Topic: The ConWeb
The ConWeb bashes the National Enquirer when it reports salacious claims against conservatives, but treats it as gospel when it reports salacious claims against liberals. Read more >>
Thursday, August 21, 2008
New Article: The Tabloid Double Standard
Topic: The ConWeb The ConWeb bashes the National Enquirer when it reports salacious claims against conservatives, but treats it as gospel when it reports salacious claims against liberals. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:26 AM EDT
MRC Study of Obama Clashes With CMPA Study
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center has released a study claiming that the broadcast networks' coverage of Barack Obama "bordered on giddy celebration of a political 'rock star' rather than objective newsgathering," based on an "exhaustive analysis of ABC, CBS and NBC evening news coverage of Barack Obama — every story, every soundbite, every mention — from his first appearance on a network broadcast in May 2000 through the end of the Democratic primaries in June 2008." No big surprise there, though not necessarily because it's true -- it's the MRC's raison d'etre to make those claims, after all. But there's a problem: it appears to clash with reality. As we've noted, a study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a conservative-leaning group whose work is the foundation of the MRC, found that broadcast network news evaluations of Obama in the six weeks after he clinched the Democratic nomination were overwhelmingly negative -- 72 percent negative vs. 28 percent positive. John McCain's coverage, meanwhile, was much better, 43 percent positive and 57 percent negative. The MRC has not, to our knowledge, mentioned the study in any way, approvingly or otherwise. That silence can be interpreted as a tacit acceptance of the study's findings. But to treat both the MRC and CMPA studies as accurate, one must accept the proposition that media coverage of Obama whipsawed from overwhelmingly positive to overwhelmingly negative in a day's time. We can't imagine how that would be possible. Perhaps the MRC could devise a model a scenario of how both studies could be accurate. Or perhaps the MRC could just admit the bias and faulty analysis in its study -- a longtime problem.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:44 AM EDT
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Maddow Derangement Syndrome Watch
Topic: NewsBusters
-- Noel Sheppard, in an Aug. 19 NewsBusters post reacting to news that Rachel Maddow has been given her own show on MSNBC. Sheppard further called the news an "abomination" and described Keith Olbermann as "the most hateful and biased person on the airwaves today." (Apparently, Sheppard has never heard of Michael Savage.)
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:41 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 4:47 PM EDT
Is AIM Blaming Tubbs-Jones' Aneurysm On Obama?
Topic: Accuracy in Media In an Aug. 20 Accuracy in Media blog post, headlined "Clinton Supporters Dropping Like Flies," Don Irvine writes that "It looks like Hillary Clinton may be without a couple of her top supporters at the Democratic National Convention next week," noting that "Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH) has been hospitalized after police found her unconscious behind the wheel of a moving car." Irvine added: "Will there be any more 'accidents' before the convention?" Tubbs-Jones suffered an aneurysm and is in critical condition. Is Irvine suggesting that Obama killed Tubbs-Jones to spite Hillary? Does he really want to go there? Such crassness is normally beyond AIM (though it's not above calling Obama a "revolutionary sociopath"). Irvine might want to explain himself -- and apologize. UPDATE: Removed reference to news report erroneously claiming Tubbs-Jones had died. UPDATE 2: She has now died. Is Irvine still looking to be crass and insensitive and do the Obama version of the discredited Clinton body count?
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:19 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 10:52 PM EDT
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch
Topic: NewsBusters
-- Mark Finkelstein, Aug. 20 NewsBusters post
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:23 AM EDT
'Karachi Kids' Defender Ignores Facts
Topic: Horowitz An Aug. 18 FrontPageMag article by Alex Alexiev attacks CNN for debunking the film "Karachi Kids," which focused on the wrong Pakistani madrassa in portraying children as being brainwashed by al-Qaeda and Taliban sympathizers (as we've noted). "What is certain is that the network, not the kids’ champions, is in the wrong," Alexiev claims, adding, "For anybody familiar with Pakistan’s madrassas, the CNN ‘gotcha’ not only serves to undo their entire argument, it proves beyond much doubt that in attacking “Karachi Kids” and Congressman McCaul, the network engaged in disinformation." Well, not quite. In trying to split hairs about just how extremist a particular madrassa is, Alexiev fails to contradict, or even acknowledge, a couple important points CNN made. First, director Imran Raza conceded the error. CNN quotes him as saying, "I do need to take responsibility for these things in terms of these were errors that sort of spun out of control. ... I have to take responsibility for the mistakes. I take responsibility for the error in the allegation that Osama bin Laden was there. I take responsibility for the error that some of the Taliban leaders were there." Second, the teenage "kids" that are the focus of the film -- whom Alexiev makes no mention of whatsoever -- denied that they were taught extremism or saw any al-Qaeda or Taliban members. They also say the filmmaker took their comments out of context. Alexiev -- vice president for research at the conservative Center for Security Policy -- concluded by claiming, "CNN has with its attack on 'Karachi Kids' earned yet another distinction in journalistic malfeasance: proud purveyor of jihadist disinformation." But by ignoring pertinent facts, Alexiev is running his own disinformation campaign.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:28 AM EDT
'Karachi Kids' Defender Ignores Facts
Topic: Horowitz An Aug. 18 FrontPageMag article by Alex Alexiev attacks CNN for debunking the film "Karachi Kids," which focused on the wrong Pakistani madrassa in portraying children as being brainwashed by al-Qaeda and Taliban sympathizers (as we've noted). "What is certain is that the network, not the kids’ champions, is in the wrong," Alexiev claims, adding, "For anybody familiar with Pakistan’s madrassas, the CNN 'gotcha' not only serves to undo their entire argument, it proves beyond much doubt that in attacking 'Karachi Kids' and Congressman McCaul, the network engaged in disinformation." Well, not quite. In trying to split hairs about just how extremist a particular madrassa is, Alexiev fails to contradict, or even acknowledge, a couple important points CNN made. First, director Imran Raza conceded the error. CNN quotes him as saying, "I do need to take responsibility for these things in terms of these were errors that sort of spun out of control. ... I have to take responsibility for the mistakes. I take responsibility for the error in the allegation that Osama bin Laden was there. I take responsibility for the error that some of the Taliban leaders were there." Second, the teenage "kids" that are the focus of the film -- whom Alexiev makes no mention of whatsoever -- denied that they were taught extremism or saw any al-Qaeda or Taliban members. Alexiev -- vice president for research at the conservative Center for Security Policy -- concluded by claiming, "CNN has with its attack on 'Karachi Kids' earned yet another distinction in journalistic malfeasance: proud purveyor of jihadist disinformation." but through ignoring pertinent facts, Alexiev is running his own disinformation campaign.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:58 AM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 9:32 AM EDT
Savage's Boss Has Wackier Ideas About Autism Than Savage Does
Topic: The ConWeb Remember Michael Savage's comments about autism, how "[i]n 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out"? Ever wonder where Savage got such an idea? It may have come from his boss. Savage's syndicator, Talk Radio Network, is operated by the Roy Masters family (Masters' son, Mark Masters, is TRN's CEO). As we've detailed, Masters heads the Foundation of Human Understanding and has been accused of being a cult leader who sways disciples through hypnosis and meditation. (Masters also has ties to WorldNetDaily, which, among other things, hosts Savage's website.) Masters hosts a TRN-syndicated overnight radio show. ConWebWatch has discovered an audio clip of the July 22 edition of Masters' show, in which he addressed the controversy over Savage's remarks. Masters not only declared that "Savage is dead right," he claimed autism is caused by "[b]ad parenting" and cited the pursuit of "the benefits the parent gets for having their children pronounced with autism." He also appears to blame dominating moms and weak dads: "And you, sir, who just sit on the fence crying like a rooster. Well, one of these days you’ll wake up, you’ll cackle like a hen and become a homosexual or something because you’re not a man to let this happen to your children." From the July 22 edition of Talk Radio Network's "Advice Line Overnight With Roy Masters":
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:37 AM EDT
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
The Return of the WJC?
Topic: WorldNetDaily Last time we saw Andrea Shea King, WorldNetDaily was pretending she was a reporter. WND has brought her back in a more honest role as a commentator in an Obama-bashing, Jerome Corsi-defending Aug. 19 WND column. She's particularly impressed by Corsi's "nearly 700 footnotes." But look at the tag line at the end: "This column was commissioned by the Western Journalism Center." The WJC, if you'll recall, was co-founded by WND chief Joseph Farah in the early 1990s (with a hefty chunk of Scaife money) with the purpose of attacking the Clinton administration; when Bill Clinton left office, the WJC went dormant. Farah created WND as a project of the WJC, and we can presume that the WJC still possesses a piece of WND. We presume that the WJC is currently run by James H. Smith, co-founder along with Farah and publisher of the Sacramento Union when Farah served as editor (and did his part to help kill it). When several staffers were laid off from a revival of the Union in 2005 (shortly before Smith himself was ousted), it was noted that "at least one laid-off staffer has gone next door to a job at the Western Journalism Center." So it has seemingly been doing something, even if its website is empty is useless. It is rather curious that after eight years of effective dormancy, the WJC is springing to life just as a Democrat is mounting a serious claim to the presidency -- which would seem to put the lie to Farah's claim that "[t]he center's mission was not ideological." WND needs to explain its current relationship with the WJC -- specifically, how much of WND the WJC still owns. And the WJC needs to admit the truth about itself. With websites like Talking Points Memo and ProPublica demonstrating how freelance investigative reporting really operates, will the WJC abandon its shaky pretense of being an "investigative reporting" organization and finally admit to being a right-wing pressure group like all the others?
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:16 PM EDT
WND Has Editorial Standards?
Topic: WorldNetDaily An Aug. 18 WorldNetDaily article defends Jerome Corsi from the charge that he is a 9/11 "truther," insisting that Corsi "has rejected the arguments from '9/11 Truthers' who allege the U.S. government brought about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks." It includes the following claim:
The big revelation here is the suggestion that WND has an "editorial panel" that purports to have certain journalistic standards and would actually refuse to run an article. That's not something we would have suspected -- we thought WND's only standard was to smear Democrats and liberals regardless of whether the smear has any basis in fact. After all, it has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of journalistic standards, from printing sleazy, never-verified claims about Barack Obama to publishing a series of articles attacking Al Gore that it never fact-checked, ultimately resulting in a libel lawsuit and a (presumably costly) out-of-court settlement in which WND admitted that claims it published were false and that "the sources named in the publications have stated under oath that statements attributed to them in the articles were either not made by them, were misquoted by the authors, were misconstrued, or the statements were taken out of context." This suggests that WND's status as a horribly biased, unreliable news organization is part of an actual, deliberate plan. Horrors!
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:53 PM EDT
What Kincaid Won't Tell You About Obama's 'Mentor'
Topic: Accuracy in Media Cliff Kincaid's Aug. 15 Accuracy in Media column proclaims that the Barack Obama campaign's debunking of Jerome Corsi's Obama-bashing book "acknowledges on ... that the mysterious “Frank” in Obama’s 1995 book, Dreams From My Father, is in fact the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) member Frank Marshall Davis," insisting that the admission "can only add to growing public concern about Obama’s relationship with a Communist pawn of Moscow who was the subject of security investigations by the FBI and various congressional committees which examined Soviet activities in the U.S." In an Aug. 17 column, Kincaid complains that the Obama campaign's debunking "doesn’t identify Davis as a hard-core communist and it dishonestly edits an article about Davis to eliminate references to his admitted involvement in CPUSA activities and make the black revolutionary writer and “poet” look like a civil rights activist." But the Obama report does something that Kincaid has yet to do: put Obama's relationship with Davis in full and accurate context. Specifically, it points out that Obama wrote in his autobiography "Dreams From My Father" that he rejected Davis' alleged radicalism. From the report:
In his eagerness to smear Obama as a communist sympathizer through his relationship with Davis, Kincaid has yet to report these statements from Obama's book that demonstrate he rejected Davis' extremist views. That, after all, conflicts with his Obama-is-a-secret-commie meme. Then again, an accurate view of Obama is presumably not what Richard Mellon Scaife is paying Kincaid to promulgate.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:12 AM EDT
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily
-- Doug Powers, Aug. 18 WorldNetDaily column
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:30 AM EDT
Monday, August 18, 2008
Compare and Contrast
Topic: WorldNetDaily
-- Roger Hedgecock, Aug. 18 WorldNetDaily column
-- Media Matters, Aug. 15 item
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:09 PM EDT
Quote of the Day
Topic: WorldNetDaily
-- Aug. 16 letter to WorldNetDaily by Tony Patterson. Patterson has never read ConWebWatch, has he?
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:47 PM EDT
Klein Falsely Impugns Obama's 'Loyalty'
Topic: WorldNetDaily Aaron Klein is moving on from guilt-by-association about Barack Obama to libelous innuendo. Klein's 49th (at least) anti-Obama article for WorldNetDaily speculates on whether Obama was "a citizen of Indonesia" as a child, asserting that this "could raise loyalty concerns." How? According to who? Klein doesn't say. It's only Klein making this empty accusation against a candidate he viscerally hates, as part of his attempts to smear Obama. Remember, Klein is a reporter whose biased, shoddy journalism WND boss Joseph Farah unequivocally stands by, just like factually challenged anti-Obama author Jerome Corsi. UPDATE: One would think the fact that John McCain's chief foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, has been a paid lobbyist for the nation of Georgia raises more "loyalty concerns" than what Obama did as a child, but Klein makes no mention of this in apparent deference to WND's pro-McCain agenda.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:27 AM EDT
Updated: Monday, August 18, 2008 3:00 PM EDT
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