New Article: Selective Religious Outrage
Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is offended by anti-Catholic statements -- unless they're made by a prominent right-wing evangelist who has endorsed a Republican presidential candidate. Read more >>

Klein's Attack Lacks Context, Balance
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein is still doing his tiny part to destabilize Ehud Olmert's coalition government in Israel.

In a March 17 WND article, Klein repeated the "unprecedented criticism" of Shas party spiritual leader Ovadia Yosef by his son, Rabbi Jacob Yosef. Shas -- which Klein surprisingly describes as "ultra-Orthodox" despite his longtime aversion to labeling Israeli conservatives with something that indicates said conservativism -- is a part of Olmert's coalition. As Klein hastens to add, "If Shas bolts, Olmert's coalition government could fall apart, precipitating new elections." That seems to be precisely what Klein wants to achieve by writing this article.

Klein, however, serves up his usual lack of context and balance. Nowhere does Klein state in what form the younger Yosef made his statements against his father -- did he issue a press release? Did Klein talk to him personally? Klein also does not allow the elder Yosef or anyone from Shas an opportunity to respond.

Klein does note that the younger Yosef is "a member of the Rabbinical Congress for Peace, a coalition of more than 350 Israeli rabbinic leaders and pulpit rabbis," and stated that the congress has previously attacked Shas and Olmert. But we we've detailed, the RCP is a key on Klein's mighty Wurlitzer, which he hauls out when he needs to attack Olmert. As per usual, Klein does not note the RCP's historical animosity to Olmert.

MRC War Coverage Studies Mostly Ignore Fox News
Topic: Media Research Center

A March 17 MRC "Media Reality Check" by Rich Noyes declares:

Analysts at the Media Research Center have studied TV news coverage of the Iraq war from the beginning, even before the first bombs fell on Baghdad in March 2003. The record shows the networks have trumpeted bad news — setbacks for the U.S. coalition and allegations of misdeeds by American troops — while minimizing good news such as the success of the 2007 troop surge and acts of heroism by U.S. soldiers.

But nearly all of the 11 studies Noyes cites are focused only on the broadcast networks or a specific network -- two focus only on ABC (one of those solely on ABC anchor Peter Jennings), two focus only on NBC (one solely on then-NBC reporter Peter Arnett). One study focused only on cable news coverage. None offer a comprehensive look at all "TV news coverage of the Iraq war."

Why so little focus on cable news? Perhaps because it doesn't want to be put in the position of having to criticize conservative-friendly (not to mention MRC-friendly) Fox News. MRC, after all, has a history of running to Fox News' defense.

The lone cable news-focused MRC study of Iraq war coverage, in December 2006, made Fox News look good: It claimed that, unlike MSNBC and CNN, Fox News "was better able to balance the bad news with more optimistic news of U.S. achievements in Iraq," unashamedly rehashing Fox News' "fair and balanced" slogan. The study does not state whether news events in Iraq from the period of time studied warranted the "balance" that Fox News provided and the MRC lauded.

One MRC study, issued Feb. 28, claimed that "[w]hen U.S. casualties began to steadily decline, TV coverage of Iraq dramatically decreased" on the TV networks. That study, like nearly all of the others, excluded cable news coverage, and it uncritically repeats Bush administration talking points claiming that "the President’s surge strategy is well on its way to succeeding."

The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism's State of the News Media 2008 report, however, showed this trend of declining coverage was not limited to the purportedly liberal news networks: It found that Fox News "spent less time on the war in Iraq" than CNN and MSNBC, and it was "more oriented to crime, celebrity and the media than its rivals." (h/t Think Progress.)

The MRC does not mention this, nor does it note Fox News' previous hostility toward airing negative Iraq war coverage:

• John Gibson claimed that those who criticized news channels for obsessive coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death while minimizing Iraq war coverage (like Fox News) were suffering from "news-guy snobbery."
• Bill O'Reilly, responding to a previous PEJ study with similar findings for Fox News, defended the lack of coverage of negative Iraq war news by asserting that it does not "highlight every terrorist attack because we learn nothing from that. And that's exactly what the terrorists want us to do." O'Reilly also asserted, without evidence, that "CNN and MSNBC are actually helping the terrorists by reporting useless explosions. ... I'm not gonna cover every bomb that goes off in Tikrit, because it's meaningless."

These studies are not unlike a lot of other MRC studies -- they are driven too much by the MRC's conservative bias to be trusted without question.

CNS Labeling Bias Watch
Topic: CNSNews.com

A March 19 CNSNews.com article by Lois Owen described a New York state proposal regarding abortion as a "pro-abortion" bill and its supporters "pro-abortion activists." Those on the other side of the issue were described as "pro-life." This follows CNS' usual labeling bias on the issue.

In related repeat of labeling bias, a March 19 article by Susan Jones pitted "gun control advocates" against "Second Amendment supporters." Jones offers no evidence that "gun control advocates" do not support the Second Amendment.

Compare and Contrast
Topic: Media Research Center

If Obama really meant any of this rhetoric about healing racial divisions – in any of his speeches over many months of campaigning – he would have quit his hate-spewing minister and his Church of Slurs a long time ago.

-- Brent Bozell, March 18 column

It wasn’t hard to disagree with Jerry Falwell. As a Catholic I could easily disagree with many of his theological positions. I didn’t always agree with him on politics, either. But these disagreements never reached the point of enmity because I could applaud him for so much more.

[...]

Every obituary in the mainstream press has regurgitated Falwell’s ill-timed statement after 9/11 for which he was condemned by liberals and conservatives alike, and for which he would later apologize. That is part of the historical record, and deserved inclusion. But for his enemies it deserved to be far more than that. It needed to be the centerpiece of his obituary, that which by its essence would define Falwell as an extremist, at the virtual exclusion of his manifold achievements.

-- Brent Bozell, May 23, 2007, column

ConWeb Makes Misleading Claims About Obama's Church's Website
Topic: The ConWeb

A March 16 NewsBusters post by John Stephenson howled that Barack Obama's church, Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ (which Stephenson called "Trinity Baptist"), "removed the 'black values' from their about us page! the new pastor bringing a new vision and vaules system? Lets hope so, but lets not forget the values they adopted before and are rooted in."

A March 16 WorldNetDaily article similarly claimed: "A black Chicago church attended by Democrat presidential frontrunner Barack Obama has removed from the "About Us" page of its website a section outlining a radical belief system for blacks."

Both Stephenson and WND failed to note that the "Black Value System" can be found on its own page on the church's website. (h/t Media Matters)

Phil Brennan, in a March 18 Newsmax article, also misleadingly claimed that "a racially-charged section on the 'Black Value System' from the church’s Web site (www.tucc.org) and its 'About Us' page," then sorta got it right: "However, the church’s Web masters apparently neglected to remove a link to the Black Value System at the bottom of its home page." Who said it was neglect?

It's rather amusing to see WND in particular describe the "Black Value System" as "radical," since among its components, as WND itself listed them, are "Dedication to the Pursuit of Education," "Dedication to the Pursuit of Excellence," and "Commitment to Self-Discipline and Self-Respect." What's so "radical" about that?

WND Launches Desperate Anti-Obama Barrage
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily has apparently decided that Barack Obama must be brought down at all costs. WND posted a trio of Obama-bashing articles late on March 18:

• An article by Aaron Klein -- who has made previous guilt-by-association attacks on Obama -- claiming that "an anti-American government, anti-white and virally anti-Semitic black supremacist party has endorsed the presidential candidate."
  
• A claim that Obama's church "is launching a new elementary school that is named after an African revolutionary and promises not to give children the alphabet, reading and writing, but "African-centered teaching." 
• An assertion that "the Democrat [sic] senator could become haunted by his call last year to fire radio host Don Imus, who had referred to women on the Rutgers basketball team as 'nappy-headed hos.'" 

The "black supremacist" article is especially hypocritical on WND part; as we noted, WND gave Ron Paul an opportunity to explain away a donation to his campaign by a white supremacist and has refused to inform its readers about a report detailing numerous bigoted attacks appearing in a newsletter issued under Paul's name. 

WND has a decided lack of credibility -- as a news organization as a while, but particularly in attacking Obama. Last month, it embraced sex-and-drug allegations by a man whose claims WND apparently never bothered to fact-check, even enlisting its PR firm to promote them. But it sheepishly backed away from the claims after the man failed a polygraph test. WND has never explained to its readers why it staked so much on the man's never-verified claims -- nor has it explained why it fought a libel lawsuit by a supporter of Al Gore for seven years before finally admitting that it published false claims and abruptly settling the lawsuit.

Further, for all of its fulminating over Obama, WND has ignored Republican John McCain's recent link to controversial pastors John Hagee and Rod Parsley -- perhaps because WND, which sells books written by both Hagee and Parsley, doesn't think they are controversial.

Given WND's lack of credibility, will the ultimate price of bringing down Obama be destroying WND as well? Lies, smears -- it apparently doesn't matter to Joseph Farah; Obama must go down, Farah seems to have decreed, even if Farah's own website, robbed of what little integrity it has left as continues its journalistic death spiral, goes down with it.

Just Asking ...
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Does a news organization that has in the past month or so settled a libel lawsuit by admitting it published false claims, as well as promoting never-verified allegations by a man who failed a lie-detector test, have any right to call itself "truthful," as David Kupelian does in a March 18 WorldNetDaily letter begging people to join its mailing list?

Kessler Pans Obama Speech
Topic: Newsmax

As should be expected from someone with a history of attacks on Barack Obama, Newsmax's Ronald Kessler used his March 18 column to criticize Obama's speech on race matters and the controversial statements made by his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright:

In his eloquent speech in Philadelphia, Obama sought to distance himself from that record while retaining support from blacks who — as my friend Fox News commentator Juan Williams puts it — revel in looking at themselves as victims.

As in the past, Obama carefully parsed his words. Without specifically saying he heard these extremist comments, Obama acknowledged hearing comments by his longtime minister, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., that “could be considered controversial.”

“Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views?” Obama asked. “Absolutely — just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.”

In making that remark, Obama maligned the vast majority of clergymen who would never utter the kind of anti-American hatred that Wright spews forth on a regular basis.

[...]

Obama went on to malign the many black churches that would never condone featuring such hatred in their services.

Obama also acknowledged in his speech that "a similar anger exists within segments of the white community" on racial issues, but Kessler didn't refer to that as a victim mentality -- in fact, he didn't mention that at all.

Also, nowhere does Kessler mention the controversy over his March 16 column, in which his claim that Obama attended a church service in which Wright made inflammatory remarks has been disputed by the Obama campaign. Newsmax added a passive-aggressive "clarification" in which it stood by the claim, not acknowledging that New York Times columnist William Kristol, who repeated Kessler's assertion, has retracted it.

(Meanwhile, Jim Davis, the writer of the August 2007 Newsmax article from which Kessler took his claim, now specifically claims Obama attended an early-morning service before leaving for a speech in Miami. The Newsmax "clarification" does not make a claim as to which service Obama is purported to have attended that day, nor have Kessler or Newsmax further addressed the issue.)

WND Keeps Blackout on Homeschooling Family's History
Topic: WorldNetDaily

A March 17 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh continues his refusal to detail the dysfunctional history of the California family at the center of a court ruling regarding homeschooling.

As we've detailed, Unruh has refused to tell his readers the history of abuse in the family of Phillip Long, which leaves the impression that Unruh and WND condone such abuse in the service of promoting the cause of homeschooling.

As Unruh has frequently done in the past, Unruh plays the Nazi card, claiming that that those he perceives as critics of homeschooling "echoed the ideas of officials from Germany, where homeschooling has been outlawed since 1938 under a law adopted when Adolf Hitler decided he wanted the state, and no one else, to control the minds of the nation's youth."

UPDATE: Let's give Unruh a little credit, though; for the very first time, he links to a copy of the appeals court ruling (though not the Dependency Court's ruling containing the full history of the family), while treating it as something that was revealed in a Facebook group of opponents of the ruling (it wasn't; the AMPS blog posted a copy on March 2). Of course, nowhere does he note that the court ruling stated that the homeschooling education the Long children have been receiving was described as "lousy," "meager" and "bad," nor did he note the shifting excuses the parents have given for not sending their children to a real school, as cited in the ruling.

CNS Still Won't Let Planned Parenthood Respond
Topic: CNSNews.com

A March 18 CNSNews.com article by Penny Starr reported on a Republican congressman's proposed effort to "prohibit funding for Planned Parenthood." While Starr also quotes a Democratic congresswoman defending Planned Parenthood, the bulk of the article is tilted toward the Republican's arguments. Further, while Starr has audio of the Republican, Mike Pence, her quoting of the Democrat, Lois Capps, is restricted to "a statement to Cybercast News Service."

As has been Starr's pattern in her recent attacks on Planned Parenthood, there is no evidence offered that she made any effort to give PP officials an opportunity to respond.

WND Adds Ron Paul Column, Ignores Paul's Extremist Ties
Topic: WorldNetDaily

A March 16 WorldNetDaily article declared that Ron Paul's column will appear at WND "first thing Monday mornings." The article contains the usual promotional blather and fails to mention WND's own reporting -- namely, a December 2007 article stating that Paul "is planning on keeping a contribution from a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan."

Meanwhile, a look at WND's archives shows that it has never reported on Paul's newsletter having a history of publishing bigoted claims, as detailed in a Jan. 8 New Republic article. The only mention of it anywhere on WND came in a Jan. 18 column by Ron Paul endorser Ilana Mercer, who described the bigoted statements, "unearthed strategically by The New Republic," merely as "politically incorrect" and "unsavory," hastening to add, "none of which bore Ron Paul's byline." In fact, most of the inflammatory claims carried no byline, while the newsletter carried the name of Ron Paul, thus "implying that Paul was the author," as the TNR article noted.

Speaking of Blackouts...
Topic: NewsBusters

In a March 17 NewsBusters post, Brent Baker accused the TV networks of a "blackout" of "Reverend Jeremiah Wright's 2001 charge that the U.S. earned the 9/11 attacks."

Of course, Baker's employer, the Media Research Center, is in the midst of its own blackout of the controversy over John McCain endorser John Hagee's anti-Catholic rhetoric. As we've noted, only a March 4 CNSNews.com article has repeated the specific claims, and Hagee was not otherwise addressed at all until the controversy over Wright gave the MRC cover to dismiss Hagee as unimportant by comparison -- even though Hagee's words had not become any less offensive.

Did Kessler Make False Claim About Obama?
Topic: Newsmax

(Updated)

In a March 16 Newsmax column, Ronald Kessler -- citing Newsmax correspondent Jim Davis as a source in a article he wrote last August -- claimed that, contrary to Barack Obama's suggestion that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright "had not used such derogatory language in any of the church services Obama attended over the past two decades," Obama "was present in the South Side Chicago church on July 22 last year," when, according to Kessler, Wright referred to the "United States of White America" and that the "illegal war" in Iraq was "based on Bush’s lies" and is being "fought for oil money."

But there was a problem: As The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder pointed out when New York Times columnist William Kristol repeated the claim, Obama spent the day campaigning in Miami.

This resulted in a strangely passive-aggressive "clarification" being appended to Kessler's article:

Clarification: The Obama campaign has told members of the press that Senator Obama was not in church on the day cited, July 22, because he had a speech he gave in Miami at 1:30 PM. Our writer, Jim Davis, says he attended several services at Senator Obama's church during the month of July, including July 22. The church holds services three times every Sunday at 7:30 and 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. Central time. While both the early morning and evening service allowed Sen. Obama to attend the service and still give a speech in Miami, Mr. Davis stands by his story that during one of the services he attended during the month of July, Senator Obama was present and sat through the sermon given by Rev. Wright as described in the story. Mr. Davis said Secret Service were also present in the church during Senator Obama's attendance. Mr. Davis' story was first published on Newsmax on August 9, 2007. Shortly before publication, Mr. Davis contacted the press office of Sen. Obama several times for comment about the Senator's attendance and Rev. Wright's comments during his sermon. The Senator's office declined to comment.

While the "clarification" makes a point of detailing the church's service times that would have purportedly "allowed Sen. Obama to attend the service and still give a speech in Miami," nowhere does Davis or Newsmax state exactly which service Obama is purported to have attended that day, nor is it made clear whether Wright gives a sermon (or the same sermon) at all three services. Newsmax then blamed Obama's office for not returning calls to Davis before publication of his 2007 article.

Kessler clearly has an anti-Obama bias:

• In a March 14 Wall Street Journal op-ed -- a retooled version of his March 6 Newsmax column -- Kessler selectively quoted a New York Times article to leave out Obama's previous criticism of Wright's remarks.
• In a March 5 Newsmax column, Kessler claimed that Obama "dissemble[d]" in his denunciation of Louis Farrakhan, while remaining silent about anti-Catholic evangelist John Hagee's endorsement of John McCain.
• A Jan. 7 article by Kessler attacked Obama's "racist church" because it claims to be "unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian" with a “non-negotiable commitment to Africa” and a "Black Value System." But Kessler ignored that Wright has stated that the church's philosophy does not "assume superiority nor does it assume separatism." Kessler claimed by way of comparison: "Imagine if Mitt Romney’s church proclaimed on its website that it is 'unashamedly white.' The media would pounce, and Romney’s presidential candidacy would be over." He doesn't mention that the Mormon church has arguably been for a good part of its history "unabashedly white," with a history of anti-black racism. (Kessler was a disturbingly sycophantic booster of Romney's campaign.)
• Kessler falsely suggested that the only statements Obama has made on the issue of Farrakhan was one in which Obama said the decision by a magazine published by the church he attends to honor Farrakhan was "is not a decision with which I agree" and that it "showed a lack of sensitivity to the Jewish community." But Obama has also said that he has been a "consistent denunciator of Louis Farrakhan, nobody challenges that."
• In a Dec. 31, 2007, column , Kessler claimed that "Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama last August voted against revising the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to allow NSA to continue to monitor calls by foreign terrorists without a warrant even if all parties are situated overseas." As we detailed the last time Kessler did this, Clinton, Obama, and other Democrats who opposed the bill did not do so because they opposed revising FISA in the manner Kessler wanted; rather, the main point of contention was court oversight of the warrantless wiretapping program. Democrats wanted meaningful court oversight; Republicans didn't. Kessler didn't mention the court oversight controversy.

Meanwhile, Kristol has issued a correction for his citing of Kessler:

In this column, I cite a report that Sen. Obama had attended services at Trinity Church on July 22, 2007. The Obama camapaign has provided information showing that Sen. Obama did not attend Trinity that day. I regret the error.

Will Newsmax get around to noting this?

UPDATE: Davis, aka Free Republic poster Philo1962, now says his notes for his story have long since been thrown away and he can't verify what he wrote. Davis adds: "If they didn't see any need to immediately correct a story about Barack Obama attending a sermon filled with hatred and racial animus, then in my opinion, they don't deserve to win a presidential campaign." So it looks like Davis has a anti-Obama bias too.

UPDATE 2: Newsmax has previously embraced Obama smears by Andy Martin.

UPDATE 3: TPM's Greg Sargent notes that Kessler has been trying to scrub references to the controversy off his Wikipedia page.

WND Silent On McCain-Hagee Controversy
Topic: WorldNetDaily

We've previously noted that the ConWeb has mostly stayed away from addressing evangelist John Hagee's endorsement of John McCain and Hagee's history of making anti-Catholic (among other various anti-) statements. One place where the silence has been total is WorldNetDaily: Not only has there been no original "news" article about it, no columnist has so much as breathed a word about it.

Which is strange because WND editor Joseph Farah deplored the idea of evangelicals endorsing McCain a year ago.

In a Feb. 12, 2007, column, Farah expressed dismay that "several major American Christian leaders seem ready to accept the possibility of a John McCain presidency," including "my friend John Hagee." Indeed, Hagee is enough of a friend to have written a column for WND for a time in 2002, and WND's online store sells at least one Hagee-penned book.

Farah went on to bash McCain as "morally bankrupt, intellectually dishonest and emotionally unequipped for the Oval Office," as well as "emotionally and psychologically unstable" in the tradition of Hillary Clinton, Captain Queeg and "Charles Logan, the fictional president in season five of '24.'" He then praised Focus on the Family's James Dobson because he "all but ruled out supporting McCain under any circumstances."

So there is a history here. Why is WND being silent now?

The short answer appears to be that as much as Farah despises McCain, he also doesn't want to offend his friend Hagee, so WND will not put Hagee on the spot and either call him out for his controversial statements or run to his defense (after all, WND has a bit of anti-Catholic bias itself).

That would seem to be a contradiction of WND's mission statement to be "credible, fearless, independent." There's nothing credible, fearless, or independent about being afraid to offend a friend of the owner.

WND also sells a book by Rod Parsley, so don't expect WND to delve too deeply into that little McCain-related controversy either.

By contrast, it should not be a surprise that WND is all over controverisal statements made by Barack Obama's pastor.