MRC Suggests Nunes Has Goods on Obama Spying on Trump ... Then Admits It Doesn't Topic: Media Research Center
Under the headline "Nets Demand Evidence 123 Times, Scold Nunes for Giving It," the Media Research Center's Mike Ciandella tried to live up to the headline in his March 23 post, but ... doesn't:
When President Trump made his claim that President Obama “wiretapped” Trump Tower during the presidential campaign, the media demanded evidence. Since Trump’s initial tweet on March 4, the evening news shows of ABC, CBS and NBC have called on the White House to provide more evidence a grand total of 123 times.
But when House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes briefed the President, and the press, revealing that Trump associates’ names hadn’t been redacted from intelligence reports, the networks changed their tone.
According to Nunes, the Trump associates hadn’t been the target of surveillance. However, their conversations were picked up in the process, and then their identities weren’t masked as is usually the protocol with American citizens.
Nunes’s revelation didn’t prove the President’s wiretapping claims, but it did change the network news’s tone on releasing evidence. Before Nunes, the evening news shows were full of examples of demands for evidence to be made public.
So even Ciandella admits Nunes did not offer evidence to support Trump's claim. But he's trying to change the subject -- and regurgitate the Trump White House's talking points -- by claiming it's really all about how the names of the Trump people who talked with monitored people leaked out.
Ciandella also glosses over thereal reason for the change in tone on the story. He's trying to portray it as because Nunes is also trying to make it about leaked names (and, though also trying to align with the Trump agenda), but as Ciandella also sorta concedes, the networks are actually focusing on how Nunes is briefing Trump onclaimed findings in the Russian contact investigation before even the members of his own committee, which is highly unusual behavior.
Of course, if Trump and Nunes were Democrats, Ciandella and the rest of the MRC would be clamoring for those names and wailing about collusion.
WND's Brown Denies Mocking Transgenders, Then Calls Jenner 'A Man In A Dress' Topic: WorldNetDaily
Last month we caught WorldNetDaily columnist Michael Brown trying to pretend he's not really bashing transgenders. He does it again in his Feb. 27 column:
This being said, I do not minimize for a moment the very real struggle of precious little children who grapple deeply with their gender identity, nor do I deny that many children (and adults) report that their lives are more stable and fulfilled when they identify as the opposite of their biological sex.
I do not minimize the traumas through which Bruce Jenner (or others like him) has lived, nor do I claim to be able to relate to those traumas personally.
And I do not make a spiritual judgment about someone who struggles with his or her gender identity, as if this somehow made them into the vilest of sinners. Why should that be the case?
Again, my goal is not to belittle or disparage, and as loudly and clearly as I can, I proclaim God’s love for all of you who identify as transgender, reminding each one that Jesus died for you just as He died for me and that God has a good and godly purpose for each of your lives.
You are not defective any more than I am defective, and every human being on the planet is broken in some way and in need of a Great Physician.
The headline of this column? "Caitlyn Jenner is just a man in a dress." And the very first line of this column (italics his): "I do not write these words lightly, and there is not an ounce of mockery or, God forbid, hatred in my heart when I say that Caitlyn Jenner is a man wearing a dress."
Brown is in serious denial that there's a profound disconnect between the cocmpassion he claims to feel for transgenders and his snide dismissal of them by insisting they're nothing more than a man in a dress.
Brown's column also embeds his "new video commentary, including some telling clips with Jenner." He again dismisses Jenner as "a man in a dress taking hormones," then cheers that President Trump "rescinded a ridiculous order, guidelines from the federal government" that Title IX also covers gender identity, which he claims meant would allow "a 17-year-old boy who identifies as a girl to play on the girls' sports team and to share the girls' locker rooms and shower stall and bathrooms." That language is a scare tactic WND and other anti-LGBT activists have used for years.
Brown then asserts that children with gender identity issues -- which he calls "some kind of handicap -- mental, emotional" -- "need to be told boys are boys and girls." He also likens being transgender to thinking you're Chinese or 7 feet tall.
The graphic shown along with Brown during his video lecture reads, "Caution: Transanity."
Is that the language of a guy who claims he's not trying to belittle or disparage transgenders, or not making a spiritual judgment about them, or not mocking them, or not minimizing their struggles? Yeah, we don't think so either.
MRC's Graham & Bozell Mislead About ACLU, 'SNL' Topic: Media Research Center
The March 24 column by Tim Graham and Brent Bozell carries the provocative headline "'Saturday Night Live' Supports 9/11 Killers." It begins:
In the stunned aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, America healed in part by tuning in to "Saturday Night Live," just a few miles from the wreckage of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. We all felt like New Yorkers and Pentagon employees after radical Islamic terrorists killed more than 3,000 Americans by hijacking four airplanes.
Now, many years later, the American Civil Liberties Union is demonstrating its bizarre definition of "civil liberties" by complaining that the 9/11 terrorists are not having their civil rights respected. One article on the website was headlined "Will the 9/11 Defendants Ever Get a Fair Trial?" Most Americans wonder why anyone responsible for 9/11 is still breathing.
But guess who supports that radical take? Stars of "Saturday Night Live."
The ACLU is now promoting a Facebook Live telethon on March 31 called "Stand for Rights," starring former "Saturday Night Live" stars Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and frequent "SNL" players like Alec Baldwin and Tom Hanks.
Now, the quicker-thinking among us will probably remember that "the 9/11 terrorists" all died in the attacks, which means they ACLU is probably talking about someone else. Graham and Bozell deliberately don't help by stating nothing from the ACLU column beyond its headline, which raises suspicions about deception even more.
Indeed, the ACLU column does talk about someone else: the people being held at Guantanamo Bay. The article points out that those remaining at Gitmo still haven't gone to trial after 15-plus years of confinement, and that the government is trying to withhold evidence of CIA "black sites" where torture is alleged to have taken place.
But because lazy right-wing rants about supposedly out-of-touch liberals are so much easier than a nuanced examination of what's happening in Gitmo, it's a lazy rant we get from Graham and Bozell:
You somehow "help people" and "stand for rights" by spitting on the graves of the 9/11 dead and championing the rights of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? The left doesn't care about the lost civil rights of people murdered by terrorists, only the civil rights of terrorist suspects. The prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay is somehow more historically heinous than the 9/11 attacks ever were.
Liberals are so arrogant they think conservatives are the oppressors and torturers, even as they support the rights of terrorists and abortionists who sell the body parts of dead babies. The ACLU has created a People Power project to fight President Trump's administration's "anti-civil rights agenda" of "deportation raids, the Muslim ban, Planned Parenthood defunding and other civil rights priorities." It's very selective about which rights are essential, including a so-called right to import yourself into America, especially if you're Muslim.
Of course, Graham and Bozell are no less selective, all too willing to go along with the idea that Muslims aren't allowed to live in America and that abortionists are murderers.
Never mind that they are deliberatly misleading about what exactly "SNL" supports in regard to the ACLU. The ACLU talks about justice for the Gitmo defendants, which includes a open trial instead of a military tribunal behind closed doors. Graham and Bozell don't explain why it's "spitting on the graves of the 9/11 dead" to make the justice the Gitmo folks face an open process so that everyone can see what they are accused of having done.
Graham and Bozell close by huffing that "The entertainment industry will never stop being egregiously out of touch with the American heartland," ignoring how out of touch they themselves are with American ideals of freedom and justice.
WND Book 'Reviewer' Hypes WND Titles (And Has A Raging Case of Obama Derangement) Topic: WorldNetDaily
Developing biased right-wing-Christian conspiracy theories about a Christian bookstore chain going out of business isn't the only thing WorldNetDaily columnist Jim Fletcher has been up to lately. He's also back to his old tricks of serving as hype man for books published by the company that also publishes his column.
Fletcher's March 8 column focused on Carl Gallups' WND-published book "When The Lion Roars," gushing over it as "a thrilling look at a triumphant Messiah. The message of the book really resonates, precisely at a time when the world is in such chaos," as well as "an indispensable guide for navigating the crazy globe spinning out of control" and "proof some writers don’t exhaust their talent with their first couple of books."
On March 10, Fletcher took on WND reporter Leo Hohmann's anti-Muslim book "Stealth Invasion" -- and by "took on," we mean that Fletcher totally slobbered over it. As if he was being paid to do so, Fletcher totally buys into Hohmann's hateful Muslim-bashing rhetoric:
Weak-kneed Washington establishment-types caved to Obama, and now that President Donald Trump is attempting to put the brakes on such immigration through what he calls “extreme vetting,” he is being attacked on all sides, from clueless college students to seasoned political operatives and media hacks.
All this makes a new book by Leo Hohmann especially timely. “Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest Through Immigration and Resettlement Jihad” will make the hair stand up on the back of your neck.
And that’s a good thing.
Too many Americans either want to stick their heads in the sand, or wring their hands over their perception that we must “welcome the stranger” no matter the cost. In actual fact, the demons of ISIS are already making their way here and will exist in sleeper cells until they determine the time is right to unleash jihad on Americans. Hohmann outlines this and much more in “Stealth Invasion.”
[...]
I think we know what was going on within the Obama administration. Let’s use common sense. Perhaps Trump can turn things around, but the fact is, we already have a jihadist presence on our soil, and it entered under stealth.
[...]
Wake up before it’s too late! “Stealth Invasion” will help show you the way.
This is one of the most important books you’ll read this year.
Needless to say, in neither column does he disclose that the books he "reviewed" were published by WND.
Fletcher also demonstrated he still has a raging case of Obama Derangement Syndrome in his March 3 column, in which he bitterly complains about Barack Obama's $60 million book deal. "Reports are that Barack and Michelle Obama will continue to use their taxpayer-funded lifestyle to enrich themselves," Fletcher huffed, apparently missing the part where the contract was between Obama and the book publisher and the complete lack of government involvement. And the derangement continued:
Obama has been a hardcore totalitarian ideologue his entire adult life. Michelle Obama is every bit the true believer her husband is.
[...]
The lavish vacations and endless other perks make the Obamas among the most shameless power couples in history, and that’s saying a whole lot.
Look, we all understand that for one to ascend to the highest office in the land requires a healthy ego. The current one has that in spades. It’s just the way it is. But what separates these leaders is the way they treat people. The Democrat Party mouths the right words in their perpetual “fight for the people,” but it’s a scam. In reality, the Dems have built a modern slave enterprise, dooming millions to lives of squalor, while the elites tax and spend and laugh all the way to the bank.
Or to their publishers.
[...]
Like all leftists, Penguin and their celebrity authors really do intend to change the world, and they’re being successful. Along those lines, the publishing giant has also announced one million copies of the Obamas’ books will be donated to First Book, a non-profit that “provides educational materials” to children in need.
In need of what – instruction in Marxism? I’m being serious. The book deal is yet another way Obama engages in community organizing, or rather, community enslavement. It’s an interesting network he’s built. Penguin will also give a “significant” number of books to the Obama Foundation. For those of us watching the corruption of the Clinton Foundation … well, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
The one saving grace is there are still many millions of Americans who hold to traditional American values, and who rose up in November and sent a message to Barack Obama:
Your legacy isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
Fletcher really needs to seek some professional help for his Obama derangement.
MRC Doesn't Back Up Claim That Judge Is 'Liberal' Topic: Media Research Center
We've noted how the Media Research Center loves hurling labels at suspected liberals without regard to accuracy. We see that again in a March 17 MRC post headlined "ABC Touts Liberal Judge Shooting Down Trump’s Revised Travel Ban."
So what's the evidence that the judge is a "liberal'? Fondacaro provides none.
Are we supposed to assume the judge is "liberal" simply because he ruled against an order by a Republican president? Apparently so, according to Fondacaro's logic.
Fondacaro also claims that the judge's order was "championed by the liberal media" -- but he onl evidence he provides of that is an ABC report that, in fact, is a straightforward accounting of the judge's order.
Fondacaro went on to rant that "the constitutionality of Trump’s executive order is not in question, according to Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz," and that "The question of the constitutionality of the executive order was missing from" the ABC report.
Fondacaro further complained that "There was no mention that the countries selected in the order were observed by the Obama White House for needing additional screening because proper checks are lacking. All of which are very important facts to understanding the entire situation."But as Foreign Policy magazine explains, the immigration restrictions Obama had imposed on there countries was much more narrowly targeted and didn't ban nearly all immigration, as Trump's original order tried to do.
WND Promises Netanyahu Meeting With This Year's Holy Land Tour Topic: WorldNetDaily
Even though last year's WorldNetDaily-led tour of the Holy Land was close enough to being adebacle that WND was begging for sign-ups three months after the original deadline, WND is doing it again -- with an elevated political profile.
In February, WND started promoting this year's tour with the usual stops, and it's also dangling the idea that tour-goers will get "briefings from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and new U.S. Ambassador David Friedman among others," adding "You will hear from top Israeli leaders, military brass, see with your own eyes why the Jewish state is so strategically positioned in the hotbed of the Middle East."
But, alas, these visits hasn't actually been worked out yet. As the article later admits:
While Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu cannot promise he will be able to address the group in November, all indications are positive that he will make every effort to address the group.
As for David Friedman, President Donald Trump’s designee as the new U.S. ambassador to Israel, WND is closely working with him on a date for meeting the group, even as he winds his way through the hurdles of the confirmation process and his anticipated move this year to the new U.S. Embassy Jerusalem.
“I’m optimistic,” says Farah, “After all, who can turn down Chuck Norris?”
Well, true -- who can turn down Chuck Norris? Except Norris doesn't appear to be actually going on the tour. The article cites a WND column by Norris in which he says, "Bibi and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman have been invited to speak to the tour group, and I hope they do. Check out the educational and inspiring itinerary here."
And, indeed, the WND website for the tour, while it does state that Netanyahu and Friedman had been "invited" to speak to tour-goers, does not list any such political briefings on the itinerary.
Of course, WND is not averse to creating news events on tour. On last year's visit, there was a publicity stunt by Farah and his celebrity rabbi buddy Jonathan Cahn in trying to get their tour party kicked out of the Temple Mount by provoking a fight with the Muslim Waqf administrators who manage the site.
What LGBT Stuff Is The MRC Freaking Out About Now? Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center loves to freak out over transgenders -- as well as other LGBT-related things -- and it's having another of its continual fits of doing so.
A March 14 post by Jay Maxson won't identify Texas high school wrestler Mack Beggs as transgender but, rather, as "a girl in Texas who struggles with gender identity," and he laments that "Beggs never got any psychological attention for her gender confusion." He concluded by asserting: "According to Dr. Paul McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital, transgenderism is a 'mental disorder' that can be treated, sex change is 'biologically impossible' and the people promoting sexual reassignment surgery are promoting a mental disorder."
We've previously pointed out that McHugh's bigoted views are seen as out of the medical mainstream and ignores the current state of research on transgender issues.
On March 15, Karen Townsend ranted that the TV show "The Fosters" "continues to shove teen abortion and LGBT sex education on America, this time pushing the issues even further when it comes to parental knowledge -- or lack thereof." She added, "Parents are legally entitled to know about their children’s education."
Alex Nitzberg hopped over from Accuracy in Media to the MRC and debuted with a pair of anti-gay attacks on articles published at NBC News' LGBT portal, NBC Out. On March 13, Nitzberg complained of an article noting the vulernability of transgender students: "On that topic, what about the vulnerability and innocence of other students? All students should be protected from abuse, including those who identify as transgender, but their protection does not necessitate the normalization or accommodation of their lifestyle choice."
On March 17, Nitzberg ranted about another NBC Out article on transgender bathroom use:
The most “gender-appropriate” facility for biological boys, regardless of their self-declared gender-identity, is the men’s facility—and for biological girls, the women’s facility represents the most “gender-appropriate” option. The fact that this issue has degenerated into a societal debate illustrates the cultural chasm that has developed as the radical left and the media work to aggressively advance the revolution to redefine gender.
[...]
Liberals and the media inaccurately portray the LGBT agenda as a “civil rights” issue. But LGBT identities are behaviors, not immutable, inborn physical characteristics like skin color. In practice, LGBT “non-discrimination laws” would likely penalize social conservatives who fail to comply with the LGBT lobby’s radical demands for societal transformation.
Sarah Stites, meanwhile, huffed that singer Kary Perry was given an award by the Human Rights Campaign, where she "spent ten minutes criticizing her Christian upbringing while championing 'sexual fluidity.' And, predictably, the feminist media loved it." But curiously, Stites omitted the part where Perry said that as a teenager she "prayed the gay away at my Jesus camps" during her "unconscious adolescence," which utterly failed until she met people outside her "bubble."
Stites returned to serve up another freakout over a transgender couple on the wedding-dress show "Say Yes to the Dress." grumbling about "liberal media, fashion and Hollywood’s focused attempt to mainstream transgender and gender fluid content."
And Stites wasn't done, for even people who want no gender at all offend her as well:
Clothing. Makeup. Emojis. And now legal status?
The genderless movement is firing ahead, fast and furious, while those who cleave to traditional views are considered anachronistic at best, and bigoted at worst.
In June 2016, Oregon Judge Amy Hehn granted legal gender “non-binary” status to Portland resident Jamie Shupe. But this month, Hehn went a step further, granting video game designer “Patch” the right to be genderless.
She concluded that post by asking, "Is there anything that will faze the left?" The better question: Is there any instance of non-heteronormative behavior that Stites and the rest of the MRC won't throw a fit about?
WND Writer Crushes On Right-Wing 'Superstar Reporter' Topic: WorldNetDaily
Does WorldNetDaily reporter Garth Kant have a bit of a crush on right-wing "investigative reporter" Sharyl Attkisson? It sure seems that way.
Last December, Kant wrote a gushing, lengthy profile of Attkisson, under a headline calling her a "superstar reporter":
If you want to spot a forged painting, ask an art expert.
And if you want to find out what is “fake news,” ask perhaps the top investigative reporter in journalism.
Sharyl Attkisson spotted the fake news trend long before it became a recent catchphrase.
And she doesn’t portray it, as do many in the mainstream media, as some right-wing conspiracy. In fact, Attkisson told WND she often sees the mainstream media as prime culprits when they push suspect stories.
Kant uncritically touted Attkisson's conspiracy theory that the "fake news" controversy is really a "narrative-driven propaganda campaign" with an "agenda to censor the news," and that "The white nationalist narrative was invented on a certain day and time by certain interests."
Kant enthused: "Her observations on fake news were delivered with the force and precision of an expert karate chop, as befitting her rank of fourth-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do." He also proclaimed Attkisson an "ace reporter" and touted her various awards and "her own Sunday morning national TV news program, 'Full Measure,' which focuses on investigative and accountability reporting. The show had it highest ratings ever, last week."
This is all for the sake of publicity, of course. Kant, clearly in need of a good editor, made sure to plug Attkisson's "new book, coming out on May 22, titled 'The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote,' due to be published on May 22, 2017."
Kant's gushing continued in a March 12 article, which again placed "superstar reporter" in the headline and again proclaimed her "perhaps the nation’s top investigative journalist." Kant gives her the space to peddle another conspiracy theory, this time that she was "spied on by the Obama administration while investigating its scandals."
Responding to statements by computer experts that the purported evidence of said spying she had presented was actually just a stuck backspace key, Kant let Attkisson uncritically huff that "It was just a silly attempt by a noted propagandist blog that had no firsthand information to deflect from the surveillance."
Kant got gooey at the end of his article: "Finally, WND said it would be remiss if it did not ask the ace reporter if her experience had given her any insight into President Trump’s accusations that his campaign had been spied on by the Obama administration. However, Attkisson said she has not looked at, or reported, on those allegations."
This is not the first time WND has gone all gooey over Attkisson. We documented how WND "news" articles enthusiastically plugged her "Full Measure" show nearly every week in its first six months on the air -- many of which seemed to closely follow Attkisson's on-air scripts. That raises the possibility that Attkisson paid WND for the publicity, something neither has publicly admitted to, and it raises questions about the credibility of both.
CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman has a thing for publishing hateful far-right commentary on his website, with anti-gay attacks a particular interest. Chapman ramped up the hate with a March 16 post:
Peter LaBarbera, founder of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, gave a talk on Saturday about the destructive agenda of the LGBT movement and how it manipulates language in particular to disguise its evil intentions and spin them in a positive light -- darkness to light -- which, he added, is truly "satanic."
LaBarbera presented his talk at the Wisconsin Christian News Ministry Expo and Conference in Wausau, Wisc., on March 10. In a discussion about how "Words Lose their Meaning" when adopted and manipulated by the LGBT movement, LaBarbera gave the example, "Come Out of the Closet."
"This is one people don’t think about," he said. "But think about it – come out of the closet. Come out of the dark closet of lies and self-hatred into the light of truth, right? You come out."
"But what is it really? said LaBarbera. "You come in, into darkness. You’re embracing spiritual darkness as a personal identity, as who you are. Then you’re selling it to everyone you know. You’re doing Satan’s work in the name of light.”
[...]
For some reason, homosexuality has become the issue for the left,” said LaBarbera. “The issue. It’s satanic.”
Homosexuality is satanic because it is a complete rejection of nature -- the natural design, order of one's body, male or female -- and an attack on the natural world (biology) that was created by God to function in a specific way. The principal entity that rejected God and His creation from the start was Satan, Lucifer. As he said, "I will not serve."
LaBarbera's NARTH is a leading promoter of anti-gay hate and junk science.
Chapman presents this post as fact, without offering a countering opinion (and you'd think it wouldn't be hard to find someone to point out that gays aren't, in fact, satanic).
Here are some of the other anti-LGBT attacks Chapman has posted to CNS over the past few months, with a heavy emphasis on the rantings of his favorite right-wing minister, Franklin Graham:
In that time period, Chapman wrote nothing that was positive about the LGBT community, so we can assume that Chapman wholeheartedly endorses the hate he regurgitates.
MRC Joins Anti-Immigrant Bandwagon, Exploits Alleged Rape Case Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center hasn't historically done much in the way of anti-immigrant activism, but apparently that's changing.
Last week, two students at a high school in suburban Washington, D.C., were arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting another student in a school restroom. One of the alleged assailants is an undocumented immigrant, however, and the second is a recent arrival to the U.S. So the MRC decided the story was ripe for a little right-wing political exploitation.
In a March 21 post, the MRC's Curtis Houck cheered that a reporter from the Fox affiliate in Washington, D.C., asked White House press secretary Sean Spicer about the incident, going on to complain: "As far as we can tell, no network or cable news coverage has been given to the rape that occurred last week at Rockville High School in Montgomery County, Maryland since it’s an inconvenient story for their liberal narrative."
Or, you know because it's a local story that doesn't merit national coverage. Not that the MRC will allow a little thing like that conflict with its political agenda.
Indeed, the next day, Kristine Marsh had already convicted the defendants without a trial -- and cheered that her favorite news outlet did latch onto the story:
Last Thursday, a young girl attending Rockville High School in Maryland was brutally gang raped in her school’s bathroom by two fellow students, at least one of which was in the country illegally. Jose O. Montano, 17, from El Salvador, and Henry E. Sanchez-Milian, 18, from Guatemala, were charged last week with raping their 14-year-old female classmate in the school’s men’s bathroom. Both had only been in Montgomery County for a few months before they were placed in the school’s 9th grade class. Sanchez-Milian is a confirmed illegal immigrant that is being detained by ICE officials while officials will not comment on Montano’s immigration status, as he is a minor.
Fox News’s Bret Baier was the first reporter to tell the story on national television on his show Monday.
Marsh asserted that the reason why "ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC, don’t want to report" the story is because "it makes their side look bad." Curiously, she doesn't ascribe any political motivation to Fox News' report, even though "it makes the other side look bad" is much more plausible than the mind-reading she imposes on those other outlets.
Later on March 22, Houck complained that "The 'big three' networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC continued their shameful blackout into Wednesday night of the horrifying alleged rape of a teenage girl in a Washington D.C. suburb high school bathroom by two men, including one here in the U.S. illegally. Instead, the pathetic liberal media that’s shown no interest in the Rockville High School case complied with Rolling Stone in giving over 10 minutes of coverage in two days to the fake 2014 claim that a University of Virginia fraternity gang raped a female student."
Houck didn't mention that the networks did not know the story was fake at the time they reported it. He did concede, though, that it "can be a noble cause" to report on sexual assault at college fraternities. But he also touted how Fox News ran another story on the case; while he assailed those media outlets who didn't report the story as "pro-illegal immigrant," he refused to describe Fox news as "anti-illegal immigrant" for embracing it.
Then, the MRC was rewarded for politicizing the story: MRCTV ranter Brittany Hughes made an appearance on "Fox & Friends," where she "lambasted ABC, CBS, and NBC for their callous refusal to cover the alleged heinous rape of a female student in a Washington D.C. suburban high school by two men and one of which is here in the country illegally."
Hughes hit all her talking points -- even ranting that the networks would rather be "slamming President Donald Trump's agenda" -- as the MRC post praised her for doing: "As we often do here at NewsBusters, Hughes astutely pointed to examples of what ABC and CBS gave airtime to instead of another crime allegedly committed by an illegal alien."
It's so funny -- in a sad way -- who the MRC pretends it doesn't have an agenda in accusing others of having an agenda. But then, they're not getting paid to be honest.
WND's Hohmann Still Fearmongering About Proposed Michigan 'Mega-Mosque' Topic: WorldNetDaily
It seems WorldNetDaily's chief Islamophobe, Leo Hohmann, isn't done fearmongering about a proposed mosque in Michigan. He ramps up the victimization arrative in a March 13 article:
The saga of the 21,000-square-foot mega-mosque in Sterling Heights, Michigan, is not over yet.
The mayor and city council voted Feb. 21 to settle a lawsuit by a Shiite Muslim group and allow it to build a mosque in a residential neighborhood populated largely by Chaldean Christian refugees who escaped Islamic persecution in Iraq.
A companion suit against the city by Barack Obama’s Department of Justice alleging the city had denied the mosque a permit based on “anti-Muslim” sentiments in the community was also settled at the Feb. 21 meeting, paving the way for the mosque to start construction.
But the counter-lawsuit filed Monday argues that city officials were actually favoring the Shiite Muslims of neighboring Madison Heights while ignoring the wishes of its own citizens who were overwhelmingly against the mosque.
If built, the American Islamic Community Center, or AICC, will become the third mosque in Sterling Heights.
As we documented, this proposed "mega-mosque" is actually about the size of an Aldi grocery store and about one-tenth the size of a megachurch. And he doesn't mention that there are at least 64 churches in Sterling Heights, so three mosques isn't really that a big of a deal.
Curiously, Hohmann dropped all mention of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal regulation that was invoked in the the fight to get the mosque built -- and a law WND has praised Christians for exploiting, at one point approvingly quoting one right-wing legal group as saying, First Liberty has won multiple cases using RLUIPA. ... We know this law well."
Instead, Hohmann attacked "Obama's DOJ" for getting involved in the case, adding a new smear by claiming that "Obama’s DOJ forced a madrassa on Pittsfield Township, near Ann Arbor." In fact, what was permitted was a school;Hohmann wants to maliciously portray it as a place where potential Islamist terrorists are created, like right-wingers do.
Hohmann also maliciously portrays the Muslim community in Sterling Heights as building the mosque to intimidate a group of Christians that live in the neighborhood where the mosque is to be built, who he claims "escaped Islamic persecution in Iraq." Needless to say, Hohmann can't be bothered to interview anyone in the local Muslim community about that slander.
MRC's Graham: 'You Have No Right To Tell Us What The Truth Is' Topic: Media Research Center
We know that the Media Research Center's Tim Graham is a terrible media critic, but other mainstream media outlets haven't figured that out yet.
The Associated Press got a comment from Graham for a March 6 article regarding aggressive media questioning of Trump surrogates
Many of Trump's supporters are angered by aggressive questioning because they believe the media did not ask similar tough questions of the Obama administration, said Tim Graham of the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog.
"You have no right to tell us what the truth is," Graham said.
Actually, telling you what the truth is is pretty much a reporter's job, Tim.
We know what Graham wants: uncritical, fawning coverage of Trump, the kind the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, provides in spades.
(Oh, and Graham iscompletelywrong that the media never offered tough coverage of the Obama administration.)
Graham pops up again in a March 22 Washington Post article on how thte presence of Shepard Smith on Fox News drives people like Graham crazy:
However, Tim Graham, director of media analysis for the conservative Media Research Center, buys the buzz that Smith is ready to bolt: “His aggressive defense of the liberal media suggests he’s looking at Greta Van Susteren and saying, ‘Yeah, I could do that.’ ” Van Susteren left Fox last summer and joined MSNBC.
Added Graham: “To me, it sounds like he’s advertising to other networks. It just seems bizarre for him to be sticking up for CNN and MSNBC. It’s like Jif peanut butter taking an ad sticking up for Skippy.”
But Graham's MRC praised CNN's Jake Tapper for that very same act of reporter defending in 2013, when the phone records of Fox News' James Rosen were seized in an investigation. It also touted that "Even very liberal journalists like Jonathan Alter have lashed out at Obama over the Rosen incident."
Did the MRC think these "liberal" reporters were advertising to Fox News? Probably not -- Graham and Co. just liked that its favorite news channel was being praised.
And that sort of rank double standard is just another reason why Graham is a terrible media critic that the "liberal media" shouldn't be taking seriously just to provide an alternate voice.
Another Fake-News Story Remains Live and Uncorrected At WND Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has a problem with reporting dubious claims that later turn out to be completely false, then leaving the original claim on its website uncorrected.
So we have this anonymously written March 14 article:
Former President Obama used the British to spy on President Trump – both as a presidential candidate and as president-elect – to avoid having American “fingerprints” on the scandal, according to Fox News judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano.
He says three intelligence sources have confirmed the bombshell revelations.
Napolitano explained that statues allow the president to surveil anyone in the U.S. without suspicion, probable cause or a warrant, but doing so would leave a trail of evidence.
Instead, he said, Obama deliberately chose to use Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, the British spying agency with “24-7 access to the NSA database.”
He told “Fox & Friends” Tuesday:
Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn’t use the NSA, he didn’t use the CIA, he didn’t use the FBI, and he didn’t use the Department of Justice… He used GCHQ. What the heck is GCHQ? That’s the initials for the British spying agency. They have 24/7 access to the NSA database. So by simply having two people go to them and say ‘President Obama needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trump, conversations involving President-elect Trump,’ [Obama’s] able to get it, and there’s no American fingerprints on this.
Napolitano claimed the GCHQ was approached on behalf of Obama. He said the unnamed man who ordered the surveillance quit his job in January.
“President Obama needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trump, conversations involving President-elect Trump, he’s able to get it,” Napolitano said. “What happened to the guy who ordered this? Resigned three days after Donald Trump was inaugurated.”
Yet this utterly false story remains at WND, live and uncorrected. That's an egregious journalistic violation.
What was that WND editor Joseph Farah was saying about WND being staffed with "journalism professionals" with "collectively hundreds of years of experience" that, if true, would have kept them from committing such an egregious journalistic violation? Never mind.
MRC's Heathering of Anti-Trump Conservative Continues Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has been regularly targeting conservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin (a process we call Heathering), mainly because she didn't sell out her principles and blindly support Donald Trump (unlike the MRC). And the shots have continued:
In a Jan. 14 post, Brad Wilmouth sneered that "allegedly conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin sounded like just one more liberal analyst on top of the other four liberals already on the panel as she could only find negative things to say about Republican efforts to repeal ObamaCare, and even fretted over the move to defund Planned Parenthood."
On Jan. 30, Wilmouth complained that Rubin "play[ed] the role of allegedly right-leaning MSNBC guest who mostly offers agreement to the liberal MSNBC host, and spends little time injecting the conservative point of view into the conversation."
On March 8, Wilmouth called her a "supposedly right-leaning" columnist who was "appearing on MSNBC to mostly agree with a liberal host."
The next day, Curtis Houck declared Rubin to be "shameless" for "touting federal bureaucracy as this marvelous institution that they (and not business, the people, and states) have been the impetus behind the country’s prosperity."
And on March 19, Wilmouth once again lamented that Rubin "has recently been a recurring MSNBC guest who has bolstered the network's anti-Republican commentaries" and grumbled that she "declared that she is not a Republican any longer" because of Trump. But he leaves relegated to transcript excerpts her explanation of what that is:
[Trumpism] has destroyed the Republican Party, which was based on a set of principles, frankly, that abhors discrimination, that is -- takes the Declaration seriously: "All men are created equal. All men are endowed with certain rights." Donald Trump and his sidekicks do not believe this. They have turned into this ethno-tribalism. It's contrary to American expressions of history of law from its founding.
[...]
He's a buffoon. He's insulting our British allies. He's insulting our German allies. Angela Merkel -- who has an election later this year -- you could see she wasn't too pleased at the press conference yesterday. I think there's going to be reaction against him with their far-right party in Germany as well.
It's telling that the MRC is burying this viewpoint instead of engaging with it. But then, the Mercers aren't giving the MRC millions of dollars a year to do that.
WND Invents 'Miracles' So Trump Can Take Credit For Them Topic: WorldNetDaily
Not only does WorldNetDailiy think Donald Trump is sent from God, it thinks he can perform miracles as well. An anonymous WND writer enthused in a March 10 article:
Is it the federal government’s hiring freeze on non-essential employees?
Or is it a miracle?
The U.S. debt clock is actually spinning backwards since Donald Trump moved into the White House Jan. 20.
On inauguration day, the debt stood at $19.947 trillion. Since then it has reversed by $68 billion, or 0.3 percent, for the first time in at least 10 years.
What happened in the same period after Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009? The debt rose $320 billion in the same period – an increase of 3.1 percent. Overall, the debt nearly doubled in Obama’s eight years, by far the largest increase in any administration in history.
The "miracle" here is that Trump supposedly caused this to happen despite having done nothing that would have caused it. Trump is wrong, of course, as PolitiFact points out:
"Considering that Trump hasn’t enacted any fiscal legislation, it’s a bit of a stretch for him to take credit for any changes in debt levels," Dan Mitchell, a libertarian economist and senior fellow at the Cato Institute, told us.
"Debt levels go up and down in the short run based on independent factors such as quarterly tax payments and predetermined expenditure patterns," he said.
[...]
Dean Baker, an economist with the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research, said the temporary dip in the debt is triggered by the timing of tax payments and government spending, "both matters that he has not affected one iota."
Added Neil Buchanan, a George Washington University law professor and author of The Debt Ceiling Disasters: "No one who knows anything about budgeting would take a 30-day change to have any meaning at all. There is no credit to take, because it's like noticing that rainfall numbers from one month to the next are not exactly the same or that attendance at baseball games is not a constant number."
Donald Marron, Director of Economic Policy Initiatives at the Urban Institute, speculated that the drop in debt may be because President Barack Obama’s administration left Trump with cash on hand to run the government. So the government's need to borrow hasn't been high recently.
Also, WND has apparently forgotten that Obama took office while the economy was in free fall during a recession, less revenue was coming in, and new government spending was needed to pay unemployment benefits and food stamps.
The anonymous WND writer also touted taht Trump is "already making America great again" as shown by a higher than expected increase in new jobs, even though, again, Trump had implemented no policies that would have caused such an increase.
Yeah, Trump is such a miracle worker that WND has to embellish facts, if not outright lie, to demonstrate those miracles.
Under the headline "Nets Demand Evidence 123 Times, Scold Nunes for Giving It," the Media Research Center's Mike Ciandella tried to live up to the headline in his March 23 post, but ... doesn't:
Last month we 
The March 24 
Developing 
We've 
Even though last year's WorldNetDaily-led tour of the Holy Land was close enough to being adebacle that WND was begging for sign-ups 
The Media Research Center loves to freak out over transgenders -- as well as other LGBT-related things -- and it's having another of its continual fits of doing so.
Does WorldNetDaily reporter Garth Kant have a bit of a crush on right-wing "investigative reporter" Sharyl Attkisson? It sure seems that way.
CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman 
The Media Research Center hasn't historically done much in the way of anti-immigrant activism, but apparently that's changing.
It seems WorldNetDaily's chief Islamophobe, 
We know that the Media Research Center's Tim Graham is a 
WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center has been 
Not only does WorldNetDailiy think Donald Trump is 
