexual parents – overprotective, goofy, and loving. They’re even health conscious, telling their son to avoid nuts, gluten, and sugar. See, kids? These guys are just like your parents.
This isn’t the first time Nickelodeon has pushed an agenda on its young, impressionable audience. Since 2009, Nick has been running “The Big Green Help” multimedia campaign, which is aimed at encouraging kids to join the cult of lefty environmentalism.
Although there are other animated shows trying to indoctrinate children, none has the viewership size of The Loud House, or the major platform that is Nickelodeon.
And Karen Townsend has another TV-related freakout, this time because the show "Dead of Summer" has a transgender character whom Townsend claims was inserted "so that the show’s creator can promote his pet social cause – a friend is dealing with the issue. So, in true leftist form, we must ALL be made to deal with it." She whines aboutthe David Bowie Song "Modern Love' playing a role in the episode: "owie is prominent because, as every anguished teen from the 80’s knew, he was a source of courage for his free spirit way of living and pushing the boundaries of sexual liberation. Very appropriate for a show that is promoting LGBT lifestyles to teens in the 2010's."
Because, apparently, the only possible reason to ever put a gay person in a TV show is to "promote" an "agenda."
WND Takes DNC's Birther Bait Again Topic: WorldNetDaily
Art Moore begins his July 27 WorldNetDaily article by stating, "It appears the Obama family just can’t get birth certificates out of their heads." Actually, it's WND who has that problem.
For the second time this week, WND took the bait on a oblique reference to birthers by a member of the Obama family at the Democratic National Convention in order to rehash its discredited "eligibility" conspiracy theories. And Moore goes full-bore on it:
Dozens of lawsuits were filed over that issue before and after Obama’s election in 2008, and, after pressure from Donald Trump and others, the White House ultimately released a document he said was his Hawaiian birth certificate.
The only law-enforcement investigation of the issue, conducted by Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, concluded the document is likely a forgery.
Ironically, it was Hillary Clinton who began the whole “birther” controversy by questioning Obama’s eligibility during the hotly contested 2008 Democratic race against Obama.
It’s not just Obama’s birth certificate that’s in doubt, but he also mysteriously has a Connecticut-based Social Security Number, despite the fact neither he nor his parents ever lived in the Constitution State.
As we've noted, that "only law-enforcement investigation of the issue" was a corrupt sham, with Arpaio's "cold case posse" populated with the like of biurther conspiracists like WND's own Jerome Corsi.
And, no, Hillary Clinton did not "begin the whole “birther” controversy by questioning Obama’s eligibility." As CNN and others have documented, the 2008 Clinton campaign did not pursue the issue, though diehard supporters filed the first lawsuits on the issue. The one organization that pursued the birther issue to ludicrous extents and beyond was the definitely-not-supported-by-Hillary WND -- which, of course, Kovacs fails to mention.
As for Obama's supposedly fraudulent Social Security number, the most logical explanation is that Obama’s return address was mistyped, the initial “9” typed as a “0” which would turn a Hawaiian zip code into one from Connecticut.
For an organization that (currently) insists the birther issue ended in "late 2011," WND sure likes to keep talking about it -- and taking the bait when Democrats bring it up.
CNS Buries News of Trump Inviting Russia To Hack Hillary's Emails Topic: CNSNews.com
You'd think a presidential candidate inviting a foreign power to hack the email accounts of Americans would be big news at CNSNews.com, which purports to care a lot about national security.
But that candidate is Republican Donald Trump, so it wasn't.
CNS' initial article on the press conference in which Trump said he wished for Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's email, by Melanie Hunter, failed to even mention that he said it. Hunter began her article instead with Trump's statement that "he never met Russian President Vladimir Putin but as president, he would rather be 'friendly' with Russia so both countries 'can go and knock out ISIS together' along with other allies."
Hunter was in stenography mode, as most CNS reporters are when writing about Trump, and therefore she couldn't be bothered to note that Trump previously claimed he has spoken "directly and indirectly" with Putin.
Patrick Goodenough featured Trump's press conference in an article the next day -- but didn't mention the hacking invitation. Instead, he touted how "One day after Republican Donald Trump warned that China and Russia 'have never been closer,' China's military announced on Thursday it will hold joint exercises with Russian forces in the South China Sea."
Goodenough wrote an accompanying article that showed him in full spin mode, claiing that "The Russian government may soon release texts of emails hacked from Hillary Clinton’s private server during her time as secretary of state, a respected geopolitical affairs publication reported last month, citing Western intelligence sources." It wasn't until the 13th paragraph of his article that he noted Trump's invitation to Russia to hack Hillary's email, then immediately noted Trump ally Newt Gingrich's baseless assertion that Trump was making a "joke."
It wasn't until a full day later that CNS gave the hacking invitation a bit more prominence, in an article by Susan Jones -- but she, like Goodenough, spun Trump's words in a way to bury the whole treasonous aspect of it:
"It's just a total deflection, this whole thing with Russia," Donald Trump told a news conference on Wednesday.
"In fact, I saw her (Hillary Clinton's) campaign manager -- I don't know his title, Mook. I saw him on television and they asked him about Russia and the (DNC) hacking. By the way, they hacked -- they probably have her 33,000 e-mails. I hope they do. They probably have her 33,000 e-mails that she lost and deleted because you'd see some beauties there."
Trump repeated several times that it may not be Russia who hacked the DNC: "Nobody even knows this, it's probably China, or it could be somebody sitting in his bed. But it shows how weak we are, it shows how disrespected we are."
After telling the news conference that Russia -- or somebody -- probably already has Hillary Clinton's deleted emails, a reporter later returned to the subject, asking Trump why he doesn't tell Russian President Vladimir Puting to stop interfering with the U.S. presidential campaign.
"I have nothing to do with Putin. I've never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me. He doesn't respect our president.
"And if it is Russia -- which it's probably not, nobody knows who it is -- but if it is Russia, it's really bad for a different reason, because it shows how little respect they have for our country, when they would hack into a major party and get everything.
"But it would be interesting to see -- I will tell you this. Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens. That'll be next."
A short time later, Trump repeated that nobody knows if the Russians were the ones who hacked into the DNC: "You know (what) the sad thing is? That with the technology and the genius we have in this country, not in government unfortunately, but with the genius we have in government, we don't even know who took the Democratic National Committee e-mails. We don't even know who it is."
Trump also said it's not about the hackers anyway: "It was about the things that were said in those emails. They were terrible things, talking about Jewish, talking about race, talking about atheist, trying to pin labels on people -- what was said was a disgrace, and it was Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and believe me, as sure as you're sitting there, Hillary Clinton knew about it. She knew everything."
Not only did Jones failed to mention the bipartisan criticism of Trump's remarks, she referred to something she called the "Democrat National Convention."That's not a mistake -- right-wingers have maliciously switched "Democratic" for "Democrat" for years.
Jones' commitment to partisan posturing over something as basic as getting names correct tells us what a hack she is -- and the lack of journalistic seriousness of her employer.
UPDATE: A July 29 article by Goodenough on Joe Biden referring to Russian premier Vladimir Putin as a "dictator" waits until the very end to note Trump's hacking invitation to Russia, but then added, "Trump later characterized the comments as sarcasm."
This means that CNS has yet to make Trump's hacking invitation the primary focus of any article. And this is a "news" operation?
Newsmax Highlights Negative News About Company It's Feuding With Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax is currently embroiled in a dispute with Dish Network for the past couple months over the terms under which Dish carries Newsmax TV, which has meant that Dish has pulled the channel off its system for now.
That seems like the proper light in which to view Newsmax highlighting a July 22 Bloomberg article -- under the headline "Dish Network Loses Record-Setting 281,000 Subscribers" -- noting that Dish Network "lost a record number of TV subscribers in the second quarter as programming blackouts and price increases drove customers to seek cheaper online alternatives."
Newsmax failed to add a note to the article that it's in a dispute with Dish, which would seem to be a relevant disclosure.
Even WorldNetDaily, the least credible news operation in America, can stumble upon doing some actual journalism on occasion -- stopped clock, and all that -- and we would remiss if we didn't recognize it.
Michael Morris writes in a July 27 CNSNews.com 
Jerome Corsi's new WorldNetDaily-published 
The fail starts early in Robert V. Carl's July 29 Newsmax 
Is Donald Trump one of the contributors to WorldNetDaily's 
Accuracy in Media's resident 
WorldNetDaily's unbylined July 22 
CNSNews.com reacted to the historic news of Hillary Clinton being the first female major-party presidential nominee in its usual fashion: with partisan sniping instead of the fair and balanced journalism a real news operation is supposed to engage in.
Barack Obama’s allegiance to Islam appears to trump everything else he supposedly values. The killer Mateen shot up a homosexual club on “Latin Night,” but even the horrific deaths of blacks, Latinos and homosexuals is not enough for Obama to call out Islamists.
There's too much anti-LGBT ranting at the Media Research Center to catch it all individually. So 
Art Moore begins his July 27 WorldNetDaily 
You'd think a presidential candidate inviting a foreign power to hack the email accounts of Americans would be big news at CNSNews.com, which purports to care a lot about national security.
Newsmax is currently 
