It's Always the Cold War In Cliff Kincaid's Head Topic: Accuracy in Media
The Cold War ended decades ago, but Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid apepars not to have gotten the memo -- he's as obsessed with finding communists under every rock as any cold warrior. Thus, we have this overly lengthy Sept. 1 AIM piece from Kincaid that starts out thusly:
The lack of coverage in 2008 of the embarrassing facts in Barack Obama’s background, especially his deep personal relationship with a Communist by the name of Frank Marshall Davis, stands as a sensational example of how dishonest the national media can be when they are determined to elect somebody. If Obama’s opponent, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), had been linked to a Nazi or a Klansman, the press would have jumped on the story, with endless follow-ups. But the story of Obama’s Communist mentor was suppressed by a journalist for The Washington Post who had all the essential details and could have broken the story wide open.
We now know why the potential blockbuster story about Obama’s Communist mentor was deliberately ignored by Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalist David Maraniss. He had personal and political conflicts that prevented him from telling the truth about Obama to the American people. Simply put, his parents were Communists, just like Davis.
Maraniss, in other words, was a red-diaper baby.
The shocking truth can finally be told. His parents, Elliott and Mary Maraniss, along with Davis, were members of the same international conspiracy which had groomed Obama for the presidency, in order to hasten the decline and destruction of the United States.
We're into some serious guilt-by-association territory here. It's a very tangental attack on Obama by going after the author of a book Kincaid didn't like.
And Kincaid is just spouting off by claiming that Maraniss "deliberately ignored" and "suppressed" the story of "Obama’s Communist mentor." He knows no such thing -- he's just ranting and speculating.
And these sorts of weird, tangental attacks are a big reason why few people take AIM seriously as a source for credible media criticism.
AIM's Kincaid Defends the Honor of White Supremacists Topic: Accuracy in Media
For some reason, Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid loves Jared Taylor, the unambuguously racist head of white-supremacist group American Renaissance. He's promoted Taylor before, fretting that the Southern Poverty Law Center "has smeared Taylor as a 'white nationalist'" (it's not a smear if it's true, Cliff) and laughably denying that Taylor and AmRen are racist, insisting that merely deals with "racial issues" like the Congressional Black Caucus.
Well, Kincaid has struck again in an Aug. 29 AIM column. First, he's upset that Hillary Clinton's campaign is pointing out the white-nationalist support for Donald Trump and doesn't see why it's such a big deal: "I frankly don’t know who or what she is talking about. Is it objectionable for white people to defend their interests and even be proud of their race? Is that 'white nationalism?'"
Kincaid quickly moves from that to defending the honor of his white-supremacist friends at AmRen:
It would be nice if these columnists would let the pro-white groups speak for themselves. It would also be nice to have a few facts in place of their vitriol.
One good source of information on all of this is the website of American Renaissance, a self-described “white advocacy organization.”
American Renaissance declares, “The United States is not a territory that is up for grabs, and that belongs to whoever manages—legally or illegally—to get here. It was founded by Europeans, who gave it its culture and institutions, and America’s European core has every right to resist dispossession.”
Is there some doubt that European Americans founded this country?
American Renaissance goes on to say, “American Renaissance is a voice for all white people whose hopes for preserving their people and culture are being sacrificed under the delusion that diversity is a strength. Diversity of race, language or religion is a source of weakness and tension for a country. To ask whites—anywhere in the world—to ‘celebrate diversity’ is to ask them to celebrate their declining numbers and dwindling influence. It is to ask them to welcome oblivion.”
One can disagree with Trump on this or that issue. But the idea that it’s wrong to appeal to or attract white voters is simply ludicrous. Is it objectionable for whites to advocate policies advantageous to their race?
Kincaid then complains that if appealing to minorities is OK, why is it such a bad thing for anyone to explicitly appeal to whites, like Jared Taylor does?
It is perfectly fine, from the liberal media’s point of view, to appeal to blacks and other minorities. But whites are off-limits. Hence, to even speak of a “white identity” makes one a racist or a nationalist. This is complete nonsense, especially from a media that doesn’t even use the accurate phrase “illegal aliens” anymore.
In 2012 the Obama campaign ran a 60-second ad entitled, “We’ve Got Your Back,” appealing to black voters’ nostalgia about the election of the nation’s first African-American president. It called on those voters to “have the President’s back” and stand with Obama again in November of 2012.
Obama’s mentor had taught him that black people have “reason to hate.”
Where was the outrage?
We commented four years ago that Jared Taylor, author of the book, White Identity, had been banned from most programs because he dared to talk about whites as people with special interests of their own, separate from various minority groups. Taylor runs American Renaissance.
He’s getting more attention today because he is a target of Hillary Clinton’s campaign against Donald J. Trump. Taylor has been lumped into the alt-right category and branded as a “white nationalist.”
That's because he is a white nationalist, Cliff.
Kincaid concludes with what he thinks is his coup de grace: The real racist is Hillary!
Hillary has a $10 billion plan to fight drug addiction with “multi-faceted federal policy leadership.” Her plan says nothing about how to stop the heroin, which kills white people, from coming across the border.
Is she anti-white?
Um, no, Cliff -- you're just projecting. Further, as Vox explains, Clinton's plan does address the heroin epidemic through increased funding for prevention and treatment programs. It also proposes to increase access to naloxone, a drug that can reverse the effects of an overdose of heroin or other opiates.
Vox also points out that prescription opioid drugs have contributed to heroinuse, and Clinton's plan would also give doctors better training and tools to know which patients actually need painkillers and which may be likely to abuse them.
Kincaid apparently doesn't understand that one key way to address the supply of heroin is to address the demand; as the Economist notes, rising supply is linked to rising demand. Merely addressing supply without addressing demand, as Kincaid seems to want, does not solve the problem.
AIM Lets Anti-Gay Activist Attack 'Media Myths' About Gay 'Agenda' Topic: Accuracy in Media
Accuracy in Media -- never particularly friendly to gays -- has published a report claiming to "expose and refute some of the longstanding statistical lies and propagandistic myths of the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) activist movement."
One huge sign the report wouldn't live up to the standards in AIM's name: it was written by Peter LaBarbera, head of the virulently anti-gay group Americans For Truth About Homosexuality. The Southern Poverty Law Center has detailed how LaBarbera and his group traffics in distortions and falsehoods about gays.
True to form, LaBarbera paints gays as filthy and disease-ridden, lovingly detailing how they are more likely to catch diseases like HIV and syphilis. He denies all evidence that homosexuality may have a genetic basis and thinks bans on conversion therapy are "highly dangerous" (as opposed to the therapy itself).
LaBarbera touts a study claiming that children of homosexual parents have more emotional problems than in other types of families, but that study has been criticized as using highly flawed data and was published in a for-profit journal that takes payments from authors to get published, meaning that its peer-review process was questionable.
LaBarbera also extensively quotes discredited anti-gay and anti-transgender psychiatrist Paul McHugh -- a favorite of CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman -- and his list of "helpful sites" all at least as gay-hating as his own, except for the Centers for Disease Control, which "is strongly pro-homosexual" but serves LaBarbera's purpose by issuing reports with "ample evidence on the relationship between homosexual/bisexual behavior and disease."
So anti-gay hate is "accuracy in media"? Apparently it is at AIM.
AIM Trots Out Ethically Challenged Journalist To Lament 'The Sad State of Modern Journalism' Topic: Accuracy in Media
Yes, this Aug. 8 Accuracy in Media article by Alex Nitzberg really exists:
Criticizing the current state of modern journalism, Tucker Carlson told Accuracy in Media (AIM) that journalists’ obsequious behavior, blatant bias and monolithic worldview have compromised the integrity of the nation’s fourth estate.
Carlson, a member of the Fox News team and a veteran journalist who co-founded The Daily Caller, asserts that many journalists bask in the presence of “the powerful” and are “…afraid to challenge anybody in power.”
[...]
He explained that regardless of the election’s outcome, the media’s advocacy has destroyed its claim to objectivity.
Pointing out that a conflict of interest will arise if Trump wins and the largely anti-Trump media must report on his presidency, he said, “… how are they gonna cover that, the administration? Can they? Haven’t they discredited themselves?”
[...]
Carlson believes journalists should seek the truth, “even if it leads them into uncomfortable places and especially if it leads them to places they didn’t expect to arrive…that’s what I thought journalism was, pursuit of what’s true, of accuracy, but not just accuracy, of truth.”
This would be the same Tucker Carlson whose Daily Caller has published numerous false and dubious claims as well as right-wing conspiracy theories. More recently, Carlson has admitted that he doesn't permit Daily Caller writers to publish anything critical of Fox News because he co-hosts a show there. So much for Carlson's pursuit of the truth.
That's who AIM thinks should opine on what the headline calls "the sad state of modern journalism": someone who's playing a key role in perpetuating it.
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).
AIM Is Mad One Reporter Showed Its Benghazi Kangaroo Court Sham Topic: Accuracy in Media
In his July 5 column, Accuracy in Media's Roger Aronoff predictably complained that the "liberal media" mostly ignored the final report from AIM's Benghazi kangaroo court -- er, the Citizens' Commission on Benghazi. And he also complained about the one "liberal media" member that did, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank, who allegedly "regularly trolls conservative gatherings to heap scorn, sarcasm and peddle misinformation to his waiting readers. That is the sad state of journalism in this country today." Aronoff complains:
During the course of Milbank’s article, he called the members of the CCB “a coalition of far-right foreign-policy types,” “conspiracy theorists,” and “agitators.” This is all part of the attempt to discredit the messenger, because Milbank can’t really dispute the message—although he has certainly tried. But at least he was there, and spelled the names correctly, though he was wrong about the number of members on the commission (it’s 14, plus two advisory, not 11). Apparently the Post’s Fact-Checker was busy on other stories that day. Maybe they should hire more.
Milbank found our report to be what he called “full of inventive accusations.”
“They found ‘troubling evidence that Obama and Clinton were deeply and knowingly involved in running guns to al-Qaeda in Libya,’” writes Milbank, “as well as ‘a clear case of official U.S. government submission to the Islamic Law on slander.’”
“They determined that the Obama administration ‘switched sides in what was then called the Global War on Terror’ and ‘benefited this country’s worst enemies,’” he continues. “They wrote that Clinton herself blocked U.S. military forces from attempting a rescue mission, and they attributed the decision to oust Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi in part to financial interests of the Clinton Foundation.”
When Milbank quotes from the CCB’s findings, the obvious inference is that he finds these points to be baseless—and believes they could only originate from the minds of right-wing conspiracy theorists. The findings in the CCB’s latest report are, indeed, very damning accusations. But we back them up in every case, and encourage people to read the report and judge for themselves. Our military and intelligence experts—former admirals, generals, colonels, congressmen and CIA officers—are people with vast service to this country and outstanding reputations.
Aronoff doesn't want to talk about how the CCB is filled with far-right foreign policy types and conspiracy theorists because he knows that's indisputably true. His insistence that "our military and intelligence experts—former admirals, generals, colonels, congressmen and CIA officers—are people with vast service to this country and outstanding reputations" doesn't contradict the fact that they are, in fact, Obama-haters and birthers who had no intention of conducting a fair and balanced investigation.
Indeed, according to Milbank, one of the speakersat the press conference referred to Obama as "Barack Hussein Soetero Obama," a name only birthers and Obama-haters would use. Aronoff doesn't mention that.
Milbank also pointed out that the CCB included as a member Wayne Simmons, who was recently sentenced to prison on various fraud charges after it was discovered that he apparently lied about being a longtime CIA operative. Aronoff didn't note Milbank's reference to Simmons, let alone address why a commission that had him as a member has any credibility.
Aronoff is apparently under orders from AIM chief Don Irvine not to discuss Simmons; after news of Simmons' arrest broke last fall, AIM scrubbed its website of most references to Simmons and issued a statement on him that is the last public statement anyone at AIM has made about Simmons.
Like it or not, the presence of Simmons on the CCB, as much as AIM is now pretending it never happened, is a(nother) reason not to take the CCB seriously, as is Aronoff's refusal to discuss him.
Aronoff continues his complaint against Milbank:
It is Milbank who is being played for the fool by not looking at the evidence.
Apparently he doesn’t believe that Hillary Clinton, or anyone else, for that matter, “blocked U.S. military forces from attempting a rescue mission.” Yet American military assets were not sent to aid those in Benghazi. The Americans in Benghazi were left to withstand multiple terror attacks on their own, lasting approximately 13 hours from start to finish.
Actually, the reason to believe that Cliinton "blocked U.S. military forces from attempting a rescue mission" is because the commission offered no evidence that it happened.
Looking at the CCB report, the main source for that is an article at the far-right FrontPageMag.com by right-winger Ken Timmerman, whose headline falsely states that Clinton issued a "stand-down order" to troops purportedly ready to go to Benghazi on a rescue mission. Timmerman himself doesn't even claim that; he simply speculates that Clinton refused to authorize a military rescue into Benghazi, based on a memo issued by Jeremy Bash, an aide to then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.
In fact, as the Democratic members of the House Selecddt Committee on Benghazi point out, the Bash memo confirms previous testimony by Panetta and others that even if military assets were blocked from going in (which they weren't), Americans at the Benghazi facility were evacuated before they would have arrived.
Meanwhile, note who does get Aronoff's praise for reporting on AIM's little kangaroo court:
Jerome Corsi at WorldNetDaily did read the report, and he wrote a different sort of article illuminating the dereliction of duty by the Obama administration.
[...]
Corsi recounts how Charles Woods, the father of Ty Woods, spoke at the June 29 press conference, and asked to know who is “responsible” for his son’s death. Ty was a former Navy SEAL who was part of the CIA Annex Security Team. In fact, I hope every American will get the chance to watch the movie “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.” It is available on demand on most cable TV services. I attended the premiere last January in Dallas.
Jennifer Harper of The Washington Times also highlighted the new report from the CCB.
Needless to say, neither Corsi nor Harper mention the conspiratorial, Obama-hating nature of the CCB members or that the discredited criminal Simmons was a member. And Aronoff doesn't admit that WND and the Washington Times have right-wing editorial biases.
In other words, Aronoff is praising WND and the WashTimes for uncritically repeating what it wanted to be made public. That's not "accuracy in media"; that's stenography.
And he's mad that one media outlet did raise uncomfortable truths about the CCB that he did not want discussed, an attitude that appears to contradict the whole "accuracy in media" thing AIM claims to be all about.
AIM's Kincaid Thinks Transgender Soldiers Are Like Corporal Klinger Topic: Accuracy in Media
Accuracy in Media's chief gay-hater, Cliff Kincaid, is at it again. In a June 28 column titled "Corporal Klinger Reporting for Duty," he rants:
As if to add insult to injury, the Department of Defense will lift its ban on transgenders on July 1.
We predicted this development back in 2010. “The MASH television spectacle of Corporal Klinger wearing women’s dresses to get out of the military may now give way to the Pentagon actually permitting transgendered male soldiers to openly wear women’s military uniforms,” we said. “This is what repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ could mean.” The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was designed to keep active and open homosexuals out of the military services.
These developments prove that the “fundamental transformation” of America promised by Obama has been most evident in the cultural rather than economic sphere. His communist mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a pedophile.
Yes, Kincaid thinks all transgender people will wear dresses on the front lines instead of regular fatigues, like Corporal Klinger.
Speaking of that casual smear of all gays as pedophiles, Kincaid also serves up this creative interpretation of the Stonewall riots:
President Obama’s determination to eliminate any notion of sexual deviance or perversion in American society continues at a rapid pace. He just released a video announcement of his designation of a gay bar, the Stonewall Inn in New York City, as a national monument.
Obama’s video made it seem as if the homosexuals at the formerly Mafia-controlled facility were giving their lives for the greater good of the nation. The place had been raided in 1969 because it was a location for men known as chicken hawks wanting sex with underage boys. Homosexuals rioted in response, injuring several policemen.
No, Cliff, gays were not rioting to have sex with "underage boys." They were rioting against years of harassment by the police. That the bar had Mafia links is irrelevant to the issue.
When Vince Foster Conspiracy Theorists Collide Topic: Accuracy in Media
In June, former Newsmax reporter Ronald Kessler got some right-wing press by running to the Daily Mail content mill to claim that Hillary Clinton is responsible for Vincent Foster's death because "she attacked and humiliated her mentor from their former Rose Law Firm in front of other White House aides a week before he took his own life."
Kessler's source is "former FBI agent Coy Copeland," a favorite Kessler source who appears to have done nothing with his alleged career but ply Kessler with stories about how terrible the Clintons purportedly are. Despite the lack of documentation of the claims, the Washington Times published a version of Kessler's conspiracy, and the Clinton-haters at WorldNetDaily devoted an entire article to it.
But another Clinton-hating conspiracy-monger is having none of it. In ah June 22 Acuracy in Media column, Hugh Turley -- who believes Foster was murdered -- is not pleased by Kessler's theories because it contradicts his own conspiracy theory:
Patrick Knowlton and I examined over 20,000 pages of documents from the Foster death investigation, including scores of FBI handwritten notes and interview reports of friends, family and co-workers of Foster. Many of these FBI documents that we reviewed at the National Archives were unredacted. We never saw any mention of a meeting a week before Foster’s death with Hillary, Foster, and other staff present—not even a tele-conference.
The FBI has been covering up the murder of Foster with the help of the news media since 1993. FBI agents have falsified interview reports to make it appear Foster’s car was at Fort Marcy Park when it was not.
[...]
The latest attempt to cover-up the murder unfairly blames Mrs. Clinton for causing a suicide, when she clearly did not. Trump, who has been opposed by establishment Republicans that have long ignored Foster’s murder, should not be silent.
WND also published Turley's response to Kessler, though WND curiously linked only to Kessler's Daily Mail article and not its own article summarizing it.
AIM's Kincaid Returns to Pushing Conspiracy Theories About Obama's 'Real Father' Topic: Accuracy in Media
WorldNetDaily wasn't the only ConWeb outlet to jump back on the Obama Derangement Express with the release of of cache of letters written by Barack Obama's father. Longtime Obama-hater Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy in Media joins Jack Cashill and Jerome Corsi in going into full conspiracy mode in a June 20 column:
Seven years into Barack Obama’s presidency, the scales may slowly be falling from the eyes of The New York Times. Could the truth about America’s red diaper baby President be starting to emerge?
In a story about papers of his reported father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., the Times said that President Obama has shown no interest in “the newly discovered documents, which included nearly two dozen of his father’s letters, his transcripts from the University of Hawaii and Harvard University, and references from professors, advisers and supporters.” The paper added, “Nearly three years later, as Mr. Obama celebrates his last Father’s Day in the White House, the center [the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem] is still waiting” for a response from the President as to whether he is interested in seeing the documents.
What accounts for this strange behavior from Obama? Could the lack of interest have something to do with the fact that the Kenyan is not Obama’s real father?
Kincaid goes on, as WND's Cashill did, to cite liar and charlatan Joel Gilbert's discredited film asserting that Frank Marshall Davis is Obama's "real father" as evidence of his conspiracy. But Kincaid's not done conspiracy-ing:
Based on all the available evidence, including the newly discovered documents, it would appear that the Kenyan Obama had been used not only for the purpose of concealing an illicit relationship between Obama’s mother and Davis, but also for hiding a Marxist agenda for America and the world.
But Obama’s cover-up goes much deeper than this.
For that "deeper" conspiracy, Kincaid cites an even more discredited Obama-hater, Ed Klein, to claim that Obama is comfortable being a Christian without renouncing his "Islamic background."
Two days later, Kincaid followed up to elaborate on his Obama-hating conspiracy:
With the release of papers associated with the Kenyan Obama, it is clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that President Barack Obama was not his son. The nation has been treated to a monumental deception. Indeed, Obama campaigned as someone he is not. One can understand some of the reasons for the deception. Davis was a communist whose illicit affair with Obama’s mother was not something to be proud of. But shame should have taken a back seat to the need for the American people to learn the truth. Obama decided not to take that route. He told the American people a whopper about his dad being from Kenya. It was a calculated political deception, much like the claim he made while campaigning for office in 2008 that he was a committed Christian. Once he was elected, he became “The Politician Without a Church,” someone more likely to be on a golf course than worshipping Christ, and a president eager to accommodate the demands of the Muslim world.
Although Obama is nearing the end of his presidency, the questions which follow proof of his lies are still relevant, since he will rally Democrats to vote for Hillary Clinton, the apparent Democratic nominee, and has several months to do more damage. Before campaigning for a woman who may be charged with being a security risk, he should be asked about the lies that he told that, if exposed in 2008 or 2012, might have convinced millions of voters that he wasn’t to be trusted with the power of the presidency. In his own way, Obama was more of a security risk than Mrs. Clinton. But as a candidate and as President, he never underwent a background security check, enabling him to decide on his own what information was “secure” and what was not.
Since Democrats are charging that Donald J. Trump is a charlatan of some sort, shouldn’t Barack Obama’s lies about his controversial background be exposed, once and for all? Isn’t Obama the real charlatan? Didn’t he conceal major aspects of his background in order to win the presidency?
If anything, Obama seems to be a much bigger charlatan. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is accused of making business deals that ripped people off, such as in the case of Trump University. Legal proceedings will determine the truth of these claims. Obama, by contrast, committed electoral fraud, promising “hope and change” that has turned out to be a version of the kind of socialism that is currently ravaging Venezuela. Obama’s fraud has put the entire country at risk.
Kincaid likes hanging out with liars and charlatans like Joel Gilbert, so why wouldn't he embrace Trump?
AIM's Kincaid Joins Right-Wing Game of Abusing Vince Foster's Corpse Again Topic: Accuracy in Media
WorldNetDaily isn't the only ConWeb component overjoyed at Donald Trump bringing up Vincent Foster conspiracy theories to attempt to smear Hillary. Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid is just as gleeful:
Donald J. Trump has brought up the case of the mysterious death of former Clinton aide Vincent Foster, calling it “fishy.” Trump is right. Foster is the man who knew too much. He had knowledge of various Clinton scandals, including Travelgate, the Waco tragedy, and possibly some illegal activities involving national security. His body was found in a Virginia park on July 20, 1993, and the media accepted the verdict of suicide.
But as AIM founder and late chairman Reed Irvine and I reported on the case, there were so many anomalies that the Special Division of the Court of Appeals ordered an appendix added to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s report on the death of Vincent Foster. The appendix exposed serious flaws in the report that cast strong doubt on the suicide finding.
[...]
Yes, something was, and is, very fishy in the case of the death of Vincent Foster. Media attacks on Trump are a diversion from the media’s documented unwillingness to thoroughly investigate the case. Irvine said at the time, “The cover-up is so transparent to those familiar with the facts that it is maddening to see those responsible make America look like a nation of dolts. Not that we haven’t tried to make the truth known, but the brilliant men and women who decide what’s fit to print and to air in the traditional media need to have their closed minds pried open.”
Irvine’s comments are even more appropriate now.
Like WND, Kincaid also cites former Starr investigator Miguel Rodriguez (and makes sure not to mention that he's apparently transgender now) and gives a special shout-out to fellow conspiracy-monger Hugh Turley "for assisting with this article." Which tells you all you need to know about Kincaid's prejudices.
Meanwhile, Foster's sister wrote a Washington Post op-ed who denounced "irresponsinble" and "cruel" people like Trump (and Kincaid) who cravenly use her brother's death for "political advantage." Both Kincaid and AIM have ignored her thus far,depriving us of an opportunity to see them deny their cruelty and cravenness.
AIM's 'Accuracy in Media' Fail Topic: Accuracy in Media
In a May 5 Accuracy in Media blog post headlined "Obama Believes the Flint Water Crisis is a Shared Responsibility," Spencer Irvine tries to snark by adding: "At least he didn’t pivot and blast Republicans, when the EPA was at fault for the current water crisis."
But the link Irvine provides as evidence that "the EPA was a fault" for the Flint water crisis says no such thing. In fact, the Washington Examiner article doesn't even mention the EPA; rather, it explicitly states that "A report done by the state indicated state environmental officials are at fault for the crisis."
So much for "accuracy in media" from the third generation of Irvines to be involved in the AIM family business.
AIM's Kincaid, An Obama Birther, Won't Touch Cruz Eligibility Topic: Accuracy in Media
WorldNetDaily's not the only ConWeb outlet that wants nothing to do with Ted Cruz's eligibility issues. Cliff Kincaid writes in his April 20 Accuracy in Media column, in the midst of an anti-Trump tirade complaining that "there is no eligibility requirement to be a Republican":
Trump, for a while, was harping on the fact that Cruz was born in Canada, as if that had any bearing on his credentials as a Republican. It was a diversion from the fact that Trump really wasn’t a Republican and had no business in the race. The real question, therefore, is not the eligibility of Cruz but the eligibility of Trump.
Kincaid, however, did think Barack Obama's eligibility was an issue. From September 2009, AIM proclaimed that Kincaid released his own birth certificate in order to raise questions about Obama's:
“My birth certificate includes the names of my mother and father, my mother’s doctor, and the hospital in which I was born,” said Kincaid. “This certified copy of an original long form document is what anyone who wants to be president should be prepared to produce.”
Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution, states, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
[...]
“Journalism used to ask who, what, when, where, why and how,” said Kincaid. “But today’s pro-Obama journalists want to ignore those questions when it comes to the constitutional eligibility of the current occupant of the oval office. They would rather accept what the Obama campaign (and now administration) wants them to believe. The Obama document may reflect what is in another document, but we really have no way of knowing. The only way to address these questions is to identify where exactly he was born, in what hospital, and what doctor was present. All of this information should be on an original birth certificate.”
Kincaid continued, “It is not unreasonable to ask questions about Barack Obama’s birthplace. Anybody who has an original copy of their own birth certificate, or a certified copy of their own original birth certificate, should immediately understand that the Obama version is lacking in basic information that should be publicly available.”
Kincaid asked, “Whatever happened to the public’s right to know?”
We haven't found anything by Kincaid stating that he's satisfied by Obama's release of his long-form birth certificate. He has promoted discredited filmmaker Joel Gilbert's debunked claim that Frank Marshall Davis is Obama's father.
Additionally, several members of AIM's "Citizens' Commission on Benghazi" kangaroo court are serious Obama birthers who, as far as we know, have not raised similar questions about Cruz.
Apparently, Kincaid's concern about "the public’s right to know" doesn't extend to questions about candidates he supports.
AIM's Kincaid Promotes Discredited Vaccine-Autism Link Topic: Accuracy in Media
Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid has been an anti-vaxxer for a while, pushing the discredited idea that vaccines cause autism. He has insisted that "the science is not settled" on the subject, and he's touted the anti-vaxxers at the National Vaccine Information Center as credible spokespeople when they simply want to fearmonger.
Kincaid begins his April 4 column by needlessly making things political, ranting that "liberals and the left-wingers who come down on the side of the drug companies, known as Big Pharma. They want government to force parents to have their infants injected with potentially dangerous vaccines that may be linked to the developmental disorder known as autism."
Kincaid then promotes former NBC executive Bob Wright, who has a new book out that touches on the subject. Kincaid notes that Wright founded the autism advocacy group Autism Speaks, but not that the group has taken the position that "Vaccines do not cause autism" (though that position statement is accompanied by a more ambiguous one by Wright insisting that "Scientific research has not directly connected autism to vaccines").
Kincaid then opromoted the film "VAXXED: From Cover-up to Catastrophe," which he benignly called "a documentary about the possible link between vaccines and autism that is based largely on the work of a CDC whistleblower." Actually, the film is made by Andrew Wakefield, a now-defrocked doctor whose 1998 study claiming to link vaccines to autism has been retracted by the medical journal that published it and has been called a fraud.
Kincaid then credulously writes this:
Dr. Stephanie Seneff, a research scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), says in the trailer for the film that if present trends continue, by 2032 half of the children—and 80 percent of the boys—will be autistic. She says, “This will be a complete catastrophe if we just let it happen.”
That's complete and utter bull. In fact, the autism rate among children has leveled off at 1 in 68, and increasing diagnosis rates in previous years likely had much to do with a "learning curve" among doctors when it came to properly diagnosing autism spectrum disorders.
Meanwhile, Kincaid howls that "vaccines have led to the dramatic increase in autism" and rants that vaccines "have become a cash cow for Big Pharma. There is a vested financial interest in increasing the number of vaccines, and making them mandatory at earlier ages." Perhaps Kincaid should disclose what his vested financial interests are in perpetuating a falsehood.
AIM Joins WND In Trying To Revive Vince Foster Conspiracy Theories Topic: Accuracy in Media
WorldNetDaily isn't the only ConWeb outlet trying to revive fake Clinton scandals to try and take down Hillary Clinton.
A March 25 Accuracy in Media column by Hugh Turley prattles on about the "cover-up" of the "murder" of Vince Foster and tries to play concern troll:
As Hillary Clinton moves closer to securing the Democratic Party nomination for president, her critics and supporters might wonder why she has no apparent interest in the ongoing cover-up of the murder of her close friend and confidant. The day after Foster died, Hillary had lunch at her mother’s home in Arkansas with James Rutherford III, a friend and associate of Foster and the Clintons and dean of the Clinton School in Arkansas, and he told the FBI, “Hillary Clinton was in complete shock and disbelief at the thought of Foster committing suicide.” And she wasn’t alone. What changed her mind?
Needless to say, Turley -- credited only as having "co-authored the final 20 pages of Ken Starr's Report on Vince Foster's death" -- makes no mention of the numerous investigations that found Foster's death to be a suicide. Instead he suggests a more timely, if murky, conspiracy theory: that Brett Kavanaugh, an investigator for Starr, somehow fixed things for the Clintons by making sure any official intimation of murder disappeared from the Starr report on Foster, and that Hillary Clinton, if elected president, will elevate him to the Supreme Court as thanks, or something.
You can't make this stuff up, folks. And as long as there are Clinton-obsessed right-wingers around to gin up conspracy theories, you never have to.
AIM Chairman Baselessly Blames Bookstore for Apparent Prank Topic: Accuracy in Media
Accuracy in Media chairman Don Irvine rants in a Dec. 29 AIM blog post:
Looks like a Miami, Florida Barnes & Noble got caught red-handed showing its liberal bias towards some Republican presidential candidates. Especially when it comes to Donald Trump and Ben Carson.
Robbie Myers, the digital director for the Senate Republican Conference, spotted Trump’s new book, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, along with another Trump book and Carson’s latest, A More Perfect Union: What We the People Can Do to Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties, in the store’s humor section.
Maybe the manager of the bookstore thinks Trump and Carson are just naturally funny guys—they’re certainly funnier than Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders—but considering that they are the only books written by any presidential candidates in that section is suspicious at best.
This type of behavior by a bookstore towards Republican or conservative books isn’t anything new, but in the age of social media it’s much harder to get away with it.
Completely lacking from Irvine's post: any evidence that a bookstore employee actually did this. It's much more likely that a mischievous customer put the books there without the knowledge of any employee.
This reminds us of the time WorldNetDaily devoted an actual "news" story to a copy of Hillary Clinton's autobiography being placed in a bookstore's science fiction section. WND credited a "mischievous customer" who "is likely one of the majority of Americans who, according to new national polls, think the New York senator is not being truthful in her new book."
We're guessing Irvine was perfectly fine with that bit of silliness and did not baselessly blame bookstore employees for it, as he is doing here.
And Irvine wonders about AIM's increasing irrelevence in the media-criticism game.
The Cold War ended decades ago, but Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid apepars not to have gotten the memo -- he's as obsessed with finding communists under every rock as any cold warrior. Thus, we have this overly lengthy Sept. 1 AIM piece from Kincaid that starts out thusly:
For some reason, Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid loves Jared Taylor, the 
Accuracy in Media -- never particularly friendly to gays -- has published a 
Yes, this Aug. 8 Accuracy in Media 
In his July 5 
In June, former Newsmax reporter Ronald Kessler got some right-wing press by running to the 
In a May 5 Accuracy in Media 
Accuracy in Media chairman Don Irvine rants in a Dec. 29 AIM 
