Aaron Klein Labeling Aversion Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've previously noted that Aaron Klein's latest anti-Obama article, detailing a visit by Obama adviser Daniel Kurtzer to Syria, excludes Kurtzer's Orthodox Jewish credentials in order to paint him as "one of Israel's greatest foes in Washington." But a closer look at the article shows that Klein is indulging in his favoriteaversion: refusing to label right-wingers as right-wingers.
Klein attributes his assertion that Kurtzer is "one of Israel's greatest foes in Washington" to "Israeli leaders speaking on the record." But nearly all of the "leaders" he names reside on the right side of the political spectrum:
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which Aaron Klein portrayed as a "mainstream Jewish organization." But the Conference is headed by Malcolm Hoenlein, whom the Nation noted likes to refer to the West Bank as "Judea and Samaria" -- an affectation shared by Klein. Hoenlein has also suggested that Obama is anti-Israel, another Klein hobbyhorse.
Morris Amitay, former executive director of the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee. Amitay is associated with a long list of neoconservative-led or hardline pro-Israel groups and policy organizations, and AIPAC itself is arguably a right-leaning group, perhaps most notorious for being tied to the Lawrence Franklin espionage scandal, in which classified information regarding U.S. policy toward Iran was passed from Franklin to Israel via AIPAC staffers.
Yitzhak Shamir and Benjamin Nentanyahu. Both members of Israel's Likud party, which Klein doesn't even mention, let alone the fact that Likud is right-wing.
Klein wants to portray the Kurtzer controversy as an anti-Israel issue when, in fact, it's a liberal-vs.-conservative issue.
Meanwhile ... Topic: WorldNetDaily Media Matters explains why people should not take WorldNetDaily columnist and anti-abortion/anti-Obama activist Jill Stanek seriously. Not only does she have a history of inflammatory, extremist statements, the central claim on which she has built her activism -- that aborted fetuses that were born alive were abandoned at the hospital where she worked -- has never been substantiated.
ConWeb Repeats Dubious MRC Study Topic: The ConWeb
Both WorldNetDaily (in an Aug. 20 article by Bob Unruh) and Newsmax (in an Aug. 20 article by Jim Meyers) uncriticially repeat the Media Research Center's assertion in a study that Barack Obama received unduly positive coverage from the broadcast media before winning the Democratic presidential nomination. Unruh and Meyers praised the MRC study as "comprehensive" and "exhaustive," respectively, but both refused to note contradictory views -- specifically, a Center for Media and Public Affairs study finding that Obama has received overwhelmingly negative network news coverage since winning the nomination.
As we've noted, both studies can't be right, since the likelihood of network coverage of Obama shifting from highly positive to highly negative in a day's time is virtually nil. Since the CMPA is a historically conservative-leaning organization, and the MRC has not challenged the findings of the CMPA study to our knowledge, one can deduce which study must be the flawed one.
UPDATE: An Aug. 22 CNSNews.com article by Fred Lucas does the same thing.
Aaron Klein Anti-Obama Agenda Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein's 50th (at least) anti-Obama article for WorldNetDaily notes that "A key foreign policy adviser to Sen. Barack Obama has traveled to Damascus where he reportedly urged Syrian officials to fast-track negotiations with Israel." Nowhere does Klein note the McCain campaign's own freelance diplomacy, including McCain chief foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann's work as a paid lobbyist for the nation of Georgia.
UPDATE: Heather Hurlburt notes that the adviser to which Klein is referring, Daniel Kurtzer, is an Orthodox Jew, the former dean of Yeshiva University, and has been caricatured in anti-Semitic cartoons in the Egyptian press during his tenure as U.S. ambassador to Egypt -- all things Klein curiously fails to tell his readers, perhaps because it conflicts with Klein's portrayal of Kurtzer as "one of Israel's greatest foes in Washington."
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 >>
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.
Excuse me, because I have to throw up, wash my hands, and disinfect my keyboard -- not necessarily in that order.
I'm nauseated...talk amongst yourselves.
-- 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.)
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?"
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?
Obama is ostensibly explaining to a crowd what he is looking for in a vice-president [Dick Cheney need not apply.] But tell me if you don't get the feeling that it was at least as much about Obama on an ego trip, fantasizing about occupying the Oval Office, right down to his imagining the veep addressing him as "Mr. President."
Note also Obama mentioning that he wants "somebody who in their gut knows where they came from." The kind of person who wouldn't need to write two autobiographies to figure that out, maybe?
And—sorry Hillary—as Kiran Chetry pointed out, Obama repeatedly refers to his fantasy veep as "he."
Note also Obama's down-home pronunciation of "country." Was it in Hawaii or at Harvard that he picked that up? Couldn't be an affectation, could it?
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.
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.
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":
MASTERS: So, I will discuss autism with -- the kind of induced autism, the one that is induced by inoculations and, of course, people are born that way, which is a very small number indeed, but most of them are made that way by the school, by parents, and I -- I’ve seen some awful things in my life, how parents treat their children, especially the bright ones. They demoralize their own children. And those are the parents, possibly, who misunderstood what Savage says, the parents who destroyed their own children. And don’t you think parents don’t destroy their own children? Most parents do to some degree. Some of them are just simply practicing Munchausen by proxy. They create the problem and then -- unconsciously create the problem and yet -- and if you’re bright enough, you can actually see some of those people when they’re interviewed on television, you can see the mother -- I’ve seen one where the mother was degrading this boy right in front, talking to him like he was a stupid idiot. The kid was as bright as he could be, and the silly little stupid old father sat there and let it happen. And -- but the trouble is if don’t look at it right because we’re all kind of nuts in some way. We’re all sympathetic for the mama to put up with this poor little kid, but she’s created it. She created it, and the father, well, he just lets it happen. He sits like a rooster on the fence. And so therefore, whatever happens, he don’t get any blame. So, that’s how he thinks anyway.
So, anyway, we can talk about that if you want to, but there’s very few cases of real autism. It’s all created. And the medicine, medical people -- I told you about medicine, and I told you the other night about the VA, that the country -- don’t you get it? The country is infected. It’s infiltrated with our enemies. This is not paranoia. It’s a fact. They go for the health – the healthcare system. They go for the social services and healthcare system, so they can decide what disease is, and what common sense it is and what it isn’t. And that’s what’s wrong with the schools. I heard one of the politicians running for president, I just heard him say -- I’m not going to give any credit to any one of them, but you can guess which one it is if you like. Just -- I just want to say what he said. He said “I know there’s something wrong with the school system” -- this is not his words exactly, but my interpretation of it. He says, “But the problem with the school system, the worst place you can find this is in the inner city, the black schools.” Now, how did black schools get the worst share of the system? Is it the Republicans? No. It’s always the left that have degrading, always degrading, always degrading. The people always demoralizing and robbing us of our -- our -- our sovereignty. And the school system, you won’t find any -- hardly any normal people there. You’ll find all these lef- wing people who are on a payroll and they’re programmed to demoralize your children. And then, of course, it’s Munchausen by proxy again. See, so the children don’t do well in school, so they get drugs so they can pay attention to the crap they give them -- excuse me for saying that. They’re not learning anything, they’re being brainwashed, socialized, sensitized to their environment so they can’t think for themselves. That’s what’s happening.
So, what do you do with seven million children -- someone want to correct me? It’s bad enough if it’s three million, I’m just hoping someone correct -- no, it’s not seven, it’s only three. So, in my day it wasn’t like that at all. We didn’t have that much of problems at school, it was halfway decent. Wasn’t the greatest education in the world that I came from, but it wasn’t like it is today. And in England it’s even worse. We’re not far behind them. And there’s the -- these pharmaceuticals, they’re having a heyday on the demoralization of our children. And all the sick parents are out -- yeah, you want to call me? You call me. Now, I understand, and I give it to you, some children are born that way, but most of them are made that way. Bad parenting, see, and the benefits the parent gets for having their children pronounced with autism. Actually, Savage is dead right. And you have a problem with me? You call me. I’ll show you who has autism. It’s you, sir, you, ma’am -- mostly you, ma’am. 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.
OK, now, I’ve said all that, I feel better. I hope you feel worse, but remember, I’ve got no sponsors, I don’t need -- it’s just you. Look, if you have an autistic child, I’ll show you how to fix him if you’ve done it. So why don’t you own up to it? It could be you. It could be you, sir, letting your wife do it while you’re away. It could be that you have a bright, beautiful kid there and you can’t tolerate his brightness, any more than you can tolerate Savage’s brightness, or mine for that matter. And you won’t dare to pick up the phone and call me or him for that matter. All you can do is get together like a big bunch of cowards you are.
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?
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:
Obama's rebuttal used as evidence for its claim a radio interview in which Corsi discussed a story he was researching concerning the chemical analysis of debris from the Twin Tower collapse.
While Corsi claims in the interview that he intended to publish the story, the WND editorial panel rejected the article, with Corsi's agreement, after reaching a consensus that the research failed to answer several critical questions which left the results inconclusive.
"After the review of my draft article by the WND editorial staff, I agreed the piece should be withdrawn," Corsi affirmed.
"As I explained on the radio, I am typically interested in scientific evidence that lies outside the explanation of conventional hypotheses," he continued. "Science advances by rejecting hypotheses, not by establishing hypotheses. In other words, should somebody find convincing scientific evidence that challenges some aspect of any official report, that evidence will not automatically confirm the truth of an alternative hypothesis."
"Put simply, even if we had published the article, all we would have established was that there were some questions yet to be resolved with the government's 9/11 explanation, not that an alternative hypothesis was suddenly correct," he explained[.]
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!
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:
Obama Wrote Of Frank As Someone Who “Fell Short” Of The “Lofty Standards” Of “Martin And Malcolm, Dubois And Mandela.” “Yes, I’d seen weakness in other men—Gramps and his disappointments, Lolo and his compromise. But these men had become object lessons for me, men I might love but never emulate, white men and brown men whose fates didn’t speak to my own. It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela. And if later I saw that the black men I knew— Frank or Ray or Will or Rafiq — fell short of such lofty standards; if I had learned to respect these men for the struggles they went through, recognizing them as my own — my father’s voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. You do not work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people’s struggle. Wake up, black man!” [Dreams From My Father, Pg. 96]
Obama Wrote That “The Relationship Between Black And White, The Meaning Of Escape, Would Never Be Quite The Same For Me As It Had Been For Frank, Or For The Old Man, Or Even For Roy.” “The relationship between black and white, the meaning of escape, would never be quite the same for me as it had been for Frank, or for the Old Man, or even for Roy.” [Dreams From My Father, Pg. 277]
Obama Recounted Frank’s Diatribe About What Would Happen To Him In College And Then Described Frank As “Incurable” And Living In The “Sixties Time Warp That Hawaii Had Created.” “What had Frank called college? An advanced degree in compromise. I thought back to the last time I had seen the old poet, a few days before I left Hawaii. We had made small talk for a while; he complained about his feet, the corns and bone spurs that he insisted were a direct result of trying to force African feet into European shoes. Finally he had asked me what it was that I expected to get out of college. I told him I didn’t know. He shook his big, hoary head…’Leaving your race at the door,” he said. “Leaving your people behind.” He studied me over the top of his reading glasses. “Understand something, boy. You’re not going to college to get educated. You’re going there to get trained. They’ll train you to want what you don’t need. They’ll train you to manipulate words so they don’t mean anything anymore. They’ll train you to forget what it is that you already know. They’ll train you so good, you’ll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that shit. They’ll give you a corner office and invite you to fancy dinners, and tell you you’re a credit to your race. Until you want to actually start running things, and then they’ll yank on your chain and let you know that you may be a well-trained, well-paid nigger, but you’re a nigger just the same…It made me smile, thinking back on Frank and his old Black Power, dashiki self. In some ways he was as incurable as my mother, as certain in his faith, living in the same sixties time warp that Hawaii had created.” [Dreams From My Father, Pg. 96-97]
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 payingKincaid to promulgate.
