Topic: WorldNetDaily
In his July 13 WorldNetDaily column, Craig R. Smith repeatedly refers to President Obama as "Chairman Obama." Smith also throws in a reference to "Commandant Pelosi."
Monday, July 13, 2009
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily In his July 13 WorldNetDaily column, Craig R. Smith repeatedly refers to President Obama as "Chairman Obama." Smith also throws in a reference to "Commandant Pelosi."
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:51 PM EDT
Is WND Editing Obama's Wikipedia Entry Again?
Topic: WorldNetDaily We've previously detailed how a person working under the direction of WorldNetDaily reporter Aaron Klein edited Barack Obama's Wikipedia entry so that Klein could write a WND article on how edits adding baseless speculation about Obama's birth were deleted. Is WND trying to manufacture another story like that? A July 12 WND article by Joe Kovacs details how a Wikipedia page on the "early life and career of Barack Obama" had "changed numerous times" and "displayed at least two countries the commander in chief may have been born in – the United States and Kenya." Kovacs doesn't state how it became aware of the edits or who did the editing. Thus, we don't know whether the editing was done by Kovacs, another WND emoployee or an outside person acting under the direction of WND (as was the case in Klein's article). (The edit-history section of the Wikipedia page in question shows that the edits Kovacs cited were made by a user posting under the name BenSpecter.) Kovacs goes on to call the reversion of BenSpecter's edits "blatant scrubbing" (though WND did the same thing to Klein's article after publication in removing all evidence that the person who made the edits to Obama's Wikipedia page for Klein's article did so under Klein's direction). Kovacs then goes on to add:
Do Kovacs, Joseph Farah and the rest of the WND agree with Trebe that Obama is an "evil illegal alien"? Given the prominence to which Kovacs has elevated her remarks, we'd have to say yes -- which, of course, disqualifies Kovacs and WND from reporting anything that can be trusted.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:09 PM EDT
Molotov's Obama-Hating Tea Party Rant
Topic: WorldNetDaily Molotov Mitchell has posted the video of his speech at the sparsely attended anti-Obama tea party July 4 in Charlottesville, Va., and it's not pretty -- Mitchell lets his Obama-hate shine through in a way that not even his WorldNetDaily videos capture. He starts his rant by telling the crowd, "I know how you feel -- like the underground." He continues:
Mitchell then engages in his usual denigrating of people he doesn't agree with: "A handful of pencil-necked, metrosexual socialists in Washington can't possibly defeat a nation of red-blooded, God-fearing patriots." He then endorsed a military coup against Obama:
Next, he embraced the birther conspiracy:
In fact, he's not imparting facts -- as we noted the last time he did this, most of the claims Mitchell makes have been discredited. Mitchell then lets the Obama-hate loose:
As we've noted, the pizza chef flew coach, his boss at the restaurant paid for his travel he was already making a business trip to Washington, and Obama himself picked up the tab, not the taxpayers.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:30 AM EDT
Updated: Monday, July 13, 2009 12:37 AM EDT
Sunday, July 12, 2009
WND Still Promoting Anti-Semite's Attacks on Obama
Topic: WorldNetDaily A July 9 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh keeps up WND's embrace of Andy Martin by uncritically repeating his latest legal action regarding Barack Obama's birth certificate. Unruh describes Martin onlyas a "Chicago activist," Martin's long history of anti-Semitism and questionable behavior.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:14 PM EDT
Examiner Misleads on Train Station Money
Topic: Washington Examiner A July 10 "Daily Outrage" item (print only) in the Washington Examiner attacked stimulus money going "to refurbish a passenger train station in Elizabethtown, a small town in Lancaster County, Pa." because it "has been abandoned for the past 30 years." In fact, as Media Matters notes, while the station building is closed for 30 years, the station's platform is open and serving passengers -- more than 80,000 a year. Further, the station has reportedly nearly doubled its number of passengers since 2003-2004 and, according to the Pennsylvania State Department of Transportation, has had the highest increase in ridership in the past two years of any station along the Keystone corridor. The Examiner failed to mention those facts, which contradict its depiction of the station renovation as a waste of money. The Examiner apparently cribbed its attack from a report issued by Republican Sen. Tom Coburn. Here's a scan of the item as it appeared in the Examiner:
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:09 AM EDT
Updated: Sunday, July 12, 2009 1:10 AM EDT
Saturday, July 11, 2009
O'Leary Baselessly Attacks NYT Poll, Puffs His Own
Topic: WorldNetDaily Brad O'Leary uses his July 10 WorldNetDaily column to attack a New York Times poll he didn't like -- and, of course, to promote his own skewed polls. O'Leary asserts that the Times"rigged the poll much like the Ayatollah rigged the Iranian election," claiming that it "heavily weighted the poll in favor of Obama, showing the gap between his personal approval rating and the public's approval of his initiatives to be much smaller than it actually is." O'Leary also complained that the poll "surveyed twice as many Obama voters than McCain voters, as well as a significant number of non-voters. ... Sixteen percent of those surveyed by the Times are not even registered to vote." By comparison, O'Leary asserted, "the O'Leary/Zogby poll used an honest and accurate sampling method by only surveying Americans who voted in the 2008 presidential election, and weighting that sample to reflect the actual outcome of the election." O'Leary's attack on the Times poll -- portraying it as "rigged" and "portrait of a mythical America that doesn't exist," while puffing up his own as "honest and accurate" -- is without substance. O'Leary doesn't explain why non-voters are somehow less qualifed to offer opinions on presidential policies -- last time we checked, they were American citizens and subject to all the same regulations as voting Americans. The Times' use of a different methodology than O'Leary doesn't make its results any less valid. As Janet Elder, the Times' editor for news surveys and election analysis, said in a July 24 CNS article, "Although some polling organizations do, The New York Times/CBS News poll does not weight by party ID. ... We weight by characteristics that are known from census data." O'Leary took the cop-out that "the Times failed to disclose the make-up of its sample in the article it published that detailed the poll's results" -- even though it could have been found by simple Googling -- thus avoiding having to respond to the Times poll's methodology. Further, as Slate points out, it's highly likely that the large disparity between declared Obama voters and declared McCain voters in the Times poll is because people aren't telling the truth to pollsters because they want to be on the side of the winning candidate (and don't want to be associated with a loser like McCain):
O'Leary then offered "a comparison of both the New York Times' and The O'Leary Report's findings on similarly asked poll questions." But as O'Leary surely knows, "similarly asked" does not mean the same thing as exactly asked; slight changes in wording can produce different responses. As we've detailed, the Zogby polls O'Leary pays for include questions tweaked to obtain the response he wants. O'Leary largely fails to provide the questions specifically asked by both polls, and the one example he provides shows O'Leary's bias:
By using phrases like "means of production" and "state owned" -- phrases long used in reference to socialism and communism -- O'Leary is using language that is clearly designed to strike a negative subliminal response, predisposing respondents to reject that option. Thus, it can be argued that O'Leary's sample is not only not "accurate," it's just as "manipulated" as the Times poll he denigrates. It's also worth noting that for as much as O'Leary complains about the Times' alleged failure to "disclose the full details behind its sampling method," at no point in his article does O'Leary offer a link to his own Zogby poll so we can examine the methodology and specific questions he asked for ourselves.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:03 AM EDT
Updated: Saturday, July 11, 2009 11:07 AM EDT
'Grotesque' But True
Topic: NewsBusters Mark Finkelstein, in a July 10 NewsBusters post, is upset that Ed Schultz, on his MSNBC show, "offered up an unpaid infomercial for GM's new Camaro. Most grotesque was Schultz's boast that the Camaro was outselling the Ford Mustang." Finkelstein failed to mention that Schultz's "boast," however "grotesque" it may be, happens to be true. UPDATE: Corrected name of NewsBusters writer.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:30 AM EDT
Updated: Sunday, July 12, 2009 12:37 AM EDT
Friday, July 10, 2009
Meanwhile...
Topic: NewsBusters We have a post up at Media Matters' County Fair blog noting that Tim Graham, in a July 9 NewsBusters post, makes a big deal out of reporters attending an off-the-record Fourth of July gathering at the White House but failing to mention that President Bush held an annual off-the-record barbecue for reporters at his Texas ranch during his presidency.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:45 PM EDT
WND Wants Hospitals to Violate Obama's Privacy
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily has been frustrated in its attempts to get a Honolulu hospital to admit that Barack Obama was born there, due to federal privacy regulations prohibiting the release of patient information. So WND has done the next logical (for them) thing: attack the privacy law. A July 9 WND article by Joe Kovacs declares that "Federal law regarding the release of health records is so restrictive and intimidating, U.S. hospitals could conceivably refuse to confirm or deny if Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler were born in their facility." Kovacs goes on to complain that "the protections remain in effect even after someone is deceased, so hospitals could remain silent about Obama's mother, Ann Dunham." Why does WND want to violate Obama's rights? Does it hate him that much? (Answer to that last question: Yes, it does.)
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:28 PM EDT
CNS' Lucas Still Taking Walpin's Side
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com vowed to "cover stories that are subject to the bias of omission and report on other news subject to bias by commission." CNS reporter Fred Lucas is fulfilling that mission, though perhaps not in the way the mission statement intended. We've already noted how his report on a congressional committee report glossed over its partisan nature, failed to seek responses to it, and ignored that parts of the report appeared to contradict established facts. That's largely bias by omission. Lucas' July 9 article on the case of ousted AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin, by contrast, is largely bias by commission:
Lucas engages in bias by omission here as well. He interviews Walpin and a congressman who supports him, but no Walpin critics. He references the Washington Post as his source for the claim about AmeriCorps officials are supplying "documents intended to discredit Walpin," but he doesn't inform his readers that the Post has also posted those documents online. Further, as he has done before, Lucas failed to reference a letter by acting U.S. Attorney Lawrence Brown that accused Walpin of withholding exculpatory evidence from the attorney's office in the Johnson investigation, that Walpin made pronouncements to the media before discussing them with the attorney's office, and that Walpin's "actions were hindering our investigation and handling of this matter." We thought CNS was supposed to counter the bias of other media, not create bias of its own.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:16 AM EDT
Your Jackie Mason Bile-Filled Rant of the Week
Topic: WorldNetDaily It's that time again -- time for Jackie Mason to crank up his Two Minutes Hate against Barack Obama. In the midst of defending Sarah Palin's decision to resign as Alaska governor, Mason launches into yet another factually deficient anti-Obama tirade:
And the video clip abruptly ends. What insult is WND afraid to share with its readers?
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:01 AM EDT
Thursday, July 9, 2009
CNS' Lucas Uncritically Repeats Report's Bogus Claims
Topic: CNSNews.com A July 8 CNSNews.com article by Fred Lucas repeats claims from a "congressional report" that "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the chief culprits in the housing crisis because they encouraged people who could not afford payments to borrow money," but Lucas waits until the fourth paragraph to reveal that the report came from "Republican members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee." In other words, it's a biased report that committee Democrats did not sign off on. Lucas failed to solicit any reaction to the report, even though its claims appear to contradict established facts. Lucas states that "claims in the report have long been advanced by conservatives, who argue that the Community Reinvestment Act and other federal programs fed the housing bubble that burst in 2007 and led to the economic downfall in 2008." In fact, housing experts have pointed out that most subprime loans were not made under the CRA. Lucas also describes Democratic Rep. Barney Frank as having "fought against regulation of the two quasi-public mortgage giants." In fact, Frank made numerous efforts to enhance federal oversight of Fannie and Freddie. We suspect that Lucas can't be bothered to do a more balanced follow-up, even though prominent conservative David Horowitz has denounced the Republicans' report as "factually wrong-headed" and having "ugly racial overtones."
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:44 PM EDT
NewsBusters, WND Mislead on Ginsburg Statement
Topic: NewsBusters A July 9 NewsBusters post by serial misinformer Tom Blumer falsely suggests that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg believes in eugenics by highlighting a statement she made in a New York Times interview that "at the time Roe [v. Wade] was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of." Blumer added: "Who is this 'we' Ginsburg refers to?" Blumer does add the transcript of the relevant part of the interview in his post, which contradicts his suggestion by making clear that Ginsburg was not referring to herself regarding that belief. WorldNetDaily similarly misleads on Ginsburg's comment with a July 8 article headlined "Ginsburg: I thought Roe was to rid undesirables." WND does include a fuller transcript that contradicts the headline.
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:18 PM EDT
Ellis Washington Thinks He's Emile Zola
Topic: WorldNetDaily Let's see -- Ellis Washington has already likened Michael Savage to Jesus and Prometheus. Where does Washington go from there? Well, Washington has now decided that he's Emile Zola. Which means, of course, that Savage is Capt. Alfred Dreyfus. It also means that Washington spends his July 8 WorldNetDaily column throwing around the word "j'accuse" a lot. But that's not all. Washington ventures into Jack Cashill territory and spins a pan-continental conspiracy to destroy the sainted Savage:
Um, yeah. Needless to say, Washington has no evidence whatsoever of any of this. Also needless to say, Washington's whole "j'accuse" framework is faulty. While Dreyfus was innocent of the allegations against him, Savage is quite guilty of the hate speech the British have accused him of making, and Washington's feeble aping of Zola doesn't change that. P.S. World O' Crap deconstructs Washington's column further.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:38 AM EDT
Molotov Misleads Again
Topic: WorldNetDaily In his July 8 WorldNetDaily video, Molotov Mitchell dismisses "wine research" and "Mormon cricket studies" as projects benefiting from the "trillions of dollars that's already been distributed through welfare" by the Obama administration. Both items appear to be straight off John McCain's list of the "top 10 porkiest projects" in the omnibus spending bill passed by Congress in February (Mitchell doesn't mention, of course, that the bill included earmarks from both Republicans and Democrats). The first apparently refers to, as McCain put it, "$2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in New York." But as one blogger points out, given that the wine industry in California alone is worth $20 billion a year, spending $2 million to assure the genetic safety of grape varieties seems like money fairly well spent. The latter refers to McCain's citing of "$1 million for mormon cricket control in Utah." As Think Progress noted, Mormon crickets cause millions of dollars a year to crops in Western states. Given that cricket infestations cost Utah alone $22 million in crop damages in 2000, spending money to control the pests also seems like money well spent. If Mitchell really was the "For the Record" guy he proclaims himself to be, he would have mentioned the cost of those two particular earmarks are mere rounding errors in the "trillions of dollars" he asserts is being misspent under Obama. But he's not.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:23 AM EDT
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