Topic: WorldNetDaily
As part of the past month of ranting in order to keep his website from going down the tubes (again), WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah served up this little Aug. 22 sermon on fairness:
I don’t. I’ve worked in the media all my life – about half in what we euphemistically call “the mainstream,” and the last half in the alternative or independent media, as I call it. As a reporter, I never worked in a newspaper that wasn’t dominated by leftist bias. I’ve never been covered by one that didn’t inject that bias into the story. There is no restraint on leftist bias in the media today, nor is there any restraint on leftist bias among their Overlords in the “Speech Code Cartel.”
Without restraint, leftist ideology will always dominate. Without competition, leftist ideology will always dominate. And, believe me, when people like Jack Dorsey admit their leftist bias, there is no restraint and no competition in sight.
[...]
And this is what we’re up against at WND and the rest of the independent, alternative media. It’s why we are all fighting for our professional lives, our very existence, our very survival in the battle to counter the lies and “fake news.”
You cannot trust leftists to be fair. And leftists control the media and the means of distribution. If left unchallenged, if not forced to play by the rules, they will reset the rules. And resetting the rules means the First Amendment is null and void for all intents and purposes.
The unspoken claim of Farah's column is that he and WND are eminently fair -- which couldn't be further from the truth.
WND wasn't fair to Clark Jones when it lied about him being a drug dealer. It took nearly eight years and a defamation suit -- and an undisclosed out-of-court settlement that involved an abject apology and, presumably, no small amount of cash -- before WND was fair to him.
WND wasn't fair to Barack Obama, refusing to publish all the things that discredited its birther consipracy theories. Farah even refuses to acknowledge that Obama was president -- how fair is that?
WND wasn't fair to the Chobani yogurt company when it published false and malicious claims about it. WND corrected the record months later, presumably after Chobani's lawyers demanded a little fairness.
WND wasn't fair to Muslims when it blamed Islam for a measles outbreak in a Somali-American community in Minnesota when, in fact, it was WND's anti-vaxxer friends who had been lobbying the community.
And we haven't even gotten to all the rewritten press releases and one-source wonders WND has published over the years that are unfair for their lack of an alternative view or failure to give the targeted person a chance to respond.
And now Farah is complaining how others aren't fair? Fix your own house first, Joe -- after all, whether you admit it or not, WND's shoddy reporting and fundamental unfairness is one big reason it's going down the tubes (again).
