MRC's Graham Hypocritically Attacks Wash. Post for Exposing TV Station Owner's Right-Wing Bias Topic: Media Research Center
The Washington Post did a big story last month on how Sinclair Broadcast Group, the largest owner of TV stations in the country, required its local news operations to run negative stories about Hillary Clinton during the election and worked with Donald Trump's campaign to air interviews with him on those stations.
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham was mad about this, becuase he is a terrible media critic and doesn't think right-wing media should face the same scrutiny as the "liberal media" the MRC pays him to attack. So he ranted about it in a Dec. 25 post:
Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi dug into the Baltimore-based Sinclair Broadcast Group to warn of conservative pro-Trump bias. The headline at the top of the Style section front page was “How a giant TV company helped Donald Trump's campaign.” It’s nothing like giant TV companies like, say, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, or (“not for profit’’) PBS. But pro-Trump bias is offensive inside the Post headquarters. The major networks demonstrating a pro-Hillary bias is just favoring compassion, intelligence, and diversity.
A hostile source inside Sinclair leaked internal e-mails to the Post. We can only imagine how much fun it would be to read internal e-mails from the Post (especiallywhen the managing editor was Kevin “I Love Obama” Merida).
Needless to say, Graham offered no evidence that any of those "liberal media" outlets he cited issued "must run" orders from corporate on stories attacking Trump, like Sinclair did for anti-Hillary stories.
Graham also defended Sinclair's softball questions to former presidential candidate and later Trump surrogate Ben Carson: "How does Farhi think these questions are remarkably biased? They might not be hardballs, but they’re not kissing Carson’s ring. They’re bland and open-ended inquiries. It's nothing like Gayle King (from the "giant TV company" CBS) gushing to the Obamas about her favorite Obama inauguration photos."
Graham didn't mention how Farhi rep orted that Sinclair "managers have been particularly close to Carson, who practiced medicine in Baltimore for many years," and "aired his hour-long autobiographical promotional film, called 'A Breath of Fresh Air, A New Prescription for America,' just before Carson’s official announcement [of his presidential campaign]. The Carson infomercial was produced by a company run by Armstrong Williams, which paid Sinclair an undisclosed fee for the airtime."
Neither Graham nor Farhi noted that Williams, who is also Ben Carson's handler, is in business with Sinclair. His Howard Stirk Holdings owns several TV stations that are operated by Sinclair through "sidecar" LMA agreements.
If any of this bias and cozy self-dealing happened with a non-conservative owner of TV stations, Graham would be screaming bloody murder. But Sinclair's bias is the kind of bias he likes.
WND Is Back to Likening Obama to Hitler Topic: WorldNetDaily
Remember when WorldNetDaily got all huffy about people likening Donald Trump to Hitler despite its own lengthy history of likening Barack Obama to Hitler and other Nazis? Now WND is back to its old Godwin-ing tricks.
Scott Lively writes in his Jan. 3 WND column, headlined "OBAMA'S HITLERIAN DEPARTURE":
Immediately after D-Day in World War II, the American forces of the Allied coalition set their focus on the liberation of Cherbourg, France, in Normandy. The City of Cherbourg, with it’s heavily fortified deep-water harbor, became a key strategic foothold and transportation hub for America in northern France, allowing supply ships to deliver a steady stream of troops and cargo directly to the continent for immediate deployment to the front lines.
However, when he realized that Germany would soon lose control of Cherbourg, Adolf Hitler ordered Rear Adm. Walter Hennecke to make the city and harbor unusable. Hennecke so thoroughly demolished Cherbourg and filled the harbor with debris and mines that Hitler awarded him the Knight’s Cross for “a feat unprecedented in the annals of coastal defense” on the day after his surrender.
As I watch our current occupant of the White House, Barack Hussein Obama, spend the final days of his disastrous presidency frantically working to make the Executive Branch unusable to President-elect Trump, I cannot help seeing the parallel.
[...]
Clearly, Obama’s vindictive strategy is repulsive even to many liberals, and reflects similar egomaniacal errors of judgment to Hitler’s. Like Obama, Hitler presumed himself to be a great strategic genius. After the fall of Cherbourg, while lauding Hennecke, Hitler ordered Cherbourg’s Gen. Friedrich Dollmann to be court-martialed then micro-managed subsequent maneuvers, making tactical blunders that cost the Germans the entire peninsula, and eventually the war.
Like Hitler, Obama’s bad decisions invariably lose territory for his team: and each new bruise to his self-image requires a greater need for revenge, further clouding his judgment. During his administration, Democrats have lost 63 House seats, 10 Senate seats and 12 governorships. Abroad, Obama has lost most of the Middle East, virtually destroyed our relationships with Israel and Russia, and squandered America’s formerly deep reservoir of goodwill with countless nations by forcing “gay marriage” and Soros’ “open borders” agenda on them.
WND columnist Michael Brown once declared that "This horrific name-calling needs to stop, not only because it defames the living but also because it mocks the dead – specifically, the victims of Hitler and his henchmen." He was talking aboutTrump-Nazi comparisons, of course. He might want to send a copy of his column to his fellow anti-gay activist Lively.
CNS Unemployment Numbers Distortion Watch, Last Licks Edition Topic: CNSNews.com
The jobs report for December was the last one to come out under the Obama administration, so CNSNews.com had to get their last cherry-pickingdistortion of the numbers in while they could.
The main story by Susan Jones focuses, as usual, on the labor force participation rate, telling us that "the number of Americans not in the labor force has increased by 14,573,000 (18.09 percent) since January 2009, when Obama took office." Jones surprisingly concedes the dishonesty of that number, admitting that it is "continuing a long-term trend that began well before Obama was sworn in." It's not until the seventh paragraph that Jones reports that there is also a record number of Americans who are employed, and she buried in the 17th paragraph the fact that 156,000 jobs were created in December.
The first sidebar, by editor in chief Terry Jeffrey, bemoaned that manufacturing jobs continued to decline, glossing over the fact that -- as the chart accompanying his article illustrates -- manufacturing jobs have been on a general downward slope for a good 30 years. Jeffrey further bemoaned that there are more government jobs than manufaturing jobs.
The second sidebar, by managing editor Michael W. Chapman, once again played up relatively high black unemployment, implicitly blaming Obama while leaving out the important contextual fact that black unemployment has always been roughly double that of white unemployment.
Theh final sidebar, also by Chapman, repeats his imaginary claim that the U-6 number is the "real unemployment" figure, grousing that "it is not often reported by the mainstream media." As we've explained, it's a factual misnomer since that particular number counts people are employed part-time but seeking full-time work.
Next month will bring the first report of job numbers under Donald Trump. Will CNS be as diligent at cherry-picking numbers under Trump as it has been under Obama? We shall see.
WND's Hohmann Attacks Newspaper For Not Hating Muslims As Much As He Does Topic: WorldNetDaily
The headline of Leo Hohmann's Jan. 3 WorldNetDaily article says it all: 'Refugee' named Mohamed sexually assaults disabled U.S. woman, media silent." It's time to fearmonger about scary Muslims again, as is Hohmann's job at WND, and to paint all Muslims in general, and Muslim refugees in particular, as potential criminals and rapists.
Actually, the headline is wrong in one key respect: Hohmann admits the "refugee named Mohamed" was convicted not of sexual assault but, rather, attempted sexual assault.
But it's the "media silent" part that Hohmann is really hammering this time around:
WND called the executive editor of Aberdeen’s daily newspaper, the American News, and asked why nothing has been reported on the crime committed by Mohamed. He said he had no knowledge of Mohamed’s arrest, trial or conviction.
“I’m not seeing it in our system, and I really don’t recall it,” said editor J.J. Perry when asked about the case Tuesday by WND. “I’ll have to talk to our court reporter. It might be we just missed it on the docket.”
The newspaper’s court reporter, Elisa Sand, did not attend the trial, WND was told by officials who were present on Dec. 20.
Nor has the case received any coverage from local TV stations in South Dakota or neighboring Minnesota.
Hohmann did not name any other instance where a case of attempted sexual assault warranted blanket media coverage.
The next day, Hohmann was in full attack mode against the Aberdeen newspaper for not hating Muslims like he does:
A South Dakota newspaper that failed to report on the case of a Somali man convicted of trying to molest a severely handicapped woman, changed gears Wednesday after being outed by WND and decided to publish a story about the crime.
The story ran on page three of the Aberdeen American News under the headline “Sentencing later this month for a man convicted of attempted sexual contact.”
But the newspaper left out an important detail.
The convicted sex criminal, 39-year-old Liban Mohamed, was a recently arrived refugee brought to the state from Somalia at the invitation of the U.S. government. He had been in the country only about a week and in Aberdeen only one day when he wandered up to a group home and tried to molest a 31-year-old mentally handicapped woman who was sitting outside the facility.
[...]
WND contacted AAN Executive Editor J.J. Perry and asked why he omitted the information about Mohamed being a refugee.
“Because I don’t know that it was a fact he was a refugee. We weren’t there [at the trial],” Perry said, after which he was reminded that the state’s attorney, Christopher White, confirmed for WND that Mohamed was a refugee and that this information was offered by Mohamed’s own defense attorney at trial. It was part of the court record in the defense attorney’s opening statement.
Hohmann went on to rant that no picture of "the convicted sex offender" has been released ("South Dakota is one of the few states where mugshots of convicted criminals are not considered public record," he huffed), and went after a social-services group involved in resettling refugees for not addressing "how it could leave a man from Somalia, in the country for only a week, on his own to wander the streets looking for a vulnerable female."
Hohmann also complained that "The U.S. State Department and its federal contractor, Lutheran Social Services, have sent 939 Somali refugees to South Dakota since 2002, all of them being placed in Sioux Falls. More than 99 percent of all Somali refugees are Muslim." If this crime is the only one Hohmann can come up with in 14 years of Somali resettlements in South Dakota, isn't that a pretty good record?
Bizarrely, both of Hohmann's articles are illustrated with pictures of Somali refugee camps in Keny, which is nowhere near South Dakota. Apparently that's an acceptable substitute when you can't get a picture of the perp to reinofrce the otherness that's a key to Hohmann's anti-Muslim obsession.
Is Cliff Kincaid Trying to Make AIM A White Nationalist Group? Topic: Accuracy in Media
Thanks to Cliff Kincaid and his love for American Renaissance's Jared Taylor, Accuracy in Media has been flirting with white nationalism for years. AIM takes its biggest step in that direction with a Jan. 2 column by, yes, Kincaid.
He ranted that groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center focusing on white nationalism "is designed to further demonize white Americans who are waking up to what President Obama has done to them during his eight years in office," addin, "Rather than admit that Obama’s legacy turned many white Americans against the Democrats, groups like the SPLC are attempting to portray racial consciousness among white people as something to fear. ... According to the SPLC, whites are just supposed to take it." Kincaid then quotes his favorite white-nationalist buddy:
Jared Taylor of American Renaissance comments that white Americans are “beginning to realize that they need an advocate for their interests, so they start searching the internet for an honest look at the facts—and they find us.” He hopes to raise enough money to hire a reporter to cover various racial angles in developing stories, saying, “Groundbreaking pro-white journalism is exactly what American Renaissance—and the country—need.”
Of course, "pro-white journalism" is arguably another phrase for "anti-black journalism." Maybe Colin Flaherty could sign up for that. Or Cliff Kincaid.
Is AIM chief Don Irvine OK witih Kincaid pushing his organization into a white nationalist direction? Kincaid still has a job there, so apparently not.
CNS Still Shilling for Trump -- and Russia -- on Russian Election Meddling Topic: CNSNews.com
We've noted how the Trump stenographers at CNSNews.com have been heavily spinning for Trump -- and, thus, for Russia -- on the issue of Russian meddling in the presidential election, treating blanket denials from Trump lackeys as undisputed despite evidence to the contrary and even cheering on a "Russian reporter named Andre" slagging President Obama. Well, CNS is still at it, even as the evidence becomes more indisputable.
On Dec. 29, CNS managing editor Micahel W. Chapman proudly quoted Republican Rep. Trent Franks declaring that the Russians "merely did what the media should have done." Chapman quickly added that Franks meant "reported accurate information to the American people" instead of hacking into other people's email, though the full context is unclear since Chapman included only a 9-second clip of Franks saying those words instead of the entire conversation he had on MSNBC on the subject.
But the full segment reveals what Chapman didn't report that would place things in context -- Franks calling Vladimir Putin a "KGB thug" who should be punished for his involvement in the election, as well as backing away from sharing Trump's criticism of the intelligence community.
In a Jan. 3 article, chief stenographer Susan Jones uncritically quoted Trump spokesman Sean Spicer suggesting that President Obama's expelling Russian diplomats in response to the Russian meddling was a "political retribution" instead of a "diplomatic response."
CNS' pro-Republican, anti-Hillary response to the Russian meddling continued in a Jan. 5 article by Melanie Hunter approvingly quoting Republican Rep. Paul Ryan declaring that while Russia “clearly tried to meddle in our political system,” they did not put the server in Hillary Clinton’s basement or tell her not to campaign in Wisconsin or Michigan.
In covering Director of National Intelligence James Clapper 's congressional testimony on the meddling, CNS did what it usually does: quote only Republican congressmen asking questions and ignoring Democrats. Hunter pushed Trump-approved spin in another Jan. 5 article, leading with Clapper's statement that no "vote tallies" werealtered by the Russians and focusing on Republican Sen. Tom Cotton spinning that Vladimir Putin would not want to help Trump get elected because Trump proposed increasing the defense budget "to accelerate nuclear modernization, to accelerate ballistic missile defenses, and to expand and to accelerate boosting missile defenses, and to expand and accelerate oil and gas production, which would obviously harm Russia’s economy" and other "contrary evidence despite what the media speculates that perhaps Donald Trump is not the best candidate for Russia."
Jones followed the template with an article quoting Republican Lindsey Graham saying he's "ready to throw a rock" at Russia, but framed it as criticism of Obama, who only threw a "pebble."
(In contrast to Jones' stenography, actual reporters at the Washington Post noted that Cotton was among the GOP senators who "seemed keen to avoid drawing links between President-elect Donald Trump and the Russian government.")
UPDATE: There's even more shilling: A Jan. 7 article by editor in chief Terry Jeffrey repititiously recycles the claim that "Russia did not target or compromise systems used in counting votes in U.S. elections," a Jan. 9 article by Susan Jones uncritically quotes a Republican congressman (though curiously not identified as a Republican) bashing Obama for purportedly not doing anything about the hacking sooner, and another Jones article plays stenographer for Mitch McConnell insisting that Trump's national security picks are "clear-eyed people who understand fully that the Russians are not our friends."
I want Obama to linger around like the stain on American history he has been – so he can have his nose rubbed in the success of a true leader, the way some used to rub a dog’s nose in its feces to teach it the error of its ways when house-breaking it.
[...]
I want Obama to stay around so he can personally witness President Trump institute change Americans want, expect and deserve. Obama’s idea of change is cross-genderism on the battlefield and men in girls’ bathrooms. President-Elect Trump views change as better schools, cheaper more plentiful energy, health care we can afford and the right to make our own decisions on providers by increasing competition in the insurance marketplace.
I want Obama to stay around so he can see our military supporting and applauding a President Trump juxtaposed to disrespecting and attacking him as Obama encouraged them to do.
I want Obama to stick around and “speak out against [President] Trump” as he has boasted he would do if he thinks President Trump’s “policies breach certain values or ideals.”
American “values” and “ideals” are not stabbing Israel in the back by orchestrating betrayal vis-a-vis a United Nations resolution. And I want “Judas” Obama front and center in public view when President Trump works with Israel to overturn the resolution.
I want Obama to understand that when we elected Donald J. Trump, We the People of America rejected him and everything he stood for and represented.
Remember when President Bill Clinton was called “America’s first black president”? Obviously, it wasn’t because he was black. But Clinton had an affinity for black people, and his actions were beneficial to blacks (or so they thought). Hence the branding as “America’s first black president.” The tag stuck.
Well don’t look now, but I believe Obama has earned the right to be called, “America’s first Muslim president.”
[...]
Obama was obsessed with disarming Americans, at the exact same time he armed Muslim terrorists. Remember he recently handed back to the terrorist state Iran $150 billion PLUS interest (they didn’t even ask for) to buy weapons that will be used to murder Americans, Israelis and other Westerners.
Obama actually claimed that terrorists have “legitimate grievances.”
Obama refused to use the word “Muslim” at a terrorism summit.
But remarkably Obama opened that same terrorism summit with a Muslim prayer.
[...]
You couldn’t make this stuff up in a fiction movie. You’d be laughed out of Hollywood.
Obama’s actions are revolting, embarrassing and insulting. But more importantly, they’ve been telling.
Now, after 16 years of failed presidencies, under George W. Bush and later Barack Hussein Obama, we are about to embark into a new era. This new era was triggered by the prejudices and reverse racism of Obama himself. Pitting black against white, Muslim against Jew and Christian, illegal immigrant against legal immigrant, woman against man, and atheists against people of faith, with the aid of the likes of self-hating Jew and Nazi collaborator George Soros and his ilk at Media Matters and with allies in the leftist press, Obama sought to deconstruct the nation and build it back up in his ultra-leftist, socialist, “Black Muslim” image and vision. After Obama’s rule, one might have thought that George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were not just the Founding Fathers, but also the founders of the Nation of Islam and that he sought to follow in their wake.
The reality is that the American people recognize how inept the Obama administration has become, and the outcome of the election reflects that.
We know Obama is a failure who has put this country in great jeopardy, and the election proves that. Americans want a change and voted for it. Regardless of the point of view of the media or of the politicians who are more concerned with protecting their turf, American citizens want to get their country back and want it to be a safe place to raise their children and live their lives.
Now, 2017 is the beginning of a move toward that, and they are putting their faith in Donald Trump to help us along that way. If Vladimir Putin is part of that, so be it. It can’t be any worse than what we’re facing now.
Obama continues acting like the president – commuting prison sentences, declaring new national monuments, ignoring the chaos his policies have caused in the Middle East and, of course, taking another of his extravagant family vacations charged to the American taxpayer. In fact, these latest presidential decrees and actions are made from Hawaii, while he is supposed to be vacationing and relaxing but really while he continues his steamrolling through our country and our future.
It’s clear he doesn’t care. He has his own agenda and plans to carry it out regardless of the effect it will have on Americans now and in the future.
With less than three weeks from the inauguration of the new president, God only knows what further destruction Obama will wreak. We need to stay in prayer, be vigilant and give our full support to President-elect Trump as he dismantles Obama’s mess. Thank God for His mercy upon America.
It’s not just a new year, it’s a new era in the United States. The Trump era is beginning, and it is fun to think about how history will record the end of Obama and the beginning of Trump.
If you ask a leftist academic or a Hollywood liberal, they will tell you the greatest president in history is Barack Obama.
Ask any American who has (or formerly held) a real job, and they will tell you that after eight years of Obama, Jimmy Carter is now only the second worst president in American history.
[...]
It’s going to be a great year as we watch President-elect Trump dismantle the Obama legacy. The only thing history will record of Obama’s presidency will be the persistently poor Obama economy and that Obama helped usher in the era of Trump.
As we look back on this year and the end of his presidency, President Obama deserves congratulations for knocking President Carter off the bottom of the list. That is an accomplishment that will be remembered throughout history.
In the speech announcing the sanctions, deportations, etc., Obama claimed that Russia had been hacking for 10 years. A logical question then would be: Did Russia help get Obama elected? I remind you of Obama being caught on an open microphone telling Russian President Medvedev that he would have more flexibility after he was re-elected. What was he promising Medvedev? Was it a quid pro quo for Russia’s help to get him re-elected? Why would we believe one thing today and not the same thing from that incident?
After jetting off to Hawaii for another luxury vacation, costing taxpayer millions of dollars, it became obvious that Obama left land mines for his successor, hoping they will blow up during some portion of Trump’s initial stay in the White House. Between rounds of golf, he gave orders to throw Israel under the bus at the United Nations. He expelled 35 Russian diplomats. He used an arcane statute to block oil drilling in much of the Arctic and portions of the Atlantic Ocean in an obvious attempt to keep Trump from making good on his promise to use all available fuel reserves and allow more off-shore drilling. He used another arcane statute to grab 1.6 million acres of valuable land in Utah and Nevada, two states that helped put Trump over the top.
Obama is going to extreme lengths to make it difficult for Trump to roll back job-killing federal regulations that have been crippling economic growth by releasing hundreds more in the waning days of his administration. Word is that this administration is eyeing $44.1 billion in midnight regulations, in addition to the $150 billion in regulatory costs already published, as he goes out the door.
I understand there are people reading this who will be put off by that headline.
I get it.
You don’t really think people who are not serial killers or genocidal maniacs are evil.
You would rather just attribute actions to differences of opinion.
So let’s start with why Barack Obama and John Kerry took one big parting shot against Israel at the United Nations by not only refusing to veto the resolution labeling the Jewish state an occupying power but for orchestrating the introduction of this assault on a peace-loving, liberty-loving, self-governing nation – the only one, by the way, in the Middle East.
[...]
That’s why Obama and Kerry and wrong. Now let’s look at why I say they are evil.
Most prominent among Obama’s actions has been his harrying of Russia vis-à-vis accusations that her government somehow influenced the November election in Donald Trump’s favor through digital means despite any evidence whatsoever of this having taken place. Relying as always upon the complicit establishment press to back him up, Obama took punitive steps against Russia in the form of sanctions and the expulsion of some of its diplomats from the U.S., a futile but insulting move calculated to antagonize rather than penalize.
Would Obama be perfectly happy to catalyze World War III through these antics? Probably – but if there’s anything the left’s radical icon Saul Alinsky stressed, it was patience. Chances are that Obama is looking forward to his days as a celebrated elder statesman and the opportunities this will present for furthering his destructive mission.
[...]
The widespread baseless accusations, fearmongering and despotism in which Obama has engaged since the election underscore who he is at his core: An ill-bred, horribly maladjusted and arguably psychopathic low-level street organizer and catty, vindictive bath-houser who has been allowed to believe his own publicity for far too long.
Over the last couple of weeks, we have been hearing much of Barack Obama and his legacy. In other words, we have been hearing about what state he has left America in.
I can sum up his legacy for you in short order here:
He is a narcissist, usurper-in-chief, (Isaiah 14) dictator wannabe;
He is a liar-deceiver-fraud-impostor (2 Corinthians 11:14);
He is a thief (John 12:6);
He is a racist;
He is a sodomite (Romans 1:24);
He is a communist-Muslim sympathizer, a Marxist and a devil worshiper (See “Rules for Radicals”).
Newsmax's Ruddy Staying Buddy-Buddy With Trump Topic: Newsmax
One of the more minor controversies involved whether author Harry Hurt III was actually escorted off the grounds of a Trump golf club. Newsmax has its own take on it in a Jan. 2 article -- credited only to "Newsmas Wires" -- noting that it was "newsworthy because Hurt was golfing with billionaire David Koch as part of Koch's foursome at West Palm Beach's Trump International Golf Club."
The article then quickly runs to Trump's defense, noting that Hurt had written a book that "published divorce allegations made by Trump's first wife Ivana that while married she had been 'raped' by her husband," adding, "Ivana later recanted the comment, said she never meant to imply a legal definition of rape. She strongly supported her ex-husband in his presidential bid."
That was followed by a section we're pretty sure did not come from any wire service Newsmax subscribes to:
Hurt claimed in his Facebook post "David was appalled" by Trump's actions and implied David was asked to leave as well.
A Koch source tells Newsmax "at no time was DHK asked to leave."
Koch said "something to the effect when Harry Hurt offered to leave on his own, 'We came as a foursome and will leave as a foursome,'" the source said.
Another Koch associate in Palm Beach said the billionaire was not aware of the feud the two had in the past year. He was surprised his longtime friend had accosted Trump on the course and then went public with the episode.
The source added Koch has always personally liked Trump and he "loves" Trump's golf course, which he thinks is one of the best in the country.
The week before, Koch and his wife Julia had met Trump at Mar-a-Lago during a dinner hosted by Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy and Palm Beach heiress Talbott Maxey. Koch congratulated Trump on his election victory and the two had a cordial conversation.
So not only is Newsmax close enough to the right-wing Koch billionaires to get a quick response from a "Koch source" for this story, Christopher Ruddy is hosting parties for Trump.
We've noted that Ruddy has long been a Trump buddy, and that he and then-Newsmax reporter Ronald Kessler played a major role in feeding Trump's presidential ambitions in the runup to the 2012 campaign, which set the stage for his 2016 run. Newsmax and Trump even tried to co-host a GOP presidential debate during the 2012 campaign, which fizzled when only two candidates showed interest in participating. Newsmax is headquarted in West Palm Beach, so the closeness to Trump is geographical as well.
Ruddy's closeness with Trump doesn't bode well for any effort to portray Newsmax as a fair and balanced news organization and not a Trump shill with conflicts of interest.
WND Returns to Smearing Obama Over U.S. Aid to Kenya Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've documented how WorldNetDaily freelancer Steve Peacock spent years writing about how President Obama supposedly personally steered millions of dollars in federal funding to Kenya -- until he admitted that federal aid to Kenya under Obama was well below fiscal year 2009, the last budget approved by his predecessor, George W. Bush.
Peacock actually disappeared from WNBD for several months after we documented that; we'd like to think it was from shame. Whatever the reason, Peacock got over it and returned to contributing articles to WND -- and to obsessing over U.S. aid to Kenya.
Peacock wrote in a Nov. 16 WND article that "A joint venture between the government of Kenya and private investors soon will receive a million-dollar grant from the Obama administration solely to study whether to build a solar power plant in Gitaru, Kenya." Peacock touted his own past reporting:
WND for several years now has reported extensively on U.S. assistance to Kenya, which initially decreased during Obama’s first term – as did the budgets for many assistance programs – but then grew “exponentially,” in USAID’s own words, in subsequent years.
The overall U.S. aid-to-Kenya budget has vacillated, dropping to $508 million in FY 2012 but then rising to $674 million by FY 2014. But even as overall expenditures dropped – indeed, despite those initial cost decreases – the voluminous growth in the number of separate U.S.-financed Kenyan projects led to USAID’s admission that it faced difficulty in managing them.
Peacock doesn't mention that, as he had earlier admitted, that $674 million figure is still well below the $830 million Kenya received under Bush's 2009 budget.
Peacock followed up with a Jan. 1 article complaining:
The Obama administration is seeking to infuse another $306 million into HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention programs solely for the African nation of Kenya, where men who have sex with men, female sex workers and people who inject drugs “are considered key populations for intervention.”
Peacock omitted the pertinent fact that according to the U.S. Agency for International Development procurement document he cites, that money is spread over five years. Peacock has also previously expressed disdain for federal money helping gays or HIV victims.
As before, the unspoken assumption Peacock is feeding with these articles is that Obama is giving special attention to Kenya because of his familial ties there or that he has proved more aid to Kenya than to other countries -- something Peacock has never provided a shred of evidence. He's content to be a lazy, Obama-hating reporter willing to write biased articles for cash to aid WND's pathological Obama-hate.
MRC Proves NY Times Right About Conservative Use of 'Fake News' to Bash Media Topic: Media Research Center
Clay Waters devoted a Dec. 27 Media Research Center post to complaining that the New York Times wrote an article about the fact-checker Snopes, complaining that it was designed to counter Snopes' purportedly "liberal reputation" amid "allegations of hypocrisy." Waters also grumbled that the article "accused conservatives of crying 'fake news' to discredit the mainstream media."
Waters cannot credibly counter that claim.The MRC is so dedicated to blaming fake news only on the "liberal media" that it actually reached back to 1980 to rehash the Washington Post "Jimmy's World" hoax as evidence "the liberal media elite" put out fake news.
Indeed, after quoting the offending passage, Waters does exactly what he complained about being accused of:
Rolling Stone and The Washington Post are not immune to bogus reporting. The Times went all-in on the made-up liberal narrative of racist Duke lacrosse players guilty of raping a stripper. One more recent example of “fake news” from the NYT: Its utter gullibility (and failure to follow up) in swallowing the claims of YouTube hoaxer Adam Saleh, allegedly removed from a Delta plane in London for speaking Arabic on his phone, a tale which conveniently played into the paper’s narrative of Islamophobia but which has been declared false by -- guess who? -- Snopes.
Waters is self-discrediting in another way: by admitting that Snopes debunked a New York Times, he undid his claim of Snopes' "liberal reputation." Whoops.
Waters also takes offense to the article noting "efforts by highly partisan conservatives to claim that their fact-checking efforts are the same as those of independent outlets like Snopes." He offers no evidence to rebut the claim, only mockingly references "pristinely objective fact-checkers at Snopes" and whining that "apparently only Snopes and the liberal media are allowed to fact-check," unlike "Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin."
Waters cites no alleged "fact-checks" done by Hannity or Malkin, let alone an instance in which they ever found a fellow conservative in the wrong.
For a "news" organization that professes to despise fake news, WorldNetDaily sure publishes a lot of it.
WND serves up another dose of it in a Dec. 29 article by Chelsea Schilling screaming "CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATS LEGALIZE CHILD PROSTITUTION." In it, Schilling treated as fact assertions by a Republican California state lawmaker, Travis Allen -- originally published by the right-wing Washington Examiner -- that a new law designed to protect youths involved in child prostitution by steering them to help instead of treating them as criminals was a legalization of child prostitution:
“[T]eenage girls (and boys) in California will soon be free to have sex in exchange for money without fear of arrest or prosecution,” Allen wrote in a column published by the Washington Examiner.
Allen acknowledged that Democrats sincerely believe the law will help child sex victims, but he issued a dire warning about the “immoral” consequences of decriminalizing child prostitution.
“Unfortunately, the reality is that the legalization of underage prostitution suffers from the fatal defect endemic to progressive-left policymaking: it ignores experience, common sense and most of all human nature — especially its darker side,” Allen explained.
“The unintended but predictable consequence of how the real villains — pimps and other traffickers in human misery — will respond to this new law isn’t difficult to foresee. Pimping and pandering will still be against the law whether it involves running adult women or young girls. But legalizing child prostitution will only incentivize the increased exploitation of underage girls. Immunity from arrest means law enforcement can’t interfere with minors engaging in prostitution — which translates into bigger and better cash flow for the pimps. Simply put, more time on the street and less time in jail means more money for pimps, and more victims for them to exploit.”
While Schilling devoted a mere two paragraphs of her article to a token defense of the law, the vast majority of her 17-paragraph araticle is devoted to Allen's attack and other criticism of it.
Because Schilling has no interest in balanced reporting or even facts, she failed to ttell the full story behind the bill and how it does not, in fact, legalize child prostitution, perhaps explained best by Wonkette:
Wow! So, we have to punish child victims in order to make things tougher for those who victimize them? No! We do not, actually, because the law still allows for sex-trafficked minors to be taken into custody or be declared a dependent child of the court. Meaning that these children can still be taken off the street, but they can’t be punished and thrown in jail themselves.
Additionally, this measure actually helps fight child sex-trafficking, and takes away the leverage pimps and sex-traffickers have to keep these minors in line — the “If I go to jail, so will you” leverage — and may result in trafficked minors seeking help from the police rather than avoiding them for fear of going to jail. Ta-Da!
This legislation is the result of a combined effort from the McCain Institute and the Human Rights Project For Girls, the “There’s No Such Thing As A Child Prostitute” campaign, designed to put the blame where it belongs in cases of child sex-trafficking, treating the pimps as criminals and the minors as the victims of sexual abuse that they are.
[...]
Pilot programs in Compton and Long Beach boasted great success and, rather than boosting the income of high-profile exploiters, resulted in their arrests. A similar measure in Los Angeles passed with bipartisan support.
It’s actually a really great program, and includes a new Law Enforcement First Responder Protocol for dealing with child victims of sex-trafficking that will hopefully become the national model. It encourages providing victims with community-based services and actually helping them, rather than treating them like criminals.
Sometime after Dec. 30, though, Schilling's byline was removed and that headline was detuned to "Lawmaker: California Democrats 'legalize child prostitution.'" Near as we can tell, the content of the article was not changed; however, this marks the second time in a month that a WND article was revised after publication to the point that the original author's byline was removed. Like previous offender Joe Kovacs, Schilling appears to still be a WND employee despite her history of misinformation and falsehoods.
But the first, sensational headline is the one that sticks. And mindshare -- even if it's not true -- appears to be all that financially struggling WND cares about these days.
CNS' Jones Takes Another Snide Swipe at Liberals Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com morning managing editor and snide reporter Susan Jones endeavors to interject bias into her articles any way she can -- whether it's slavish stenography for conservatives or snarky asides for liberals.
That explains Jones' Dec. 21 article, which telegraphs her partisanship right in the lede: "In these waning days of the Obama administration, the Department of Housing an Urban Development announced on Tuesday that it has awarded a record $1,953,210,272 to thousands of homeless assistance programs across the nation, including some in Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands."
Does HUD awarding this money have any connection to "these waning days of the Obama administration"? Jones never explains. But it's a setup for her third-paragraph zing:
More than half of the money is going to programs in the 20 "blue" states plus the District of Columbia that voted for Hillary Clinton in November.
Excluding Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the total amount going to the 50 states and the District of Columbia is $1,933,264,877. And of that total, 59.00 percent -- $1,140,698,805 -- went to states won by Clinton.
But does that have anything to do with anything? Nope, as Jones concedes: "The awards have nothing to do with Clinton, but they do indicate that homelessness is more of a problem in blue states, some of them large and some of them small."
Shorter Jones: Just kidding! Suck it,b lue states!
And CNS' parent, the Media Research Center, has the gall to criticize other reporters for bias? The MRC should clean up its own house first.
WND's Jihad Against Keith Ellison Topic: WorldNetDaily
As a Muslim member of Congress, Keith Ellison has been a regulartarget of the ConWeb. Now that he's under consideration for Democratic National Committee chairman, the attacks are ratcheting up.
A leader of this is WorldNetDaily's chief Islamophobe, Leo Hohmann. He rants in a Dec. 25 article:
Evidence is mounting in support of the allegation that U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, the nation’s first Muslim congressman and a leading candidate for chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is a Muslim Brotherhood operative and has been for years.
As a mouthpiece for that subversive organization, which Congress is considering declaring a terrorist organization, nothing Ellison says should be taken at face value, experts on the Brotherhood told WND.
This explains how he could speak before Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups like the Islamic Society of North America and later claim he has no relationship with the group. In fact, he was scheduled to address the annual convention of another Brotherhood offshoot, the Muslim American Society or MAS, on Tuesday but his name has suddenly disappeared from the list of convention speakers, reports the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
Hohmann's so-called "experts on the Brotherhood" are all Muslim-haters like him -- Chris Gaubatz, Mark Christian and the Investigative Project on Terrorism. And at no point does Hohmann prove Ellison is a "Muslim Brotherhood operative" -- all hedoes is note tangental links between Ellison and groups he claims are purportedly "affiliated" with or have "ties" to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Also, at no point does Hohmann explain what exactly the Muslim Brotherhood is or why he's using it as a bogeyman by trying to attach it to Ellison.
Hohmann goes on to conveniently claim that Ellison is not allowed to defend himself because Muslims should be presumed to be liars:
Given his ties to an international brotherhood whose stated goal is the spread of Shariah across the globe, can Ellison be taken at his word when he speaks to the media or on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives?
In fact, everything about Ellison’s public life, his support for far-left causes such as same-sex marriage and abortion on demand through the later stages of pregnancy, might be a smokescreen.
At best, he is a confused individual who doesn’t square his spiritual life with his political stances, which seem to be at odds with each other. Unless you understand Islamic law.
When his life is inspected under the lens of Sharia, maybe Keith Ellison isn’t such an enigma after all, says a former Islamic imam and expert on the Muslim Brotherhood.
To understand Ellison you have to understand Shariah, says Dr. Mark Christian, who converted to Christianity in 2005 and changed his name from Muhammad Abdullah, leaving behind a comfortable life in Egypt as part of a prominent Muslim family.
“So, does Sharia allow you to accept some stuff that is not Islamic in order to further the political agenda of Islam? Absolutely it does,” Christian told WND. It is based on a teaching that is called the code “necessity.”
[...]
“It is put upon any Muslim to make the decision to abide or not abide with any Islamic rules or regulations based on if it’s going to serve the cause of Islam,” he said. “If it’s going to protect the life of a Muslim, or protect the person himself, you have the right to make changes to the rules if you are going to protect yourself or your family or another person who is part of your brotherhood as a Muslim in this non-Muslim country, or if it is going to protect and advance the cause of Islam itself in this society.”
Hohmann's record of Muslim-hatred and rampantdishonesty gives us a much better basis to similarly presume Hohmann is lying than the presumption he gives to Ellison.
MRC Restarts the PR Machine For Upcoming Anti-Abortion Film Topic: Media Research Center
We've documented how the Media Research Center enthusiasticallyshilled for the crowdfunding campaign for Phelim McAleer's film about rogue abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell -- shilling for which McAleer appears to have paid the MRC, which bought its silence about where the money came from for McAleer to buy a billboard mocking one crowdfunding website for cutting off his campaign.
Well, that film is close to being release, which means the MRC must crank up the publicity machine once again.
Thus, we have a Dec. 2 article by Katie Yoder touting this "record-breaking abortion movie." But how can it be a "record-breaking" film if it hasn't been released yet? She's apparently referring to it being "the most successful crowdfunded movie on Indiegogo."
Yoder uncritically quotes McAleer making suspiciously evidence-free assertions about the film, such as how it purportedly hasn't found a distributor because it's "too controversial" ("Because of non-disclosure agreements, the producers didn’t name names," Yoder writes, but why would McAleer be contractually obligated not to reveal who's not distributing his film if there's no contract in the first place?) or that the film "has scored off the charts at test screenings. ... Test audiences in their feedback have cried and praised the storytelling but also praised the movie Gosnell for its accessibility."
Naturally, this leads to a conspiracy theory about why Hollywood won't touch his movie when it will make other films about abortion: "This is continuing the media cover-up – they don't want anything that asks difficult questions about abortion," McAleer is quoted as saying.
McAleer and Yoder don't broach the possiiblity that "Gosnell" is simply an amateurish, terrible film. Rewire saw an early version of the film, and notes that its apparent goal is to suggest that all abortion doctors are Gosnell wannabes:
Like any crudely made horror movie, the film seeks to achieve these ends by using the most gruesome aspects of an egregious crime to inflame passions. Sensational footage of “baby parts,” filthy conditions, and untrained assistants all are part of a movie that seeks to implicate abortion providers in the crimes of a felon whose practices were unquestionably and undeniably horrific and do not comport with standard or accepted medical practice of any kind, nor do they have anything to do with the clinics in which legal abortions are performed.
Like any good PR shill, Yoder makes sure to plug the ancillary products, noting that McAleer has written a companion book and "Regnery Publishing will release the book for sale on January 24th, although it is already available for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million."
McAleer is so invested in putting ideology first by turning Gosnell into a anti-abortion bogeyman that he's not going to tell the truth about the safety of the abortion prodecure, or that the vast majority of abortions take place before the 12th week and, thus, have nothing whatsover to do with the contents of his film.
Yoder, as McAleer's loyal stenographer, will continue to tell that story, because that's what she's getting paid to do -- either as part of her MRC job or by McAleer himself.
NEW ARTICLE: WND's Chief Islamophobe Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily reporter Leo Hohmann has been peddling hatred of Muslims with misleading and biased reporting, at one point effectively asking: Why should police investigate a crime when we can simply make assumptions if the perp is Muslim? Read more >>
The Washington Post did a big story last month on how Sinclair Broadcast Group, the largest owner of TV stations in the country, required its local news operations to run negative stories about Hillary Clinton during the election and worked with Donald Trump's campaign to air interviews with him on those stations.
Remember when WorldNetDaily 
The jobs report for December was the last one to come out under the Obama administration, so CNSNews.com had to get their last 
The headline of Leo Hohmann's Jan. 3 WorldNetDaily 
Thanks to Cliff Kincaid and 
We've noted how the 
I want Obama to linger around like the stain on American history he has been – so he can have his nose rubbed in the success of a true leader, the way some used to rub a dog’s nose in its feces to teach it the error of its ways when house-breaking it.
One of the more minor controversies involved whether author Harry Hurt III was actually escorted off the grounds of a Trump golf club. Newsmax has its own take on it in a Jan. 2 
We've 
Clay Waters devoted a Dec. 27 Media Research Center 
For a "news" organization that professes to despise fake news, WorldNetDaily sure 
CNSNews.com morning managing editor and 
As a Muslim member of Congress, Keith Ellison has been a 
We've documented how the Media Research Center 
