Topic: WorldNetDaily
It's becoming a bit clearer now what Joseph Farah's new book "Stop the Presses!" is about.
"If you really want to understand how America's great and unique institution of a free press has been deliberately undermined by radical activists masquerading as journalists, backed by big business and encouraged by big government, you have to examine this phenomenon," says Farah in an April 10 WND book-promoting article alleging that "organized social and political activists ... have invaded America's newsrooms, subverting long-established guidelines and ethics codes calling for accuracy, fairness, balance and the avoidance of conflict of interest in journalism." Farah expands on this in his April 10 column, claiming that in his book he is "revealing, for the first time, the way the press was invaded and taken over by radical activists with a perverse and extreme agenda."
The effect of this is to suggest that Farah and WND have no "activist" agenda and follow those "long-established guidelines and ethics codes calling for accuracy, fairness, balance and the avoidance of conflict of interest in journalism." Nothing could be further from the truth.
The agenda Farah and WND have is even more pronounced than the one he accuses the "lamestream media" of having -- anti-liberal, pro-conservative, anti-Clinton, pro-Tancredo. We've repeatedly documented how WND has no concern for accuracy, fairness, and balance. From Jon Dougherty to Aaron Klein to Bob Unruh to Farah himself, WND's writers has shown a longtime disregard for those concepts. Numerous undisclosed conflicts of interest are also a hallmark of WND's reporting. And as for a "perverse and extreme agenda," condoning murder and blacklisting political opponents would arguably fall under that definition.
In other words, Farah is spouting concepts he has no history of following himself, which makes a book by him advocating such concepts close to worthless.
We'll be doing a full review of Farah's book once we get our hands on one. It appears that Farah has not seen fit to send us a review copy. We don't know why -- after all, we are WND's most incisive observer, and we'd like to see if he bothers to live up to his own purported policy of "accuracy, fairness, and balance" by addressing our criticisms in his book.
