We Digg It
Topic: The ConWeb
For those readers into such things, we've added to the ConWebBlog RSS feed the ability to link items to Digg.

New Article #2: Who's On the Payroll?
Topic: The ConWeb
ConWeb writers promote their (Republican) candidates so much, they may as well be employed by the campaign. Read more.

ConWeb Promotes Dubious AP Article on Reid
Topic: The ConWeb

So, how's the rest of the ConWeb promoting the dubious AP article about Harry Reid?

WorldNetDaily latched onto the article as well, without reporting the questions about the article's central claim that Reid cleared $1.1 million in a land deal. It also promoted the AP's claim that Reid hung on the AP reporter doing the article without the reporter's history of misleading articles about Democrats.

NewsMax ran the AP article under the headline, "Sen. Harry Reid: $1 Million in Shady Land Deal."

CNSNews.com, meanwhile, gets all snarky in a front-page blurb:

Bias? Hmmm. The "Foley scandal" gets another mention on the front page of Thursday's Washington Post, but you'll have to turn to page A-3 to see the article headlined "Reid Land Deal Under Scrutiny." The sub-head makes it sound like this is nothing more than a question of "disclosure requirements.

CNS does no actual article on it but, rather, a "News This Hour" brief. It repeats the dubious claim that Reid "collect[ed] $1.1 million" on the deal --but, like the rest of the ConWeb, fails to note the questions raised about the claim.

Also note the scare quotes around "Foley scandal," reflecting CNS' desire to pretend that there is no scandal since it involves Republicans (as we've previously noted).

New Article: A Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy
Topic: The ConWeb
The ConWeb uses conspiracy-mongering, gay-bashing and other methods to try to divert attention away from the Mark Foley page scandal. Read more.

Another Columnist Who Can't Tell the Difference Between Unflattering and False
Topic: The ConWeb

Add another name to those conservatives conflating unflattering with false and misleading regarding Clinton administration complaints over "The Path to 9/11": syndicated columnist Larry Elder. From his Sept. 14 column:

Besides, the docudrama comes down hard on the Bush administration for dawdling during its eight months before 9/11.

In one scene, for example, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice demotes counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, clearly showing the Bush administration's failure to give bin Laden top priority. But did anyone in the Bush administration send letters to ABC demanding revisions -- or else?

As we noted, the Clinton administration wasn't complaining about unflattering (but factually accurate) portrayals; they were complaining about factually inaccurate and misleading portrayals. Elder, like Brent Bozell, WorldNetDaily and Lowell Ponte before him, can't figure out the difference --  possibly because the show's factual inaccuracies about the Bush administration make him look better than the historical record shows.

A Look Back
Topic: The ConWeb

How did the ConWeb react to 9/11? The ConWebWatch archive has the answers:

-- The bodies weren't even cold before WorldNetDaily and NewsMax blamed it on Clinton, with NewsMax adding for effect: "The president has been eloquent. He has been confident. Real Americans support him 100 percent."

-- The ConWeb quickly moved on to branding any criticism of President Bush as tantamount to treason.

-- The MRC was actually nice to Dan Rather, and WorldNetDaily's Anthony LoBaido went on his infamous tirade blaming the U.S. for the attacks and noting that "All that is evil in the world can be found in New York -- a screed too extreme even for WND, which eventually deleted it.

-- NewsMax couldn't decide whether to attack or embrace Bill Maher's "cowards" remark. So it didn't, then it did.

-- Hugh Hewitt went wobbly on supporting the president post-9/11 if that president was Al Gore. 

-- It was never too early to start deifying Barbara Olson -- and to profit by plugging her books. 

New Article: The ConWeb Ignores A Republican
Topic: The ConWeb
There's a Republican running against Joe Lieberman -- why is the ConWeb so reluctant to acknowledge his existence? And will Christopher Ruddy's endorsement of Lieberman mean a slew of fawning NewsMax articles about him? Read more.

So That Explains It! (Part 2)
Topic: The ConWeb
We recently noted that conservatives had suddenly become lockstep in their effusive praise of Oliver Stone's new movie "World Trade Center." Turns out there's a reason for that: The New York Times reports that Stone's studio, Paramount, hired Creative Response Concepts -- the folks that helped bring you the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth -- to market the film to conservatives.

ConWeb Praises ... Oliver Stone?
Topic: The ConWeb

Rhapsodic reviews of Oliver Stone's new movie, "World Trade Center," are coming from two unlikely sources: Brent Bozell and NewsMax's James Hirsen.

In a July 17 Media Research Center press release, Bozell is quoted thusly:

"World Trade Center is a masterpiece and must be seen by as many people as possible. Oliver Stone has created something spectacular and it deserves our nation’s gratitude. Conservatives and liberals will praise this movie."

Hirsen was similarly effusive in a July 17 NewsMax article. Starting out by stating, "Oliver Stone has made a movie that is sure to please cops, fire fighters, red-staters, the military, and even the GOP. Yes, you read the name correctly. It's that Oliver Stone," Hirsen wrote that "what came through on the screen was a tender rendering of a story that is rich with timeless themes":

From the opening sequence to the end of the film, one can discern that Stone used painstaking care to tell the WTC story without embellishing it with a political agenda.

[...]

More than a mere chronicle of the nation's attack, the film is a homage to the courage and selflessness that were displayed amidst tragedy.

[...]

"World Trade Center" is about real-life superheroes. And Stone may have just performed the super-cinematic feat of his career.

We haven't seen this sort of ideological confusion since the Harriet Myers debacle.

The Return of the Clinton Body Count
Topic: The ConWeb
Ah, but it never really went away despite all the evidence that it was bogus, did it?

The Freepers and their fellow travelers are having a high ol' time reliving their Clinton-bashing glory days by tying the killing of an Arkansas urologist, David Millstein, to Clinton. The connection? Millstein's wife's first husband was Jerry Parks, a person with tangental Clinton ties who was murdered in 1993 and holds a prominent spot on the Clinton death list. But as we (and Snopes) noted, there are much more likely suspects than Clinton.

Well, as long as they're spinning their wheels on fevered speculation, they can't be plotting to harrass or kill New York Times employees, so there's an upside.

Update: Conservative Medicine
Topic: The ConWeb
Last year, we wrote an article about the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and how its right-wing agenda dovetails with the likes of NewsMax and WorldNetDaily. The Neurodiversity weblog has a new article that serves up much more detail about the AAPS' political agenda.

New Article: Cuckoo for Coulter
Topic: The ConWeb
Will Ann Coulter ever say or write something so offensive that she will lose the ConWeb's support? She hasn't yet. Read more.

ConWeb Downplays A Certain Inconvenient Fact on Alleged WMD Find
Topic: The ConWeb
The ConWeb is playing up Sen. Rick Santorum's assertion that weapons of mass destruction in the form of munitions containing sarin or mustard gas were found in Iraq -- and glossing over the fact that the munitons were degraded and apparently not a threat as a WMD.

At NewsBusters, Brent Baker claimed when Keith Olbermann pointed out that particular fact, he did so "condescendingly" (Baker repeated the claim in a June 23 CyberAlert). Dave Pierre didn't mention the degraded state of the munitions at all. Both Baker and Tim Graham take the technicality approach that the find proves liberals wrong, however worthless those weapons are; in Baker's words: "Though these are not the weapons the Bush administration used to justify going to war, since they date from before the 1991 Gulf War, they do undermine the claims of those on the left -- too often repeated by members of the media -- that 'no' WMD existed in Iraq."

At WorldNetDaily, a June 21 news article played up the claim while burying the functional uselessness of those weapons. The article quoted "former U.N. weapons inspector" Tim Trevan, appearing on Fox News, claiming that "the weapons could still have posed a danger, even in a deteriorated state" -- not as a weapon but, rather, from just sitting here: "It goes from a liquid to a gooey mass."

WND columnists Kevin McCullough and Melanie Morgan trumpeted the find without mentioning the uselessness of those weapons.

CNSNews.com, meanwhile, also takes the technicality road -- with a self-promotion twist -- as its corporate bretheren at NewsBusters by claiming that the find "confirm[s] reporting in 2004 by Cybercast News Service that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, including mustard gas, when his country was invaded by coalition forces." It too downplays the degraded state of the munitions, insisting that the declassified report that contains the finding "appears to contradict" the claim that weapons were degraded, stating that "While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal." That appears to refer to what Trevan said on Fox News -- that the danger is not from being used as a weapon but from just sitting there. In other words, you have walk up and touch that gooey mass leaking out of the munition for it to be a danger to you.

The ConWeb Hearts Coulter
Topic: The ConWeb
Gee, we go out of town for a few days, and Ann Coulter finally says something that even some conservatives find loathsome. The key word here is "some"; the ConWeb appears not to have joined that particular bandwagon. After all, both NewsMax and WorldNetDaily have a business interest in Coulter's success by selling her new book.

And following those business interests, NewsMax repeated Mary Matalin's defense of Coulter, while WND wrote of the widespread criticism of Coulter: "How's this for book publicity?" WND columnist Kevin McCullough also defends Coulter, calling her a martyr "for the well-being of political discourse in general."

Meanwhile, over at Bozell's empire (which, near as we can tell, has no direct business interest in promoting Coulter), CNSNews.com did a fawning interview with Coulter, though it has stayed away thus far from original reporting on the current controversy. At NewsBusters, Mark Finkelstein took offense at the idea that Coulter's bashing of 9/11 widows "amounts to desecration of the graves of the 9/11 victims themselves"; he also suggested that any criticism of Coulter is motivated by jealousy of the money she's making off this controversy. Fellow NewsBuster Noel Sheppard calls the Coulter controversy "left-wing hysteria," adding, "from a publicity standpoint, Coulter must be thrilled about all the free attention these folks have given her."

And the MRC's Tim Graham took Coulter's side, claiming that her critics "did not consider that some of the 9-11 widows she mocked were also champions of political trash talk," adding: "Kristen Breitweiser, the most prominent Bush-trashing 9-11 widow, has sounded like a liberal version of Coulter at times on her huffing and puffing blog at the Huffington Post."

ConWebWatch In the News
Topic: The ConWeb
A May 16 Reason Online article points out ConWebWatch as part of the new wave of media watchdogs.