MRC Lamely Attacks Study Debunking Its Conservative-Victim Narrative
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center just hates it when its narratives are debunked -- in no small part because it can't be bothered to make even a miminal defense of them. Which brings us to a Feb. 1 item by Corinne Weaver complaining that a study blew up one of the MRC's biggest narratives, that conservatives are uniquely being "censored" on social media:

A study released by the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights decided that the argument that conservatives are being censored by Big Tech is “not legitimate.”

“False Accusation: The Unfounded Claim that Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives,” levied the accusation that conservative censorship is a myth. Deputy Director Paul M. Barrett and Law + Research Fellow J. Grant Sims wrote that “the claim of anti-conservative animus is itself a form of disinformation: a falsehood with no reliable evidence to support it.” The study referred to the overall bans of former President Donald Trump on Facebook and Twitter as “reasonable responses to Trump’s repeated violation of platform rules.” 

The piece accused Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), conservative commentator Ben Shapiro and Fox News host Tucker Carlson of spreading “The false contention that conservatives are throttled online.” The problem with criticizing online censorship now, according to the study, is that it delegitimizes efforts made by platforms “when they’re actually experimenting with more aggressive forms of fact-checking and content moderation.”

The study relied on NewsGuard’s classification of “manipulators.” It noted, “All of the top five manipulators, in terms of their engagement levels on Facebook, were right-leaning: Fox News, The Daily Wire, Breitbart, The Blaze, and Western Journal.”

Furthermore, Barrett and Sims relied on the leftist Oxford Internet Institute’s report on “junk news.” That report had classified several conservative websites as “junk news,” including Drudge Report, NewsBusters, CNSNews.com, MRCTV, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, The Washington Free Beacon, LifeNews, National Review, the Red State, and The Federalist. These sites were smeared as “unprofessional,” “counterfeit,” “biased” and “emotionally driven.”

Note that all Weaver does here is dismiss the study as "liberal" and relied on a "leftist" group's previous report; she later accused the Stern Center of having "a liberal advisory board." At no point does Weaver even attempt to rebut any claim actually made in the report.

Weaver has previousluy attacked the "leftist" OII -- as we've noted, last October she bashed it for concluding that the MRC's NewsBusters blog (where her posts appear) publishes "junk news" and that the MRC's Curtis Houck offered a biased analysis of a presidential debate. In 2018, Weaver attacked another OII study concluding that "junk news" is disproportionately created by right-wing websites; she offered no rebuttal of that claim either, instead whining that "Liberal media will go a long way to portray conservatives as liars -- all the way to England."

There's a lot in the Stern Center report that's pretty damning of the MRC's victimization narrative, though Weaver will never admit it. It stated that "Even anecdotal evidence of supposed bias tends to crumble under close examination" -- and offered examples. It takes to task Robert Epstein -- a favorite of the MRC for his dubious research claiming that Google manipulates search results for the purpose of "switching" votes from  Democrats to Republicans:

The basic question Epstein asks—how might internet searching affect voting—is potentially important. But his extrapolation to hard numbers of purposefully changed votes seems highly questionable. Francesca Tripodi, a social media scholar at the University of North Carolina who has reviewed Epstein’s work, says in an interview that he lacks evidence of either Google’s intent to manipulate elections or that the company has distorted search results toward that end. In a November 2020 article in Slate, she writes that “his hypothesis that Google influenced U.S. elections has never been rigorously tested or reviewed by political or information scientists.”

In fact, there is other research that clashes with Epstein’s findings. A study released in 2019 by researchers at Stanford University concluded that Google’s search algorithm is not biased along political lines and instead emphasizes authoritative sources. In a separate inquiry published the same year, The Economist came to a similar conclusion. The magazine compared news sites’ actual proportion of search results in Google’s News tab with a predictive model of that proportion based on factors Google says its search rankings rely on—namely, a site’s reach, output, and accuracy. “If Google favored liberals, left-wing sites would appear more often than our model predicted, and right-wing ones less,” The Economistsaid. “We saw no such trend.”

Epstein counters that his “work is meticulous. My standards are very high.” He points out that in 2015, he co-authored an article on SEME for the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That piece, however, didn’t make any allegations against Google or point to any actual vote manipulation.

The report also blows up the MRC's key narrative that Twitter exclusively bans conservatives for expressing mainstream conservative views:

Conservatives do get suspended or banned for violating Twitter’s rules against such things as harassment, hateful conduct, or, as in Trump’s case, glorifying violence. But liberals are excluded in this fashion, as well. Pinning down precise proportions is impossible because Twitter doesn’t release sufficient data.

[...]

More broadly, Twitter has suspended or banned individuals and groups of highly disparate political persuasions. In 2018, the platform excluded some 80 accounts belonging to activists affiliated with the left-leaning Occupy movement. According to some of these activists, Twitter revoked the accounts without giving a reason. In February 2020, Twitter banned 70 accounts affiliated with Mike Bloomberg’s short-lived campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, reportedly for violating the platform’s policy against platform manipulation and spam.

On the right, Twitter doesn’t target conservatives or Republicans as such, but people who violate its rules by calling for violence, harassing others, or advocating hateful ideologies. Among the right-leaning users who have faced enforcement action are white nationalists like Richard Spencer, Jared Taylor, and David Duke, as well as white nationalist organizations such as the American Nazi Party, the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party, and American Renaissance magazine.

Weaver could not possibly offer a response to this because "media researchg" isn't what the MRC does -- its job is to push right-wing narratives.

This is what happens when you put a partisan narrative first, as the MRC has done with its anti-social media war: you get swiftly and painfully owned by actual media researchers.

Farah Falsely Suggests WND Still Has A Reporter At The White House
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Joseph Farah was in a fearmongering mood (but when isn't he, really?) in his Jan. 28 WorldNetDaily column:

First, it was the act of using the term "China virus" that was effectively banned by Joe Biden.

Now that appears to be only the beginning.

What does Biden's press shop have in store? Throwing out of the White House briefing room every member of the MAGA media – a virtual war on the likes of Sean Spicer, host of a Newsmax show, Eric Bolling, host of Sinclair's "America This Week," One America News, the Daily Caller, Breitbart and WND.

Bolling, who interviewed President Trump seven times and occasionally attended press briefing, is worried that he may lose his credential. He has submitted an application to the White House Correspondents' Association to try to prevent his banishment.

"I hope to hold this administration as accountable as the media held the Trump administration," Bolling said.

Well, it turns out that Bolling had more immediate concerns. ON the same day Farah's column came out, he was fired by Sinclair for pushing too many coronavirus lies and conspiracy theories, including that vaccines didn't work.

Farah then moved on to burnishing WND's once-existent reputation as a news organization that once had a reporter at the White House:

As for WND, one of the very first online news companies, it was a long hard fight to get a hard pass to cover the U.S. Senate. After an initial denial, it took 19 months, two appeals, a massive letter-writing campaign by loyal readers, calls from members of Congress and the threat of a lawsuit, before WND finally got its Senate press credentials. The victory came on 3-2 vote Jan. 29, 2003.

I doubt very much WND would be approved today for a hard pass to cover the White House – in a time of censorship, cancel culture and since the war declared on President Trump declared him to be persona non grata.

Farah conveniently omits the fact that WND hasn't had a regular reporter at the White House for years, since Les Kinsolving -- who was rightly seen as a wildly biased joke by the rest of the White House press corps --  held the job (and he died in 2018).

Farah then complained that "At the White House, the new Biden staffers have imposed a new standard that may exclude more reporters than made the cut in the Trump years" quoting a press office official saying that "We expect reporters covering the White House to operate in good faith and tell their audience the truth, and this White House will do the same.. ... Organizations or individuals who traffic in conspiracy theories, propaganda and lies to spread disinformation will not be tolerated."

Trafficking in conspiracy theories, propaganda and lies to spread disinformation? That describes WND to a T, and it's why WND would likely not be approved for a White House press pass today. No wonder Farah's worried -- never mind that WND hasn't sent a reporter to the White House in years and likely won't be anytime soon given the continuing precarious state of its finances.

Farah concluded by serving up false bravado and Trump nostalgia: "WND, for its part, has been around for 24 years. We expect to survive whatever is coming from the Biden administration, as bad it might be. We look forward to being here for the next act of a real president, Donald Trump – it will be true renaissance."

CNS Reporter Remains Overly Excited Over Minor Israel Deals -- And Ready To Attack Biden
Topic: CNSNews.com

We've documented how CNSNews.com -- particularly reporter Patrick Goodenough -- has been enamored of the normalization deals Israel made with minor Islamic countries (some not even in the Middle East) that were negotiated under the Trump administration. That enamor, for the deals and Israel itself, hasn't faded. Goodenough gushed in a Jan. 25 article:

Building on the foundation of the normalization agreement brokered by the Trump administration last summer, Israel on Sunday opened an embassy in the United Arab Emirates, and the Gulf state’s cabinet approved the establishment of an embassy in Tel Aviv.

The progress came despite the coronavirus pandemic. Israel is currently in its third national lockdown, and an uptick in deaths attributed to COVID-19 prompted Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday to announce a week-long shutdown of almost all flights in and out of the country.

Goodenough went on to complain that "some critics of President Trump played down their significance, arguing for instance that they were not peace agreements per se, since the Arab countries had not been at war with Israel."

Quinn Weimer supported the narrative in a Feb. 1 article touting how "President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his business partner Avi Berkowitz were nominated by Harvard Law Emeritus Professor Alan Dershowitz for the Nobel Peace Prize, to be awarded in October 2021," for their work on the normallization deals.

Meanwhile, Goodenough used a Feb. 17 article to complain that President Biden hadn't called Netanyahu already, pointing out that "Netanyahu, whose relationship with President Trump was a warm one, is known to be wary of Biden’s plans to re-engage Iran, and his offer to re-enter the Obama-era nuclear deal if Tehran returns to compliance" and adding that "the length of time taken does appear to be a departure from the norm." But Goodenough had to revise his article later in the day after it was revealed that Biden did call Netanyahu.

Strangely, even though Goodenough and CNS care so much about Israel, it has completely censored an mention of the  corruption trial Netanyahu is currently undergoing (though he petulantly walked out of the trial). Even though the trial has been going on since last May, CNS has devoted no article to it. Goodenough arguably has the time to do one, considering 1) he's the international editor and it's his beact, and 2) there was purportedy so little to do on that beat that he devoted a story to the "sexually explicit" lyrics of rappers campaigning for Democratic Senate candidates in Georgia (the state, not the country).

MRC Pushed The Lie That Psaki Wanted Questions In Advance
Topic: Media Research Center

Media Research Center executive Tim Graham presumably chortled heartily to hgimself as he wrote this Feb. 1 item:

Daily Beast media reporter Maxwell Tani is reporting that anonymous White House reporters are tattling on Jen Psaki's press team, that they have already probed reporters to find out what questions they plan on asking Psaki during the daily briefings. Some of these reporters don't like an idea forming that they're coordinating their questions and coverage with the Democratic staff. 

The Biden White House did not deny this report, but the White House says "it has tried to foster a better relationship with the press corps than the previous administration, and has tried to reach out to reporters directly in order to avoid appearing to dodge questions during briefings."

You can see Psaki wanting to cut down on the "circle back" answers, but this kind of snooping can also affect which reporters are called on, and who might be skipped, or delayed until the end, when cable news might move on from live coverage.

It's always amusing to see reprters using each other as anonymous sources, so they can keep the White House from learning who's tattling on them. Journalists love to preach the need for transparency, and routinely avoid it with their sourcing.

Just one problem: It's not true, at least in the way Graham wants you to think it is. As Matthew Yglesias pointed out, well down in the Daily Beast article is a segment that discredits the entire premise:

Under previous administrations, many White House reporters would meet informally in the morning for gaggles with the press secretaries. During these interactions, White House communications staff could get a sense of the topics reporters were interested in that day, and would come prepared for questions during televised briefings later in the afternoon.

Eric Schultz, a former deputy press secretary in the Obama White House, said that the new comms team was restoring normalcy to the briefing process. Finding out what reporters are focusing on, he said, was standard procedure in most pre-Trump White Houses in order to reduce the number of questions that go unanswered during televised briefings.

“This is textbook communications work. The briefing becomes meaningless if the press secretary has to repeatedly punt questions, instead of coming equipped to discuss what journalists are reporting on,” he said. “In a non-covid environment, this would happen in casual conversations throughout the day in lower and upper press. One of the few upsides to reporters hovering over your desk all day, is that you get a very quick sense of what they’re working on.”

In other words: Psaki's comms shop is simply re-establishing what the White House press office did before Trump. Other reporters have also confirmed that Psaki was returning to a pre-Trump norm that nobody objected to. Graham isn't going to tell you that, though.

Nevertheless, Kristine Marsh kept the bogus narrative going in a Feb. 3 post, complaining that "The View’sliberal hosts weren’t only bored by the Daily Beast report that the White House press office was already asking reporters to feed them the questions before press briefings; in fact, they rationalized and defended it." She then laughably referred to 'the alarming behavior from the Biden administration," censoring the fact that this behavior occured and was accepted under many previous presidential administrations.

Meanwhile, Curtis Houck dishonestly complained in his daily press briefing writeup on Feb. 2 that "not a single reporter stepped up to ask Psaki about the embarrassing Daily Beast report that her team had been probing reporters to pre-screen their questions ahead of briefings. Talk about a case of collusion." Houck repeated the claim the next day.

Over at the MRC's more extreme MRCTV operation, Sergie Daez huffed: "Jen Psaki is off to a poor start as White House press secretary. Even though she’s been positively pampered by the leftist media, Psaki can’t seem to give direct answers to reporters in White House press briefings, constantly saying that she’ll 'circle back' instead. Now, it looks like the direct answers she is able to give can't come without rehearsal."

Daez cited a Fox News report as the basis for the post, which censored the fact that Psaki was returning to a pre-Trump practice.

In short: The MRC got days of content from spreading a lie. Don't expect Graham and Co. to apologize.

Michael Reagan: From The 'Reichstag Flu' To The 'Reichstag Riot'
Topic: Newsmax

When Germany was just on the cusp of becoming Hitler’s Germany, the Nazis needed an event that would fit their narrative.

That narrative was the near future was so threatening Hitler needed extraordinary power to save the nation.

Rather than wait, the Nazi’s created their own event and arranged for the burning the seat of the lower house of the legislature.

The resultant Reichstag Fire of Feb. 27, 1933 paved the way for Hitler to assume absolute power in his adopted country. 

The situation here in the United States last year was different.

The left was out of power and needed an issue that would make Donald Trump vulnerable in November. Then came a virus which blew up into a pandemic.

Thus, the OpMedia and Democrats turned a virus that was 99.8%  survivable into the "Reichstag flu."

[...]

Once Trump lost it was obvious that the left was going to be a collective sore winner.

Revenge and punishment were definitely on the agenda.

Only a pretext was needed.

Then Trump himself gave the left the Reichstag Riot where a few hundred of his rowdy, angry and violent followers breached the grounds of the Capitol and invaded the building.

The leftists in charge of our government have used that one-and-done riot as a pretext for what looks like a permanent crackdown on conservatives.

As this is written thousands of National Guard troops are still garrisoned in Washington, D.C. and hastily built razor-wire fencing is keeping ordinary citizens away from the buildings and officeholders their tax dollars have made and continue to make possible.

If we recall correctly, the USA went to Iraq to bring democracy to an authoritarian country.

What appears to have happened instead is the authoritarianism have been brought back to America. A Pentagon spokesman estimates the cost of keeping troops in the armed camp that is D.C. approaches half-a-billion-dollars.

There is no threat to the Capitol that could not be thwarted by using the thousands of law enforcement officers that are already there.

The troop’s job is to send a message to Trump voters.

And the message is the left is in charge now.

If they can turn Washington, D.C. into an Iraq-ike Green Zone without any pushback from our country club conservatives, just think of what they can do to individual Trump voters.

-- Michael Reagan and Michael Shannon, Feb. 13 Newsmax column

(Hey, at least Reagan admits that Trump lost the election and instigated the Capitol riot, though it's somehow not Trump's fault that the riot forced new security measures at the Capitol.)

(Also, the one in three people whose coronvirius symptoms linger well past  the typical two weeks might not want to hear Reagan blithely dismiss the virus as "99.8% survivable."

NEW ARTICLE: A Catholic Crack-Up At CNS
Topic: CNSNews.com
The uber-Catholics who run CNSNews.com still think they're more Catholic than the pope and will chastise Pope Francis for not hating gay people enough -- but they flip-flopped on how to report on a prominent bishop caught in sexual misconduct. Read more >>

WND Pushes False Claim That Pro-Lindell Boycott Hurt Company's Stock
Topic: WorldNetDaily

It's good that WorldNetDaily is getting more proactive about correcting false articles (though maybe it should do a better job of fact-checking before publication). But there are others that still need correction. Art Moore wrote in a Jan. 28 WND article:

Amid a boycott in response to its politically motivated decision to drop Mike Lindell's MyPillow products, shares of Bed Bath & Beyond plunged 36.4% at the close of trading Thursday.

The retail chain suffered its biggest one-day loss since going public in June 1992.

The consumer organization Media Action Network launched the boycott of Bed, Bath & Beyond after the retail chain stopped selling Lindell's products due to his support of President Trump's claim that fraud affected the outcome of the 2020 election. Retailers Wayfair and Kohl's also have stopped selling MyPillow products.

Lindell, famous for his TV ads, employs more than 1,500 people at his Minnesota plant. He recounted to WND last May the remarkable transformation in his lifethrough his faith in Jesus Christ.

"This isn't about pillows. It's about the continual punishment of conservative speech," Media Action Network founder Ken LaCorte said in an announcement of the boycott.

"And we've had enough."

Just one problem: There's no actual proof that a boycott or any Lindell-related action resulted in the steep share drop. As Media Matters summed it up:

The supposed “collapse” of retailer Bed Bath & Beyond’s stock has obviously got nothing to do with its decision to not carry MyPillow products. Rather, the company's stock price had recently become artificially high as part of the current online craze of small investors buying up stocks that had been short-sold by large hedge funds. The stock price then eventually fell from those heights. (The most famous example of such stocks is video game retailer GameStop, but it also includes other companies such as AMC, Blackberry, and Nokia.)

Moore also failed to tell his readers that Lindell's conspiracy theories aren't "conservative speech" -- they are falsehoods. So there's a lot of work to be done to make a full correction here.

The MRC's Hitler Hypocrisy Strikes Again
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has a bad habit of getting mad about others using Hitler comparisons when it does so on a regular basis, and it apparently has no intention of stopping its hypocrisy.

Teirin-Rose Mandelberg groused on Jan. 25 that director Spike Lee stated that Trump "will go down in history with the likes of Hitler," then played whataboutism: "The Capitol riots were disgraceful. But anyone who excused the summer’s race violence is in no position to dole out blame. Lee is blind to his own hypocrisy." The same day, Alexa Moutevelis channeled her inner Rush Limbaugh and used an article to smear abortion-rights supporters as "feminazis." 

On Jan. 27, Lindsay Kornick complained:

Talk about throwing Godwin’s Law out the window. This latest op-ed from the Philadelphia Inquirer goes so far as to compare Donald Trump to Hitler on Holocaust Remembrance Day. National unity is looking more and more like a pipe dream by the day.

On January 27, retired Inquirer editor David Lee Preston did his part in remembering one of the worst atrocities in humanity by, what else, comparing President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. His piece, aptly-titled “Is it wrong to compare Trump to Hitler? No,” dives straight to the point that yes, it is now okay to connect a former U.S. president to the Nazi dictator.

[...]

The last thing this nation needs is more lying, fearmongering, and division. And the last thing this solemn Holocaust Remembrance Day needed was a sideshow of more whiny Trump comparisons to Hitler.

Kornick then downplayed the  Jan. 6 right-wing riot at the Capitol by complaining about the writer's compaison of it to Kristallnacht: "Absolutely, yes, they are different! Once again, the Capitol Hill attack was reprehensible. What it wasn’t was a night of widespread slaughter and destruction targeting an oppressed minority. Any comparison of the two is disgusting, especially during a time when we’re supposed to honor the 11 million lives lost to the Holocaust, including six million Jewish people."

On Feb. 11, Tim Graham noted that ABC correspondent Terry Moran said of Trump's grip on the Republican Party: "He has the Republican party as a personalized power like we haven't seen. It's a caudillo, it’s a Caesar, it's a Fuhrer, we don't see that in this country. We do now." He huffed in response: "It's a little strange considering some rogue Republicans are voting and speaking out against Trump, which doesn't sound much like Hitler's Germany in action. But the media insist: you either agree with our plot, or you're like a Nazi."

If GOP criticism of Trump is a normal thing these days, where is that to be found on the MRC network of websites? Graham pointed to no examples, and we've seen no space on any MRC website where conservatives are permitted to criticize Trump with impunity.

Nicholas Fondacaro ranted in a Feb. 22 post:

To kick off Sunday’s Global Public Square, CNN host Fareed Zakaria, praised a “brilliant scholarly work” comparing British and German conservative parties in the early 20th century. The point was to suggest that America was on its way to emulate Germany with the modern Republican Party and News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch marching to create a new Nazi Party to destroy our democracy.

But fear not, Zakaria reassured would-be critics he wasn’t saying Republicans WERE Nazis. He was only saying they’re LIKE Nazis. He said this while the chyron said " Republicans need an exorcism."

Fondacaro then baselessly claimed that "Zakaria betrayed his own disgust for democracy and the will of the governed." That's a rather rich complaint given that his employer is still peddling the Big Lie that the election was stolen from Trump.

None of these complaints about others going Godwin noted that their boss, Brent Bozell, declared of Twitter removing Trump's account and Amazon Web Services canceling its hosting deal with Parler over the hate and violence Parler permitted: "Stalin censored speech. So did Mao. So did Hitler. It’s what tyrants do."

None of these MRC employees was fretting about Bozell spreading "lying, fearmongering, and division." None of these employees accused Bozell of being blind to his own hypocrisy. They're just loyal MRC drones being paid to not hold themselves to the same standards they demand of others.

CNS Piles On AOC Over Remarks About Cruz
Topic: CNSNews.com

The Media Research Center wasn't alone in trashing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for expressing her sincere fears about her fellow members of Congress who supported the attempt to overturn the presidential election that culminated in the Capitol riot. Its "news" division, CNSNews.com, joined in as well.

In a Jan. 22 article, Susan Jones seemed offended that Ocasio-Cortez didn't attend President Biden's inauguration in part because "we still don't yet feel safe around other members of Congress," specifically citing Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. Jones made sure to call Ocasio-Cortez a "non-senator" and tried to whitewash what the senators tried to do:

For the record, neither Sen. Hawley nor Cruz advocated “insurrection” or overturning the results of the 2020 election.

Hawley said he would vote against certification of the Electoral College tally because it was the only way to air his and his constituents' concerns about problems with the election and have a chance to debate it, as the law and Constitution allow.

Cruz and other Republican senators advocated a 10-day delay in congressional certification to make time for an audit of the results in swing states.

When Ocasio-Cortez explicitly claiming that Cruz was trying to get her killed through his support of overtunring the election (and he did effectively do that no matter what Jones thinks), CNS was quick to rush out Republicans demanding an apology in similarly headlined items, all by Craig Bannister:

• Lee: AOC ‘Should Be Admonished or Censured’ If She Doesn’t Retract False Claim Cruz Was ‘Trying to Get Me Killed’
• Rep. Roy to Pelosi: Call on AOC to ‘Immediately Apologize and Retract’ Tweet Accusing Cruz of 'Trying to Get Me Killed'
• 14 House Members Urge Pelosi to Call on AOC to ‘Apologize and Retract’ Tweet Accusing Cruz of 'Trying to Get Me Killed'

Bannister let the Republicans claim that Ocasio-Cortez was making a false accusation without providing the context for it. In the Roy item, he wrote: "On January 6 of this year, when a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol while votes electing Joe Biden as president were being certified, Sen. Cruz was 'simply engaging in speech and debate regarding electors,' not threatening Ocasio-Cortez, Roy says" -- but he didn't tell readers that the attempt to overturn the election Cruz supported help instigate the riot.

Bannister comes off as doing PR for Republicans instead of being a reporter.

MRC Complains Once Again That Fictional (And Real) People Advocating For Abortion Are Not Shamed
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has long complained that woman who seek abortions -- even fictional characters -- are not shamed for doing so and that they and abortions providers are not smeared as Nazis. Well, the're on that kick again. Teirin-Rose Mandelberg complained in a Jan. 22 post ofering up a bizarre caricature of abortion-rights supporters:

Today’s a high holy day for lefties. On this date, January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade and mass infanticide became the law of the land.

Abortion clinic volunteer Lauren Rankin marked the occasion by complaining that “We Still Have a Long Way to Go.” Forty-eight years and 63 million lives later, the left still isn’t satisfied. What’s new?

Rankin wants laws updated so women can have access to dangerous abortion drugs via mail without a doctor's visit. Ostensibly, she’s worried about women being too nervous about COVID to go to an abortion clinic. But social distancing is a pretext so women can abort even more conveniently -- another leftist attempt to overstep and gain control.

[...]

Hollywood tries to "normalize" abortion and celebrities use it as a “dedicated to my craft” badge of honor. Having an abortion constitutes popularity.

Alexa Moutevelis used a Jan. 25 article to smear abortion-rights supporters as "feminazis" (looks like somebody's been listening to too much Rush Limbaugh!). And Rebecca Downs ranted on Jan. 29:

Not only have media outlets been ignoring the hundreds of thousands of pro-life Americans who participate in the March for Life, but they've been promoting and normalizing abortion on television. This has been going on for years, and 2020 was no different from 2019 and 2018.

Despite coronavirus canceling and postponing tv production for several months, they still managed to squeeze in several abortion storylines. Here's how abortion was portrayed on television last year.

[...]

In order for abortion to seem normal, viewers have to be bombarded that it’s no big deal.

Downs also pushed the dubious claim -- citing only an anti-abortion website -- that a chemically induced abortion can be reversed. And while she huffed at "leftist propaganda" on abortion, she was not above inserting some propaganda of her own:

It’s a biological fact that life begins at conception, meaning it's a child, the whole time. Not only is it a child, even going by the pro-abortion logic that it isn't a child until a later stage, it "would be" a child.

[...]

For an “honest abortion story” that is “diverse,” rather than just the one pro-abortion perspective television wants us to see, it would also include women experiencing not just the loss of their children, but suffering from psychological and physical effects, and from regret. 

Moutevelis returned in a Feb. 24 post to complain some more about "abortion propaganda" on TV -- unironically sounding a lot like a propagandist herself:

Pro-abortion columns are notorious for lacking facts and building bad faith strawmen to knock down, but I think this is the first time I’ve seen such a poorly constructed argument in a major paper like The Washington Post. If you're going to call for more baby slaughter on entertainment TV, put some thought into it.

Even the premise of the article is ridiculous. Apparently, the author just happened to be watching a show from 2019 that had an unexpectedly pregnant character and so she decided to rant about there not being enough abortions on TV. What editor authorizes an op-ed based on an obscure show that’s years old and includes no research to back up its hypothesis or make it relevant to today?

Somehow, on Friday afternoon, the WaPo powers that be allowed a Kate Cohen article to be published online complaining that the 2019 Netflix series Atypical did not include the preborn baby slaughter she’d wanted.

[...]

In fact, if she had made any attempt at research, she would have found that in 2019, The New York Times said abortions were “unapologetically” on TV “at record levels.” If she is still stuck in the past consuming media from 2019, I can also offer her the news that in that year, actress, director, and producer Elizabeth Banks joined the Creative Council at the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) to “help destigmatize abortion by sharing and supporting women's stories” in the entertainment industry. Or maybe she could read her own outlet’s The Washington Post Magazine piece that same year about “abortion rights…winning in Hollywood” because of Planned Parenthood consultants.

But Cohen, who wrote this column based on her own outdated anecdotes, with no statistics, facts or interviews to back her up, had the audacity to lecture, “Those who contribute to the cultural space have a responsibility to consider the historical and political context into which their work will land.” Maybe she should look in the mirror.

Written like a true propagandist for the cause, where opposing arguments must be obliterated and the people who make them must be stripped of their humanity.

WND Columnists Refuse To Take Biden's Election Well
Topic: WorldNetDaily

COVID-19 was more than just a pretext for crashing the U.S. economy to take down Trump. It served to justify repressive police-state controls across the globe. The election-fraud campaign was about more than stealing the presidency. It produced the stunning abandonment of any pretense of fairness or due-process in the vicious enforcement of Marxist narratives by all the power players of the elites: a result that will likely not be reversed despite the coup being completed. The dystopian jack-booted surrealism of Baghdad Biden's pending "inauguration" is more likely a glimpse at the "new normal" than just an historical aberration.

That's the soberingly pessimistic view we must include in our contingency planning, even as we hope – and work – for the best.

-- Scott Lively, Jan. 19 WorldNetDaily column

In October, Joe Biden told us America is headed into a "dark winter" and repeated that phrase Wednesday in his Inaugural Address. As America and Western nations head into a new Dark Age, ordinary citizens have increasingly little say over their own nations' political decisions. And when voters do exert their preferences over the objection of globalist elites, the political establishment uses their control of the bureaucracy to hamstring and block every change until they can reassert control.

-- Sean Harshey, Jan. 20 WND column

It is frankly disturbing, and more than a little terrifying, therefore, that more than a few Democrats and left-leaning pundits are calling for Republicans and conservatives, including Christian Republicans, conservatives and supporters of President Trump, to be deprived of their rights to free speech and freedom to assemble peaceably, as guaranteed by the First Amendment in the United States Constitution. In fact, some of them are even calling for the establishment of reeducation camps for those who reject the political and economic talking points put forth by the Democratic Party and its echo chambers, Big Tech, the mainstream media and the teachers unions. This is a real concern. Look at how many Democrat-appointed judges who are willing to go along with such totalitarian nonsense. If Democrat-appointed judges can force a Christian baker to bake a cake supporting same-sex marriage, or pay a big fine that destroys his business, why wouldn't Democratic elected officials force people to publicly support a taxpayer-funded government program to burn books they don't like, including a program to imprison the authors of those books? After all, we've already seen some elected Democrats refuse to stop or prosecute "protesters" trying to remove statues of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant from the public square.

-- Ted Baehr, Jan. 20 WND column

It's beginning to occur to me that when Joe Biden talks about "unity," he's not talking about we deplorables, or loyalist Trump backers, or even just plain old Republicans.

Remember, Trump supporters are the ones he has called by such vicious names as "extremists," "white supremacists" and "domestic terrorists."<

In fact, as we have learned in the last few days, we are considered his enemies – worse than the Iranian regime, worse than al-Qaida, needing deprogramming – and prompting the announcement of a brand new domestic terror program aimed at us.

As far as Biden is concerned, he's coming after all of us – he's approving of it in advance, he's celebrating it. Why do you think his inauguration had 25,000 National Guardsmen? To protect a couple hundred people? To add an audience to the proceedings? Come on, man. This was a show of force – nothing less.

-- Joseph Farah, Jan. 20 WND column

Having successfully circumvented the will of the American people to an extent never before realized, look for the Biden administration, its surrogates, congressional Democrats and radical socialists at large to become emboldened to an exponential degree – far more than when Barack Obama occupied the White House. The majority of Americans simply have no advocate at this juncture, save for a paltry handful of Republicans in Congress. The socialists have won.

I could project what the weeks and months ahead might hold for us, but I obviously don't know for sure. As it stands, my past prognostications – accurate though they may have been – didn't count for much, save for the edification of those who were pretty well clued-in to start with.

-- Erik Rush, Jan. 20 WND column

I wrote a while back about what Ernest Hemingway described as a writer's most important tool: it's called "a built in, shock proof s–- detector." Mine has been blaring loud and clear since the campaign attorneys did not cite the U.S. Supreme Court's 1997 Foster v. Love 9-0 decision, which ruled that Election Day means Election DAY. Ballot counting stops at midnight. That's when it's over.

States never considered this when they counted their ballots and certified their election and ballot counting that went on for days. The Senate and House ignored it when they accepted those flawed results. You can work out for yourself where the end of Election Day left the two candidates last November. Maybe that is part of what is giving me this unfinished-story feeling.

[...]

Is it possible this coup is really directed against Almighty God and His government? The usurpers would be many: governments, our own as well as others, with cameo appearances by big media and big tech.

As such, would it be so surprising to see such an insurrection addressed by Almighty God? As the momentarily former President Trump likes to say, "I guess we'll see what happens."

Maybe you're not there yet. I understand. But I think we are going to see a divine response to what is in reality a coup against our Creator and His Laws.

-- Craige McMillan, Jan. 22 WND column

Remember the old New Orleans Saints coach Jim Mora, who went nuts at a press conference? "Playoffs? Are you kidding me? Playoffs?" he said.

You can quote me today: "Unity? Are you freakin' kidding me? Unity? There's no unity. President Joe Biden can mouth the word 'unity' all he wants. It's a lie. Democrats don't want unity. They want to censor us, ban us, purge us, wipe away American history like it never happened and then intimidate us into meekly going along with it all. They want us to kneel and say thank you while they destroy America and the American way of life. That's what they mean by 'unity.' So, you can take your unity and shove it where the sun don't shine."

[...]

Biden is not a "moderate." He is either a radical Marxist out to destroy America or a feeble old man with dementia being used as a puppet by George Soros, former President Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Ilhan Omar and other radical, extreme, crazed America haters to destroy this country. But it really doesn't matter. Either way, he's leading us down the road to disaster, ruin, misery and poverty. He is going to turn America into Venezuela.

This isn't "unity." It's the destruction of America and everything that ever made it great. I'm not in unity. Are you?

Count me as "the Resistance."

Wayne Allyn Root, Jan. 25 WND column

MRC's Houck Uses Space Force Quip To Attack Psaki
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck has made it claear that -- in a reversal of his obsequious fawning over Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and wild attacks on any reporter who asked her a challenging question -- Biden press secretary Jen Psaki would be a target and any reporter who asked her a challenging question would be virtuous.

Houck is reviewing Psaki's press briefings as a "performance," looking for ways to attack. Thus, he declared in a Feb. 2 post because she was not sufficiently reverent of the Space Force that was created under President Trump:

Tuesday’s White House press briefing was perhaps Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s most combative one yet, facing tough questions on China, coronavirus relief, illegal immigration, Israel, and schools but also softballs on topics like COVID and impeachment.

[...]

 

It was the Space Force question that raised the most eyebrows as Bloomberg’s Josh Wingrove simply wanted to know if President Biden “has made a decision on keeping or keeping the scope of the Space Force.”

Psaki interjected and chuckled, making a reference to a question about Air Force One from the inaugural briefing: “Wow, Space Force. It's the plane of today.”

Wingrove pushed back that this matters and Psaki further beclowned herself: “It is an interesting question. I'm happy to check with our Space Force point of contact. I'm not sure who that is and find out and see if we have any update on that.”

Hours later, Psaki tweeted in a piece of damage control that the administration “look[s] forward to the continuing work of Space Force.”

We don't recall Houck ever saying that McEnany "beclowned herself" -- he was much to enamored by her allegedly sick burns and scripted insults of the media she was supposed to be briefing (thought she did, indeed, beclown herself regularly).

The next day, Houck got more mileage out of the Space Force kerfuffle while adding in a couple other pedantic attacks:

On Thursday’s episode of the White House press briefing, Press Secretary Jen Psaki refused to apologize for having mocked the Space Force a day earlier and skimped on funding schools that teachers unions have kept shuttered, and falsely claimed that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was the first openly gay cabinet secretary.

[...]

The daughter of astronauts, the Fox News Channel’s Kristin Fisher brought up the Bloomberg reporter Josh Wingrove’s Space Force question: “The top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee is asking you to apologize for the comments made yesterday in the briefing room about the space force. Will you apologize?”

Psaki declined, only alluding to a tweet she sent “invite members of Space Force here to provide an update to all of you on all the important work they're doing and we certainly look forward to seeing continued updates from there — from their team.”

But before the above quote, she worked in another dig at the Space Force: “I did send a tweet last night. You may not all be on Twitter. Maybe they’re not on Twitter.”

Houck then complained that "Psaki memory-holed former acting DNI Richard Grenell as having been the first openly-gay cabinet official when she boasted that the Senate had 'just confirmed as the first LGBTQ secretary in a cabinet.'" But he didn't mention that Grenell was only an acting cabinet official; Buttigieg is the first gay official to be confirmed by the Senate, nor did he mention all the falsehoods McEnany from the podium.

Houck also grumbled: "And yet, no one stepped up to the plate to ask Psaki about a 2020 tweet of hers calling “LadyG,” specifically). After expressing interest in past statements from Kayleigh McEnany, the press corps doesn’t seem to care about Psaki’s record." Houck didn't care about McEnany's record, and he certainly didn't mention the MRC's proud anti-LGBT record -- which included the MRC's Dan Gainor working to get Grenell fired from Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign simply because he was gay.

CNS Columnist Still Whining About Minorities Getting COVID Vaccine
Topic: CNSNews.com

Back in December, CNSNews.com columnist Hans Bader argued (badly) that Blacks and Hispanics don't deserve early acceess to a coronavirus vaccine because they are "not inherently at greater risk of contracting the virus" (which is not true) and that it's their fault they tend to work in jobs that expose them to greater risk of catching the virus. Apparently that argument didn't gain any traction, for he tried it again in a Jan. 21 column:

Oregon plans to give minorities preference over whites in access to the coronavirus vaccine, which is unconstitutional.

After vaccinating healthcare workers, teachers, and seniors, Oregon plans to vaccinate "people in communities of color, specifically those most impacted by the pandemic: 'Black, African-American, Hispanic/Latino/Latinx, indigenous peoples, tribal and urban-based native communities, and Pacific Islanders.'”

[...]

The racial differences in disease rates aren't based on genetic susceptibility. Hispanics, who have a lot of white DNA, are the most disproportionately impacted: they account for 36% of COVID-19 cases in Oregon, despite being only 13% of Oregon's population. People who have looked at similar or larger disparities in other states have concluded that they are not due to racism, but rather due to other factors, such as Hispanics being a disproportionate share of the essential workforce exempt from government lockdowns, or their living in densely-populated apartment buildings.

[...]

There is nothing special about their genes that puts them in danger. It is just that their jobs, neighborhoods, and backgrounds tend to put them in more frequent contact with people who already carry COVID-19. As medical school professor Sally Satel observes, the risks of exposure for blacks and Hispanics "are increased because they are more likely than whites to work lower-paying jobs that require interaction with the public and to travel to those jobs by public transportation. Blacks and Hispanics are also more likely to live in homes with many family members sharing close quarters."

So it is those characteristics -- not race -- that Oregon can legally consider in handing out the vaccine to individuals.

[...]

It might be argued that blacks live in densely-populated areas plagued by coronavirus partly due to discrimination, such as redlining by banks, or discrimination by landlords. But the Supreme Court has ruled that "societal discrimination" against a minority group is not a valid reason for giving priority to members of that group. (See Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co. (1989)). So even if black and Hispanic people experience discrimination that shunts them into lower-paying jobs with increased risk of catching the coronavirus, that wouldn't be reason enough for Oregon to give them a racial preference.

It seems that Bader is just searching for legal loopholes to keep Blacks and Hispanics from getting the vaccine ahead of him. And, strangely, he doesn't seem all that eager to give vaccines to those essential workers whose jobs put them more at risk.

MRC Pushes Bogus Anti-Transgender Angle On Biden Executive Order
Topic: Media Research Center

Tierin-Rose Mandelberg's Jan. 22 Media Research Center post was dramatically headlined "Biden’s Title IX Order Erased Women on His First Day. Twitter Noticed." In fact, Mandelberg was a woman before Biden's order, and she remained one afterward. Mandelberg then served upher definition of what President Biden's executive order to cover gender identity and sexual orientation under the Title IX guidelines governing women's sports:

Essentially, Biden’s trans-friendly order expanded the nondiscrimination protections of the LGBTQ community, prohibiting all workplace and educational discrimination against gender identity and sexual orientation. But, in addition to at least recognizing the existence of a right of association, Trump’s policy supported the difference between biological women and confused men.

Title IX was originally intended to ensure equal access and academic experience for women in higher education. But it has since progressed to locker rooms, bedrooms, and bathrooms, creating plenty of potentially uncomfortable (at the minimum) situations for women. 

But the liberal overreach does real harm. In sports, for example, a biological male identifying as a “female” is inevitably going to beat out a real female if allowed to compete against her. As this situation gets more common (and the Trans industry very much wants it to) it will start depriving women athletes of scholarships, advancement opportunities, and honest victories. Biological men will dominate a sphere constructed solely for women.

Liberals claim to fight against male dominance --- ironic. This isn’t about inequality or being transphobic. It’s about taking away the honor of being born a woman.

Notice how quick she was to define Biden's order as "liberal" and smears transgender women as "confused."

In fact, as a fact-checker points out:

The executive order does not address athletics beyond the mention of discrimination in "school sports." Further, transgender amateur athletes already have policies they must follow in order to compete.

According to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which oversees 24 sports at over 1,000 colleges and universities, gender confirming surgery or legal recognition of a player's transitioned sex is not required in order for transgender players to participate on a team.

When hormones are used, the NCAA requires one year of hormone treatment for trans female athletes prior to competing on a women's team, and trans male athletes remain eligible to compete in women's sports until the athlete begins a physical transition using testosterone.

[...]

For K-12, according to Transathlete.com, policies vary by state and and school district, with 16 states having policies in place that facilitate the full inclusion of transgender, nonbinary and gender nonconforming students in high school athletics. There are 14 states that require medical proof, and 10 states that did not issue statewide practices but allow schools to create their own policies on a case-by-case basis. 

So Biden's executive order barely mentions school sports, but Mandelberg falsely tried to portray the order as mostly about it. That's a mischaracterization that, unsprurpisingly, occurred across right-wing media.Nevertherless, Mandelberg concluded by ranting: "Do they not realize they take the special part of womanhood away by allowing anyone and everyone to identify as one at any time? Where does women’s empowerment go if anybody can just decide to be a woman? Obviously, it doesn’t take strength or power. Tomorrow, you can identify as a woman, too, and then go back again the next day, if you'd like."

No, Tierin-Rose, that's not how being transgender works.

WND's Farah Recycles A Column
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily editor Josephy Farah devoted his Jan. 19 column to ranting about Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnel and his wife, former Trump transportation secretary Elaine Chao. He complained that "McConnell congratulated Joe Biden for being president-elect on Dec. 15, while President Trump was still trying to 'Stop the Steal,'" while bashing Chao's "ties to Chinese business" and her father, who allegedly "had a cozy relationship with then-Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin and owned a shipping company that does business with the Chinese government." He concluded, "While we're working on cleaning out the dead-wood RINOs like Rep. Liz Cheney, we had better take a long look at Mitch and Elaine too."

If Farah's Feb. 17 column resulted in a sense of deja vu, there's a reason -- it's mostly the exact same column, right down to the headline. Without telling readers, Farah recycled the column.

The main difference is that he appended Donald Trump's petulant attack on McConnell in its apparent entirety, then added a few lines perpetuating the Big Lie about election fraud:

Let's remember, Donald J. Trump got more votes than any other president – including Biden!

He's going to get even more if the next presidential election is not rigged.

Mitch McConnell doesn't have a future in the Republican Party. We're tired of being the party of good losers.

Farah is the guy who spearheaded WND's years-long birther lie against Barack Obama, so we already know he's a sore loser. Apparently, election fraud is the new birtherism (which, in turn, was the new Vince Foster).