Another reminder that the MRC's mission is less about "balance" and more about being offended that positive things are being said about liberals at all comes from Tim Graham in a Jan. 29 NewsBusters post, in which he rails against "at least two completely sickening moments for conservatives" -- as his headline puts it, "puke points."
The first is calling the Kennedys "American royalty," which Graham claims "conservatives would like ... to be a trap-door phrase or a Nerf ball-pasting phrase." The second was "Paul Begala with his usual embarrassing over-praise of Bill Clinton," to which Graham responds: "Let's hope Begala has been well-paid for making statements that are so fawning they make Bambi blush."
Graham added that "Begala then turned even more desperate in tone, suggesting that some in the media hate Clinton so much, it's like mental illness." Graham doesn't comment on that, perhaps because it hits a little too close to home.
Sheffield Still Flailing Away at NYT Stock Structure Topic: NewsBusters
A Jan. 28 NewsBusters post by Matthew Sheffield continues his flailing away at the New York Times Co.'s stock structure, in particular praising "Morgan Stanley's audacious attempt to end the Times's dual-class share system which enables the radical leftist Sulzberger family to continue running the paper into the ground by giving it almost-exclusive control of the NYT Co.'s board of directors."
As we've noted, Sheffield never criticized the pre-Rupert Murdoch structure of the Dow Jones Co., owner of the Wall Street Journal -- which had the same type of dual-tier stock -- all but admitting his double standard that his NYT criticism is based on what he thinks are its "radical leftist" policies, while Dow Jones while not taking the Journal's right-wing editorial pages into consideration.
A Jan. 28 NewsBusters post by Warner Todd Huston ascribes the views of a single article to that of the entire New York Times: "Through the pessimistically, penumbrous pen of Parag Khanna, the New York Times has declared that the U.S.A. is finished. Yes, we have lost our 'global hegemony' and we will find that by 2016, 'America’s standing in the world remains in steady decline.' "
But the Times didn't just run a single article by neoconservative William Kristol; it hired him as a regular columnist. Shouldn't that mean, using Huston's logic, that the Times is a hotbed of neoconservatism?
Or is it just that Huston is utterly obtuse on the concept of a newspaper permitting the airing of diverse views? He is obtuse is so many other areas...
LeBoutillier Embraces Sampley As Source Topic: Newsmax
In his Jan. 28 Newsmax attack piece on John McCain, John LeBoutillier lists as one of the reasons why McCain is "totally out of step with the GOP voters": "He has a terrible anger problem. (See Ted Sampley's excellent article at the US Veteran Dispatch.)"
Sampley is a longtime hater of McCain best known for calling him a "Manchurian candidate" -- a meme Paul Weyrich tried to spread about McCain in 2000 -- and for punching a McCain staffer, for which he was sentenced to two days in jail, six months probation and an order to stay away from McCain. Sampley was also behind an anti-McCain screed mailed to media outlets in South Carolina before the recent primary that appropriated Swift Boat Vets imagery (spelled "Swift Boot Vets for Truth). Sampley's website also features a picture of Barack Obama doctored to loook like an African savage.
Is this a guy LeBoutillier really wants to rely on as a source of information?
McCain is a prime target at Newsmax today: Diane Alden and Ronald Kessler also weigh in with anti-McCain pieces. In a bit of insider dealing, Kessler cites LeBoutillier as a source, quoting him as saying, "I think [McCain] is mentally unstable and not fit to be president."
Back in 2003, we detailed how WorldNetDaily told only one side of the story in the case of William Kennedy, former editor of Conservative Digest who was convicted on charges of racketeering, mail fraud and money-laundering and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Kennedy has been trying to get out of prison ever since, snagging a new lawyer in Christian writer Craig Parshall and a defense funded by "Left Behind" co-author Tim LaHaye.
It appears that Kennedy is still at it. The Jan. 28 edition of James Dobson's "Focus on the Family" radio show details his case, insisting he was "unjustly imprisoned for white collar crimes" that "he did not commit." We haven't listened to the show yet, but we suspect that, like WND, Dobson won't be telling the full story either.
Farah Tosses Softballs to Vox Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've noted that, despite WorldNetDaily's regular proclamation that it has a "fiercely independent editorial mission with no sacred cows," WND has plenty of them. WND demonstrates it again in editor Joseph Farah's Jan. 28 interview of columnist Vox Day to promote Day's new book, "The Irrational Atheist."
Farah tosses nothing but softballs at Day, culminating with, "When are you going to lose that ridiculous mohawk and grow a righteous mustache like mine?" Thus, Farah sidesteps holding Day accountable for some of his most notorious assertions, including:
His approvingly citing the Nazis as a prior example of how millions of people can be removed from a country (ultimately scrubbed from Day's WND column on orders of Farah himself).
His statement that "Jews have worn out their welcome in literally dozens of countries over the centuries" (which Farah is on record as criticizing, if belatedly so).
In a Jan. 25 Newsmax column, Lowell Ponte offers up some "serious" questions that "might be asked of Clinton if a genuine journalist seriously interrogated her." Here are a couple:
Mrs. Clinton, will you pledge that as president you will never appoint to any federal court, including the U.S. Supreme Court, anyone who has had a law license suspended for unethical behavior? Of course, your husband Bill Clinton’s license to practice law was suspended for five years for lying under oath in a court case.
[...]
In Africa, Barack Obama and his wife volunteered to be publicly tested for HIV, not because they feared having it but to set a good example that encouraged others to take such tests on this AIDS-plagued continent.
In that spirit of encouraging others, will you and your husband prior to the Democratic National Convention volunteer to be tested for HIV, and to make the results of these tests public?
Unlike past presidential candidates, you and your husband have refused to make your medical records available to reporters — although your 1993 health plan would have opened every citizen’s health records to any curious government bureaucrat.
Of course, Ponte doesn't mention -- as a "serious" questioner presumably would -- that President Bush has also refused to fully release his medical records.
WND Columnist Misleads on KKK Ties of Democrats Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've previouslydetailed how conservatives have decided that only conservatives, and not liberals, are permitted to use the plantation as a political metaphor. WorldNetDaily columnist Ellis Washington is an upholder of that standard.
Washington keeps it up in his Jan. 26 WND column chastising an unnamed "preacher" for giving "support to your mistress" -- that is, Hillary Clinton -- "as she, though shorter than you, looked down to you and upon all who witnessed this spectacle." Washington offers no evidence that Clinton "looks down" on blacks. Ellis goes on to add:
Black preachers across America have been in the forefront of controlling black people's political liberty every election year by demanding their flock vote for a political party that has an unashamed history of undermining your hopes, your dreams, your aspirations under the guise of helping you. On this point, Rev. Preacher, you and your colleagues have been like the overseers of the plantation during slavery times. You have been accorded just enough power by "Masser" to keep those in your charge "on the plantation"; otherwise, what use are you to the Democrat Party?
Guess all that conservative outrage over Clinton using "plantation" as a political metaphor was hypocritical and meaningless, eh, Mr. Washington?
In his zeal to bash Democrats, Washington also gets his facts wrong. he writes:
Jefferson's first promise to all Americans in the Declaration of Independence was denied to your people from the beginning by the evil institution of slavery. Later, by Democrat politicians largely from the South and also by their de facto Brownshirts, the Klu Klux Klan. Two of the KKK's most notable members, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, are both proud Democrats – their infamous membership in the KKK never repudiated by the Democrats to this day.
As we've noted, Byrd has, in fact, repeatedly apologized for his Klan membership. As for Black, evidencesuggests that he was a member for a couple of years in the 1920s out of a combination of political expediency and anti-Catholic animus, not out of racist sympathies. Anyway, his record of championing civil rights -- which Washington curiously fails to mention -- far outstrips his Klan link; as a review of a Black biography notes, "he wrote a ringing opinion upholding the rights of four southern blacks from whom police had coerced a confession of murder" and "Black more than paid for his KKK affiliation with his support of the 1954 school desegregation decision, which rendered him until almost the end of his life a virtual exile in his home state [of Alabama]."
A Jan. 25 WorldNetDaily article by Jerome Corsi about "ad in which the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee charges the U.S. government surreptitiously utilizes gold reserves to engage in international swaps and other market manipulations" features statements by Swiss America Trading Corp.'s Craig R. Smith. Amazingly, Corsi includes the following statement: "Swiss America, a WND advertiser, specializes in investment-quality numismatic gold coins."
That's a big switch from a couple years ago, when WND didn't disclose in Smith's column that he was a WND advertiser, and has failed to disclose Swiss America's status as an advertiser in previous "news" articles (such as Joseph Farah infamous plagiarism incident). Indeed, WND has a longtime aversion to disclosing conflicts of interest.
But there's one bit of disclosure Corsi didn't make along with that: he co-wrote a book with Smith. It's noted in Corsi's bio at the end of the article but not where he disclosed that Swiss America is a WND advertiser. As we've detailed, Corsi has not disclosed in any of his recent attacks on the Minuteman Project's Jim Gilchrist that he co-wrote a book with Gilchrist.
CNS Suggests Hillary Quid Pro Quo It Doesn't Prove Topic: CNSNews.com
A pair of Jan. 24 CNSNews.com articles by Fred Lucas suggest malfeasance by Hillary Clinton that it doesn't bother to actually prove.
The first states that Clinton "secured more than $1 million in federal funding last year for a Harlem-based non-profit whose leader gave her presidential campaign a major endorsement last weekend." The second states that the Gay Men's Health Crisis Center "received a $303,000 federal earmark pushed by" Clinton, after which two officials of the roup donated a total of $1,000 to Clinton's PAC; Lucas adds that "A number of other non-profit organizations in New York state that received Clinton earmarks also had employees who contributed to her presidential campaign or political action committee, HillPAC." Nowhere does Lucas offer any evidence beyond the circumstantial to support the quid pro quo he suggest exists, though the latter article appears to take more offense that federal money was given to a group with "Gay Men" in its name.
Further, the CNS articles cover only Clinton, even though the Citizens Against Government Waste press release on earmarks by senators who are presidential candidates that ostensibly inspired Lucas' articles lists both Democrats and Republicans as responsible for earmarks. Wanna bet CNS never quite gets around to examining the quid pro quo aspects of the earmarks by Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter?
Farah's Double Standard on Secret Societies, Redux Topic: WorldNetDaily
In his Jan. 23 WorldNetDaily column, Joseph Farah smacks around the Davos conference:
I'm deeply troubled by this kind of forum – whether it's the World Economic Forum or the Trilateral Commission or the Bilderberg Group.
These private meetings, far from the public eye and excluded from ethics laws and sunshine requirements, are anathema to the American way of life and the ideals upon which this nation was founded – namely national sovereignty and independence.
[...]
The whole purpose of these exclusive gatherings is to avoid the light of public scrutiny.
As we noted the last time he whined about secret gatherings, Farah belongs to his own secret society that " far from the public eye and [is]excluded from ethics laws and sunshine requirements" -- the Council for National Policy. The CNP recently barred all media except friendly ones -- like WND -- from covering a meeting in Salt Lake City, and WND offered the only news to come from it, presumably only after receiving the express permission of CNP officials.
Farah has thus far "avoided the light of public scrutiny" by refusing to disclose to his readers his CNP membership. Why?
CPI Bashed As 'Left-Wing,' But ... Topic: Media Research Center
(Updated)
The Media Research Center has declared war against the Center for Public Integrity over its report stating that the Bush administration made hundreds of false statements regarding Iraq:
A Jan. 23 NewsBusters post (and TimesWatch item), Clay Waters described the Center for Public Integrity -- which issued a -- as "left-wing" and complained that a New York Times article on the study "made no mention of CPI's ties to the left-wing billionaire George Soros."
A Jan. 23 NewsBusters post by the ever-insightful Warner Todd Huston calls CPI "ultra-leftist" and "funded by extreme leftist George Soros" and others who are "exclusively leftist in political philosophy."
A Jan. 23 NewsBusters post by Matthew Balan noted "the Center’s funding by various left-wing individuals and foundations, most notably George Soros."
A Jan. 24 NewsBusters post and CyberAlert item by Brent Baker stated that the report was issued by "a couple of affiliated far-left groups."
Which begs the question: If CPI is so far left, why was it trying to bring down Al Gore in 2000?
As we've detailed, CPI funded much of the reporting for the multi-part series on Gore that WorldNetDaily published before the 2000 election (a secondary target of the series is suing WND, CPI and the authors for libel). CPI then later disassociated itself from the series prior to publication; according to CPI senior fellow Knut Royce, "The biggest determinant was that the main focus to begin with in the project was Al Gore. And the bottom line, we just didn't have Al Gore."
One defense repeated in most of these posts is that, as Baker quoted Fox News' Brit Hume as saying, it was "a concept nearly universally accepted by most of the world's intelligence services at the time" that Iraq under Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. But all are general references, and none of these posts address the specific evidence CPI cites to declare various Bush administration officials' statements about Iraq WMD as false.
UPDATE: Seton Motley stumbles in with a Jan. 24 NewsBusters post saying the same thing: CPI is funded by "left-wing mega-mogul George Soros," and everybody thought Iraq had WMD. But he doesn't note that CPI went after Gore or specifically address the evidence CPI uses to back up its claim of false statements about Iraq WMD.
Motley also disingenously raises the labeling issue, complaining that CPI and its sister organization was described by Keith Olbermann (whom he weirdly describes as the "Legacy Press") as "two non-profit groups," while Olbermann called the MRC a "rabid right-wing spin group." Motley ignores the fact that, as we have repeatedlynoted, that other "Legacy Press" pillar, Fox News (founded the same year as MSNBC), almost never applies an ideological label to the MRC.
New Article: In Bed -- And Out of Bed -- With Sources Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Jerome Corsi is too close to the Minutemen to tell the truth about their recent controversies. But that doesn't keep him from violating numerous ethical rules to bash his Minuteman co-author for endorsing Mike Huckabee. Read more >>
WND Buys Its Publishing Partner Topic: WorldNetDaily
Remember back in November, when we noticed that WorldNetDaily was claiming it published Kathleen Willey's factually challenged book rather than its publishing partner, World Ahead Media, whose imprint actually appears on the book?
That question is now moot: WND announced in a Jan. 23 article that it has acquired World Ahead Media. Founders Eric Jackson and Norman Book will continue to run the company as a division of WND, as well as serving as WND vice presidents.
There's no mention of what will happen with the WND Books and World Ahead imprints; there's currently no notable difference in what they offer -- conservative-leaning attack books -- and it would make sense to phase out one or the other unless they decide to take one in a different direction.
Media Matters catches CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey telling Wolf Blitzer: "There was a moment there in the debate, Wolf, where it looked like, if someone had splashed water on Hillary, she would have melted like the Wicked Witch of the West."
And Sadly, No! dismantles "Christian and applied scientist" Andrew Longman's Jan. 22 WorldNetDaily column dubiously claiming that replacing incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent ones would release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
