Topic: CNSNews.com
Despite calling itself a "news" website, CNS did its best to ignore news of a sexual molestation scandal in a family of right-wing darlings as long as it could, reporting the facts only grudgingly. Read more >>
Thursday, June 11, 2015
NEW ARTICLE: CNS Protects The Duggars
Topic: CNSNews.com Despite calling itself a "news" website, CNS did its best to ignore news of a sexual molestation scandal in a family of right-wing darlings as long as it could, reporting the facts only grudgingly. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:28 PM EDT
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
WND Finds 'Obama Scandals' That Obama Had Nothing To Do With
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Funny thing: Nothing Unruh cites from Judicial Watch ties President Obama to anything that happened. That would seem to make it a Secret Service scandal, not an "Obama scandal." Unruh then writes:
But if you go to that "big list," it provides no evidence Obama has any connection to those other Secret Service-linked scandals either, other than the fact that he was president when they were made public. Unruh's article includes an in-article promotion for the WND-published "story of a top-ranked Secret Service agent who walked away from it all," Dan Bongino’s "Life Inside the Bubble." The book's promo touts how Bongino is attacking Obama for creating "a 'bubble' which distorts his view of the world and detaches him from the tragic results of his poor policy choices." Given Bongino's disdain for the president he was supposed to be protecting and his key role as a self-proclaimed "successful, 12-year Secret Service agent" -- which appears to not be all that different from the Secret Service agents who got in trouble -- it could be argued that Bongino is much closer to these Secret Service scandals than Obama is. Yet WND insists that these are "Obama scandals." Go figure.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:52 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, June 10, 2015 1:58 PM EDT
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
CNS Unemployment Numbers Distortion Watch
Topic: CNSNews.com When the unemployment rate has dropped under the Obama administration, CNSNews.com is loath to put that in the headline, choosing instead to cherry-pick other numbers in an attempt to hide good news about the economy. But if that rate ticks back up, by golly, CNS is on the spot with the details. Thus, the lead CNS story by Ali Meyer on May's employment figures has a headline that reads, "5.5%: Unemployment Rate Edges Up As More People Look for Work." Meyer resorts to her usual cherry-picking for two other articles: 6,652,000: More Americans Working Part-Time, But Not by Choice Rising: 25,098,000 Foreign-Born Workers Employed in U.S.A. None of Meyer's articles mentionthe fact that 280,000 jobs were created in May. Can't give Obama any credit for something positive, y'know. And Meyer's mildly xenophobic article on foreign-born workers is rather laughably illustrated with this image of migrant farm workers:
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:50 PM EDT
Monday, June 8, 2015
Caitlyn Jenner Derangement Syndrome
Topic: WorldNetDaily
-- Matt Barber, June 5 WorldNetDaily column
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:21 PM EDT
WND's Gina Loudon Pushes Misinformation About Transdenders
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Just look at how Loudon startsout her June 4 WorldNetDaily article on "the dark, untold story of transgenderism":
Loudon doesn't mention that Reisman is a documented liar about Kinsey. The Kinsey Institute points out that Kinsey never conducted sexual experiments on children. Loudon clearly doesn't care about the truth if she is treating Reisman with any kind of credibility. But that's not all. She goes on to quote Paul McHugh's anti-transgender claims despite the fact that, as we've noted, he has numerous critics who note that he ignores current research on gender dysphoria:
Such claims ignore research into why transgenders have such a high suicide rate. Sociologist Jay Irwin (a transgendered man) explains:
Loudon is simply too concerned about forwarding a right-wing, anti-LGBT agenda to care about telling the truth -- or about doing anything that would actually do anything about transgender issues she'd rather exploit for her political purposes.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:54 PM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, June 9, 2015 1:51 PM EDT
Sunday, June 7, 2015
MRC's Double Standard on Speeding Ticket Coverage
Topic: Media Research Center
"Is this supposed to punish the Rubios when Hillary Clinton hasn’t driven a car during this entire 18-year period?" Graham huffed in a June 5 NewsBusters post. Graham followed that up later in the day by suggesting that the story had "Democratic oppo fingerprints" on it, highlighting the #RubioCrimeScoop Twitter hashtag that "describe[d] tiny offenses – stealing a bank pen, failing to return a library book – in the same vein as the Times gumshoes." The funny thing? The MRC used to think speeding tickets warranted national media coverage. In a June 2001 MRC CyberAlert, Brent Baker howled that "speeding and reckless driving citations issued to Albert Gore III for going 97 mph in a 55 mph zone", which happened the weekend before the 2000 Democratic convention that nominated his father as the Democratic presidential candidate, demanded media coverage. That was intended as a form of punishment of the kind Graham claimed the Times was doing to Rubio -- Baker's goal was to distract from the foibles of President George W. Bush's twin daughters, who were busted twice in a month for underage drinking and using a false ID to obtain alcohol. Baker did concede that Gore III was 17 at the time and, thus, a minor, while the Bush twins were 19. He didn't note that Gore's father was merely a candidate while the Bushes' father was the sitting president, and the children of sitting presidents are by definition newsworthy, especially when they break the law -- or that one reason the Bushes got busted was because of a law their father passed while Texas governor that aimed to get tough on underage drinking. (As we noted at the time, the ConWeb did a lot of excuse-making to distract attention from the Bushes, of which the Gore speeding ticket was but one.) Graham himself demanded media coverage of Gore's speeding ticket in a November 2000 pre-election column written for National Review. He was trying to punish and distract as well, this time from news of George W. Bush's mid-1970s drunk-driving conviction. Graham admits Gore III "is not supposed to be a public figure," but then demands that he be made one: "But is it fair to spike the unfavorable news angles — especially when a presidential nominee's child breaks the law — and then celebrate the child, or more precisely, celebrate the parenting of the child, on a different day?" As far as spiking unfavorable news angles go, Graham might want to have a chat with the folks at CNSNews.com, down the hall at MRC headquarters, which has done everything it can to censor and bury the Josh Duggar molestation scandal. Graham even demanded that the media get tough on then-tennage Chelsea Clinton despite the lack of any evidence she had ever done anything to warrant it: "Chelsea Clinton has never had a brush with the law, but how can the public judge what a 'princess' she is when the media have placed her in a plastic bubble?" Also: If the Times' story was supposedly Democratic "oppo research," we should then assume that the MRC's desperate attempts to maker Gore III's speeding ticket a national issue was its attempt to serve as oppo research for Republicans. Doesn't that cross the line of what the MRC is permitted to do under its nonprofit tax designation? Graham might want to think twice before making such an allegation.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:25 PM EDT
Saturday, June 6, 2015
Duggar Story Miraculously Returns to CNS Front Page
Topic: CNSNews.com It seems that CNSNews.com has realized that the Josh Duggar molestation story is news after all. Or maybe they just got tired of us pointing out that its attempts to censor and bury the Duggar story disqualify it as a news operation. A day after CNS perfunctorily summarized the Duggar family's Fox News interview on the scandal -- in which it treated the Duggars' statements as indisputable fact and ignored their misleading statements and self-proclaimed victimhood over the molestation report going public -- then pulled the story off its front page as soon as it could, the story on the Duggars' "sins" (not crime) mysteriously reappeared on the CNS front page in the culture section: But also notice what the lead story is in the entertainment section -- an Associated Press article on Fox News' ratings for the Duggar interview. So, apparently, touting the ratings coup for CNS' friends at Fox News for the interview is bigger news than the content of the interview itself. Well, it takes baby steps for CNS to make its way back to the pretense of being a real news organization.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:44 PM EDT
Friday, June 5, 2015
CNS Managing Editor Lazily Recycles His Anti-Transgender Hate
Topic: CNSNews.com
Last August, we caught Chapman devoting an article to "a recent commentary in the Wall Street Journal" by "Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital and its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry," even though the article had been published a full two months earlier and had ceased being news, if it ever was (except by CNS standards, anyway). We noted that Chapman made no effort to mention the many mental health professionals who disagree with McHugh's claims. Then we clicked on the link we provided for that August article -- and discovered it pulls up the June 2 article. All Chapman did is slap a new date on his discredited 10-month-old piece to pretend that it's relevant with the coming out of Caitlyn Jenner. We already know Chapman is lazy enough to consider serving as stenographer for right-wing evangelist Franklin Graham a legitimate journalistic endeavor. But Chapman, it appears, is such a lazy journalist that he must recycle his hate and can't be bothered to lift a finger to do any reporting to update to current events. And this man is the managing editor of a "news" organization?
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:38 AM EDT
Thursday, June 4, 2015
CNS Actually Reports On Duggars -- Then Quickly Buries It
Topic: CNSNews.com
The Duggar family's interview with Fox News' Megyn Kelly was also too big to ignore, so CNS couldn't get away with censoring it. Thus, we have a June 4 article -- unbylined, credited only to "CNSNews.com Staff," as if no CNS employee wanted to be on record reporting facts about that Duggars that conflicted with their right-wing Christian image -- that dutifully summed up the interview. The article was still an advocacy piece for the Duggars, playing down the actual offenses of Josh Duggar and playing up the family's self-proclaimed victimhood at the release of the police report on his offenses. Those offenses are only referenced once in the first 12 paragraphs of the article, eupemistically described as him having "inappropriately touched" his sisters and "groped a babysitter." The article declared that "the Duggars detailed the problem they faced 12 years ago -- a son who three times came to them and confessed to molestation; what they did about it -- eventually sending him out of the home for Christian-based counseling and later to talk with a policeman; and what they now see as the bigger scandal -- the illegal May 21 release of their son's juvenile police record to a tabloid." The article further insisted that "The Duggars explained the facts of the case." CNS was certainly not about to live up to its mission statement to "fairly present all legitimate sides of a story" and acknowledge criticism of the Duggars. Thus,you won't read at CNS how some of the Duggars' answers to Kelly are at odds with the established facts in the case. And you certainly won't see CNS point out the obvious conflict between Jim Bob Duggar's claim that "We had nothing to hide" and his complaint about the juvenile record of Josh Duggar's offenses being release. Another sign CNS wants to bury this story: While it appeared on the CNS front page this morning, all trace of it was off the front page by mid-afternoon. And even on the CNS "culture" section page, it's buried under much older stories, such as a May 27 article detailing the latest attempt to portray any LGBT-related federal spending as a waste. Apparently, news is "news" at CNS only if it advances the right-wing agenda of its parent, the Media Research Center. Otherwise, it will get short shrift. Perhaps it's time for CNS to admit that it's not in the news business but, rather, in the propaganda business.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:37 PM EDT
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Did WND's Farah Really March With Martin Luther King?
Topic: WorldNetDaily
In the midst of his self-righteous, self-aggrandizing defense, Farah declared that he was "the guy who actually marched with Martin Luther King Jr." Thanks to an alert ConWebWatch reader, we know that Farah has made this claim before: here, here and here, for instance. But Farah, to our knowledge, has never written about the details of this march with King. Even his 2007 book "Stop the Presses!" about his journey in journalism appears to be silent about it. This begs the question: When did Farah actually march with King? It's an interesting question, given that, if the birth date on his Wikipedia page is correct, Farah was only 14 years old when King was assassinated. Unless Farah was an unusually precocious and race-conscious tween, that likely means any occasion Farah would have had to march with King was somehow facilitated by his parents. That hardly plays with the image he has constructed for himself as a radical left-winger in his youth. Farah in known to embellish his self-proclaimed left-wing past. He evolved one claim to have been a bodyguard for Jane Fonda and once invited to meet Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn to proclaiming that he was "literally working shoulder to shoulder with the likes of revolutionary terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn and whacked out traitors Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda." We've emailed Farah to ask for the details of his march with King. We'll let you know if he responds. P.S. The Farah "liar" image -- which we never thought we'd get so much use out of when we first created it -- is provisional, placed on this post based on his extensive track record of falsehoods. If Farah adequately answers the question about his claimed march with King, we'll remove it (from this post, anyway). UPDATE: To be perfectly accurate, King died three months before Farah's 14th birthday, so Farah would have been no more than 13 years of age in any march he and King allegedly participated in.
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:36 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, June 5, 2015 1:29 AM EDT
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
NewsBusters Laments Hastert Scandal 'Tragedy' ... For Hastert
Topic: NewsBusters
Waters is not lamenting the aformentioned "tragedy" for Hastert's victims -- he's lamenting it for Hastert. How dare Krugman write about a Republican congressman's alleged crimes? By the way, the word "crime" appears nowhere in Waters' post in relation to Hastert's alleged actions. But he knows it's somehow a "tragedy" -- but, apparently, not a crime -- for Hastert for such behavior to be revealed. Who's really the classless one here?
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:14 PM EDT
Monday, June 1, 2015
MRC Falsely Suggests Sex Ed Is Airing On PBS Kids
Topic: Media Research Center The headline on the Media Research Center front page screams "Taxpayer-Funded PBS Pushes Teaching Sex-Ed to 4-Year-Olds," accompanied by an image of the logo for the PBS Kids channel: Nowhere in the May 29 article by Katie Yoder does it claim that PBS Kids is running sex education -- or that sex ed directed at 4-year-olds is happening anywhere on PBS. Instead, Yoder complains that on PBS' "NewsHour" website -- again, not a kid-friendly place -- there's an article that "held up the Netherlands as an example for the United States in “sexuality education” – for those as young as 4-years-old to learn 'honest conversations about love and relationships.'" Yoder selectively quotes from the article claiming that it talks about "sex ed classes … for 4-year olds" -but waits until the next paragraph to concede that the article states that "You’ll never hear an explicit reference to sex in a kindergarten class." Yoder doesn't even raise any specific objections to the "sexuality eduction" lessons being taught to 4-year-olds, which include "able to properly name body parts including genitals. They also learn about different types of families, what it means to be a good friend, and that a baby grows in a mother’s womb." She has simply gone into a right-wing freakout over the words "sexuality education" and "4-year-olds" being in close proximity. Yoder does declare that Dutch parents have "totally abdicated their responsibility to the state" by letting schools teach them how to talk to their kids about sex. She doesn't explain, however, why empowering parents with knowledge is a bad thing.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:41 AM EDT
Sunday, May 31, 2015
WND Author Thinks Teachers Are Criminals
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Newman is co-author, along with longtime WND columnist Samuel Blumenfeld of the new WND-published book "Crimes of the Educators." And yes, he really does think teachers are criminals on the level of Hitler and Pol Pot -- an comprarison absurd on its face and should alone be enough to disqualify their book from serious consideration. But WND believes in the Big Lie technique -- complete with an elaborate conspiracy theory to supposedly prove it, as illustrated by the book's promotional copy:
There is evidence that the whole-language approch does not work with students who have dyslexia, but Newman and Blumenfeld are claiming that the mere act of teaching whole-language causes dyslexia.No eveidence is mentioned, either in the blurb or in a May 25 WND article making the same claim, that backs up this assertion. Newman and Blumenfeld ignore one key problem with phonics: There are so many English words that violate the standard sound-symbol rules that at least some memorization of words -- the "whole language" approach they despise -- is necessary to be fully literate. As befits Newman's extremism, the May 25 WND article documents Newsman's appearance on conspiracy-monger Alex Jones' radio show to promote his book, where he spews more slanders of teachers:
The article also states that the authors "decry public schools for destroying children’s religious beliefs by teaching evolution and secular humanist doctrines. The authors note that lack of religion is a hallmark of totalitarian societies." Talk about your base demonization. While Newman and Blumenfeld's book is laughable and paranoiac on its face -- complete with references to "socialist utopians" who want to create "a global government, a global society, a single world religion" -- that's WND's stock in trade. It's never corrected or apologized for any of its birther falsehoods, so look for it to promote the hell out of this book, no matter how discredited it becomes.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:45 PM EDT
Saturday, May 30, 2015
Islamic Superhero Derangement Syndrome
Topic: WorldNetDaily
-- Marisa Martin, May 28 WorldNetDaily column
Posted by Terry K.
at 5:44 PM EDT
Friday, May 29, 2015
WND's Loudon Is Clueless About Non-Christians
Topic: WorldNetDaily
First, nowhere in her column does Loudon identify what Josh Duggar's "past transgressions as a child" were -- namely, molesting numerous underage girls, several of them his own sisters. Doing so would presumably blunt the impact of Loudon defending the family as not "perfect." Second, the point is not that the Duggars claimed to be "perfect"; they portrayed their lifestyle as an antidote to the type of behavior that were, in fact, happening within their own family. So it's more about hypocrisy than failing to act perfectly. You think that even Loudon would agree that sexual molestation is a behavior that ranges far beyond "imperfect" -- but then, Loudon spent a disturbing amount of time and column space rationallizing (and trying to capitalize on) her own teenage daughter's relationship with a 57-year-old man. (The above image of Loudon and her daughter accompanied that column.) And speaking of straw men, Loudon tries to set up her own:
Loudon falsely assumes that if you are not a Christian, you cannot possibly act in a moral fashion. Jews, Muslims and Buddhists are just a few of the many non-Christian religions that have a moral code, and even many people who do not follow an organized religion behave in ways that follow a moral code. The system of law can also be said to be a moral code. The fact that Loudon can speak only euphemistically about Josh Duggar's disturbing behavior, coupled with her attempt to defend the family and throw their critics under the bus -- she even attacks Christians who are criticizing them, declaring that they "are handing ammo to the secular left" -- tells us that she has some, shall we say, issues. But we already knew that.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:01 AM EDT
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