WorldNetDaily's front page currently has a link to a TV station's report that a 13-year-old girl who claimed that she was "beaten and threatened" after displaying a sign protesting illegal immigration apparently made up the story and faces a charge of false reporting.
There's no mention of WND's own story from earlier in the day unquestioningly regurgitating the girl's claim that "21 classmates attacked and beat her in response to a sign she made for a history class calling for an end to illegal immigration." It is no longer linked from the front page, but -- even though the story has now apparently been proven false -- WND has not, as of this writing, updated the story to reflect that.
Will WND print a retraction, update the story, or simply make it disappear and pretend it never existed? We'll be watching.
(We have a PDF that we'll post for posterity's sake if WND chooses the third option. Think of it as blackmail in the cause of responsible journalism.)
UPDATE: WND has now done its own article on the false report, but the old article remains posted, with no indication that it has been proven false, not even a link to the new article.
Curiously, though WND leaves out the details about how the girl made up the story. From the TV station article WND originally linked to:
After Melanie's accusations, administrators reviewed school survellience videotape of the incident - which, instead of showing students beating or attacking her, showed Bowers scratching herself on her arms, face, and neck, and walking through the halls of the school calmly long after she claimed the incident happened.
After Melanie's parents were presented with that information and the video, the school confronted Melanie, and she admitted that she made the story up.
Of course, WND has a history of not reporting newsy details when it's not in their interest to do so.
Sheffield Ignores That 'Wiki Wars' Go Both Ways Topic: NewsBusters
An April 9 NewsBusters post by Matthew Sheffield paints a skirmish on the Wikipedia page for Absolut vodka over the mentnion of a (conservative-led) controversy over an ad Absolut ran in Mexico that portrayed much of the southwestern U.S. as part of Mexico, per an early 19th century map, as part of "the front of the Wiki Wars, the ideological battle for the soul of Wikipedia." Sheffield asserted that "it seems left-wingers at the online encyclopedia site are angry that anyone would want to mention Absolut's reconquista controversy in the vodka maker's article." Sheffield concluded by claiming that "a perfect example of how there's no need to cede dominance of the critically important resource of Wikipedia to the left." This is an update of sorts to a March 31 post in which Sheffield claimed that Wikipedia is liberal-dominated, thus giving liberals an advantage in the "war for the political metanarrative."
Sheffield ignores, however, that the "Wiki War" goes both ways. As TPM's Greg Sargent noted, Newsmax's Ronald Kessler was actively trying to scrub from his Wikipedia page references to his Obama-bashing reporting that addressed the controversy over his claim (denied by the Obama campaign and retracted by William Kristol) that Barack Obama attended a church service in which Rev. Jeremiah Wright allegedly said inflammatory things. It's a rather puffery-laden page, which suggests that Kessler or a surrogate makes an effort to maintain said puffery, at least until finally giving up over the Obama stuff. Similarly, the Wikipedia page for WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein is also puffery-laden and suspciously criticism-free (well, it was criticism-free until we took a crack at it); note the scrubbing activities of unregistered users (those identified only by IP address) and a certain "Jerusalem21" in the page's history.
For Sheffield to portray aggressive Wikipedia editing as a provice solely of "left-wingers" is inaccurate, and he might want to admit that sometime.
It's not often that a black man cites the self-proclaimed "white nationalist" website VDare.com to support his arguments. But Mychal Massie is apparently no ordinary black man.
In his April 8 WorldNetDaily column, Massie cites not one but two VDare blogitems by Steve Sailer to buttress his argument that Michelle Obama is a "bitter" woman "driven by anger, resentment and blind racial entitlement."
This would be the same Steve Sailer who has written in defense of the Pioneer Fund, an organization designated a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its support over the years of the work of white supremacists, eugenicists, and others dedicated to proving the genetic superiority of certain races. The same Steve Sailer who runs the Human Biodiversity Institute, which has been called a eugenics think tank. The same Steve Sailer who wrote of blacks stranded in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina: "The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society."
Sailer is presumably taking great pleasure in being treated as a authority on racial issues by Massie. And Massie seems quite happy to give Sailer that opportunity.
New Article -- Out There, Exhibit 45: Armitage-O-Philia Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters just can't stop falsely claiming that Richard Armitage was the first, or the only, person involved in outing Valerie Plame. Read more >>
The Capital Research Center's Matthew Vadum responds to our critique of his NewsBusters posts on Al Gore:
Unfortunately, though, you appear to have missed the point of the post. Let me explain.
In that entry and in the April 1 item (cross-posted here) I wrote that Al Gore, the former Vice President-cum-tycoon who is now worth much more than $100 million, is trying to create an artificial market in the U.S. for the right to generate carbon dioxide emissions.
[...]
However, for reasons known only to Gore and his handlers, he is now denying the obvious, namely, that he stands to profit from the expansion of carbon trading.
But Vadum offers no evidence that, denials aside, Gore will profit from this, nor does Vadum contradict Gore's denial.
Vadum, meanwhile, misses our point: he never proves his implication that the only reason Gore is a global warming activist, as previously articulated by NewsBusters stablemate Noel Sheppard, is to make a killing.
Ultimately, Vadum states more than he can actually prove. His repeated stating of Gore's current wealth suggests he doesn't think Gore deserves it or any future earnings, which indicates his own hidden agenda.
Vadum goes on to note that we "are affiliated with Media Matters for America, an in-your-face group headed by admitted liar David Brock, and known for its hyperbolic hairsplitting, half truths, and somewhat entertaining sophistry." At the risk of further hair-splitting, we repeat: We just work there, and ConWebWatch is entirely separate from Media Matters.
Vadum then invites us to read the CRC's profile of Media Matters. Let's count the false and misleading statements in the profile's summary:
Media Matters for America is an aggressively liberal nonprofit that claims the mainstream media deliberately promotes “conservative disinformation” and must be exposed in order to protect a gullible public. The group is headed by David Brock, a former conservative journalist who switched sides and now targets his former allies using donations from George Soros and other wealthy liberal activists and foundations.
1) It's "conservative misinformation," not "conservative disinformation."
2) The assertion that Media Matters "claims the mainstream media deliberately promotes 'conservative disinformation'" is itself hyperbolic (which Vadum professes to hate). Substitute "conservative" for liberal," and the statement "claims the mainstream media deliberately promotes liberal disinformation' and must be exposed in order to protect a gullible public" more precisely describes the mission of the Media Research Center.
3) Media Matters has not received "donations from George Soros," directly or through another group. (Of course, CRC has little room to talk, having received millions from the usual conservative foundations and donors, including Mr. Moneybags himself, Richard Mellon Scaife.
The report itself -- a large chunk of which is a hyperbolic attack on David Brock, not Media Matters itself -- is similarly slippery with the facts, so yeah, we did "enjoy" reading it ... for the entertainment value. It's too biased and pejorative to be of real use to anyone who is not a right-wing fellow traveler. "Somewhat entertaining sophistry" indeed.
-- headline on April 8 NewsBusters post by John Stephenson.
Wonder whose idea it was to schedule a Medal of Honor award ceremony at the White House at the same time as the Petraeus hearings?
All three cable nets broke away from hearings coverage to carry the ceremony live.
-- April 8 Talking Points Memo post by David Kurtz
UPDATE: Stephenson adds: "The media finally wakes up and starts covering this. I wonder how much Newsbusters had to do with that." We would guess nothing -- as noted above the cable news networks covered it live, and the newspaper websites that dominate his above-linked search would generally not have made the story available on their websites until the morning paper was published. Stephenson appears to have a fundamental misunderstanding about how the newspaper industry works -- and the broadcast media, since he ignores that the cable nets covered it live.
NewsBusters Slightly Less Bitter Over Pulitizers Topic: NewsBusters
Fresh off his not-so-breaking news about Fox News' cancellation of John Gibson's show, Matthew Sheffield starts of an April 8 NewsBusters post this way:
It's not often you'll hear a right-leaning media critic say this: I agree with the Pulitzer Prize committee this year, at least when it comes to the award the committee gave to Investor's Business Daily's Michael Ramirez for his excellent cartooning work.
Why would it be unusual for a conservative to praise an prominent award given to a fellow conservative? Sheffield doesn't explain.
Sheffield then prints excerpts of an April 2007 column by his boss, Brent Bozell, complaining that the Pulitzers are "biased against right-leaning columnists." But as we noted at the time about this bitter rant, Bozell misleadingly complained (and Sheffield repeats the section here) that there was only one female conservative who had won the Pulitzer for commentary. In fact, when the New York Times' Maureen Dowd won her prize in 1999, she was advancing anti-Clinton talking points in her columns that conservatives like Bozell and Sheffield could heartily endorse.
Shocker: Kessler Debunks Joe McCarthy Revisionism Topic: Newsmax
Here's a shocker: There appears to be one part of the conservative agenda Bush-fluffer extrordinaire Ronald Kessler won't sign on to.
In an April 7 Newsmax column, Kessler called attempts by some conservatives to "vindicate the late Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy and his campaign to expose Soviet spies in the U.S. government" -- he doesn't name names, but they include Ann Coulter, M. Stanton Evans and Accuracy in Media -- "dangerous." Why? "The FBI agents who were actually chasing those spies have told me that McCarthy hurt their efforts because he trumped up charges, unfairly besmirched honorable Americans, and gave hunting spies a bad name." Kessler adds:
The problem was that the people McCarthy tarnished as Communists or Communist sympathizers were not the real spies. Often, the information McCarthy used came from FBI files, which were full of rumor and third-hand accounts.
[...]
While McCarthy said he would protect the names of witnesses, their names were leaked to the press, [Senate associate historian Donald] Ritchie says. Only half a dozen of the witnesses turned up in the VENONA intercepts, all minor figures in McCarthy’s investigations, he notes.
In the end, says Ritchie, “Not one of the 500 witnesses went to jail for perjury or contempt of Congress, whereas a lot of people who testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Senate Internal Security subcommittee were investigated, prosecuted and convicted, and served jail time. Yet McCarthy was constantly accusing people of having committed perjury and urging the Justice Department to prosecute them.”
[...]
Efforts to vindicate McCarthy by people who have never caught a spy ignore the fact that rather than helping the cause of dealing with the spy threat, he harmed it.
By sanctioning McCarthy’s intimidating tactics and dishonest charges against innocent Americans, revisionists dangerously invite history to be repeated, imperiling all of us.
Ouch. How will Coulter, Evans, et al, handle this?
WND Misleads on Zeifman's Hillary-Bashing, Ignores His Conflicting Firing Claims Topic: WorldNetDaily
An April 7 WorldNetDaily article begins: "Details of Hillary Clinton's firing from the House Judiciary Committee staff for unethical behavior as she helped prepare articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon have been confirmed by the panel's chief Republican counsel."
Except that most of them weren't.
The article states that "Franklin Polk backed up major claims by Jerry Zeifman, the general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee who supervised Clinton's work on the Watergate investigation in 1974." According to the article, "Polk confirmed Clinton wrote a brief arguing Nixon should not be granted legal counsel due to a lack of precedent."
But, in fact, the article does not claim that Polk backed any of Zeifman's "major claims" -- that Clinton's brief was "fradulent," that "Clinton deliberately ignored the then-recent case of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who was allowed to have a lawyer during the impeachment attempt against him in 1970," that "Clinton bolstered her fraudulent brief by removing all of the Douglas files from public access and storing them at her office, enabling her to argue as if the case never existed," and that "Clinton was collaborating with allies of the Kennedys to block revelation of Kennedy-administration activities that made Watergate 'look like a day at the beach.'"
Indeed, the article states only that "Polk confirmed the Clinton memo ignored the Douglas case, but he could not confirm or dispel the claim that Hillary removed the files," adding that he considered Clinton's alleged exclusion of the Douglas precedent "more stupid than sinister."
Further, WND repeats the claim that Zeifman "fired Clinton from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation" without mentioning (as we've noted) that in 1998, Zeifman claimed that he didn't fire Clinton because he didn't have the power to do so.
WND also reprints an article by Dan Calebrese of North Star Writers, from which WND lifted the bulk of its article. Calebrese similarly claimed that Zeifman "sign[ed Hillary's] termination papers" without noting that Zeifman has previously claimed he didn't fire her because he didn't have the power to do so.
Indeed, none of Zeifman's major attacks on Hillary have been independently corroborated. And Zeifman's flip-flop about whether he fired Hillary would seem to make him an unreliable witness.
In an April 7 NewsBusters post, Matthew Sheffield solemnly informs us: "Fox News has canceled its long-running show 'The Big Story' which originally featured John Gibson."
But as the New York Times article to which Sheffield linked makes clear, the cancellation happened on March 12. Nowhere does Sheffield indicate that he's relating an event that happened nearly a month ago.
Insert snarky remark here about not keeping up with the news.
The Gore-Bashing Baton Passes At NewsBusters Topic: NewsBusters
Now that Noel Sheppard has apparently decided not to accept our challenge to support his unsubstantiated claim that Al Gore is into global warming activism only for the Benjamins, it was inevitable that someone else would pick up that misleading lilttle ball.
Enter Matthew Vadum, editor of Organization Trends and Foundation Watch, two newsletters issued by the conservative Capital Research Center. In an April 1 NewsBusters post, Vadum claimed that Gore was "profiteering" on global warming by heading a private equity firm that invests in "green" companies and technology. "Little is known about his shadowy firm’s finances, where it gets funding and what projects it supports," Vadum asserts, without explaining if all private-equity firms are, or should be, held to the same standard. He also derisively calls Gore "Saint Albert of Carthage, Tennessee."
Vadum kept up the hate in a April 6 post, starting with a false claim off the bat -- that Gore famously claimed to have invented the Internet." (We debunked this eight years ago.) Vadum claimed that a spokesman gave "a snotty response" when he denied Vadum's profiteering allegations.
Vadum went on to call Gore's global warming activism a "Chicken Little routine" and he suggests throughout that Gore is only doing this for the money. But correlation does not equal causation: because Gore is making some money related to his global warming activism does not mean that it's the only reason he's doing it. (We thought that conservatives believed making money was a good thing.) Nowhere does Vadum offer evidence that his beliefs are not sincere.
Vadum even attacks Gore's speaking fees:
And let’s not forget that Gore now makes $175,000 a speech. Are people paying Gore not to talk about global warming, his policy forte, in his speeches? He sure isn’t making that kind of money for his oratory by enthralling crowds with fascinating tales from his time as Vice President of the United States, an office a previous holder once described as not being worth “a bucket of warm p---.” By comparison, the rhetorical gifts of both Dan Quayle and Walter Mondale go for a more affordable $30,000 (per speech), or less.
We would argue that Vadum, as an employee of a right-wing think tank that has attacked Gore, is doing it for the money to a greater extent than Gore is.
UPDATE: Welcome, visitors from CRC. We respond to Vadum here.
Nowhere is it mentioned that WND admitted, as part of settling a libel suit by Al Gore supporter Clark Jones, printing false claims about him -- which undermines its assertion that its journalism is "honest." And nowhere does WND indicate how much of each donation to its "legal defense fund" goes toward the cost of paying a presumed financial award to Jones as part of that lawsuit settlement.
C'mon, WND, be honest with your readers and potential donors -- you're begging for donations to pay for the settlement to Jones, right? Oh, and while you're at it, how about a little transparency for that legal defense fund, making public its donors and disbursements?
An April 4 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh starts off with two falsehoods right off the bat.
The headline states, "Elementary lesson on 'gay' issues now tied to reading, social studies." Nowhere does Unruh specifically state that reading and social studies are a particular focus of purported " 'gay' studies."
Unruh began his article by referencing "The superintendent of a public school that sparked a federal lawsuit by teaching homosexuality to children as young as kindergarten." But as we detailed the last time Unruh "reported" on this story, the school was not "teaching homosexuality"; rather, his 5-year-old son brought home a book about families that "depicted at least two households led by homosexual partners."
And despite Unruh's sinister warnings of "indoctrination" and "teaching homosexuality" and "promotions of such alternative lifestyles," there's nothing of the sort going on here. Buried in Unruh's article is a mention that the school in question may assign reading to students that includes "stories that show same gender parents."
That's what Unruh's article is about -- fear that a school will show students that gay parents exist. The Depiction-Equals-Approval Fallacy strikes again!
Only Democrats Put 'On the Spot' Topic: CNSNews.com
As we noted last fall, one occasional feature CNSNews.com started under new leadership last year is "On the Spot," in which (mostly Democratic) members of Congress are ambushed with a question reflecting CNS' conservative bias, the apparent point of which is to catch a Democrat making a potentially awkward remark on tape.
The latest edition came in an April 4 article by Pete Winn, in which he asks "several members of Congress" whether they "agreeed with [Martin Luther King's] view that man's laws must comport with the laws of God." But all three listed interviewees are Democrats; Winn offers no evidence he asked the question of a Republican.
Will NewsBusters Report Zeifman's Conflicting Claims? Topic: NewsBusters
An April 1 NewsBusters post by John Stephenson reported the latest anti-Hillary allegations by Jerry Zeifman -- who, aswe'vedetailed, likes to go on right-wing websites and tout his self-proclaimed status as a "lifelong Democrat" as an excuse to bash other Democrats. Stephenson reprinted excerpts of a North Star Writers article in which Zeifman asserted that he "fired Hillary from the [House Judiciary] committee staff" investigating the Watergate scandal. Stephenson, of course, swallows Zeifman's claims without question; his headline on the post is "Will Media Give Story About Hillary's Unethical Past the Legs It Deserves?"
But as Media Matters details, Zeifman claimed back in a 1998 article that he didn't fire her and didn't have the power to do so.
So either Zeifman lied back then, or he's lying now -- which makes him a liar either way. Will Stephenson or anyone else at NewsBusters hold Zeifman accountable for his conflicting claims? Don't count on it.
