Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily continues to be on life support -- an apparent de facto division of the Floyd Brown-operated fake-news outlet the Western Journal -- and Joseph Farah remains out of commission. Meanwhile, managing editor David Kupelian continues to send out email letters to WND's mailing llist that thinks we've forgotten about WND's journalistic non-legacy.
In a March 11 letter, Kupelian serves up a WND-standard anti-media rant:
When radical left media bullies talk about "Freedom of the Press," they're not talking about the vision of the Founding Fathers who understood the crucial, life-and-death role a free and independent press plays in keeping our democratic republic healthy and strong.
[...]
I had the honor of spending a year working closely with the highest-ranking Soviet bloc intel official ever to defect to the West during the entire Cold War, former communist spymaster Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, on his groundbreaking book, "Disinformation."
That's why I know disinformation when I see it — and that is precisely what so much of today's "news" amounts to.
This disinformation is designed to brainwash the American people with regard to what is going on in our country, scare people with "crisis stories" or fake "bombshell reports" attacking our president, and leave people with the mistaken belief that there is nothing they can do to fight back.
Funny, we figured Kupelian knew disinformation when he saw it because he published so much of it at WND -- which is what the website's obsession with Obama birtherism and Seth Rich conspiracy theories were. And we remember when WND falsely smeared a Tennessee car dealer as a drug dealer -- despite years of denial, WND was forced to quietly settle the man's defamation case against it before it went to trial. (How much did WND have to pay the man, David? Why are you keeping that secret after all these years?)
WND did not care about the truth before, and there's no reason to beleive Kupelian now when he claims that WND cares about "real news stories about important issues free of bias and selective reporting" and "isn't politically motivated." Honestly -- has WND ever been like that? Not in our 20 years of monitoring it.
On March 29, Kupelian sent out another letter, this time rehasing most of the typical right-wing talking points about the coronavirus pandemic, including the obsession with chloroquine, claimingn without evidence that "many physicians in America who are currently treating COVID-19 patients are taking the drug themselves right now, prophylactically." That led to more bogus posturing:
We are living in an exceedingly dangerous time – and I don’t mean just from a dangerous and highly contagious virus. I also mean from the dangerous virus of leftism that has infected both the Democratic Party and the elite news media. It’s very contagious.
But we’ve got the cure!
The cure for lies is truth. The cure for confusion, obfuscation and doubletalk is truth. The cure for hysteria, demonization and exploitation of crises “to restructure things to fit our vision” is truth.
WND has been publishing real news nonstop for almost 23 years, since long before Google, Facebook, social media – or for that matter, most of the rest of the online news media – even existed. We are experienced, professional journalists dedicated to our craft. But we are also Christians who above all honor God, America, the U.S. Constitution, liberty, and our nation’s Judeo-Christian culture, which of course is the glue that holds everything good about America together. That is our anchor, the rock we stand on, and we will be here for the duration, like a lighthouse, to help illuminate the way forward for good Americans to navigate through these troubled and turbulent times.
If Kupelian wants us to believe he publishes "real news" by "experienced, professional journalists," he should start apologizing for and retracting all the fake news WND has published through the years.
Both letters end with a plea for donations. Again, not until it repents for its decades of reprehensible behavior.
