CNS' Anti-Democrat Slant Topic: CNSNews.com
A May 11 CNSNews.com article by Susan Jones starts out with the promise of a balanced presentation:
Darned Republicans, say Democrats, giving more tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. Darned Democrats, say Republicans, opposing a bill that will encourage further economic growth.
And so goes the long-running argument in Washington over tax-cut legislation.
But the balance ends there, and Jones resorts to anti-Democratic, pro-Republican spin that CNS justloves. At one point, Jones writes, "Democrats frequently resort to emotional arguments intended to make those who are not wealthy resent those who are," but she makes no similarly pejorative comment about Republicans. In fact, she implicitly praises the Republicans' tax plan, writing, "Some analysts say extending the tax cut on investments will goose the stock market and juice the economy, just as earlier tax cuts did."
Today's ConWeb Spin Point Topic: NewsBusters
That massive NSA database compiling the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans? Old news.
We've already documented NewsMax's version of the spin point. The MRC has echoed it as well; a May 11 NewsBusters post by Rich Noyes similarly claimed that "there may not even be much 'news' here" since it is similar to a Dec. 24 New York Times article. And anyway, Noyes wrote, the program "seems like a thoroughly innocuous database of the same information that appears on your phone bill, but with your name, address and other personal information removed."
NewsMax's Zombie Falsehood Topic: Newsmax
A May 11 NewsMax article attacks a USA Today article on a massive NSA database that compiles the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans as old news, "though liberal media outlets have been blaring the story as a shocking revelation all Thursday morning." According to NewsMax, "CBS's '60 Minutes' blew the lid off the agency's domestic wiretapping in Feb. 2000, when the Clinton administration was using it for all sorts of unauthorized purposes." The article links to a December 2005 NewsMax item as proof.
But the NSA monitoring program specifically referenced in the December NewsMax article, called Echelon, predates the Clinton administration, as ConWebWatch has documented. Further, the article doesn't even claim, as the May 11 NewsMax article says it does, that "the Clinton administration was using it for all sorts of unauthorized purposes," let alone offer evidence to support that claim.
Further, the December article implies that under Clinton administration orders, "the NSA had even monitored and tape recorded the conversations of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond." This is false; that monitoring took place in the 1980s, well before Clinton took office. A NewsMax article more explicitly making that false claim abruptly disappeared from NewsMax's website without explanation.
Quote of the Day Topic: NewsBusters
"The liberal media are nothing if not militantly in favor of sex, and everything that enables it to be more frequent and fearless."
-- Tim Graham, in a May 10 NewsBusters post attacking a New York Times article on anti-contraception conservatives.
New Article: The Evil of Marketing, Part 2 Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's hyping of criticism of a WND editor's book: Shameless marketing, or the result of a secret deal between WND and the Alliance Defense Fund? Read more.
Guilt by Association Watch Topic: Accuracy in Media
A May 9 Accuracy in Media article by Jennifer Verner keeps up AIM's attack on Washington Post reporter Dana Priest over her Pulitzer-winning series exposing the CIA's secret prisons. This time around, Verner plays the guilt-by-association card by attacking Priest's husband, William Goodfellow, "a far-left political activist and current executive director of the Center for International Policy (CIP), who has been at the vanguard of many of the most rabid attacks on Bush Administration policy." But Verner engages in some wobbly research to back up her claims.
According to Verner:
In 1974, he [Goodfellow] wrote a widely circulated op-ed for the New York Times that served to excuse the genocidal Pol Pot's forced evacuation of the Cambodian people from the cities. The piece was so influential that it is still quoted by Noam Chomsky and his followers to this day.
Verner gets the date wrong; Goodfellow's op-ed actually appeared July 14, 1975. As to Verner's suggestion that the op-ed was "widely circulated" beyond its Times appearance, searches on Google and Nexis failed to turn up a complete copy of it. Nexis contains an abstract summary, while two paragraphs of it appear (and have been repeated) on the Internet.
Verner also offers no evidence to support her claim that the op-ed is "quoted by Noam Chomsky and his followers to this day." A search of the archive of Chomsky's Z Magazine turned up only one reference to Goodfellow's op-ed: a June 1977 article co-written by Chomsky citing Goodfellow's claim regarding "the testimony of U.S. AID officials that Phnom Penh had only a six-day supply of rice."
Verner also attacks Joseph Wilson, who was a speaker at a CIP conference, claiming that his "statements about what he found in Africa and his wife's role in his mission have been completely undermined by a Senate Intelligence Committee report." In fact, much of the Senate Intelligence Committee report's "undermining" of Wilson appears not in the body of the report but, rather, in a partisan addendum written by Republicans.
These are just two paragraphs out of Verner's commentary; this provides a good reason to assume that the rest of it is similarly loosely researched.
WND's News Priorities Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily won't write about Republican corruption, but it will spend its precious resources to compile an article about a newspaper publisher arrested for DUI.
The presumed purpose of the WND article was to demonstrate the purported arrogance of the "mainstream media," but it notes that the paper immeidately ran an article on the publisher's arrest and quotes a newsroom employee saying, "The attitude here is great transparency and I appreciate that." Ironically, that's a transparency that doesn't exist at WND; witness its refusal to disclose its business and personal interests in the subjects it covers and unwillingness to fully disclose the financial details of its legal defense fund.
Tell It To Who? Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell's May 9 column, in taking glee in promoting recent indiscretions by Democratic politicians, complained that no TV network has reported that a business associate of Democratic Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson "pled guilty of bribery." Bozell then added: "Tell that to Duke Cunningham."
MRC readers may wonder what Bozell is talking about. A search of MRC's archives reveals that not only is this the first time Bozell has mentioned Cunningham's name in reference to his long trail of bribery and corruption -- and it is only a mention, since Bozell writes only that and doesn't go into the details of Cunningham's corruption -- it the first mention of Cunningham in relation to his corruption anywhere on the MRC website.
MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, hasn't done much more. Its first news article related to the Cunningham case appeared in February -- nearly three months after Cunningham resigned his congressional seat. (He was mentioned in three commentary items at CNS prior to that.)
CNS' News Priorities Topic: CNSNews.com
Interesting that CNSNews.com has the time to compile some snarky-but-lame comments by the head of a gun-rights group about the Patrick Kennedy case -- "I'd rather go quail hunting with Dick Cheney than get in a car being driven by a Kennedy" -- despite the extremely tenuous link between gun rights and driving under the influence. Then again, it is just a recycled press release that didn't require any actual reporting.
Meanwhile, CNS has yet to report on the hookers-and-limos scandal that has touched the Porter Goss resignation story, even though there's plenty out there to report upon.
'Censored Again'? Nope Topic: WorldNetDaily
The headline of a May 9 WorldNetDaily column by Scott Savage -- the Ohio librarian at the center of a controversy sparked by his recommendation of a book by WND managing editor David Kupelian -- reads, "Persecuted librarian censored again." An editor's note states that the column was originally written for the magazine of the American Library Association. It claims that the ALA "said the piece was 'timely and well-written' and publishable 'at its current length'" but that it "abruptly changed its mind and informed Savage he had to cut the column in half or not see it published."
WND makes no case that Savage was "censored," as the appearance of this column at WND demonstrates. Requesting that the column be edited is not prima facie evidence of "censorship." Certainly WND has edited or requested edits to items it has published. That's not censorship; that's part of the publication process. Additionally, WND offers no independent confirmation of the ALA's action, nor does it offer a chance for the ALA to respond to Savage's claims.
Moreover, given that WND has served as the public-relations division of the Alliance Defense Fund by promoting Savage's plight unsullied by any attempt to contact anyone at the Ohio university where Savage works for a response, it's difficult to argue that Savage was "censored" in the first place.
Will Savage figure out that he is, at least in part, just being used by WND to pump sales of Kupelian's book?
Coy About Canceled Conservatives Topic: NewsBusters
In a May 8 NewsBusters post on how "liberals are up in arms about their sacred turf of non-FNC television being invaded" due to Glenn Beck's new show on CNN Headline News, Matthew Sheffield wrote that both Fox News and MSNBC "have pulled shows out from underneath other right-of-center hosts Matt Drudge and Michael Savage." While Sheffield ascribed a reason for Drudge's cancellation -- "he dared to show a picture of a prenatal operation" -- he failed to note the reason for Savage's cancellation.
That, of course, was because Savage told a caller to "get AIDS and die."
Dubious Claim of the Day Topic: NewsBusters
A May 6 NewsBusters post by Noel Sheppard makes the following point regarding Valerie Plame's seven-figure book deal:
This makes one wonder if the drive-by media are going to praise the Bush administration for giving Wilson a new, significantly more profitable writing career. After all, she will likely make more money from this book than she made her entire life working for the CIA.
Sheppard writes that he's making this claim "with a tad bit of tongue in cheek", but then adds: "However, the media have made it one of their goals to regularly drive home the point that this affair ruined Wilson’s career." He concludes: "Boy, I sure wish the Administration would ruin my career like this!"
Uh, Noel, for that to happen, you have to have a career that's worth ruining.
(Really Old) Press Release Journalism Watch Topic: Newsmax
A May 7 NewsMax article announcing Glenn Beck's new CNN Headline News program is a reproduction of the press release that announced the show. That press release was issued April 10, nearly a month ago.
Tech Stuff Topic: The ConWeb
We've added a FeedBurner RSS feed (large orange icon at bottom of right column). Through that, you can bookmark links to ConWebBlog items on del.icio.us, for those of you who are into that.
Happy Birthday, WND! Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily marked its ninth anniversary yesterday. Let's count the misleading statements and outright lies made in the article and Joseph Farah column celebrating it, shall we?
"We basically started WorldNetDaily in semi-secret," says Chief Executive Officer and Editor Joseph Farah. "It began as something of a cottage industry – a total experiment, without grand ambitions or lofty business plans."
This conflicts with Farah's statement in his column that "Elizabeth and I had grand aspirations from the start."
"To this day, WND is the No. 1 'conservative website' in the world, according to Alexa.com," he points out. "There's just one problem with that. There's nothing 'conservative' about WND. In fact, it's quite a radical idea. It doesn't promote a political agenda. It seeks the truth. It doesn't adhere to a party line. It reports the news with uncompromising tenacity and fierce independence. In fact, it's radical about independence. Anyone who has ever read WND for more than a week can see that."
As we've documented, WND very much hews to a conservative, anti-Democrat agenda, which is actually far-right enough to be considered Christian reconstructionist.
While there is no "independent news" category, there is Alexa's "News and Media" ranking, where WND gets another No. 1 classification.
We believe we must be credible, relentless and fiercely independent to succeed. And we believe the truth will set all of us free.
WND retracted two articles last year because they contained false claims, apparently based on the partisan and personal beliefs of WND reporters and editors rather than the facts. WND regularly plagiarizes the work of others, and it regularly presents ads as "news" and steers news articles to the benefit of advertisers. It also regularly runs news releases from conservative groups nearly verbatim and with their claims unanswered by the targets of said press releases. And it repeatedly fails to disclose its personal and business links to the people and organizations it covers.
Farah also states: "And, with our 9th anniversary today, we kick off what I see as a 19-month celebration of our first decade on the Net. From now through December 2007, we're planning conferences, parties, galas and other festivities to mark the occasion."
Here's a challenge for WND and Farah: If you really believe that "the truth will set all of us free," how 'bout inviting ConWebWatch to some of those events? What better way to demonstrate your commitment to the truth than by openly dealing with your most knowledgeable observer? C'mon, WND, waddaya say?
