WND's Welch Conflicted Over Beck Topic: WorldNetDaily
Dave Welch is conflicted over Glenn Beck in his Sept. 4 WorldNetDaily column. While Welch appears to appreciate some of the things Beck has done, there is the issue of him being a Mormon:
The furor over Glenn Beck's Mormon faith and his defense by some evangelical leaders, following closely on the heels of President Obama being called a "devout Christian," does raise critical questions. How far can we ally ourselves with those who believe differently toward common goals without compromising our convictions? Does it matter what we believe?
We can and must stand together with Mormons on a cultural/political level as we have in particular on sanctity of life and defense of marriage issues. I pray that one day the evangelical churches will exhibit one half as much commitment of manpower and money to those causes. However, we are not just different denominations.
I'll restate that active Mormons are not America's problem – inactive, weak and compromised Christians are. Pastors who stay safely in their stained glass towers are. However, Mormonism is not Christianity.
[...]
The fact is that by any definition of historic Christian doctrines and theology as compared to those that of LDS adherents, we are on a different planet.
Welch goes on to affirmatively cite a pastor who wrote that 'Mormonism is correctly categorized as a CULT." Welch adds, "Mormonism is not Christianity, and anyone who asserts differently is either ignorant or dishonest."
Welch concludes:
Glenn Beck could certainly be a follower of Jesus … but which Jesus? It matters. Regardless, he can be a patriotic, God-fearing American who understands the vision of our founding fathers and has given a voice and platform to strong, dynamic Christians like David Barton, Jim Garlow and others who present the real Jesus.
WND has a history of promoting people who have issues with Mormonism.
The Media Research Center has longcomplained about the supposed "revolving door" for people whose jobs shift between news organizations to liberal groups or Democratic administrations. It has even kept a list of "major media journalists who have joined the Obama administration."
What the MRC doesn't want to admit is that there's also a revolving door to conservative advocacy at its news operation, CNSNews.com. Here is an incomplete list of CNS staffers who have made the leap from right-wing journalism to right-wing advocacy (like there's a difference):
Scott Hogenson: He made significant use of CNS's revolving door. He worked for the Republican National Committee before joining CNS, where he eventually became editor, was CNS editor until 2004, when he left to be radio services director for the RNC during the 2004 presidential campaign. After briefly returning to CNS after the election, he left again in 2005 to become deputy assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Veterans Affairs. He's now at the PR damage control firm Dezenhall Resources and hangs out at the right-wing Leadership Institute.
David Thibault: Like Hogenson, Thibault worked for the RNC prior to joining CNS, as well as working for Republican Sen. Judd Gregg. He filled in as editor during Hogenson's 2004 sabbatical and ascended to the post after Hogenson left for good. He died in 2007.
Marc Morano: Like Hogenson, Morano was a right-wing activist before joining CNS, having worked for Rush Limbaugh's TV show. Morano left CNS in 2006 to join the press office of Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, where he regularly peddled (often in a factually challenged manner) the position of global warming skeptics. Morano now runs the Climate Depot website for the right-wing think tank Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.
Jim Burns: He was a CNS reporter until leaving in 2003 to become press secretary for Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.). He had to leave that job after it was revealed that he copied large parts of a op-ed issued under Pearce's name from the Heritage Foundation.
Nathan Burchfiel: He didn't have to go far to move from news to activism -- in fact, he didn't have to leave MRC headquarters. After serving as a CNS reporter, he moved on to other MRC divisions and is now an assistant editor for MRC's Culture & Media Institute.
Robert Bluey: He's a former CNS reporter -- where he was an early promoter of the Swift Boat Vets attacks on John Kerry -- who left to join Human Events. He's now at the Heritage Foundation, as director of its Center for Media and Public Policy.
WND Conference Is 'All About Debate'? Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Sept. 5 WorldNetDaily article announces that WND's Joseph Farah will debate Christopher Barron, head of the "homosexual activist group" GOProud, at WND's upcoming "Taking Back America" conference. Farah goes on to explain:
"This conference has always been about debate," Farah said. "We invited, among others, the American Civil Liberties Union, La Raza, the NAACP and Freedomworks, to come debate the issues of the day with us. To GOProud's credit, it was willing to stand toe to toe with us. I'm looking forward to the challenge. From my point of view, this represents a much-needed opportunity to expose GOProud's actual goals and agenda."
Huh? The conference "has always been about debate"? So why not debate Ann Coulter, whom WND instead dumped as a speaker over her scheduled speech to GOProud?
Farah tries to explain:
Anticipating that critics will lob a "hypocrite" label his way, Farah draws a sharp distinction between his decision to disinvite conservative star commentator Ann Coulter from the Taking America Back Conference for addressing GOProud's 'Homocon' event in New York and inviting Barron to the WND conference to debate GOProud's positions.
"Coulter's paid speaking appearance at GOProud's event serves to validate the group's agenda, which as I've written goes far beyond just tearing down and remaking the Judeo-Christian institution of marriage, attacking free speech with hate-crimes laws or integrating open homosexuality in the military," he said. "With so-called 'conservative' superstars embracing GOProud, a faceoff like this becomes an absolute necessity. If Ann Coulter were going to 'Homocon' to debate and expose GOProud, I would have congratulated her."
That still doesn't explain why WND dumped her instead of turning her GOProud speech into a teachable (albeit anti-gay) moment. On the other hand, as we've detailed, the water has now been poisoned between Coulter and Farah to the point where they will never appear in the same place at the same time for the foreseeable future, if ever. (Farah will still run Coulter's column at WND, though, for the traffic it brings in.)
Meanwhile, we're still awaiting our invitation to debate the issues of the day -- well, actually, we'd like to debate WND's brand of journalism -- at this conference. Must've gotten lost in the mail...
WND's Attack on Removed School Filters Sets Off Reisman Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Sept. 3 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh is mostly a rewritten press release, this time from the UK's Christian Institute, about a school system in Scotland that allegedly lifted its Internet filtering so that students could access government health websites regarding sexual health. Unruh makes no apparent attempt to verify anything the Christian Institute stated, nor did he apparently contact the school system for a response. Unruh also whitewashed the Christian Institute by repeating its own description of itself as promoting "the furtherance and promotion of the Christian religion in the United Kingdom" as well as "the advancement of education." The Wikipedia page for the group, meanwhile, describes it a a "fundamentalist Christian" group that is anti-gay.
If you think Unruh's article was full of distortions, wait 'til you see what Judith Reisman did when she got her hands on it.
In a Sept. 4 WND column, Reisman asserts that Unruh's article was about "Scotland's opening up internet pornography to school children at lunch break thanks to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, currently un-ratified by the repressed USA." In fact, neither Unruh nor the Christian Institute offer evidence that the school's Internet filters were modified to permit access to any "sexually explicit" site other than the government health sites.
Reisman then goes on a tirade about the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, offering up her own -- shall we say -- creative interpretations:
"Article 1 (Definition of the child): The Convention defines a 'child' as a person below the age of 18, unless the laws of a particular country set the legal age for adulthood younger …" This deliberately allows any age child to be redefined as adult.
Translation: Countries with legal prostitution or pornography and younger "age of adulthood," can sell legal child prostitution/pornography. "Rights" authors know adulthood may become any age, depending on the age of the partner(s). Spain's age of consent is now 13, pornography legal and prostitution effectively legal.
Article 17 says: "(Access to information; mass media): Children have the right to get information that is important to their health and well-being …"
Much international pornographic and fraudulent Planned Parenthood material masqueraded as sex education and AIDS prevention are said to be good for children's "health and well being." Similarly, "children's books" lie and sexually violate the child reader.
Article 13 is the pornography access act: "The child shall have the right to freedom of expression … [to] receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child's choice."
[...]
Article 15 gives children of any age "freedom of association and to freedom of peaceful assembly. No restrictions may be placed on the exercise of these rights" if they are legal and don't violate public safety, etc. It is illegal for parents to stop children from bad actions, etc. Billions can be made via these child "protective" articles.
Article 16: allows the lockup for parents who interfere with a pimp for children are protected against "arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy … honour and reputation."
Article 24 provides "health care" family planning education and services, "abolishing traditional practices prejudicial to the health of children."
Translation: child contraception, venereal vaccination and abortion as child "protections" in international care documents[.]
Reisman added: "So a Scottish pedophile educator organizes access to 'all' media for any age, one to 18. Free 'expression … regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media,' it's a child's choice."
That's right -- Reisman called some Scottish school official (she has no idea who, since Unruh's article did not name any officials) a "pedophile" for allowing students access to sexual health websites.
Ad on WND Calls for 'Civil War' Topic: WorldNetDaily
This interesting ad popped up on WorldNetDaily (via Google ads) over the weekend:
That's right -- it's claiming that "Only A Civil War Will Save America -- But Only If It Comes Soon!"
The ad links to a website promoting a book called "It's Over" by R. Keith Martin, aka Ron Martin. Martin reprints the book's introduction, which includes this:
America is terminal and its demise is not the result of Al Gore’s global warming or Michael Moore’s phantom conspiracies. Neither is it Iran’s nuke(s), Putin’s reconstituted USSR or China rising. It’s an “in house job” by people whose names you have come to know, but really don’t know at all. For the past 100 years or so they have been called liberals, progressives, statists, communists, Nazis, fascists, socialists, leftists and, most recently, Democrats. Regardless of how Webster defines each of these belief systems they all share the same dream: dismantling our 234 year old democratic republic and replacing it with a serfdom ruled by oligarchic elitists. For simplicity, I will combine all nine of these evils into one and simply call it the “Darkside”, as in Star Wars. Unlike the movie, there is no Darth Vader coming after you, and no Luke Skywalker to save you, and sadly, the good guys don’t win in the end.
[...]
I am a Yankee who moved to the segregated South in 1958. I saw the court-ordered end of segregation only to see it re-imposed later, not by the process of law, but by the very people who wanted it to end. I argue that the re-introduction of segregation by the black elite is really a control technique to keep the elite in perpetual power, which it has done. My real ultimate destination in bringing you the “Black Imbroglio” is Obama. Were it not for the inculcated guilt of whites, absorbed from a society dripping with it, and the black elitists institutionalizing black dependency, Obama would never have progressed beyond community organizer.
But, Obama did progress, and he is President. If he was just another black liberal pushing welfare programs or other liberal causes like all black politicians I would not have spent the last year cloistered with my computer. Obama is dangerous - crash and burn dangerous. The deeper and deeper I dug into the Obama machine, and the Darkside, the greater I realized just how much trouble America is in. We have simply never faced such an array of problems, or had to depend for our rescue from the precipice, on someone that is pulling the lifeline away from us as we reach for it. What is even more amazing is that is seems that nobody, or at least very few, really believe that we are very near the point of collapse. What Obama is doing routinely on a daily basis, no other President would have even attempted. Bill Clinton came closest to this chronic criminality with the FBI files scandal, White House Travel Office, Vince Foster, and numerous others, but nothing compared to what Obama and the Darkside are doing every day in every part of his administration.
Martin's book has chapter titles such as "Homosexuals," "The Second Reconstruction," "White Racism Is Rare, Black Racism Is Raging," "The Madhi Cometh," "Body Count Thus Far," "The Final Solution," "The Coming Demicide," and, yes, "Why Obama Must Murder You."
There appears to be little about Martin on the Internet; the Southern Poverty Law Center notes that he distributed a flyer that discussed subjects such as “Race-Based Tyranny” and “Our Black Imbroglio.”
The SPLC called such rhetoric "inspired" by the racially charged attacks on Obama by Fox News; we would add that WND arguably had a hand in shaping Martin's Obama-hate worldview.
Shoebat Falsely Claims Rauf Wrote of “Judenrein” Israel Topic: WorldNetDaily
Walid Shoebat’s September 3 “open letter” to Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, published by WorldNetDaily, is a barely coherent mess of right-wing anti-Islam talking points and unexplained allusions. In the middle of it, Shoebat sticks in this slur:
You have worked tirelessly for peace. All you wanted was: "an icon [Cordoba Mosque]." My mother asked me: On God's green earth, there is no other place you can put a mosque except by the 9/11 rubble? And since we rejected the mosque idea, will the pool at your center allow Jews to swim, or were you kidding when you wrote the N.Y Times that Israel will be Judenrein (free of Jews)?
“Judenrein” was a term used by the Nazis to describe areas from which Jews had been “cleansed.”
Needless to say, Rauf said no such thing -- there’s no evidence Rauf ever used the term “Judenrein,” in The New York Times or anywhere else. Shoebat appears to be referring to a 1977 letter to the Times in which, according to The Wall Street Journal, Rauf wrote: “In a true peace it is impossible that a purely Jewish state of Palestine can endure. . . . In a true peace, Israel will, in our lifetimes, become one more Arab country, with a Jewish minority.” That is clearly not the same thing as Shoebat’s inflammatory accusation that Rauf declared “Israel will be Judenrein.”
Shoebat’s eagerness to smear Rauf seems to come from ignorance of anything he’s written that didn’t come from anti-Islam activists. For instance, Shoebat asks of Rauf, “I would like to know if your American-style Islamic Shariah would include interest banking since our whole capitalistic system depends on it.” If Shoebat had read Rauf’s book What’s Right With Islam, he would have something of an answer. In it, Rauf asserts that America’s political system is already “Shariah-compliant,” suggesting that he has no particular desire to eliminate the nation’s interest banking system. Rauf also wrote that the corporation structure provided the West “great competitive advantages” over Islamic ways of doing business, adding, “Until the Muslim world finds a way to opening embrace these concepts and ideas in a manner consistent with Islamic law, it will continue to lag economically” [page 210].
But Shoebat hasn’t read Rauf’s book. In a different version of the “open letter” posted on his own website on August 27, Shoebat writes, ”I admit that I failed to read your book ‘What’s Right With Islam.’ “
Perhaps Shoebat -- whose self-proclaimed past as a “PLO terrorist” has raised questions -- should get a copy of Rauf’s book and read it quietly until he is able to offer an informed opinion.
WND's Double Dose of Getting A Name Wrong Topic: WorldNetDaily
Remember WorldNetDaily's sad attempt to tie Discovery Channel building gunman James J. Lee's extremist environmental views to Al Gore, despite the fact that 1) Lee also shares WND's view on the undesirability of "anchor babies" and 2) WND's Bob Unruh couldn't get Lee's name correct ("Jason Jay Lee")?
Turns out that was preceded by a column by Brian Sussman -- extensively quoted in Unruh's article -- attempting to make the same connection. And now we know where Unruh's name screw-up came from:
Yesterday, a gun-wielding, bomb-toting, eco-terrorist – who claimed to have been "awakened" by Al Gore's Oscar winning film, "An Inconvenient Truth" – was shot and killed by police after holding several people hostage inside the Discovery Channel headquarters in Maryland.
Sadly, it's not the first incident of someone going berserk after taking in Gore's work.
This time it was Jason Jay Lee.
[...]
As I prove in my book, "Climategate," Al Gore's writings, films, slideshows and speeches are filled with deception. And the scam he spews is scary stuff – so scary that many who believe it to be gospel are often compelled to take action. For some the action entails buying a hybrid vehicle they don't need or can't afford. For others, like singer Sheryl Crow, it means using one square of toilet paper at a time – to reduce thy carbon footprint.
For others, like Jason Jay Lee, it resulted in something unthinkable.
Sussman's inability to nail down basic facts like the gunman's name raises red flags about the veracity of Sussman's WND-published book purporting to expose "the global warming scam." And Unruh's copying-and-pasting of Sussman's wrong name for his own article demostrates what a complete hack he has become at WND.
Most recently, Mora wrote an Aug. 31 article headlined "2010 Already Deadliest Year for U.S. in Nine-Year Afghan War." As with the other articles, Mora conveniently omits any comparison to the fatality rate in Iraq at the height of the war there. It's not that he could not easily obtain those numbers -- in fact, a fellow CNS writer noted them less than a month ago.
According to a Cybercast News Service database, the deadliest months of the war for U.S. forces were April 2004 (136 total deaths, 125 hostile), November 2004 (146 total, 139 hostile), December 2006 (117 total, 106 hostile) and May 2007 (125 total, 121 hostile).
All of those numbers are approximately twice that of the peak monthly deaths in Afghanistan that Mora has been reporting:
The majority of all American deaths in the war in Afghanistan have occurred under Obama’s watch, according to a CNSNews.com database of Afghanistan war casualties. 612 U.S. soldiers have died since Obama was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2009, or about 52 percent of the overall 1,181 fatalities (which includes both combat-related casualties and non-combat fatalities).
Mora gives little attention to the fact that the reason there have been more troop deaths in Afghanistan is because there are more troops in Afghanistan.
It's unclear why CNS has gone the body-count route, but we don't recall it doing this when President Bush was in office, certainly not to this extent.
The MRC Runs to Palin's Defense Topic: Media Research Center
If there's one thing the Media Research Center really can't abide, it's unflattering articles about conservative icons. So when Vanity Fair published an article depicting Sarah Palin as the center of "a place of fear, anger, and illusion, which has swallowed up the engaging, small-town hockey mom and her family," the MRC swiftly went into defense mode.
First up was the MRC Culture & Media Institute's Nathan Burchfiel, who dismissed the article as "a list of ill-sourced, hearsay attacks on Palin designed to depict her as a raging psychopath" and "managed to cite just one person to criticize Palin on the record." Burchfiel claimed the article "fits right in with previous coverage of Palin," citing a CMI study as evidence. But as we detailed, the study confuses negative coverage with bias and had a severly limited scope of a time in the 2008 campaign in which Palin very much earned the negative coverage she received.
Next was Noel Sheppard, who touted at NewsBusters how Palin "went after impotent, limp, gutless reporters that quote anonymous sources to attack her" in a sycophantic interview with Sean Hannity.
He was followed by Kyle Drennen, who was annoyed that CBS' "The Early Show" had on the author of the Vanity Fair "article slamming Sarah Palin with outlandish accusations."
The CMI's Burchfiel returned to scowl at the author's appearance on "Morning Joe" talking abouthow he "depicts Palin as a volatile, vengeful, mean-spirited figure." Burchfiel portrayed the writer as an "antagonist" who may not be telling the truth when he claimed that "he set out to defend the former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate, but that the resulting article 'was forced on me by the facts.'"
Tim Graham then chimed in, complaining that "Morning Joe" covered "anonymously sourced hit jobs against alleged serial liar Sarah Palin in Vanity Fair.
That's the MRC's job -- attack the messenger and not once challenge the facts.
WND Can't Tell Difference Between Domestic Violence, Hate Crime Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh uses a Sept. 1 WorldNetDaily article to serve up a bit of concern trolling from a "family group" that merely wants to hate gays.
Unruh writes about a purported epidemic of "lesbians attacking lesbians," and quotes Diane Gramley, president of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, asking why these aren't being charged as hate crimes.
In fact, the three cases of "lesbians attacking lesbians"cited by Unruh appear to instances of domestic violence, not anti-gay hate crimes.
Unruh then brings on anti-Kinsey fanatic Judith Reisman to spout unsupported claims:
Judith Reisman, author of "Sexual Sabotage: How One Mad Scientist Unleashed a Plague of Corruption and Contagion on America," told WND her studies of sexual deviancy over the decades has confirmed that "gay-on-gay" battery actually is common.
"Indeed, it is statistically more significant than is heterosexual battery – that is often triggered by repressed memories of pederastic sex abuse," she said.
"My interviews with recovering homosexuals and those still in the 'life' confirm early sexual abuse as a motivating factor in their resulting homosexuality. This bitter background of betrayal supports a higher rate of same sex battery than is found in marital violence.
"This is especially true in lesbian relations. My in-depth interviews with lesbians confirm the data on their high incest rate – much more so than among male homosexuals," she continued. "The claims of low reporting due to police hostility means the high level of same sex violence is drastically underreported by male and female homosexuals."
Reisman went on to portray a book "Men Who Beat the Men Who Love Them," as describing "the commonality of homosexual and lesbian battery as reflecting a generally violent lifestyle." In fact, the book appears to do no such thing -- rather, it merely focuses on the then-taboo issue (at the time of its 1991 publication) of domestic violence in gay relationships, and Reisman offers no evidence that violence in gay relationships is any more "common" than in heterosexual relationships, let alone endemic to the lifestyle. Indeed, the authors, David Island and Patrick Letellier, write:
This book marks agurning point in the movement ot stop gay men's domestic violence. As a community, we must wake up, learn about domestic violence occuring in our midst, unambiguously condemn it, and state to work to eradicate it. We must end the violence.
This book, paradoxically, validates gay relationships and gay coupling by demonstrating through an intelligent analysis of this problem taht gay men are subject to the same problems that heterosexuals are. The time has come for a book written by gay men that gakes gay coupling seriously, while at the same time forthrightly examining the severe problem of domestic violence without blaming thte dominant, homophobic, and homohating culture for it.
Needless to say, Reisman blames all of this on Alfred Kinsey, and Reisman just happens to have written a new smear book about him.
Unruh, meanwhile, just can't stop lying about the hate-crimes bill:
The Hate Crimes Act, signed into law in 2009 by Obama, was dubbed by its critics as the "Pedophile Protection Act" after an amendment to explicitly prohibit pedophiles from being protected by the act was defeated by majority Democrats. During congressional debate, supporters argued that all "philias," or alternative sexual lifestyles, should be protected.
In fact, as we detailed, since the federal government's definition of "sexual orientation" already excludes pedophilia and the other "philias" Unruh is hinting at, the amendment was redundant, and the law does not protect pedophilia.
WorldNetDaily has touted an affidavit by retired Lt. Gen. Thomas G. McInerney in the case of Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, who's currently throwing away his military career to satisfy the birther movement.
McInerney is also a Fox News military analyst with more than 200 appearances over the past eight years. Media Matters has more.
McInerney is not the only birther to have popped up on Fox News, as Media Matters goes on to note -- WND's Aaron Klein and Jerome Corsi have as well.
WND Quick to Link Discovery Gunman to Gore, Ignores Own Links to Extremism Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has gotten into politicizing the hostage crisis at the Discovery Channel headquarters with a Sept. 2 article by Bob Unruh trying to portray the hostage taker, James Lee -- whose name Unruh gets wrong -- as merely channeling Al Gore's environmental views by citing so-called "experts."
Needless to say, Unruh fails to note that Lee dovetails nicely with WorldNetDaily's right-wing anti-immigration agenda by denouncing "anchor baby filth."
WND has a longtime aversion to introspection when the perpetrators of violent acts have agendas that parallel its own. We've detailed how WND was quick to dismiss Scott Roeder, convicted killer of abortion doctor George Tiller as "allegedly suffered from mental illness" and "not associated with the mainstream pro-life movement" even though WND had long published articles sympathetic to anti-abortion extremists. WND later published several columns by Jack Cashill praising Tiller's murder as "frontier justice."
WNd has also failed to acknowledge that it shared several viewpoints with Holocaust Museum shooter James Von Brunn, including Obama birtherism and hatred of the Federal Reserve.
NewsBusters' Double Standard on Spinning a Tragedy Topic: NewsBusters
A Sept. 1 NewsBusters post by Lachlan Markay predicted that "the left will be working overtime in the next few days to spin ... any way they can" the hostage crisis at the Discovery Channel headquarters, claiming they won't highlight "the radical, militant environmentalism he espoused, and that "anti-war groups" make "similar claims."
Markay doesn't mention that NewsBusters leads the way in doing this kind of spin.
In a May 31, 2009, post, Tom Blumer touted a LifeNews.com article claiming that Scott Roeder, shooter of abortion doctor George Tiller, "appears to have an affiliation with extremist political groups but not with the mainstream pro-life movement." Blumer similarly insisted that "George Tiller's murderer was not affiliated with the prolife movement."
Except, of course, that he was. As we detailed at the time, Roeder had numerous contacts with mainstream anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, and Randall Terry, for years considered a mainstream figure in the pro-life movement, tacitly endorsed Roeder's shooting of Tiller.
Similarly, a June 11, 2009, post by Noel Sheppard insisted that James von Brunn, who shot and killed a guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, was "hardly conservative" even though, as we noted, he held such right-wing views as Obama birtherism and hatred of the Federal Reserve (views also held by WorldNetDaily).
Why doesn't Markay want others to do what NewsBusters has done?
Conflict of Interest: WND Writer Promoted Author Whose Book She Edited Topic: WorldNetDaily
When we wrote our blog post on WorldNetDaily pretending that attendance at Glenn Beck's rally last Saturday was racially diverse, we noted that one of the articles was written by Anita Crane, a name we didn't recall seeing on a WND byline before (though it turns out she has written twoprevious articles for WND, and she is identified in a 2006 WND article as "editor of Celebrate Life magazine").
Now we know a lot more about Crane -- and one of the people she wrote about.
A Sept. 1 Southern Maryland Online article focuses on local author Ron Miller, who was quoted extensively in Crane's article, which also made sure to mention Miller's new book, "Sellout: Musings from Uncle Tom's Porch." The Drudge Report linked to Crane's WND article, and sales of Miller's book spiked on Amazon.com, he said.
The end of the article includes the following note:
Note: Ron volunteered that the article on WorldNetDaily which mentioned him was written by the woman who edited his book.
That's right -- Anita Crane featured an author whose book she edited in her WND article. Of course, neither she nor WND disclosed this, even though she had previously promoted Miller's book on her personal website by describing herself as "Ron's editor and contributor."
WND has a longhistory of violating journalistic ethics by failing to disclose its personal and financial interests in the subjects and people it writes about, so it's probably not surprising that Crane thought she could get away with it too.
A freelancer like Crane perhaps shouldn't be looking to WND as guidance for ethics, since its endemic ethical lapses may very well keep her from getting further freelance work (from publications other than WND).
New Article: More Than An Endorsement Topic: Newsmax
Not only did Newsmax slant its coverage of the Republican primary for Florida governor in favor of Bill McCollum and against Rick Scott, Newsmax CEO hosted a undisclosed fundraiser for McCollum -- all on top of Newsmax's editorial endorsement. Read more >>
