Will Sheppard Hold His Boss To Same Standard He Holds Gore? Topic: NewsBusters
An April 12 NewsBusters post by Noel Sheppard bashed Al Gore because he gave a speech "with specific instructions for no press members to be allowed through the doors." Fair enough. But will he criticize his MRC boss for his involvement in an organization that loves to hide from the press?
Brent Bozell's own bio identifies him as member of the Council for National Policy, a group of the nation's most prominent social conservativves with a penchant for secrecy -- meeting behind closed doors at undisclosed locations, featuring speakers that include presidential whose words rarely leave the room they were spoken in. Reporters lacking ties to conservatives are not allowed through the doors, and those reports that are made public are limited to what CNP honchos want publicized; WorldNetDaily was a willing participant in that self-censorship, as we've noted.
If Brent Bozell can keep reporters out of his little group, why can't Gore keep reporters from his speech? Will Sheppard excoriate his boss for engaging in the same behavior as Gore?
As Sheppard himself might say, there's a metaphysical certitude that won't happen. As such, move along ... nothing to see here.
WND Anti-Gay Agenda Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily is still misleading readers about California anti-discrimination laws for gays in schools: An April 11 article refers to "California's mandated homosexual indoctrination programs for public schools" -- no evidence is offered that any "indoctrination" is taking place -- and again calls the bill in question, SB777, "a legislative plan to mandate only positive messages about homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexuality in public schools," which is a logical fallacy that assumes any non-negative depiction of homosexuality is automatically positive.
Corsi Still Misrepresenting Kerry's Vietnam Record Topic: WorldNetDaily
In an April 10 WorldNetDaily article, Jerome Corsi -- co-author of the Kerry-bashing book "Unfit for Command" -- bashes John Kerry again for "assert[ing] he served two tours of duty in Vietnam," without actually disproving that he didn't. Corsi writes:
This counts as his "first tour of duty in Vietnam" his service on the guided-missile frigate USS Gridley following his completion of 16 weeks of officer candidate school at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, on December 16, 1966.
He was on the Gridley from June 1967 to June 1968.
But it was Feb. 9, 1968, when the Gridley set sail for Western Pacific deployment where the guided-missile frigate performed guard duty for airplanes operating in the China Sea and the Gulf of Tonkin.
Specifically, Kerry's tour of duty on the Gridley would be described as service on a deep fleet ocean vessel, involving no combat.
[...]
The Gridley operated in the Western Pacific, but was "in a fighting zone" arguably only for a time far off the coast of Vietnam, and then only for less than five weeks while Kerry was aboard.
What Corsi doesn't tell you: His own "Unfit for Command" co-author, John O'Neill, has conceded that Kerry's service on the Gridley was indeed "recorded as combat theater duty" and that for this service Kerry was "given credit by the Navy for serving in Vietnam."
Corsi never states his definition of a Vietnam "tour of duty"; he seems to be saying that only a full 12-month stint in Vietnam under combat conditions can be considered a "tour of duty," but he never actually states that -- thus undercutting the raison d'etre of his article. Then again, he references "the discoveries about his career made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the 2004 presidential election" without disclosing in the article that he was co-author of the Swift Boat Vets' book, "Unfit for Command."
AIA's Kline Selectively Cites Article About Poll Topic: Accuracy in Media
In an April 8 Accuracy in Media article, Accuracy in Academia's Malcolm Kline writes:
The latest survey on academic bias has sent academics into their usual state of denial despite evidence of same that frequently stares them right in the face. “Taken together, 40 percent of the Americans in the survey said professors often use their classrooms as political platforms,” Robin Wilson of the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on April 4th of a Gallup poll.
“When that many Americans think this happens often, higher ed has a problem,” says S. Robert Lichter, director of its Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University. Higher ed doesn’t feel that way:
• “The more you have less real experience on a campus, the more likely you might be to buy this ambient background belief,” Jeremy D. Mayer, director of the master's program in public policy at George Mason says.
• “The farther away you are from academe, the more worried you are about what goes on,” Harvard sociologist Neil R. Gross says.
Actually, proximity may prove correct a maxim of author M. Stanton Evans. He outlines what he calls “Evans’ law of inadequate paranoia”: “No matter how bad you think things are, they’re worse.”
But Kline doesn't the full context of the statements he plucked from the Chronicle of Higher Education article. The lead of it stated: "The older Americans are, and the less time they have spent on a college campus, the more likely they are to believe that professors are politically biased."
Kline also clipped the quote from Mayer. He went on to say: "If you have never been in a college classroom, the fantasies and hyped-up expectations promulgated by David Horowitz and others may seem plausible descriptions of the typical American campus."
Why would Kline do this? Perhaps to hide the article's suggestion that the main way older and non-college-educated people would agree with Gallup's question "How often do you believe that college professors use their classrooms as a platform for their personal politics?" would be through the millions of dollars spent by and on behalf of conservatives such as Horowitz -- and Accuracy in Academia, the AIM offshoot of which Kline is executive director -- to promote that very idea.
Thus, it would seem that all this poll does is confirm the work of Kline and other conservatives to push the idea of academe as hopelessly liberal -- and that their millions have had an effect on persuading people with no recent contact with higher education, or no contact at all, to swallow their side.
Sheppard Downplays His Gore-Bashing Topic: NewsBusters
An April 11 NewsBusters post by Noel Sheppard begins: "For years, NewsBusters has reported on Al Gore's financial interests in advancing global warming hysteria around the world."
Actually, NewsBusters (read: Sheppard) has done much more than that: As we've detailed, he has alleged -- without offering evidence -- that Gore is into global warming activism purely to make a profit.
Sheppard offers no evidence of that here, either, of course -- thus contining to forsake our challenge to support his claim. Instead, he makes a big deal out of Gore admitting "to having 'a stake' in a number of green 'investments' that he recommended attendees put money in," adding "as he tours the world demanding nations stop burning fossil fuels, he will financially benefit if they follow his advice and move to technologies that he has already invested in."
Sheppard offers no evidence that Gore is behaving any differently from any other activist in advising people to invest in things they have admitted they have a financial stake in. Indeed, Sheppard writes that Gore is acting "like an investment advisor or stock broker giving a seminar to prospects and clients."
So what, exactly, is Sheppard's problem, besides an apparent personal dislike of Gore?
UPDATE: Newsmax's Phil Brennan regurgitates Sheppard's post. Like Sheppard, Brennan fails to explain why Gore's behavior is beyond the pale.
Stanek Misleads on 'Expelled' Topic: WorldNetDaily
An April 10 WorldNetDaily column by Jill Stanek, like Matt Barber over at CNSNews.com, praises the new anti-evolution film "Expelled." And, like Barber, Stanek misleads about the participation of atheists in the film. Stanek writes:
One complaint Darwinist scientists interviewed for "Expelled" have not lodged is that the filmmakers applied Michael Moore cut-and-paste editing to make them look bad. The film includes many of their long, uninterrupted thoughts.
In fact, "Darwinist scientists" have complained about their portrayal in the film: Richard Dawkins, for example, has stated that a "thought experiment" is falsely depicted as his actual beliefs, and PZ Myers has claimed that his participation in the film was obtained under false premises.
And contrary to Stanek's claim that "two Darwinian defenders, who accepted payment to talk like buffoons on the film, tried to bust into a private screening in Minnesota" and that "Myers then disrupted an "Expelled" conference call with reporters the next day," Myers points out that the signup for the private screening "was publicly linked on the web, where any idiot could get to it" and that the press conference was "a carefully controlled, closed environment in which they would spout their nonsense and only take questions by email," during which the film's producer's "they mentioned the secret code ... for the two way calls."
Stanek's statement that "According to an 'Expelled' press release, the 'Expelled' controversy held the No. 1 slot in the blogosphere all day March 24, as registered by Nielson's [sic] BlogPulse, and garnered over 800 Technorati results" is also misleading; according to Myers, "near as I can tell ... it was my exposure of their hypocrisy that was #1."
NewsBusters Mum on Bilal Hussein's Acquittal Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters has attacked Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, arrested in Iraq on suspicion of terrorism-related acts, numerous times over the years. Al Brown cited a columnist who claimed Hussein "looks like an accessory to murder." John Stephenson claimed Hussein "made a reputation staging anti-war propaganda photos" and cited a blogger who likened him to Josef Goebbels, then called the AP's complaint that the military had never charged Hussein with a specific crime "whining." Ken Shepherd insisted that the AP should not allowed to even report on the Hussein case. Dan Riehl alleged: "Does Hussein sound like someone with a press credential trying to get out of Fallujah, or more like a terrorist sympathizer running for his life, trying to go undetected - and bashing the US military the first chance he gets?"
With such interest in Hussein, you'd think that NewsBusters would be interested in the fact that, as the AP reported:
An Iraqi judicial committee has dismissed terrorism-related allegations against Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein and ordered him released nearly two years after he was detained by the U.S. military.
But no -- not a peep about this news development has been posted on NewsBusters, even though we're approaching 24 hours after the news first broke. Apparently they're too busy primping for their big party tonight. Or perhaps it contradicts their previous the-guy's-a-terrorist narrative too much for them to acknowledge.
Barber Shills for Anti-Evolution Film Topic: CNSNews.com
Matt Barber expands his repertoire somewhat, from gay-bashing to anti-evolution attacks, in an April 8 column published at CNSNews.com in which he sings the praises of Ben Stein's new anti-evolution film "Expelled."
Barber called the film "intellectually honest" without noting claims by atheist PZ Myers that he was interviewed for the film under false pretenses. Barber also repeated the movie's presentation of atheist Richard Dawkins as theorizing that an "alien life form" was responsible for the creation of the universe; in fact, as Dawkins has explained:
[M]y science fiction thought experiment -- however implausible -- was designed to illustrate intelligent design's closest approach to being plausible. I was most emphaticaly NOT saying that I believed the thought experiment. Quite the contrary. I do not believe it (and I don't think Francis Crick believed it either). I was bending over backwards to make the best case I could for a form of intelligent design. And my clear implication was that the best case I could make was a very implausible case indeed. In other words, I was using the thought experiment as a way of demonstrating strong opposition to all theories of intelligent design.
Barber regurgitates the film's premise that "secular elitists in academia, the media and the courts chew up and spit out anyone who dares to question the gospel according to Charles Darwin" without noting that Myers was barred from entering an advance screening of the movie in which he appears, even though he followed established procedure in gaining admittance.
In his April 9 WorldNetDaily column bashing Absolut vodka over that ad with a 19th century map (which fails to mention the fact that it ran only in Mexico), Matt Sanchez (you know, that Matt Sanchez) throws out an odd slam: "The eternally astonished, over at The Gawker, are quick to label anyone who is offended by the insult to national sovereignty a xenophobe." That was regarding a Gawker post quipping of a possible Absolut boycott over the ad (remember, again, it ran only in Mexico): "That's fine with us. Xenophobes don't need to be drinking in the first place."
What's behind this slam of a New York-centric blog the vast majority of WND readers probably doesn't even know exists, let alone would be caught dead reading?
Apparently, Sanchez has decided that everyone at Gawker is gay. From an April 7 Gawker post:
A certain right-wing blogger has a question for us, via email: "Are all of the contributors to Gawker homosexuals, because there's a level of superciliousness that must be directly tied to sexual frustration and the inability to bond with other human beings." Whoa! We'll have him know that Gawker employs a veritable handful of heterosexuals. This guy was ostensibly upset that our coverage of Absolut's pro-Mexico ad (which the company has now apologized for) was not quite xenophobic enough. But what led this Republican internet soldier to target us in our vulnerable gay spot? It's probably his own past as a gay porn star—that does have a tendency to color one's perceptions.
Gawker thengets tangled in a email exchange with Sanchez. Sample statement by Sanchez: "If you think Mexico City would allow two dudes to get married if politicians wearing sombreros repossessed the Southwest, than you probably believe that a woman who has an operation to look like a man, is still a man when the woman is expecting her first baby."
The Gawker is the modern day version of Playgirl, a "straight" publication gay men feel good about buying because they're tired of low quality faggy stuff the pink media puts out.
Funny, this weird passive-aggressive gay obsession never surfaces in his WND writings. Perhaps that's because, as far as we know, Joseph Farah has yet to publicly address why they hired a correspondent with a publicly known gay-porn past -- the kind of "seriously compromised personal life" that should presumably disqualify him from employment there because "WorldNetDaily hires only serious and experienced journalists with the highest standards of ethics – both in their professional lives and their personal lives."
WorldNetDaily's front page currently has a link to a TV station's report that a 13-year-old girl who claimed that she was "beaten and threatened" after displaying a sign protesting illegal immigration apparently made up the story and faces a charge of false reporting.
There's no mention of WND's own story from earlier in the day unquestioningly regurgitating the girl's claim that "21 classmates attacked and beat her in response to a sign she made for a history class calling for an end to illegal immigration." It is no longer linked from the front page, but -- even though the story has now apparently been proven false -- WND has not, as of this writing, updated the story to reflect that.
Will WND print a retraction, update the story, or simply make it disappear and pretend it never existed? We'll be watching.
(We have a PDF that we'll post for posterity's sake if WND chooses the third option. Think of it as blackmail in the cause of responsible journalism.)
UPDATE: WND has now done its own article on the false report, but the old article remains posted, with no indication that it has been proven false, not even a link to the new article.
Curiously, though WND leaves out the details about how the girl made up the story. From the TV station article WND originally linked to:
After Melanie's accusations, administrators reviewed school survellience videotape of the incident - which, instead of showing students beating or attacking her, showed Bowers scratching herself on her arms, face, and neck, and walking through the halls of the school calmly long after she claimed the incident happened.
After Melanie's parents were presented with that information and the video, the school confronted Melanie, and she admitted that she made the story up.
Of course, WND has a history of not reporting newsy details when it's not in their interest to do so.
Sheffield Ignores That 'Wiki Wars' Go Both Ways Topic: NewsBusters
An April 9 NewsBusters post by Matthew Sheffield paints a skirmish on the Wikipedia page for Absolut vodka over the mentnion of a (conservative-led) controversy over an ad Absolut ran in Mexico that portrayed much of the southwestern U.S. as part of Mexico, per an early 19th century map, as part of "the front of the Wiki Wars, the ideological battle for the soul of Wikipedia." Sheffield asserted that "it seems left-wingers at the online encyclopedia site are angry that anyone would want to mention Absolut's reconquista controversy in the vodka maker's article." Sheffield concluded by claiming that "a perfect example of how there's no need to cede dominance of the critically important resource of Wikipedia to the left." This is an update of sorts to a March 31 post in which Sheffield claimed that Wikipedia is liberal-dominated, thus giving liberals an advantage in the "war for the political metanarrative."
Sheffield ignores, however, that the "Wiki War" goes both ways. As TPM's Greg Sargent noted, Newsmax's Ronald Kessler was actively trying to scrub from his Wikipedia page references to his Obama-bashing reporting that addressed the controversy over his claim (denied by the Obama campaign and retracted by William Kristol) that Barack Obama attended a church service in which Rev. Jeremiah Wright allegedly said inflammatory things. It's a rather puffery-laden page, which suggests that Kessler or a surrogate makes an effort to maintain said puffery, at least until finally giving up over the Obama stuff. Similarly, the Wikipedia page for WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein is also puffery-laden and suspciously criticism-free (well, it was criticism-free until we took a crack at it); note the scrubbing activities of unregistered users (those identified only by IP address) and a certain "Jerusalem21" in the page's history.
For Sheffield to portray aggressive Wikipedia editing as a provice solely of "left-wingers" is inaccurate, and he might want to admit that sometime.
It's not often that a black man cites the self-proclaimed "white nationalist" website VDare.com to support his arguments. But Mychal Massie is apparently no ordinary black man.
In his April 8 WorldNetDaily column, Massie cites not one but two VDare blogitems by Steve Sailer to buttress his argument that Michelle Obama is a "bitter" woman "driven by anger, resentment and blind racial entitlement."
This would be the same Steve Sailer who has written in defense of the Pioneer Fund, an organization designated a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its support over the years of the work of white supremacists, eugenicists, and others dedicated to proving the genetic superiority of certain races. The same Steve Sailer who runs the Human Biodiversity Institute, which has been called a eugenics think tank. The same Steve Sailer who wrote of blacks stranded in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina: "The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society."
Sailer is presumably taking great pleasure in being treated as a authority on racial issues by Massie. And Massie seems quite happy to give Sailer that opportunity.
New Article -- Out There, Exhibit 45: Armitage-O-Philia Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters just can't stop falsely claiming that Richard Armitage was the first, or the only, person involved in outing Valerie Plame. Read more >>
The Capital Research Center's Matthew Vadum responds to our critique of his NewsBusters posts on Al Gore:
Unfortunately, though, you appear to have missed the point of the post. Let me explain.
In that entry and in the April 1 item (cross-posted here) I wrote that Al Gore, the former Vice President-cum-tycoon who is now worth much more than $100 million, is trying to create an artificial market in the U.S. for the right to generate carbon dioxide emissions.
[...]
However, for reasons known only to Gore and his handlers, he is now denying the obvious, namely, that he stands to profit from the expansion of carbon trading.
But Vadum offers no evidence that, denials aside, Gore will profit from this, nor does Vadum contradict Gore's denial.
Vadum, meanwhile, misses our point: he never proves his implication that the only reason Gore is a global warming activist, as previously articulated by NewsBusters stablemate Noel Sheppard, is to make a killing.
Ultimately, Vadum states more than he can actually prove. His repeated stating of Gore's current wealth suggests he doesn't think Gore deserves it or any future earnings, which indicates his own hidden agenda.
Vadum goes on to note that we "are affiliated with Media Matters for America, an in-your-face group headed by admitted liar David Brock, and known for its hyperbolic hairsplitting, half truths, and somewhat entertaining sophistry." At the risk of further hair-splitting, we repeat: We just work there, and ConWebWatch is entirely separate from Media Matters.
Vadum then invites us to read the CRC's profile of Media Matters. Let's count the false and misleading statements in the profile's summary:
Media Matters for America is an aggressively liberal nonprofit that claims the mainstream media deliberately promotes “conservative disinformation” and must be exposed in order to protect a gullible public. The group is headed by David Brock, a former conservative journalist who switched sides and now targets his former allies using donations from George Soros and other wealthy liberal activists and foundations.
1) It's "conservative misinformation," not "conservative disinformation."
2) The assertion that Media Matters "claims the mainstream media deliberately promotes 'conservative disinformation'" is itself hyperbolic (which Vadum professes to hate). Substitute "conservative" for liberal," and the statement "claims the mainstream media deliberately promotes liberal disinformation' and must be exposed in order to protect a gullible public" more precisely describes the mission of the Media Research Center.
3) Media Matters has not received "donations from George Soros," directly or through another group. (Of course, CRC has little room to talk, having received millions from the usual conservative foundations and donors, including Mr. Moneybags himself, Richard Mellon Scaife.
The report itself -- a large chunk of which is a hyperbolic attack on David Brock, not Media Matters itself -- is similarly slippery with the facts, so yeah, we did "enjoy" reading it ... for the entertainment value. It's too biased and pejorative to be of real use to anyone who is not a right-wing fellow traveler. "Somewhat entertaining sophistry" indeed.
-- headline on April 8 NewsBusters post by John Stephenson.
Wonder whose idea it was to schedule a Medal of Honor award ceremony at the White House at the same time as the Petraeus hearings?
All three cable nets broke away from hearings coverage to carry the ceremony live.
-- April 8 Talking Points Memo post by David Kurtz
UPDATE: Stephenson adds: "The media finally wakes up and starts covering this. I wonder how much Newsbusters had to do with that." We would guess nothing -- as noted above the cable news networks covered it live, and the newspaper websites that dominate his above-linked search would generally not have made the story available on their websites until the morning paper was published. Stephenson appears to have a fundamental misunderstanding about how the newspaper industry works -- and the broadcast media, since he ignores that the cable nets covered it live.
