Topic: WorldNetDaily
WND was busted long ago for spreading falsehoods about President Obama, yet it continues to peddle those very same lies years later. Read more >>
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
NEW ARTICLE: WorldNetDaily's Zombie Lies
Topic: WorldNetDaily WND was busted long ago for spreading falsehoods about President Obama, yet it continues to peddle those very same lies years later. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:14 PM EDT
Sleazy Jerome Corsi Now Pushing Obama Gay-Sex Claims
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily's Jerome Corsi despises Barack Obama so much that he has shown no reluctance to plunging into the sleaziest sewers of Obama derangement. He started moving this direction last year by darkly hinting that Obama is secretly gay. Now, Corsi has taken the full plunge at WND by trying to rehabilitate Larry Sinclair. If you'll recall, in 2008 WND enthusiastically embraced Sinclair's tale that he once did drugs and had sex with Obama, despite the facts that no corroborating evidence was presented to back up his claims and WND itself made no effort whatsoever to check him out. WND quietly backed away from Sinclair after he failed lie-detector tests, he turned out to be a convicted crimina,l and he held a press conference one observer called "the single most stupefying event on any single day, what with the diversity of inanity on display from coast to coast in an election year," complete with a kilt-wearing attorney who justified his wardrobe decision by discussing the size of his "male genitalia." But never mind all that -- Corsi needs more excuses to hate Obama, and Sinclair will serve just nicely. In an April 24 WND article, Corsi writes that a libel case was dismissed against Sinclair by a man who claimed Sinclair ruined him by claiming in a book that Obama adviser David Axelrod had agreed to pay the man $750,000 to rig the results of Sinclair's polygraph test. Corsi makes sure to put inhis lead paragraph that Sinclair has made the "sensational charge that he had sex and used drugs with the future president," but it's not until the final paragraph of his 27-paragraph article that Corsi mentions that Sinclair has a "criminal past." The libel suit has no direct link to Sinclair's allegations about Obama -- which still lack substantiation -- yet Corsi is seizing on it to portray Sinclair as credible. This is little more than carpet-munching on Corsi's part. There apparently is no depth too low for him to indulge his Obama derangement.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:53 AM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, April 25, 2012 11:54 AM EDT
Not Dead Yet: Newsmax Still Promoting Gingrich's Campaign
Topic: Newsmax Christopher Ruddy's salute aside, it appears that Newsmax is not quite ready to give up on Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign. An April 24 article by Paul Scicchitano in an interview with Gingrich in which the candidate repeats his usual attacks on Mitt Romney and plays down the near-impossibility of Gingrich actually winning the nomination. While acknowledging that "Gingrich lost Tuesday's Delaware primary — where he had spent a significant amount of time campaigning and had hoped to win," Scicchitano also portrays Gingrich as an "underdog" who faces "funding challenges," suggesting he still has a chance. But then, Newsmax turned its news operation into a hype machine for Gingrich for much of of December and January, so it's probably not a surprise that Newsmax is still clinging to the idea of Gingrich as a president.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:42 AM EDT
Shorter Joseph Farah: Give Me Money!
Topic: WorldNetDaily In case it wasn't obvious before, WorldNetDaily has made it crystal clear: It's no longer a news organization, it's a political action committee. WND explains it in an April 23 article:
Of course, the reason "most of the media" ignores this story is because it's a sham, ginned up by Farah and Co., just like he did in the 1990s with the claim that Vince Foster was murdered, and for the same purpose -- to try and delegitimize a president he opposes. Thank you, Mr. Farah, for declaring that not only do you have no interest in fair and balanced journalism or even the facts, you will be turning WND into a propaganda machine dedicated almost exclusively to trying to destroy President Obama. Years back, Farah declared himself an activist and not a journalist, so let's not pretend he's anything but a craven, hate-filled partisan. Here's where the PAC part comes in. Farah needs money in a hurry -- lots of money:
When Donald Trump thinks you're too crazy, that may be a sign that you're too crazy. But sanity isn't the point -- money is. This is nothing but a grab for cash done in the most cynical way possible. And don't expect that Farah will ever provide any accountability to his donors for how that money he's begging for is spent, and he certainly isn't promising to do so here. He doesn't have that kind of integrity. If Farah was truly committed, he'd borrow the money himself. Instead, the money from his gullible donors may very well line his own pockets. You'll see WND report on John Woodman's birther debuking before he'll publicly document how that money was spent. Given that, why would anybody trust Farah and WND with their cash? We can't imagine how.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:21 AM EDT
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Dan Gainor's Anti-Gay Freakout Over Romney Spokesman
Topic: Media Research Center You know Dan Gainor as the Media Research Center apparatchik (and T. Boone Pickens Fellow) who loyally spouts right-wing talking points. It's probably not a surprise that he would parrot the MRC's anti-gay agenda as well. After it came out that Mitt Romney had hired as his national security spokesman Richard Grennell, Gainor managed to find something wrong with that: Grennell is gay. So he decided to tap into his inner Bryan Fischer and and pick Twitter fights with anyone who disagreed with him by ranting about how it wasn't "conservative" for Romney to do such a thing, as Slate's David Weigel documents. Never mind, of course, that not even Gainor appears to be disputing Grennell's qualifications on national security -- heck, he's certainly right-wing enough, as demonstrated by Newsmax's crush on him. Grennell's sexual orientation is simply irrelevant to the job in question, but Gainor has decided to portray his hiring as a "move to the left." And as the Twitter chain demonstrates, Gainor refuses to address the logical conclusion drawn from his tweets: that conservatives should discriminate against gays in job preferences. Curiously, Gainor has yet to bring any of this up at the MRC website. Is that because he knows that such blatant attacks on the presumptive Republican candidate are a big no-no at this point? Or is it because that such naked gay-bashing may not fly with even the MRC's conservative base?
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:49 PM EDT
AIM's Irvine Didn't Want His Child to Be Born on Earth Day
Topic: Accuracy in Media Earth Day coincides with the birth of one of the sons of Accuracy in Media director Don Irvine. And Irvine's not exactly happy about that. He details in an April 22 AIM blog post:
Irvine concluded: "Happy Birthday Steven, and please feel free to expand your carbon footprint today." This sort of Earth Day bashing, of course, is endemic to right-wingers like Irvine.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:17 PM EDT
MRC Unhappy That Another Pew Study Contradicts Its Agenda
Topic: Media Research Center Last fall, we noted how the Media Research Center tried to discredit a Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism because if offered evidence that ran contrary to the MRC's raison d'etre narrative that the media has a hopeless liberal bias. Well, the PEJ has issued a new study -- this one claiming that coverage of President Obama has been "mostly negative," while Mitt Romney saw more positive coverage after he began winning more presidential primaries -- and the MRC is trying to discredit it again. As he did previously, MRC research director Rich Noyes complains again in an April 23 NewsBusters post about PEJ's methodology:
Noyes offer no evidence whatsoever to back up his assertions -- perhaps because the MRC's methodology tends to be so shoddy and so ridiculously stacked. For instance, it judged the political slant of questions at Republican debates hosted by CNN and NBC -- but not debates hosted by Fox News. Unlike the MRC, which mostly limits itself to bashing the three TV networks and ignoring Fox News completely, the PEJ study examines pretty much all media outlets -- more than 11,000 according to the study, along with a smaller breakout of a sample of 52 key news outlets. Further, if Noyes was the "serious media observer" he claims to be, he wouldn't be tossing around terms like "media elite" in such a pejorative way. The work of Noyes and the MRC is simply too agenda-driven to be taken seriously beyond the political activists it's intended to motivate. That's not research, that's propaganda. The MRC starts with a conclusion -- the media has a liberal bias -- and finds evidence to back it up. PEJ, by contrast, follows the evidence wherever it goes. Josh St. Louis parrots Noyes' complaints in an April 24 NewsBusters post bashing MSNBC's Martin Bashir for noting the "faulty" Pew study. He goes on to huff: "It's unfortunate that a division of Pew devoted to "excellence in journalism" uses such flimsy methodology to argue against the clear liberal media bias present in campaign coverage." There are "serious media observers" out there, but they sure don't work for the MRC.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:13 PM EDT
WND Defends Pat Boone's Gay-Bashing
Topic: WorldNetDaily We know WorldNetDaily has an anti-gay agenda, so it's no surprise to see WND run to the defense of Pat Boone and his gay-bashing remarks. And that's exactly what Drew Zahn does in an April 22 WND article reporting on the controversy of Boone being selected as a commencement speaker for Adrian College, a small college in Ohio. Critics have pointed out Boone's statement in a 2008 WND column that "there is a real, unbroken line between the jihadist savagery in Mumbai and the hedonistic, irresponsible, blindly selfish goals and tactics of our homegrown sexual jihadists." But Zahn insists that doesn't mean he was,you know, likening gays to terrorists:
Essentially rewriting a Toledo Blade article, which he cites but does not link to, Zahn notes that critics have also cited what he calls Boone's "willingness to question Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president and the legitimacy of the document the White House presented as Obama’s purported, long-form birth certificate." But the article also pointed out that Boone has also "claimed President Obama was born in Kenya," which he has -- but curiously, that part didn't make it into Zahn's article. Boone, of course, has a long record of spewing hatred of Obama, gays, and others.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:31 AM EDT
Monday, April 23, 2012
Newsmax's Ruddy Salutes Gingrich's Campaign
Topic: Newsmax As might be expected from someone who turned his website into a hype machine for Newt Gingrich, Newsmax's Christopher Ruddy serves up a tribute to Gingrich's failed campaign in his April 19 column:
Despite Gingrich's failure, Ruddy thinks Romney should embrace Gingrich's ideas anyway:
Said like someone who provided a huge in-kind contribution to Gingrich's campaign in the form of wildly biased news coverage.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:03 PM EDT
What Happened to the MRC's List of 'GCB' Offenses?
Topic: Media Research Center Apparently, the purported anti-Christian offenses in the TV show "GCB" have become too much for the Media Research Center's Lauren Thompson to count. In the latest weekly installment of her "GCB"-bashing, Thompson complains about the show's twisted rendering of the 10 Commandments," but she makes no mention of the running list of offenses she has been documenting since the show began (at last count, the show has racked up 157 offenses). Thompson has refused to publish this list in the past. Now, apparently, she's either reached the point where there are too many to document, or she has decided to disappear the list since she clearly has no intention of publishing it for the edification of her readers. Either way, it's a bit of cowardice on Thompson's part. Given that the MRC frequently fails to provide readers with the raw data it uses to attack liberals, it's not surprising.
Posted by Terry K.
at 5:28 PM EDT
WND Lets Disbarred Arpaio Attorney Portray Himself As A Victim
Topic: WorldNetDaily Remember when we wrote that WorldNetDaily would not cover the disbarment of Andrew Thomas, former Maricopa County attorney and doer of the bidding of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, until it had figured out how to spin things to minimize the damage to its biggest public-relations client? Well, WND figured out a way -- by letting Thomas spin things for himself. In an April 21 article, Dave Tombers lets Thomas prattle on and on with self-aggrandizing blather about how he's the victim of a "witch hunt," as well as make charges of "a massive cover-up and, for me, genuinely a Dreyfus-like injustice." Tombers makes sure to bury the details of Thomas' disbarment until the 33rd paragraph, filling most of the remainder with Thomas' blathering and rehashing the "more than 100 charges" Thomas brought against one Maricopa County supervisor, the malicious prosecution of whom was a key reason for his disbarment. Tombers also throws in some unsubstantiated charges he claims he's "learned":
Tombers doesn't explain how he "learned" about this -- his article contains no substantive quotes from any source other than Thomas. Tombers did a fine job of being a stenographer for Thomas (and, by extension, Arpaio) -- just another day for the Arpaio stenographers at WND.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:37 AM EDT
Terry Jeffrey Keeps the CNS Anti-Obama Propaganda Train Rolling
Topic: CNSNews.com We've documented how Terry Jeffrey is no longer even pretending his CNSNews.com is a "news" operation, turning it into an anti-Obama propaganda mill. He does it again in an April 18 article:
As we noted the last time Jeffrey did this, there's no journalistic reason for Jeffrey to replace the perfectly functional (and stylistically correct, AP-wise) word "trillion" with the full number down the penny. That's a political judgment Jeffrey made solely to illustrate his right-wing, anti-Obama agenda.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:24 AM EDT
Sunday, April 22, 2012
NewsBusters' Sheppard Falsely Accuses Bill Maher of Telling Racist Joke
Topic: NewsBusters Mediaite notes that NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard, in an April 21 post, accused Bill Maher of telling a "racist joke about Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman" for a quip in which a judge granted Zimmerman permission to kill off the hot new boy band One Direction. Sheppard had to issue a correction because, it turns out, he had no idea who One Direction is:
Sheppard does have a habit of writing before thinking, such as defending Michael Savage's smears of children with autism and even whining that President Obama did an introduction to a broadcast of "To Kill A Mockingbird."
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:30 PM EDT
Updated: Monday, April 23, 2012 4:20 PM EDT
WND's Farah Doesn't Understand How Lawsuits Work
Topic: WorldNetDaily Joseph Farah writes in his April 20 WorldNetDaily column:
Farah seems not to understand how the judicial system works in such a lawsuit. In this case, Hill took exactly the same approach any lawyer would do -- invoke the relevant law. For this lawsuit, that meant pointing out that there is no need for Obama to submit a birth certificate since New Jersey law does not require presidential candidates to prove their eligibility for office before being placed on the ballot. The lawyer made a proper request, and the judge properly granted it. And, Farah being Farah, he portrays the justice system working as designed as some sort of conspiracy. Indeed, as Dr. Conspiracy points out, the Constitution does not permit any mechanism to challenge eligibility through a legal process to begin before the election -- that's when voters themselves make the decision. After the election, the 20th Amendment provides a mechanism to challenge an election through Congress and the Electoral College. Meanwhile, Farah inadvertently proves that he and WND have never approached the birther issue from a effort to find the truth but, rather, treated it as a witch hunt designed to entrap Obama:
Of course, none of WND's "forensics experts" -- in fact, Corsi has admitted that no genuine credentialed forensic document examiners would touch it, and the the only two "experts" with forensics experience to have been quoted by WND both never claimed the document is a fake -- examined the actual "document" of Obama's birth certificate. They examined a PDF scan of it. And as we've detailed, the cold case posse "law enforcement investigation" didn't do any actual investigating at all, instead simply regurgitated WND conspiracy theories. Farah ends up proving that latter point as well by quoting the head of the posse "investigation," Mike Zullo, as sounding as conspiratorial as Corsi (with whom he wrote about on the so-called investigation):
Apparenly Zullo knows even less about the legal system than Farah does. And that's the way Farah probably likes it.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:18 AM EDT
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Newsmax's Ponte: Obama 'Had A Silver Spoon Not In His Mouth But Up His Nose'
Topic: Newsmax Lowell Ponte ramps up the Obama derangement in his April 20 Newsmax column:
Ponte follows this with:
And that's not all, for Ponte latches onto another Obama conspiracy:
Sorry, Lowell, Jack Cashill is not a "scholar." And even most conservatives think the the whole ghostwriting thing is a crock.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:45 PM EDT
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