Topic: NewsBusters
Has NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard ever heard of Media Matters? Apparently not, because he's written a few posts of late that make claims contradicted by my employer.
In a July 9 post, Sheppard singled out Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s "rant" during the Live Earth concerts asserting that conservative media figures such as John Stossel, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity are "lying to you, lying to the American public, and telling you that global warming doesn't exist." He claimed to highlight Kennedy's remarks as being "[f]or those whose gastrointestinal tracts couldn’t allow them to stomach the goings on during Saturday’s Live Earth concerts." A July 15 post called Kennedy's statements "absurd" (and professed to be "verklempt" that Stossel and conservative radio host Steve Malzberg would trash Kennedy for saying such a thing).
But if Sheppard had read Media Matters, he would know that Stossel, Hannity, Beck and Limbaugh have indeed made false, misleading, or just plain wacky claims about global warming (among many other issues).
In another July 15 post, Sheppard repeated a Rasmussen Reports poll that he claimed showed Americans "overwhelmingly believe" the media has a liberal bias. Well, maybe, if you think 40 percent is "overwhelming." He then went on to insult anyone who doesn't think otherwise, saying of the 25 percent who said that "ABC, CBS, and NBC deliver the news without any bias": "How’d you like to be part of that addle-minded minority?" In noting that 49 percent of liberals believe that network TV news has a conservative bias, Sheppard wrote: "Can you imagine the intellectual capacity of someone who believes that ABC, CBS, and NBC are conservatively biased? Must be the same people who think Michael Moore’s films are actually documentaries, and Al Gore is more qualified to make climate prognostications than accredited meteorologists and climatologists."
Of course, Media Matters has documented numerous instances of pro-conservative, anti-liberal tilt on CBS, NBC and ABC.
The question is, can Sheppard tear himself away from thinking up new insults for Al Gore long enough to do some actual research and check out that newfangled thing called Media Matters?
