We've previously detailed Noel Sheppard's uncanny ability to be surprised by things that aren't very surprising. He again engages in a form of this in a Dec. 27 NewsBusters post, in which Sheppard asks, "Can you imagine a major American newspaper publishing the headline '2008 Was the Year Man-made Global Warming Was Disproved'?" Sheppard adds that "the British Telegraph published a piece Saturday most climate alarmists on this side of the Atlantic would never dare," which he claims supports "the view that foreign press outlets are more willing to present both sides of this debate."
What Sheppard doesn't tell you: The London Telegraph is a conservative-leaning paper owned until recently by Conrad Black, the article in question is an opinion column, and the columnist (whom Sheppard curiously fails to name), Christopher Booker, has a history of spreading misinformation not only about globalwarming but also about asbestos -- Booker has peddled the false claim that some types of asbestos don't cause cancer.
Sheppard doesn't explain how a conserative opinion columnist in a conservative newspaper peddling conservative talking points, and misleading ones at that, is representative of telling "both sides of the debate."
With the Israeli military action against Hamas in Gaza, Aaron Klein has turned propagandist, bashing claims made by Hamas while uncritically promoting claims by the Israeli government.
A Dec. 27 WND article by Klein focuses on "Hamas' and the Palestinian Authority's long and sordid histories of greatly inflating casualty figures, complaining that news reports on casualties in Gaza failed to note that "the casualty numbers were provided by Hamas."
By contrast, Klein uncritically repeated claims by the Israeli Defense Forces about "some of the targets hit," that "the IDF maintains it tried to minimize casualties," and that the IDF strikes "were predicated on precise intelligence amassed in recent months to target specific Hamas facilities." Klein also quotes a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert saying that "Hamas has a major propaganda interest in highlighting civilian casualties while at the same time minimizing the number of Hamas combatants killed."
A real journalist might have noted that Israel, as the other combatant, has a propaganda interest in downplaying civilian casualties in its airstrikes. But that's not Klein's job here. His goal is to make Israel look good and Hamas look bad -- which makes him a propagandist, not a journalist.
It's Christmas time again, and you know that that means: time for Aaron Klein to disingenuously claim about other media reporting (not his own, of course) about Bethlehem.
A Dec. 24 WorldNetDaily column by Klein contains his apparently annual carping -- he melodramatically targets "but the cold deceit of the mainstream media, which, like clockwork, file misleading reports from this important Christian city every year" -- and like last year, he misleads about what he's criticizing (though, unlike last year, it doesn't appear that he got basic facts wrong, such as the name of the news agency he was attacking). His main problem is that the media doesn't parrot his right-wing agenda in which Israelis the right-wing ones, anyway) are always correct and justified in their behavior and all Muslims are always wrong.
Klein's first target is a Associated Press article on life in Bethlehem that he claims improperly describes the security wall erected by the Israelis. He accuses the writer (putting "journalist" in scare quotes to describe her) of claiming that the wall "encircle[s]" Bethlehem. In fact, the AP writer did not do that; she only described one property as being "surrounded on three sides by a gray cement wall."
Klein also claims that the writer's "main contention" was that "Palestinians in Bethlehem are suffering economically, and this is Israel's fault," which "couldn't be further from the truth." In fact, the AP article makes no such claim; rather, the writer makes no explicit claims about the economy of Bethlehem as a whole and points out how the wall has been disruptive to some but that residents are adapting.
Klein also engages in some whitewashing here by downplaying the impact of the fence: "Actually, unless one enters the city from the area interfacing Jerusalem, a traveler coming in from any other entrance will not even encounter the barrier." Klein concludes with a dissertation on Palestinian and Muslim aggression in Bethlehem.
The notion of Klein complaining about the biased reporting of others is laughable given the extreme bias of his own reporting. Most recently, as we've detailed, Klein has been whitewashing and explaining away violence by right-wing Israeli settlers in the West Bank against Palestinians. Klein has avoided reporting on it since even as the violence continues.
And Klein's whitewashing continues: In a Dec. 26 article, Klein quotes West Bank settler David Haivri, whom he benignly describes only as the "Shromron Community Council liason." As we'vedetailed, Haivri (or Ha'ivri) -- whom Klein has sympathetically portrayed in the past -- is a far-right activist aligned with Meir Kahane's movements who, in a CNN documentary, refused to criticize a plot by Jewish extremists to detonate a bomb outside a Palestinian girls' school.
If Klein is so offended by the "cold deceit" of the media, shouldn't he stop engaging in it himself?
Eugenics pioneer, Francis Galton, defined eugenics as "the study of all agencies under human control which can improve or impair the racial quality of future generations."
Global warming can be defined as: "The study of all agencies under human control which can improve or impair the environmental quality of future generations."
[...]
The eugenics movement, carried to its logical conclusion by Hitler, killed millions of innocent people. Global warming, when carried to its logical conclusion, will kill far more people than eugenics, and cause incomprehensible agony to people who desperately need affordable energy to survive and prosper.
A Dec. 25 NewsBusters post by P.J. Gladnick highlights a Slate article about "political media divas who refuse to appear with other guests." What Gladnick doesn't mention: a number of those media divas are at the Media Research Center.
Last year, we studied a three-month period of MRC staffers' appearances on Fox News. Our findings:
Of the 21 appearances on the channel by MRC employees we documented in the first three months of 2007, 11 were solo appearances with no other guests, and three more included guests who held similar conservative views to that of the MRC representative.
Only five appearances were made in a format that included the opportunity for questioning by ideological opposites.
Rarely was the MRC representative identified as conservative.
Indeed, we've continuedtodocument MRC appearances on Fox News in which not only is there no ideological opposite taking part in the conversation, the MRC rep nor the MRC are not identified as conservative. We don't know how strict the MRC's standards are for TV appearances, but it seems that there are too many friendly solo appearances on Fox for it to be a coincidence.
Further, MRC chief Brent Bozell does have a history of engaging in diva-esque behavior.
WND Still Whitewashing Ramos, Compean Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has been agitating of late for a pardon of Border Patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, convicted in 2006 of shooting a fleeing suspected drug smuggler on the U.S.-Mexico border and then covering up their actions -- even offering a petition for people to sign (which, as we've noted, is a tad disingenuous). But as it did before, WND is shielding from its readers the most damning aspects of the case against Ramos and Compean -- namely, what exactly they did to earn their prison sentences.
A Dec. 15 article by Chelsea Schilling summarized the case this way: "Ramos and Compean are serving 11- and 12-year prison sentences, respectively, for shooting at a fleeing illegal alien drug dealer while he smuggled nearly 750 pounds of marijuana across the border." While Schilling did go on to note that the two "were convicted of assault, discharge of a weapon in the commission of a crime of violence, tampering with an official proceeding and deprivation of civil rights," at no point does Schilling explain it, preferring instead to tell the sob stories of the families of the agents. Schilling does admit that the Ramos and Compean's convictions on nearly all of the charges were upheld by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
As we detailed when WND endeavored to suppress the full story the first time around, the agents were accused of covering up their involvement in the shooting by picking up their shell casings and failing to file an incident report. Further, pursuing fleeing suspects violates Border Patrol policy.
While this article had some semblence of balance, a follow-up Dec. 22 article by Schilling did not. She repeated the "illegal alien drug dealer" slant, noted the charges the two were convicted of -- then went on to claim, based solely on a claim made by an anonymous source, that Border Patrol agents "fear losing their jobs or ending up behind bars like agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean."
Other recent WND articles on the case demonstrate a similar bias by not reporting the details of the case explaining why Ramos and Compean faced those charges and were convicted of them. A Dec. 15 article promoting the petition whitewashes things further, noting only that Ramos and Compean "were convicted and sentenced under a law requiring a minimum 10-year sentence for the use of a firearm in the commission of a crime – a law the Congress never intended to apply to law enforcement officers" without mention the cover-up charges. A Dec. 24 article by Bob Unruh recited some of the charges Ramos and Compean wereconvicted of but failed to detail the circumstances of the crime.
A Dec. 19 column by Joseph Farah engages in a total whitewash, stating only that "Ramos and Compean were Border Patrol agents who slightly wounded an illegal alien drug smuggler with a gunshot while in pursuit and in the line of duty" without explaining the attempted cover-up of their actions. Farah added that "They have already served nearly two years – mostly in solitary confinement" without explaining that they are in solitary confinement for their own protection. Law enforcement agents convicted of crimes typically are held apart from the general prison population for their own safety -- as illustrated by an assault on Ramos while he was held among the general prison population (and yes, WND complained about that, too).
Waters Ignores Falsehood to Praise Fox Attack on NYT Topic: NewsBusters
A Dec. 23 NewsBusters post (and TimesWatch item) by Clay Waters proclaims how "The roundtable on Monday night's Special Report with Brit Hume on FNC was not kind to the New York Times's hit piece on Sunday's front page that blamed President Bush and only Bush for the mortgage meltdown." But Waters failed to note that panelists Nina Easton and Charles Krauthammer got a major fact wrong.
As Media Matters details, both Barnes and Krauthammer claimed that the Community Reinvestment Act and efforts to expand affordable housing are at least in part to blame for the home foreclosure crisis. But according to experts, the CRA does not govern the vast majority of subprime lenders.
Apparently, conservatives aren't held to the same factual standards by the MRC as non-conservatives.
Examiner Misleads on Global Warming Topic: Washington Examiner
A Dec. 23 Washington Examiner editorial falsely claims that "the Earth has actually been cooling – not warming – since 1998." In fact, as we've repeatedlydetailed, while 1998 is the warmest year on record, overall global temperatures have risen in the ensuing decade.
The editorial also cites a claim regarding "more than 650 current and former members of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who are now publicly questioning the non-scientist Gore’s major premise." The editorial fails to note that the claim is being peddled by Marc Morano, the staffer for Republican Sen. James Infofe who has a history of pushing bogus claims denying global warming.
First, the Examiner gets one detail wrong. The Inhofe/Morano report did not cite "more than 650 current and former members of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change"; it cited "over 650 prominent international scientists, including many current and former UN IPCC scientists."
Second, Morano's numbers are suspect here as well. As Climate Progress points out, the vast majority of people on Morano's list are recycled from a smiliar 2007 report, which was criticized for including a number of people with no expertise in climate science (or science, period).
The editorial also cited "recent freak snowstorms in Malibu, New Orleans and Las Vegas" as evidence that global warming doesn't exist. In fact, as we've detailed, a spell of cold weather in a particular place has no relevance to the overall global warming debate.
A Dec. 22 Newsmax article by David A. Patten, headlined, "ACORN, Soros, Linked to Franken Vote Grab," doesn't fulfill the promise of its headline. Rather, Patten attacks Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie as allegedly having "extensive ties to both the ACORN organization now under federal investigation for vote fraud, and to MoveOn.org ultra-liberal kingmaker George Soros."
And what are those "extensive ties"? Patten tells us: "In 2006, ACORN endorsed Ritchie in his bid to become secretary of state, and Ritchie also received a campaign contribution that year from Soros." That's "extensive"?
Patten also alleges that Ritchie was a beneficiary of a Soros-funded project whose "express purpose is to seed state election bureaucracies nationwide with partisan activists ... who are strategically positioned to influence the outcome of close recounts like the one now underway in Minnesota." Patten adds that the project "was founded after Democrats involved in George W. Bush’s narrow 2000 election victory blamed Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris for influencing the outcome."
As for evidence that Ritchie is spearheading a "Franken vote grab" in the Minnesota Senate race recount between Democrat Al Franken and Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, Patten offers none -- instead, he quotes our old friend Matthew Vadum of the Capital Research Center calling Ritchie "a hard-core liberal who was endorsed by ACORN and funded by ACORN" and who has "a permissive attitude toward the recount process." Patten also states that "ruling after ruling by the Ritchie-led State Canvassing Board has gone against Coleman," but fails to note that Republican Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty approved the canvassing board's composition, and that a lawyer for Coleman's campaign reportedly said that the "state should feel good about who's on the panel."
If all this sounds a little familiar, it's because eight years ago, Newsmax was on the other side of a similar election controversy.
Newsmax was all about defending then-Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris during the 2000 presidential election recount, declaring her "the one and only hero to emerge from the election crisis" and asking its readers to email their support to her.
But a search of Newsmax's online archives found no reference to the one relevent piece of information about Harris that was the basis for much of the controversy surrounding her: she was the Florida co-chair for George W. Bush's campaign and had campaigned for him, and her certifying Bush as the winner in the face of controversies surrounding the voting process made him the president.
While that would seem to have relevance in an article on the alleged political affiliations of state election officials, Patten fails to mention that fact as well in his reference to Harris. Further, Patten offers no evidence that Ritchie is behaving any different than Harris, whose behavior Newsmax endorsed and defended.
UPDATE: MN Publius reports that people on the Newsmax mailing list have received a fund-raising letter from the Republican National Lawyers Association, which baselessly asserts that Franken and "his liberal allies are working feverishingly to steal the Minnesota Senate election."
For the past few weeks, WorldNetDaily has been flogging a petition "demanding that the constitutional eligibility requirement be taken seriously and that any and all controlling legal authorities in this matter examine the complete birth certificate of Barack Obama, including the actual city and hospital of birth, and make that document available to the American people for inspection." But the petition itself lacks the transparency WND is demanding from Obama.
First of all, there's no way for anyone to inspect the signatures, as WND has not made them available. Not only is there no independent way of verifying that (at the time of this writing) 195,039 signatures actually exist, there's no way to check how many Mickey Mouses and Donald Ducks and other fake names have signed it.
Third, the petition accepts only a name, email address and zip code, with no verification that the signer be a registered or even eligible voter. But why ask for an email address? Could it be that this is all one big harvesting operation to gather addresses forWND's mailing list?
It appears so; as part of signing the petiiton, you agree to let WND "keep me informed about the upcoming constitutional crisis over Barack Hussein Obama's eligibility for the presidency, as well as other breaking news and special offers from WND." And once you click the button to sign the petition, you're taken to another page where WND tries to sell you some factually challenged anti-Obama books.
Another WND petition asking President Bush to pardon two Border Patrol agents appears to be structured the same way, down to the sales job on the follow-up page.
There's no genuine sincerity here on WND's part here. It's all just marketing -- another way to make money off readers.
AIM's Dishonest Cry of Censorship Topic: Accuracy in Media
A Dec. 22 Accuracy in Media column by Larry Grathwohl is described in an editor's note as "written in response to Charles Lane’s December 11, 2008, Washington Post column, 'The Unreal Bill Ayers: Three Decades After the Weather Underground’s End, He’s Still Justifying Its Means.'" The note adds: "This Grathwohl column was rejected for publication by the Washington Post." The column is headlined, "Washington Post Censors Truth About Bill Ayers."
But a publication declining to publish someone's letter is not the same thing as "censorship" -- otherwise, we could accuse AIM of censorship for not allowing readers to comment on Grathwohl's column, as it does for most AIM columnists including Cliff Kincaid, who desperately needs to be countered with the truth. It appears that AIM now has turned off comments even on its blogs.
Further, Grathwohl does not accuse the Post of "censoring" the "truth"; indeeed, he writes, "There isn’t much for me to disagree with in the article." He does not complain about the Post but, rather, offers further criticism of Ayers.
And the Post article itself is critical of Ayers, accusing him of engaging in a "selective version" of history, concluding:
Hardly the worst crimes of that turbulent era, the Weather Underground's deeds were nevertheless immoral. They put innocents at risk and sowed fear. Ultimately, they achieved nothing except to undermine the peaceful antiwar movement. Bill Ayers should cut the sophistry and admit it.
It's dishonest for AIM to claim that the Post "censored" Grathwohl by not publishing his letter when AIM refuses to permit its readers to respond to Grathwohl -- or Kincaid, or any other AIM writer.
Aaron Klein Desperate Obama Smear Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
Is Aaron Klein turning into Cliff Kincaid?
In recent weeks, Klein hasbeenseeminglyobsessed with making guilt-by-association claims, howevertenuous, between Barack Obama and members of his governing team to ... communists -- communism being a longtime Kincaid obsession (as we've noted). He gives it another shot in a Dec. 21 article, in which he tars labor secretary-designee Rep. Hilda Solis as a commie because ... she once sent a representative to a gathering of socialists 12 years ago, and because socialists have allegedly said nice things about her.
Rather thin gruel for an attempted smear. But that's pretty much all Klein has at this point.
Farah Throws Another Lie on WND's Obama-Hate Pile Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has lied and misled about Barack Obama so much in the past year. Why not add one more lie to the pile?
In a Dec. 22 WND column exhorting Rev. Rick Warren not to give the invocation at Obama's inauguration because it would be akin to "embracing evil," Joseph Farah writes of "just one of Obama's evil policies":
Barack Obama is opposed to any and all restrictions on the killing of unborn children and has pledged to work against the few that remain. In fact, as a state legislator in Illinois, he pushed a law that would require the killing of babies born alive after unsuccessful abortions.
That is a deliberate, non-factual distortion of Obama's actions as a state legislator. He did not "push[] a law that would require the killing of babies born alive after unsuccessful abortions"; he opposed a proposed state law that would have designated any fetus that survived an abortion -- even pre-viable ones that cannot survive outside the womb -- as a "human person" and making it a crime to allow them to die (again, even if they cannot survive outside the womb). Obama made a distinction between viable and pre-viable fetuses and claimed that Illinois law already required doctors to provide medical treatment for all children born after abortions who demonstrated viability.
Farah also throws in an apparently obligatory Nazi reference: "I'm sure you would not want to invoke God's blessing on the inauguration of a figure like Adolf Hitler, whose rise to power brought the destruction of millions of lives." Farah clearly wants you to think -- as do manyWNDcolumnists -- that Obama and Hitler are interchangable.
Farah concludes with more extreme rhetoric: "God will not bless the Obama administration's plans for murder, no matter what you say on Jan. 20. It's time for Rick Warren to decide whether he stands with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob or if he stands with the world and his "friend," Barack Hussein Obama."
Farah's refusal to get basic facts straight on Obama reflects poorly on the rest of WND -- though, really, it's more of a symptom of WND's fabulist malaise.
New Article: Faith2Hate Topic: WorldNetDaily
Is WorldNetDaily columnist Janet Folger Porter misusing the resources of her Faith2Action organization for her own personal anti-Obama crusade? Read more >>
