Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Nov. 6 WorldNetDaily article promoting Aaron Klein's claim that terrorists want Democrats to win on Tuesday features a rebuttal of a Media Matters item I co-wrote pointing out Klein's regular promotion of previous statements by his stable of terrorists:
David Brock's media watchdogs at Media Matters are fighting mad about what they see as Fox News Channel's promotion of the WND scoop.
Media Matters hyperventilates that Klein "has similarly promoted inflammatory statements by terrorists in the past."
"I think most of the world understood that neither Klein nor WND was 'promoting' what these terrorists had to say," explained WND Editor Joseph Farah. "There is much speculation in the press about what these dangerous people think and want. Our reporter just happens to be one of the very few who is not afraid to ask them questions and report their answers verbatim. That's not promotion. It's good journalism – something about which David Brock and his organization apparently know little."
As we point out in our analysis of Klein's reporting of terrorist statements, Klein clearly has some kind of relationship with them -- after all, as a right-wing Jew, he is their enemy, a writer has no history of fairness toward their views.
And speaking of "good journalism," Klein has no evidence that the three terrorists he quotes in his article to are representative of the views of all terrorists on the U.S. elections -- yet he and WND are claiming that they are, which is hardly sound journalistic practice. As Media Matters has noted, intelligence agencies have concluded that Osama bin Laden's release of a videotape before the 2004 election was designed to get President Bush re-elected -- something Klein fails to mention in his article. Klein's terrorist buddies could have similarly been feeding him disinformation they know he would use as red meat for his conservative readers because they, in fact, want the Republicans to win.
So let's not pretend that "good journalism" had anthing to do with Klein's article. Klein has a long history of using his reporting for partisan ends, and nothing has changed here.
To that end, we have a challenge for Klein and Farah: Print our detailed criticisms of Klein's reporting on WND, and rebut them point by point. Tell us why we're wrong to note Klein's history of bias and lack of full context. Tell us how three people constitutes an official consensus of the views of hundreds of thousands of terrorists. Tell us how Klein maintains a working relationship with these terrorists when he is their enemy.
You wanna take us? Go ahead on.
