MRC's Graham Bashes CNN's Stelter For Making Accurate Observations Topic: Media Research Center
One of the ways Media Research Center Tim Graham loves to slag the so-called "liberal media" is by asserting the prowess and alleged robustness of right-wing journalists -- minus any actual proof to back it up, of course.
Graham does this again in a Dec. 14 post attacking CNN media critic Brian Stelter for daring to criticize those who dismiss journalism:
Stelter maligned Trump voters and supporters of Trump’s media critiques as anti-journalism: “A big part of the country has opted out of journalism and opted in to an alternate reality.”
Liberals always think that you either swallow the liberal media consensus whole, or you've "opted out of journalism." Why don't they understand conservatives are journalists? Could they acknowledge conservatives were tougher journalists in the last eight years?
Again, if would be nice if Graham had cited any examples of conservatives being "tougher journalists" than non-conservative ones in the last eight years, but of course he doesn't.He certainly can't point to his fellow MRC co-workers at CNSNews.com as an example, since all they care about is slavish stenography of Donald Trump and his minions and snide attacks on liberals.
Further, his view of the media is unrealiastically binary -- in his eyes, any media that's not slavishly right-wing is "liberal." That view may bring in the big bucks from right-wing donors, but it's not how the media world works.
Graham also complains that "Stelter also predictably bashed Fox News in the usual Clintonista terms as a kind of super PAC instead of a news channel," but again, Graham offers no proof that it's not.
So it seems that Graham is once again criticizing others for making accurate observations about the right-wing media.
WND's Unruh Turns In Yet Another Biased One-Source Wonder Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily reporter Bob Unruh -- who loves stories about alleged persecution of Christians and right-wingers so much that he can'tbebothered to report the other side of the story lest it undermine the whatever biased story the right-wing legal group is trying to get out -- writes in a Dec. 17 article:
Police officers who are accused of shutting down a woman’s prayer in her own home, and joking about it, have defended their actions to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, saying it did not “burden” her constitutional rights.
But that defense claim is gaining little ground with advocates for Mary Anne Sause, a Louisberg, Kansas, resident who has brought the charges against the officers.
WND reported in October when a lower court rejected Sause’s claim and the case moved up to the appeals court.
The case is being handled now by lawyers with First Liberty Institute after Mary Anne Sause, a retired Catholic nurse on disability, handled the initial claim on her own.
[...]
“When Sause came to the door, the officers asked why she didn’t answer the door the first time. Ms. Sause saw a pocket Constitution, given to her by her congressman, lying on a nearby table and showed it to the officers, who still had not explained the reason for their appearance. One officer laughed and said, ‘That’s just a piece of paper’ that ‘doesn’t work here.'”
Once inside, they “harassed” her, she said, at one point telling her to get ready to go to jail.
“When Sause asked why, he said, ‘I don’t know yet,'” First Liberty reported.
She was frightened and asked permission to pray, and one officer agreed. The other then came back into the room and ordered her to “stop praying,” the complaint explains.
They then “flipped through the codebook to see how they could charge her,” finally choosing “interference” and “disorderly conduct.”
At the end of their visit, they finally explained they were there because someone thought her radio was too loud.
As usual, Unruh once again fails to tell the other side of the story, sticking only with the propaganda supplied by the First Liberty Institute. The Christian Examiner reported after Sause's case was first dismissed that Sause has a history of making dubious claims:
This is not, however, the first time Sause has launched a claim the court deemed implausible.
In 2011, she filed assault charges against Mark Pederson, the manager of a Kansas City abortion clinic, for reportedly body slamming her during a scuffle outside of the clinic. Sause was reportedly protesting abortion at the time.
Pederson was found not guilty because numerous eyewitness accounts didn't support her version of the story.
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She also filed another pro se case (a case filed without a lawyer) over the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services' placement of her child in the state's foster care system. She claims the state's court case reflected "inaccuracies in her parenting history" and the child was taken "into custody" by the state in violation of federal law.
The court dismissed that case, as well.
The federal court that dismissed Sause's claim -- which Unruh could have quoted from to provide balance to his article, but didn't -- explained further that Sause offered no proof whatsoever to back up her allegations:
While Officer Stevans’s instruction to Plaintiff [Sause] to stop praying may have offended her, it does not constitute a burden on her ability to exercise her religion. Plaintiff fails to provide any allegations that would suggest Officer Stevans’s actions coerced her into conduct contrary to her religious beliefs, or that he otherwise prevented her from practicing her religion. Rather, he merely instructed her to stop praying while the officers were in the middle of talking to her about a noise complaint they had received. The Court thus finds that Plaintiff has not made a plausible claim that her First Amendment rights were violated.
In other words, it's more journalistic malpractice from a reporter who, to be blunt, is getting paid to be a unfair and highly biased reporter -- making his boss Joseph Farah's laughable insistence that "WND uses the same standards and practices I cherished during my 20 years in the 'mainstream media'" even more laughable.
The WND-ization of the MRC, Part 87 Topic: CNSNews.com
Nominee Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, not only has been supportive of the abortion industry, through his company’s donations to abortionists, but also played a key role in opening the Boy Scouts to homosexuality.
Those accomplishments have left Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council appalled at the idea of Tillerson continuing the pro-abortion, pro-homosexual agenda outlined by Hillary Clinton and followed by John Kerry at the State Department.
[...]
“The left, which doesn’t usually need a reason to oppose Trump’s choices, won’t find many here, since the ExxonMobil executive may be the greatest ally liberals have in the Cabinet for their abortion and LGBT agendas,” Perkins said.
“That should be particularly alarming to conservatives, who’ve spent the last eight years watching the State Department lead the global parade for the slaughter of innocent unborn children and the intimidation of nations with natural views on marriage and sexuality,” Perkins continued.
President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, lobbied for the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) to change its rules on youth membership and allow homosexuals to join the organization, according to the Dallas Morning News.
[...]
Commenting on Tillerson as Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said, “The Left, which doesn't usually need a reason to oppose Trump's choices, won't find many here, since the ExxonMobil executive may be the greatest ally liberals have in the Cabinet for their abortion and LGBT agendas.”
“That should be particularly alarming to conservatives, who've spent the last eight years watching the State Department lead the global parade for the slaughter of innocent unborn children and the intimidation of nations with natural views on marriage and sexuality,” said Perkins.
-- Michael W. Chapman, Dec. 15 CNSNews.com article
Newsmax's Ruddy -- A Trump Buddy -- Is Concerned About Anti-Trump Media Coverage Topic: Newsmax
A Dec. 19 Newsmax article summarizes its boss' appearance on CNN:
The news media was biased in its coverage of Donald Trump and that partiality had a bigger impact on the election than any "fake news," Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy told Brian Stelter Sunday on CNN's "Reliable Sources."
"You guys had a responsibility to give fair and balanced news," Ruddy said in his one-on-one segment with host Stelter.
"Instead the mainstream press focused on Trump's use of Twitter and the release of an audio recording on 'Access Hollywood.' The voters in Ohio and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, they were worried about jobs and trade.
"Donald Trump, to his credit, was in those states talking about those issues. You guys missed the story."
Ruddy said the media continues to be critical of Trump, focusing on stories like fake news and Russian hacking.
"I don’t think they’re necessarily giving him a complete fair shake," he said.
In that segment, however, Ruddy doesn't really discuss his own "responsibility to give fair and balanced news," as if conservative news outlets are exempt from responsible journalism. He said only that Newsmax will grow its online and video operations during the Trump presidency and that Newsmax "is going to be tough on Trump when we think he's going off the rails on policy issues," but he made it clear that his news operation will be "supportive" of him overall. IN other words. he's demanding more balance from his competition than from his own operation.
Ruddy also didn't explicitly disclose how close he and Trump are, or that Newsmax played a major role in legitimizing the idea of Trump as presidential timber. Ineeed, the day after his CNN appearance, he tweeted: "Just finished Newsmax Christmas @ 230 Fifth, Pres. Trump called my cell at party wishing 'Merry Xmas' - @realDonaldTrump is not happy w CNN!"
Ruddy then repeated how a study (he incorrectly claimed it was from the Pew Center; it was actually done by the Freedom Forum) from the 1990s reported that "89 percent of the people voted for Bill Clinton -- of the press corps in Washington voted for Bill Clinton." We documented way back in 2000 how skewed that study was; most study respondents weren't from national news outlets but from small regional papers whose Washington bureau reporters, some of whom are just one person, focus their coverage mostly on local issues and have no influence on the national political agenda.
CNS Censors Biased Nature of Anti-Abortion Poll Topic: CNSNews.com
Lauretta Brown writes in a Nov. 21 CNSNews.com article:
A poll released Friday by the Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List) shows that a majority of voters, 64%, support legislation such as the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act that would prohibit abortions nationwide after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
The poll was commissioned by the SBA List and conducted by the polling company, inc./WomanTrend.
What Brown doesn't report: The Susan B. Anthony List is an anti-abortion group, and the polling company (lowercase is cq) is operated by Kellyanne Conway, manager for Donald Trump's presidential campaign and works on behalf of right-wing causes. Indeed, Conway's firm cashed in big during the 2016 campaign even before she joined Trump's team through her company's work for the campaigns of both Trump and Ted Cruz.
That ideological bent makes the poll results unreliable since we can assume that the questions were skewed to provide the desired result.
Brown goes on to tout that "The results mirror a Marist poll commissioned by the Knights of Columbus in July." The Knights of Columbus is a Catholic fraternal orghanization that reflects Catholic tenets, one of which is opposition to abortion. Marist College, which operates a polling center that the K of C utlized, is a Catholic university; while its polling generally has a good reputation, one cannot discount the possibility of skewing questions to achieve desired results.
Indeed, CNS regularlypromotespolls conducted by Marist-K of C since they provide results they like to push on its readers. Most recently, Brown used a Dec. 23 article to tout a Marist-K of C poll finding that "Americans prefer ‘Merry Christmas’ to ‘Happy Holidays’ by 20 percentage points."
WND Columnist Spins for Flynns Over Pizzagate Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has commendably stayed away from buying into the "Pizzagate" hoax -- on the news side, anyway. WND's columnists, however, are a different story. We've documented how WND columnist Jesse Lee Peterson promoted the story as if it was credible.
In his Dec. 8 WND column, Jeff Roorda admits Pizzagate is fake news, but he labors heavily to distance national security adviser-designate Michael Flynn and his son from accusations they promoted the story:
Most recently, media outlets have been atwitter with reports about the firing of Michael G. Flynn from the Trump transition team for his role in the “pizzagate” fake news story.
Gasp!
The only problem is that Flynn appears to have had nothing to do with debuting or spreading the “pizzagate” story. In fact, the tweet that has everyone lathered-up attributed to Flynn (this is the younger Flynn, by the way, not to be confused with his father, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who President-elect Trump has tapped to serve as his national security adviser) innocently pointed out, “Until #Pizzagate (is) proven to be false, it’ll remain a story.”
What, exactly, is wrong with that statement?
Isn’t it more social commentary or an observation about the nature of the Twittersphere than it is scandal-mongering of some fraudulent, unfounded narrative?
Even though so-called mainstream media outlets – including the New York Times – reported that Flynn was fired from the Trump transition team for “using Twitter to spread a fake news story about Hillary Clinton that led to an armed confrontation in a pizza restaurant in Washington,” the plain facts seem to tell us that Flynn did not spread the story but rather commented on it’s miasmal nature and that his actions did not lead to the armed confrontation and that he was NOT fired from the Trump transition team because he was never on the Trump transition team.
Talk about your fake news!
The actual facts of the case, according to the Washington Post: The elder Flynn did tweet about "New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc...MUST READ!" but did not specifically reference Pizzagate -- there are other sex crime-related conspiracy theories about the Clintons that Flynn sorta gets a pass on, but only sorta because his Twitter feed is filled with fake news.
Roorda also leaves out the last part of the younger Flynn's tweet, which reads in whole: "Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many ‘coincidences’ tied to it." Flynn's evidence that Pizzagate might be true are the purported "coincidences" in the emails stolen from John Podesta, which nobody has proven true. That's much more than a comment on its "miasmal nature."
If Pizzagate hasn't been proven true, it should presume to be false. Flynn should know that, and Roorda should not give him the benefit of the doubt.
It's unclear whether or not the younger Flynn was officially on the payroll of the Trump transition team -- he was assisting his father with administrative and scheduling duties-- but the statement from the transition team that he was "no longer involved" with the transition after the tweet went viral indicates some sort of official role from which he was removed. And he apparently he resigned before he was fired, possibly seconds before.
The rest of Roorda's column is dedicated to telling us that "no matter where you get your news, it’s filtered, spun, or embellished," and that "it’s incumbent on you to decide what is and isn’t fake."
MRC Takes War-On-Christmas Shot at Univision Topic: Media Research Center
Apparently, the "War on Christmas" has ended because Donald Trump was elected president. That's the message MRC Latino's Jorge Bonilla seems to be imparting in a Dec. 16 post, in which he's mad that Univision failed to follow the implicit Trump edict that only "Merry Christmas" is permitted by not saying it in its annual holiday video:
Univision continues its gallant resistance against the seismic results of this election. As Donald Trump declares that "It is OK to say Merry Christmas again", Univision responds with a holiday video that bravely transcends "Merry Christmas" and even refuses to wish you "Happy Holidays".
[...]
But this is 2016, and we are talking about Univision. So bound is the network to political correctness that "Merry Christmas" is a non-starter, and "Happy Holidays" is an impossibly heavy lift. And so it is that we end up with the best that Univision can muster this year, "Mejores Deseos (Best Wishes)". The full subtitled video is available here, one minute and 43 seconds of anodyne ambiguous-holiday-flavored treacle that makes Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" look like Handel's Messiah in comparison. In fact, "Mejores Deseos" is what you'd probably be left with if you stripped Christmas out of "Wonderful Christmastime".
In and of itself, this video provides a perfect snapshot of the manner in which Univision continues to lose touch with its traditional audience while pursuing the clicks and page views of the "rising American majority".
Actually, only 29 percent of Hispanics -- near as we can tell, Univision's target audience -- voted for Trump; some argued that Latino support for Trump was less than that. So it's unclear that what Univision chooses to include in its holiday message is an issue for anyone besides right-wingers like Bonilla who get paid to bash Univision.
CNS' Jones Plays Stenographer to Distract from Russian Meddling Topic: CNSNews.com
WorldNetDaily's not the only ConWeb outlet trying to give Donald Trump -- and Russia -- a pass on allegations Russia meddled in the presidential election to boost Trump. CNSNews.com's Susan Jones is taking a crack at it as well.
On Dec. 19, Jones churned out a couple of stenography specials to try and deflect attention from the growing scandal:
Jones dutifully transcribed Reince Priebus spinning: "Even this question is insane. Of course we didn't interface with the Russians. I mean, this whole thing is a spin job. And I think what the Democrats ought to do is look in the mirror and face the reality that they lost the election. And they lost the election because they're so and completely out of touch with the American people that they're so shell-shocked and they can't believe it."
Jones also transcribed John McCain saying, in her words, that there's no reason to think that Russian activity changed the outcome of the election.
Then, on Dec. 20, Jones played stenographer for Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher actually excusing Russian meddling in the form of stealing emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign because "The e-mails were factual, and thus the American people, it did not hurt the American people to have more factual information available to them."
Jones, meanwhile, skewed her transcription job on Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta discussing the issue, framing it as him evading a question on whether he thought the election was "free and fair."
Jones, of course, is known for her stenography for Trump and for her snide skewing of the news regarding non-conservatives.
Jones even gave space to someone she identified only as a "Russian reporter named Andre" slagging President Obama in a Dec. 16 article:
A Russian reporter named Andre challenged President Obama's leadership Thursday, running down a list of problems that have worsened on Obama's watch, including relations with Russia and racial tensions in America. "Does he feel any responsibility for all this?" the reporter asked.
Jones undoubtedly approve of the reporter's attack on Obama. If he was saying the same thing about Trump, it would never make the CNS front page.
WND Warns of Muslim 'Overthrow' of Trump -- But Farah Prayed for Obama's Death Topic: WorldNetDaily
An anonymous WorldNetDaily writer was in full pro-Trump -- and anti-Muslim -- mode in a Dec. 18 article:
While the Council on American-Islamic Relations likes to bill itself as a Muslim “civil-rights organization,” it downplays its direct ties to the terrorist group Hamas, its lineage to the Muslim Brotherhood and its extremist history that includes dozens of its executives, board members’ and staffers’ indictments, convictions and prison sentences for terror-related crimes.
But sometimes CAIR leadership lets its guard down.
That’s what happened, apparently, in the early morning hours of Nov. 9, right after the election of Donald Trump as president became clear.
Hussam Ayloush, the long-time director of CAIR-Los Angeles, Tweeted out the following message:
“Ok, repeat after me: “Al-Shaab yureed isqat al-nizaam. “(Arab Spring chant)”
The second line in Arabic translates to “The people want to bring down the regime.”
“In other words, Ayloush unambiguously and directly called for the overthrow of the U.S. government,” observes scholar Daniel Pipes of Middle East Forum.
The "threat" here is rather laughable when you consider WND has effectively been calling for the overthrow of President Obama for the past eight years. And it's done worse.
In November 2009, WND editor Joseph Farah began one of his many, many anti-Obama columns with a segment of Psalm 109: "Let his days be few; and let another take his office."
Now, Farah probably wants you think that's benign -- a 2011 WND article mocked the idea that it could be considered a threat to Obama -- but as we noted, a full reading of that psalm continues:
May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.
May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes.
May a creditor seize all he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.
May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children.
May his descendants be cut off, their names blotted out from the next generation.
May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the LORD; may the sin of his mother never be blotted out.
May their sins always remain before the LORD, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.
In other words, not benign. Farah clearly is wishing Obama a very severe sort of ill will, if not his death, by invoking that psalm.
We get the feeling we're going to be spending a lot of time pointing out whenever WND whines about something happening to Trump that it did or tried to do something equivalent to Obama.
MRC's Right-Wing Movie Critic Still Can't Accept All-Female 'Ghostbusters' Topic: Media Research Center
Several months after it was released, the Media Research Center can't stop dancing on the grave of the all-female reboot of "Ghostbusters."
Despite making $180 million worldwide at the box office and having a 73% positive rating at Rotten Tomatoes, the MRC -- led by right-wing movie critic Christian Toto, who blogs at NewsBusters -- pronounced it a flop because it didn't make back all its filmmaking and marketing expenses and because it was too feminist for the right-wing MRC boys, with Toto insisting in his ideologically motivated review that it relied on "victimization storylines ripped from today’s snowflake-encrusted headlines."
Toto, apparently, isn't done bashing the film. His Dec. 17 NewsBusters post takes a gratiutous shot at director Paul Feig: "Paul Feig can rock a finely tailored suit. He’s far less comfortable defending his Ghostbusters reboot." He then whines that Feig is "insisting recasting an iconic male comedy with women isn’t political. Hogwash."
Toto also sneers at Feig for noting that women were inspired by the movie and told him that If I’d had this movie when I was younger, I would have been an engineer or a scientist now": "Really? Young women need a silly comedy about women busting ghosts to influence their careers? Was the film truly a scientific inspiration, or just a FX-laden lark? Young girls who never saw the new Ghostbusters simply couldn’t imagine a career in science?"
Toto backed off the bashing a bit by the end, conceding that Feig is a "big league talent" who "deserves credit for proving to Hollywood that women can lead major franchises without apology" -- despite the fact the much of his post is devoted to complaing that Feig isn't apologizing for his "Ghostbusters" treatment. But he makes sure to conclude with a parting shot: "He’s still not seeing the wreckage that is the Ghostbusters reboot clearly."
Actually, it appears that Toto is the one who's not seeing things clearly, so blinded by his Breitbart-inspired right-wing ideology that he's unable to keep from injecting in his movie reviews.
WND's Hohmann Fears Trump Won't Hate Muslims As Much As He Promised Topic: WorldNetDaily
The panic is almost palpable from Leo Hohmann in his Dec. 8 WorldNetDaily article:
Donald Trump made statements to Time magazine in its “person of the year” article that reverberated with great trepidation across red states that elected him the next president of the United States just one month ago.
The president-elect promised to “work something out” for so-called “dreamers,” brought here illegally as children by their parents.
“We’re going to work something out that’s going to make people happy and proud,” Trump said. “They got brought here at a very young age, they’ve worked here, they’ve gone to school here. Some were good students. Some have wonderful jobs. And they’re in never-never land because they don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Trump’s advisers scrambled to walk back his comments, with one transition aide demanding anonymity to deny that Trump intended to set any new policy, CBS News reported.
The comments to Time add to the growing uneasiness among conservatives wary that Trump might not fulfill some of his most basic campaign promises.
Will he build the wall? Will he rescind Obama’s DACA edict offering amnesty to young illegals? Will he deport illegal aliens, or at least the 2 to 3 million criminal aliens?
Will he halt or at least reduce the number of Muslim migrants coming to the U.S. every year on green cards, a number that has soared to more than 130,000 annually under President Obama, or will he settle for “extreme vetting?”
Extreme vetting, after all, would have stopped few if any of the recent Muslim terror attacks on U.S. soil – the Boston Marathon bombing, the Chattanooga shooting, the University of California Merced knife attack, the San Bernardino shooting, the Orlando nightclub massacre, the St. Cloud mall attack, the Manhattan pipe-bombing, or the Ohio State knife attack. All of these attacks were carried out by young men who migrated to the U.S. when they were boys, too young to establish any vettable history, or were born here to immigrant parents.
Hohmann -- WND's resident Islamophobe masquerading as a reporter with standards -- really is afraid that Trump won't hate Muslims as much as he promised during the campaign ... and, more importantly, as much as Hohmann does.
The MRC's Latest Heathering Target: A Conservative Blogger Who Won't Blindly Support Trump Topic: Media Research Center
Conservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin has regularly been a target of the Media Research Center's Heathering -- its campaign of attacking conservatives it deems insufficiently loyal to right-wing orthodoxy. For example, the MRC's Tim Graham complained that Rubin in 2012 said that "every conservative presidential contender was unelectable except Mitt Romney, who was neither conservative nor electable, as it turned out" (though the latter didn't stop the MRC from supporting him in the 2012 election), and that she said mean things about Ted Cruz (who turned out in 2016 to be the former but most definitely not the latter).
Rubin and MRC chief Brent Bozell once held the same belief about Donald Trump: that he was neither conservative nor electable. Bozell changed his mind about that, embracing the "electable" part and all too happy to let conservative purity slide (the siren call of a certain big-bucks MRC donor and Trump supporter seems to have played a role), while Rubin remained a Trump critic through the election.
Cue the Heathering, because apparently it's conservative to embrace the pursuit of power over deeply held principles. And Rubin got a chunk of it during the campaign for failing to climb aboard the Trump train:
In August, Brad Wilmouth sneered that she was an "allegedly right-leaning columnist" and complained that she (accurately) pointed out that Steve Bannon, before joining Trump's campaign, ran a website that "attracted a very anti-Semitic, anti-minority clique called the 'alt-right.'"
In October, P.J. Gladnick derided Rubin as "'conservative' in the same sense that David Brooks is 'conservative,'" then rather narrowly focused on a tiny part of a Rubin appearance on "The O'Reilly Factor" in which she "struggled in a most hilarious fumbling way ... to find a quote where the host supposedly made excuses for 'lock her up'" while ignoring that that she called Bill O'Reilly out for his pro-Trump bias.
When Rubin wouldn't stop criticizing Trump even after his election victory, Rubin remained a Heathering target. In a Nov. 20 post, Wilmouth made his snide "allegedly right-leaning" comment again as he groused that Rubin "played the racism card" by (correctly) pointing out that Trump's immigration policy is obsessed with Mexicans.
On Nov. 26, Trump fanboy and apologist Jeffrey Lord called Rubin an "establishment Republican columnist" and bizarrely claimed she was "normalizing racism" by pointing out that Trump's base of Republican support is "White, unhinged men, most well past their prime, acting abusively toward women."Lord ranted that "The line was so casually racist, sexist and ageist," while quickly changing the subject to Michelle Obama taking her daughter to a concert by Beyonce and Jay-Z.
And on Dec. 11, Wilmouth was back to sneer once again that Rubin is "allegedly right-leaning" and complain that Rubin (accurately) pointed out that Trump's Cabinet picks included "ignoramuses, billionaires, and a few generals." Wilmouth didn't dispute any of it -- he's just mad she said it in public, apparently.
That's the price Rubin is paying for holding to the conservative prinicples Bozell abandoned in a pursuit of power -- which makes all the MRC's sneering that she's "allegedly" conservative all the more sadly ironic.
Expect much more of this as the Trump presidency continues -- and sooner rather than later. A Dec. 19 CNN Money article details her journey from Romney shill to Trump critic, and she has a few choice words for her fellow conservatives, particularly the ones at a certain media watchdog group:
After frequently complaining about the press coverage of Romney in 2012, Rubin now sees problems with the right's media criticism.
"I think it's very difficult for many in the conservative movement to get away from this obsessive blame the mainstream media habit," she said. "I don't think it's particularly productive. I think there is bias, and there's also good honest reporting. Of course, in this election, Trump blames the media for accurately reporting and playing back what he has said."
Tim Graham's probably sharpening up his Heathering stick as we speak.
So, WND, About Those '10 Experts and Analysts Who Doubt Obama's Birth Certificate'... Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Dec. 15 WorldNetDaily article, published along with last week's bogus birther presser, touts "10 experts and analysts who doubt Obama's birth certificate," declaring:
Is President Obama’s White House-released birth certificate really just a forgery and one of the biggest frauds perpetrated on the American people?
At least 10 researchers, analysts and document experts have questioned the validity of the birth certificate Obama released online in 2011.
but a closer look at these "experts and analysts" reveals a much different story -- one that WND doesn't want to tell.
First up is Ron Polland, who WND claims is "known for his forensic investigation of Obama’s short-form birth certificate, constructed from scratch a duplicate of the document released by the White House, seeking to validate his contention that it was created by a forger." It goes on to claim that "Polland demonstrated that during the 2008 presidential election race, the Obama campaign posted an image of a short-form Obama Certification of Live Birth that actually was a forgery created by Polland, not a scan of an original certificate obtained from the Hawaii Department of Health.
In fact, as Dr. Conspiracy documents, it's far from clear that the Obama campaign ever posted Polland's fake document, and Polland never offered definitive proof of it. As far as Polland's "forensic investigation of Obama’s short-form birth certificate" -- done under the pseudonym "Polarik" -- that investigation was definitivelydiscredited.
Next up is Mara Zebest, "a nationally recognized computer expert who served as contributing author and technical editor for more than 100 books on Adobe and Microsoft software." As we noted when WND dragged her along for its birther lawsuit dog-and-pony show in 2011, we could find no documented expertise in PDF files or the Adobe Acrobat software used to create them (though she claimed she had some). She also claimed that the long-form Obama birth certificate was created in Adobe Photoshop, even though the document's properties show it was created in a different program.
Then there's this guy:
WND reported when Ivan Zatkovich, of Tampa-based eComp Consultants, analyzed the analyzed the various layers in the PDF file released by the White House, and concluded: “The content clearly indicates that the document was knowingly and explicitly edited and modified before it was placed on the web.”
Zatkovich later told Dr. Conspiracy that WND's report on his findings was cherry-picked for the most damning evidence, and that he actually concluded that "All of the modifications to the PDF document that can be identified are consistent with someone enhancing the legibility of the document." WND also wouldn't publish the full report Zatkovich provided to WND, presumably for those reasons.
And another old friend pops up:
As WND reported, Hawaii elections clerk Tim Adams signed an affidavit swearing he was told by his supervisors in Hawaii that no long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate existed for Obama in Hawaii and that neither Queens Medical Center nor Kapi’olani Medical Center in Honolulu had any record of Obama having been born in their medical facilities.
As we documented, Adams first started making his claims on a white nationalist radio show, and Adams was never in any top-level election position while in Hawaii -- his boss confirmed he was a temp, a low-level data-entry clerk. And that affidavit? It was proffered by WND itself; Adams confirmed that "someone associated with WorldNetDaily" drew it up and had him sign it.
The article is padded out with Joe Arpaio and posse leader Mike Zullo.
In short: They aren't "experts," they're conspiracy-mongers, and WND has once again tried to give them credibility they haven't earned and don't deserve.
Despite publishing all these birther conspiracies, WND continues to whine about being labeled as a purveyor of fake news. Funny, that.
CNS Is 5 Months Late In Issuing Biased Attack On State Dept. Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman writes in a Dec. 12 article:
According to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), the State Department gave $349,276 in U.S. taxpayer-funded grants to a political group in Israel to build a campaign operation, which subsequently was used to try to influence Israelis to vote against conservative Benjamin Netanyahu in the March 2015 election for prime minister.
And like WND, Chapman de-emphasizes the fact that the State Department's funding of the Israeli group One Voice had nothing to do with the group's anti-Netanyahu campaign and involved a separate project. Chapman unprofessionally puts in bold italic statements like "OneVoice used the campaign infrastructure and resources built, in part, with State Department grants funds to support V15" but not statements like "no evidence that OneVoice spent grant funds to influence the 2015 Israeli elections."
Chapman also uncritically quotes Republican Sen. Rob Portman saying, "American resources should be used to help our allies in the region, not undermine them." But Israel as a whole is the ally in question, not just Netanyahu. Is Portman saying that any Israeli politician who opposes Netanyahu is an enemy of the U.S.
If so, Chapman apparently agrees with the sentiment.
NEW ARTICLE: Faking It at WND Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily complains about being lumped in with providers of "fake news" -- even as it's serving up fake news to its readers. Read more >>
One of the ways Media Research Center Tim Graham loves to slag the so-called "liberal media" is by asserting the prowess and alleged robustness of right-wing journalists -- minus any actual proof to back it up, of course.
WorldNetDaily reporter Bob Unruh -- who loves stories about alleged persecution of Christians and right-wingers so much that he 
A Dec. 19 Newsmax 
Lauretta Brown writes in a Nov. 21 CNSNews.com 
WorldNetDaily has commendably stayed away from buying into the "Pizzagate" hoax -- on the news side, anyway. WND's columnists, however, are a different story. We've 
Apparently, the "War on Christmas" has ended because Donald Trump was elected president. That's the message MRC Latino's Jorge Bonilla seems to be imparting in a Dec. 16 
WorldNetDaily's not the only ConWeb outlet trying to give Donald Trump -- and Russia -- a pass on allegations Russia meddled in the presidential election to boost Trump. CNSNews.com's Susan Jones is taking a crack at it as well. 
An anonymous WorldNetDaily writer was in full pro-Trump -- and anti-Muslim -- mode in a Dec. 18 
Several months after it was released, the Media Research Center can't stop dancing on the grave of the all-female reboot of "Ghostbusters."
The panic is almost palpable from Leo Hohmann in his Dec. 8 WorldNetDaily 
Conservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin has regularly been a target of the Media Research Center's 
A Dec. 15 WorldNetDaily 
CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman writes in a Dec. 12 
