MRC's Gainor Has Anti-Gay Freakout Over Picture of Two Men Kissing Topic: Media Research Center
For someone whose job it is to be a watchdog of news coverage, the Media Research Center's Dan Gainor sure is clueless about how journalism works.
Gainor took to FoxNews.com to deliver a rant about the Denver Post putting a picture of Colorado House Speaker Mark Ferrandino kissing his partner after the passage of a bill permitting civil unions in the state. Apparently, Gainor not only considers such a thing to be offensive to community standards even though he does not live in the Post's circulation area -- he puts "partner" in scare quotes to denigrate their relationship -- he does not consider such a thing to be news:
The Post ran that photo as its main front-page picture, taking up 20-25 percent of the front page.
They were shocked that not everyone was amused by a typical example of media promoting the gay agenda. The debate went national with both Huffington Post and even the prominent journalism blog Jimromenesko.com chiming in.
Director of Newsroom Operations Linda Shapley naturally defended the decision to run the photo. Choosing editor cliché No. 7, Shapley told readers: “As editors, it’s often our job to make difficult decisions.” But a little analysis shows they knew the impact it would have. They just didn’t care.
The headline on her column first read: “Mark Ferrandino kiss photo shows truth, no matter how objectionable.” But that offended the pro-gay lobby, so the explanation of the offense … offended. The new headline became “Picture of Mark Ferrandino kissing partner shows the truth, even if it offends some.”
Note that both versions emphasized the “truth.” Journalists are constantly convinced their view of the world is truth. All others not so much.
Gainor doesn't explain why that unambiguously true picture is not "truth."
He goes on to accuse the editor of engaging in a "self-serving defense," but Gainor's manufactured outrage is just as self-serving. He's working in service of an organization that puts its anti-gay agenda ahead of news value considerations, and he's nothing if not a loyal apparatchik for whom right-wing ideology comes first, last and always. Gainor doesn't care that gay relationships are news -- he doesn't want gays reported on, period, unless they are denigrated.
But Gainor keeps ranting anyway:
Readers who disagree or are offended because they might not want to explain two men kissing to a 6-year-old child, well they don’t matter. In years past, when newspapers were still popular ways Americans received news, editors were concerned with delivering a “family newspaper.” Now they care more that they are giving readers the propaganda of a “Modern Family” newspaper.
And it’s exactly what the left wants. The pro-gay group GLAAD, which aims to ban traditional marriage supporters from TV, makes it clear it looks to the media to propagandize. “What people see in the media has a huge impact and GLAAD ensures images of LGBT people and allies grow acceptance, understanding and build support for equality.”
The Post is right in one way. A picture is worth a thousand words and not one of them says anything kind to readers who are not liberal.
Presumably, Gainor would have no problem with the Denver Post running a picture of a bloody fetus on the front page to illustrate a story about abortion -- something that seems to be less offensive and disgusting than a picture of two men kissing.
Meanwhile ... Topic: WorldNetDaily
Richard Bartholomew shoots down WorldNetDaily's promotion of a video (which, of course, it is selling) claiming that Jerusalem's Temple Mount is not in the correct place, and Jews can build the Third Temple without disturbing the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque so that Jesus can return. WND's Joseph Farah even appears in one promotional video. Turns out the filmmaker, Ken Klein, says a lot of goofy things, and Farah is apparently a sucker for any apocalyptic "last days" scenario.
Pot, Kettle, Black Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell -- the man who called President Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead" -- is calling Chris Matthews "real face of character assassination."
WND Belatedly Objects to High School's Non-Gay-Bashing Play Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily, as befits its anti-gayagenda, does have a thing against theater productions that fail to indulge in gay-bashing.In 2010, for example, WND railed against a production of "The Laramie Project" because a member of the board of the theater company putting on the production was onetime right-wing pinata Kevin Jennings and because the play did not conform to right-wing revisionism regarding the death of Matthew Shepard.
In a March 23 WND article, Drew Zahn bashes a "public charter school" in Massachusetts for staging a production of “The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told," which retells the Book of Genesis from a "pro-homosexual" point of view.
Zahn's article appeared a week after the play was staged, so he was rather late to the controversy, making it a very old story the second it was published. Way to stay on top of the news, WND.
CNS Pushes Smears of Obama Nominee Topic: CNSNews.com
Craig Bannister uses a March 18 CNSNews.com blog post to uncritically repeat an allegation that Thomas Perez, President Obama's nominee for labor secretary, was involved in "a quid pro quo deal that potentially cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars," in which "Perez urged the City of St. Paul to drop a case it had before the Supreme Court in return for a Justice Department decision not to intervene in an unrelated False Claims Act case. That case had the potential to return over $180 million in damages to the U.S. treasury."
in fact, as Media Matters explains, there's no evidence that Perez did anything wrong, the St. Paul case was seen by conservatives as an opportunity to undermine the longstanding "disparate impact" doctrine of civil rights enforcement, and other civil rights activists encouraged St. Paul to drop the lawsuit.
Another March 18 CNS article by Fred Lucas front-loads allegedly scandalous allegations against Perez, such as "giving incomplete testimony on the controversial handling of the New Black Panther voter intimidation case" and being "disqualified from running for Maryland state attorney general."
But those allegations fall apart once Lucas gets around to explaining some of the circumstances. For instance, Lucas ultimately admits that Perez was not with the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division when the DOJ dropped the New Black Panther case.
And the reason Perez was disqualified from his race for attorney general, Lucas eventually gets around to stating, is because "Perez did not meet the state constitutional requirement to have practiced law in the state of Maryland for 10 years to be eligible to run for attorney general." But that doesn't tell the whole story, which Lucas started off by suggesting corruption and flipping to suggesting incompetence. In fact, Maryland courts had ruled that Perez's experience as a lawyer for the federal government in Washington, D.C., did not count because he was not a member of the Maryland bar at the time.
WND's Ellis Washington Misquotes Obama Topic: WorldNetDaily
It wouldn't be Ellis Washington if he weren't getting something flamboyantly wrong, and Washington does just that in his March 22 WorldNetDaily column:
In a 2001 radio interview, Obama gave America a glimpse into the perverse mind of The Regime and what type of characteristics he considers in an ideal judge. Obama said, “… The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution. …”
The most effective tactics liberal/progressives have used repeatedly to break free from the “essential constraints” of the Constitution was to enact the treason of the Progressive Revolution throughout every aspect of society via liberal activist judges and their anti-constitutional decisions. By appointing Sonia Sotomayor (2009) and Elena Kagan (2010) to the high court, Obama has openly shown his utter contempt for the U.S. Constitution, preferring evolutionary activist judges who legislate from the bench and share his tyrannous belief that the Warren Court (1953-69) didn’t go “far enough” in enshrining “redistributive change” (e.g., integrating Marxist/Alinsky socialist ideas in place of the rule of law into every area of society), thus effectively rendering the Constitution a dead letter.
As we documented years ago, Obama did not say the Warren Court didn’t go "far enough" in enshrining "redistributive change." He said that because the Warren Court "didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution," that meant it wasn't as radical as its critics have portrayed it.
If Washington fails so utterly at basic reading comprehension, no wonder he can't find a tenure-track teaching job.
MRC's Graham Dowplays Swift Boat Lies Topic: NewsBusters
In a March 23 NewsBusters post, Tim Graham complains that NPR's Terry Gross noted that there were "so many lies" in the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attack against John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election. While Graham grouses that Gross didn't cite "anything specific," there were indeed lies and deceptions in what the Swift Boat group said.
Graham then insisted there were "firsthand testimonials on BOTH sides" of the Swift Boat issue, citing as evidence an ABC report that quoted Swift Boater Larry Thurlow. But Thurlow -- whose main function in 2004 was to deny that Kerry wasn't under enemy fire in an incident for which Kerry received a Bronze Star -- wasn't on Kerry's boat, he was on one nearby.
Graham also glosses over what was happening in that ABC report: the undermining of Thurlow's claims. Thurlow's own Bronze Star citation for the incident states that there was enemy fire. Thurlow never moved to returned his Bronze Star despite it being apparently awarded under false pretenses -- instead, he has made the unsubstantiated claim that Kerry was the author of the after-action report that allegedly resulted in the awarding of the medals.
WND Brings Back More Anti-Obama Pseudo-Science Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily, it seems, is determined to grace its readers with more Obama-bashing thinly disguised as pseudo-science from self-proclaimed profiler Andrew G. Hodges.
Hodges' stenographer, Bob Unruh, gives us his latest psychological projection in a March 22 WND article:
In his newest analysis, he looks further into Obama’s statements in his press conference about the sequester issue in which he berated Republicans for not doing what he wants.
Hodges said “another spontaneous image” appeared from Obama’s “super intelligence.”
“Asked whether he couldn’t have pushed negotiations until a deal was reached, Obama replied, ‘I can’t have Secret Service block the doorway,’” Hodges explained
“He suggests the secret wish to block the Republicans from the door to the government. Failing to negotiate, he has made every effort to demonize/crush Republicans to gain total control of the government after the 2014 election. His ‘have Secret Service’ image further suggests a desire to totally control major government law enforcement agencies– to block any opposition,” Hodges said.
“The frightening image ‘of blocking the doorway’ to those who oppose him suggests progressively ideas of imprisonment/forced containment, and a picture of martial law. Extreme? Likely so for now but equally a potential major warning of his true intent – if everything fell into place,” he said.
But Hodges noted objective actions that fit the pattern, such as the government’s purchase of 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition, the estimated 145,000 federal agents with firearm- carry authority and the 65,000 agents for the Department of Homeland Security alone.
[...]
Hodges noted that even activists on the left have expressed concern. Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the left-wing Code Pink, in a recent WABC radio interview with host Aaron Klein, called the potential abuse by the Obama administration’s huge domestic police power “extremely troubling.”
“Recall Obama’s earlier words which, importantly, he made spontaneously, strongly pointing toward an unconscious confession. ‘We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded [as the military].’
“What exactly was he thinking and why? Undeniably this was extreme: a civilian force just as well funded and strong as our military – implying majorly armed. The question is what exactly was Obama secretly confessing about his future plans? His unconscious super intelligence suggests a warning from a very dangerous Obama,” Hodges contends.
Hodges' not-so-secret anti-Obama agenda is all too clear as he once again puts the image of Obama that exists only in his fevered brain ahead of the facts. He apparently reads only WND, which seems to be where he picked up his fearmongering about the government hoarding ammunition and the zombie lie that Obama wants to create his own private army.
As before, Hodges is merely projecting his own hatred of Obama and/or throwing red meat to the rubes who hate Obama as much as he does. What does his so-called "ThoughtPrint decoding" say about that kind of chicanery?
Newsmax Wants Us To Know 'What Really Happened' With Trump's CPAC Appearance Topic: Newsmax
Ronald Kessler may be gone from Newsmax, but his brand of Trump-fluffing lives on there.
A March 22 Newsmax article by Bill Hoffman is dedicated to counterspinning Donald Trump's sparsely attended appearance at CPAC by telling us "what really happened":
According to sources, organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference placed Trump on the schedule for an 8:45 a.m. speech.
But this year, CPAC was located at Maryland’s National Harbor, well outside of downtown Washington, D.C., and some 30 minutes drive time during rush hour for many CPAC attendees who stayed in D.C. hotels.
To add further confusion, CPAC scheduled its prayer breakfast at the same time Trump was to speak. And the attendees who made it early to the convention site at the Gaylord National Resort were under the mistaken impression that Trump was speaking at the prayer breakfast, not in the ballroom.
“The organizers didn’t inform people that Mr. Trump was going to be at a separate forum. A large crowd went to the prayer breakfast thinking he would be there,’’ a CPAC organizer said, explaining the faux pas to Newsmax.
But it turns out that Trump, still one of the most popular figures among tea party conservatives, had the last laugh.
Much of the press that covered CPAC attended Trump’s event and missed the prayer breakfast.
Then, following his speech, the star of NBC’s smash show “All-Star Celebrity Apprentice’’ held the largest press conference of any of the guest speakers who attended CPAC’s three-day event.
“Not only were the national press in attendance, but Trump had a huge number of international press there,’’ the source said.
Yes, Hoffmann couldn't even get this but of fluff on the record -- he had to quote an anonymous "CPAC organizer." Sad, isn't it?
WND Misleads About Alleged Government Bullet-Hoarding Topic: WorldNetDaily
Garth Kant surely must be pleasing his new bosses at WorldNetDaily with the amount of misinformation he's generated in his short time as a WND reporter. On top of fearmongering about vaccines, Kant has turned his attention to suggesting that the government wants to kill you.
Members of Congress are demanding the Obama administration explain why it is stockpiling a huge arsenal of ammunition and weapons.
The Department of Homeland Security bought more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition over the last year, as well as thousands of armored vehicles.
First, DHS is not stonewalling. It responded to similar questions from Sen. Tom Coburn back in early February. DHS explained that it purchased fewer rounds of ammuntion in fiscal year 2012 than it had in the two previous years.
Second, as DHS noted, DHS did not buy "more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition over the last year," as Kant claimed. As the Associated Press reported, that number is for use over the next five years, not a single year, and it saves the government money by buying in bulk.
We thought WND opposed government waste. Apparently not.
MRC's Philbin Has Anti-Gay Freakout Over "'Glee' On the Gridiron" Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Matt Philbin has a notable gay-bashing record: He turns a blind eye to anti-gay slurs, thinks a young boy with brightly painted toenails is "transgendered child propaganda," and he's opposed to gays or anyone who looks like they might be gay from being depicted in advertising.
Philbin takes his hatred and fear of gays to a new, silly level in a March 20 MRC Culture & Media Institute post, headlined "‘Glee’ on the Gridiron?" in which he fearmongers about the unmanly specter of openly gay athletes:
If liberals in the sports media have their way, your favorite sporting event will soon be a little more like an episode of “Glee.” Writers and talking heads at outlets from ESPN to NBC Sports are in a full-court press. They want to see openly gay athletes in American sports, no matter what it means for the games, the fans, or the athletes themselves.
Perhaps envious that their news colleagues get to cover – and advocate for – what a Washington Post reporter recently called “the civil rights issue of our time,” sports journalists have been long been obsessed with gay athletes. Commentator after commentator have taken to ESPN’s website to assure us “the issue of sports and homosexuality isn't going away,” to call a football player “intelligent and articulate athlete when he made a stand for gay rights,” and to wonder where the gay Jackie Robinson is.
Yes, it seems Philbin really thinks that, say, a single football player who makes his homosexuality public means the entire team will break out into show tunes on the field.
Philbin's level of thinking doesn't go far beyond that. He complains about how "CNN’s pro-gay bias is well established" -- actually, that's more about Philbin's fellow MRC employee Matt Hadro studiously documenting every time gays fail to be bashed on CNN -- then asserts that "bias is more like obsession when the network can’t do a sports interview one of the best pitchers in baseball (who lost the World Series in October) without bringing up – apropos of nothing – gay rights. But there was CNN’s Carol Costello asking Detroit Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander if he’d have problems playing with an openly gay teammate." But Philbin ignores that 1) the idea of gays in sports had been talked about in the media in previous months, and 2) Costello began the interview with an even more apropos-of-nothing question: Verlander's golf game.
It seems that the only person obsessed with homosexuality here is Philbin.
Aaron Klein Anonymous Source Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein dipped into his presumed retinue of untraceable, anonymous sources in honor of President Obama's trip to Israel this past week.
A March 20 article cited a "Palestinian official, who asked that his name be withheld" to claim that "In a conversation with the Palestinian Authority, a White House official apparently compared Israel’s Knesset, or parliament, to the gravesite of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat," claiming that "just as Obama won’t address the Knesset, which is a symbol of Israeli nationalism, so too he won’t visit the grave, a symbol of Palestinian nationalism."
The next day, Klein followed that up by claiming a "top PA negotiator" said that "Palestinian Authority leaders are disappointed with what they heard in a private meeting" with Obama.
Is there any reason readers should blindly trust Klein or his sources? No. Klein is an inveterate Obama-hater who, as we've noted, is using Palestinians' words against themto forward his own right-wing agenda> Further, he rarely uses named sources to advance his smears, which makes us "reporting" extremely suspect.
UPDATE: A March 24 WND article by Klein cites "a top Syrian official" and "informed Mideast security officials" to claim that "It was the Syrian opposition and not the Syrian government behind the firing Sunday and yesterday at the Israeli border" and that "it appears the rebels are attempting to create a humanitarian crisis to precipitate the deployment of NATO to fight the Assad regime."
CNS Cites Conspiracy Theorist To Fearmonger Over DHS Supposedly Hoarding Bullets Topic: CNSNews.com
Gregory Gwyn-Williams Jr. buys into the government ammunition-hoarding conspiracy in a March 22 CNSNews.com blog post, uncritrically repeating a claim that "the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has failed to respond to multiple members of Congress asking why DHS bought more than 1.6 billion rounds in the past year."
The link to back up his claim goes to Infowars, the notoriously conspiratorial website operated by conspiracy-monger Alex Jones. That suggests the level of credibility this little rumor has.
Gwyn-Williams is also wrong that DHS has never responded to questions about its ammuntion purchases. In January DHS responded to Republican Sen. Tom Coburn's questions, which he posted on his website. DHS states that , contrary to the rumor-mongering, it purchased 103 million rounds of ammo in fiscal year 2012, which is actually a smaller number than was purchased in the previous two years. Those rounds were accounted for for training and operational purchases.
But why should Gwyn-Williams care about facts when he was able to get a Drudge link -- as the top story, no less -- out of his post?
WorldNetDaily's Garth Kant keeps up his anti-vaccine fearmongering in a March 20 article claiming that "the federal government has now paid almost $6 million to victims of the [HPV vaccine] shot – including at least two who died after receiving it."
As always, Kant fails to provide any meaningful context, such as the fact that more than 35 million doses of HPV vaccine have been administered, making such a settlement rate extraordinarily low. Kant also claims "thousands of adverse reactions" to the vaccine without mentioning that the vast majority of them are minor and the scary ones he lists -- "seizures, paralysis, blindness, pancreatitis, speech problems, short-term memory loss, Guillain-Barré syndrome and even death" represent "no statistically significant increased risk" according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Kant also treats discredited claims that vaccines cause autism is true, even though the most prominent study making the link has retracted by the medical journal that published it.
Kant, by the way, is apparently a new WND writer. His WND bio claims "he spent five years writing, copy-editing and producing at "CNN Headline News," three years writing, copy-editing and training writers at MSNBC, and also served several local TV newsrooms as producer, executive producer and assistant news director. He is the author of the McGraw-Hill textbook, 'How to Write Television News.'"
The fact that Kant is no longer working in TV news but has descended to fearmongering at a bottom-feeding website strongly suggests he couldn't hack it in the big leagues and, like fellow real-media refugee Bob Unruh, decided to work at a "news" organization where things like truth and balance don't apply.
ConWeb Latches Onto Misleading Claim About MSNBC Topic: The ConWeb
The ConWeb readily embraced a too-good-to-check statistic from a Pew Research Center study of the media: that 85 percent of MSNBC's airtime is devoted to "opinion."
WorldNetDaily's Drew Zahn dishonestly rounded up the number to "nearly 90 percent" -- of course, it's equally near to 80 percent, but Zahn clearly didn't want to go there. Newsmax's Bill Hoffmann asserted, "If you’re looking for straight and unbiased news reporting, you may want to avoid MSNBC."
And the number was practically made for the Media Research Center, and indeed, Brent Bozell issued a snotty press release on the subject:
“Pick any Orwellian nickname you want: the Ministry of Truth, the Department of Agitation and Propaganda, but don’t dare call MSNBC a news organization. No legitimate news outlet spends 85% of its airtime pushing leftist commentary. Pravda would be proud.
“Both CNN and Fox News have close to a 50/50 news/commentary split. We have said time and time again that MSNBC in not a news network. Their absurd 15/85 split is a vindication of every single criticism we’ve leveled against them.
“MSNBC is a deeply unserious organization and should never have been placed under the ‘news’category on any cable system’s guide. They’ve Lean[ed] Forward right off the cliff of credibility. What a farce.”
Since that number was too good to check, the ConWeb couldn't be bothered to do one simple thing: find out how Pew made this determination. Salon's Alex Pareene did:
That’s a bit of a misuse of the word “opinion,” which does not, in this case, refer to liberal punditry, but rather to all interviews and other segments that involve people talking instead of live reports or reported “packages.” That kind of programming is common because it’s cheap, and MSNBC and Fox do not actually pay many people to do “reporting” — they are cable “talking about the news” channels, basically. But don’t assume reported pieces are intrinsically superior to commentary. Some of that “opinion” programming is informative and useful in a way that live shots of, say, poop boats are decidedly not. And some of that programming is “Morning Joe,” the talking head equivalent of a poop boat.
It also overlooks the fact that, even though Pew gives Fox News credit for 45 percent of its content being "factual reporting," that does not equal unbiased reporting. Fox's ostensible "news" anchors are prone to spoutingbiasedopinions, and it has a historyofshortchanging the Obama administration on airtime.
But thte ConWeb doesn't care about facts, not when it has an official-sounding number.
