Topic: The ConWeb
It's time once again to honor the year's most egregious violations of truth and sanity on the ConWeb. Read more.
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
New Article: Slanties 2007: Bringing SlantieBack
Topic: The ConWeb It's time once again to honor the year's most egregious violations of truth and sanity on the ConWeb. Read more.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:36 AM EST
Monday, January 8, 2007
Who (Really) Is Avigdor Lieberman?
Topic: CNSNews.com You'd think that a column headlined "Who Is Avigdor Lieberman?" would, you know, tell us who Avigdor Lieberman is. But Alan Caruba's Jan. 8 CNSNews.com column manages to avoid doing that -- at least, fail to tell the important stuff. While Caruba tells us that Lieberman is a "soft-spoken fellow" who is an Israeli deputy prime minister and who "has been credited with revitalizing Likud," a conservative Israeli party, Caruba doesn't note that Lieberman is a founder and member of the right-wing Yisrael Beytenu party, who thought Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu granted too many concessions to the Palestinians. Caruba writes that Lieberman "wants the Arabs out of Israel" and "wants Israel's Arabs to take a loyalty oath" and that he "believes Arabs would be happier living among other Arabs." Caruba calls Lieberman "radical," but he doesn't say just how radical an anti-Arab Lieberman is. According to Wikipedia:
This gets closer to a correct answer to the question "Who Is Avignor Lieberman?" than Caruba's fawning, soft-pedaled portrayal.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:53 PM EST
Owens Won't Admit It
Topic: NewsBusters In a Jan. 8 NewsBusters post, Bob Owens -- like his NewsBusters compadre Warner Todd Huston -- is all too eager to distract folks from the fact that his claim that Associated Press source Jamil Hussein didn't exist has been proven to be false. Rather than question why the Iraq Interior Ministry flip-flopped and suddenly confirmed Hussein's existence after weeks of denying it (and folks like him unquestioningly believing it), Owens bashes "the Leftist swarm" for "conflat[ing] Hussein's ability to exist with the veracity of his claims." Shouldn't Owens be more concerned about why he took the Iraqis' false claim that Hussein didn't exist at face value? As recently as Jan. 3, Owens was chastising the AP for standing by Hussein "even after the Iraqi Interior Ministry Officially stated that the AP's source, Captain Jamil Hussein, simply didn't exist, and that no one by that name ever worked at the two police stations where AP said he did." Yet he apparently feels no need to apologize for trusting someone who was peddling a claim now proven false. Indeed, now he refuses to take the Interior Ministry at its word:
Wait -- Owens and other conservative bloggers have spent the past month presenting the Interior Ministry's claim that Hussein didn't exist as unimpeachable. Is he suddenly doubting the Interior Ministry now because of its Hussein flip-flop -- or because AP cited it as a source? If it's the latter, that seems to indicate that Owens is less concerned with accuracy than with the conservative goal of trying to discredit AP. Owens also bashed the AP for leaving out "a very important detail" listed in Wikipedia on an organization, the Association of Muslim Scholars, cited in one article -- that it is "believed to have strong links with Al-Qaeda terrorists." But Wikipedia's claim is followed by "[citation required], meaning that the claim has not been substantiated, and Owens offers no other evidence. He then claims that AP should have mentioned those "strong alleged tie[s]," ignoring the fact that if they were genuinely "strong," they wouldn't have to be qualified as "alleged."
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:21 PM EST
Updated: Monday, January 8, 2007 8:23 PM EST
NewsBusters Selectively Outraged Over Journalist Contact with Terrorists
Topic: NewsBusters Robin Boyd is shocked -- shocked! -- that a news service would contact a terrorist. From her Jan. 4 NewsBusters post:
What we want to know is, why isn't Boyd similarly outraged at WorldNetDaily for having similar contact with terrorists?
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:44 AM EST
Sunday, January 7, 2007
WND Changes Its Mission
Topic: WorldNetDaily As late as last April, WorldNetDaily's mission statement read:
It now reads:
We're guessing that WND is downplaying the stuff about being an "exponent of truth and justice" and "uncompromising disseminator of news" because, as we've repeatedly documented, it's neither of those things. The "personal virtue and good character" blather is new, though, a reflection of its recent efforts to position itself as a moral arbiter, such as its dishonest flogging of Sexpidemic! But wouldn't WND have shown "personal virtue and good character" by telling its readers that it had made such a substantial change to its mission statement? However, if WND did that, it would also have to require its staff to live up to that standard as well. Is Joseph Farah showing "personal virtue and good character" by plagiarizing the work of others and peddling dubious statistics? Is Aaron Klein showing "personal virtue and good character" when he undermines the government of the country where he lives during a time of war? Farah and the rest of WND's staff are presumably good enough Christians to know the story of the woman accused of adultery brought before Jesus for judgment, which by Old Testament law was death by stoning; Jesus replied, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." WND should similarly get its own house in order before casting moral judgment on others.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:54 PM EST
Saturday, January 6, 2007
Even More Conservative Media Blunders
Topic: The ConWeb Glenn Greenwald serves up a nice little list of dubious and outright false claims conservative bloggers have made of late. Let us bring the ConWeb into the mix and add a few more to that list: -- Dan Riehl's false claim at NewsBusters that S.R. Sidarth made racial slurs. -- WorldNetDaily's false claim -- taken from a April fool's post at Gawker and presented as fact -- that Michael Schiavo sold the TV movie rights to the Terri Schiavo story. -- NewsMax's false claim that U2 was holding a fund-raiser for Rick Santorum, followed by its false denial that it never made the claim. -- Aaron Klein's vitriolic, error-laden attack on an Islamic charity, which WorldNetDaily was forced to retract. -- WND author Paul L. Williams' apparently false attacks on Canada's McMaaster University, which WND has only partially retracted thus far. Greenwald writes of the bloggers: "They operate in a credibility-free zone where there are never any consequences for their mistakes because the partisans who read them will always dismiss every one of these unfair smears on the media as well-intentioned." Indeed, we've seen no evidence that anyone at NewsMax, WND or the MRC has suffered any consequences as a result of the above false claims.
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:43 PM EST
Warner, Al, Bob, Greg: Just Admit It
Topic: NewsBusters Warner Todd Huston, in a Jan. 5 NewsBusters post, was eager to change the subject upon the news that Iraqi officials, after weeks of denying, now admits that Jamil Hussein -- source for several Associated Press articles -- does in fact exist. Rather than admitting that he and his fellow conservative bloggers were wrong and questioning the veracity of those officials whose word they treated as gospel, Huston insisted that "it is not yet assured that this person is, indeed, the 'capt. Jamil Hussein' the AP used as a source" and that "it's only a start toward solving the controversies surrounding this AP story." He goes on to list "central points of the story" that do not include "Why did the Iraqi Interior Ministry deny Hussein's existence for weeks, then suddenly change their minds?" NewsBusters posters Al Brown, Bob Owens and Greg Sheffield were among the most vocal proponents of the now-discredited AP-Hussein story; none of them have posted a thing at NewsBusters on the subject since the Interior Ministry's flip-flop. Will they ever correct the record and admit that they were wrong, like they demand when "mainstream" journalists make mistakes? Don't count on it -- remember, NewsBusters buried its correction on Amir Taheri's claim that Iran was requiring non-Muslims to wear colored badges. Besides, conservative bloggers just don't do that.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:18 AM EST
Finkelstein Misleads on Matthews' 'Anger'
Topic: NewsBusters A Jan. 4 NewsBusters post by Mark Finkelstein claims there was a "a very rare display of real anger" between Chris Matthews and Matt Lauer during MSNBC's coverage of the swearing-in of the new Democratic-controlled Congress. In Finkelstein's words (boldface and italics are his):
That transcript, and the video Finkelstein supplies, conveniently cuts off at that point -- thus avoiding having to show evidence that undermines his claim about Matthews' "anger." Here's the full excerpt of what Matthews said:
That's right -- mere seconds after Matthews was purportedly "angry" with Lauer, Matthews said to him, "I agree with you." That doesn't sound very angry to us. And even the truncated video Finkelstein supplies doesn't exactly show the anger he claims is there; the boldfacing and italicizing he added to the transcript isn't reflected in what they say. Finkelstein tries to finesse it by claiming, "Matthews later struck a more conciliatory tone with Lauer, but the initial anger was unmistakable." Well, no. If Finkelstein had supplied his readers with the full video, they would have seen that, too. Finkelstein has been on a Matthews-bashing tear of late, insisting that Matthews is a unreformed liberal (despite ample evidence to the contrary):
Right back atcha, Mark: If you can't admit that Matthews has also attacked liberals and praised Republicans, why should we think that you're anything more than a demagogic automaton? UPDATE: Finkelstein's biased misinformation continues: In a Jan. 6 post, he takes a swipe at NBC for its "official line" that Iraq is in a "civil war." But he -- either here or in a Nov. 27 post by him to which he links in support -- offers no evidence to refute NBC's claim.
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:25 AM EST
Updated: Saturday, January 6, 2007 10:27 AM EST
Friday, January 5, 2007
NewsMax Still Promotes Misleading Claim on Pelosi
Topic: Newsmax A link on today's NewsMax front page reads, "Nancy Pelosi Doesn't Want You to Read This." It goes to a promotion for the November 2005 edition of NewsMax Magazine, which featured Peter Schweizer's liberal-bashing book "Do As I Say (Not As I Do)." At the top of the claims listed from Schweizer's book is:
As we reported, that's highly misleading. Not only does Pelosi treats her workers better than unionized vineyard workers, offering them higher-than-union wages, Pelosi is prohibited by law from helping her workers unionize. Further, Schweizer hilariously claimed that he's not obligated to research the claims he makes for their accuracy, which raises questions about the other claims in his book. We predicted that NewsMax would do nothing to correct Schweizer's claim. It's nice to be proven right.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:40 PM EST
Kinsolving Hides Source of HUD Chief's Quote
Topic: The Daily Les According to a Jan. 5 WorldNetDaily article, Les Kinsolving asked the following question at a Jan. 4 White House briefing:
But neither Kinsolving nor WND disclose the source of that "news report": a fluff piece by Ronald Kessler at WND's rival, NewsMax. While, unlike NewsMax, WND reported Jackson's claim that he refused to award a government contract to a winning bidder who didn't like Bush, the article dismissed it as merely one of the "blunt expressions of his opinions" rather than the admission of cronyism WND purports to be opposed to when it purports a desire to expose "wrongdoing, corruption and abuse of power."
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:54 PM EST
An Incomplete WND Retraction
Topic: WorldNetDaily We just noticed this "disclaimer" on the front page of the WND Books website and on the page for Paul L. Williams' book "The Dunces of Doomsday":
WND made similar claims about McMaster University (a school in Hamilton, Ontario) in a June 5 article promoting "The Dunces of Doomsday" -- claims presumably also contained in the book. But the article is still live on the WND site, and no "disclaimer" (read: retraction) has been forthcoming there. Why is only the press release retracted and not the claim in Williams' book and the WND article? After all, the information in the press release presumably came from the book and/or the WND article. Curious. (WND, if you'll recall, had a bit of a retraction problem in 2005.) Even more curious, WND hasn't reported a thing about the controversy between Williams and McMaster University -- something apparently serious enough that Williams has set up a legal defense fund, which claims that Williams "has been sued by McMaster University for $4 million plus punitive damages" and alleges the lawsuit has been "fuelled by Islamic contributions." The site further describes Williams as "such a true man of God. He is so dedicated to educate both Christians and Jews to what he knows is about to hit American soil." It adds: "Besides the funds Paul needs all the prayer warriors praying for this situation." The website hasn't been updated since June, however, and the "disclaimer" at the WND Books site seems to be evidence that McMaster has a solid argument, and that Williams has lost a legal action somewhere along the way. When will it be applied to the WND site proper, as well as Williams' book?
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:08 AM EST
Thursday, January 4, 2007
NewsMax's Byrd-KKK Obsession Continues
Topic: Newsmax A Jan. 4 NewsMax article notes for the umpteenth time that Sen. Robert Byrd was once a member of the Ku Klux Klan. In this five-paragraph article, this non-news is mentioned twice -- in the first paragraph, in which concern is faked that "an 89-year-old former Klansman third in the line of presidential succession," and in the final paragraph, which does something NewsMax usually avoids: it notes that "He has admitted that his membership in the organization was 'wrong.' "
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:50 PM EST
Did the Pope Really Say That?
Topic: WorldNetDaily From a Dec. 22 Catholic News Agency article on a speech by Pope Benedict XVI:
What WorldNetDaily, in a Dec. 28 article quoting the above, said the pope said:
Not quite. The pope didn't say that "homosexuals end up destroying themselves": he said that endorsement of same-sex unions -- " 'de facto' couples" in his words -- is a sign of "contempt for corpeality" in which "man ... ends up by destroying himself." Even though what WND may not be that far from what the pope believes, WND went far beyond the pope's actual words to make a claim his words don't support. And Michael Savage bought into WND's misinterpretation.
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:05 PM EST
Micah Morrison Resurfaces
Topic: Washington Examiner We see that Micah Morrison has contributed a two-part series to the Washington Examiner on what he called an "alleged conspiracy scheme of staggering proportions" involving a prominent class-action law firm. We haven't seen or heard from Morrison in quite a while; he has apparently left the employ of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, where he contributed notable amounts of Clinton-bashing copy. Besides freelancing, he is now an adviser to the Tenet Shareholder Committee, dedicated to bringing "corporate reform and improved performance to Tenet Healthcare Co., currently the second-largest private hospital company in the country." As far as we're concerned, Morrison will always be remembered for his hilariously parsed defense of himself against claims made about his visits to Arkansas in Joe Conason and Gene Lyons' "The Hunting of the President": "This writer never was 'swaggering' around a Hot Springs fishing camp carrying 'semiautomatic pistols' or 'making noisy public displays' of dislike toward President Clinton in 'public places' -- or anywhere else for that matter."
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:57 PM EST
Updated: Sunday, September 16, 2007 1:04 PM EDT
There's A Reason They Were 'Underreported'
Topic: WorldNetDaily A Jan. 3 WorldNetDaily article details WND's annual "Operation Spike" list of "underreported stories of the last year." As always, the stories reflect WND's conservative agenda, with a special emphasis this year on things designed to sell other WND products or are, in fact, not real stories at all. In first place is the purported merger of the U.S., Mexico and Canada into a North American "superstate" -- which, conveniently, the new issue of WND's Whistleblower magazine just happens to be about (and over which WND's Joseph Farah and Jerome Corsi are currently engaged in a flame war with conservative radio host Michael Medved). In second place is the "wave of murders and other crimes by illegal aliens." in which it repeated the claim that "more Americans were murdered this year by illegal aliens than the combined death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan since those military campaigns began." As we reported, the statistics WND used to back that claim are dubious, if not outright wrong. In third place: Sexpidemic! "In one of the most sensational stories of the year, WND documented dozens of cases of female teachers having sex with their underage students – both male and female." But as we pointed out, WND offered serious evidence whatsoever that these are anything more than isolated cases over a period of 15 years. In fourth place: Aaron Klein's terrorist buddies claiming that they wanted Democrats to win the midterm elections. The article claims that "it was obvious the terrorists would prefer the Democrats,"which ignores the fact that in the 2004 presidential election, intelligence agencies have concluded that Osama bin Laden's release of a videotape before the 2004 election -- which conservatives portrayed as an endorsement of John Kerry -- was in fact designed to get President Bush re-elected. The article further asserts that "WND alone among the major media actually canvassed key terror leaders." Wrong; it only talked to three, hardly a representative sample. It seems these stories were "spiked" for good reason: They serve only to bolster Joseph Farah's personal and political agenda (or, in the case of Sexpidemic!, certain apparent proclivities we'd rather not know about).
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:11 AM EST
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