MRC's Double Standard On Religious Insults Involving Ben Shapiro Topic: Media Research Center
Alec Sears huffed in a July 2 Media Research Center post:
Late Saturday night Joshua Topolsky, Co-Founder of The Verge, tweeted a hideous statement directed at prominent Jewish, conservative pundit, Ben Shapiro. The since-deleted tweet read, ”Ben Shapiro is the Jew who helps other Jews onto the train.” Topolsky has not apologized, and claimed to have deleted the tweet because “a mob of right wing babies were flooding my mentions.” Topolsky also said he received death threats over the tweet.
Sears added that "Conservative Twitter discovered the tweet on Sunday and lept to Shapiro’s defense." Sears doesn't mention, however, that Shapiro himself has engaged in similar Holocaust-referencing insults.
As we've noted, in a 2010 column ranting about President Obama's purported "anti-Semitism" -- published by the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com -- Shapiro declared that then-Obama White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel "is a kapo" (Shapiro also laughably described himself as"a charter member of the tribe" -- which, unless he was born several thousand years ago, is almost certainly not true.) Later that year, Shapiro asserted in a tweet that George Soros is a "kapo."
A "kapo" was the term used for trustee prisoners in Nazi concentration camps -- some of them Jewish -- who supervised other prisoners and carried out the will of the Nazi commandants.
The MRC did not notice these nasty insults, let alone call him out on them -- though it once got outraged that someone on TV used the word to attack black Tea Party members, and a 2016 post by Brad Wilmouth appears to condone U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman's declaration that liberal Jewish groups who advocate a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are "kapos." Shapiro only recently semi-apologized for the Emanuel insult -- though not for the Soros insult -- admitting it was "probably too charged."
We're not defending Topolsky's tweet here, just putting it in context with the level of vitriol Shapiro himself has engaged in -- something the MRC has no interest in doing here because that weakens its case.
Another Newsmax Writer Offers Sycophantic Defense of Trump Foundation, Baselessly Attacks Clinton Foundation Topic: Newsmax
Michael Reagan's July 14 Newsmax column, co-written with Michael R. Shannon, is so slavishly devoted to following in the footsteps of Newsmax chief Christopher Ruddy in defending the Trump Foundation over allegations of impropriety that he actually quotes Ruddy:
After state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman resigned in disgrace his placeholder Barbara Underwood took up the cudgel and continued bashing the president. She accused the president’s Trump Foundation of “persistent illegal conduct” continuing for more than a decade.
Proving that the lawsuit is simply a political strategy dressed up in a statute book, the trial is scheduled for a date just prior to the November mid-term election. What’s more, the attack and the timing has the total support of the judge in charge of the show trial. The New Yorker reported that when a Trump Foundation lawyer asked that the case be delayed due to the trial’s proximity to the election, the judge thought the request was funny.
“Judge Scarpulla laughed in response [to the Trump request], did not change the trial date, and hinted that she is likely to require the president to testify.”
These shenanigans caught the attention of Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy who has known the president for a number of years.
Ruddy points out the Trump foundation is almost unique in that it donated more money than it received in contributions: $19.2 million in donations after receiving $18.8 in contributions.
As we pointed out when Ruddy went into defense mode, the point of the investigation is not whether the foundation paid out more than it took in -- it's about apparent self-dealing in receipt and distribution of funds.It appears much of the foundation's money came from people and organizations that did business with Trump, foundation money went to settle legal disputes with his businesses, and some donations went to organizations that rented out his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach.
Reagan then made an apples-and-oranges comparison to the Clinton Foundation:
Compare that to the Clinton Foundation, which vacuumed up $500 million in contributions from 2009 to 2012 and only donated $75 million to unaffiliated charities.
The “persistent[ly] illegal” Trump Foundation was also strange in that it spent not one thin dime on salaries and its overhead costs can be measured with an electron microscope. While the Clinton Foundation serves as the Human Resources department for Hillary’s various campaigns and spent $110 million on salaries during the same time period. And another astounding $290 million went to “other expenses.”
We agree there is a foundation based in New York State that deserves close scrutiny from the AG’s office, but it is not the foundation named after Trump.
Reagan apparent got his numbers from the right-wing Federalist website and Rush Limbaugh, which is an indicator of how they are designed to mislead. But the Clinton Foundation is a global public charity, compared with the family-run Trump Foundation. As a group that actually cares about facts reports, the Clinton Foundation conducts most of its charity in-house and doesn't need to donate to outside groups, and the salary money mostly pays for people actually doing the foundation's charity work. Experts on charities say the Clinton Foundation's spending is not out of line with other charities in good standing.
Reagan concludes by calling the Trump Foundation investigation a "kangaroo prosecution." But that's exactly what he wants against the Clinton Foundation.
Unhinged: MRC Thinks Media Outlets Discussing The Same Thing Is 'Collusion' Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has been been moving in lockstep with its fellow conservative media outlets in defending President Trump and denouncing the Russia investigation as a witch hunt. Which means it's hilarously hypocritical for the MRC to accuse the non-conservative media of "collusion," which Ryan Foley did in a July 17 post:
For all of the talk about collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, the liberal media seems to have engaged in a little bit of collusion themselves. On six different programs over the past 24 hours, hosts either suggested or asked their guests to weigh in on whether Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats should resign due to President Trump's refusal to accept the DNI's assertion that Russia meddled in the 2016 election.
The latest montage of meltdowns came after President Trump's Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland.
[...]
In all honesty, the media could care less whether or not Director Coats resigns. They just see the hypothetical resignations of Coats or other Trump Administration officials as stepping stones in achieving their ultimate goal: the premature end of the Trump presidency.
Foley and the MRC could care less about journalism -- they're just cobsessed with scoring political points and destroying the non-conservative media for failing to lionize Trump 24/7. It's absurd for Foley and the MRC to see "collusion" everywhere except on their own side.
Before he goes on another "collusion" rant, perhaps Foley could explain to us just how much his employer colludes with other conservative groups in pushing its pro-Trump, anti-media message.
WND's Peterson Sounds Like A White Supremacist Again, Declares That It's 'White History Month' Topic: WorldNetDaily
You know how Jesse Lee Peterson loves to rant like a white nationalist but gets away with it because he's a black right-winger? Well, he's taken that to a whole 'nother level in his July 15 WorldNetDaily column:
For the last 60 years or more, white people have been under attack, falsely called “racist,” and blamed for the failure and problems of black Americans and other so-called “people of color.”
Each year reveals new levels of insanity celebrating radical Black History Month, transgender and homosexual history, feminist women – celebration of everyone except for straight, white, conservative Christian men of power.
White people have been under attack, unappreciated and under a spell of fear for so long that most of the country can’t even remember that it was whites who made this country the destination that it is!
The simple fact remains: Without white people, there would be no America. White men founded this country and made it great. White men like President Trump are the last ones holding America together – and it is hanging by a thread.
For some reason, whites allowed others to come in to this country who would turn around and betray them! Reportedly, whites will soon be a minority in their own country!
If we allow the vilification and replacement of whites to continue, then our country will become a ghetto. We will see more black-on-white crime, more laws against Christians and men, a total loss of freedom, and destruction of communities.
Aside from the fact that this rant would be not be out of place on white-nationalist or supremacist websites such as Stormfront or VDARE, Peterson misses the point hard here. Just as every day is Children's Day, every month is already White History Month by dint of whites being the dominant culture in America despite Peterson's fearmongering to the contrary. Thus, there's no need to declare one.
Peterson once again labeled President Trump the "Great White Hope" -- apparently still oblivious to the fact that the phrase originated as a racist, anti-black insult -- and then showed he's still learning the wrong message from all this:
Some friends and callers express concern for my safety, fearing a violent backlash against White History Month. We should be wary of violent leftists and white haters, given the incitement by anti-Trump agitators like Maxine Waters (the Wicked Witch of the West), corrupt government officials, media and Hollywood. There are places where it’s not safe to be an open Trump supporter. But the children of the lie proudly tout their beliefs with no sense of shame for being wrong – they’re in your face promoting evil!
If you are a child of God, you have no fear. Perfect love, the nature of God, drives out fear. But if you have fear, you are still of your father the devil. In counseling and talking with people, I notice most men and women have fear. Men are afraid to deal with their wives. Grown men and women are afraid to face their mothers and be honest with them!
Where does fear come from? Anger and unforgiveness. Unless you forgive, you will not be forgiven. And you will have all of the children of anger: fear, doubt, insecurity and suicidal thoughts. So forgive and be free!
Peterson seems to be confusing a lack of fear with a lack of shame. And his continuingObamaderangement demonstrates that he still harbors a massive reservoir of the anger (and, we can assume, its children) that he claims not to have.
Tim Graham's Anti-CNN, Anti-Media Rants Getting More Unhinged Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham is growing as unhinged as he claims the rest of the media is. He begins a July 14 post about whether Fox News' John Roberts should have defended CNN's Jim Acosta (a key target in the MRC's anti-media war) after President Trump and declaring that Fox News is "real news," began this way:
CNN has branded itself as savagely, incessantly anti-Trump, as well as savagely, incessantly anti-Fox News. So why on Earth do they expect that when the president mocks CNN at a press conference, "unity" demands that Fox defend CNN in the moment of the insult?
This is especially true of Brian Stelter, whose boss Jeff Zucker has ordered the network's attack on Fox as "state-run TV." But then, Stelter is shameless enough to tell Kellyanne Conway to her face "I'm not on a side of an aisle."
Graham, notably, doesn't deny that Fox News is so pro-Trump that it is esseially "state-run TV" -- then again, ridiculously pro-Trump is how Graham and the MRC want the media to act. He followed that with an even more scattershot attack on CNN:
When other media outlets have defended Fox is normally a question of access, as in pool events. It wasn't expected that other reporters would defend Fox in front of President Obama. Fox's questions to Obama didn't have Jim Acosta's angry and desperate tone, and Obama didn't normally attack reporters during press conferences.
Jake Tapper is really not the person who should fuss about letting insults go on TV. He famously let Nancy Pelosi suggest Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch was a bad choice "if you breathe air, drink water, eat food, take medicine." In another town hall after the Parkland school shooting, allowed an obnoxious child to compare Sen. Marco Rubio to Nikolas Cruz, who shot 17 people dead.
Jim Acosta isn't more honorable than Gorsuch or Rubio.
Finally, Graham huffed at the idea that there should be, in Stelter's words, "unity" among media outlets "when a president insults your competitors and then calls on you instead":
"Unity." Liberal media are routinely unified in attacking Fox as not a real-news network. CNN defends Acosta even when he says Trump's fake-news insults are dangerous because "people around the country" who "don’t have all their faculties in some cases — their elevator might not hit all floors."
By the way, Graham and the MRC have no record of how many insults Fox News personalities have hurled at CNN. Perhaps he should do that before complaining further about things CNN personalities have said about Fox News.
WND Thinks A Mischievous Wikipedia Edit That Lasted Only 9 Minutes Is 'News' Topic: WorldNetDaily
Treating minor political mischief as "news" is among the laziest thing a so-called journalist can do -- which is probably why WorldNetDaily is no stranger to the practice. For instance, WND once devoted an entire story to a picture of Hillary Clinton's book that somebody placed in the science-fiction section of a bookstore.
That sort of politically motivated lameness resurfaces in an anonymously written July 17 WND article:
John Brennan, who shoved himself into the headlines this week with the wild claim that President Trump’s actions at his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin were “treasonous,” was described in a new way, briefly, at the online site Wikipedia.
“Silly old fart.”
The entry for Brennan, for a few minutes Tuesday, read: “Brennan withdrew his name from consideration for director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the first Obama administration over concerns about his support for transferring terror suspects to countries where they may be tortured while serving under President George W. Bush. Instead Brennan was appointed deputy national security advisor, a position which did not require senate confirmation … is now best known as an irrelevant silly old fart who spends his days in his favourite slippers tweeting furiously about the Trump administration.”
The Washington Examiner explained the page was edited only a day after he lashed out against President Trump for comments at the summit.
The edits were live for about nine minutes before the text was changed back to its original.
So the Wsahington Examiner actually did the reporting on this lameness, and WND is merely repeating it secondhand? That's even more lame than we originally thought.
A July 16 CNSNews.com article by Max Augros is yet another bit of pro-Trump stenography:
When asked about U.S. intelligence claims that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections and whether he would call on Russian President Vladimir Putin to not interfere again, President Donald Trump said he wants to know why the FBI did not seize the Democratic National Committee’s server, which was allegedly hacked by Russian actors, and he wants to know why the FBI has not tracked down Hillary Clinton’s apparently missing 33,000 emails.
“But I don’t think it can go on without finding out what happened to the sever,” said Trump. “What happened to the servers of the Pakistani gentleman that worked on the DNC? Where are those servers? They’re missing. Where are they?”
“What happened to Hillary Clinton’s emails?” he said. “33,000 emails gone, just gone. I think in Russia they wouldn’t be gone so easily.”
If Augros had cared more about journalism than stenography, he would have pointed that, as the headline of this Daily Beast article explained, the purportedly missing server Trump is obsessed with is neither missing nor a server:
The “server” Trump is obsessed with is actually 140 servers, most of them cloud-based, which the DNC was forced to decommission in June 2016 while trying to rid its network of the Russian GRU officers working to help Trump win the election, according to the figures in the DNC’s civil lawsuit against Russia and the Trump campaign. Another 180 desktop and laptop computers were also swapped out as the DNC raced to get the organization back on its feet and free of Putin’s surveillance.
But despite Trump’s repeated feverish claims to the contrary, no machines are actually missing.
It’s true that the FBI doesn’t have the DNC’s computer hardware. Agents didn’t sweep into DNC headquarters, load up all the equipment and leave Democrats standing stunned beside empty desks and dangling cables. There’s a reason for that, and it has nothing to do with a deep state conspiracy to frame Putin.
Trump and his allies are capitalizing on a basic misapprehension of how computer intrusion investigations work. Investigating a virtual crime isn’t a like investigating a murder. The Russians didn’t leave DNA evidence on the server racks and fingerprints on the keyboards. All the evidence of their comings and goings was on the computer hard drives, and in memory, and in the ephemeral network transmissions to and from the GRU’s command-and-control servers.
[...]
Both the DNC and the security firm Crowdstrike, hired to respond to the breach, have said repeatedly over the years that they gave the FBI a copy of all the DNC images back in 2016. The DNC reiterated that Monday in a statement to the Daily Beast.
“The FBI was given images of servers, forensic copies, as well as a host of other forensic information we collected from our systems,” said Adrienne Watson, the DNC’s deputy communications director. “We were in close contact and worked cooperatively with the FBI and were always responsive to their requests. Any suggestion that they were denied access to what they wanted for their investigation is completely incorrect.”
See, that wasn't so hard -- in fact, a simple Google search would have easily uncovered it, had Augros bothered to do so. But, again, pro-Trump stenography trumps even the most basic explanatory journalism at CNS if explaining things makes Trump look bad.
WND Buys Into Fake-News #WalkAway Campaign Topic: WorldNetDaily
An anonymous WorldNetDaily writer enthused in a June 29 article:
It’s “intolerant, inflexible, illogical, hateful, misguided, ill-informed, un-American, hypocritical, menacing, callous, ignorant, narrow-minded and at times blatantly fascistic,” says a new political activist who has created a campaign online to oppose a party that he says he’s leaving.
Naturally, he was a silver-spoon-in-mouth Republican, with corporate executive parents and privilege from morning until night, and he’s fed up, right?
Well. No.
He’s leaving liberalism and the Democrats.
His video is titled “#WalkAway Campaign – Why I left liberalism & the Democratic Party” and is one of those must-see projects.
Brandon Straka explains he’s, “for years,” watched as the “left has devolved” into that list of negatives above.
So now it’s over.
He’s online at Facebook and other social media sites and his campaign is moving in viral leaps and bounds.
Like most things too good to fact-check -- and the latest in the pile of fake news WND has promoted -- the #WalkAway campaign turns out to be a bit on the bogus side.
As the Washington Post reports, a significant portion of those "viral leaps and bounds" were apparently artificially generated by Twitter bots, not real people. And one of themost heavily retweeted #WalkAway tweets is itself apparently fake, with a profile image stolen from a book about making money in penny stocks. And later #WalkAway images simply use stock photos of people and not actual humans who actually are members of the movement.
Even the WND article promoted a tweet that doesn't sound like an actual American human, with the Twitter handle @Zealandian and the name "52-75-73-6b-69," which sure sounds like a Russian bot to us.
All that shadiness, however, didn't keep WND columnist Patrice Lewis from promoting the alleged movement in her July 13 column. She insists it's a real thing and attacks anyone who points out otherwise:
Unable to accept the idea that people loath their hateful message, the left is denying anyone is leaving. FrontPage Magazine notes, “The paranoid leftists at hate site Salon.com claim #WalkAway is a Russian-operated misinformation campaign. Bob Cesca writes that #WalkAway ‘is a likely Kremlin operation’ that is fueled by ‘online trolls.’ It is a myth that ‘real-life Democrats [are] leaving the party in disgust[.]'” Huffington Post makes a similar claim. The Washington Post redefines the definition of “viral.”
That FrontPageMag article is written by the dickish Matthew Vadum, so it too is of dubious descent.
If WND bothered to actually do some basic fact-checking, it wouldn't have to publish so much fake news.
CNS, MRC Keep Up Their Love Affair With Tim Tebow Topic: CNSNews.com
As the baseball season continues, so does the Media Research Center's love for former pro football player and current minor league baseball player Tim Tebow. CNSNews.com writer Michael Morris in particular loves the overtly Christian athlete.
In February, Morris wrote a blog post touting how New York Mets general manager Sandy Alderson was "making waves with his prediction that Tebow 'will play in the major leagues' at some point." Morris then listed a bunch of Tebow's minor-league stats, leaving the fact that he hit a miserable .226 for the season for second to last.
The MRC's Jay Maxson wrote his own version of Morris' post on July 1, substituting an ESPN host for Alderson in making the Tebow-will-play-in-the-majors prediction. Maxson largely ignored stats but enthused: "Tebow just made the Eastern League all-star team as a member of the New York Mets' Binghamton Rumble Ponies minor league team. After a sluggish start in April and May, Tebow had a sizzling month of June and gained newfound respect."
CNS followed up with a July 13 column by Eric Metaxas lionizing Tebow for his "unabashed Christian witness and pro-life beliefs" and declaring, "Those who think Tebow has returned to pro sports for glamour and glory do not understand Tim Tebow." This is also a bit of a retread, in this case of a 2017 column by Metaxas' "BreakPoint" colleague John Stonestreet, also published by CNS, in which he gushed that "what has long set Tebow apart, of course, is his Christian faith. It’s drawn millions of people to love him."
Well, it has certainly drawn right-wing writers with an agenda to love him, anyway.
WND's Kupelian: No Collusion! Obama Is The Collusion! Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian has to go deep into his well of Obama derangement to deflect from credible accusations of pro-Trump meddling by the Russians during the 2016 election -- as well as rehash some old, discredited Clinton derangement in the process. Here's how Kupelian starts his July 15 column:
Is it just me, or is everyone missing the biggest, most mind-boggling part of the never-ending “Trump-Russia collusion” drama?
Let’s set aside all the deceit, demagoguery and mass hysteria associated with the left’s ongoing campaign to overturn Trump’s election by endlessly accusing him of “colluding with the Russians,” and consider the biggest scandal of all:
For the past 100 years, it’s the left that has been continually “colluding with the Russians.”
For something like three generations this nation’s most vital institutions, from higher education to Hollywood, have been powerfully influenced, if not entirely dominated, by the Marxist-socialist worldview incubated, nurtured, celebrated, propagandized and exported primarily by Russia.
As I have documented, today’s Democratic Party, pushed radically leftward by President Barack Obama (whom both former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy and ex-New Left leader David Horowitz accurately call a “neocommunist”), has become almost indistinguishable from the Communist Party USA. In case you didn’t know, the CPUSA came into existence as a U.S.-based, Moscow-controlled-and-funded communist party, but has lost most of its influence and support since the Soviet Union collapsed, thanks to President Ronald Reagan. Today, the CPUSA no longer fields its own presidential candidates, but rather, urges voters to support Democrats, having enthusiastically endorsed John Kerry, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
[...]
Remember also that the Democratic Party’s rapid leftward drift while Obama steered the American ship of state for eight years was characterized by actual “collusion with the Russians,” including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s official agreement to hand over control of one-fifth of America’s strategic uranium reserves to Russia, in return for which millions of dollars flowed from Russia to the Clinton Foundation – not to mention $500,000 to husband Bill for giving a one-hour speech in Moscow. And who can forget President Barack Obama being caught on a hot mic saying to Russian President Medvedev,“This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.” (Translation: After I’m re-elected president, I can do things Putin wants, but that the American people would never approve of.) To which comrade Medvedev replied, “I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir, and I stand with you.”
In fact, no quid pro quo has ever been found betweenHillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation and the deal to let a Russian-owned company control that sliver of U.S. uranium deposits, and Clinton was one of nine Cabinet members who had to sign off on the deal, and she had no power to approve or veto the deal on her own.
Kupelian also huffed: "Barack Obama, in his zeal to influence the outcome of Israel’s 2015 national election, actually spent American taxpayers’ money on a failed attempt to defeat a sitting prime minister and close ally, Benjamin Netanyahu." This is another lie from Kupelian.
Kupelian then called WND's favorite ex-Soviet Bloc spymaster, Ion Mihail Pacepa -- who endorsed Trump despite his cozy ties to Russia and Putin -- who is sounding more like an Obama-deranged pro-Trump shill:
“Mike,” I emailed recently. “How long would you say Russia has been actively trying to influence American society, politics and elections?” I explained the gist of the article I was writing about the American left’s century-long secret “collusion” with Russia.
<>Russia, he said, has been attempting to influence America for more than half a century, adding pointedly: “The leaders of our Democratic Party have known at least for seven decades that Russia was trying to influence the U.S. policies and her elections process – it was an open secret.”
[...]
Interestingly, Pacepa added in his email: “In 2009, the U.S. got its first Marxist president, and in March 2013, the CIA got a director, John O. Brennan, who had voted the Communist ticket.” (That’s right. In the 1976 U.S. presidential election, Brennan voted for Communist Party USA candidate Gus Hall.)
So, what does Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, one of the world’s top experts on genuine “Russian collusion,” think about the leftist Democrats and “mainstream media” daily attacking President Donald Trump for alleged “Russian collusion”?
The left, he said, specializes in fabricating fake news, history and reality, and always has. He recalled, thoughtfully: “In my other life as a Soviet bloc intelligence general, I had a banner posted in my DIE [Romania’s foreign intelligence service] office proclaiming in upper-case letters: ‘CAPITALIST ESPIONAGE REPORTS HISTORY. WE MAKE IT.’ Communist espionage was not designed to predict enemy intentions, as Western espionage services do. Our omniscient rulers knew best,” he said, indicating that communists prefer to rewrite and re-invent history, something the American left is notorious for doing.
And never more ferociously than right now.
“Now,” summarizes Pacepa, “a new generation of Democratic Party leaders who seem to have sawdust in their heads are trying to use Russia as a scarecrow in order to prevent the return of the U.S. to capitalism and freedom.”
Kupelian concluded by grousing: "In the meantime, the same left that demonizes America and capitalism with arguments identical to those learned at the feet of Russian communists, continues to accuse pro-American capitalist Donald Trump of 'colluding with the Russians.' That’s irony for you." No, the irony is that if Obama had done the same things Trump is accusing of doing with Russia, Kupelian would be screaming bloody murder.
MRC Won't Admit It Helped Spread Conspiracy Theories About Arrested Dem IT Staffer Topic: Media Research Center
In a July 5 Media Research Center post complaining that there was insufficient media coverage of former Democratic House IT aide Imran Awan pleading guilty to a bank fraud charge, Bill D'Agostino huffed: "Liberal print media have attempted to spin this finding into a non-story. On Tuesday, The Washington Post published a piece titled, 'Conspiracy theories on ex-congressional IT staffer debunked in plea deal,' which triumphantly mocks the attention that conservative media have given Awan."
What D'Agostino didn't mention: His employer was among the conservative media that promoted those conspiracy theories about Awan.
The Post pointed out that the plea agreement for Awan included a statement that, following a "thorough investigation" of forensic analysis of computer equipment and interview with 40 witnesses, "'The Government has uncovered no evidence that your client violated federal law with respect to the House computer systems,' including stealing equipment or illegally accessing or transferring information." Prosecutors added: "Particularly, the Government has found no evidence that your client illegally removed House data from the House network or from House Members’ offices, stole the House Democratic Caucus Server, stole or destroyed House information technology equipment, or improperly accessed or transferred government information, including classified or sensitive information."
One of those "media children" coordinating with Trump and House Republicans was the MRC. In July 2017, Curtis Houck hyperventilated that Awan's arrest was part of a "disturbing story involving double billing, Hezbollah, smashed hard drives, and possessing the e-mails and files of leading congressional Democrats," citing, yes, Fox News and the Daily Caller. He added: "So, we have a shady I.T. staffer and his family running a firm that possibly compromised the e-mails and files for a number of key congressional Democrats. To the casual observer, that would probably strike them as disturbing." A couple days later, Houck declared that the non-conservative media's failure to cover Awan's arrest to the MRC's satisfaction proves that "the media are aiding and abetting liberals in their nefarious behavior."
Meanwhile, white nationalist-loving NewsBusters blogger Tom Blumer huffed that an Associated PRess article on Awan's arrest"spun the news in the most favorable way it could for beleaguered Democrats, making Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz look like the victim as it headlined her spokesman's claim that she fired Awan Tuesday after learning of his arrest. The fact is that Schultz has been involved in obstructing investigations into Awan's activities for months" and that the article "was written to protect [Rep. Debbie] Wasserman Schultz and the Democratic Party."
Charles Dorfeuille cheered how "The Hill reporter Joe Concha put the media on notice"-- though he failed to identify Concha as a writer with a conservative bias -- for ignoring Awan's arrest and "valid questions on what the now-arrested former Dem staffer was doing on the computers of the multiple congressional offices he was working on." Tim Graham got in on the act, whining that newspapers were "ignoring or downplaying the Imran Awan-Debbie Wasserman Schultz scandal."
Blumer returned to get upset that the New York Times accurately reported that President Trump was hyping Awan's arrest to attack Democrsts, then once again to further whine that "the scandal's multi-faceted and outrageous developments" involving the "rogue Democrat IT staffer" weren't being covered in the media to his satisfaction.
Additionally, the MRC published a column by Michelle Malkin touting the "criminal theft and hacking probe of the House Democrats' information security systems" involving Awan and other family members.
To sum up: Instead of apologizing for the false conspiracy theories it spread about Awan, the MRC chose instead to complain that it and the rest of the conservative media were justly "mocked" for putting conspiracies ahead of facts. But then, the MRC is just not not that into correcting the record.
WND Frets Again About Not Enough White People Topic: WorldNetDaily
For years, WorldNetDailyhasfretted about low birth rates among white people, compared with the swarthy, Muslim-y hordes who want to immigrate to Europe and the U.S., which usually takes place under the "demographic winter" euphemism. That fretting pops up yet again in an anonymously written July 12 article that starts off with the usual code words -- the words "white" and "Christian" are absent, instead obliquely referring to "Europe’s native population" -- but ultimately descends into right-wing huffing about "diversity" and "Islamic piety":
Newly released European Union figures show deaths surpassed births in 2017 among Europe’s native population.
The office Eurostat released the report ahead of World Population Day on Wednesday, reported LifeSiteNews.
The EU saw 5.3 million deaths and 5.1 million births in 2017 while the overall population increased from 511.5 million to 512.6 million due to immigration.
The report found Ireland retained the highest birth rate and lowest death rate in the EU, making its natural population growth five times higher than the EU’s average. Births also continued to outnumber deaths in Cyprus, Luxembourg, France, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Brian Stewart writes at The Federalist that Europe has been “importing a considerable mass of people on the unspoken assumption that more diversity in a society will invariably breed ever more tolerance.”
“Worse, this massive influx has been accompanied by an austere and often fervent Islamic piety; and this has been doubly dangerous,” he said.
That anonymous writer almost let his pro-white agenda out of the bag.
CNS Publishes Article For MRC To Use In Bashing Media It Doesn't Like Topic: Media Research Center
Remember how we noted earlier this month that CNSNews.com suddenly decided to highlight the low unemployment rate among Hispanics among its rah-rah pro-Trump monthly unemployment coverage? Turns out there was a reason for that: so its Media Research Center parent could use the cherry-picked stat to attack media outlets it doesn't like for not reporting it.
And the MRC did indeed get a lot of mileage out of it:
Tom Blumer (a few days before he was fired) played up the number, pointing out that "Craig Bannister at our sister site CNSNews.com noted the record-low Hispanic unemployment rate a half-hour after the jobs report's release" and complaining that "The establishment press's gatekeepers have been ignoring, downplaying, or deeply burying June's record-low Hispanic joblessness."
MRC Latino's Ken Oliver-Mendez wrote a post a couple hours later complaining that Hispanic TV networks Univision and Telemundo failed to report it: "One would think such a historic achievement would be news that night on the nation’s leading Spanish-language television news programs, but that was not the case."
Oliver then appeared on Fox Business to tout his attack on Univision and Telemundo, assering that this somehow "really illustrates the disconnect between the average Hispanic voter in the country and perhaps the average Hispanic viewer of Univision and Telemundo and what they're getting." Interestingly, Oliver-Mendez appeared with Fox Business host Charles Payne, whose travails with sexual harrassment allegations against him the MRC has censored.
And just to bring things full circle, Bannister wrote a blog post at CNS about Oliver's TV appearance promoting his CNS article. Bannister did helpfully include the disclaimer that "MRC Latino, like CNSNews.com, is a division of the Media Research Center (MRC)."
A truly independent news organization -- which the MRC likes to portray CNS as -- would not be writing "news" articles for the apparet sole purpose for use as activism by the parent organization. It's time for the MRC to publicly explain to readers what line -- if any -- exists between the editorial side and the activism side.
CNS Obsesses Over Strzok's Sex Life Topic: CNSNews.com
The testimony of FBI agent Peter Strzok was never going to get fair treatment from the pro-Trump stenographers at CNSNews.com. But what started out as a relatively straightforward accounting oi his House committee testimony ended obsessing about his sex life.
CNS' coverage began with an article by Susan Jones that, shockingly, uncritically presented Strzok's defense of his professional actions regardinghis work in the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation of Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election.This was followed by Melanie Arter taking the lazy way out and simply copying-and-pasting an exchange between Strzok and Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy.
Then it was time for CNS to denigrate Strzok by portraying him as defensive and a weasel about facts.Jones complained in one article that Strzok faced "friendly questioning from a fellow anti-Trumper" under the headline "Strzok: 'I've Done Nothing Wrong. Uh, Let Me Rephrase That'." Another Jones article featured questioning from a committee Republican, but she did not identify him as a "pro-Trumper" offering "hostile questioning" (y'know, just to be fair and balanced). By contrast, Jones cherry-picked a Democratic committee member in order to write dismissively about her statement that Republicans should thank Strzok for not speaking out about pro-Trump Russian influence in the campaign (since FBI agents are not allow to speak publicly about ongoing investigations) because that silence helped Trump get elected.
Tellingly, both of these articles are credited only to "CNSNews.com staff" -- which tells us that no CNS employee wanted their name to be put on its boss' obsession with Strzok's sex life.
Funny, we don't recall CNS ever referring to thrice-married adulterer Donald Trump as such in the headline of any article.
UPDATE: This isn't the first time CNS has fixated on Strzok's love life. A June 28 article -- also by "CNSNews.com Staff" -- highlighted FBI director Christopher Wray being asked whether "engaging in adultery was a “significant vulnerability” for an FBI counterintelligence agent, making sure to note that Strzok was having an "extramarital affair" with Page.
Buzzfeed detailed how anti-Muslim propaganda travels from Europe to the U.S., citing WND as a conduit. For example, an August 2017 article by the anti-Muslim Gatestone Institute carried the headline ""Muslims Tell Europe: 'One Day This Will All Be Ours'"-- but the article quotes no Muslim saying that (it game from a French Catholic bishop who was purporting to quote unnamed Muslims). WND republished part of the Gatestone article, complete with false headline.
WND has gotten burned by fake news from Gatestone before; we've documented how it promoted an alarmist Gatestone article about how more mosques than churches were being built in France, ignnoring that Christianity had a centuries-long head start over Islam in the country and has far more churches than Islam has mosques. Gatestone has since deleted its false article, but WND's article, by Alicia Powe (see below), remains live and uncorrected.
Meanwhile, Media Matters reported on the closeness between American conservatives and Macedonian-based fake news operations, noting that one figure in the operations, Trajche Arsov, had recruited Alicia Powe to write for one of those fake-news sites during the 2016 election, and that Powe also shared numerous fake-news stories on her personal Facebook page. Powe joined WND as a reporter in February 2017 -- where one of her beats was perpetuating Seth Rich conspiracy theories -- and stayed for approximately a year; she now writes for the even less credible Gateway Pundit.
Meanwhile, WND still won't admit its dubious editorial policies played a role in leading it to near-death, continuing to whine about Google and Facebook prioritizing other (read: more credlble) content.Until Joseph Farah and crew admit they have a problem and apologize to its readers for essentially lying to them, they can't even begin to fix it, let alone regain the credibility it needs to stay alive.
Alec Sears huffed in a July 2 Media Research Center post:
Michael Reagan's July 14 Newsmax 
The Media Research Center has been been moving in lockstep with its fellow conservative media outlets in defending President Trump and denouncing the Russia investigation as a witch hunt. Which means it's hilarously hypocritical for the MRC to accuse the non-conservative media of "collusion," which Ryan Foley did in a July 17 
You know how Jesse Lee Peterson 
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham is growing as unhinged as he claims the rest of the media is. He begins a July 14 
Treating minor political mischief as "news" is among the laziest thing a so-called journalist can do -- which is probably why WorldNetDaily is no stranger to the practice. For instance, WND once devoted 
A July 16 CNSNews.com 
An anonymous WorldNetDaily writer enthused in a June 29 
As the baseball season continues, so does 
WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian has to go deep into 
In a July 5 Media Research Center 
For years
Remember how we 
The testimony of FBI agent Peter Strzok was never going to get fair treatment from the pro-Trump stenographers at CNSNews.com. But what started out as a relatively straightforward accounting oi his House committee testimony ended obsessing about his sex life.
We've documented WorldNetDaily's 
