Topic: WorldNetDaily
In his latest periodic appeal for cash from his readers, WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah notes the following: "You may also donate to WND's Legal Defense Fund, to help us battle the lawsuits and threats that always accompany honest journalism."
"Honest journalism"? This from a news organization that finally admitted earliler this year, after seven years of denial, that it published false claims about Al Gore supporter Clark Jones as part of settling a libel and defamation lawsuit.
Would a news organization that was actually committed to "honest journalism" have spent seven years denying the truth? Nope.
The legal fund donation page also misleadingly claims that "WND has never lost such a lawsuit." That's technically true; WND did not "lose" the Jones lawsuit because it settled before going to trial because it was clear that WND would lose. Given that Jones got most of what he wanted -- an admission from WND that it "has no verified information by which to question Mr. Jones' honesty and integrity" -- that's a loss by most definitions of the word, especially given that WND fought making such an admission for seven years.
Farah, unsurprisingly, makes no mention of the Jones lawsuit -- let alone how much money WND spent fighting it for seven years and, presumably, paid Jones to settle it -- since the truth of that counters his assertion that WND is "constantly challenging ... lies." (WND won't make the terms of the settlement public, but we can safely assume that WND paid some amount of cash to Jones, given that he sued WND for $165 million in actual and punitive damages.)
WND has never responded to our challenge to add transparency to its legal defense fund by making public its donors and disbursements.
The bitterly ironic headline for Farah's cash appeal? "While WND fights for truth, will you watch our back?" How can WND fight for truth when it regularly gets caught in the act of telling lies?
