WND Touts Another Dubious Lawsuit Against SPLC
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Last month, WorldNetDaily touted a frivolous defamation lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center by a man who's mad the SPLC exposed his support and legal work for a neo-Nazi group. Now it's found another guy suing the SPLC because it exposed him:

Gavin McInnes, the conservative commentator and host of the internet-based program “Get Off My Lawn,” is suing the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center for designating him a “hate” figure, charging the group’s “concerted, obsessive and malicious actions” were designed to harm him.

“SPLC’s defamatory, false, and misleading designation of Mr. McInnes as a ‘hate’ figure is purposefully deceitful and intended to tarnish Mr. McInnes’s reputation, disparage Mr. McInnes’s good name and work, inflict harm and financial damage, reduce Mr. McInnes’s goodwill and standing in the community, expose Mr. MicInnes, his family and anyone else associated with him to public scorn, harassment, intimidation, and potential violence, and to denigrate, malign, and ridicule Mr. McInnes to countless individuals and potential employers and partners around the world,” Monday’s lawsuit by McInnes explains.

[...]

McInnes’ complaint contends that while he is an “avowed and vocal opponent of discrimination based on race, religion or sexual preference, and of ideologies and movements espousing extremism, nationalism and white supremacy,” SPLC still gave him its “hate designation.”

In the lawsuit, McInnes says SPLC is “defaming him by use of the SPLC Hate Designations, and publishing other false, damaging and defamatory statements about him.”

The case was filed in Alabama District Court.

McInnes alleges SPLC “harassed” him, his family and friends, and lied about him.

Tellingly, WND does not link to the SPLC page on McInnes and the Proud Boys -- the only reference to which in the WND is a bland note that it was founded by McInnes but that he "left it in 2018" -- and WND does not identify specific claims by the SPLC about McInnes beyond being a "hate" figure. In fact, the SPLC documents McInnes' ties to racism and hate and the Proud Boys' descent into violence:

McInnes himself has ties to the racist right and has contributed to hate sites like VDare.com and American Renaissance, both of which publish the work of white supremacists and so-called “race realists.” He even used Taki’s Magazine — a far-right publication whose contributors include Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor — to announce the founding of the Proud Boys. McInnes plays a duplicitous rhetorical game: rejecting white nationalism and, in particular, the term “alt-right” while espousing some of its central tenets.

[...]

Despite the pains they’ve taken to distance themselves from open white nationalists and antisemites, Proud Boys have been present at high-profile alt-right events, including the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. “[J]ust don’t fucking wear your Fred Perry, or decide to belt: ‘Proud of Your Boy,’” McInnes limply warned followers before the event. “[I]f you decide to rub elbows with those people [while] in colors, you very well could find yourself disavowed.”

But they did show up, which McInnes evidently expected. In the first episode of his Compound Media show after the August rally, McInnes said he had been “just combing through all the media reports going, ‘Don’t say Proud Boys, don’t say Proud Boys, don’t say Proud Boys,’” hoping the “lunatic Nazi” who allegedly killed Heather Heyer wasn’t a member of his group. He wasn’t, but the white nationalist Jason Kessler — who has been filmed undergoing his second-degree Proud Boy initiation — was the rally’s principal organizer. Less than two months earlier, Kessler had been a guest on “The Gavin McInnes Show,” where he promoted Unite the Right and, in a chummy interview, laid out the ideological overlap he and McInnes shared. “What’s really under attack is if you say, ‘I want to stand up for white people. I want to stand up for western civilization. I want to stand up for men. I want to stand up for Christians,’” to which McInnes nodded in agreement and added other examples: “I’m against immigration…I’m against jihadis. I’m against radical Islam."

[...]

Around the same time, Proud Boys member Kyle Chapman announced he was forming a new “tactical defense arm” of the Proud Boys — with McInnes’ “full approval” — called the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights (FOAK). The paramilitary wing positions itself as a defensive organization formed to protect right-wing activists at political demonstrations. Chapman, who has an extensive criminal history, first gained renown within the alt-right when he was photographed hitting a counter-protestor over the head with a stick at a March 4, 2017, pro-Trump rally in Berkeley, California.

Now referring to himself as “Based Stick Man,” Chapman has been making the rounds of far-right rallies around the country, doing little to create rhetorical distance between the Proud Boys and outright white nationalism.

[...]

A number of journalists who’ve written about the group have received cease-and-desist orders from Proud Boys’ lawyer Jason Van Dyke insisting they “do not now, nor have they ever, espoused white nationalist, white supremacist, anti-Semitic, or alt-right views.”

The statement is especially remarkable coming from Van Dyke, a member of the Dallas-Fort Worth chapter and known neo-Confederate. Van Dyke’s affair with far right extremism stretches back until at least his college days, when Michigan State University police searching his dorm found extremist literature, including The Turner Diaries and Protocols of the Elders of Zion.In 2000, the university suspended Van Dyke for several semesters after he was arrested for domestic violence, possession of a banned weapon and firearm safety violations. 

Van Dyke's penchant for violence appears on his Twitter page, where in 2014 he made death threats against another user. Alongside a picture of a noose, he wrote, “Look good and hard at this picture you fucking nigger. It’s where I am going to put your neck.”

(That's who McInnes pals around with. He quit the organization he founded only a few months ago, shortly after the FBI reportedly tagged the Proud Boys as an "extremist group with ties to white nationalism."

(We've previously noted some of this stuff about McInnes.)

WND doesn't want to tell you that -- so averse is to telling the full story that it didn't bother to contact the SPLC for a response. And it references the earlier frivolous lawsuit that was filed without mentioning the fact that the guy's mad the SPLC exposed him as a "neo-Nazi lawyer."

MRC Whines That Networks Exercised Editorial Discretion In Not Airing WH Press Briefing Live
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck pours a bottle of whine in a Jan. 28 post:

On Monday, the White House held its first press briefing in 41 days, a stat passed around the press about how it was the longest span between briefings since cameras were brought in during the Clinton administration. 

Despite this kvetching, CNN and MSNBC chose not to air a single second of the briefing live, which included an announcement of new Venezuela sanctions plus questions for National Security Adviser John Bolton, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Council of Economic Advisers head Larry Kudlow and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

The briefing began at 3:33 p.m. Eastern and the Fox News Channel immediately went to it during Your World, but CNN Newsroom aired two tape-delayed soundbites on the Venezuela sanctions before moving on.

[...]

Meanwhile, MSNBC Live featured hosts Katy Tur and Ali Velshi joking sarcastically about briefings with Velshi wondering to Tur if she remembers what those were. Velshi later insisted MSNBC was standing by for it, but like CNN, they didn’t air it aside from a brief soundbite of Bolton announcing the sanctions.

[...]

So to be clear, these two liberal cable outlets have long suggested that the President was eroding American press freedoms. But when it came to the news media allowing viewers to decide things for themselves, the former thinks they should be in charge of what the latter sees.

But as Houck seems to concede, the only actual news from the press briefing was the announcement of the Venezuela sanctions, and he further concedes that both CNN and MSNBC reported on that soon after the announcement was made, showing that they were, in fact, monitoring the briefing and not ignoring it. He does not explain, however, why that was so newsworthy that it demanded to be aired live, beyond the increasing rarity of such briefings. He also does not explain why all channels must air it live if Fox News was already doing so.

Houck doesn't seem to understand that the lack of White House press briefings erodes press freedoms whether or not a given news organization chooses to air them live. Did Houck and/or the MRC ever attack Fox News if they refused to air a press briefing from the Obama White House live and in its entirety? Not that we can recall.

As the Washington Post's Erik Wemple points out, CNN and MSNBC were acting like genuine news organizations by making an editorial decision not to air the presser live:

There is, in fact, no contradiction in a news network pushing for White House briefings and then declining to carry them live. Even as CNN and MSNBC were airing other material Monday, their correspondents were in the briefing room seeking answers to their questions. Later on, if real answers actually materialize, they can air the footage, an approach that matches the prescription of two former White House press secretaries. It’s a fair approximation of journalism.

Of course, Houck and the MRC do not actually want to see a "fair approximation of journalism" -- they want ceaselessly fawning coverage of the Trump administration.

WND's Farah Slobbers Over Trump's State of the Union Speech
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah has been fawning over President Trump for some time and sucking up to him whenever possible -- most recently pretending there's no evidence that Trump has exhibited racism. Farah has taken the fawning to new embarassing levels by devoting not one but two columns to slobbering over Trump's State of the Union address.

In the first column, Farah added random capitalizaton to quotes from Trump's speech:

• “We have not yet BEGUN TO DREAM,” he said.
• “I am asking you to CHOOSE GREATNESS,” Trump said.
• “There is a new opportunity in American politics, if only we have the courage to seize it,” Trump added. “Victory is not winning for our party. Victory is winning for our COUNTRY.”

In the second column, Farah's sycophantic gushing just wouldn't stop:

It was more than words read on a teleprompter.

It was a supreme performance – dignified, positive. It provided America with an alternative view of a potential future.

Let’s just cut to the chase: It was the very best State of the Union in my lifetime – which is nearly 65 years. It may have been the best ever.

He explained that we don’t have to become a socialist nation, setting ourselves up for economic failure and the end of liberty.

He explained that we don’t have to become a nation that takes the lives of its inconvenient and innocent citizens on both ends of life’s age spectrum.

He explained how we need to protect the lives and property of our own citizens by defending our borders and sovereignty.

It was a supreme lesson in what government’s responsibility is to its people – as well as what its limits should be in a free society.

How was it received nationally?

With 76 percent approval and only 24 percent disapproval, according to a CBS poll.

In other words, he did what most Americans would have thought impossible in a time of ferocious division. He united the country.

In fact, Trump did not unite the country; according to the article on that poll to whifch he links, "When broken down by party, almost all Republicans, 97 percent, said they approved of Trump’s speech. ... Only 30 percent of Democrats, however, say they approved."

If Farah thinks Trump actually believes any of the things he's saying and isn't merely sucking up to right-wing evangelicals like himself in a cynical attempt to gain their support, he's more deluded than we thought.

CNS Still Falsely Suggesting Federal Money to Planned Parenthood Pays For Abortion
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com has spent more than a decade falsely implying that federal money that goes to Planned Parenthood pays for abortion, and CNS' newest reporter, Emily Ward, isn't about to disturb that record.

So it's no surprise that Ward wrote in a Jan. 21 article:

Planned Parenthood released its 2017-2018 annual report over the weekend, revealing that the organization did 332,757 abortions in the fiscal year that ran from Oct. 1, 2016 to Sept. 30, 2017.

Planned Parenthood also reported that it received $563.8 million in revenue from “government health services reimbursements & grants” for the year ending June 30, 2018.

Ward's juxtaposition suggests the two are linked. They are not: Federal policy prohibits federal money from paying for abortion. 

Ward followed with another attack on Planned Parenthood on Feb. 1, this time over online chatbots offering teens "instant sex and relationship advice." Ward doesn't cite any answers provided that were inaccurate or even offensive, though she did seem disturbed that the chatbot offers "no judgment." Surprisingly, Ward doesn't even contact the usual right-wing suspects to denounce the dissemination of accurate information; instead, she irrelvantly repeats the number of abortions performed at Planned Parenthood clinics (though, surprisingly, not the amount of federal money it has accepted).

Ward appears to have taken Penny Starr's place on CNS' anti-abortion beat, but it's not translating so far into stories on the subject being more fair and balanced.

UPDATE: Ward pushed the false funding meme again -- while also taking an unusual shot at Republicans -- in a Jan. 24 article that complained "Planned Parenthood did more than 2 million abortions while receiving federal funding through appropriations approved by the House of Representatives when the House was controlled by Republicans from the beginning of 2011 through the beginning of 2019." She did not explain that none of those appropriations paid for any of those abortions.

MRC Pushes Dubious Claim of 'Rejected' Super Bowl Ad
Topic: Media Research Center

Knowing a good right-wing anti-media narrative when he sees it -- and being a terrible media critic -- the Media Research Center's Tim Graham leaped on the claim by tiny Nine Line Apparel that CBS rejected its Super Bowl ad for being too patriotic. Graham huffed: "Networks are well-known for rejecting overt political messaging....unless it's from a sponsor like Nike that has multinational-conglomerate heft, and the message leans a bit left. Liberal messages are also allowed by CBS if you're an arrogant newspaper that imagines you're the saviors of democracy."

Just one problem with this story: it was apparently too good for Graham -- or the Washington Examiner's notoriously right-wing gossip columnist, Paul Bedard, the "friend" from whom Graham lifted the story -- to fact-check. Both rely solely on Nine Line's insistence that CBS' claim that it questioned the company's ability to pay for the ad, which would cost roughly one-third of its annual revenue of $25 million, was just an excuse to reject the ad's content.

Neither Graham nor Bedard bothered to contact CBS for comment. An actual news outlet did: According to USA Today's For the Win blog, a CBS spokesperson said the network never rejected the ad.

Claiming your Super Bowl ad got "rejected" is a cheap way to generate publicity. As we reported last year, the promoters of AML Bitcoin -- which made a deal with WND to give away pieces of it to donors -- claimed its Super Bowl ad was "banned," when in fact it had never bought airtime and the network doesn't review content unless airtime is purchased.

That appears to be what happened here. If CBS didn't think Nine Line couldn't pay for the ad, there's no need to review its content -- which is why CBS can credibly say it never rejected the ad.

Is Graham and the MRC going to apologize for promoting this bit of fake news? Doubtful -- it advances a right-wing narrative.

NEW ARTICLE: Shutdown Shenanigans at CNS
Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com had to follow Trump's flip-flops on the shutdown to keep parroting the party line, on top of its refusal to fact-check anything Trump says or tweets. Read more >>

Another WND Columnist Upset By News Website Trust Monitor
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Craige McMillan writes in his Feb. 1 WorldNetDaily column:

Let’s go to the organization NewsGuard and see how it might work. My first observation is that the website, newsguardtech.com, is somewhat vague in explaining how it does what it does: “Our trained analysts, who are experienced journalists, research online news brands to help readers and viewers know which ones are trying to do legitimate journalism – and which are not.”

As I read that, NewsGuard is rating websites, not specific articles. They then assign a thumbs up or down based on … we don’t know how many articles, or which specific articles. It seems to me that if you were evaluating a specific article, you would need to review the journalist’s research sources, inspect – at the very least – the journalist’s notes regarding human source interviews and look at the series of revisions from rough draft to final story. Otherwise, how could you tell if the article was made up, or carefully researched and written?

I am very skeptical that NewsGuard is doing this, because I don’t see many journalists handing out their research, much less human sources, and exposing their writing skills to a stranger. I’m skeptical, as in “it ain’t gonna happen.”

To learn anything about News Guard’s human component, you have to add “about” to their main page. I’ll link to this page, but they may change it. Beyond management, they list 14 staff, and 16 contributors. They list three technical people.

I have not looked into the backgrounds of News Guard’s staff and contributors, but will leave that for a future article. NewsGuard itself could be a legitimate effort to apply human understanding and judgment to the news dissemination business. It could be algorithm-driven, and the staff and contributors merely deal with complaints. It could even be a modern outgrowth of Operation Mockingbird.

The thing that concerns me most at this point is NewsGuard’s attempt to shut down advertising to websites they have branded unreliable. Google and Facebook already have roughly 70 percent of the internet’s advertising. We need to find out about these two firms’ involvement in the News Guard project, or its principals. Another concern is ideology. It is a hallmark of the political left to shut down dissent. On its face, that is what News Guard is doing.

This is basically a gentler version of the anti-NewsGuard screed WND editor Joseph Farah wrote a while back. Both share the basic conceit that operations like NewsGuard are a liberal conspiracy to silence conservatives, though their real fear is having WND's history of shoddy journalism quantified (though we've been doing exactly that for years).

Contrary to McMillan's assertion, one does not need "the journalist’s notes regarding human source interviews and look at the series of revisions from rough draft to final story" for every single article a news operation publishes to determine whether "tell if the article was made up, or carefully researched and written." The final article itself is proof enough and can be easily analyzed.

Take, for instance, the story we just highlighted about WND freaking out over meditationin schools as some government-Buddhist plot. We know the article was not "carefully researched" because reporter Bob Unruh quoted only the right-wing American Center for Law and Justice, whose legal action Unruh's article was promoting, and makes no attempt to contact any school or government official involved in the story. It's a highly biased article, and one does not need to look at all rough drafts of it to conclude otherwise (though it might be entertaining in this case to see if the article was even more biased in earlier drafts).

NewsGuard must be on to something it WND is getting this nervous about it.

MRC's Double Standard on Schadenfreude, Or: Dancing on the Newseum's Grave
Topic: Media Research Center

A Jan. 25 NewsBusters post by Mark Finkelstein admonished former Republican aide Rick Tyler against engaging in "schadenfreude" over the arrest of Trump confidate and overall sleaze Roger Stone, becuase "to take such manifest pleasure in another political operative's indictment is not a display of civility and compassion in politics." Nobody at the Media Research Center apparently read Finkelstein's warning, because it was in full schadenfreude mode just a few hours later over the sale of the Newseum property.

Scott Whitlock wasted no time dancing on the Newseum's grave in a post whose headline called it a "self-indulgent journalistic shrine." Whitlock sneered that the Newseum was a "temple dedicated to journalists by journalists," complained that the Neweum didn't uniformly lionize conservative journalism and right-wing talk radio, then scowled:

How bloated and ridiculous is the seven floor Newseum? Even the liberal Politico in 2017 opined that “it deserves to die.” Well, now it is. If you’re a family of five interested in spending over $80 to see journalistic self-praise, you have until December 31st, 2019. But if you would rather go to better, free museums, they are all over Washington D.C. 

The Newseum undeniably had its problems due to poor management and its origin as something of a vanity project by longtime newspaper executive Al Neuharth. But  Whitlock's kneejerk denigration a museum that has 9/11 artifacts among its exhibits and tries to explain how people working in news do their jobs shows how much the MRC absolutely loathes journalism and is dedicated to destroying it in order to replace it with a partisan model demonstrated by its ridiculously biased "news" division, CNSNews.com.

This is a reminder that the MRC has always been anti-media, especially if it doesn't follow a right-wing agenda.

Why Did WND Illustrate Article On Meditation Class With Pic Of A Briefcase Full of Money?
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily writer Bob Unruh has freaked out about yoga in the past, so it's no surprise that even the benign practice of meditation would set him into freakout mode as well.

A Feb. 2 article by Unruh rewrites a press release from the right-wing American Center for Law and Justice that attacks a school "trying to push a Buddhist-based meditation program on preschoolers," purportedly with federal education money. As usual for Unruh, he can't be bothered to talk to any school or federal official for the other side of the story; ACLJ appears to be his only source of information. Thus, there's no explanation of how meditation itself, or seeking "discernment, insight, wisdom, enlightenment," can only been seen as promoting the religion of Buddhism, or why that can't have a secular purpose.

(Of course, while the ACLJ presents this as imposing religion in public schools, it has no problem when the religion being imposed is Christianity.)

Unruh writes that the ACLJ "wants to find out from the Department of Education how many grants it has awarded for the programs 'and how it justifies using federal taxpayer dollars to implement them,'" citing as one alleged example "a $3.3 allocation to Portland State University for a MindUP program, 'a mindfulness-based social emotional learning program to be implemented on preschool-age children in 120 schools in Oregon.'" But mindfulness is not necessrily meditation; it's the ability to be fully present in where you are and whatever you're doing. That is not an explicitly religious principle.

Unruh and the ACLJ won't tell you this, but mindfulness programs in schools appears to work in improving student behavior and test scores.

The weird thing, though, is that WND chose as its lead image for the article a briefcase filled with money:

The federal government should be trying to fund educational programs that work (which mindfulness does). But it's utterly ridiculous to portray that funding as suitcases full of cash presumably being shoved across or under a table.

These sort of outrageously biased editorial choices are just another reason why nobody believes WND.

CNS Channels WND, Still Pushing CNN-Roger Stone Conspiracy Theory
Topic: CNSNews.com

When Trump confidant and all-around sleazy person Roger Stone got arrested as part of the Robert Mueller probe last month, CNSNews.com reporter Susan Jones turned conspiracy-happy by promoting President Trump's never-proven conspiracy theory that CNN cameras were on hand at Stone's house for the arrest because they had been tipped off by Mueller.

Apparenly channeling her inner WorldNetDaily, Jones pushed the conspiracy theory again when acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker was asked about it by Republican Rep. Doug Collins during congressional testimony, devoting much of a Feb. 8 article to it. Jones touted how Shitaker said he was "aware -- and deeply concerned -- about CNN being there to cover Stone's arrest" andhelped Collins push the unproven claim that "CNN may have been tipped off."

Of the 11 paragraphs in her article devoted to the conspiracy theory, only one reported the truth, and even then only parenthetically, as if it was unimportant instead of the thing that blows up the other 10 paragraphs:

(CNN insists it was not tipped off about Stone's arrest. CNN said it was just good reporting -- noticing "unusual activity" at the grand jury venue in Washington that prompted a CNN team to wait outside Stone's house on that particular Friday morning.)

We've prevoiusly noted the creeping WND-ization of Media Research Center properties like CNS. Jones' conspiracy-mongering takes it up to a new level.

WND Tries to Rebrand Anti-Gay Conversion Therapy As 'Gender-Confusion Counseling'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily has long been a hotbed of LGBT-hating animus, and it continues to be so with its coverage of anti-gay conversion therapy -- which, of course, it doesn't see as anti-gay.

Last year, WND tried to brand state bans on  conversion therapy as "Must Stay Gay" laws (without explaining why folks must be forced to stop being gay). Now it's obfuscating about the therapy itself by calling it "gender-confusion counseling," as it did in a Jan. 27 article touting a right-wing legal group's latest lawsuit:

A lawsuit contends Maryland’s ban on any gender-confusion counseling that does not promote homosexuality or transgenderism violates the constitutional rights of counselors, parents and youth alike.

Liberty Counsel’s complaint seeks preliminary and permanent injunctions against the new state requirement.

The state measure prohibits minors from receiving voluntary counseling from licensed professionals to reduce or eliminate unwanted same-sex attractions or gender confusion.

Such restrictions have been adopted in several states already, but the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in large part against states taking such moves, based on the First Amendment.

Advocates for the homosexual lifestyle have worked through lawmakers to impose the restrictions, which ban any counseling that does not advocate homosexuality and transgenderism.

WND never provides evidence that conversion therapy works; instead, it uncritically quotes from Liberty Counsel's complaint to vaguely complain that "Maryland purports to try to 'protect' youngsters with its ban on counseling, but the “evidence” included in the law 'misrepresents the empirical record.' And studies that were cited were biased."

Indeed, the Liberty Counsel complaint spends a lot of time ranting about one study questioning conversion therapy. It also promotes supposed guidelines for therapy forwarded by something called the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity -- which, it turns out, is a rebrand of the notorious anti-gay group NARTH, and which still shames same-sex attraction.The complaint never identifies the Alliance as an anti-gay group.

A Jan. 30 article -- like the earlier one, anonymously written --  didn't go the rebranding route, but did promote a separate Liberty Counsel lawsuit that takes a different legal tack by claiming conversion-therapy bans violate the First Amendment. WND then misrepsents what conversion therapy bans are about:

The fight has been going on for years already: pro-homosexual activists in city and state lawmaking bodies want to ban anything that suggests same-sex relationships are not the ideal, and so they try to ban speech that carries that message.

[...]

In the counseling fight, it’s that governments are trying to censor any counseling speech that could be viewed as not endorsing same-sex relationships.

Actually, legislators see the harm that an unproven therapy can do to youngsters -- considering how they're so heavily based in shame -- and are trying to keep them from being victims of anti-gay "therapists" trying to coerce them into not being gay.

Again, WND provides no evidence that conversion therapy actually works in a consistent and replicable way.

An anonymously written Feb. 10  WND article promoted yet another Liberty Counsel lawsuit over conversion therapy, this time in New Jersey, again invoking First Amendment rights. Once more, WND doesn't note that Liberty Counsel provided any evidence that conversion therapy works and again falsely claims that "the issue is governments trying to censor any counseling speech that does not endorse same-sex relationships."

MRC Misleads In Claiming Secret Anti-Abortion Videos Weren't Edited
Topic: Media Research Center

A Jan. 18 Media Research Center post by Matt Philbin touted a federal appeals court decision that, according to him, puts the lie to the Planned Parenthood/media talking points about the infamous 2015 undercover “baby parts” videos being deceptively edited," which "should be a blow to the extensive list of media outlets that dutifully repeated Planned Parenthood’s damage control statement about the video." Bill D'Agostino followed up the same day with a post furthering this talking point:

It's never been disputed that the "baby parts" video were edited. The individuals behind the camera chose when to press record, when to stop, and what bits of recorded conversation to leave out of their finished product. The question is, and always has been, did any of the edits give viewers a false impression of what the raw footage actually showed – for example, by stringing together unrelated or out-of-context statements? According to the 5th Circuit Court's decision and based in part on a forensic analysis that compared the raw footage to the edited videos, the answer is no.

Thus the claim that the Planned Parenthood videos were "deceptively edited" is no longer accurate. That's a problem for the organizations and news outlets who published celebratory articles containing that talking point back when the now-vacated ruling was first issued. 

D'Agostino then provided a "list of organizations and news outlets who have repeated the now-disproven line about 'deceptive edits'," huffily adding, "It's anybody's guess as to how many of them will issue updates or corrections."

It appears D'Agostino and Philbin are confusing issues. It's indisputable that the Center for Medical Progress, the anti-abortion group that perpetrated the sting, rolled out their attack of the day designed to spark conservative outrage with a video that was, yes, deceptively edited. Only later did CMP release the full, supposedly unedited video that, more often than not, contradicted claims made in the edited version.

The ruling is unclear on what video or videos are being talked about. Rather, it narrowly states only that video submitted by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission’s Office of Inspector General in support of its attempt to defund Planned Parenthood in the state "was authentic and not deceptively edited." Indeed, a firm paid by Planned Parenthood found there were edits to the longer "unedited" videos as well. It does not refer to the body of short videos CMP released that were, in fact, deceptively edited, as demonstrated by the unedited videos they released hours later, or does it claim, as Philbin and D'Agostiono suggest, that all CMP-released videos were unedited.

So, yes, CMP did release tapes that were deceptively edited -- the court ruling does not change this fact. D'Agostino provides only a laundry list of articles at various website and does not fact-check regarding the specific claim of editing they're making. Nobody needs to correct anything, since the MRC does not prove any specific claim false.

Of course, this misleading claim spread elsewhere at the MRC: A Jan. 23 CNSNews.com article by Emily Ward similarly falsely suggested that the court's ruling applied to all CMP videos.

AIM Thinks Repeating Pro-Trump Talking Points Is 'Fact-Checking'
Topic: Accuracy in Media

Brian McNicoll spends his Feb. 6 Accuracy in Media article rebutting Washington Post fact-checkers writing about claims in President Trump's State of the Union address by ... repeating pro-rump talking points and being mad that the Post won't give Trump credit for anything that happened between the 2016 election and his inauguration:

The Washington Post took issue with Trump’s economic successes in its “Fact Checking President Trump’s 2019 State of the Union address” by Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly.

To Trump’s claim that “We have created 5.3 million new jobs and importantly added 600,000 new manufacturing jobs,” it wrote: “Trump often inflates the number of jogs created under his presidency by counting Election Day, rather than when he took the oath of office.”

But the economy began to recover from its eight moribund years under President Obama immediately upon Trump winning the election. On the day after he won in 2016, the Dow soared 257 points and neared lifetime highs. Business investment began almost immediately. Banks began to lend again. Defense contractors ramped up for increased orders. Trump did start making a difference from the day he was elected.

Since he took office – the only measure the Post will accept – it says 436,000 manufacturing jobs were created. But that compares to 900,000 created by Obama – over seven years, compared to barely two for Trump – and “the number of manufacturing jobs is still nearly 1 million below the level at the start of the Great Recession in 2007.”

McNicoll offers no proof that "Business investment began almost immediately. Banks began to lend again. Defense contractors ramped up for increased orders" immediately after the 2016 election solely because Trump was elected. Actually, it can be easily argued that Trump is simply continuing Obama's economy, since major economic trend lines are simply continuing their Obama-era trajectory.

McNicoll is also disingenously comparing job creation during Obama's entire presidency -- which started with a major recession -- with the two years of Trump's presidency. As the Post has also reported, average monthly job growth in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 under Obama outpaced that of 2017 under Trump, and 2018's figure through October matched 2015 but fell short of 2014.

So much for accuracy in media at AIM.

CNS' Hilariously Biased Coverage of Trump's State of the Union
Topic: CNSNews.com

As if the right-wing bias of CNSNews.com was obvious, they made it crystal clear in its coverage of President Trump's State of the Union Address.

CNS published four "news" articles centered on, or completely made up of, quotes from Trump's address:

• Trump: Only ‘Foolish Wars, Politics, or Ridiculous Partisan Investigations’ Can Stop our Economic Miracle
• Trump: 'America Is Again Winning, Each and Every Day...The State of Our Union Is Strong'
• Trump on Afghanistan and Syria: ‘Great Nations Do Not Fight Endless Wars’
• Trump in State of the Union: ‘America Will Never be a Socialist Country’

These were followed by three articles focusing on the facial expressions of Democratic politicians listening to the address -- all centered on CNS' pet issue of abortion:

• Pelosi Sits, Scowls, Shakes Head as Trump Says: ‘Let Us Work Together to Build a Culture That Cherishes Innocent Life'
• Schumer Smirks as Trump Describes NY Law Allowing ‘Baby to be Ripped from Mother’s Womb Moments from Birth’
• Congresswomen in White Sit Stone-Faced as Chamber Cheers Trump’s Call to Ban Late-Term Abortion

Additionally, CNS published no article on Stacey Abrams' Democratic rebuttal to Trump's address -- effectively censoring its existence for its readers. It did, however, publish a column by Tom Kilgannon of Freedom Alliance declaring that State of the Union rebuttals should be banned because they're "pointless, petty and uninspired" and "only perpetuates distrust and discord in our political life." Kilgannon claimed he was making a bipartisan demand -- "It matters not whether the respondent is Stacy Abrams or Marco Rubio, the evening belongs to the president" -- but we found no instance of Kilgannon making the same demand while Barack Obama was president.

CNS' Media Research Center would be up in arms if it found bias this blatant at a "liberal" media outlet.

WND Finds A New Conspiracy Theory To Promote
Topic: WorldNetDaily

There's a hot new conspiracy theory going around: that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg could not possibly have attended an event in Washington, D.C., last week -- described as her first public appearance since cancer surgery in December -- because no photos exist of the event, perhaps because she's dying or dead.

And WorldNetDaily -- conspiracy theorists extraordinare -- wants in on that action. Thus, an anonymously written Feb. 5 article:

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Ginsburg has promised to retire when she can no long work at “full steam.”

For the past six weeks or so, following surgery, she’s been working from home, according to the court.

On Monday, however, she reportedly attended a concert put on by her daughter-in-law at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

But the American Mirror blog points out that in the age of digital cameras, no one apparently has documented her public appearance.

“Attendees at the Notorious RBG in Song described Ginsburg as ‘glam,’ and ‘resplendent,’ and ‘magnificent,’ but you’ll have to take their word for it,” the blog said. “In an era when every person is carrying a camera and isn’t afraid to use it, there wasn’t a single snap of the 85-year-old to be found. Every media story that covered her alleged appearance used file photos.”

[...]

Several reporters “claimed to have spotted Ginsburg,” the blog said.

NPR reporter Nina Totenberg wrote on Twitter, “Spotted at a concert by her daughter-in-law, the notorious RBG out for the first time after her surgery in December!”

But the American Mirror said: “Folks online aren’t buying it, with more than a few pointing out the obvious: Why no pictures?”

Twitter user Edwin Motes wrote, “Well until I see her in a new video or sitting on the SCOTUS hearing cases, I won’t believe the likes of the Washington Post!”

As an actual news outlet reported, the reason there are no photos is that photography was forbidden at the event. A Washington Post reporter who actually witnessed the event in question and saw Ginsburg there has been accused of either lying or having seen her body double instead.

Promoting conspiracy theories got WND into the financial hole it's currently in, and continuing to embrace them won't help it get out.