MRC: CNN's Amanpour 'Angrily Maim[s]' Hillary Critics
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck goes a little too far into hyperbolic-rhetoric territory in his Sept. 13 post:

CNN International host Christiane Amanpour was at it again on Monday night in flashing her far-left ideology as she used her eponymous show to angrily maim critics of Hillary Clinton and (a select few) in the media as sexist for raising questions about her health and hiding the pneumonia diagnosis and unwilling to let “a girl have a sick day or two.” 

Amanpour is "angrily maiming" her critics? We know Houck is going for hyperbole here, but sheesh.

Houck goes on to write this:

Needless to say, it’s clear Amanpour left the idea of objective analysis in the dust and ignored the initial dismissals of Clinton’s 9/11 episode as just part of their broader “conspiracy theory” narrative being raised not by sensible journalists and voters but the obscene grocery store tabloid The National Enquirer.

Houck seems to have forgotten that his employer had no problem with "the obscene grocery store tabloid The National Enquirer" when it was going after Democrats like John Edwards. He also seems to be unaware that the Enquirer has been promoting Trump throughout the entire presidential campaign by pushing sleazy attacks on his opponents -- including, yes, speculation about Hillary's health -- and that Enquirer CEO David Pecker is a close friend of Trump.

WND Removes Article Bashing NY Times Over Book Classification
Topic: WorldNetDaily

As Richard Bartholomew first noted, WorldNetDaily quietly deleted without explanation an unbylined article complaining that the New York Times won't classify the work of WND buddy and messianic rabbi Jonathan Cahn in a more prominent category. The original link to the article returns a 404 error.

Under the headline "N.Y. Times shafts best-selling Christian author – again!" the uncredited author complains that the Times won't list Cahn's new book "The Book of Mysteries," which came out earlier this month, on its fiction bestseller list, whining:

Apparently, the book is too mysterious to classify for the guardians of the New York Times list.

Or maybe they’ve just had enough of Cahn’s domination of their charts every other year.

While “The Book of Mysteries” clearly outsold almost all the competition and appears on multiple bestsellers lists in its first week of release, the New York Times refuses to classify it as fiction, which it is.

Nor will the Times classify it as non-fiction, which it isn’t.

So it sits in a New York Times list limbo – unable to appear because it is unlike most other books with the exception of possibly appearing on a monthly list with the miscellany.

For some reason, WND really, really wants you to know that Cahn is a fiction writer. It emphasizes that "The Book of Mysteries" "consists of 365 stories of short revelations a fictional seeker of biblical wisdom receives on a spiritual one-year journey. The daily insights can thus be read as daily devotionals." It also points out that "all the other best-sellers lists have no problem with the fiction classification of 'The Book of Mysteries.'" Even WND editor and Cahn friend Joseph Farah gets in on the act:

“Ironically,” said Joseph Farah, the producer of Cahn’s “The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment” and “The Harbinger Man” and WND’s founder, “one of the reasons I was determined to make that movie as a documentary was because of the classification of ‘The Harbinger’ as fiction. While that was a proper classification, given the narrative format, I wanted people to understand that what happened in that book was actually true – simply using fictional characters to make the point. Thus was born ‘The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment.'”

Wait, "The Harbinger" is fiction? We don't recall WND ever promoting it that way. Even the WND online store listing for "The Harbinger" states no fiction designatio, nor does it sell it that way: "Hidden in an ancient biblical prophecy from Isaiah, the mysteries revealed in "The Harbinger" are so precise that they foretold recent American events down to the exact days. It’s all decoded by the author in convincing fashion. The revelations are so specific that even the most hardened skeptics will find them hard to dismiss. It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood thriller with one exception ... IT’S REAL."

Also, the only book listed under the WND store's "fiction" category is "Pilgrim's Progress."

All of this may very well be the reason for why WND mysteriously disappeared this article. The normally loquacious Cahn "declined to be quoted for the article," WND states. Bartholomew suggests that Cahn "didn’t want to risk antagonizing the New York Times," but it's also entirely possible that WND's heavy insistence on how his books are works of fiction didn't sit well with Cahn, who has a reputation as a self-proclaimed biblical scholar and akin-to-prophet to protect (and trade on).

And WND most definitely doesn't want to piss off Cahn, on whose coattails WND has been riding and may actually be WND's most consistent revenue stream -- important for a company with serious financial problems. While it doesn't publish Cahn's books, it has made two films based on him and his work. As a blurb link to the WND store inserted into the article notes, "Jonathan Cahn’s always a No. 1 bestseller in the WND Superstore."

There's nothing noticably false in the article, unlike too many other WND articles. Our guess is that, for whatever reason -- but likely either harm to reputation or desire not to hack off the Times -- Cahn wanted the article taken down, and whatever Cahn wants from WND, we're pretty sure Cahn gets.

But before it goes away for good from the Google cache, below is a copy of the deleted WND article, saved for posterity.

* * *

N.Y. TIMES SHAFTS BEST-SELLING CHRISTIAN AUTHOR – AGAIN!
Refuses to recognize fiction label, previously refusing to acknowledge nonfiction categorization

WASHINGTON – Jonathan Cahn, the two-time New York Times best-selling author, knows what it’s like fighting the odds as a Christian to make the vaunted list – despite having the sales to warrant it.

He made it twice with his first two books, 2012’s “The Harbinger,” which remained on the New York Times’ fiction bestsellers list for more than 100 weeks, and 2014’s “The Mystery of the Shemitah,” which made the list for more than 12 weeks. But the messianic rabbi’s readers won’t be seeing his latest release on the Sept. 26 list.

It’s not for lack of sales for “The Book of Mysteries,” which came out Sept. 8.

Apparently, the book is too mysterious to classify for the guardians of the New York Times list.

Or maybe they’ve just had enough of Cahn’s domination of their charts every other year.

While “The Book of Mysteries” clearly outsold almost all the competition and appears on multiple bestsellers lists in its first week of release, the New York Times refuses to classify it as fiction, which it is.

Nor will the Times classify it as non-fiction, which it isn’t.

So it sits in a New York Times list limbo – unable to appear because it is unlike most other books with the exception of possibly appearing on a monthly list with the miscellany.

WND attempted to contact the New York Times for comment, but had not received a response at the time of this report.

However, sources in the publishing industry have shared some of the brewing controversy details.

It begins with an unusual book.

“The Book of Mysteries” is indeed hard to pigeonhole in traditional publishing. It consists of 365 stories of short revelations a fictional seeker of biblical wisdom receives on a spiritual one-year journey. The daily insights can thus be read as daily devotionals. The New York Times reportedly made this point in talks with Cahn’s publisher – as a disqualifier to the traditional fiction classification.

But, then again, the New York Times did not conclude it was simply a devotional. And, if it were, would that disqualify any Christian devotional from making the list?

Cahn himself, who worked with WND Films on the best-selling faith film of 2013 and 2014, “The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment,” a documentary-style adaptation of “The Harbinger,” declined to be quoted for the article.
The New York Times has a long history of problems counting Christian books for its celebrated list.

In 1980, the New York Times set out to learn what the best-selling book of the 1970s had been. Much to the shock and amazement of the editors, it was Christian evangelist Hal Lindsey’s “The Late Great Planet Earth,” which had never made the Times best-seller list for a single week or a single year during the decade but sold tens of millions, outselling all other fiction and nonfiction books alike for that time period.

So the paper set out to change its metrics for calculating best-sellers, which still remain as mysterious to the public and the publishing industry as “The Book of Mysteries” appears to be for the New York Times.

“Ironically,” said Joseph Farah, the producer of Cahn’s “The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment” and “The Harbinger Man” and WND’s founder, “one of the reasons I was determined to make that movie as a documentary was because of the classification of ‘The Harbinger’ as fiction. While that was a proper classification, given the narrative format, I wanted people to understand that what happened in that book was actually true – simply using fictional characters to make the point. Thus was born ‘The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment.'”

Farah’s publishing company, WND Books, has produced the highest percentage of New York Times bestsellers of any publisher in the world over the last 15 years. About 10 percent of WND Books releases over that time period have made the grade.

“I’ve been studying the list for decades,” says Farah. “I worked with Hal Lindsey when the New York Times discovered his book sold more than any other book in the decade of the 1970s. I worked with other best-selling authors as a collaborator through the 1990s. And in 2001, I launched WND Books. So that’s nearly 40 years of experience with the New York Times best-sellers list.”

The problems started for the New York Times calculations when they didn’t measure sales in Christian bookstores, he says. There’s also still a lot of secrecy about which bookstores they sample for sales.

“It’s almost like the New York Times wants its list to be mysterious,” Farah said. “It’s a prestigious list, but just because your book sells more copies than others doesn’t mean your book will make it on the list. That’s always been true and still is today.”

Meanwhile, all the other best-sellers lists have no problem with the fiction classification of “The Book of Mysteries.”
The Wall Street Journal lists it No. 7.

Publisher’s Weekly has it as No. 4.

USA Today has it as No. 29, but among all books of every classification – fiction, non-fiction, etc.

But here’s the real surprise. While claiming the book is not fiction, it also won’t classify it in the list’s “miscellaneous” category. Why? Reportedly because the Times maintains that the book is fiction after all.

There were only three hardcover fiction books that sold 15,000 or more copies in the first week “The Book of Mysteries” was in release. Cahn’s book was one of them. It sold more than double 12 of the titles that made the New York Times best-sellers list for hardcover fiction that week. It sold triple the number of copies of seven of the top 20 hardcover fiction titles on the list.

It’s not the first time Cahn has experienced categorization issues with the Times.

His second book, “The Mystery of the Shemitah,” was clearly a non-fiction title. However, the New York Times refused to consider it as such, instead, classifying it in its “how to, advice, miscellaneous” category. It apparently didn’t hurt sales.

MRC Flip-Flops on Debate Moderators Vetting Trump
Topic: Media Research Center

Tim Graham and Brent Bozell whine in their Sept. 21 column about presidential debate moderators:

Already, Fox's Chris Wallace drew liberal outrage by declaring: "I do not believe that it's my job to be a truth squad. It's up to the other person to catch them on that." Wallace sees his role as being like a referee in a heavyweight boxing match, where no one remembers him being there. But the left hounds today's liberal media, saying that being a mere referee is being an accessory to evil.

Funny, we remember when the Media Research Center felt the opposite way about vetting Trump -- earlier this year, to be exact. This time, though, the MRC's Nicholas Fondacaro was complaining that NBC's Chuck Todd said what his bosses are now praising Wallace for saying:

For Chuck Todd to insinuate that it’s not the media’s job to dig into a candidate’s past or fully vet a candidate for the public is just plain ridiculous. Todd laid the this duty at the feet of the other candidates stating “Folks, those are all inconsistencies that a normal campaign that was running against Donald Trump would probably put together, into TV ads and try to see if it would leave a mark with voters.”

For a member of the media to advocate for campaigns alone to do the vetting is an abdication of journalistic duty.

So, to summarize: In February, when Trump was the MRC's enemy, it was "abdication of journalistic duty" not to vet Trump or point out that he's lying. Now, with Trump the Republican nominee and the MRC obliged to defend him no matter what, not vetting Trump or pointing out when he's lying is the highest form of journalism.

Graham and Bozell also kept up the anti-fact jihad against fact-checkers, complaining that Trump has been caught by fact-checkers in more lies than Clinton -- " PolitiFact routinely fails to assign its "fact-checkers" when Team Clinton lies through its teeth" -- without apparently stopping to consider the seemingly obvious fact that Trump has told more lies than Clinton.

But, hey, when you have to defend a candidate that seemingly lies all the time, attacking the mere existence of facts is pretty much the only defense you have.

WND's Substance-Free Attack on Hillary Over Haiti
Topic: WorldNetDaily

For WorldNetDaily, flamboyant and prolific trump factual every time. Which brings us to this Sept. 20 WND article by Jerome Corsi:

Now, flamboyant and prolific Haitian human-rights lawyer, playwright and poet Marguerite Laurent, who goes by the nom-de-plume Ezili Dantó – a pseudonym taken after Ezili Dantor, the spirit in Haitian Voodoo for motherhood, commonly represented by the Black Madonna of Częstochowa – is using her considerable influence in the Haitian community both in the United States and in Haiti to endorse Donald Trump for president.

“Hillary Clinton preyed on Haiti,” Dantó, writing from her position as leader in both the Free Haiti Movement and the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, HLLN, noted on her blog Sept. 7.

[...]

“The earthquake [that hit Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010] weakened the victims and she used her power to crush them some more,” she said. “Dressed as ‘savior’ at the Obama State Department, Hillary Clinton betrayed innocent Americans who desired to help with recovery. If we are scientifically and objectively balancing facts, then Donald Trump, arguably a bigot and perhaps a sexist, still clearly has less of a record of lies, looting, lawlessness and implementing systemic governmental/institutional racism than Hillary Clinton.”

A lot of hate there, but very little substance. That comes sometime later:

“Addressing Haiti is a debacle for [Bill and Hillary Clinton],” she continued. “It brings up the 2010, Michel Martelly presidential election that Hillary Clinton and, her longtime consigliore, Cheryl Mills, help to doctor. It brings up their association with the convicted fraudster Claudio Osorio, who never built any of the 10,000 housing units in Haiti that the U.S. government put in a $10 million grant for him to build, and which the Clinton team heavily facilitated.”

She continued: “It brings up the pay-to-play, money laundering scheme they call the ‘Clinton Foundation.’ The Clintons cannot justify why they prey on hurt quake victims and poor Haitians to put money in their Foundation – a slush fund where 85 percent of the money collected goes to salaries, travel, luxury hotels, dinners and overhead, all tax free.”

Yes, Osorio is a fraudster who wormed his way into the Clinton circle and did use the grant money to pay off investors in his other schemes, but there's no evidence that anyone at the Clinton Foundation who helped Osorio get the grant knew he was not going to follow through. And, yes, Martelly did turn out to be the latest in a long line of terrible Haitian leaders. But it's a giant leap from that to accusing the entire foundation of being corrupt.

And Danto shows she doesn't care about the facts with her assertion that the foundation is "a slush fund where 85 percent of the money collected goes to salaries, travel, luxury hotels, dinners and overhead, all tax free." That claim has been proven false -- PolitiFact explains that at least 80 percent ofthe foundation's money goes to programs. And Corsi shows how little he cares about the facts by uncritically regurgitating her lie.

But Laurent/Danto is saying nasty things about Clinton and willing to be a shill for Trump, so that's good enough for Corsi -- inedeed, he quotes her at length touting Trump as a "non-establishment politician" who could help free Haiti from "Hillary Clinton and her promiscuous, politicians-for-sale, Clintonite team."

Corsi's article was followed the next day with an unbylined article that found a former Haitian politician to make more unsubstantiated attacks on Clinton (who just so happened to be at a "pro-Trump rally"). So dedicated to falsehoods is the article that it simply copied-and-pasted Laurent/Danto's lie about the Clinton Foundation being a "slush fund."

Oh, and by the way, Corsi's Clinton-bashing book continues to be a major flop despite WND's plea for its readers to buy it in bulk; it's currently ranked at No. 16,201 at Amazon. Looks like nobody else is buying his BS either.

NewsBusters' Double Standard on The Meaning of 'Many'
Topic: NewsBusters

In a Sept. 10 NewsBusters post, Tom Blumer -- he of the racism whitewashing -- had a conniption when the Associated Press, writing about Hillary clinton's "basket of deplorables" remark, stated in a headline that she had put "many" of Donald Trump's followers in that basket: "Mrs. Clinton was describing fully "half" of Trump's supporters — or roughly 25 percent of all Americans, given that recent polling is virtually dead-even — and not just 'many' of them."

Blumer's fuss over descriptors is rather funny, given that four days later, his Media Research Center colleague Brad Wilmouth wrote a post with the headline "MSNBC's Hayes Admits Many Clinton Voters Fit Liberal Definition of 'Racist'." Wilmouth also asserted that "according to a Reuters poll from earlier in the year, a large percentage of Clinton supporters also hold views on race that by his standards would be considered 'racist.'"

What's the number in question? A poll finding that 31 percent of Clinton supporters believed blacks are more violent than whites. That's neither a "large" numer, nor is it "many"-- and, more importantly, it's a much smaller number than that of Trump supporters who believe the same -- 49 percent.

But since Wilmouth's misuse of "many" advances the MRC's agenda, we doubt that Blumer sent him a message schooling him on the finer points of grammar.

Kupelian's 'Islamic Zombie Apocalypse' Essay Doesn't Live Up to Its Title
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Some time back, we noted that an anti-Muslim issue of WorldNetDaily's sparsely read Whistleblower magazine featured an article by WND managing editor David Kupelian titled "The Islamic zombie apocalypse." WND has finally gotten around to publishing Kupelian's article on WND proper. And, well, it's pretty lame.

First of all, Kupelian doesn't even use the term" Islamic zombie apocalypse" in his article at all -- it's just a clickbait headline come-on.

Kupelian engages in his usual rote liberal-bashing, blaming "infiltration, subversion and corruption of every single American institution by what we cryptically call 'the left'" for the "spiritual vacuum" of American culture and "all but eliminating the former Christian character of this nation’s culture." As a good anti-Muslim, Kupelain can't be bothered to make any meaningful distinction between the vast majority of peaceful Muslims and violent extremists using Islam, even accusing Muslims of being complicit with the violence: "Unfortunately, a disturbing number of Muslims in America, while not necessarily supportive of terrorism, are nevertheless in agreement with the end result desired by Islamic terrorists. And that is, the ultimate supremacy of Islam over the entire world and the imposition of Shariah law everywhere." He even blames the film "Avatar" for creating "distraught and disillusioned young people ripe for transition to a radically different reality," which somehow equates in Kupelian's mind to joining ISIS.

Kupelian then ironically laments that ISIS sympethizers and genocide perpetrators don't see their victims as human. Ironic, because Kupelian is a key factor in dehumanizing Barack Obama for the past eight years -- not just with birtherism but also portraying him as a Nazi and even as the Antichrist.

He's currently giving the same dehumanization treatment to Hillary Clinton. He spent an entire column maliciously likening her to Nurse Ratched and declaring she's "someone who never strikes any familiar chords within our souls of genuine decency, humanity and heartfelt shared values." That is, someone who's not human.

If all Muslims are suspect as terrorists for dehumanizing their opponents, Kupelian should be too.

NewsBusters Tries to Justify Racism of Trump Supporters By Insisting It's Not Racist
Topic: NewsBusters

NewsBusters blogger Tom Blumer wants you to think that because Donald Trump's supporters believe racist things, it doesn't mean they're racist. No, really.

Blumer complains in a Sept. 19 post that Juan Williams, in a column for The Hill, agrees with Hillary Clinton that a significant number of Trump supporters are "deplorables," citing a poll showing that a large percentage of self-described Trump supporters describe black people as more “lazy” than whites, “less intelligent” than whites, more “rude” than whites, more “violent” than whites and more “criminal” than whites, and that 58 percent of Trump supporters have either a “very unfavorable” or “somewhat unfavorable” view of the entire religion of Islam. But Blumer doesn't want you to believe your own eyes:

Let's make one thing clear: All six of the views identified (five relating to blacks, and one relating to Islam) are NOT presumptively racist views. (Islam is a religion and not a race, so I'll set that matter aside after observing that the over 29,000 Islamic jihadist attacks around the world since 9/11 certainly influence the high percentage of Americans who view Islam unfavorably.) I would argue that the vast majority of people holding those views don't have a racist bone in their body. I'll demonstrate the accuracy of that argument later in this post.

That's right -- according to Blumer, it's not racist to believe blacks are inferior.

After trying to distract from the issue by noting that polls also showed a significantly lower number of Clinton supporters held similar views, Blumer hits us with his "accuracy" argument:

Holding any of those views is not an automatic indicator of racism — and this fallacy, which should be obvious to anyone, has seriously polluted political discourse in the U.S. for far too long.

You identify a genuine racist by asking the "born that way" question. That is, are blacks as a race inherently inferior because they are born less intelligent, lazier, more rude, more violent, and more criminal than members of other races? Only people who would say "yes" would likely qualify as racists. I would argue that fewer than 5 percent of all non-black Americans agree with even one of the five statements; my guess is that it's more like 2 percent (to be clear, this was not always so; it's a credit to the people of this nation that these attitudes have changed as much as they have in the space of no more than four generations).

Prove me wrong, pollsters, if you dare, and ask the questions properly. Sadly, most of won't even think about asking properly formulated questions, because doing so would delegitimize their own or their clients' agendas.

Not only is Blumer trying to obfuscate the issue --  for him, it apparently doesn't follow that declaring another race is violent, lazy, etc., is, in fact, a de facto "born that way" question -- he's trying to mainstream racist views.

In the original version of his post at his own blog, Blumer goes even further by explaining that "There are perfectly good reasons why respondents who are not racist in any way, shape or form would agree with each of the five statements." Which, somehow, gets even more racist while also trying to blame liberals in the process.

Blacks are less intelligent, Blumer argues, because "A disproportionate percentage of the black population receives substandard educations at inferior urban public schools and/or live in family situations where the parent or parents fails to treat childhood education with sufficient seriousness." He adds, "Those who have seen this disparity play out in real life will regretfully agree, without any hint of racism, that black adults in 2016 America are on the whole less intelligent than non-blacks, as much as they sincerely wish it were not so."

Lazy blacks? That's because "LBJ’s Great Society programs have devastated the black family and urban areas" and " Minimum-wage laws shut young blacks out of work ethic-building opportunities." Again, he adds: "Those who have seen this disparity play out in real life are going to regretfully agree, without any hint of racism, that black adults in 2016 America on the whole do not have as strong a work ethic as non-blacks, as much as they sincerely wish it were not so."

Rude blacks? "Again, we go back to the disastrous influence of the Great Society and its impact on the black family. Then add in the cultural influences which have filled the void, including violent and pornographic rap music." And again: "Those who have seen the difference in behavior in real life are going to regretfully agree, without any hint of racism, that blacks in 2016 America on the whole are more rude than non-blacks, as much as they sincerely wish it were not so."

Violent blacks? "The voluminous violent crime and other crime statistics, especially among black juveniles and early adults compared to non-blacks, speak for themselves. Sadly, those who are aware of the crime statistics are going to regretfully agree, without any hint of racism, that blacks in 2016 America on the whole have a record of more violence and more criminality than non-blacks, as much as they sincerely wish it were not so."

Finally, Blumer insists that Trump supporters are not racists but, rather, realists:

What that failure all too often shows is an inability to recognize or admit the sad realities in America today — again, as much as one sincerely wishes that these conditions did not exist. One could also argue that Donald Trump’s overwhelmingly non-racist supporters are more willing to recognize those realities, unintimidated by people like Juan Williams, [Slate writer] Josh Voorhees and so many other misguided commentators and thought-police enforcers.

Yeah, realist like, uh, this Trump supporter.

As Trevor Noah has noted, if the only time you see black people is when they're in a criminal situation, you will believe that all black people are criminals. And if, as is apparently the case with Blumer, if the only media you consume is partisan-motivated right-wing media that portrays blacks as lazy and violent and insists that liberals made them that way as part of their political agenda, you will believe that. That seems to be why he is trying to tell us we shouldn't believe our own eyes with regard to the racist views of Trump supporters.

We highly doubt that Blumer "regretfully agrees" with the inferiority of blacks, as much as he sincerely wishes it were not so -- it's too good of a right-wing talking point for people like him to be regretful about.

Blumer is trying to thread a needle that nobody this side of VDARE believes should be threaded -- and he's making NewsBusters look racist in the process. The Media Research Center surely knows this, since it edited out the most offensive and indefensible part of his post. But what remains -- Blumer's insistence that obviously racist views can't possibly be racist -- is still pretty offensive and indefensible.

Not to mention an incredibly desperate and bizarre attempt at right-wing "logic."

WND Still Disparaging Transgenders With (Stolen) Hairy-Guy-In-Heels Pic
Topic: WorldNetDaily

A while back, we documented how WorldNetDaily is unusually fond of illustrating stories about transgender issues -- and disparaging transgenders -- with a photo it stole from the Associated Press of the hairy legs of a man wearing a dress and heels (taken from a 2012 "hairy legs on heels" race in Madrid, so the person in the photo is not even transgender, just a guy in heels).

Well, WND and its stolen photo have struck again, this time on a Sept. 10 transgender-related article by Bob Unruh:

The photo lacks a credit, and WND is not a member of the AP, so WND has violated copyright law once again by using it. It's racking up quite a fee it must eventually pay the AP for repeated unauthorized use of its photo.

The sad thing is, that photo likely illustrates what WND thinks transgenders are.

MRC: Mentioning Roger Ailes' Sexual Harassment Is 'Liberal Bias'
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Alexa Moutevelis Coombs, in a Sept. 12 post, was tickled to death that her employer's signature issue of "liberal media bias" got a shout-out during the Miss America pageant, in the form of a question about Matt Lauer's questioning of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during a presidential forum.

Other things getting questions at the Miss America pageant, however, did not meet with Coombs' approval:

Other instances of liberal bias were on display through the selection of questions. Actress Sara Foster brought up Fox News to Miss Mississippi, Laura Lee Lewis, in saying, “Miss America 1989 Gretchen Carlson just accepted a $20 million settlement from Fox News for her sexual harassment suit against Roger Ailes. Fox paid, Ailes walked. What message does this send?”

Mark Cuban asked Miss Washington, Alicia Cooper, of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s National Anthem protest, “Do you sit with him or stand against him?” And she responds that Black Lives Matter, All Lives Matter. 

Wait, so simply mentioning Ailes' sexual harassment scandal is "liberal bias"? And it's also somehow "liberal bias" to ask in a nonpartisan way how a contestant stands on Kaepernick's protest?

That tells us the MRC's definition of "liberal bias" is completely meaningless.

NEW ARTICLE: Bad Business At WND
Topic: WorldNetDaily
The inability to understand how capitalism works -- and its knee-jerk insistence on falsely blaming the creative destruction of capitalism on the "Obama economy" -- is one big reason why WorldNetDaily is in serious financial trouble. Read more >>

AIM's Resident Birther Now Claims Birtherism Doesn't Matter
Topic: Accuracy in Media

In a September 2009 column, Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid was in full birther froth, proclaiming that he had released a copy of his own birth certificate, in order to demonstrate what needs to be done to resolve the growing controversy over the alleged birth certificate of President Barack Obama, adding: “My birth certificate includes the names of my mother and father, my mother’s doctor, and the hospital in which I was born. ... This certified copy of an original long form document is what anyone who wants to be president should be prepared to produce.”

Kincaid also claimed: “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 denied that contemporaneous notices of Obama's birth in Honolulu newspapers were not sufficient proof that he was born there, further whining that "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."

Now, however, with birtherism unambiguously proven to be a  discredited fraud -- and with Donald Trump beating a public retreat from his years of birtherism -- Kincaid wants to change the subject.

He makes that abundantly clear in the headline of his Sept. 18 AIM column, "It’s the Marxism, Not the Birtherism." Ah, but the birtherism still matters enough toKincaid to talk at length about it:

The “birther” issue is now being used by Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama and their media allies to get black people riled up. It’s part of their get-out-the-vote drive. Not surprisingly, the Post and other media play right along with it. They realize Obama has done little for black people. So they have to demonize Trump.

The Post’s Jenna Johnson reported on Friday afternoon that Hillary Clinton “said Trump owes Obama an apology for promoting a false theory about his birthplace. She did not directly address the Trump assertion that her own 2008 campaign promoted the same theory, but her current campaign flatly rejected that claim.”

This appeared under the headline, “Trump admits Obama was born in U.S., but falsely blames Clinton for starting rumors.”

[...]

Actually, Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle did admit that a Clinton staffer had spread the claim that Obama was born outside of the United States. Hillary did not personally apologize to Barack Obama for that. Yet now the cry is for Trump, who questioned the place of his birth, to personally apologize to Obama.

All of this is just racial politics. Hillary knows that most blacks are not as enthusiastic about her as they were for Obama. So she has to get them up in arms. 

But Kincaid's current story is that Obama's purported relationship with Frank Marshall Davis is what really matters. "orget Kenya or Hawaii as Barack Obama’s birthplace. The issue is that he was mentored by a communist named Frank Marshall Davis, who taught him that blacks had a “reason to hate” and that Christianity was the white man’s religion," Kincaid insists. "That was the smoking gun in Obama’s life story, not the place where he was born. His birthplace was always a secondary issue."

Yeah, it was so "secondary" to Kincaid that he was such a devoted birther he felt compelled to release his own birth certificate.

Kincaid forgets he has a paper trail so his lies are easy to track.

CNS' Starr Whitewashes Benham Brothers' Extremist Views Again
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com reporter Penny Starr is an apologist for the right-wing Benham brothers who likes to whitewash the extremity of their anti-gay views.

Starr does this again in a Sept. 13 CNS article giving themspace to baselessly rant that "if one disagrees with the 'sexual revolution' in Hollywood that promotes homosexuality and same-sex marriage they will be 'persecuted.'"She adds that the Benham's planned house-flipping reality show was canceled "after their stance on abortion was revealed and that they supported traditional marriage as the union of one man and one woman."

In fact, the Benhams are on record calling homosexuals "destructive," "vile," and controlled by "demonic forces," and they have said that Satan is behind gay marriage. As for abortion, the brothers are the sons of notorious anti-abortion activist Flip Benham, who was convicted of stalking an abortion doctor and effectively condoning calls for their murders. The brothers have never distanced themselves from their father's views and tactics, as far as we know.

Those are not mainstream views -- they are fringe, hostile and potentially threatening and violent. Starr is being dishonest to her readers by pretending otherwise.

WND Clinton Derangement Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily

A few months back, WorldNetDaily took a full dive into Clinton derangement by devoting an entire issue of its sparsely read Whistleblower magazine to likening Hillary Clinton to Nurse Ratched. Apparently WND has worked up enough material for another Hillary-hating issue of Whistleblower, and it's been unleashed under the theme "WILL WE ELECT A CRIMINAL?"

WND's promotional copy for the issue shows just how far down the Clinton derangement rabbit hole it is -- led by WND managing editor David Kupelian, who sold his soul to back Donald Trump:

Of all the astonishing, historic aspects of the 2016 presidential election, perhaps the most vexing is that something like half of America’s voters seem content to elect a pathologically lying career criminal as president.

How can this be? Has the electorate grown stupid – or morally dead?

In some cases, yes, but many more are just abysmally ignorant, as revealed by an Annenberg Public Policy Center poll showing almost two-thirds of Americans cannot even name the three branches of the federal government. Tens of millions are just not paying attention.

The establishment news media, so totally biased toward Hillary Clinton they’ve abandoned their former pretense of objectivity, diligently labor to keep the electorate uninformed. So far they have been successful in protecting their favored candidate from public exposure of her three-decades-long record of crime, corruption and sleaze.

This is the electrifying topic of September’s issue of Whistleblower magazine, headlined “WILL WE ELECT A CRIMINAL? Hillary Clinton would be the most corrupt president in modern history.”

[...]

Why does the American public give the Clintons a pass on their lifelong, ever-cascading criminality?

“Dishonesty, deceitfulness, demagoguery – traits typical of so many politicians – are things the public understands,” said Whistleblower Editor David Kupelian. “Lying they understand; politicians lie. Liberal versus conservative they understand, also pro-abortion versus anti-abortion, socialism versus capitalism, amnesty versus deportation, sexual anarchy versus biblical values. They understand that candidates hold very different views on these issues and support or oppose them on that basis.”

However, said Kupelian, “actual criminality – the kind that lands people behind bars – is something else, and the reality of Hillary and Bill as career criminals hasn’t yet truly penetrated the public mind.”

Kupelian also made one more attempt to shame people into abandoning their sense of morality like he did: "It’s about time the self-absorbed NeverTrump Republicans wake up from their pathetic delusions before it’s too late. If they don’t, I predict they will come to regret their great foolishness during Election 2016 for the rest of their lives."

But what if the person with the pathetic delusions is actually Kupelian? He won't talk about that.

MRC Attacks Another Fact-Checker Who Accurately Checked Facts
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Tim Graham grumbles in a Sept. 16 post:

The website Politifact Bias underlined how slippery the “fact checkers” get when they’re screening speeches by the Democrats – as they actually admit they’re following Clinton campaign tipsters. PolitiFact's Sean Gorman admitted "Sarah Peck, the Virginia communications director for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign, pointed us to a June 7 article in BuzzFeed News about the tent episode." They rated this speech nugget from Tim Kaine “True”:

"When Moammar Gadhafi was set to visit the United Nations, and no one would let him stay in New York, Trump allowed Gadhafi to set up an elaborate tent at his Westchester County (New York) estate."

Kaine’s next sentence: “That’s right, when Gadhafi was looking for a place to stay in America, and because of his human rights track record, and the pan am bombing, others were turning him away, he found one guy – one guy – who was willing to host him.”

There’s only one problem: Gadhafi never stayed there. 

But Kaine never said Gadhafi stayed there. He said Trump allowed Gadhafi to set up a tent at his estate, something Graham and his fellow fact-check-hater concede is true. You really can't fact-check an implication.

You can, however, fact-check deliberately imprecise language used to promtoe a false talking point, as the MRC did all weekend in parroting Donald Trump by falsely insisting that Hillary Clinton directly promoted birtherism.

Graham's PolitiFact attack is, of course, part of the MRC's campaign to de-legitimize fact-checkers in order to cover up for Trump's many, many lies.

CNS Maliciously Attacks Obama As Insensitive By Not Speaking Publicly on Weekend Attacks
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com serves up a particularly odious bit of Obama derangement in the form of a Sept. 19 article by Susan Jones portraying Obama as, at best, callous and insensitive to the detonation of a bomb in New York and other violent incidents over the weekend and, at worst, celebrating them.

Jones' article has the out-of-context headline "Obama Tells Black Lawmakers, 'There's an Extra Spring in My Step Tonight'," which -- precisely because it's placed there devoid of context -- suggests that Obama is saying the spring in his step is because of the weekend's incidents.

Jones then maliciously frames Obama's speech to the Congressional Black Caucus as insensitive to the weekend's events:

As of early Monday morning, President Obama had made no public comment on a series of weekend bombings, attempted bombings and stabbings in three states, but he did make time to address a Congressional Black Caucus awards dinner Saturday night and a Democrat fundraiser Sunday night.

At Saturday's event, Obama thanked the assembled guests, then joked: "There’s an extra spring in my step tonight. I don't know about you guys, but I am so relieved that the whole birther thing is over.

"I mean, ISIL, North Korea, poverty, climate change -- none of those things weighed on my mind -- (laughter) -- like the validity of my birth certificate.  (Laughter.)  

Jones then complained that "all three attacks had happened by the time Obama attended a Democrat fundraiser in New York on Sunday night, and a transcript shows he made no comment on the attacks at that event. A fourth attempted attack, on a train station in Elizabeth, New Jersey, was discovered after Obama had left the fundraiser."

Indeed, portraying Obama as deliberately ignoring the weekend's events was Jones' directive and obsession this morning. She quickly followed up two hours later with an article whining that White House spokesman Josh Earnest didn't commit to a time that Obama would speak on the events of the weekend, emphasizing that "As of Monday morning, Obama has made no public comment on the series of bombings and stabbings in three states -- Minnesota, New York and New Jersey -- that took place on Saturday and Sunday."

In neither article does explain when Obama should have spoken on the weekend's events, given that few details were available immediately after they happened.

This is just sleazy Obama derangement at its worst, from a right-wing "news" outlet trying to score cheap political points after a potentially tragic event. Jones and her bosses Terry Jeffrey and Michael W. Chapman, should be ashamed.

UPDATE: Obama spoke about the weekend incidents later in the morning. Jones did not consider this newsworthy enough to write about story about, despite the fact that she wrote two articles complainingthat Obama was too slow to speak out. And even though CNS considered Jones' articles worthy of the front page, Obama's statement did not appear there in any form.