Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily is continuing to take the end of its ad-hosting business deal with Google -- which it falsely frames as "de-monetization" -- poorly. Joseph Farah used his Nov. 9 column to once again trot out his anti-Google conspiracy theories and blaming it for its financial problems because it allegedly buried WND in search results:
Back in normal times, WND regularly showed up among the top of Google News results; now it never does. Even worse are the words it uses to characterize our stories – "dangerous," "derogatory," even "shocking content." These labels are all applied to TRUE stories – all of which have panned out. But few got to read them, because Google made sure its algorithm condemned those stories to the internet's black hole.
I don't want reform. I want real justice for those harmed by these companies. What they have done to the American landscape with these tactics is a disgrace!
Here's a primer on why companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, YouTube and Twitter must be broken up through anti-trust actions, stripped of their inexcusable protections against consumer liability, stopped from invading the privacy of Americans for profit, blocked from using the most intimate personal data to inject extreme bias into the national debate, prohibited from rigging elections and held accountable for the restraint of trade practices against WND.
Furthermore, and most important, they need to be stopped from blocking, banning and blacklisting legitimate political speech, imposing speech codes, enforcing "political correctness" standards in either content or advertising sales or punishing those expressing opinions with which they disagree.
Under no circumstances should these corporations be permitted to engage in political lobbying, soliciting, accepting government contracts or participating in any political activities, operating as they currently do under special government protections against liability claims.
This, of course, completely ignores that Google, as a private business, has a responsibility to users to deliver quality search results from reliable sources, and WND's history of misinformation and conspiracy theories makes it anything but reliable.
Farah went on to cite anti-Google crusader Robert Epstein, but censors the fact that Epstein's research has been called into question because of its dubious and partisan nature. He went on to rant:
But there's not much time left for WND, the site that once set the records for breaking the mold. I'll be honest, we are in SURVIVAL MODE. We have less than one-fifteenth of the resources we had in 2016! Why? Because we had the audacity to support Donald Trump. That was our "crime."
Farah is lying. The current state of WND's finances is directly attritubate to the low quality of its "news" -- again, littered with misinformation and conspiracy theories -- and not because it supported Trump. Other Trump-friendly outlets are doing well financially; how does Farah explain that?
Farah then announced a money beg: "Our goal is to raise at least $100,000 through the end of the year for the kind of hard-hitting, breathtaking journalism you've come to know us for!"
Farah devoted his Nov. 15 column to attack Google as well:
"Extremist group."
"Dangerous or derogatory content."
"Unreliable and harmful claims."
Those are among the ways Google describes WND.
Is such language libelous? Is it abhorrent? Is it totally unfair? Is it in the eye of the beholder?
Yes, of course, it's all those things. But these are more than slurs, accusations, slanders.
They are part of a narrative that goes back 25 years – when WND and Google were just getting started.
Actually, they're all true, but Farah will never admit it. Farah went on to repeat his like about Google targeting WND because it supported Trump, adding:
It started, as I've said in the past, in 2016. We were enthusiastically supportive of Donald Trump. That was our major "error." We plead guilty. But for Google, this is a capital offense.
Of course, there is much more to which Google objects. A good measure of WND's news reporting published daily currently focuses on the three big topics Google cites as most troubling: "COVID misinformation," allegations of voter fraud and the transgender issue.
I can assure you, we will never cease, or slow down in any way, from reporting on these or any other issues – truthfully, honestly, eagerly. We will never stop this kind of genuine journalism. We intend to keep on doing what we've done for 25 years and doing it professionally – so help me God.
We've caught WND publishing misinformation and lies about all those things. Again, Farah will never admit it. This time, he asked for prayers on top of money.
This was followed by a Nov. 18 article touting the appearance of Farah's wife, Elizabeth Farah, appearing with Gina Loudon "on her popular 'Dr. Gina Prime Time' show on America’s Real Voice network." This was the same "popular" show (WND offered no metrics that proved its alleged popularity) that WND managing editor David Kupelian appeared on in August to push his election fraud conspiracy theories. If you'll recall, Loudon is a former WND columnist who tried to armchair-diagnose President Obama as a psychopath and demonstrated some serious pathology of her own by spreading lies. You might also remember her for trying to make hay off her teenage daughter being in a relationship with a 57-year-old actor -- then later making sure WND deleted the column she wrote quasi-defending it.
Strangely, WND didn't (or couldn't) embed the interview in the article, so one must travel to the Dr. Gina website to access it. Elizabeth Farah starts out by embellishing WND's history: "We started out as a for-profit news organization, a business that just wanted to do the right thing in journalism." Actually, WND started out as a division of Joseph Farah's right-wing nonprofit Western Journalism Center and was then spun off as a for-profit business. And "the right thing" always meant right-wing bias at WND.
Farah went on to claim that Google met in the Obama White House "four or five hundred times" to create "plans of suppression" against "alternate news." Farah is surprisingly correct about the number of Google-related visits to the Obama White House, but the idea that they were somehow forming "plans of suppression" against right-wing media appears to be a figment of her imagination designed to boost WND's victimhood narrative.
Loudon returned the favor by going into full suck-up mode: "It says so much that they did go after you because there was such a crediblity there, as you said, with award-winning journalists and everything else, but also those who were willing to mentor folks like me who ended up in professional media, so you've done a service, you deserve people to fight back for you." Yeesh.
