We've noted that for all of WorldNetDaily's bluster about having, in Aaron Klein's words, "one agenda: fierce independent reporting that exposes the truth," there's a marked refusal on WND's part to cover John McCain as aggressively as Barack Obama. Nowhere is this disparity more starkly illustrated than in the area of pastors linked to candidates.
While WND has published article after article referencing Jeremiah Wright's relationship with Obama and the various controversial statements he has made -- a search of WND's archive for Wright's name generates 151 hits as of this writing -- WND has not published a single news article about controversial statements made by John Hagee, a conservative pastor whose endorsement McCain sought. Indeed, there have been a mere two references to date to the controversy in any form at WND: a May 9 syndicated column by token liberal Bill Press noting that Hagee has been "given a free ride by the media" (and WND too, he might have added), and a May 6 column by Dennis Prager defending Hagee.
Why is that? Perhaps because WND is not so fiercely independent as it claims to be.
As we've noted, WND editor Joseph Farah appears to be a little too close to the situation, having previously called Hagee "my friend" in a 2007 column and published a column by Hagee for a time in 2002. WND's online store also sellstwo Hagee-penned books.
Wouldn't a "fiercely independent" news website be unafraid of reporting things regardless of its personal and business relationships? It seems that WND is not that website.
Will WND continue to remain silent on Hagee, even with his latest outrageous claim -- that Hitler was doing God's will to force Jews to move to Israel? Certainly that trumps much of what WND has reported about Wright. Certainly even Orthodox Jew Aaron Klein would be offended by that.
Or Farah may actually agree with Hagee -- Hagee and Farah are buddies, after all. Silence equals assent, they say.
Will WND dare to touch this statement in any fashion? We shall see, but we won't be holding our breath.
Huston Likens Homosexuality to Bestiality, KKK, Nazis, Black Panthers, Anti-Americanism Topic: NewsBusters
In a May 21 NewsBusters post, defending a South Carolina high school principal for resigning rather than presiding over a school that has a Gay/Straight Alliance Club, Warner Todd Huston baselessly attacked the club, alleging without evidence that it encourages sexual activity.
After citing the principal's objection that the club "implies that students joining the club will have chosen to or will choose to engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, opposite sex, or members of both sexes" (again, no evidence is cited that this is the case), Huston adds:
This is exactly right on. Why are we promoting "clubs" in a high school based on sexual activity? Do we have a porno club at Irmo high school? Why not? How about a polygamy club? Maybe a bestiality club?
[...]
Like I said, if the kids wanted to form a "club" that supports pornography, would that be OK? After all, porn is legal. How about a "club" that promotes dancing strippers? A beer drinking club? How about a club that specifies support of terrorists? One that promotes Jew hatred, supports the KKK, the Nazis, gangs, the Black Panthers or Louis Farrakhan? Wouldn't the school have a vested interest in stopping these sorts of clubs based on hatred, anti-Americanism, and anti-social behavior? Is the school so bereft of moral convictions that they'd bend over for every socially backward and dangerous "club" to be formed just because the kids wanted it?
So not only is homosexuality is the same as bestality and polygamy (we're shocked he didn't throw incest in there), it's the same being a member of the KKK or the Black Panthers, and anti-American to boot.
See, folks, this is why we devoted an entire article to Huston's whacked-out ravings. Looks like he's generating enough material for a second one.
P.S. Huston also gets the name of the paper he's ranting against wrong, calling it "a small paper in South Carolina called The Statesman." In fact, it's The State in Columbia, South Carolina's capital. According to its website, it has an average daily circulation of 107,153 and an average Sunday circulation of 139,521.
Well, he did get the fact that it's located in South Carolina correct...
Aaron Klein Anti-Obama Agenda Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein's anti-Obama to anti-McCain article ratio has increased from 24-to-1 to 25-to-1 with a May 20 guilt-by-association article attacking Obama's church.
Meanwhile, an unbylined WND article references Klein's questionable interview of a Hamas supporter endorsing Obama without mentioning the pertinent fact that Obama opposes negotiation with Hamas.
Has Anyone At NewsBusters Actually Listened to the Decemberists? Topic: NewsBusters
A May 20 NewsBusters post by Robert Knight fowards one of the more absurd ideas of the election season: that the 70,000-plus attending a speech by Barack Obama in Portand didn't go to see him but, instead, the Portland-based band the Decemberists, which played before Obama's speech.
Knight declared the Decemberists "actual rock stars," pointing out that the band "has drawn rave reviews from Rolling Stone magazine." (This may be the first instance of an MRC employee referencing Rolling Stone in a non-derogatory manner.) Knight added that "Indie rock Web sites were abuzz with news of the impending concert"; somehow, we can't imagine Knight trolling said websites for the latest news about the Decemberists. Knight concluded by sniffing:
There's nothing wrong with a candidate using celebrity power to draw a crowd, but the media have a responsibility to report their presence. By ignoring the free concert, the Times and other outlets made it appear that 75,000 people were drawn only by Sen. Obama's considerable charisma.
This makes sense only if you, like Knight, know nothing about indie rock in general or the Decemberists in particular.
According to Billboard, the Decemberists' most recent album, "The Crane Wife," sold 151,000 copies in its first two months of release -- healthy numbers for a indie band but not exactly a sign of mass appeal. Billboard goes on to note that the band was "gearing up for a spring trek that will hit 1,500- to 3,000-capacity venues across the United States." A previous tour, Billboard wrote, drew 32,000 people over 18 shows.
That's a sign that the band would in all likelihood not be able to fill a 70,000-seat venue by itself anywhere -- even in Portland. They may be popular in Portland, but not that popular. Knight is just desperately trying to denigrate Obama's popularity.
As a measure of pop-culture cluelessness, Knight ranks slightly below Accuracy in Media's attempt to portray Rufus Wainwright as a "mainstream" artist in order to claim that the music industry was shoving gay musicians down the public's throat.
In her May 20 WorldNetDaly column portraying same-sex marriage as a harbinger for the end of the world (seriously!), Janet Folger cited, as a source to back up the claim, "Jeffrey Satinover, who holds an M.D. from Princeton and doctorates from Yale, MIT and Harvard."
As wedetailed when Folger previously cited him, Satinover is an anti-gay psychiatrist who calls homosexuality "psychologically unhealthy," "an inferior way of life,"and a "sociopathy" akin to "grow[ing] up in a Cosa Nostra family," adding that "homosexuality--like narcissism--is best viewed as a spiritual and moral illness." Not the person to go to for an unbiased view on the issue, yet Folger loves to cite him anyway.
Folger has been busy of late being inflammatory; as Right Wing Watch noted, in her May 13 WND column, Folger likened supporting Barack Obama to supporting Nazis.
We think that's a step up from authoritatively citing neo-Nazi racists, but we're not sure.
New Article: Shoebat's Story Topic: WorldNetDaily
Muslim-turned-Christian Walid Shoebat is the star attraction of WorldNetDaily's new anti-Islam book. But WND has kept mum on questions about the veracity of Shoebat's claim to be a former terrorist. Read more >>
So Warner Todd Huston has his panties in a bunch over an allegedly offensive (to conservatives, at least) Daily Kos thread, adding ominously: "Even more damning, Kos pulled the entire post off the website."
Then, Huston should consider it equally damning that a Free Republic thread on the news of Ted Kennedy's brain tumor has numerous posts deleted from it by a moderator.
Why? As Pandagon notes, the thread was locked at one point with a message from the moderator: "Some of you are a disgrace to this forum, and life is too short to waste cleaning up your messes." (The thread is now apparently open again, headed by the moderator's opaque statement, "It was locked for reasons that should be obvious to everyone by now.")
LiberalLand caught some of those now-presumably deleted Freeper posts on Kennedy that are, shall we say, less than respectful.
Will Huston take Free Republic to task the way he has Daily Kos for its similar damning behavior? Don't count on it. One might even call it a metaphysical certainty that he won't.
UPDATE: The same goes for any mention of Michael Savage playing a Dead Kennedys song out of "some respect" for Ted Kennedy's brain tumor.
Yet another example of WorldNetDaily's anti-Obama (and de facto pro-McCain) agenda is a May 19 article portraying Barack Obama has having "pooh-poohed the idea that Iran or any of a few other 'tiny' nations around the world offer a serious potential threat to the United States or the free world," compared with the threat posed by the Soviet Union. WND devotes 16 of the article's 23 paragraphs to quoting McCain, right-wing blogger (though not identified as one) Ed Morrissey and even commenters on "a forum on YouTube" attacking Obama.
Further, as is WND style, the article does not quote Obama responding to the criticism, even though his reaction (to McCain's attack, not that of the YouTube commenters) was available prior to WND's posting of its article.
MRC-Fox News Appearance Watch Topic: Media Research Center
A May 20 appearance by Brent Bozell on "Fox & Friends" offers a shocking deviation from the template: he doesn't appear solo but is paired with radio host Mike Papantonio.
Even more shocking: While at one point Bozell is introduced only as "president of the Media Research Center" while at the same time Papantonio is described as a "liberal radio host," the segment concludes with one host say, "We thank you guys for representing the right and the left." The MRC's clip of the segment contains only highlights and not the entire segment, so we can't determine if Bozell was identified as a conservative at any other point in the segment. But such acknowledgment that anyone from the MRC is right of center is a rarity on Fox News.
UPDATE: In an appearance on the May 20 edition of "America's Election HQ" -- the MRC's Rich Noyes takes President Bush's side (as does anchor Megyn Kelly) on a controversy over how an interview with NBC was edited. Kelly not only echoed Noyes' talking points, she returns to the template: Noyes appeared solo and is not identified as a conservative.
Klein Absurdly Denies Having Anti-Obama Agenda Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah's May 20 WorldNetDaily column attacked a Congressional Quarterly writer who suggested that WND is promoting John McCain's agenda by repeatedly attacking Barack Obama (which, as we've noted, is arguably true). Showing the class we've come to expect from WND, Farah smears the CQ writer, Shawn Zeller, as "some lightweight staffer," "this little twit," and "a pasty-faced nerd who gets his jollies ripping real reporters from the friendly confines of his CQ office."
One paragraph from Zeller's CQ item caught our eye:
But in an e-mail exchange from Jerusalem, Klein says that it’s absurd to say, as some liberal bloggers have of late, that WorldNetDaily has an anti-Obama agenda. “WND has one agenda: fierce independent reporting that exposes the truth,” he says. “Isn’t it fair to report that the man running for our highest office has some questionable advisers and affiliations? What is not fair is when liberal bloggers call out any reporter who dares expose the truth about their favored presidential candidate.”
To which we say: Yeah, right. But don't take our word for it; just examine Klein's WND article archive. A look at articles Klein has written since the beginning of the year reveals the following count:
Klein articles that attack or reflect negatively on Obama: 24 Klein articles that attack or reflect negatively on McCain: 1
That, of course, doesn't include Obama-bashing articles not written by Klein, of which there are at least as many.
That's irrefutable proof of an anti-Obama agenda. Farah and Klein can deny it -- and likely will -- but you can't spin away hard numbers.
P.S. More evidence: In March, Klein slammed supporters of Obama has having a "malignant messianic infatuation."
Kinsolving Misleads About WaPo Editorial Page Topic: WorldNetDaily
In his May 13 WorldNetDaily column, Les Kinsolving bashed the Washington Post's purportedly "very leftist editorial page," later noting the Post's "stubborn decision for leftist op-ed pages (with the slim exception of columnists Krauthammer and Will) and that harrowing editorial page."
Of course, that's not true. As Media Matters has detailed, the Post's editorials have often expressed views similar to those of the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page. And Kinsolving ignored one other conservative Post columnist, Robert Novak, fattening up that "slim exception."
Given this, we can only assume that Kinsolving was thrilled beyond words that the Post ran a May 17 column by conservative writer Kathleen Parker (whose work, by the way, is distributed by the Washington Post Writers Group) essentially calling Obama and John Edwards gay for each other.
Newsmax, WND Swallow Global Warming Petition's Claims Topic: Newsmax
In a May 19 Newsmax article, Phil Brennan joins Noel Sheppard as an unpaid (or maybe not) press agent for the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine in promoting the group's petition claiming, in Brennan's words, "[a]n incredible 31,072 Americans with university degrees in science, including 9,021 Ph.D.s, have signed a petition that flatly denies Al Gore’s claims that human-caused global warming is a settled scientific fact."
Brennan not only treats the OISM's claims as an undisputed fact that doesn't require verification, he fawns over the group, asserting that "These 31,072 scientists do not believe the world is flat, and they say there is no convincing scientific evidence that so-called greenhouse gasses are causing catastrophic heating of the earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the earth’s climate" and calling petition organizer Frederick Seitz "a towering figure in the world of science."
Like Sheppard, Brennan asks no questions about how the OISM is so certain all of these petition signers are "scientists" or even hold "
These 31,072 scientists do not believe the world is flat, and they say there is no convincing scientific evidence that so-called greenhouse gasses are causing catastrophic heating of the earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the earth’s climate." According to the group's website, it appears to be based on self-reporting with no apparent verification mechanism.
Further, judging by a letter from Seitz on the group's website, it appears that OISM gamed things a bit by sending out information packets to scientists containing only information attacking the idea of global warming. As SourceWatch points out, the 12-page article purporting to be a "review article about the human-caused global warming hypothesis" that had the appearance of a scientific paper but never appeared in a peer-reviewed journal at the time it was sent out. The paper prominently promoted Seitz's ties to the National Academy of Sciences, forcing the NAS to publicly disassociate itself from it. Also, according to SourceWatch, OISM has refused to release information on the number of these mailings that were sent out.
WND jumped on the bandwagon as well with a May 19 article by Bob Unruh, who also showed no evidence of skepticism toward the OISM's claims. Unruh asserted that "between 1999 and 2007, the list of signatures grew gradually without any special effort or campaign" -- even though Brennan reported that "In 2001, OISM circulated what was known as the Oregon Petition," an effort that "gathered an astounding 17,800 signatures."
The level of metaphysical certainty that Sheppard won't report anything that dares to contradict the OISM may reasonably be extended to Brennan and Unruh as well.
Farah Disingenously Claims He's Not Helping McCain Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah has regularly proclaimed that he won't support John McCain for president and won't help him get elected. For instance:
"No, I won't be a part of that scenario. McCain could well beat Obama or Clinton. They are deeply flawed candidates. But he will get no help from me." -- May 19
"But John McCain won't get any help from me. He won't get my vote." -- May 1
That's a disingenuous claim. Farah is very much "helping" McCain through WND's torrent of articles bashing Barack Obama. A search of WND's archives would easily demonstrate the number of "news" articles critical of McCain is crushed by the number attacking Obama.
Another example is the campaign coverage of WND's Whistleblower magazine. While the issues dedicated to Obama ("THE SECRET LIFE OF BARACK OBAMA") and Hillary Clinton ("QUEEN OF DARKNESS") are comprised solely of attack articles (and, in Clinton's case, repeating long-discredited hatchet jobs), Whistleblower's upcoming edition on McCain, neutrally titled "The Real John McCain," includes articles titled "The conservative case for McCain," "How McCain can woo conservatives and independents," "Leading pro-life group supports McCain," "Making the case for McCain," and "Why conservatives should support McCain."
Yet Farah wants us to believe that this is not "helping" McCain.
His harsh words for McCain himself aside, WND proprietor Farah and WND's chief Obama-bashing reporter Aaron Klein might as well be on McCain's payroll.
Good and Bad From Aaron Klein Topic: WorldNetDaily
First the good news: In a May 18 WorldNetDaily article, Aaron Klein correctly stated that Barack Obama "term[ed] the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a "constant sore" last week." If you'll recall, an unbylined WND article took Obama's words out of context to falsely claim that he called Israel a "constant sore."
Will WND issue a correction and apology for its previous article, now that Klein has gotten it right? Probably not -- not even after publishing two articles with conflicting, irreconcilable claims. But we'll watch for one anyway.
Now the bad news: The rest of Klein's article is another desperate guilt-by-association smear of Obama, suggesting that using the term "constant sore" means that Obama "borrow[ed] the phraseology of a pro-Palestinian activist and harsh critic of Israel who has been described as a friend of the senator."
Klein repeated a claim from a previous article that Khalidi "dedicated his 1986 book, 'Under Siege,' to 'those who gave their lives ... in defense of the cause of Palestine and independence of Lebanon.' Critics assailed the book as excusing Palestinian terrorism and claim the dedication is in reference to the Palestine Liberation Organization, which at that time committed scores of anti-Western attacks and was labeled by the U.S. as a terror group[.]" Klein does not identify who these purported "critics" are.
Klein also delves into the murky anonymous-source pool, citing "a professor at the University of Chicago who said he has known Obama for 12 years" who "spoke on condition of anonymity" and other never-identified "sources at the University."
UPDATE: In a previous article, Klein referred to William Ayers, not Khalidi, as a "confessed domestic terrorist." This item has been edited to conform.
The names of over 31,000 American scientists that reject the theory of anthropogenic global warming are to be revealed on Monday.
Although this will occur at the National Press Club in Washington, DC., it seems a metaphysical certitude media will completely ignore the event.
Roughly the same level of metaphysical certainty, we'd guess, that Sheppard won't tell his readers about the agenda of the group pushing the petition, the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.
After reprinting the OISM's press release verbatim, Sheppard does take a stab at explaining the petition's background (reflecting his own biases, of course):
Folks should recall that this petition was first circulated in 1999 garnering more than 19,000 signatures. The alarmists discounted its significance because there were some duplicate names, and some of the signatories apparently weren't scientists -- or so the story goes.
With over 31,000 now on the list, all with degrees in science -- including 9,000 PhDs! -- what might this do to the nonsensical premise of there being a consensus concerning this issue?
SourceWatch, meanwhile, offers up a little more background on the OISM's petition than Sheppard seems to want to share with his readers:
The Oregon Petition, sponsored by the OISM, was circulated in April 1998 in a bulk mailing to tens of thousands of U.S. scientists. In addition to the petition, the mailing included what appeared to be a reprint of a scientific paper. Authored by OISM's Arthur B. Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Willie Soon, and Zachary W. Robinson, the paper was titled "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide" and was printed in the same typeface and format as the official Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Also included was a reprint of a December 1997, Wall Street Journal editorial, "Science Has Spoken: Global Warming Is a Myth, by Arthur and Zachary Robinson. A cover note signed "Frederick Seitz/Past President, National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A./President Emeritus, Rockefeller University", may have given some persons the impression that Robinson's paper was an official publication of the academy's peer-reviewed journal. The blatant editorializing in the pseudopaper, however, was uncharacteristic of scientific papers. Robinson's paper claimed to show that pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is actually a good thing. "As atmospheric CO2 increases," it stated, "plant growth rates increase. Also, leaves lose less water as CO2 increases, so that plants are able to grow under drier conditions. Animal life, which depends upon plant life for food, increases proportionally." As a result, Robinson concluded, industrial activities can be counted on to encourage greater species biodiversity and a greener planet[.]
[...]
In reality, neither Robinson's paper nor OISM's petition drive had anything to do with the National Academy of Sciences, which first heard about the petition when its members began calling to ask if the NAS had taken a stand against the Kyoto treaty. Robinson was not even a climate scientist. He was a biochemist with no published research in the field of climatology, and his paper had never been subjected to peer review by anyone with training in the field. In fact, the paper had never been accepted for publication anywhere, let alone in the NAS Proceedings. It was self-published by Robinson, who did the typesetting himself on his own computer. (It was subsequently published as a "review" in Climate Research, which contributed to an editorial scandal at that publication.)
None of the coauthors of "Environmental Effects of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide" had any more standing than Robinson himself as a climate change researcher. They included Robinson's 22-year-old son, Zachary, along with astrophysicists Sallie L. Baliunas and Willie Soon.
[...]
When questioned in 1998, OISM's Arthur Robinson admitted that only 2,100 signers of the Oregon Petition had identified themselves as physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, or meteorologists, "and of those the greatest number are physicists." This grouping of fields concealed the fact that only a few dozen, at most, of the signatories were drawn from the core disciplines of climate science - such as meteorology, oceanography, and glaciology - and almost none were climate specialists. The names of the signers are available on the OISM's website, but without listing any institutional affiliations or even city of residence, making it very difficult to determine their credentials or even whether they exist at all.
Gee, sounds like the OISM has a certain agenda -- the same one Sheppard has. That increases the metaphysical certitude that Sheppard won't discuss the full truth about this petition.
