NewsBusters Complains Media Ignoring Obama-Bashing Author -- Who It Admits Lacks Credibility Topic: Media Research Center
In a May 22 NewsBusters post, Randy Hall complains that Obama-bashing author Edward Klein "is being almost totally ignored by the elite media" -- yet he inadvertently explains why.
Hall admits that Klein's book, "The Amateur," is "a biography of President Obama which relies heavily (although not entirely) on anonymous sources to paint a highly unflattering picture of its subject." Hall adds: "Given that we don’t know who Klein’s sources were on some of his more sensational accusations, it’s tough to vouch for his credibility."
Indeed, one of Hall's fellow NewsBusters bloggers, the rabidly anti-abortion Jill Stanek, has criticized Klein for getting things "pretty much all wrong" on the subject of abortion, going on to say that "Klein’s portrayal of events was wrong on just about every point. I expected more from the former editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine, who has also had many books on the NYT bestseller’s list."
Yes, Klein's book is a major hack job filled with distortions and falsehoods -- so much so that Hall can't deny it.
Because the Media Research Center can't let go of the Clinton years, Hall also complains that the media ignored Gary Aldrich's Clinton-bashing book:
Stephanopoulos’s parading of the slime against [Nikki] Haley is particularly egregious given that he played a significant role in suppressing another book making accusations against his boss Bill Clinton. That book, Unlimited Access: An FBI Agent Inside the Clinton White House, was similarly blackballed by America’s media elite.
At the time, Stephanopoulos argued that salacious accusations deserved no place in the mass media:
"Someone should have to pass a bare threshold of credibility before they're put on the air to millions of viewers. You know, his [Gary Aldrich's] story couldn't get past the fact-checker at the National Enquirer....A 30-year record in the FBI in and of itself is no proof of credibility."
Note that Hall makes no attempt to vouch for Aldrich's credibility either -- perhaps because he can't. As CNN reported, Aldrich's book is filled with "second-hand, unsubstantiated sexual rumors about and bitter attacks against President and Mrs. Clinton."
Even Tim Graham concedes Klein's lack of credibility in a May 23 NewsBusters post: "Journalists would suggest that Klein is not a credible author, with a habit of making wild charges with anonymous sources."
Graham makes no effort to counter this claim, instead changing the subject by baselessly imputing a political motive to the Klein blackout: "Liberals like the outraged activists at The New York Times want to make sure no one is allowed to bring up Reverend Wright again."
WND's Farber: Gays Are 'Overreaching,' Just Like The Nazis Topic: WorldNetDaily
Yes, Barry Farber uses his May 22 WorldNetDaily column to accuse gays of "overreaching" ... just like the Nazis and imperial Japan:
“We Shall Overcome!”
Various groups of Americans say it, shout it, sing it and, when they score a victory, they think they’ve “overcome.” No harm done, but it’s often incorrect. A more precise slogan than “We Shall Overcome!” is “They Shall Overreach!” Enemy overreaching has done as much or more to rescue America than our own overcoming. If Adolf Hitler had not insisted on invading the Soviet Union in June, 1941 but, as his generals pleaded, waited until March of 1942 – virtually assuring the taking of Moscow before the Russian winter set in – the Germans could have conquered the Soviet Union and harvested vast armies of volunteers who hated Stalin and Communism, not to mention staggering stockpiles of natural resources including oil. Hitler was impatient and self-impressed. Look how easy Poland was! And France! He bawled out his “cowardly” generals and gave the attack order. The Russian winter, not the Red Army, stopped Hitler at the Moscow city limits. The German troops had only summer clothing.
Meanwhile, Japan, handily having its way with a hapless Chinese giant, was ready to swallow Thailand, Burma, Malaya. Adm. Yamamoto wisely said after the successful Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, “I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant!”
Exactly! Two mushroom clouds later the Japanese officers who’d counseled less-ambitious aggression appeared less-cowardly and more wise.
Overreaching is understandable. If you’re achieving your goals without major exertion, why not go for higher, greater, grander, more? And there’s no flashing yellow light suggesting “This may be a good place to stop.”
It will be fascinating to see if the gay community can discipline its present overreaching and, if not, how much the gay agenda will suffer.
Bozell, MRC Try To Gin Up 'Censorship' Controversy Over Catholic Lawsuit Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell and the Media Research Center are in full hair-on-fire mode, trying to manufacture a controversy out of the TV networks not covering something that appeals to its right-wing readership and donors.
That would be the lawsuit filed by various Catholic entities against the federal government over its contraception coverage mandate. A May 22 MRC press release declared this "the largest legal action in history to defend our Constitutionally-protected religious freedom," without providing any evidence to back up this claim.
But never mind that -- Bozell's frothing at the mouth:
This is the worst bias by omission I have seen in the quarter century history of the Media Research Center. Every American knows about the Chinese communists withholding for 20 years the news that the US had landed on the moon, because it reflected poorly on the government. Our US media today are no different. They are now withholding news from the American people if it is harmful to the re-election of Barack Obama.
“This is not a mistake, nor is it an editorial oversight by the broadcast networks. This is a deliberate and insidious withholding of national news to protect the ‘Chosen One’ who ABC, CBS and NBC have worked so hard to elect and are now abusing their journalistic influence to reelect. And when a network like CBS mentions the suit ever-so-briefly, they deliberately distort the issue by framing it as a contraception lawsuit instead of what they know it to be: a religious freedom issue. It’s bogus, dishonest – a flat out lie.
“The fact is that the Catholic Church has unleashed legal Armageddon on the administration, promising ‘we will not comply’ with a health law that strips Catholics of their religious liberty. If this isn't 'news' then there's no such thing as news. This should be leading newscasts and the subject of special, in-depth reports. Instead, these networks are sending a clear message to all Americans that the networks will go to any lengths – even censoring from the public an event of this historic magnitude – to prevent the release of any information that will hurt Obama’s chances of re-election.
"The so-called 'news' media have sunk to a new low. This is despicable."
The MRC followed that up the next day with another press release proclaiming that "Nine prominent Catholic leaders have joined the Media Research Center to voice outrage over the broadcast networks deliberately withholding news of the momentous 43 Catholic entities suing the Obama administration for violating their religious freedoms."
Curiously buried among the groups is the Catholic League -- it's not mentioned in the opening paragraph, and Bill Donohue's quote is the final one in the release. Completely unmentioned, meanwhile, is the fact that Bozell is on the Catholic League's board of advisers.
It seems that what we have here is not any sort of spontaneous outcry over this -- it's a completely manufactured issue by Bozell and the MRC, which has a vested interest in defeating Obama. Bozell is trying to pass off a partisan political issue as a journalistic one. A lot of people have sued the Obama administration over various aspects of health care reform, so why is this lawsuit any more special? Aside from his unsupported claim that it's "the largest legal action in history," he doesn't explain.
In other words: This is news because Bozell, a partisan political activist, has declared it to be. No other reason.
NEW ARTICLE -- Kessler and Keene: Logrolling In Our Time Topic: Newsmax
Ronald Kessler lovingly quotes David Keene at Newsmax, and Keene presents an award to Kessler at CPAC. It's a beautiful relationship. Read more >>
CNS' Jeffrey Lets Foreign Actor Channel His Smear Of Obama Topic: CNSNews.com
Terry Jeffrey writes in a May 22 CNSNews.com article:
Eduardo Verastegui, who plays the Catholic martyr Anacleto Gonzalez Flores in the soon to be released film For Greater Glory, says that Mexican President Plutarco Calles, whose government was responsible for Flores’s martyrdom in 1927, and President Barack Obama, who is moving forward in 2012 with a health-insurance regulation that will force Catholics in the United States to act against their faith, are both like Henry VIII, who martyred St. Thomas More in 1535 when More refused to act against his faith and take an oath affirming that Henry was the supreme authority over the church in England.
What? You've never heard of Eduardo Verastegui? Nobody else has either. On top of that, it appears that Verastegui isn't even an American -- his bio suggests he's a Mexican citizen. Would Jeffrey tolerate a foreign actor who bad-mouthed a Republican politician? Probably not.
In short, there is no "news" value to this story -- Jeffrey is simply forwarding Verastegui as a vessel for his anti-Obama agenda ... in more ways than one.
If Verastegui's ludicrous likening of Obama to Henry VIII sounds familiar, it's because Jeffrey himself made the exact same comparison in a column last September.
To make this parroting of right-wing talking points complete, Jeffrey repeats his earlier contention that the Obama administration's contraception mandate covers "sterilizations and artificial contraceptives, including those that cause abortions." As we detailed the last time Jeffrey did this, morning-after pills and contraception are not abortifacients under the medical definition.
Kessler Ratchets Up the Romney-Fluffing Topic: Newsmax
Mitt Romney surrogate Ronald Kessler lays his trademark Romney-fluffing on thick in his May 21 Newsmax column, in which he enists Romney's siblings to spin away the idea that Romney is a "spoiled rich kid" and vouch for the good character of their parents:
Democrats are portraying Mitt Romney as a spoiled rich kid. But the Republican presidential candidate’s upbringing was not much different from that of any middle-class kid.
To be sure, his father George W. Romney was CEO of American Motors. The Romneys lived in the tony suburb of Bloomfield Hills, Mich. where Romney attended the private Cranbrook School.
But if the family was well off, it had little impact on Romney’s upbringing. Like most other kids, Romney worked summer jobs. His sister Jane Romney, an actress in Beverly Hills, remembers that she was only allowed to buy one new dress a year.
“I always hated the word privileged, and I never thought we were,” Jane Romney tells me. “My dad grew up with nothing. His father went bankrupt twice when my father was a kid. I walked from my own house to school from the time I was little, in winter as well.”
[...]
Even though Mitt was the youngest of his parents’ four children, he was their dad’s most able questioner, says his brother G. Scott Romney, a Michigan lawyer. When their father held family meetings to tell them he was thinking of running for office, Scott recalls, “My sisters and I would say, ‘Gee, that sounds fabulous,’ while Mitt would say, ‘Well, have you thought about this?’”
Mitt’s disposition was like his mother’s.
“My mother was a great diplomat,” Jane says. “My dad was not known for his diplomacy. He was more of a hothead and spoke from the gut. But my mother had been an actor, and she had a lot of grace.”
If Kessler is being this embarassing now, imagine how he'll be this fall.
Noel Sheppard Ignores That Anti-Obama Op-Ed Was Written By Wife of Romney Adviser Topic: NewsBusters
Noel Sheppard, the man who's easily shocked by non-shocking things, devoted a May 20 NewsBusters post to taking great joy in a New York Times op-ed by failed CNN anchor Campbell Brown, delcaring that she "surprisingly took a shot at Obama's 'silly and embarrassing' new ad targeting women." Sheppard proclaimed the op-ed as evidence that "the White House's dishonest, media-assisted plan to concoct a Republican 'War on Women' has failed and failed miserably," adding: "
This entire stunt by the White House that began in January appears to have failed miserably, and if the media hadn't gone along with it, we wouldn't have wasted almost five months talking about things America doesn't care about at the moment.
Brava, Campbell! Brava!
There's one thing that Sheppard fails to highlight about Brown, however: She discloses in her column that her husband (Dan Senor) is an adviser to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. Sheppard quotes the disclosure but does not comment on it.
By contrast, the MRC's Tim Graham complained that NPR's Michele Norris didn't immediately disclose that she stepped down as "All Things Considered" co-anchor for the duration of the 2012 presidential campaign because her husband is an Obama campaign adviser. Not that she didn't step down, mind you -- because she didn't immediately disclose why.
If such drastic measures were necessary for Norris, why not point out that Brown is writing a piece that bashes the opponent of the candidate her husband is working for?
WND's Massie Calls Black Woman A 'Negress' -- Again Topic: WorldNetDaily
Mychal Massie, it appears, is not done insulting Jehmu Greene.
For the second time in the past three weeks, Massie uses his WorldNetDaily column to channel white supremacists and twice smear commentator Greene as a "Negress," this time appending "Marxist" to it -- and at one point calling her a "rabid Marxist-negress."
Is Massie proud of channeling Bull Connor and Orval Faubus? Apparently so.
Paul Wilson, the Betty Anderlik Fellow in Culture and Media at the Media Research Center's Culture & Media Institute, really did devote an entire May 19 article to this:
NYU graduate student Matthew Epler fashioned polling data for the Republican candidates during the 2012 primary into sex toys called butt plugs – for a telecommunications class. He decided to market his creations, which met with the winking approval of left-wing outlets.
Is there something you'd like to share with the rest of the class, Paul?
Who's Paying for Corsi's 'Embedded' Trip to Hawaii? Topic: WorldNetDaily
A May 21 WorldNetDaily article about how "Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has dispatched his lead Cold Case Posse investigator and a deputy detective to Hawaii" because "the Hawaii Department of Health continues to resist efforts by Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett to verify that the Honolulu agency has a valid birth certificate on file for Obama" contains this interesting tidbit:
WND reporter Jerome Corsi is embedded with the investigators in Hawaii with the provision that reporting during the trip be curtailed to protect the investigation.
As we've detailed, Corsi is far more than "embedded" with Arpaio and the cold case posse -- he's cozily in bed with them, helping out with their investigation, fluffing Arpaio, and even (it is alleged) being named a secret "special deputy" by Arpaio.
There's also the issue of what role Corsi's secret birther fund -- Constitution Consultants LLC, through which Corsi has pledged to launder anonymous contributions and forward them to the cold case posse -- is playing in this trip.
It seems that Corsi has to decide who he is, a reporter or an activist. Apparently, in putting journalistic concerns aside, he's fully an anti-Obama activist.
WND also makes sure to downplay the facts around Bennett's attempt to get a copy of Obama's birth certificate: namely, that he's not authorized to do so. As Talking Points Memo details, the emails between Bennett and Hawaii officials make it clear that he has not established his credentials under Hawaiian law to obtain a copy of the birth certificate. WND only briefly mentions this, instead letting cold case posse leader Mike Zullo accuse Hawaii officials of "stonewalling" and Arpaio claim that "it looks like they’re hiding something."
Despite the fact that TPM published the email chain between Hawaii officials and Bennett, WND makes no mention whatsoever of it.
The ones who are actually hiding something here are Arpaio, Zullo, Corsi, and WND.
MRC's Graham: Story on Transgender 5-Year-Old Is 'Propaganda' Topic: Media Research Center
One of the leaders in enforcing the Media Research Center's anti-gay agenda is Tim Graham. He comes through again in a May 21 NewsBusters post screeching about a Washington Post article about a 5-year-old who was born a girl but insists on living as a boy:
Somehow, The Washington Post always picks Sundays for articles on how God makes mistakes. Screaming at the top of Sunday’s paper was a picture of a little girl getting her head buzzed with the headline “TRANSGENDER AT FIVE,” and “She first declared she was a boy when she was 2 years old. Her parents brushed it off by slowly concluded this wasn’t just a phase." This wasn't news. It was propaganda, and if you don't like it, they dare you to cancel your subscription.
The article, by liberal Post columnist (and former reporter) Petula Dvorak, naturally referred to how everyone has grown to know “transgenders” from Chaz Bono on “Dancing with the Stars.” It also repeatedly rejected scientific fact in referring to this troubled girl in male terms like “he” and “his” – including the “instructional” video the Post put online.
Graham is further upset that being transgender is moving away from being a "disorder" and that "therapists are now organizing to remove the term 'disorder' and replace it with 'gender incongruence.'"
After huffing that "This is really a very long editorial badly disguised as a news story," Graham concludes:
The Washington Post can't allow this subject to be a debate. It has to be all told from the standpoint of "protective" parents who insist the whole society has to adopt this "disorder" as their own.
What business is it of Graham's how this child expresses a gender or how the child's parents learn to deal with it? Graham is utterly lacking in compassion for this situation of this family, and he's appalled that anyone else would have some.
That's just pure hate. And if you're not a right-winger like Graham, hate is all he has to offer you.
Farah Tries Pre-Emptive Strike on SPLC Article About WND Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah ends his May 18 WorldNetDaily column by saying that "the SPLC doesn’t waste its ammunition on ineffective enemies." Neither, of course, does WND (we can attest to that) -- Farah's column is a pre-emptive strike on the Southern Poverty Law Center in advance of an upcoming SPLC article on WND.
Farah dumps long paragraphs of previous SPLC work on WND, nitpicks minor factual inaccuracies, then bashes the SPLC for being nothing more than "a smarmy, money-driven pseudo-charity that leans to the left of the Communist Party USA whose specialty is attack pieces."
Given how Farah is turning WND into a for-profit anti-Obama super PAC, his criticism of SPLC's fundraising is laughable. His bashing SPLC for "attack pieces" is doubly so, since that's pretty much WND's stock in trade.
Farah goes on to grumble that SPLC leader Morris Dees "pays himself more than $280,000 a year," but he's silent about how much he pays himself as the head of WND.
Meanwhile, we'll be looking forward to that SPLC profile. We'll know it's out when Farah has another freak-out over it.
Bozell Bashes NBC For Promoting Howard Stern, Silent About Hannity Hosting Shock Jock Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell uses his May 18 column to criticize NBC for allowing Howard Stern to be a judge on "America's Got Talent":
Howard Stern has not been missed since he took his smutty shtick off the airwaves and onto the unregulated Sirius satellite radio.
His super fans — the brainiacs still playing their VHS tapes of a Stern show called "Butt Bongo Fiesta" — have made the satellite radio chiefs happy, but Stern has almost vanished as an icon of pop culture. He even scaled back his radio schedule to three days a week, semi-retiring.
So why in the blazes would NBC make the decision to revive his career by bringing him on as a judge of their summer talent show "America's Got Talent," a family show watched by millions of children? They knew exactly what they were buying. They just never stop believing that shock will sell.
Meanwhile, Bozell has been silent about another network that has worked to mainstream another shock jock banished to satellite radio -- probably because Bozell himself also appears on that same channel.
As we've detailed, Sean Hannity regularly has as a panelist on his Fox News show Anthony Cumia, of the radio team Opie and Anthony -- most recently on May 17. Bozell appears as a weekly guest on Hannity's show, despite the fact that he has long been critical of Opie and Anthony and their outrageous stunts.
Assume that Bozell will keep his hypocritical silence about his friend Hannity giving a forum to what even Bozell admits is an offensive shock jock.
Kessler Touts Discredited Author's Anti-Obama Book Topic: Newsmax
Ronald Kessler devoted his May 15 Newsmax column to promoting the new Obama-bashing book by Edward Klein, "The Amateur," focusing on one of Kessler's favorite subjects, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
As Media Matters has detailed, Klein's book "is filled with lazy research, bad writing, bizarre generalizations ('Political wives have always found something to complain about') and gossip forwarded by anonymous sources -- exactly what you should expect from an Ed Klein book."
Kessler, of course, says nothing about Klein's credibility problems -- indeed, he essentially takes credit for being the source for one claim Klein makes, that Obama and Wright had a secret meeting prior to their public split. We've previously noted that Kessler considers Klein a "friend," a personal relationship he does not disclose here.
Needless to say, Kessler sets all of this up to whine yetagain that his reporting on Wright was ignored by the "mainstream media" in 2007:
As noted in my story "Media Blackout on Rev. Wright Started in 2007," for three months during Obama’s primary campaign, the mainstream media ignored Newsmax stories reporting on Rev. Wright’s hate-filled sermons; his denunciations of America, whites, and Israel; and the fact that he gave an award for lifetime achievement to Louis Farrakhan.
By the time the media picked up the stories, Obama was ahead of Hillary Clinton in the primary elections.
According to a Hillary Clinton aide quoted in David Remnick’s “The Ridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama,” if the media had run the Wright story just two months earlier, Obama’s candidacy “would have been over.”
Perhaps Kessler should get some counseling in order to get over that.
MRC Perpetuates Churchill Bust Falsehood Topic: Media Research Center
In a May 18 MRC Culture & Media Institute article that's more agitprop than "research," Matt Philbin peddles one false or misleading claim after another to whine that "the broadcast networks have mostly ignored, and major newspapers have excused or minimized, [President Obama's] slights to America’s unambiguous friends." Here's the most egregious one:
“Throwing Churchill out of the Oval Office” – “It is hard to think of a more derogatory message to send to the British people within days of taking office than to fling a bust of Winston Churchill out of the Oval Office and send it packing back to the British Embassy,” Gardiner wrote, “not least as it was a loaned gift from Britain to the United States as a powerful display of solidarity in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.”
ABC, CBS and NBC all ignored the offending gesture. U.S. newspapers noted it – in some case because readers had written in to ask about the story they’d heard second hand. If it bothered the papers, they didn’t say so.
What Philbin doesn't tell you: The networks ignored the story because it isn't true.
The British Embassy has confirmed that the bust was "uniquely lent" to Bush, and was scheduled to be returned at the end of Bush's term -- as reported in the UK Telegraph story to which Philbin himself links to back up his claim.
We thought Philbin's employer was the Media Research Center, not the Media Conspiracy Theory Promotion Center.
Terry Jeffrey writes in a May 22 CNSNews.com 
