Topic: Media Research Center
From MRC employee Jeff Poor's Twitter feed:
Haha @andrewbreitbart to Terry Krepel of @conwebwatch : "You need a hug."
Looks like someone's a little sensitive about being called out on his history of inaccuracy.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Breitbart Thinks We Need A Hug
Topic: Media Research Center From MRC employee Jeff Poor's Twitter feed:
Looks like someone's a little sensitive about being called out on his history of inaccuracy.
Posted by Terry K.
at 5:18 PM EST
CNS Selectively Attacks 'Anti-Catholic' Remarks
Topic: CNSNews.com A Feb. 17 CNSNews.com article by Karen Schuberg is the latest to attack Obama adviser Harry Knox, this time asserting that Knox "has a record of making anti-Catholic statements." But the statements by Knox that Schuberg provides, while repeatedly critical of the Catholic Church's stance of homosexuality, are hardly "anti-Catholic." They focus on a specific issue, and Knox is not quoted as denigrating the mission and tenets of the church outside of how it pertains to homosexuality. By the same standard, Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid -- who has been bashing Catholics for being too liberal -- is "anti-Cahtolic." And so is Dennis Miller, who ridiculed the ashes on Vice President Joe Biden's forehead for Ash Wednesday on "The O'Reilly Factor." Somehow, we suspect that CNS won't be dedicating an article to Miller's and Kincaid's "anti-Catholic statements." On top of that, Schuberg failed to disclose to her readers that her boss, Brent Bozell, has signed a letter demanding that "anti-Catholic bigot" Knox lose his job.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:46 PM EST
Kupelian's New Book On Its Way
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily started promoting WND managing editor David Kupelian's new book "How Evil Works" this week, kicking off with an appearance by him on Sean Hannity's radio show. Interestingly, it's not published by WND -- he found a "real" publisher for it, the Threshold Editions imprint of Simon & Schuster (run by Mary Matalin). It appears to be a sequel to Kupelian's last book, "The Marketing of Evil," which, as we pointed out at the time, essentially blamed everything he doesn't like on '60s hippies in general and the Clintons in particular. The book contains factual errors (such as treating anti-Kinsey activist Judith Reisman as credible), and he appeared to have partnered with the right-wing legal group Alliance Defense Fund to hype a lawsuit that tangentally involved the book in order to boost sales. "How Evil Works" appears to be more of the same. The list of subjects in the book includes:
Regarding that last subject: We're guessing he plans to rehash the case of Andrea Yates, who killed her five children. As we detailed in 2007, when he first wrote about it, he blamed Yates' condition on the antidepressants she was taking, failing to mention the fact that she and her husband were under the sway of a fundamentalist Christian minister, under whose influence Yates home-schooled the children and who harshly judged mothers he considered to be too permissive with their children, claiming that if the mother was going to hell, her children would too. We'll try to get a hold of the book and see if Kupelian's incomplete, factually challenged analysis still stands.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:30 AM EST
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
WND Ignores Double Standard In Attack on Brennan
Topic: WorldNetDaily A Feb. 16 WorldNetDaily article cites "calls for President Obama's homeland-security adviser John Brennan to step down " following "Brennan's recent appearance at a New York University assembly and his comments that having a percentage of terrorists released by the U.S. return to terrorist attacks 'isn't that bad,' since the recidivism rate for inmates in the U.S. prison system is higher." WND doesn't mention that, as we've pointed out, Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a similar argument about recidivism during an AP interview in 2005
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:23 PM EST
New Article: A Blizzard of Bamboozlement
Topic: NewsBusters Noel Sheppard and the boys at NewsBusters seize on back-to-back snowstorms in Washington to push their discredited claim that there's no such thing as global warming. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:02 PM EST
AIM To Honor Inaccuracy at CPAC
Topic: Accuracy in Media A Feb. 16 Accuracy in Media press release announces that AIM will give "Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Awards" to Andrew Breitbart and Marc Morano during the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference. That's hilarious, because neither Breitbart nor Morano are known for their accuracy. We've detailed how Morano has repeatedly lied and misled in his attacks on global warming. And Breitbart has forwarded numerous false and misleading claims in pushing what AIM calls his "groundbreaking investigation into rampant corruption at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now." AIM is honoring the antithesis of its name. That's how depraved and irrelevant AIM has become.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:47 AM EST
Updated: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 10:14 AM EST
NewsBusters Covers for Palin's Hypocrisy
Topic: NewsBusters Kyle Drennen runs to the defense of Sarah Palin and Fox News in a Feb. 16 NewsBusters post, dismissing suggestions that Palin should quit her job as a Fox News contributor in order to follow through on her criticism of Fox Broadcasting's "Family Guy" for having "tangentially mocked her son with Down Syndrome." Drennen does so by making this stunning statement: "Of course, Fox News has no connection to the Fox broadcast channel or any of its entertainment programming." Except, you know, being owned by the same company. Other than that, there's no connection. Media Matters' Karl Frisch has more. Drennen and NewsBusters are echoing Palin's hypocrisy on the issue by criticizing "Family Guy" while giving Rush Limbaugh a pass on using the word "retard" because it was satirical. As we noted, Noel Sheppard attacked Stephen Colbert for following Limbaugh's satire exception -- but not Limbaugh himself. And, yes, Sheppard freaked out about the "Family Guy" joke but continued to remain silent about Limbaugh. But then, protecting Limbaugh no matter what offensive thing he says is simply what the MRC does.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:24 AM EST
CNS Ignores Teleworking In Bashing Snowed-Out Federal Workers
Topic: CNSNews.com A Feb. 16 CNSNews.com article by Penny Starr asserts that "When the federal government closed for four days and two hours last week because of snow and ice in the Washington area, U.S. taxpayers still had to shell out an estimated $425 million to $670 million in wages and benefits to those workers." Starr makes no mention of the fact that approximately one-third of federal workers in the Washington area logged on to federal servers from home, meaning that, contrary to Starr's suggestion, some work was indeed getting done during the snowstorms.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:29 AM EST
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Meanwhile ...
Topic: WorldNetDaily Over at Media Matters, we examine how WorldNetDaily columnist Jill Stanek has gotten blogging gigs at NewsBusters and Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism despite 1) admitting she knows little about media analysis and 2) her long history of misleading and inflammatory statements (like essentially condoning the murder of George Tiller).
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:16 PM EST
Then and Now
Topic: Accuracy in Media A Feb. 14 Accuracy in Media blog post by Don Irvine highlights Obama White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan's pointing out that the recidivism rate for released detainees from Guantanamo is lower than that of those released from U.S. prisons. He adds, "So exactly what is a bad recidivism rate for terrorists that want to blow up planes and kill Americans?" We don't recall Irvine being upset when Bush secretary of state Condoleezza Rice similarly compared the rates of recidivism among enemy combatants with those of American criminals back in 2005.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:20 PM EST
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch
Topic: Newsmax
-- Pamela Geller, Feb. 16 Newsmax column
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:59 AM EST
WND Slowly Backing Away From Vaccine-Autism Link
Topic: WorldNetDaily We've detailed how WorldNetDaily has long promoted the idea of a link between vaccines and autism. It's now ever-so-slowly creeping away from the claim as it becomes increasingly discredited. When the medical journal Lancet retracted a couple weeks ago a study it had published in 1998 linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism, WND didn't report on it in one of its own articles but linked to another website's story on it. That was surprisingly followed up by a Feb. 11 column by Phil Elmore that's an all-out assault on the false link:
This was followed by a letter to the editor (which disappear after a week) criticizing Elmore for noting the truth:
Does WND have the guts to fully confront the issue by doing an original article on the Lancet retraction and not spin it as about deniers trying to explain it away? We shall see.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:04 AM EST
WND Orly Taitz Whitewash Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily We've long expected that WorldNetDaily would not report any negative information about Orly Taitz unless it could figure out a way to spin it in her favor -- after all, she has ordered WND not to be mean to her. Bob Unruh figured out a way to do it in regarding a couple piece of negative information, a $20,000 fine levied against her and the possibility of sanctions against her in the California bar. In a Feb. 13 article, Unruh portrays Taitz as the victim , uncritically repeating her claims that the fine and possible sanctions create a "hardship" for her. In order to portray Taitz as the victim, Unruh has to omit certain facts -- like why she faces the fine and possible sanctions. Again, Unruh uncritically portrays Taitz's version of events, that "she's facing a $20,000 penalty imposed by Judge Clay D. Land in the Rhodes case and possible action by the California Bar Association, to which Land forwarded his highly critical order" -- but never explains what that criticism was, even though he had done so to a certain extent in an article last October. To refresh Unruh's memory: Land stated that Taitz had repeatedly exhibited unprofessional behavior, from forcing her birther agenda in court to filing frivolous motions to making personal attacks against opposing parties, as well as Land. Unruh also omits the fact that Taitz has had at least two other complaints filed against her in the California bar. Nor does he mention the accusations that she attempted to suborn perjury in a separate case. For good measure, Unruh also peddles a lie by referencing "the estimated $1.7 million Obama has spent on court cases to prevent any of the documentation of his life to be revealed to the public." In fact, as we've previously noted, while that money was paid to a law firm through Obama for America, WND has never provided any evidence that all of the money was "spent on court cases to prevent any of the documentation of his life to be revealed to the public."
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:11 AM EST
Monday, February 15, 2010
Graham Still Can't Get Over Pentagon Papers Release
Topic: NewsBusters It's been nearly 40 years gone, but it appears Tim Graham has not gotten over the release of the Pentagon Papers. In a Feb. 13 NewsBusters post, Graham reacted to a Washington Post preview of a documentary of Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg by ranting about Ellsberg, denouncing him as an "America-bashing radical leftist whistleblower" and miffed that "the Post never described him with any ideological label, or described the Vietnamese enemy as communists." It's been 40 years, Tim. Let it go, man!
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:31 PM EST
Farah Tries, Fails to Divide Citizenship, Eligibility Wings of Birtherism
Topic: WorldNetDaily Is Joseph Farah conceding that Barack Obama is an American citizen? That's one interpretation of his recent attempts to decouple questions about Obama's citizenship from questions about eligibility -- even though Obama's citizenship status is at the heart of the birther issue. Last week, Farah insisted that it's a "lie " to claim that birthers are questioning Obama's citizenship. Now, Farah's Feb. 15 column is a letter to Newsweek demanding a retraction for its "blatantly defamatory" listing of Farah as among those who say Obama "wasn't born in the good old US of A, hence isn't a natural-born citizen and therefore cannot legally be president":
Farah is trying to bamboozle Newsweek (and you). Farah may or may not be on record as saying those exact words, Farah, by himself and via his WND subordinates, have certainly promoted the idea that Obama is not a citizen. As we've previously noted, Farah has on at least two occasions repeated the claim that Obama's grandmother has said that Obama was born in Kenya. (A claim, by the way, which is completely false, and which WND has yet to correct.) That is making the claim by implication that Obama is not a citizen. As recently as Feb. 4, WND reporters were referencing "the growing ranks of officials and prominent commentators who say they are unsure of whether President Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen." And if Farah wasn't questioning whether Obama is a citizen, it wouldn't have published a supposed "Kenyan birth certificate" without first trying to verify if it was authentic (it wasn't). Farah's effort to decouple citizenship from eligibility is bizarre and futile. The only issue being raised regarding Obama's eligibility to be president is the citizenship issue. If Farah is not questioning Obama's citizenship, he has no case to challenge his eligibility. So, Mr. Farah, will you concede that Obama is a citizen? Because that's exactly what you're doing in claiming that citizenship is not an issue. Or is birtherism too big a business for you to forthrightly state the truth?
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:41 PM EST
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