Topic: WorldNetDaily
The release of Jerome Corsi's birther book has its publisher, Joseph Farah, even more thin-skinned than usual, so he's lashing out any anyone who criticizes or makes fun of the book.
In his May 20 column, Farah growled at Mark Warren, the author of a satirical post at Esquire magazine claiming that Farah and Corsi were withdrawing the book:
I'm sick and tired of spoiled little twits like Warren, perched in their comfortable offices in New York, firing salvoes on tireless, hard-working, committed journalists like Jerome Corsi and the rest of my team at WND without any accountability to standards of professionalism.
Who is Mark Warren? He's Harry Reid's collaborator. In other words, he's a liberal Democratic hack, not a newsman. Who else is he? His professional bio posted at Esquire says he has worked there since 1988. That's 23 years in the insular world of a New York girlie mag. And he is in charge of Esquire's political coverage. He's also an acolyte of Dennis Kucinich and Christopher Hitchens. Maybe you wonder where a guy like this cut his journalistic teeth? Actually, he has no journalistic teeth. He worked in local Democratic Party political campaigns and staff positions until plucked out of obscurity by Esquire in 1988.
And some actually scoffed when I suggested the distinct possibility that the White House may have been behind this dirty trick!
Warren is not the only writer Farah has personally attacked. After an Associated Press article stated that Corsi's book "akes false claims about Obama's purported ineligibility for the presidency," Farah went on a freak-out in his May 23 column:
Let me interrupt this incredibly unprofessional screed right here to draw your attention to the italicized conclusion to the previous paragraph. In the good old days of American journalism, there was an industry-standard requirement that any assertion by the reporter be backed up with hard-cold established facts. There was no room in news stories for reporters to express opinions – even those bolstered with facts.
That leads to the obvious question: What are these false claims about Obama's purported ineligibility for the presidency?
The "reporter," or intern, or editorial copy girl, or whatever she is and represents, doesn't give a hint.
We're just to take her word for it. Based on what? Has she read the book? I doubt it. But, even in the extremely unlikely event she has, her copy still exceeds the bounds of all standards and practices for reporting – especially for a news agency whose copy is prepared for hundreds of newspapers and radio stations and TV outlets around the country and the world.
This is just unbelievable to me.
This is advocacy journalism. This is commentary, not news. This is brazen edification of the status quo – hardly the journalistic ethic of "comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable." This is an example of a poor excuse for a journalist attacking someone who actually works hard at the craft.
What a laugh. The vast majority of WND's "news" content is advocacy or commentary. As its repeated lies and biased coverage of the birth certificate alone demonstrate, WND regularly puts its anti-Obama agenda ahead of the facts.
And Farah dares to lecture others on how to cover the news? How arrogant.
Farah clearly can't handle criticism or understand satire. He has nothing to offer to the world of journalism except to serve as an example of how unprofessional it is to bully your critics with petty insults.
(P.S. Farah seems afraid to take us on, though -- perhaps because he knows that we know how he operates.)
