WND Baselessly Paints Anti-Gay Street Preachers As Conspiracy Victims Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh goes way beyond the established facts in a Dec. 1 WorldNetDaily column, asserting that "Two veteran street preachers in Houston are facing a bench trial for spreading the biblical message about homosexuality – and other sins – on one of their favorite corners for preaching in Houston." He then portrays the preachers as the victim of a gay conspiracy:
Their hearing will be in Houston Municipal Court, which is run by Barbara E. Hartle, who, according to the Dallas Voice, is listed by the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund as "one of only a few out members of the Texas judiciary."
She was appointed to the position by Houston Mayor Annise Parker, identified by the Los Angeles Times as "the first lesbian to head a major American city."
Allen told WND that no matter what happens, the fact that the ministers were handcuffed and ticketed, with their signs and shofar confiscated for a time, sent a chilling message about free speech regarding religion and homosexuality.
Unruh tells only the preachers' predicatably self-victimizing side of the story makes no apparently attempt to contact the police for their side of the story. Not surprisingly, they have a different view of events.
KHOU-TV reports that the two street preachers "were combative with officers, refusing to give their IDs and disobeying commands" -- an account that appears nowhere in Unruh's article, even though he embeds the TV station's video report in his article.
For some reason, WND lovestodefend (and mislead about) the invasive behavior and extremist views of street preachers.
Unruh's anti-gay conspiracy got overtaken by reality the next day, however, when he had to concede that this "court system managed by an 'out' lesbian judge" dismissed the charges against the street preachers.
Noel Sheppard Loves Ann Coulter's Filthy Little Mouth Topic: NewsBusters
We've detailed how NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard is a slobbering fanboy of Ann Coulter who loves every bile-coated pearl that spews from her filthy little mouth. Turns out he loves the filth too.
Sheppard ramped up his apoplexy in a Dec. 4 post against CNN's Howard Kurtz for daring to criticize his beloved Coulter for saying thing that had to be censored from MSNBC's "Morning Joe," which Kurtz described as "slang for male genitals":
Actually, what Coulter said was "dickweed." This is not a "slang for male genitals" as Kurtz said.
According to the Urban Dictionary, it is a "person so irredeemably stupid that their idiotic behavior causes pain to everyone that they interact with."
The Online Slang Dictionary agrees: "asshole, jerk, complete loser."
Strike one.
Strike two for Kurtz was ignoring that irrespective of the language Coulter used, she was trashing Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich.
This should have pleased Kurtz for in an earlier segment he lambasted conservative media as "essentially corrupt" because they weren't being harsh enough on the former Speaker of the House.
I guess we shouldn't expect he would recall what had occurred on his on show 40 minutes earlier, for if he had he might have praised Coulter for going against the conservative media tide concerning Gingrich.
Yes, Sheppard is criticizing Kurtz for supposedly contradicting himself -- something Sheppard doesallthetime.
If some liberal had called Gingrich a "dickweed," it's a metaphysical certainty that Sheppard would pound out an indignant NewsBusters post about it. But instead, his sainted Coulter spewed the word, and she can do no wrong in his eyes.
Speaking of which, Sheppard referred above to an earlier post he wrote dishonestly bashing Kurtz for highlighting conservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin for correctly pointing out that the conservative media is not interested in doing actual journalism when it comes to covering Republican presidential candidates, instead lazily engaging in boosterism:
The problem with that is the conservative media are up front in their ideology and are not trying to hide it. When you listen to a Rush Limbaugh or a Sean Hannity for example, you know you're listening to a conservative. They're certainly not trying to disguise that fact.
By contrast, much of the liberal media are hiding behind a dishonest veil of impartiality.
In fact, Rubin wasn't talking about radio hosts as the "conservative media" -- she was referring to self-proclaimed "news" websites.
That Sheppard thinks right-wing radio hosts are the direct ideological opposite of the "mainstream media" demonstrates how little he knows about the media. Such aggressive know-nothingness, somehow, makes him a premier media critic at the MRC.
After all, Sheppard's view that the conservative media should engage only in fawning praise of their fellow conservatives -- you know, like Sheppard does with Coulter -- puts him in league with his fellow MRCer, Tim Graham.
WND Helps With Advertiser's Publicity Stunt Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Nov. 29 WorldNetDaily article by Jerome Corsi gives publicity to an ad campaign by precious-metals trading firm Swiss America that's being touted as having been "rejected by major television networks, including the Fox News Channel and the Fox Business Network, for apparently political reasons."
Corsi, being the lazy and biased reporter that he is, did not ask whether Swiss America -- whom, in a reversal of WND's longtime refusal to disclose its business interests in the subjects it writes about, he admits is "a WND advertiser" -- created these ads knowing that they would never air and with the ultimate goal of working with right-wing websites like WND to generate publicity for the company based on that refusal.
The article also exhibits a rather hilarious case of cognitive dissonance. Corsi states that, according to Swiss America CEO Craig Smith (whom Corsi did not disclose is a WND columnist), "the intent of the ads was not to make a political statement." But the headline of Corsi's article reads, "See anti-Obama ads spiked by major networks – even Fox!"
So you can make an "anti-Obama" ad that's not intended to make a political statement? Please.
CNS Article on Cain Withdrawal Doesn't Mention Scandals Topic: CNSNews.com
Last week, the Media Research Center's Tim Graham attacked the idea that the right-wing media should do any serious investigation of conservative candidate, claiming they should only be cheerleaders. The MRC's "news" division provides an example of Graham's theory of journalism in action.
A Dec. 3 CNSNews.com article, credited only to "CNSNews.com Staff," reported on how Hermain Cain "announced that he is 'suspending' his presidential campaign," repeating Cain's quote that "As false accusations continue, they have sidetracked my ability to present solutions to the American people."
What is completely, and curiously, missing from the article: Any mention of what those supposedly "false accusations" are, or any mention at all of the affair and sexual harassment allegations against Cain.
So the MRC is apparently so committed to Graham's biased vision that it will distort reality and ignore established facts to report the "news."
Newsmax's Trump-Fluffing Pays Off With Joint Debate Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax -- led by the sycoiphantic Ronald Kessler -- spent much of the early part of this year aggressively promoting the presidential ambitions of Donald Trump, which ultimately imploded amid Trump's rampant birtherism. Newsmax CEO proudly proclaimed that Trump "realizes the great potential of Newsmax and has been using it very adroitly. We're well aware he's using it, happy he's using it."
That sycophancy has paid off with Trump teaming with Newsmax to host a Republican presidential debate Dec. 27.
Newsmax's "news" article on the debate reads like a press release,touting how Newsmax is "the largest online conservative news outlet in the nation" and propping up the little-watched, rerun-laden TV network Ion Television. No mention is made of Trump's birtherism, nor of Newsmax's rampant boosterism of Trump. Newsmax has since trumpeted that Newt Gingrich will appear at the debate.
Newsmax is ramping up its self-promotion in the run-up to the debate. It has already created an email list where people can "get special notices about this debate, be invited to online VIP events before and after the Debate and have an opportunity to participate online in the event itself!"
Is it surprising that these two publicity-hungry entities are getting together to create such a media event? Nope, not at all.
It's the beginning of a new month, so you know what that means: A new, context-free CNSNews.com article on how many U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan.
The curiously unbylined article (most previous body-count articles have been written by Edwin Mora) again plays up that "U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan have more than tripled under the current administration," ignoring the fact that many more U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq under President Bush. For once, though, it doesn't lead with that, highlighting instead on how "71 percent of U.S. military combat deaths in that country have taken place in provinces bordering Pakistan."
WorldNetDaily's support for Herman Cain started out enthusiastic, but when allegations of sexual harassment broke, WND editor Joseph Farah went to radio silence (mostly), while his columnist apparatchiks tried to slime his accusers.
But a woman stepping forward to claim a 13-year affair with Cain seems to have finally marked the end of WND's Cain-gasm.
WND's attempting to unload Cain's book while it's still worth something is just the beginning. WND columnist Jane Chastain -- who just two weeks earlier was making sure people knew that one of Cain's sexual harassment accusers "twice filed for bankruptcy, had a child out of wedlock, can't hold a job for very long, was fired from the National Restaurant Association, hasn't been employed for two years and lives with an unemployed boyfriend was desperate for money" -- threw in the towel in her Nov. 30 column:
As a presidential candidate, Herman Cain is done. He is toast!
In the past, I and many others gave him the benefit of doubt. The sexual harassment claims against him that were settled by the National Restaurant Association appeared frivolous at best. Sharon Bialek's assertion was a "he said, she said" and appeared to be financially and politically motivated. However, Ginger White's allegation that she carried on a 13-year affair with Cain, backed up with records of telephone and text messages, is troubling. At best, it is a case of poor judgment on his part, and there is no wiggle room in that.
And Farah finally weighed in on the burgeoning scandal on his own website for the first time in his Dec. 2 column:
Herman Cain, a fresh face showed promise and raised the hopes of tea-party activists around the country with a strong popular showing. But, whether he knows it or not, his moral character and honesty has been questioned one too many times by one too many women for him to continue a serious bid for the presidency.
Farah then begs readers to "God for a little miracle this year" in the form of a "Michele Miracle." Why has Farah thrown his support to Michele Bachmann:
She's the real deal, folks. She's 100 percent. She's gaffe-proof. She's smarter than Newt, but doesn't brag about it half as much. She's honest. She's sincere. And she really believes in what she says.
CNS' Starr Shills Again for Oil Industry Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com's resident oil industry shill, Penny Starr, comes through again with a Dec. 1 article uncritically repeating Republican claims that the Obama administration's delay of approval for the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline was "putting politics above job creation" and that the pipeline "will create 20,000 jobs."
Starr failed to mention that independent assessments of the pipeline show that it will create far fewer jobs than supporters claim.
Starr also claimed that "the pipeline could reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil by bringing as much as 700,000 barrels of oil a day into the country from Canada." Apparently, Canada is not a foreign country.
As we've detailed, CNS' parent organization, the Media Research Center, has received a significant amount of funding from oil and gas interests.
Media Matters details an ad sent by a gun and ammo seller on WorldNetDaily's mailing list which portrays President Obama as just like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Idi Amin (well, actually, Forrest Whitaker playing Idi Amin) in wanting to impose gun control.
Sheppard Likens EPA Chief to Hitler, Khomeini Topic: NewsBusters
In a June 7 NewsBusters post, Sheppard got all bent out of shape when CNN's Piers Morgan asked if the tea party was a "similar mob to Mussolini’s and Hitler’s in the modern democratic era." But Sheppard has no problemdoing the exact same thing when it suits his right-wing agenda.
In a fawning interview of fellow global warming denier Sen. James Inhofe ("If Margaritas were the official drink in Cancun, what would you and I be drinking if we were in Durban right now?"), as transcribed in a Nov. 30 NewsBusters post, Sheppard asked him whether Politico naming EPA chief Lisa Jackson as "Energy Policy Maker of the Year"was "kind of like Time picking Hitler or Khomeini as Man of the Year - whoever had the most impact whether for good or ill?"
Only Sheppard, it seems, is allowed to go Godwin. Do as he says, not as he does -- after all, he contradicts himself on a depressingly regular basis.
Later in the interview, Sheppard asserted that Jackson is "trying to set policy without oversight by the legislature" based on the "anthropogenic global warming myth." In fact, as Media Matters points out, the EPA is required to regulate greenhouse gases under the bipartisan Clean Air Act.
We thought Sheppard would run out of ways to embarrass himself in public, but he keeps proving us wrong.
Newsmax's Kessler Likens Obama to Soviet Leader Topic: Newsmax
We've detailed how Newsmax decried how President Obama will deploy "a $750 million wrecking ball to demolish the Republican opponent," even as Newsmax will deploy its own multimillion-dollar, Scaife-funded wrecking ball to demolish Obama.
Another swing of that wrecking ball came in Ronald Kessler's Nov. 28 column likening Obama to leaders in Soviet Russia:
“Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you,” Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev declared when addressing Western ambassadors at a reception at the Polish embassy in Moscow in 1956.
This was an assertion of the Marxist contention that capitalism as a system would collapse and be replaced by socialism. By this philosophy, wealthy people exploit the working class, and the capitalist system must be replaced by a socialist government that would redistribute the wealth.
If that philosophy sounds familiar, it’s the approach taken by President Barack Obama and the Occupy Wall Street movement he has embraced. At every turn, Obama demonizes those who have achieved financial success, and he has made hatred of the wealthy the key to his re-election campaign.
[...]
Obama rejects this underlying premise of the capitalist system that is a key to this country’s success. At the same time, he disses Americans for being “a little bit lazy” over pursuing foreign investment and for having “lost our ambition, our imagination, and our willingness to do things that built the Golden Gate Bridge.”
His comment about “bitter” small-town voters who “cling” to their faith, along with their guns, and their “antipathy to people who aren’t like them,” suggests just how much disdain he has for a large segment of Americans.
[...]
Khrushchev was proven wrong when he said the Soviet Union will bury America. Obama will be proven wrong about this country and what it stands for when he is defeated in 2012.
For good measure, Kessler flogs the dead horse of Jeremiah Wright yet again:
Like his self-described mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama appears to despise America. On the Sunday following 9/11, Wright characterized the terrorist attacks as a consequence of violent American policies. Wright said America created the AIDS virus to kill off blacks.
“We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty,” Wright has said. “God d— America!”
Ninety-nine percent of Americans would walk out if they heard a sermon like that. Instead, Obama listened to such hate speech for 20 years and said he considered Wright a sounding board who was like an uncle to him.
Kessler will be rewriting versions of this anti-Obama tirade again and again until the election.
MRC's Graham Attacks NPR for Reporting News Topic: Media Research Center
We've detailed how the Media Research Center's Tim Graham has been one of the leading right-wing voice in trying to bury the phone-hacking scandal at British newspapers owned by News Corp. Even now -- with the reprehensible behavior of British journalists in the employ of Rupert Murdoch copious detailed and beyond doubt, Graham still wants to bury it.
Graham issued a Nov. 29 tweet aimed at NPR media corespondent David Folkenflik, who has apparently been committing the offense of reporting on the scandal:
Graham seems to have forgotten that Soros is an American citizen.
Folkenflik responded by setting Graham straight on basic news principles:
Given that Graham likes his attacks on Democratic presidents laundered through notoriously unreliable British newspapers, bashing Folkenflik for reporting on British newspapers is a strange attack for him to make.
NEW ARTICLE: WorldNetDaily vs. Gardasil Topic: WorldNetDaily
WND finds another vaccine to fearmonger about, this time one that protects against cervical cancer. But to do so, it must rely on fringe medical groups and a man once described as "Austria’s most notorious abortionist." Read more >>
Oil-Funded MRC Defends Oil Industry Again Topic: Media Research Center
We've detailed how funding from the oil and gas industry appears to be fueling favorable coverage of the industry at the Media Research Center.
That fossil-fueled bias pops up once again in a Nov. 29 MRC Business & Media Institute article by Iris Somberg, in which she complains that the villain in the new Muppets movie is an oilman:
Muppet fans around the world were excited to see their childhood friends reunite; only to find out it was to save their studio from a rich oil executive. Liberal Hollywood loves an evil oil company - better yet, make it a successful business man that runs an oil company. The movie industry has repeatedly bashed businessmen and gone after gas and oil.
Tex Richman, a wealthy man that plans to demolish the Muppet studio after the National Geological Survey finds oil directly beneath it, has his plans foiled by three Muppet fans. They "discover the nefarious plan of oilman Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) to raze the Muppet Theater and drill for the oil recently discovered beneath the Muppets' former stomping grounds," as described by "The Muppets" website.
Muppet fans around the world were excited to see their childhood friends reunite; only to find out it was to save their studio from a rich oil executive. Liberal Hollywood loves an evil oil company - better yet, make it a successful business man that runs an oil company. The movie industry has repeatedly bashed businessmen and gone after gas and oil.
Throughout the movie, Richman cackles maniacally and shows just how heartless he really is by denying Kermit's personal plea to give back the studio. He even tells the Muppets its "time to give up your dream," which is one of the worst things anyone can say to a Muppet (or a Hollywood liberal).
Yes, it's a Muppet movie - farcical and silly. But how sadly predictable that the villain is the perennial bogeyman of liberal environmentalists, and how sadly telling that the writers politicized a children's movie. Again.
Somberg doesn't mention her employer's not-insignificant funding from oil interests.
WND's Klein Baselessly Implicates Obama Nominee In Medicare Fraud, Ignores GOP Gov's Role Topic: WorldNetDaily
Aaron Klein keeps up his long series of dubious hit pieces on the Obama administration in a Nov. 29 article, in which he attacks Marilyn Tavenner, President Obama's nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, for her longtime employment at the hospital conglomerate HCA:
Tavenner is a 31-year veteran of HCA. She began with the company in 1981 as a nursing supervisor at Johnston-Willis Hospital in Richmond, Va. After serving in a number of supervisory positions, she became CEO of the hospital in 1993.
In 1996, Tavenner became president of HCA's Richmond Division and in 2001 was appointed the company's Central Atlantic Division president.
In 2004, Tavenner was promoted to group president for HCA's Outpatient Services.
In settlements reached in 2000 and 2002, HCA pleaded guilty to 14 felonies. The company reportedly admitted to overcharging the government by claiming marketing costs as reimbursable; striking illegal deals with home care agencies; and filing false data about the use of hospital space.
HCA also reportedly admitted to defrauding Medicare by billing the agency and other health programs using exaggerated diagnoses and by filing false cost reports.
HCA agreed in 2002 to pay the U.S. government $631 million, plus interest, and pay $17.5 million to state Medicaid agencies, in addition to $250 million paid up to that point to resolve outstanding Medicare expense claims.
First, Klein offers no evidence whatsoever that Tavenner was ever implicated in any of those HCA scandals.
Second, Klein makes no mention of who was the CEO of HCA at the time those settlements over Medicare fraud were reached -- Rick Scott, currently the Republican governor of Florida.
A search of the WND database reveals that WND has never reported on Scott's links to Medicare fraud. But severalarticles have highlighted Scott's opposition to health care reform.
