Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is lobbying debate and forum moderators to get them to take it easy on Donald Trump -- and it complains that others are doing the same thing (with seemingly more success). Read more >>
Thursday, October 6, 2016
NEW ARTICLE: Working the Refs, MRC Style
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center is lobbying debate and forum moderators to get them to take it easy on Donald Trump -- and it complains that others are doing the same thing (with seemingly more success). Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:48 AM EDT
Wednesday, October 5, 2016
WND's Kupelian Still Trying to Shame Evangelicals Into Voting for Trump
Topic: WorldNetDaily The mind of WorldNetDaily editor is still in major snappage mode as he continues to convince himself to abandon his moral principles -- and try to shame others into doing the same -- and vote for Donald Trump. Witness this Sept. 29 WND article, in which Kupelian concedes yet again that Trump is evil, to the point where he's effectively likening Trump to Stalin (but Hillary Clinton is Hitler):
And, once again, Kupelian turns on the shame:
Kupelian is still insisting, without offering evidence to back it up, that "There is goodness in Donald Trump," but he then adds, "I don’t know if there is or not in Hillary; I’m not going to condemn her. I don’t know where she’s going when she leaves this world, but right now, just taking her at her word, at what she says she’ll do, she will destroy the country." Kupelian is transparently lying about not wanting to condemn Hillary -- he is the managing editor of a website where condemning Hillary has replaced obsessing over Barack Obama's birth certificate as its main editorial mission.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:26 PM EDT
MRC Excuses Trump's Misogyny By Invoking Clinton Equivocation
Topic: Media Research Center Funny how the Media Research Center's defense of Donald Trump has little to do with actually defending him. Rather, it invokes the Clinton Equivocation -- the right-wing idea that Trump and other conservatives get a pass for a given offense because a Clinton is presumed to have done it first and worse. The MRC does this again in a Sept. 30 post in which Sarah Stites gives Trump's long record of misogyny a pass because Clinton:
Stites not only gives Bill Clinton's "scandalous sexual past" its own entry, he gets dinged again in a separate entry for officiating at Anthony Weiner's wedding.
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:02 PM EDT
Is WND's Cahn Allied With ISIS On Destruction of Pagan Ruins?
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily gave its main cash cow, Jonathan Cahn, to wax prophetically, as he's wont to do, about a recreation of the arch from the Temple of Bel (Baal, as Cahn insists on using) at Palmyra, Syria, going on display in New York City. As one would expect from a guy who wrote a book called "The Harbinger," Cahn declared this a harbinger as well:
Missing from Cahn's article -- as well as from the accompanying video, which distractingly adds ominous-sounding background music and an echo to Cahn's voice to make him sound more authoritative -- is a bunch of important information: the full history of the temple, the fate of the original arch and why a replica was created. Cahn wants you to think this was done apropos of nothing other than to fulfill his own prophecies. While the temple started as a worship site for a pagan god, the temple was converted into a Christian church during the Byzantine Era and, later, a mosque. The temple's remains were destroyed by ISIS during its occupation of Palmyra last year, and the arch is all that remains. The recreation of the arch -- which was also on display in London -- was spearheaded by the Institute for Digital Archaeology, a joint venture between Harvard University, the University of Oxford and Dubai’s Museum of the Future that promotes the use of digital imaging and 3D printing in archaeology and conservation. The recreations are meant to celebreate World Heritage Week, as well as serve as an act of defiance to ISIS' attempts to erase evidence of the Middle East’s pre-Islamic history. A few days later, WND did a follow-up article rehashing much of what Cahn said. This article did admit the original temple was destroyed by ISIS and quoted officials calling it an act of "solidarity" with those "lost in Syria," and "a symbol of freedom," but adding that "Cahn said it was anything but a symbol of freedom." Cahn is not quoted as further discussing the destruction by ISIS. Which raises the question: Does Cahn endorse ISIS' destruction of a priceless, centuries-old historical artifact? While Cahn and ISIS do not share religious views, they seem to align with their hatred for certain ancient relics -- ISIS because it thinks any shrines or statues implying the existence of another deity are sacrilege and idolatry, Cahn because he despises pagan gods. (Again, never mind that the Temple of Bel had also served as both a church and a mosque.) Cahn never discusses the historical value of the temple or mentions ISIS, much less condemn it -- all he cares about is that he can exploit the situation for his own gain -- and one would think ISIS' destruction of a 2,000-year-old temple would be worthy of some criticism, if only on a historical level. So it seems Cahn is cool with ISIS on this act of destruction, and perhaps with the obliteration of other pagan-linked site and artifacts by ISIS. Is that the kind of person who should be taken seriously?
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:08 AM EDT
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
NewsBusters' Blumer Still Trying to Blame Birtherism on Clinton, Not Trump
Topic: NewsBusters NewsBusters' Tom Blumer just can't stop spinning the birther stuff in Donald Trump's favor. We've already noted that Blumer is obsessed with insisting that Hillary Clinton and her campaign started birtherism, which -- even if it was true -- doesn't explain why Trump pushed the issue for years. In a Sept. 21 post, Blumer calls on an unusual source for backup: "Larry Johnson, who runs the No Quarter USA blog, which was a heavily visited pro-Hillary site in 2008 but is anything but that now." Blumer doesn't mention that the reason nobody wants to visit Johnson's site anymore is because he spent years pushing one of the biggest hoaxes of the Obama years: that there is a secret recording of Michelle Obama railing against "whitey." That purported "whitey tape" never surfaced, and years later, Johnson tried to handwave it by claiming he was the victim of a Democratic "dirty trick." Blumer cited Johnson again in a Sept. 25 post, in which he mostly rants about Sidney Blumenthal allegedly shopping the claim in 2008. Blumer tried again in a Sept. 27 post by citing another less-than-solid source: Trump surrogate Omarosa. He also cites another purported Clinton birther link: "the matter was hand-carried into long-term general visibility when Philip J. Berg, a Pennsylvania Democrat and a former deputy attorney general in that state, filed suit in federal court in August of 2008, 'alleging that Obama was born actually in Mombasa, Kenya and that the 'Certification of Live Birth' on Obama's website is a forgery.'" But Blumer offers no evidence that the Clinton campaign had anything to do with Berg's actions; indeed, Berg himself has said that he had "no direct contact with the Hillary campaign." And who embraced and promoted Berg's legal actions? No prominent Democrat or even any prominent Hillary supporter -- it was WorldNetDaily, which in turn was the birther whisperer to Trump. Note the utter lack of involvement by Clinton. Blumer then tries to shut down the whole discussion by harrumphing: Trump put the issue to bed with the statement he made on September 16 when he announced that 'Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it. President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period.'" Yeah, no, that's not how that works. None of Blumer's posts address the real issue at hand: that Trump continued to push the birther issue for five years after he "finished it" in 2011. That means Trump is lying. Will Blumer concede that about his preferred candidate? Don't count on it.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:25 PM EDT
WND Defends The Honor of Meaningless Online Polls (For Trump, Of Course)
Topic: WorldNetDaily After last week's presidential debate, WorldNetDaily did its best to spin things Donald Trump's way, even insisting that unscientific online polls showing Trump won actually meant something. Jerome Corsi insisted that "snap polls after the debate Monday night" showing Trump won the debate "validate[d]" Trump's debate plan to "hold back on aggressive attacks on opponent Hillary Clinton, focusing, instead, on projecting a presidential bearing." He even included in his article a chart showing various polls (it's unclear whether WND or the Trump campaign made it), but the only scientific poll included in the chart is the only one that Clinton won. An unbylined Sept. 30 WND article insisted that "While Trump and Clinton fight for voters in the battleground states, most unscientific snap polls conducted online showed Trump as the overwhelming winner of the presidential debate," followed by a screenshot of an unidentified poll in which Trump got 97 percent of the vote. The oddly worded question asking "Who will you be voting for in the upcoming United States presidential election?" tells us that it was probably not a U.S.-based website. That same day, WND's Bob Unruh trotted out an old friend to not only defend the honor of meaningless online polls but assert that they show Trump will win the election:
You might remember O'Leary as a onetime WND author who was paying Zogby to do skewed polls that pushed his anti-Obama agenda, so he's predisposed to like polls, scientific or not, that reinforce his right-wing views.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:56 PM EDT
MRC Censors Tim Graham Getting Schooled on CNN
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center's Nicholas Fondacaro sure does what he can to make his boss, Tim Graham, look good in in writing about his appearance on the Oct. 2 edition of CNN's Reliable Sources:
What you don't see in Fondacaro's writeup -- and he only appears briefly in the edited transcript of the segment -- is the other person appearing in the discussion with Stelter and Graham, the Daily Beast's John Avlon. The video clip accompanying Fondacaro's post is even more censored, using less than a minute from the pair of segments on "Reliable Sources" Graham took part in, which lasted more than 13 minutes. Why? Because Avlon pretty much mopped the floor with Graham, sharply countering his kneejerk right-wing ranting about the "liberal media" with a dose of reality. And the MRC doesn't want you to know that. In the first segment discussing the Times article, Fondacaro omits the fact that Graham's claim that the person in the Times articlewho said Trump "benefited from his vast destruction" was anonymous is false. In fact, that quote is on the record, attributed to Joel Rosenfeld, an assistant professor at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate. When Stelter noted he couldn't find the anonymous quote Graham claims in the Times article, Graham continued to insist it was there. When Avlon pointed out that the Times article is solidly backed up, which is "uncomfortable for people with partisan agendas," Graham huffed, "Oh, and you don't have one, John? You're about as Republican as Lester Holt. To come on here and say you're not ideological? Nobody buys that." Avlon pointed out he's "not a right-wing ideologue who profits from polarization." Also omitted is Graham's petulant response to Avlon's claim that right-wing attacks on the well-sourced Times story are just "pure partisan spin": "The New York Times is pure partisan spin! ... This newspaper is trying to intimidate Trump into releaseing his tax returns." When Avlon pointed out that Trump has flip-flopped on releasing taxes, Graham played the Clinton Equivocation: "Oh, and Hillary Clinton have never violated a standard?" After more ranting from Graham about how "everybody's out to destroy Trump," Avlon retorted, "When did conservative start loving to play the victim so much? When did that happen?" Another large chunk of the CNN discussion censored from Fondacaro's article is Avlon's response to Graham's rehearsed attack line on Holt (which curiously appears only in the transcript) that "If Lester Holt was referencing a football game, he would have gotten thrown out of the stadium" and his weird assertion that "the whole assumption of liberal media is Hillary somehow never lies." The transcript cuts off before Graham falsely claims that "everybody cites PolitiFact and says Hillary never lies," then, as the full video shows, goes back to the '90s to claim Hillary Clinton lied about not knowing about her husband's affair with Monica Lewinsky. Avlon pointed out that Hillary's trustworthiness levels are low "in part because for 25 years she's been demonized by partisan media. And so it comes back to partisan media and the role it plays." Avlon added: "And those of you on the side of partisan media who say that the impicit bias of mainstream over the years can only be corrected by explicit bias, well, you carried the day for a while, but now people are hip to your tricks, and it's a fundamental problem that's undercutting trust in media, journalism and democracy writ large." Graham, as he is wont to do, responds by mocking and sneering, only to get smacked down by Avlon again:
In short, Avlon outlined everything that's wrong with the MRC. Graham doesn't want to have to defend that on his own website, so he made sure the discussion never appears there.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:12 AM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, October 4, 2016 1:22 AM EDT
Monday, October 3, 2016
WND Reporter Doesn't Understand Why We Can't Assume Every Muslim Is A Terrorist
Topic: WorldNetDaily First, WorldNetDaily publishes a false report claiming that Arcan Cetin, suspected in the shooting deaths of five people in a Washington state mall, committed "voter fraud" because he voted while not being a U.S. citizen (turns out he is, and WND still hasn't corrected or retracted its false story). Now, WND reporter Leo Hohmann is wondering why we have to go through the rigamorale of actually investigating the shooting when it's so much easier to presume that Cetin is an Islamic terrorist simply because he may be Muslim (well, a Turkish immigrant, but close enough for WND work):
Hohmann was really put out that Cetin was originally identified as Hispanic when he's an "immigrant from Turkey," adding, "While more than 98 percent of Turkey is Muslim, that was never mentioned by most major news outlets, even after pro-Islamic sayings were discovered on Cetin’s social media sites." Hohmann also complained that "Many of the major TV networks were referring to Cetin initially as a naturalized U.S. citizen of Turkish descent but that also turned out to be false as he is a lawful permanent resident or LPR, not a citizen." In fact, he is a naturalized citizen, and Hohmann should really correct his article. Then again, given that Hohmann's main purpose as a WND reporter is to fan the flames of Islamophobia, the truth is somewhat lower on his list of priorities.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:45 PM EDT
MRC Mad At Samantha Bee For Making The Exact Same Anti-Trump Argument It Used To Make
Topic: Media Research Center In a Sept. 20 post, the Media Research Center's Nicholas Fondacaro complains that "Full Frontal" host Samantha Bee "lashed out at NBC" for giving airtime for Donald Trump for years: "She claimed that by letting him on the air, 'NBC tacitly condoned a race-baiting demagogue.' Bee slammed NBC for allowing Trump to appear on their comedy shows, and insisted it was, 'because ratings matter more than brown people.' 'Sure, he's making life palpably dangerous for Muslims and immigrants, but hey! He's good entertainment,' she continued." If that argument sounds familiar, it should: The MRC was saying the exact same thing just a few months ago. The MRC's Sam Dorman was similarly lashing out at NBC for letting Trump appear on its airwaves in a post from May:
The MRC gave this the full "special report" treatment, complete with an "executive summary" (which Dorman's post repeats) and a high-minded recommendation that NBC "disclose its previous contractual relationships with him and be transparent about its ethical processes and choices in covering him." How does the MRC's bashing of NBC's buildup of Trump differ from Bee's critique of it? Nowhere that we can see -- other than a certain flip-flop that means it's now official MRC policy not to criticize anything directly related to Trump.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:26 PM EDT
WND's Favorite Ex-Soviet Bloc Spymaster (And His Co-Author) Still Won't Explain His Trump Contradiction
Topic: WorldNetDaily We've noted on a couple of occasions that WorldNetDaily's favorite former Soviet Bloc spy, Ion Mihai Pacepa, is supporting Donald Trump despite Trump's history of close ties with Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin -- himself a former spymaster who Pacepa considers at least somewhat dangerous -- apparently clinging to the kneejerk right-wing argument that Hillary Clinton is axiomatically worse. After our second post on the subject, we had a Twitter conversation about this with Pacepa's co-author and apparent public face, Ronald Rychlak. Here's how it went:
As you can see, Rychlak doesn't really offer any suitable answers to our questions about Pacepa, and non-answers like "Look past headlines and optics" are completely meaningless. We have heard nothing further from Rychlak in the more than two weeks since that conversation, but interestingly, neither Pacepa nor Rychlak have surfaced at WND or anywhere else since then to discuss the election or anything else. There remains a disconnect between Pacepa's Cold War history and his endorsement of a presidential candidate whose ties with another Cold War relic are unambiguous and disturbing. Having weighed in on the election already, Pacepa and Rychlak need to further explain why we shouldn't believe our own eyes regarding Trump.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:16 AM EDT
Sunday, October 2, 2016
NewsBusters Argues Clinton Didn't Really Deny Alleged Rape Because Spokesman Issued His Statement
Topic: NewsBusters NewsBusters blogger Tom Blumer has been living on the rhetorical edge. Last week, Blumer was trying to justify the racism of Trump supporters by arguing that it's really not racist to believe that blacks are less intelligent and more rude because liberals made them that way. Now, in a Sept. 29 post, Blumer is straining logic to its limits by insisting that Bill Clinton's denial that he raped Juanita Braoddrick isn't real because the denial came from spokesmen and not directly from Clinton's mouth. No, really. Blumer is actually arguing this:
Yep, that's Blumer's argument -- Clinton's denial is not "a genuine denial" unless Clinton himself is on record saying it. Sad, yet not unexpected from a guy who insists racism isn't really racism.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:25 PM EDT
Updated: Sunday, October 2, 2016 9:16 PM EDT
WND Portrays Obama Smugly Looking Down On Its Readers -- Again
Topic: WorldNetDaily We've documented how WorldNetDaily is exceedingly fond of appending out-of-context pictures of Obama to its article in order to suggest he's smugly mocking WND readers. WND does this again in a Sept. 15 article by Bob Unruh: WND is being doubly dishonest this time because the article is not about anything Obama personally did or said -- it'a about a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights letter pointing out that anti-gay religious activists are hiding behind the First Amendment to perpetuate their discrimination. True to form, Unruh uses the letter to play the persecution card, quoting only critics of the letter and whining that "The commissioners deliberately chose to single out for denigration Christian colleges or organizations that don’t promote homosexuality and business owners who choose not to endorse homosexuality with their artistic talents, such as photography and cake-making." How much does WND know what they're doing by using this photo in this context? If you download the picture, you'll see that WND has named the photo "obama_shrug_smirk.jpg".
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:48 AM EDT
Updated: Sunday, October 2, 2016 11:54 AM EDT
Saturday, October 1, 2016
NewsBusters Blogger Gloats Over Tim Tebow Homer
Topic: NewsBusters Factually challenged NewsBusters blogger Dylan Gwinn dedicates an entire Sept. 28 post to Tim Tebow hitting a home run in his first at-bat in an instructional league. Gwinn sarcastically adds that "If you listen carefully, you can hear the leftist, sports media clap and cheer with joy for Tebow and his incredible achievement." First, it's not that big of a deal. Instructional league is the absolute lowest run of professional baseball, and it's no more newsworthy than any other instructional league player who hits a homer. Second, the un-newsworthiness of Tebow's homer is underscored by the fact that he didn't get so much as a hit in the five other at-bats he had in that same game -- something Gwinn curiously fails to mention. That means Tebow's batting average after that game was a less-than-incredible .180. (Even the pitcher who gave up the homer to Tebow was good-natured about it, tweeting to him that "I thought we agreed you were taking first pitch" and quipping about himself, "Tough day for that kid! Probably should spend the rest of his instructs focused on locating his fastball down!") Third, the "leftist sports media" did, in fact, note Tebow's homer. We found stories about it at ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Time magazine and the New York Times, among many others. Heck, even TMZ wrote about it. Nevertheless, Gwinn concludes his post by sneering, "Choke on it sports media." Remember, Gwinn's tiny tantrum here is all about a low-level baseball player getting one hit in six at-bats. UPDATE: Gwinn's Media Research Center colleague, CNSNews.com commentary editor Michael Morris, gushed even more profusely about Tebow's homer, calling it "typical Tebow" and adding, "Just what will happen next in the storied sports career of the Florida native? We’ll all just have to wait and see." Like Gwinn, Morris didn't mention that Tebow went hitless in his other five at-bats.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:44 AM EDT
Updated: Sunday, October 2, 2016 10:44 AM EDT
WND Falsely Claims Mall Shooter Committed Voter Fraud
Topic: WorldNetDaily On Sept. 28, WorldNetDaily published an anonymously written article claiming that Arcan Cetin, the "Turkish immigrant" suspected in the shooting deaths of five people in a Washington state mall, committed "voter fraud" by voting in state elections because he is a "permanent resident alien with a green card" but "not a citizen with the right to vote." Just one problem with that: it's not true. (The tone of the article, which seems to be equating voter fraud with mass murder, is another thing altogether.) Right Wing Watch reports that this story originated with the right-wing voting suppressors at True the Vote.The only source WND's anonymous reporter cites is "KVI News," which is apparently a reference to Seattle radio station KVI, whose "news" feed shows it doesn't actually have a news department -- the station broadcasts right-wing talkers. Local KVI host John Carlson interviewed Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman, which is apparently where WND culled its quotes of her from. But as Right Wing Watch noted, a Seattle TV station has reported federal officials saying that after further investigation, Cetin is a naturalized U.S. citizen and, thus, legally registered to vote. WND has not corrected its article as of this writing. But since WND has a tendency to make articles disappear without warning or explanation, we've copied it below for posterity should this false article meet the same fake. * * *
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:31 AM EDT
Friday, September 30, 2016
AIM's Kincaid Mad New Black History Museum Won't Push His Far-Right Agenda
Topic: Accuracy in Media Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media is so mad about the new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. that he devotes not one but two columns to complaining about what it won't cover -- which, coincidentally, hews closely to his own (and AIM's) far-right, commie-obsessed agenda. Kincaid does concede that "many exhibits" at the museum "will be worthwhile," but adds, "In the spirit of truth and transparency, we offer examples of exhibits that we have reason to believe, based on advance publicity, will not be available to those visiting the museum." In arguing that "The Democratic Party’s history of slavery" should be an exhibit, Kincaid trots out Dinesh D'Souza's terrible, factually challenged film on the Democrats, references Hillary Clinton's praise of Robert Byrd while censoring the fact that Byrd renounced his KKK ties decades before his death, and lamenting that "no Republican presidential candidate has gotten more than 15 percent of the black vote since 1965" while censoring the fact that the racists who refused to change with the times after the Democrats fully embraced civil rights in the 1960s quit the party and became Republican. In other words, Kincaid wants the museum to promote a false claim: that the Democratic Party of the 1860s is exactly the same as the Democratic Party of today. The rest of Kincaid's list -- again, so long it takes two columns for him to explain -- is similarly dubious, pedantic and even more commie-obsessed. Among them:
Kincaid's obsession withblacks who embraced communism in thte middle part of the last century ignores the political reality of the time: Unlike much of America, the Communist Party (in theory, at least) believed in black equality, and anti-communism started out in part as a way to suppress blacks. Indeed, communism helped push the rest of the country toward full civil rights for blacks. Is Kincaid so anti-communist that he won't give the commies credit for that? In short, Kincaid's rants are said like a right-winger who sees blacks not as people but as a political talking point to be deployed and exploited to his own (and AIM's, since it willingly pays Kincaid to write this stuff) partisan purposes.
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:36 PM EDT
|
Find more neat stuff at the ConWebWatch store! Buy through this Amazon link and support ConWebWatch!
Entries by Topic
All topics « Accuracy in Media Capital Research Center CNSNews.com Free Congress Foundation Free Republic Horowitz Media Research Center NewsBusters Newsmax The ConWeb The Daily Les Washington Examiner Western Journalism Center WorldNetDaily
Watchers
Media Matters for America County Fair The Daily Howler LGF Watch SullyWatch Fact-esque Malkin(s)Watch Reading A1 (NYT) John Gorenfeld (Moonies) NewsHounds (Fox News) Media Watch CJR Daily The Counterpoint (Sinclair) BlatherWatch (Seattle Radio) Watching OlbermannWatch
Blogs
Talking Points Memo Eschaton Suburban Guerrilla World O'Crap Sadly, No! Oliver Willis Angry Single Mom Orcinus Bartholomew's Notes on Religion PFAW's Right Wing Watch Altercation Max Blumenthal
Support Bloggers' Rights! |