Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax ramped up the Gingrich-fluffing in the runup to the Republican presidential primary in its home state of Florida -- to little effect. Plus: Donald Trump heaps one final indignity on Newsmax. Read more >>
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
NEW ARTICLE -- The Great Gingrich Hype Machine, Part 2: Newtmax!
Topic: Newsmax Newsmax ramped up the Gingrich-fluffing in the runup to the Republican presidential primary in its home state of Florida -- to little effect. Plus: Donald Trump heaps one final indignity on Newsmax. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:59 PM EST
MRC's T. Boone Pickens Fellow Defends Oil Pipeline
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center is well-oiled, if you will, by the oil and gas industry -- so much so that MRC VP Dan Gainor holds the title of T. Boone Pickens Fellow. So it's no suprise that Gainor would pen a Feb. 6 MRC Business & Media article defending the Keystone XL pipeline and attacking President Obama for not approving it. That's what he's being paid to do, after all. Otherwise, he couldn't be the T. Boone Pickens Fellow.
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:27 PM EST
WND Publishes Activist's Fearmongering About Iran As 'News'
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily published a Feb. 5 "news" article by Reza Kahlili claiming that "The Iranian government, through a website proxy, has laid out the legal and religious justification for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of its people." Unmentioned by WND: Kahlili is a fearmongerer people usually laugh at. According to the Washington Post (h/t Media Matters), Kahlili is actually a pseudonym -- WND declares him to be "a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. He has a history of making wild claims involving Iran:
There's no indication that WND made any effort to verify Kahlili's claims.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:04 PM EST
AIM Awards Go To Even More Dubious Hacks
Topic: Accuracy in Media From a Feb. 1 Accuracy in Media press release:
In the tradition of such previous recipients as Tucker Carlson and Ken Timmerman and Andrew Breitbart and Marc Morano, AIM has picked another set of real winners for its most prestigious (if you can call it that) award. As Media Matters details, Attkisson has promoted the discredited theory that vaccines cause autism and issued a factually deficient report on purported "New Solyndras" which included companies that hadn't received federal money and companies that hadn't actually gone bankrupt. As for Loesch, her "fearless" behavior includes accusing NAACP Ben Jealous of being a drunk, likening Al Gore to Leni Riefenstahl, and wishing she could urinate on dead bodies like Marines do. Another class act there, AIM.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:43 AM EST
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
MRC Upset That NY Times Fact-Checked Romney
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center may be running a "Tell the Truth!" campaign, but as we've documented, it opposes telling the truth when it comes to Republican presidential candidates. The latest example is a Feb. 6 MRC TimesWatch post, in which Clay Waters is distressed that the New York Times committed the shocking act of fact-checking Mitt Romney's claim that President Obama's economic policies "made it worse." Waters framed the fact-checking as the Times "rushing to Obama’s aide [sic] after a mild attack by Mitt Romney." At no point did Waters challenge the facts forwarded in the fact-check. At the MRC, "Tell the Truth!" really means "don't report anything negative about a Republican."
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:44 PM EST
Tim Graham Anti-Gay Freakout Watch
Topic: NewsBusters The Media Research Center's Tim Graham -- who is quite the homophobe -- has been on a gay-bashing tear of late. In a Feb. 3 NewsBusters post, Graham fretted that Yahoo! would bow to "pressure" by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and delete anti-gay comments on its website.
As Equality Matters notes, Graham is essentially arguing that gay-bashing bullies get off easy. In a another Feb. 3 post, Graham had a freakout over the fact that "CNN and HLN will be the networks hosting this year's glitzy Manhattan $150-a-head fundraiser for the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association" and that "lesbian activist/CNN Headline News anchor Jane Velez-Mitchell" will be co-hosting it. Graham also dinged another co-host, CNN's Soledad O'Brien, for having "hosted the CNN special with the physiologically impossible title 'Gary and Tony Have a Baby.'" In a Feb. 4 post, Graham bashed NPR for interviewing RuPaul, "cable television's most famous drag queen," for a full "12 and a half minutes." And on Feb. 6, Graham groused that the Washington Post, in an article on schools teaching kindergarteners about different types of families, "featured happy color photographs of two lesbian moms." Graham huffed that "It’s apparently never too young to push social liberalism and call it 'anti-bullying education,'" insisting that "liberals capitalize on 'highly publicized teen suicides tied to anti-gay bullying.'" He furthered complained about "organized advocates of pre-kindergarten gay education."
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:53 PM EST
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Supersize WorldNetDaily Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily
-- Pamela Geller, Jan. 24 WorldNetDaily column
-- Burt Prelutsky, Jan. 24 WND column
-- Robert Ringer, Jan. 25 WND column
-- Jane Chastain, Jan. 25 WND column
-- Phil Elmore, Jan. 25 WND column
-- Ilana Mercer, Jan. 26 WND column
-- Henry Lamb, Jan. 27 WND column
-- Larry Klayman, Jan. 29 WND column
-- Roger Hedgecock, Jan. 29 WND column
-- Barbara Simpson, Jan. 29 WND column
-- Alan Keyes, Feb. 2 WND column
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:31 AM EST
MRC's Gainor Launches Ad Hominem Attack on Group Exposing Anti-Muslim Film
Topic: Media Research Center Dan Gainor uses a Jan. 31 MRC Culture & Media Institute article to go on a tirade against the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University for helping to expose the New York Police Department's use of a rabidly anti-Muslim film, "The Third Jihad," to train police officers. But he can't identify anything the Brennan Center actually did wrong. Gainor complained that the New York Times highlighted how the Brennan Center played a role on "gaining police documents" on the the police department's use of the film, adding, "Nowhere in any of the reporting, did the paper mention that the Brennan Center has received $7,591,129 from the George Soros-run Open Society Foundations." Gainor didn't explain why the Soros funding is at all relevant to the Brennan Center's work on exposing "The Third Jihad," beyond claiming that "Soros foundations have advocated for Islamic causes."The fact that Soros money helped gain the release of those police documents doesn't make those documents any less true. Gainor also misleadingly describes "The Third Jihad" as being about "the dangers of radical Islam." As the Times reported, the film "casts a broad shadow over American Muslims. Few Muslim leaders, it states, can be trusted." Gainor does not dispute the Times' characterization of the film.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:28 AM EST
Monday, February 6, 2012
WND Covers for Arpaio in Homeschoolers' Lawsuit
Topic: WorldNetDaily We aready know that WorldNetDaily is trying to buy a favorable outcome for Sheriff Joe Arpaio's "cold case posse" birther investigation through fawning coverage of Arpaio and by raising money to cover the investigation. Now WND is hiding the involvement of Arpaio's office in a lawsuit involving homeschoolers. A Feb. 4 WND article by Bob Unruh details how "The Home School Legal Defense Association has filed a petition asking the justices to review the case of John and Tiffany Loudermilk," who they saygave in to a search of their home "after social workers used an anonymous tip to threaten to handcuff them and seize their five children, and then summoned deputies to do that." As is Unruh's style, he lavishes attention on the Loudermilks' side of the story, completely ignoring the authorities side of the story. But aside from a references to the Loudermilks' "Maricopa County home" Unruh has hidden the fact that the Arpaio-led Maricopa County Sheriff's Office is one of the targets of the lawsuit, which is called Loudermilk v. Arpaio. Unruh writes: "Named as defendants are Deputies Joshua Ray, Joseph Sousa, Richard Gagnon and Michael Danner, social workers Rhonda Cash and Jenna Cramer, and Assistant Attorney General Julie Rhodes." But Arpaio is a defendant too. Why did Unruh leave him off that list, when he listed Arpaio as a defendant in an April 2010 WND article on the case? These omissions smack of WND continuing to curry favor with Arpaio by whitewashing his misdeeds.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:13 PM EST
Trump Cuts Newsmax Out of the Loop on Romney Endorsement
Topic: Newsmax For as much fawning over Donald Trump as Newsmax has done, you'd think that would have earned Newsmax a scoop on Trump's presidential endorsement. Apparently not -- Trump completely ignored Newsmax in announcing his endorsement of Mitt Romney. Newsmax did rush out an article on the morning of Feb. 2 to shoot down reports that Trump was going to endorse Newt Gingrich. But that came from "a senior source with the Gingrich campaign," not Trump. Several hours after Trump's endorsement, Newsmax published an article by Martin Gould on it that appears to have drawn from reports by other news organizations, and no apparent contact with Trump himself. Does this mean that the slobbering love affair between Newsmax and Trump is over? What will Ronald Kessler, Trump's biggest, most slobbering cheerleader of Trump's presidential ambitions, do now? Oh, wait, we already know the answer to that: fawn over Romney. UPDATE: As a final insult, Romney had refused to take part in Newsmax's planned Trump-hosted debate in December. Gingrich's willingness to do so was cited by Newsmax as a reason for endorsing him.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:25 PM EST
Updated: Monday, February 6, 2012 9:25 PM EST
Farah's Disingenous Attack on 'The Daily Show'
Topic: WorldNetDaily Joseph Farah used his Feb. 2 WorldNetDaily column to grace us with the reason he turned down an interview on "The Daily Show":
Farah is misleading, of course. As his admission that the interview was to take place at WND's "corporate offices in the Washington area" (Why so vague about where WND's offices are, Joe? The address is on your website) this wasn't going to be a sit-down in-studio interview with host Jon Stewart -- whose name Farah misspells -- which are almost always posted in their entirety on the "Daily Show" website. The show was apparently going to put together a humorous segment about people who insist that Obama is a socialist. Farah then rants:
This whole argument is utterly disingenuous of Farah. Does WND allow its interview subjects to record their interviews so they can show what was left on WND's cutting room floor? Probably not. More often than not, it simply chooses not to interview at all anyone who's not sympathetic to WND's far-right agenda, as Bob Unruh's one-sided articles demonstrate. So, Mr. Farah, let's not pretend that your website has any meaningful journalistic standards, because it doesn't. WND's plagiarism epidemic alone proves that.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:07 PM EST
NewsBusters Knows Nothing About Saul Alinsky
Topic: NewsBusters NewsBusters has spent the past couple of weeks ranting about Saul Alinksy. One thing is clear, though: NewsBusters has no idea who Saul Alinsky actually is. In a Jan. 22 post, Noel Sheppard asserted that "if the media had fully reported Obama's ties to Alinsky and other left-wing radicals in 2008, he never would have beaten Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination." In fact, Alinsky died when Obama was 10 years old and the two never met; thus, Obama has no "ties to Alinsky." On Jan. 24, Matt Hadro was upset that "CNN's Soledad O'Brien would not brand Saul Alinsky as a leftist radical, and neither would she say President Obama was influenced by his writings – but she had no problem tying Alinsky's controversial beliefs to the Tea Party movement on Monday's Starting Point." Hadro didn't dispute the truth of what O'Brien did report about Alinsky, but did whine that it was a "neutral take." Also on Jan. 24, Tom Blumer attacked a public radio report on Alinsky, taking offense at its description of Alinsky as "quite a pragmatic, quite a conservative guy." Blumer responded:
Blumer is selectively quoting Alinsky. In the section of "Rules for Radicals" from which Blumer plucks out the three words "conservative and archaic," Alinsky is discussing how thet AFL was not interested in unionizing workers beyond the craft unions it was familiar with during the 1930s, while the more "radical" CIO "espoused industrial unionism." Alinsky was discussing the AFL's management and expansion philosophy, not its political persuasion. Blumer does more out-of-context quoting of Alinsky: "As to whether Alinsky was aligned with the bedrock conservative principle that individuals and families should be left to make their own decisions about their lives, he wasn't: 'The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.'" But the full quote from "Rules for Radicals" puts those words in a different context:
Alinsky sounds almost like a tea partier there, doesn't he? Speaking of which, Tim Graham simply refuses to admit that right-wingers like the tea party are using "radical-left theorist" Alinsky's community organization tactics. In a Jan. 27 post, Graham freaked out at the idea, as expressed by a Washington Post blogger, that "if Alinsky were alive today, he’d surely be camped out in front of the White House, using every trick in his book, 'Rules for Radicals,' to point out the many ways in which the president is not an infiltrator of the dreaded establishment, but the personification of it." Graham huffed: "The charge against Obama did not begin with Obama as president. They begin with Obama's time as a community organizer in Alinsky's Chicago." Graham then irrelevantly quotes right-winger Stanley Kurtz trying to make the Obama-Alinsky connection. In a Jan. 31 post, Graham was offended that an Alinsky biographer -- who Graham doesn't seem to think knows very much about Alinsky -- claimed that Alinsky was not "terribly ideological," which happens to be true. Still, Graham whines: "Could we please stop trying to imply he wasn’t a radical leftist writing to a radical audience?" Again, Graham was offended that it was pointed out that right-wingers use Alinsky's tactics, adding, "How this makes Alinsky less radical is anyone’s guess." Well, right-wingers are using Alinsky's tactics, not only does it mean that Alinsky can't be that radical, it means that Alinsky's radicalness is irrelevant. Graham seems to have forgotten that. Or perhaps he and his fellow NewsBusters are too invested in the idea of Alinsky as bogeyman that they don't want their readers to know the truth.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:46 AM EST
Sunday, February 5, 2012
AIM's Kincaid Joins Geller's Anti-Muslim Group
Topic: Accuracy in Media Cliff Kincaid has something new to do when he's not hating gays or hurling baseless smears: It was announced that Kincaid had joined the board of advisers for Pam Geller's latest anti-Muslim group, Stop Islamization of Nations. As Richard Bartholomew has detailed, SION's board include the usual motley crew of anti-Muslim activists, including someone who claimed that the so-called Ground Zero mosque would be used to train terrorists and a guy who has criticized Christianity as well as Islam as "closed, dogmatic and fundamentalist and closed belief systems, which divide people between believers and non-believers." Kincaid thus joins a clearinghouse of Muslim-bashing, which is not surprising at all given that he has long blamed the post-9/11 anthrax attacks on Islamic terrorists despite the fact that the evidence points to government bioresearcher Bruce Ivins, and has promoted the idea that President Obama is some kind of secret Muslim.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:01 AM EST
Updated: Sunday, February 5, 2012 11:14 AM EST
Death Threat Aside, Blackwell's Column Lies About Obama
Topic: CNSNews.com Sure, there was a death threat against President Obama in the comments section of a Feb. 1 CNSNews.com column by Ken Blackwell attacking "the Obama administration’s ongoing hostility to people of faith, especially Christians." But there was also a fundamental problem with Blackwell's column as well. Blackwell delved into the controversy over former military offical Jerry Boykin's planned (and now-canceled) appearance at West Point, falsely claiming that Boykin "cannot speak at West Point because he’s an outspoken Christian." In fact, the issue is Boykin's lengthy record of extreme anti-Muslim statements and demonization of Obama. Blackwell doesn't explain why anyone who thinks that Obama has created a Hitler-style Brownshirt army to force Marxism on America must be allowed to speak at the nation's premier military academy. The only hint of controversy Blackwell acknowledges is that "Boykin has cast America’s war against radical Islamic terrorists as fighting Satan." But he has gone even further than that: As Right Wing Watch detailed, Boykin has asserted that Islam not protected under the First Amendment and that there can be no interfaith dialogue between Muslims and Christians because Islam is not an Abrahamic faith and has nothing in common with Christianity." As for Boykin's likening of the war on terrorism to a battle against Satan, the Defense Department has previously determined that Boykin violated Pentagon regulations by failing to obtain official clearance for making such extreme statements. Most egregiously, Blackwell claimed that "This sad episode is yet another example of the Obama administration’s ongoing hostility to people of faith, especially Christians" -- but he offered no evidence that anyone in the Obama administration had anything to do with forcing Boykin to withdraw from his West Point speech. Blackwell is lying and misleading his way through this column.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:33 AM EST
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Newsmax Repeats Limbaugh's Faulty Attack on Employment Numbers
Topic: Newsmax A Feb. 3 Newsmax article by Amy Woods uncritically repeats Rush Limbaugh's claim that newly released numbers showing that the U.S. unemployment rate dropped in January are "corrupt" because “The number of jobs not available to be filled exploded by an unprecedented, record number of 1.2 million." But Limbaugh misread the numbers. As Media Matters points out, the Bureau of Labor Statistics adjusted its methodology in January to incorporate demographic data gathered in the 2010 census, causing that statistical anomaly. As Time further explains:
Woods ignores this explanation of the facts proving Limbaugh wrong.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:23 AM EST
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