New Article: More Sand in the Umpire's Eyes
Topic: Newsmax
NewsMax tries a new tactic in its campaign to discredit Patrick Fitzgerald: misinterpreting his words. And WorldNetDaily joins in by promoting a purported witness who later "clarified" (read: retracted) his claims. Read more.

Something Else NewsMax Needs to Retract
Topic: Newsmax
An Oct. 28 NewsMax article quotes Michael Steele, Maryland's lieutenant governor and a black Republican, as saying that "during a 2002 campaign debate, Democratic Party supporters pelted him with Oreo cookies – black on the outside, white on the inside." NewsMax repeated the claim in a Nov. 7 article (and in a Nov. 4 Associated Press article it reprinted).

But it looks like this claim is false. The Baltimore Sun is reporting that it can't find anyone who attended that debate who can corroborate the Oreo-pelting claim.

Come on, NewsMax -- you know how to correct articles now. You even made a big deal about the difference between covert and classified. Care to give it a go?

NewsMax Really Does Corrects Itself
Topic: Newsmax
We can't even remember the last time we saw one of these, but here it is: a prominent NewsMax correction.

A Nov. 14 article tries to soft-pedal it by calling it a "clarification" in the headline, but it is in fact a full-fledged correction. NewsMax fully admits that in a Nov. 11 item, it atributed a quote by Sen. John Kerry to Sen. John McCain. Somebody (since it does not have a history of doing so on its own) sent NewsMax into full mea culpa mode here:

The quote attributed to Sen. McCain was published in error. Sen. McCain never made such a comment.

The quote should have been attributed to Senator John Kerry (D-MA), as reported by the New York Times on Friday November 11.

[...]

NewsMax apologies for the error and duly notes the correction.

Wow, NewsMax. We didn't know you had it in you to honorably apologize for making a factual error. As long as you're in a correcting mood, how about setting the record straight about your lie that y'all never claimed that U2 was holding a fund-raiser for Rick Santorum?

Advertising Masquerading As News
Topic: WorldNetDaily
More evidence that part of the deal in advertising at WorldNetDaily is that you get a "news" story written about you: an Oct. 26 article about the Life Donor program (which aims to "educate pregnant young women about their options to abortion, saving countless unborn lives in the process"). This story has regularly appeared on WND's front page ever since.

Life Donor appears to be getting the same deal from WND as advertisers such as Voice of the Martyrs (whose profile of its founder is currently a "news" article on the WND front page, even though it was written back in July) and Swiss America (which got a free plug when WND editor Joseph Farah steered a plagiarized article toward Swiss America's line of business).

Why doesn't WND explain to its readers why it continually breaches the wall between news and advertising to benefit its advertisers?

Contradiction
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez, Jr, sees the 60 miles of the Texas-Mexico border his deputies patrol as a frontline in the war on terror – his biggest fear is smugglers will bring terrorists and dirty bombs into the U.S. through his county. Gonzalez, Zapata County's chief lawman and chairman of the Border Sheriff's Association, told a San Antonio conference yesterday it's not a matter of "if," but "when," a terrorist will enter the U.S. through Mexico with a dirty bomb or some other weapon of mass destruction.

-- Nov. 12 WorldNetDaily article

Suitcase nukes? Relax: most of the information causing the fear over this has come from one Russian general who has changed his story many times.

-- From Richard Miniter's "Disinformation," on sale at the WND Book Service

Vallely and More
Topic: Newsmax
NewsMax tried its hand, as part of its smear-Patrick-Fitzgerald campaign, to hop on the Paul Vallely bandwagon in a Nov. 9 article by citing three other people, as well as Vallely, quoted as claiming that Joseph Wilson was running around Washington telling anyone he could buttonhole that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA. Media Matters shoots it down.

A Tale of Two Articles
Topic: CNSNews.com
The general approach taken by CNSNews.com is encapsulated in two Nov. 11 articles by Randy Hall. The first summarizes documents a Democratic event celebrating recent election victories; Hall quotes Republicans picketing outside the event.

The second article by Hall summarizes a Veterans Day speech by President Bush, in which he criticizes Democrats for "claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war" and claims that ""while it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." Hall does not quote any Democratic response to Bush's claims.

UPDATE: If Hall wants to fact-check Bush, here's a good place to start his research.

CFIF: We Love Torture!
Topic: The ConWeb
The Center for Individual Freedom, whom we've most recently noted as making bogus claims about judicial picks, recently sent out a email via NewsMax's mailing list encouraging folks to pay CFIF $20 (preferably more) to send out blast faxes opposing the anti-torture bill. (Here's the link to the CFIF site on this.) How does CFIF back the idea of torture? Mostly by not calling it that:

You may be alive today because some interrogator wasn’t too fastidious about how he got his information from some proud, smirking jihadist.

[...]

No cruel or inhuman treatment... that sounds reasonable... or does it?

But the phrase “degrading treatment” – which could have been invented by Amnesty International -- is so vague and full of holes you could drive a Hummer through it.

Solitary confinement, harsh language, ridicule, mild threats, good-cop-bad-cop -- the Senate wants to outlaw all of these standard questioning techniques and restrict interrogators to the etiquette of a ladies’ lawn party.

These terrorists are butchering women and children all over the globe -- as well as launching sneak attacks on our troops – and we’re supposed to walk on egg shells when we try to find out which Americans they intend to kill next?

Exactly what are our troops suppose to do when questioning these terrorist thugs in an attempt to save American lives?

"Pretty please Mr. terrorist... I beg you...could you please tell us the details of your NEXT attack on innocent Americans?"

That's about the size of it folks. After all, we will now have to be extra careful not to do ANYTHING THAT WOULD DEGRADE OR INSULT THESE KILLERS!

[...]

Let’s Clear Up A Few Things Right Now

We don’t torture prisoners. We don’t blindfold them, threaten them with execution, and televise their pathetic pleas for life.

We don’t condone cruel and unusual punishments. We don’t lop off prisoners’ heads in front of TV cameras or on the world wide web.

With few exceptions, we treat prisoners as humanely as any enemy has ever treated its enemies. Ask the handful of U.S. troops who survived captivity how the terrorists treated them.

Abu-Gharib was the exception -- not the rule -- and mere child's play in comparison to how these terrorists, murderers and thugs treat our people -- or even their own people for that matter.

The only atrocities going on at Guantanamo Bay are the atrocities that these murderers and thugs who are being detained are heaping upon the fine U.S. soldiers assigned to guard them.

We give these terrorists their own Korans, prayer rugs, clean living conditions, indoor plumbing and three square meals a day... many of them NEVER had it so good.

Never underestimate the power to rationalize.

Smear of the Day
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jack Cashill, in a Nov. 10 WorldNetDaily column, smears Joseph Wilson as an anti-Semite.

Consider the source: Cashill is the same guy who wrote a seven-part WND series trying to portray an admitted killer as an innocent man.

Lies-Lies-Lies, Yeah
Topic: Newsmax
In a Nov. 8 NewsMax column headlined "Lies of the Looney Left Media," Steve Malzberg tells a couple lies of his own.

First, Malzberg buys into the false claim, promoted elsewhere at NewsMax, that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald said that Valerie Plame wasn't a covert CIA agent. In fact, as we noted when other NewsMax writers made the same claim, when Fitzgerald said that "we have not made any allegation that Mr. [Lewis "Scooter"] Libby knowingly or intentionally outed a covert agent," he was referring to the fact that the charges against Libby for perjury and false statements are not linked to whether Plame was covert, not a determination that Plame was not covert. And Malzberg insists that "Democratic partisans and their media enablers" are the ones who get this statement "dead wrong."

Then, in responding to MSNBC's Chris Matthews' assertion that Plame's neighbors didn't know she worked for the CIA, Malzberg wrote:

Too bad that Chris hadn't read the Washington Times story of July 15, 2005. Reporters spoke with a former CIA agent who was himself covert from 1966 to 1990. Fred Rustman also happened to supervise Valerie Plame early in her career and he says that most of her neighbors and friends knew that she worked for the agency.

Too bad Malzberg didn't read that story either. That very same Washington Times article does quote a neighbor as saying he didn't know Plame worked for the CIA. Additionally, Fred Rustmann is not Plame's neighbor and has not supervised Plame in 15 years, making anything he has to say about Plame tenuous at best.

Seems that Malzberg has a bit of the loony factor going too.

Lynne Ratchets Up Michael-Bashing
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Diana Lynne ratchets up her attack on Michael Schiavo in a Nov. 10 WorldNetDaily commentary, saying that the mere act of Terri Schiavo's marriage to Michael set the stage for her death.

Since Lynne, as she has all along, is clearly interested in telling only one side of the Terri Schiavo story -- that which paints Terri and her parents in the most flattering light and Michael Schiavo in the most negative light -- shouldn't WND be honest with its readers and stop promoting Lynne's book, "Terri's Story," as "comprehensive"?

WND and Vallely
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Media Matters (full disclosure: my employer) does a good rundown of the ever-shifting story -- heavily promoted by WorldNetDaily -- of Paul Vallely's claim that Joseph Wilson claimed that his wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA well before her outing by Bush administration officials in mid-2003. Let's summarize and expand regarding WND's treatment of the story.

-- WND won't say that Vallely's story has changed from his original claim. In its original Nov. 5 article, WND claimed Vallely said that Wilson told his wife's job "over the course of at least three, possibly five, conversations in 2002."

Vallely retracted most of that claim three days later -- though, of course, that's not how WND's Art Moore put it in a Nov. 8 article. Rather, Moore wrote that Vallely "clarified the number of occasions Wilson mentioned his wife's status ... [a]fter recalling further over the weekend his contacts with Wilson." Vallely is now claiming that Wilson mentioned his wife's occupation only once and "that it likely occurred some time in the late summer or early fall of 2002."

-- Another Nov. 8 WND article (this one unbylined) notes a claim that National Review contributor Victor Davis Hanson said that Wilson had told him of his wife's occupation in a pre-outing green-room conversation. WND added: "But contrary to a report, Hanson said Wilson did not disclose his wife's CIA employment."

Whose mystierous "report" is WND debunking? One by radio host John Batchelor -- on whose show Vallely made his original, mostly retracted claim, Media Matters notes.

-- That same article also quotes Vallely as saying that "There's no personal vendetta here" against Wilson. But WND has never reported Vallely's background. As Media Matters details, Vallely is an official at the conservative Center for Security Policy, whose current president is Washington Times columnist Frank J. Gaffney Jr. Current and former CSP advistory board members include Former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, and radio host and former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz, and former undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas J. Feith.

There's a lot of this story WND has not told or otherwise made clear to its readers.

Who's Paranoid?
Topic: Newsmax
A Nov. 8 NewsMax article tweaks some Democrats for floating allegations that faulty voting machines would cause the Virginia governor's race to go to the Republican, Jerry Kilgore, instead of the Democrat, Tim Kaine, under the headline "Election Night Deja Vu for Paranoid Dems." "Democrats were all set to cry foul" with "conspiracy theorists running wild at lefty web sites like Democratic Underground and the Daily Kos" when early returns showed Kilgore ahead, NewsMax wrote, adding: "Of course, that was before their candidate won the race."

It's really no different from what NewsMax did before the 2004 presidential election in trying to seed claims that if John Kerry had won, it would have been because Democrats rigged the election. As an article I wrote for Media Matters summarizes, NewsMax was claiming a month before the November 2004 election that "Democrats and their supporters may be laying the groundwork for a massive effort to 'steal' the election come Election Day" and other similar allegations, though the activities it described were 1) legal and 2) also being done by Republicans.

In other words, NewsMax knows quite well the so-called paranoia that it accuses Democrats of promoting, having promoted the same thing itself.

More Michael Schiavo Bashing at WND
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Following an unbylined smear of Michael Schiavo a few days ago, WorldNetDaily's Diana Lynne (she of the unbalanced Terri Schaivo reporting for WND) affixed her byline to a Nov. 8 article bashing Schiavo's endorsement of an candidate in the Virginia governor's race based solely on comments on a message board. No word on whether she was responsible for the Nov. 4 article that prominently displayed the American Spectator's smear that Schiavo was "America's most admired widower this side of O.J. Simpson."

Lynne bizarrely adds at the end of her article that "Michael Schiavo joins the ranks of presidential wannabes soaking up the wattage of the political spotlight in Virginia." Huh? When did Michael Schiavo say he was running for president?

Goodbye, Moonbat Central
Topic: Horowitz
David Horowitz opines thusly:

Unlike our adversaries on the left, we do not have access to limitless financial resources such as those which George Soros’s Phoenix Group dispenses. We must allocate our resources carefully.

Translated: Richard Mellon Scaife missed a payment. You sure it wasn't the fact that its writers promote dubious conspiracies and take hypocritical stances that killed Moonbat Central?

Horowitz also announced that Richard Poe is being promoted to "senior fellow, director of research and investigative projects" for Horowitz's CSPC. He adds that Poe will be "taking charge of a new investigative unit at CSPC, which will dig deep into the secrets of the left. It will follow the money trail and expose the left’s hidden agendas and relationships through hard-hitting articles which will appear in FrontPage and DiscovertheNetworks."

Oh, good. More slanted, poorly reported hit jobs on non-conservatives.