Topic: WorldNetDaily
The WorldNetDaily columnist pines for the days of apartheid and advocates racist immigration policies -- and she even defended Michael Vick's dogfighting. Read more >>
Monday, July 18, 2011
NEW ARTICLE: Deep In The Heart of Whiteness With Ilana Mercer
Topic: WorldNetDaily The WorldNetDaily columnist pines for the days of apartheid and advocates racist immigration policies -- and she even defended Michael Vick's dogfighting. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:14 PM EDT
CNS Changes AP Headline to Smear Obama
Topic: CNSNews.com When the Associated Press published a short July 13 article on a reportedly contentious meeting between President Obama and members of Congress over the debt ceiling, it carried the headline "AP sources: Obama ends talks brusquely." But CNSNews.com decided that headline wasn't anti-Obama enough, so it was changed to "Obama Showboats His Way Out of Debt-Limit Talks." Of course, the word "showboat" appears nowhere in the article. CNS is simply making it up. Oddly, the original AP headline remains in the article's URL.CNS has added right-wing bias to AP articles at least twice before.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:14 PM EDT
Updated: Monday, July 18, 2011 12:15 PM EDT
WND Lets Anonymous Coward Smear Again
Topic: WorldNetDaily Last year, we detailed how WorldNetDaily gave a cowardly attorney hiding behind the "pen name" of Frank J. Bleckwenn a platform to falsely attack Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. Guess who's back? Yes, "Bleckwenn" has returned to hurl more cowardly bile in a July 15 WND column. This time, he's freaking about an impending confirmation vote on "the nation's first openly homosexual federal judge," J. Paul Oetken. "Bleckwenn" asserts that "A vote to confirm this nominee is in effect a vote to subject New York by force of judicial fiat to the homosexual agenda, lock, stock, and barrel." Among the reasons "Bleckwenn" lists to oppose his nomination is that he's gay:
If we wrote such tripe that is not only hateful but arguably illegally discriminatory as well -- suggesting that he's a horrible lawyer -- we'd hide behind a fake name just like "Bleckwenn." Of course, WND editor Joseph Farah has said that anonymous sources are "usually quotes made up out of whole cloth to help make the story read better." The same goes for its columnists too, it seems.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:57 AM EDT
NewsBusters' Double Standard on MILFs
Topic: NewsBusters In a July 12 NewsBusters post, Noel Sheppard got all worked up that Bill Maher said that he hopes Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann "split the MILF vote." Sheppard huffed: "Honestly, what does it say about our society that this disgusting creature gets invited on so-called cable news networks to spout his highly misogynistic opinions?" Of course, when a conservative uses that "disgusting" term, Sheppard can't be bothered to complain. We found no reference whatsoever in the NewsBusters archive to Tucker Carlson's tweet that "Palin's popularity falling in Iowa, but maintains lead to become supreme commander of Milfistan." Apparently, Sheppard and NewsBusters believe only conservatives are allowed to be "highly misogynistic" in public.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:25 AM EDT
Did WND Hire Private Investigator It Reported On?
Topic: WorldNetDaily A July 16 WorldNetDaily article touts how private investigator Susan Daniels, whom Unruh claims "confirmed that Barack Obama is using a Social Security number issued to a Connecticut address," said on an appearance during Joseph Farah's guest-hosting stint for domestic terrorist G. Gordon Liddy that "I can't wait to see Nancy Pelosi in an orange jumpsuit." (So much for objective research.) Unruh also writes that Daniels said she "was drawn into the controvery [sic]" after "a client asked her to do some research on Obama." So who was that client? Was it WND? After all, WND's Jerome Corsi has said that he "hired private investigators" to pursue his anti-Obama vendetta, presumably with WND's money. Did Corsi hire Daniels too? If so, shouldn't have Unruh disclosed that in his article? Of course he should. But WND refuses to be fully honest with its readers about how it's creating the birther stories it's reporting on. We've documented that Tim Adams has said WND-affiliated attorneys provided him with an affidavit to sign regarding his birther claims, which WND subsequently reported on without disclosing that fact. WND editor Joseph Farah shut down a press conference rather than confirm Adams' claim, which in itself can be taken as a form of confirmation. And for all we know, WND created the possibly fraudulent affidavit for birther Doug Vogt. It is certainly not outside the realm of possibility -- and is even quite likely -- that WND hired Daniels. Farah should have disclosed that on his radio show, and Unruh should have disclosed that in his article. But Farah and WND have never been big on journalistic ethics, have they?
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:14 AM EDT
Sunday, July 17, 2011
MRC Headline Falsely Impugns NBC
Topic: Media Research Center A July 13 Media Research Center item by Kyle Drennen -- repeated at NewsBusters -- carries the headline "NBC: 'About Time' Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. Suffer 'Damage'." But the first paragraph of Drennen's item contradicts it:
In other words: Contrary to the headline, NBC reported what others said about News Corp., and did not assert that it was "about time" Murdoch and his company suffered "damage." That's sloppy writing. Unfortunately, that's the kind of sloppy "research" we've come to expect from the MRC.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:46 AM EDT
Anti-Gay AIM, WND Rush to Defend Bachmann's Anti-Gay Husband
Topic: Accuracy in Media ABC News' report on the "pray away the gay" counseling tactics used by Marcus Bachmann, husband of Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, prompted a defense of Bachmann by some of the most anti-gay elements of the ConWeb. At Accuracy in Media, Cliff Kincaid -- a gay-hater who has expressed his approval of a proposed law in Uganda that would permit the death penalty for mere homosexuality -- claimed in a July 12 column that ABC charged that "the Bachmann family counseling service engages in terrible things by teaching homosexuals how to leave their disease-ridden lifestyle," adding "Of course, the notion of the Bible condemning homosexual behavior, reflected in several passages, was viewed as bizarre and intolerant." Kincaid dismissed the report at "largely recycled leftist material" and quoted at length fellow gay-hater Peter LaBarbera denouncing it. Kincaid even worked in claims by discredited foreigner Trevor Loudon, even though he did not comment directly on the ABC story. Kincaid followed up the next day with a more direct attack on ABC reporter Brian Ross, who conducted the report, making the largely irrelevant claim that Ross "hosted a fundraising benefit" for the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. Kincaid further complained that Ross did not interview any "ex-gays" -- and even that anyone would put "ex-gay" in scare quotes, huffing, "The failure of Ross to interview any of the ex-gays can be explained by his subservience to the homosexual lobby, which dominates the media business." At WorldNetDaily, Joseph Farah -- who leads WND's pervasive anti-gay agenda and portrayed criticism by one writer of that agenda as a paranoid fantasy that the writer wanted to kill him -- also ran to Bachmann's defense, using a July 14 column to inventively parsing the words of both Bachmanns to pretend that they aren't as anti-gay as they are:
Farah is reading a lot into that final statement. Given the close juxtaposition of the two words, a layman's reading of Bachmann's statement makes it very clear that he is indeed calling homosexuals "barbarians." The "euphemism" Farah takes refuge in -- that "barbarians" and "unbelievers" is interchangeable -- is not a common one; we don't even recall WND using it at any point. (Plus, it makes the fallacious assumption that it is somehow impossible to be gay and Christian.) While Farah is willing to impart to Bachmann words he never said and meanings he never expressed, the rest of us have to go by what actually came out of his mouth. Of course, inventing creative meanings of what people said is nothing new for Farah -- he won a Slantie Award this year for somehow divining that President Obama's omission of the word "creator" when paraphrasing the Declaration of Independence during a speech was "an attempt at deicide."
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:30 AM EDT
Updated: Sunday, July 17, 2011 1:33 AM EDT
Saturday, July 16, 2011
WND Hides Facts On FDA Abortion Pill Report
Topic: WorldNetDaily A July 13 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh uncritically repeated right-wing attacks on the "abortion pill" mifepristone, based on a newly released FDA report, but he ignored or downplayed mitigating factors, and he offered no context for the information. He writes:
Unruh didn't mention that the FDA's data was based on an estimated 1.52 million women in the U.S. who have taken mifepristone, and he didn't mention the report's statement that "These events cannot with certainty be causally attributed to mifepristone because of information gaps about patient health status, clinical management of the patient, concurrent drug use and other possible medical or surgical treatments." Unruh also failed to offer context for how such a rate of adverse events compares to other medications. For instance, taking mifepristone is actually much safer than carrying a pregnancy to term; the maternal mortality rate in the U.S. is around 13 per 100,000 live births. For a comparison with an actual drug, the National Institutes of Health reports that in one clinital trial of the anti-cancer drug Avastin for use in treatingage-related macular degeneration, the rate of adverse events was 24 percent -- much higher than the FDA has identified with mifepristone. Unruh also muddled the causes of those deaths, writing that "the deaths were blamed on sepsis, the use of drugs, methadone overdose, delayed onset of toxic shock-like syndrome, suspected homicide and ruptured ectopic pregnancies." Are Unruh and his right-wing buddies really going to blame deaths apparently caused by murder or drug overdoses on mifepristone? Removing the drug overdose- and homicide-related deaths, that leaves nine deaths out of 1.52 million women that might possibly be related to mifepristone. Unruh seems to have based his article on a press release from the right-wing group Liberty Counsel, which makes the same omissions of context and fact that Unruh does.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:46 PM EDT
Vadum Tosses Away GAO Report That Proves Him Wrong
Topic: Capital Research Center Media Matters detailed how Fox & Friends promoted a claim that "ACORN" -- which no longer exists -- is still receiving federal money, only to back down after being contacted by a federal spokesman who pointed out that the figure Fox & Friends cited was the amount that was unspent and reclaimed from a 2005 grant. The spokesman's claim is backed up by a Government Accountability Office report issued last month. Fox & Friends appears to have taken its information from a post by Matthew Vadum at Andrew Breitbart's Big Government website. If you go to Vadum's personal website, you'll find a copy of his Big Government post. But before you see that, you will see a giant photo of Vadum taken from an appearance from Fox Business. That's taken from his appearance on the June 17 edition of Follow the Money, one of six apperances Vadum has made on that show since early June, according to a Nexis search. Note that in the picture, Vadum is holding a copy of a GAO report on federal funding of ACORN. During the segment, he attacked the report for not hating ACORN as much as he does, dismissing it as "like teenage interns were researching on Google for a few hours" and accusing it of not detailing as many ACORN-related voter fraud convictions as he found (never mind that doing so was outside of the report's scope). In a dramatic flourish, Vadum declared that "you can just throw it away if you want" as he tossed the report behind him, pages fluttering. Perhaps Vadum shouldn't have tossed that GAO report away -- it's the very same report that disproves his claim. The GAO report references the grant Vadum cited at Big Government, a $527,000 grant awarded to ACORN Housing Corp. by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2005. A footnote continues: "The grant was closed with a balance of $461,086 not expended before the expenditure deadline." That's the same $481,086 Vadum claimed in his Big Government post that HUD "gave ACORN ... in January." Vadum's Big Government post contains no update or correction at this writing, though the version at his own website has an update noting that a HUD spokesman -- the same one who contacted Fox & Friends -- pointed out that the money was "de-obligated and recovered," not awarded and spent. There's a bit of irony in the fact that Vadum's website features a photo of himself holding a report that, had he actually read it closely instead of theatrically tossing it away, would have saved him some embarrassment. (Adapted from a post at Media Matters.)
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:21 AM EDT
Updated: Sunday, July 17, 2011 10:52 AM EDT
Friday, July 15, 2011
Victoria Jackson: Like Hitler, Obama Has A Private Army (And A White Mother)
Topic: WorldNetDaily
-- Victoria Jackson, July 15 WorldNetDaily column The reason nobody is "freaking out" about the "private army" stuff is because it's not true. UPDATE: We were so taken by Jackson's full Godwin that we missed her boner at the end:
Actually, neither Castro nor Hitler were "voted in." Castro assumed power after the Cuban revolution, and Hitler was appointed German chancellor and later assumed presidential powers. (WND's Joseph Farah got that wrong as well.)
Posted by Terry K.
at 5:04 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, July 15, 2011 8:48 PM EDT
Newsmax's Ruddy Defends Murdoch
Topic: Newsmax Christopher Ruddy uses a July 12 Newsmax column to defend his former boss, Rupert Murdoch:
Ruddy doesn't mention that one of the problems was that Murdoch papers were working a little too closely with police, as in bribing them to track cell phone signals of celebrities and others. Murdoch as a victim of the left is a theme he repeats later in the column:
We suspect Ruddy wouldn't be so eager to paper over this scandal if Murdoch wasn't so conservative-friendly.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:09 PM EDT
Farah: Approving HPV Vaccination Was A 'Mistake' For Perry
Topic: WorldNetDaily In a July 11 column explaining why Rick Perry can beat President Obama in the 2012 election, Joseph Farah also takes time to list a few of Perry's "mistakes":
Nor did he mention why Perry issued the order: because HPV is a major cause of cervical cancer and, according to Perry, "The HPV vaccine provides us with an incredible opportunity to effectively target and prevent cervical cancer." Farah does not explain why trying to prevent cervical cancer is a "mistake." WND has long fearmongered about vaccines, even promoting the discredited link between vaccines and autism, but Farah does none of that here; instead, he suggests that the HPV vaccination is somehow icky because it's a "sexually transmitted disease." Farah also ignores the reason sixth-grade girls are being targeted -- because the vaccine being used, Gardasil, works best before a person has contact with HPV. You'd think that Farah would have been chastened about its promotion of the vaccine-autism link -- the first report of its discrediting in an original WND article occured in a column, not a "news" item -- but he apparently cares more about fearmongering than the truth.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:55 AM EDT
NewsBusters Shifts Into Equivocate-And-Denounce Mode On News of the World Scandal
Topic: NewsBusters Now that the Media Research Center has decided to weigh on the Rupert Murdoch-News of the World scandal (after trying to dismiss it a few months ago), it has fallen into its usual pattern of dealing with such things: equivocate and denounce. Aubrey Vaughan writes on the former in a July 13 NewsBusters post:
Yes, Vaughan really thinks paying sources for scoops is no different than breaking the law by hacking into people's voice mail for story ideas. We don't dispute that paying sources is a serious ethical issue in journalism. But it's at least a few orders of magnitude smaller than the News of the World's phone-hacking. Demonstrating the latter is Tim Graham, who attacked NPR for covering it at all:
As he has before, Graham whined that NPR "the million-dollar grant NPR received from George Soros at almost the same time that Soros gave a million-plus to Media Matters for America to get cable operators to 'Drop Fox.' NPR should really try a fuller disclosure when it dives into scandals that please its liberal sugar daddies." Graham, of course, makes no mention of the conservative sugar daddies he must please by writing such things. Meanwhile, Matthew Balan was upset that NPR reported on a self-described "geek socialist" who is leading a fledging boycott against Murdoch's News Corp. Apropos of nothing but the MRC anti-gay agenda, Balan concluded by noting that earlier in the year NPR had "spotlighted a homosexual activist's income tax protest."
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:03 AM EDT
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Palling-Around-With-Terrorists Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily Joseph Farah is once again guest-hosting the radio show of G. Gordon Liddy.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:04 PM EDT
CNS Falsely Portrays DREAM Act As Amnesty
Topic: CNSNews.com A July 12 CNSNews.com article by Penny Starr carries the headline "Durbin Characterizes DREAM Act as ‘Starting Point’ in Amnesty for All Illegal Aliens." But nowhere does Starr quote Sen. Dick Durbin using the word "amnesty" to describe the DREAM Act or any other immigration reform. The article is an echo of a June 29 article by Starr with a headline that falsely suggested that Durbin called for "amnesty" when Starr quoted him saying no such thing. As we've documented, CNS repeatedly portrays the DREAM Act and other comprehensive immigration reform propsals as "amnesty" when, due to the numerous conditions imposed on illegal immigrants before citizenship may be granted, it is not by definition "amnesty." Nevertheless, Starr follows up in a July 14 CNS article by falsely claiming that the DREAM Act was an attempt at "granting amnesty for illegal aliens."
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:02 PM EDT
|
Find more neat stuff at the ConWebWatch store! Buy through this Amazon link and support ConWebWatch!
Entries by Topic
All topics « Accuracy in Media Capital Research Center CNSNews.com Free Congress Foundation Free Republic Horowitz Media Research Center NewsBusters Newsmax The ConWeb The Daily Les Washington Examiner Western Journalism Center WorldNetDaily
Watchers
Media Matters for America County Fair The Daily Howler LGF Watch SullyWatch Fact-esque Malkin(s)Watch Reading A1 (NYT) John Gorenfeld (Moonies) NewsHounds (Fox News) Media Watch CJR Daily The Counterpoint (Sinclair) BlatherWatch (Seattle Radio) Watching OlbermannWatch
Blogs
Talking Points Memo Eschaton Suburban Guerrilla World O'Crap Sadly, No! Oliver Willis Angry Single Mom Orcinus Bartholomew's Notes on Religion PFAW's Right Wing Watch Altercation Max Blumenthal
Support Bloggers' Rights! |