Topic: CNSNews.com
The CNSNews.com reporter is so dedicated to making President Trump look good that she's penning pro-Trump opinion pieces that are presented as "news." Read more >>
Wednesday, January 3, 2018
NEW ARTICLE: Susan Jones' Year of Trump Stenography
Topic: CNSNews.com The CNSNews.com reporter is so dedicated to making President Trump look good that she's penning pro-Trump opinion pieces that are presented as "news." Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:15 PM EST
Updated: Wednesday, January 3, 2018 3:17 PM EST
WND Won't Give Obama Credit For Role In Defeating ISIS
Topic: WorldNetDaily
A more likely possibility that Unruh -- who quotes only right-wing analysts as desperate as he is to credit Trump for this -- doesn't explore: Trump simply followed in Obama's footsteps in finishing what he began. When Trump's purportedly "secret plan" to defeat ISIS was revealed last May, analysts noted that it basically followed and continued Obama's plan. And the Pentagon has credited Obama's plan for training Iraqi soldiers with ISIS' defeat in Mosul.And as CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen pointed out, the majority of ISIS fighters killed in the conflict died under the Obama presidency. After all the biased pro-Trump rah-rah was done, Unruh shifted to promotional mode:
Unruh is sounding a bit desperate here, which doesn't get any less so with a final paragraph giving out WND's email address for "media representatives who would like to interview WND founder and CEO Joseph Farah about the campaign."
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:20 AM EST
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
MRC's 'Media Research' on NBC's Tur Mostly Just Personal Attacks
Topic: Media Research Center
A Dec. 19 post by Curtis Houck carries the hyperbolic headline "Grab Your Popcorn: Katy Tur Gets Annihilated by Dave Brat in Tax Policy Debate."But there's little actual annihilation going on; Brat simply disagrees with her. Houck is condescending to Tur throughout his post, ranting about her purported "smug factor" and mocking her status as a "MSNBC host extraordinaire" who's supposedly an idiot because she "grew up in a family of journalists." Perhaps Houck needs to be reminded that petty personal attacks on someoneyou don't like are not "media research." Just as condescending and spiteful was Houck's MSNBC colleague Chris Reeves, whose Dec. 27 post ridiculously called Tur an "uber-liberal partisan" (what is an "uber-liberal"? Reeves never defines the term) and ranted that she was "fomenting political tribalism by promoting rank partisan propaganda" and is "a repeat offender when it comes to pure, unadulterated liberal lunacy." One purported example of this, according to Reeves, is that Tur recently, and accurately, pointed out that President Trump has not held a full solo press conference since February. This, needless to say, sent the MRC into spin mode. Tim Graham retorted, "Trump has held a series of press conferences this year, but most of them have come with foreign leaders, and only two American reporters and two foreign reporters are allowed to ask a question. That’s a fraction of a press conference, perhaps, but it’s wrong to say he 'hasn’t had a press conference.'" Reeves joined in: "In reality, Trump’s last press conference was on October 16th, and the President regularly answers press questions in informal sessions on the White House lawn. This hardly constitutes a “laughable” fear of the press, as Tur characterized it." But that presser was an impromptu one, held in the White House Rose Garden with Sen. Mitch McConnell -- again, not the formal, planned press conference Tur was talking about. Again: Personal attacks do not qualify as "media research" -- except, apparently, at the MRC.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:48 PM EST
WND's Favorite Ex-Soviet Bloc Spymaster Peddles The Disinformation He Claims To Despise
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Pacepa has finally broken his silence in the form of a Dec. 20 WND column headlined "The real Russian collusion." And as you'd expect from a guy who wrote a (WND-published) book called "Disinformation," Pacepa's column contains a lot of, um, disinformation. His first false claim came early:
In fact, most newspapers no longer endorse political candidates. Of those that did during the 2016 election, 19 endorsed Trump while 240 endorsed Clinton. Nevertheless, Pacepa rants that "the media are disinforming America" -- a paragraph before he falsely claims that Katharine Weymouth was the publisher of the Washington Post in 1990. Weymouth was the publisher of the Post from 2008 to 2014; Pacepa may have been thinking of her grandmother Katharine Graham, but she was publisher from 1969 to 1979 and chairman of the board of the Washington Post Co. after that.Her son, Donald Graham, was the actual Post publisher in 1990. Having made two major factual errors already, it's hard to take Pacepa seriously when he cheers Donald Trump as a "capitalist entrepeneur" and calls Barack Obama "the first undercover Marxist to become president of the United States" who engaged in a "ruinous flirtation with the alien god of Kremlinist autocracy" -- then uniroinically complains that "Ridiculing the U.S. president is an anti-American dezinformtsyia tool smuggled into the U.S. by the KGB community" and whines that "During the age of Obama, the KGB-style vilification of American political leaders became a standard journalistic tactic in the U.S. as well." Pacepa then declares: "Now I am joining the efforts of WND (whose founder and editor was also a Marxist when he was young, and whose managing editor edited “Disinformation,” the book I co-authored with professor Ronald Rychlak) to persuade our media to stop colluding with Russia and with undercover Marxism, and to become American again." Another unironic statement, given that WND is one of America's foremost traffickers in disinformation and fake news. Pacepa concludes: "But national unity is difficult if not impossible when the press, that near-sacred institution on which we rely for digging up and communicating vital truth, instead becomes the chief purveyors of lies and half-truths – in a word, of disinformation." Perhaps, but he will never demand that the publisher of his book and columns adhere to that standard of truth-telling.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:46 PM EST
Updated: Tuesday, January 2, 2018 4:48 PM EST
Monday, January 1, 2018
CNS Stenography By the Numbers: Mark Levin and Franklin Graham Edition
Topic: CNSNews.com
We've looked through the CNS archives, and here's a tally by month of the articles CNS devoted to Levin and Graham in 2017. Mark Levin
Franklin Graham
The pace for Graham is a little slower in the past -- we've noted that Chapman devoted 46 articles to Graham's rantings in one previous six-month period -- but it's still a lot for someone who's known mostly for hating gays and loving President Trump. CNS' promotion for Levin, meanwhile, didn't stop with serving as a transcription service. It promoted Levin's "new best-seller" book in a July interview with CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey, and a November post by Michael Morris was basically a lightly rewritten press release on Levin's new show on Fox News -- so lightly rewritten that Morris simply copied-and-pasted the last three paragraphs of the press release to fill out his article. The fact that CNS has outsourced such a singificant part of its content to right-wing ideologues is a big indicator of how much of a non-factor it's becoming.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:27 PM EST
Newsmax's Hirsen Repeats Old Smears of Anita Hill
Topic: Newsmax
Like the MRC, Newsmax columnist James Hirsen was outraged that Hill was chosen to head a panel examining sexual harassment in Hollywood, and he devoted his Dec. 18 column to rehashing those old smears:
Does Hirsen agree that all women to want to remain anonymous in forwarding sexual harassment allegations are lying? We don't recall being outraged when, as a Dec. 15 MRC NewsBusters post, a woman who accused NBC's Matt Lauer of sexual harassment was "terrified" that the network would leak her identity and cause her to be "hounded and harassed." Of course, identifying the accuser would allow people like Hirsen to personally attack her, as he did with one woman who accused Roy Moore of perving on her as a teen. Then again, Hirsen would never try to smear one of Lauer's accusers, and he certainly never tried to attack any of the accusers of, say, Harvey Weinstein who chose to remain anonymous or demand that they go on record. There's also no evidence that Hirsen has held any woman making harassment allegations against a Hollywood figure to the same exacting standards of veracity he holds Hill. It seems that, like the MRC, Hirsen just can't let go of his quarter-century-old anger.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:28 PM EST
Sunday, December 31, 2017
The MRC's 'Soros-Funded Journalism' Fail
Topic: Media Research Center ![]()
Nielsen's article is accompanied by a chart of dubious origin -- no source is given, but it's apparently taken from the MRC's apparently dormant "Buying Bias" website, which claims to track "the funding sources behind non-profit journalism" and where a version of Nielsen's post first appeared in October -- purporting to show donors to ProPublica over an unspecified period of time, but unfortunately for Nielsen's "Soros-funded journalism" angle, it shows that Soros' Open Society Foundation donated only $737,411, while five other foundations donated more than $1 million, and the biggest donor, the Sandler Foundation, utterly dwarfed OSF's conrtibutions with a whopping #44 million donation. Yet, even though Soros' foundation donated less than 1/33 of the money of ProPublica's biggest donor, Nielsen's headline claim is "Soros-funded journalism." The MRC has done this before. For example, a 2013 post about ProPublica calls it a "Soros-funded news operation," and Nielsen herself did it again last January, using a similar chart that curiously omitted the Sandler Foundation's donations -- presumably to not undermine her Soros-bashing argument. Nielsen also huffed that "ProPublica has a history of liberal alliances and reporting," but she cited random, cherry-picked examples and offered no comprehensive research on ProPublica's coverage.
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:54 PM EST
Divine Donald Watch, WorldNetDaily Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily
-- Larry Nevenhoven, Dec. 22 WorldNetDaily column
-- Tricia Erickson, Dec. 26 WND column
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:00 PM EST
Saturday, December 30, 2017
CNS Doesn't Disclose Its Link To Group Run By Bozell's Son
Topic: CNSNews.com
Despite writing for what purports to be a "news" operation, Bannister breaks a basic rule of journalism by failing to disclose a major conflict of interest. As we've noted, David Bozell is the son of Brent Bozell, CNS publisher and head of the Media Research Center, which owns CNS. Brent Bozell also founded ForAmerica, and the group shares a building with the MRC. Further, a look at the ForAmerica website reveals it's filled mostly with posts copied from various MRC divisions, including CNS and NewsBusters. So, yeah, it's pretty integrated with the MRC. Bannister should've told his readers that -- but journalistic ethics isn't a big deal these days for the Trump stenographers at CNS.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:22 AM EST
Fake News: WND Still Misquoting Obama As A Current Supporter of Erdogan
Topic: WorldNetDaily
That misinformation -- fake news, one might call it -- is still going on. In a Dec. 12 WND article on allegedly anti-Semitic statements Erdogan made, Art Moore wrote: "President Obama praised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as 'a man of action' and one of the five world leaders with whom he had the strongest bond." The "man of action" quote comes from a statement attributed to Obama by former national security adviser in 2011; the New York Times noted the quote in a 2016 article pointing out how the relationship between Obama and Erdogan deterioriated after Erdogan "began tilting in the direction of authoritarianism" and that "Obama has periodically warned Erdogan to curb his authoritarian tendencies." The "strongest bond" statement is a relatively accurate interpretation of what Obama said, but Moore didn't mention that Obama said that in 2012 -- which, again, was before Erdogan turned authoritarian. Then, in a Dec. 27 WND article, Bob Unruh uncritically quotes Joel Richardson -- who once wrote a WND column headlined "What Obama and the Antichrist have in common" -- getting the timeline right but still blaming Obama anyway: "As recently as 2012, President Obama named Turkey’s current President Erdogan as one of his top three closest friends among world leaders. A quick five years later, Erdogan has emerged as one of the most dangerous dictators of our day.” Actually, Obama never said Erdogan was among his "closest friends"; that's a beyond-the-facts extrapolation of the "strongest bond" statement, and it also ignores the fact that the Obama-Erdogan relationship deteriorated during those five years. This fake-news link between Obama and Erdogan that WND is trying to spread ignores the fact that just a year ago, then-WND reporter Jerome Corsi was cozying up to Erdogan by pushing the unproven narrative (via anonymous "trusted sources close to the Turkish government") that the coup attempt was inspired by Fetullah Gulen, a Turkish spiritual leader who currently lives in the U.S. and whom WND has tried to link to the Clintons for some reason. It seems WND's stance on Erdogan depends on whatever political agenda it's pursuing on a given day.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:12 AM EST
Friday, December 29, 2017
MRC Writers Attack Mueller Probe As Biased, Ignore Ken Starr's Partisanship
Topic: Media Research Center
In a Dec. 15 post, the MRC's Curtis Houck responded to CNN's Wolf Blitzer and "rabble rouser" Jim Acosta calling out those right-wing attacks by insisting that they're just asking questions and aren't trying to discredit the FBI at all:
And, indeed, Noyes did whine four days earlier:
That double standard is even more obvious at the MRC. Starr actually was the partisan the MRC insists Mueller is. As Joe Conason -- who covered the many bogus Clinton "scandals" in the 1990s -- explains, Starr "had served as solicitor general under President George H.W. Bush, who considered him for a Supreme Court nomination; he had raised funds for Republican candidates; he had served as a stalwart of the Federalist Society, the high-powered organization of right-wing Republican lawyers; and he had nearly run for the U.S. Senate in the 1994 Virginia Republican primary." He also provided legal advice to a conservative women's group in support of the Paula Jones lawsuit against Clinton. Starr was placed as independent counsel by Republican-appointed judges apparently upset that the original counsel, Robert Fiske, was going to clear Clinton in the Whitewater alleged scandal, Conason adds. Needless to say, neither Houck nor Noyes mentioned that fears about Starr's partisan affiliations -- none of which, by the way, can be found with Mueller -- were well-founded. Neither did the MRC's Tim Graham and Brent Bozell, who whined in their Dec. 13 column that "among the 15 Mueller lawyers, nine are Democratic donors — several of whom contributed to Clinton's 2016 campaign" and complained that "Back then, anti-Kenneth Starr commentary wasn't 'shocking.' It was mandatory." Just as it is currently mandatory for MRC writers to issue anti-Mueller commentary.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:56 PM EST
WND Brings Back Fabulist Author To Rant About 'Luciferianism" Among 'Elites'
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Theodore Roosevelt Malloch is a Trump fanboy who was reportedly up for nomination as President Trump's ambassador to the European Union until he was busted for exaggerating his biography in, among other places, his WND-published autobiography. (It turns out that, apparently, Malloch was never even seriously considered for the ambassadorship.) WND didn't say anything about Malloch's self-fabulism at the time, but apparently all is forgiven, because a Dec. 25 article approvingly quotes Malloch peddling conspiracy theories on (where else?) Alex Jones' show, asserting that "global elites" are being influenced by "Luciferianism." Then, it was a full-on descent into the zombie-lie territory WND is very well known for:
As we pointed out the last time someone at WND claimed this, Podesta took part in no such thing. Malloch then went on to falsely claim that Saul Alinsky made a "dedication" of his book "Rules for Radicals" to Lucifer -- even as the article goes on to quote from the book in which it's made clear that Alinsky's "over the shoulder acknowledgement" of Lucifer as "the very first radical" was not a dedication (the book is actually dedicated to "Irene") and Jones is quoted as conceding that the reference was, in the words of the anonymous WND writer, done "in a cheeky way, simply meant to provoke." But zombie lies and false biography-gilding are acceptable behavior at WND, even if it would not be at any genuinely legitimate news organization.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:19 AM EST
Thursday, December 28, 2017
CNS Reporter Keeps Up Stenography for WH Press Secretary
Topic: CNSNews.com
In November and December, Arter added another 10 articles to that total:
The lower count can be blamed on more holidays during the month, plus the fact that Arter as been off work since Dec. 15 -- menaing that the total is actually for just a month and a half. It also means a stenographical story from Arter every three days or so. Which is not really journalism at all.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:36 PM EST
NEW ARTICLE: Fake News At WND, Zombies and Trolls Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily keeps zombie lies alive long after they've been discredited. It also fell for a Russian troll pro-Trump Twitter account and profiled a pro-Trump merchandiser who doesn't appear to actually exist. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:57 AM EST
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
MRC's Persistent Fox News-Shaped Blind Spot on Sexual Harassment
Topic: Media Research Center
Tim Graham and Brent Bozell's Dec. 20 column highlights the "stunning announcements and admissions about the serious alleged sexual misbehavior of Harvey Weinstein and others." "Others" is the closest Graham and Bozell get to referencing the scandals at Fox News. Graham and Bozell spend the rest of their column parsing the definition of sexual harassment. At first, it seems incongruous that they're giving something of a pass to certain allegations against hated enemies like Chris Matthews ("he's a pig, not a harasser") and Matt Lauer (regarding a woman who had an affair with Lauer she now says was an abuse of power (italics theirs): "You were a 24-year-old woman. Act your age. If he's a scoundrel, so are you"). The reason becomes clear later in their column: They're trying to set up a defense against allegations made against Donald Trump. Here's how they attack one Trump accuser:
Yes, imagine that. It's as if Graham and Bozell hae forgotten that Clinton accuser Kathleen Willey also tried to crowdfund paying off her mortgage. And for all we know, Willey may have found a donor to actually do so: Donald Trump. The blind spot was even more obvious in Jeffrey Lord's Dec. 23 NewsBusters column, in which he served up a lengthy list of how "across the media landscape one player after another fell" by, among other things, "having let loose their private sexual demons on unsuspecting colleagues or others." Curiously missing from that list: anyone from Fox News. That Fox News-shaped blind spot hasn't shrunk a bit.
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:56 PM EST
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