New Article -- 2010 Slanties: Call It The Slant-E
Topic: The ConWeb
Who's at the top of the ConWeb heap of biased reporting and outrageous statements? We've picked the winners. Read more >>

Column on Continetti Book
Topic: The ConWeb
For a little non-ConWeb-related reading, we have a column up at Media Matters reviewing Matthew Continetti's book "The Persecution of Sarah Palin."

Vote For Us!
Topic: The ConWeb

We would like to beg you, our readers, to nominate ConWebBlog in the 2009 Weblog Awards. Since there isn't a media category per se and we're not quite political, we're going to aim for the Best Large Blog, defined as having a Technorati authority rating of between 301 and 500 (we're at 440).

ConWebWatch is listed in the comments as a nominee, so what you need to do is click on the "+" icon in that particular comment to indicate your preference.

The nomination phase has been extended to Sunday, so act quickly! We appreciate your support.

Vote For Us!
Topic: The ConWeb

We would like to beg you, our readers, to nominate ConWebBlog in the 2009 Weblog Awards. Since there isn't a media category per se and we're not quite poltical, we're going to aim for the Best Large Blog, defined as having a Technorati authority rating of between 301 and 500 (we're at 440).

ConWebWatch is listed in the comments as a nominee (which is where the shameless self-promotion comes in), so what you need to do is click on the "+" icon in that particular comment to indicate your preference.

The nomination phase ends Nov. 20, so act quickly! We appreciate your support.

Shameless Self-Promotion Watch
Topic: The ConWeb

We would like to beg you, our readers, to nominate ConWebBlog in the 2009 Weblog Awards. Since there isn't a media category per se and we're not quite poltical, we're going to aim for the Best Large Blog, defined as having a Technorati authority rating of between 301 and 500 (we're at 440).

ConWebWatch is listed in the comments as a nominee (which is where the shameless self-promotion comes in), so what you need to do is click on the "+" icon in that particular comment to indicate your preference.

The nomination phase ends Nov. 20, so act quickly! We appreciate your support.

ConWeb Hypocrites Defend Limbaugh
Topic: The ConWeb

Rush Limbaugh is in trouble again -- well, actually, he just wants to buy a pro football franchise -- and you know what that means: The ConWeb is running to his rescue, defending him no matter what (just like before), and despite their own hypocrisy.

The issue this time is racially charged quotes attributed to Limbaugh which are apparently not what he actually said. Unsurprisingly, the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell was quick to attack:

“CNN and MSNBC must immediately and publicly source when Limbaugh uttered this phrase. He has unequivocally denied it. Now it is up to the same news media that reported it as fact to prove that it was, indeed, stated.

“The MRC has overnighted letters to senior executives at both cable networks demanding that they take this sourcing seriously and report back to the public. We await their word.

“Either Rush Limbaugh is lying or these networks – willfully or not – are participants in the worst form of character assassination imaginable.   They can prove their innocence by documenting this accusation. If they can’t, then they are 100% guilty of character assassination.

“Tomorrow we will go public with their response.” 

The hypocrisy here is that it took the MRC nine years to admit that it stitched quotes together out of a book by New York Times editor Howell Raines to falsely accuse Raines of smearing Ronald Reagan. It has yet to apologize or correct its out-of-context misrepresentation of a Boston Globe profile of Ted Kennedy.

Similarly, an Oct. 13 WorldNetDaily article by Chelsea Schilling highlighting Limbaugh's "scathing attack of news reporters today for publicizing racist-sounding remarks he never made – and he's demanding retractions and apologies from every journalist who repeated the 'libelous' statements."

The problem? By that same standard, WND has repeatedly committed libel against President Obama, refusing to correct the numerous false claims it has made about him and his policies.

Just another day in the pot-kettle-black world of the ConWeb.

New Article: The ConWeb's Obama Speech Freak-Out
Topic: The ConWeb
Putting hatred before the facts, ConWeb writers baselessly assumed that President Obama would indoctrinate students -- despite the fact that the speech's theme of encouragement was made clear from the beginning. Read more >>

9/11 Flashback: Blame Clinton!
Topic: The ConWeb

In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001, we detailed how the first instinct of the ConWeb was to blame them on President Clinton and to defend President Bush.

Newsmax to the latter to an extreme by asserting: "The president has been eloquent. He has been confident. Real Americans support him 100 percent."

Obama's Uncontroversial Speech Doesn't Stop the Crazy Train
Topic: The ConWeb

President Obama's speech is over, nothing controversial was in it, but the ConWeb crazy train rolls on.

Brent Bozell's Sept. 8 column, appearing after the speech, condemned Obama's speech because, well, it was Obama:

Why is this controversial? What is more American than having her president addressing the young? Reagan did it. So did Bush. The problem is Obama and his administration. There is – always is – a political agenda.

The mission was not to educate, it was to indoctrinate.

Bozell went on to conflate criticism of the overreaction of right-wingers like him to Obama's speech to attacks on all criticism of Obama, then denounced the very idea of public education: "It’s not insane to wonder why our schools should be directed by the government to discuss how the Dear Leader is inspiring the young, and how the Dear Leader can be helped."

A Sept. 11 WorldNetDaily column by Dan L. White similarly attacks the idea of public education, claiming that it allows the governmnet to "control the minds of its citizens and thereby centralize power. And that's how Obama was able to give his speech to millions of captive young minds, subservient to the socialist institution, ready to be led by the master – because of the centralized school system." As if homeschooling -- the "decentralized, individualized and maximized" ideal White presents -- isn't about a similar attempt control the minds of children, this time by parents.

Meanwhile, the ConWeb sought to find partisan intent in Obama's speech where there wasn't any. A Sept. 8 WND article was headlined, "Prez injects politics into school speech," but the article pointed out that Obama "stayed carefully in the encouraging mode during the broadcast portion of the speech" but brought up health care reform in "a conversation with students." WND's headline writer is apparently unclear on the difference between a speech and a conversation.

A Sept. 9 CNSNews.com article by Penny Starr similarly tried to find something wrong with this, expressing alarm that Obama "made a pitch for health care reform in a discussion with 40 freshmen." It wasn't until the 14th paragraph that Starr got around to mentioning that "Obama omitted any discussion of health care" during the broadcast speech.

The Crazy Train Rolls On
Topic: The ConWeb

The latest to board the crazy train that is the right-wing freak-out over President Obama's upcoming speech to students:

A Sept. 4 Accuracy in Media column by Rita Kramer invokes the "Hitler Jugend," adding: "It's ridiculous to imagine Obama Youth, isn't it? Here? Once, in the beginning, it seemed ridiculous there too." Too bad for Kramer that Obama's not doing that.

Jeff Poor began his Sept. 3 MRC Culture & Media Institute column by invoking Obama's purported narcisissm: "His weekly address on health care Aug. 22 mentioned the word “I” eight times ... The week before when he talked about health care, he said “I” 12 times." Poor goes on to baselessly denounce Obama's speech as "indoctrination" and that it "should serve as a larger reminder that this kind of manipulation of young people occurs every day in America at the hands of the NEA." Poor adds: "Conservatives of all stripes – social conservatives, libertarians, Christian conservatives and more – all need to unify to stop government from manipulating our young people." If any manipulating is to be done, Poor seems to be saying, it's conservatives who should be doing it.

Meanwhile, Bob Unruh hides a partisan agenda in a Sept. 5 article highlighting the claims of the right-wing Liberty counsel and its founder, Mathew Staver, that Obama's speech is illegal. Unruh describes Staver as "A lawyer whose work has included myriad civil rights disputes and who has practice before the U.S. Supreme Court ," refusing to accurately identify Staver's right-wing, anti-Obama agenda.

Kramer, Poor and Unruh all fail to mention that both Presidents Bush gave speeches to students or issued teaching materials, as did Ronald Reagan.

ConWeb Embaces Attack on Kennedy, Don't Consider the Source
Topic: The ConWeb

WorldNetDaily, NewsBusters and NewsReal have all uncritically repeated a claim made by author Edward Klein on a radio show that Ted Kennedy purportedly enjoyed jokes about Chappaquiddick.

Klein, as we've detailed, is the author of a 2005 book on Hillary Clinton filled with errors and distortions -- and whose claims the ConWeb, particularly Newsmax, similarly promoted without acknowledging those errors.

UPDATE: The Washington Examiner did, too.

ConWebWatch On the Air (In Germany)
Topic: The ConWeb

On Thursday, we did a radio interview with Danny Antonelli, an American expatriate who does a radio show in Hamburg, Germany called "Free Wheel." Click on the media player below to listen (interview begins around 19:37).

The rest of the show is worth a listen as well -- an eclectic mix of music, information, comedy and fiction readings:

Tracking the Lie
Topic: The ConWeb

Who are the latest to falsely claim that Nancy Pelosi called protesters against health care reform "un-American"?

Henry Lamb at WorldNetDaily.

Gregory Gethard at FrontPageMag.

Ilana Mercer at WorldNetDaily.

Phil Elmore at WorldNetDaily.

Today's Liars About Pelosi-Hoyer Op-Ed
Topic: The ConWeb

Who's telling the lie that Nany Pelosi and Steny Hoyer called protesters at congressional town hall meetings "un-American" today?

• Ben Johnson at FrontPageMag.
• Terry Jeffrey at CNSNews.com.
• Dan Gainor at the MRC Business & Media Institute.

Jeffrey managed to discredit himself by following up his false assertion with the actual quote from Pelosi and Hoyer -- "Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American"-- which is clearly not what Jeffrey, Johnson and Gainor claimed they wrote.

Johnson, Jeffrey and Gainor are just the latest in the ConWeb to lie about the Pelosi-Hoyer op-ed.

ConWeb Misleads on Mirandizing Detainees
Topic: The ConWeb

A June 10 WorldNetDaily article by Chelsea Schilling regurgitates a Weekly Standard report claiming "the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee." Since Schilling made no apparent effort to verify anything on her own, she has written an article that is dubious at best.

By contrast, the Washington Independent quoted Gen. David Petraeus as saying, "The real rumor yesterday is whether our forces were reading Miranda rights to detainees and the answer to that is no." And the Washington Post's Greg Sargent contacted a Justice Department spokesman, who said: "There has been no policy change and nor blanket instruction issued for FBI agents to Mirandize detainees overseas. While there have been specific cases in which FBI agents have Mirandized suspects overseas, at both Bagram and in other situations, in order to preserve the quality of evidence obtained, there has been no overall policy change with respect to detainees."

In other words, if there is indeed a policy to Mirandize detainees, it appears to have begun in the Bush administration. Indeed, the author of that Weekly Standard report, Stephen Hayes, said himself that "There are reports that this was happening on specific bases as going back as early as July 2008."'

The rest of the ConWeb behaved only slightly better on this story, reporting the claim but not the full truth.

A June 11 Newsmax article by Dave Eberhart repeats the claim and includes the Justice Department statement, but Eberhart ignores Hayes' statement that the Mirandizing began under the Bush administration.

David Limbaugh, in a June 12 column that appears at WorldNetDaily and Newsmax, asserted that "There are reports that [Obama's] Justice Department has quietly ordered the FBI to give Miranda warnings to enemy combatants captured at war in Afghanistan" without noting reports that it apparently started under the Bush administration.

Rich Galen, in his June 12 CNSNews.com column, also repeated the claim without noting that it apparently started under the Bush administration.