NewsBusters' Sheppard Touts Dubious Dick Morris Claim Topic: NewsBusters
The Media Research Center just loves it when someone accuses a member of the media of acting on White House orders.
In a Feb. 13 NewsBusters post, Noel Sheppard touted Dick Morris' claim that ABC’s George Stephanopoulos is a "paid Democratic hitman" who is on the ABC payroll specifically for "making points for the Democratic Party," as evidenced by asking Mitt Romney "all those contraception questions" during a debate.
Sheppard followed up in a Feb. 16 post, regurgitating Morris' claim that the tactics Stephanopoulos allegedly used against Romney were "similar to how the Clinton White House got the media to do its bidding against its opponents." Sheppard wrote, "Was this orchestrated as Morris said by the White House in order to develop a narrative prior to the release of this edict, or were all these questions about a largely irrelevant issue in the campaign up to that point mere coincidence?"
Sheppard doesn't mention that Morris offers no evidence whatsoever to back up his claim. And he completely ignores that a prominent conservative Fox News employee has mocked Morris' claim.
On his Twitter account, Fox News' Brit Hume -- whom the MRC has awarded its William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence -- pointed out that Morris "couldn't substantiate" his claim. In another tweet, Hume said of Morris: "often wrong, never in doubt."
If one of the MRC's favorite conservatives is mocking Morris' claim, why is Sheppard rushing to portray Morris as correct?
Alan Caruba Still Peddling Global Warming Denialism Topic: Accuracy in Media
Climate denier Alan Caruba has a lengthy history of misleading about global warming. He keeps it up in a couple recent columns posted at Accuracy in Media.
In a Feb. 14 column, Caruba blames "the global warming hoax" for an alleged insufficiency of electricity in Europe as it deals with unusually cold temperatures because, he claims, countries have been "spending billions for wind power when they should have been building coal-fired and other sources of energy to heat their homes and businesses." Caruba goes on to note how "Serbia has started implementing power cuts in a desperate bid to stave off the collapse of its national grid as the country suffers the effects of days of freezing temperatures."
In fact, the UK Telegraph article from which Caruba pulled the Serbia story makes no mention of "wind power" -- in fact, it states that "Temperatures as low as -30C have sent demand soaring but also interrupted coal production, restricting supplies to Serbia's coal-fired power stations."
Indeed, nowhere in Caruba's article does he provide any evidence that power sources that aren't coal- or oil-based have any responsibility whatsoever for deaths from extreme cold.
In a Feb. 16 column, Caruba ranted about the release of documents from the conservative Heartland Institute, revealing its strategies to promote global warming denialism:
This week, a major smear campaign against the Institute erupted as the result of an act of deception and thievery that may well result in criminal charges against its as yet unknown perpetrator.
The President of the Institute, Joe Bast, immediately informed its supporters, directors, donors and friends that someone pretending to be a board member had sent Heartland an email claiming to be a director and asking that documents regarding a January board meeting be re-sent.
A clever ruse, but the result was that elements of the confidential documents were then posted on a number of so-called climate blogs and from there to various members of the media who, with the exception of The Guardian, took no steps whatever to verify the authenticity of the documents, some of which Heartland says were either a concoction of lies or altered to convey inaccurate information.
By contrast, Caruba describes the release of stolen emails from climate researchers connected to East Anglia University as nothing but a "leak." Caruba obviously had no moral qualms over that deception and thievery -- after all, those documents "revealed the extent of their efforts to spread the hoax and to suppress any expression of doubt regarding it." (Except that they didn't.) To our knowledge, Caruba has never demanded that "criminal charges" be filed against the "as yet unknown perpetrator" who stole the East Anglia emails.
Further, the Heartland Institute itself effectively confirmed the authenticity of the documents by complaining that they were "stolen." Caruba offers no evidence that he or anyone else attempted to verify the authenticity of the stolen East Anglia emails before writing about them.
Double standard? Obviously. But Caruba has not exactly been known for his honesty in his denier activism.
Bozell Criticizes JFK's Affairs, Stay Mum on Gingrich's Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell unloads on John Kennedy's infidelities in his Feb. 15 column:
The problem is that any honest historian couldn't claim that Jackie was JFK's sweetheart. He had lots of 'em. And now CBS has utterly ignored what NBC just exploited — er, reported — in prime time: Former White House intern Mimi Alford has written a memoir revealing how President Kennedy pressured her into Jackie's bed in 1962 to take her virginity. This affair began when she was 19 and four days into her internship. It would last until the eve of Kennedy's assassination.
It's shocking enough to read about Kennedy cornering this young girl, plying her with daiquiris and bedding her. But there's more: Alford says that the president told her to perform oral sex on his aide Dave Powers by the swimming pool, and she complied. It's perhaps most shocking that NBCs "Rock Center" put this woman on the air in prime time.
This is a tawdry interruption. The narrative must continue. At all costs, the Camelot mythology must stay alive.
[...]
As we know from our liberal media, sleazy White House affairs with interns are never meant to make the president look sleazy. These rotten-to-the-core husbands are lauded for their heroism and their "magnetism" and "electricity" for all posterity. Instead, we demean their coquettish "conquests" for daring to write about it from their viewpoint.
But Bozell can't quite bring himself to issue the same criticism of Newt Gingrich's extramarital affairs. In fact, as we documented, Bozell decreed that Gingrich's affairs shouldn't be covered at all, and he tried to denigrate ex-wife No. 2 for talking about the affair by suggesting that she wasn't telling the truth.
Apparently, as far as Bozell is concerned, conservatives don't have sleazy affairs -- only Democrats do. We can just add this to the long list of MRC double standards.
CNS AP Headline Alteration Watch Topic: CNSNews.com
When real news organizations published the Associated Press article on Amine El Khalifi for plotting to detonate a suicide vest in the U.S. Capitol, they used headlines like "Terror suspect arrested near Capitol in FBI sting."
We're pretty sure the AP did not use the phrase "Illegal Alien Moroccan" in the headline it sent out. Just call this yet another instance of CNS adding right-wing bias to the headlines of AP articles, something that may very well violate AP guidelines.
Ellis Washington Just Can't Stop Likening Obama to Hitler (While Pretending He's Not) Topic: WorldNetDaily
For the thirdtime in eight months, WorldNetDaily's Ellis Washington feels the need to liken President Obama to Hitler, and for the second time he's denying he's actually doing so as he does it. Frim Washington's Feb. 17 WND column:
President Obama’s fascist tactics reminds me of an earlier, radical age 80 years ago and the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany. No, I’m not saying Obama is Hitler; however, writer Eric Metaxas, a biographer of Christian martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in chapter 12 of his revelatory new book on Bonhoeffer, wrote these prophetic words describing the demonic and consensus Zeitgeist that dominated Germany in the early 1930s[.]
If you have to explain that you're not likening Obama to Hitler, you're likening Obama to Hitler.
As we've documented, Washington loves to go Godwin on Obama.
Noel Sheppard's School of Headline Cliches Is Back in Session Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard is still up to his headline cliche tricks. Here are Sheppard's overuse of his two favorite cliche -- "schools" and "smacks down" -- since the beginning of the year:
CNS' Starr Has Another Smithsonian Freakout (And Gets A Key Fact Wrong) Topic: CNSNews.com
Does Penny Starr spend all of her waking hours wandering around Smithsonian museums looking for something to offend her? It seems so.
The highly biased CNSNews.com reporter has a long history of manufacturing outrage over Smithsonian exhibits, most notoriously freaking out over a gay-themed art exhibit at one museum. Now she's at it again.
In a Feb. 14 CNS article, Starr is a couple hundred years late to the story of Thomas Jefferson's edited version of the Bible, the subject of a new Smithsonian exhibit. She complains that Jefferson's Bible omits Jesus' resurrection, suggesting that the Smithsonian is calling Jefferson a "genius" for editing the Bible.
But Starr can't get her facts straight. She writes:
In an exhibition that runs through May at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, Founding Father and U.S. President Thomas Jefferson is described as a “genius” and “revolutionary” who created his own Bible by cutting and pasting the verses he preferred into a separate compilation.
[...]
The Web site states Jefferson’s “New Testament” is “an extension of his revolutionary spirit” and that, “In religion as in politics, he imagined liberating contemporary minds from inherited misconceptions and superstitions.”
In fact, the video applies that description to Jefferson's home, not his Bible. The video's very first words are "Monticello -- a brick and mortar glimpse into the mind of a genius." The Jefferson Bible itself is not mentioned until nearly two minutes into the video.
Given that Starr's central grievance has no factual basis, all she's left with is complaining that a revered figure in American history interpreted the Christian faith differently than she does. Is that really something to make a "news" article out of?
WND Discovers Shocking Evidence That Candidates Try To Appeal to Various Groups of People Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has made the completely unsurprising discovery that Barack Obama's re-election campaign -- like any person running for office -- wants to appeal to as many different types of voters as possible.
But because WND has a hatred of Obama that goes well beyond the irrational to well nigh psychotic, it has to twist that into something sinister. Which brings us to Bob Unruh's Feb. 17 article:
Barack Obama repeatedly has said he wants to have Americans work together, share the burden, “spread the wealth” and have everyone play by the same rules.
But that apparently comes only after Americans are divided up, categorized and separated by race, ethnicity, even religion.
The evidence comes from Obama himself, even though he once said, ” I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.”
But his campaign divides people into the following categories: African-Americans, Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders, Jewish Americans, Latinos, LGBT Americans, people of faith, veterans & military families, women and young Americans.
Again: This is not news. But WND has decided to hatefully twist it into something that is. That's how much Unruh and WND despise Obama.
MRC's Bozell Unleashes Anti-Obama Tirade Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell went on an anti-Obama tirade a few days ago on Mark Levin's radio show:
“There was no complaint here,” Bozell continued. “There was no outrage here. There was no problem that the Obama administration needed to fix. This is a desire on their part to destroy the Catholic Church. This has nothing to do with contraception.”
[...]
“[T]his is the radical pro-aborts,” Bozell said, adding that Obama is “as fanatical as they come where abortion is concerned.”
Can the head of a tax-exempt organization be allowed to engage in such partisan political activity?
CNS Is Now Just Rewriting Republican Press Releases Topic: CNSNews.com
We already know that CNSNews.com has pretty much abandoned whatever journalistic objectivity it may have had in order to become an anti-Obama attack machine. Now it's taking things one step further by simply rewriting Republican press releases.
Matt Cover published two CNS articles on Feb. 17 that do nothing but regurgitate Republican National Committee attacks.
In the first article, headlined "On 3rd Anniversary of Obama's $787B Stimulus, Unemployment Sets Record," Cover note: "The Republican National Committee (RNC) highlighted this and dozens of other facts in a 52-page book listing some of the biggest failures of the Obama stimulus. The book is entitled, Obamanomics: Stimulus Deconstructed, Three Years of Failed Policies." IN the second, headlined "Three Years Later, Some of the Stimulus’ Odder Projects: Basket Weaving, Polka Training, Rats on Meth," Cover states that "The hit parade of stimulus projects are the focus of a report from the Republican National Committee called ‘Where did all the Money Go?’ which gives a state-by state breakdown of questionable stimulus projects and failed government investments."
A third article by Cover attacking the stimulus doesn't credit the RNC, but theproject it features -- "a $35,000 grant to the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance to support apprentice basket weavers and help fund the Maine Indian Basketmakers Festival" -- comes straight from the RNC report.
In none of these articles does Cover make any apparent effort to talk to anyone else -- he's just copying-and-pasting Republican talking points.
The RNC must be happy to have such a compliant "journalist" like Cover who's so eager to do their job for them.
AIM's Kincaid Unhappy That News Corp. Is Cooperating With Police Topic: Accuracy in Media
Who knew that a law-and-order guy like Cliff Kincaid is opposed to people cooperating with the police?
Kincaid expresses exactly that in his Feb. 16 Accuracy in Media column, in which he declares that "the sacking of Glenn Beck from Fox News" is a "sensitive topic" at the network:
It is even more sensitive in view of what News Corporation, the parent of Fox News, is doing to its staff at the British newspaper, The Sun. As part of an internal investigation of phone-hacking and bribery, News Corporation voluntarily turned over information to police authorities.
Sun associate editor Trevor Kavanagh reports that “30 journalists have been needlessly dragged from their beds in dawn raids, arrested and held in police cells while their homes are ransacked.” He said journalists were being treated like members of a criminal gang and that freedom of the press was in danger.
If News Corporation chief Rupert Murdoch would turn over his own journalists to authorities in Britain, why wouldn’t he sack Glenn Beck in response to an orchestrated campaign from George Soros and his operatives at Media Matters?
Kincaid doesn't explain why he thinks News Corp. should have stonewalled authorities even as the company's phone-hacking scandal continues to grow. Maybe he thinks that's an accepted way of doing journalism.
WND's Geller Upset Anti-Muslim Activist Was Quoted Accurately Topic: WorldNetDaily
Pamela Geller writes in her Feb. 14 WorldNetDaily column:
Islamic supremacists and their quisling apologists in the leftist media immediately tried to twist the meaning of remarks by one of our speakers, James Lafferty. They accused Lafferty, founder and chairman of the Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force, of applauding the destruction of mosques. Lafferty set the record straight in a statement he sent me: “I do not condone or encourage any criminal act or vandalism against any mosque. I am a firm believer in the rule of law and the protections our Constitution provides for the free exercise of religion – and that means all religions.”
Geller curiously omits what Lafferty actually said, as Right Wing Watch notes:
Last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference, James Lafferty of the Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force spoke at Pamela Geller’s panel opposing the construction of mosques and the supposed threat of sharia law in the U.S. and bragged that while attending a hate crimes summit convened by the Department of Justice he watched “pictures of some mosque somewhere, and it was usually in the South I’m proud to say where a guy would drive a pickup truck right into the mosque.”
In other words, there was no twisting of Lafferty's words -- he was quoted accurately, and that's something Geller apparently can't deal with.
MRC: Contraception Poll 'Slanted' Because It Wasn't Slanted to the Right Topic: NewsBusters
In a Feb. 15 NewsBusters post, the Media Research Center's Matthew Balan claims that a CBS/New York Times poll finding that 61% of Catholics approve President Obama's contraception policy is "slanted." Why?
The left-leaning outlets' poll question, however, completely glossed over the religious liberty component to the controversy over the policy, asking only, "What about for religiously-affiliated employers, such as a hospital or university? Do you support or oppose a recent federal requirement that their health insurance plans cover the full cost of birth control for their female employees?"
Reframing the contraception issue as a religious liberty issue is a right-wing talking point that the MRC has aggressively embraced.
In other words, Balan's real complaint is not that the poll was slanted, but that it didn't slant to the right.
Newsmax Columnist Fawns Over Gingrich's PAC Funder Topic: Newsmax
Since there's a little lull right now between presidential primaries, Newsmax has been a little light on Gingrich-fluffing. Doug Wead has apparently decided to try and rectify that with his Feb. 15 column, which is devoted to serving up a ridiculous amount of praise to the billionaire who's funding Gingrich's super PAC, Sheldon Adelson:
Adelson's support of Gingrich is as American as a hot dog and as Italian as his luxurious Venetian hotel and resort. It is American to support the candidate you believe in and it is Italian to put your money where your heart is.
The billionaire's large donations to Newt Gingrich bring to mind the strategies of Nicolo Machiavelli, the 15th century Italian political genius.
At first glance Adelson's moves seem risky, after all, Mitt Romney is the official front-runner. But the casino mogul obviously knows the odds are in his favor.
Machiavelli taught that in a transition, when there are multiple rivals to the throne, one should quickly commit to one of the claimants. Actually, any one of them will do. And commit fully. If your candidate becomes king he will bring you to his bosom.
Wead's enthusiasm for Adelson is a bit surprising given his devotion to Ron Paul, which he even admits here:
As a committed supporter of Ron Paul, I admit that we have had some big donors to our Super PACs as well. I have read about them in the press.
But Ron Paul is running to diminish power not to take it, which attracts a different type of donor altogether.
My guess is that this whole Super PAC business will be shut down next time and there will be no more Sheldon Adelsons. He is seizing the moment as it appears and whatever happens he is a winner.
How else could someone become an overnight player in this trillion-dollar world power game?
And how else could someone do so with such a small investment? Can you really be at the right hand of the president of the United States for a few million? Others will spend a lifetime and commit tens of millions and not even be granted the title Mr. Ambassador, let alone "First Friend."
This sort of Kessler-esque fawning will have to do at Newsmax for now.
MRC's Graham Edits Out O'Reilly Being Unaware of MRC's Existence Topic: Media Research Center
In a Feb. 14 NewsBusters post, Tim Graham approvingly cites how, on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor," Bernard Goldberg describes the Media Research Center as doing "God's work when it comes to exposing liberal media bias."This came during a segment attacking Media Matters (disclosure: my employer).
Before Goldberg said that, however, host Bill O'Reilly said this: "But now it seems like you have a Media Matters, and I don't know if there's a corresponding organization on the right. I don't believe there is. All right, who are basically spinning stuff out to the Washington Post, New York Times, L.A. Times."
O'Reilly doesn't know that the MRC exists? That's brutal.
Of course, O'Reilly may be playing dumb. The MRC spins stuff out to Fox News all the time -- remember, Brent Bozell appears every week on Sean Hannity's show, where there is no guest to counter his spin. And when former Fox anchor Brit Hume accepted the MRC's William F. Buckley Award for Media Excellence, he expressed his gratitude for "the tremendous amount of material that the Media Research Center provided me for so many years when I was anchoring Special Report. I don't know what we would have done without them. It was a daily, sort of a buffet of material to work from, and we - we -- we certainly made tremendous use of it."
Why, it's as if the MRC is writing the scripts for Fox.
Nevertheless, Graham also decided to play dumb by pretending that the MRC is nice and honorable compared to those meanies at Media Matters: "Because liberal outlets dominate the media, there is no way that the MRC could demand the shutdown of a single network like the left-wing pressure groups do."
This is coming from the same guy whose boss called President Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead." (The MRC has yet to ackowledge that Bozell did that.) And the same guy who "declared war on the liberal media." So, yeah, that argument won't fly.
