MRC's Graham Mocks Study Showing Media Bias Agaist Women Topic: NewsBusters
Apparently, as far as the Media Research Center is concerned, the only media bias that could possibly exist is "liberal media bias."
Tim Graham uses a June 26 NewsBusters post to mock as "feminist" a study noting that the majority of people quoted in the media about abortion, birth control and Planned Parenthood are men. Graham adds:
The notion that abortion or birth control should be defined as “women’s issues” strangely ignores that women can’t get pregnant or feel the need to use contraceptives without having intercourse with men. It also ignores that roughly half of the aborted babies are boys.
But as even Graham notes, the male-female split isn't anywhere close to half-and-half: Men were the sources of 81 percent of the quotes in abortion stories, 75 percent of birth-control stories, and 67 percent of stories on Planned Parenthood.
Still, Graham went on to snark: "It didn’t matter if the men were radical feminists, only that they were male."
Of course, these kind of counting analyses are a staple of MRC's so-called media research -- for instance, a May 30 "media reality check" making the shocking discovery that liberal MSNBC host Ed Schultz had on numerous "union activists, liberal journalists and Wisconsin state Democrats" to criticize "conservative Republican" Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
If this "feminist" analysis is illegitimate, as Graham suggests, so is much of the MRC's work.
WND's Mercer: Bullied Woman Is A 'Fearful Fatty' Topic: WorldNetDaily
Ilana Mercer writes inher July 28 WorldNetDaily column:
The new “poster child” for a bully victim in America is, wait for it, not a helpless small child, robbed of lunch money by the schoolyard ruffian, but an adult entrusted with supervising them.
The Internet watched 68-year-old Karen Klein, who was charged with “monitoring” bused children in the town of Greece, N.Y., dissolve in tears to the taunts of her 13-year-old charges.
Klein’s failure to fend off the feral children was captured on YouTube by her tormentors, students at the Athena Middle School in suburban Rochester.
To the sight of a feeble adult who occupies two seats on the vehicle she’s supposed to supervise, too fat to budge and too powerless to perform the task for which she is being paid – the Internet erupted in cheers.
Klein was quickly catapulted to fame for her, yes, courage. “God bless, you are my hero,” effused a woman with the handle “Marykate” in an online post.
Charitably put, Klein has not advanced adulthood in infantile America.
[...]
In defense of the wolverines who preyed on Klein, how is an adult such as herself to command their respect? From whom are these fiends, out on a wilding spree, expected to learn a lesson? From Supervisor Klein, who was not adult enough to holler for help? Klein lacked the wherewithal to ask the bus driver to stop the bus and set the kids straight, then and there.
Or, perhaps the bus drive is another fearful fatty who was unable to dislodge herself from her seat. Perhaps the two live in fear of potential lawsuits, lodged by the parents who sire these good-for-nothing seventh graders.
Mercer goes on to rant about "natural order,"which she proposed to restore through "old-fashioned discipline" and, of course, ending public education:
Better still: Drain the septic tank that is our federalized education system, and with it the auxiliary personnel that infest the schools and feed off a dwindling tax base.
CNS' Penny Starr Unhappy Gays Aren't Being Linked to HIV Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com's Penny Starr really wants to make sure you know that gays are filthy and disease-ridden. Last year, for example, she complained that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius did not mention gays in a speech she gave about HIV infections.
Starr keeps up that concern trolling in a June 27 article:
President Barack Obama issued a statement on Wednesday marking National HIV Testing Day that includes praise for better access to testing because of the Affordable Care Act but does not include facts about the disease and those who are at highest risk of contracting it.
[...]
The president did not, however, cite the statistics from Health and Human Services’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that show while “gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (MSM) represent 2 percent of the U.S. population” in 2009 “MSM accounted for 61 percent of new HIV infections.”
Apparently, as far as Starr is concerned, all gays are good for is being filthy and disease-ridden. But her CNS bosses don't mind, because that's all part of the Media Research Center's anti-gay agenda.
WorldNetDaily freelancer Stewart Stogel is a tad unhappy that we described him as a right-wing hack. He writes us:
This is Stewart Stogel regarding a post on me and my confrontations with the US/UN mission in NYC.
Don't let the facts stand in your way.
You challenged the fact that I claim to be a "veteran" UN correspondent.
The records will show I first arrived at the UN in 1980 accredited to ABC News.
I left later that year and returned to college.
I returned in 1986 and have been continuously accredited since.
I am in the top ten reporters in the UN press corps in terms of time served.
Your crap about me being a right wing flak is bullshit.
If so, why did I enjoy strong personal relationships with the missions of Iran, Syria, Russia, Iraq and Cuba?
I also enjoy excellent relations with the Israelis, Brits, French among others.
I am a flak for nobody.
You should also be aware that I am the reporter WHO FIRST REPORTED that US troops would not find any WMD in IRAQ when Baghdad in 2003. Read the story on Time.com.
So, I don't enjoy reading such NONSENSE on your penny ante website.
I DEFY YOU TO POST THIS UNEDITED
STEWART STOGEL
Actually, we accused WND, not Stogel, of lying. Stogel may have a history of reporting on the U.N., but only recently did he affiliate himself with WND, which nevertheless described Stogel as its "veteran U.N. reporter."
As for Stogel's protest of our calling him a right-wing hack: Past performance does not seem to be an indicator of current behavior. His affiliation with WND is incontrovertible evidence of right-wing hackdom, as is his fawning over insane Obama-hater James David Manning. If Stogel is such a great reporter, why is he reduced to writing about the U.N. for WND, which has vowed to destroy the U.N.?
And as WND's Les Kinsolving more than adequately proves, a long tenure on a beat does not necessarily equal competence or lack of hack work.
Stogel later sent us a link to his Time article on WMDs in Iraq, adding: "your BS about me being a right wing hack? You idiots...I WAS THE FIRST TO REPORT THE MOST IMPORTANT STORY OF THE GULF WAR! GARBAGE LIKE YOURS SHOULD BE THROWN OFF THE INTERNET."
This, again, begs the question: Why is someone who got the scoop on THE MOST IMPORTANT STORY OF THE GULF WAR! for Time magazine writing for WorldNetDaily only a few years removed from said scoop?
To put it more simply: If Stogel is not a hack, why is he writing for a hack website?
But Stogel wasn't done with us yet. A litle later, he sent us another email:
this is stewart stogel..you wrote a libelous blog about me why not contact me and get your facts straight are you afraid? your facts are so wrong it is outrageous
Stogel seems not to know the difference between libel and constitutionally protected opinion. If there was no difference, Larry Klayman would be in prison right now.
And then, a little bit later:
your name should be Crap-el your research or lack of makes legitmate journalists who existed long before you arrived on the scene vomit...without the Internet you would be nothing
Because insulting someone's name like a second-grader is always a good way to make a reasonable argument.
Such thin-skinned ranting tells us that Stogel will fit in quitewell at WND.
MRC Mad That It's Pointed Out Right-Wingers Say 'Totally Insane' Things Topic: Media Research Center
Clay Waters dedicated a June 28 MRC TimesWatch post to whining that that a "smug" Ben Smith of Buzzfeed.com appeared on a New York Times web video, in which he was "mocking those 'not very bright' conservatives for saying 'totally insane...wildly over-the-top things' such as claiming 'America was doomed' or that they were 'prepared to go to war against radical liberalism.'"
Waters was careful to mention that some of those conservatives saying "totally insane...wildly over-the-top things" are his MRC co-workers. Like Dan Gainor, who was raging that Chief Justice John Roberts was a "power mad psychopath" and a "lying scumbag." Or his boss, Brent Bozell, who ranted that that Roberts is "a traitor to his philosophy," whatever that means.
But that would have required telling the truth, which the MRC does not want when it involves the truth being told about conservatives.
But far worse is the actual decision and how it makes Obama look. He didn't win healthcare for the people. He won a giant new tax. Don't take my word for it. Just ask the Supreme Court. How appropriate. Barack Obama will now go down in the history books as the Great Taxer-in-Chief.
His signature victory was just ruled a tax bill by the Supreme Court, not a health or commerce bill. Americans hate taxes. They throw big taxers out of office. Heck, we fought an entire revolution over tiny taxes on tea!
Obama just became "the King of Taxes" with his smashing tax victory. He will go down in history as the greatest taxer ever in the White House for his signature tax victory. Get it? Obama and the word "taxes" are forever tied together. He isn't Barack Hussein Obama anymore. He is Barack Taxes Obama.
Well, our current president has proven himself the all-time Grand Wizard of the Shell Game.
While his persistent promises of "no new taxes" ring in our ears, while his insistence that the dreaded, unwanted mandate would not impose new taxes on those who chose not to comply — his own attorneys argued successfully that it could be ruled on by the Supreme Court as a Congress-imposed tax.
And no matter how he tries to convince us otherwise — he's slicker all the time in his convincing speech — this Obamacare is a massive new tax on every American!
Although a clear majority of citizens, especially seniors, adamantly opposed the healthcare takeover, Speaker Pelosi urged "let's pass the bill, and then we'll find out what's in it."
And we sure are.
We now find that this takeover of one sixth of the nation's economy will cost initially at least twice what the president said it would, almost $1.7 trillion . . . and that's just the start. And who's going to pay for all that? Guess who — every taxpaying American, that's who. Whether they even get any of the Obamacare or not.
The headline for Scott Whitlock's June 27 NewsBusters post reads, "Cocky Journalists Declared ObamaCare Would Be Upheld, Maybe by a 8-1 Vote." As the URL indicates, Whitlock started out by referring to "Cocky, Condescending Journalists," but the middle word mysteriously disappeared somewhere along the line.
Anyway, Whitlock is rather upset that "journalists over the past few months have dismissed and derided the concept that the President's signature legislation could be declared unconstitutional." But the first three examples Whitlock cites aren't from journalists:
CNN's Jeffrey Toobin is a legal analyst, not a journalist.
Even Whitlock admits that Linda Greenhouse is an "ex-New York Times Supreme Court reporter." He curiously fails to mention, however, what Greenhouse does now: she's a journalist in residence at Yale Law School, not a working journalist.
Andrew Cohen is a legal analyst and legal editor for CBS Radio News, not a working journalist.
Whilock names only one person who's anywhere close to being a working journalist, NPR's Nina Totenberg.
Whitlock huffily concludes: "If the Supreme Court strikes down all or part of Obamacare, Thursday, will these journalists admit they weren't quite the constitutional experts they claimed to be?"
Since the vast majority of Obamacare was upheld as constitutional, will Whitlock admit that these "journalists" kinda knew what they were talking about after all?
WorldNetDaily devotes yet another article to whining that White House press secretary Jay Carney is ignoring poor widdle Les Kinsolving and his stupid questions:
Several questions about how the White House will respond should the U.S. House, as many expect, hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress weren’t answered at today’s White House news briefing.
Press Secretary Jay Carney allowed CBS and Fox News to ask seven questions each, NBC to ask five and CNN and Bloomberg to ask four each, but he did not recognize Les Kinsolving, WND’s correspondent at the White House.
Kinsolving had wanted to ask about an assertion by Cornell law professor Josh Cafetz that “if the House holds Holder in contempt, it can send its sergeant-at-arms to arrest him, and hold him until his contempt is purged.”
Kinsolving also wanted to ask whether Obama would enlist the FBI or the armed forces “to protect the attorney general.” In addition, he wanted to know whether Obama would expect Congress to impeach Holder or cut funding for the Department of Justice should the standoff continue.
As we've repeatedlydetailed, Kinsolving is a hack reporter who has not earned the respect he demands from an administration he clearly despises. WND gives no reason why Carney should take questions from a "news" organization that is single-mindedly obsessed with destroying the Obama presidency and has no interest in telling the truth about Obama.
MRC Freaks Out Over Health Care Ruling Topic: Media Research Center
The Supreme Court's ruling that health care reform is, for all practical purposes, constitutional has prompted employees of the Media Research Center to go into freakout mode.
The chief freak is the Dan Gainor, MRC's T. Boone Pickens Fellow and resident right-wing apparatchik, who kicks things off by calling Chief Justice John Roberts a "power mad psychopath":
Gainor followed that up by melodramatically declaring, "Since I won't ever accept this ruling or pay the tax, looks like jail is in my future."
Other MRC employees joined in the collective right-wing gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. Matt Hadro groused, "Anyone else feel sick right now like they did when ObamaCare passed and Obama was elected POTUS?
And Matt Philbin whined, "Another step in the decent from exceptionalism. Welcome to the 'shining mediocrity on a hill.'"
Meanwhile, the employer of all these people, Brent Bozell, put on the hat of his right-wing activism group, For America -- or so the Daily Caller portrays it -- to rant that Roberts is "a traitor to his philosophy," adding that this demonstrates that conservatives "need a good three man margin on the court. They can’t be satisfied with a majority, because you just can’t trust them."
WND Beats Dead Horse of Kagan Recusal on Health Care Reform Topic: WorldNetDaily
Even as the Supreme Court was on the verge of announcing its decision on the constitutionality of health care reform, one ConWeb outlet was still trying to beat the dead horse of trying to get Elena Kagan to recuse from deliberating on it. Surprisingly, it's not CNSNews.com.
In a June 25 WorldNetDailiy article, Unruh uncritically repeated a claim from right-wing legal group Judicial Watch that "A huge cloud looms over the coming U.S. Supreme Court decision on Barack Obama’s health-care law" because "Elena Kagan served in the Obama administration when the law advanced through Congress and now is on the Supreme Court bench sitting in judgment of it."
Unruh writes:
Email exchanges previously made public reveal that during Kagan’s time as solicitor general, her office helped develop a strategy to defend Obamacare legally.
Ordinary judicial ethics would mandate that if she participated in such discussions, she should not later sit in judgment of the law, Judicial Watch has argued.
In fact, as we've detailed, it has been made clear that Kagan appointed others to develop that strategy and she was walled off from those deliberations.
As with CNS' Terry Jeffrey, Unruh was silent about Justice Clarence Thomas' apparent conflict of interest -- his wife is a right-wing activist who founded a group that has attacked health care reform -- that would also theoretically demand recusal.
MRC Can't Stop Playing Down Anti-Mormonism Among Conservatives Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has long been selectively oblivious to right-wing criticism of Mitt Romney's Mormon religion. In April, for instance, Matt Philbin wrote that "the only ones who believe Romney’s religion worth discussion are liberal reporters themselves" -- conveniently ignoring the numerousevangelicals who raised questions about Romney's Mormonism during the Republican presidential primary.
One of those critics was Robert Jeffress, a prominent evangelical pastor and a supporter of Romney rival Rick Perry. The MRC did its best to ignore Jeffress' anti-Mormon remarks, even blaming the media for reporting them, as in a October 2011 NewsBusters post by Scott Whitlock. In another October 2011 post, Brad Wilmouth tried to spin it away by parroting a Fox News claim that "self-identified Republican voters are substantially more willing to accept a Mormon President compared to Democrats."
(The MRC has been trying to divert attention from Jeffress for years. In a 2007 post, Ken Shepherd whined that an "anti-Mitt Romney sermon" by Jeffress was reported in a newsapaper "a full 18 days" after the remarks were made, laughably insisting that any controversy in evangelical circles about Romney's religion "might be rather dormant" and blaming the media for "pushing a storyline to influence the presidential election.")
The MRC is at it again. In a June 27 NewsBusters post, Jeffrey Meyer complains that MSNBC's Martin Bashir is "painting Republicans as anti-Mormom bigots who are terrified of their own presumptive presidential nominee's faith." Meyer insisted that "Bashir doesn’t know that anti-Mormonism is more common among Democrats not Republicans" and quoted Southern Baptist leader Richard Land expressed, “most evangelicals already know what Mormonism believes and most of them are prepared to vote for Mitt Romney in a general election against Barack Obama in spite of his Mormonism.”
Not only is Meyer completely silent about Jeffress (who has since grudgingly endorsed Romney), it turns out that another Southern Baptist official, Todd Akin, has said that it would be easier for Christians to vote for Newt Gingrich -- who's on his third marriage and has committed adultery -- than Romney.
This is just another example of the MRC not wanting the truth to be told about something that makes conservatives look bad.
NEW ARTICLE -- Out There, Exhibit 56: Ellis Washington's Imaginary Socrates Topic: WorldNetDaily
The WorldNetDaily columnist loves to present skewed so-called "dialectics" in which he plays the great Greek philosopher as a judgmental, ad hominem-throwing right-wing nutjob -- not unlike Washington himself. Read more >>
Fred Lucas puts words in Obama's mouth in a June 26 CNSNews.com article:
Listing the reasons why Americans should vote for him, President Barack Obama told an audience at a high school in New Hampshire on Monday that failure to subsidize abortions and contraception is the same as “restricting access” to those services.
At no point does Obama say that he supports "subsidized abortions." In fact, the word "abortion" appears nowhere in the Obama speech Lucas is writing about, and it certainly doesn't appear in the speech excerpt Lucas includes in his article.
Lucas is simply making up stuff here, inventing meanings for Obama's reference to "restricting access to birth control or defunding Planned Parenthood." As we've previously detailed, no federal money awarded to Planned Parenthood is spent on abortions, no matter how much CNS falsely implies it.
Why does Lucas think it's OK to lie so blatantly about Obama? Because his boss, Terry Jeffrey, has made Obama-hate a major part of CNS' editorial policy.
Newsmax's Ruddy Lies About Obama's Immigration Policy Topic: Newsmax
Christopher Ruddy writes in his June 26 Newsmax column:
Despite lacking overall public support, President Obama’s recent decision to offer amnesty to the children of illegal aliens who meet certain criteria and are in the country in good standing, which could apply to 800,000 people, is a deft political move that may help him keep the White House — unless his GOP rival Mitt Romney acts decisively.
First, it's not "amnesty." As we've pointed out, the policy change permits prosecutorial discretion in delaying legal action against certain undocumented immigrants -- something that, by definition, is not "amnesty."
Second, this policy does not lack public support -- which Ruddy would know if he had read his own website. A June 19 Newsmax article stated that most voters "agree with President Obama’s decision to allow young people brought here illegally who meet certain criteria to avoid deportation."
The article highlighted a poll by the right-leaning Rasmussen Reports finding that 71 percent of Americans "think someone brought to this country illegally when they were under 16 should be allowed to apply for a work permit rather than be deported if they have no criminal record, have graduated from high school or have served in the military" -- the same group of people affected by Obama's policy change. Further, 58 percent of Republicans support that policy.
Ruddy also encourages Mitt Romney to pick Marco Rubio as his vice president, because he is "a favorite of conservatives and would be a historic choice for Romney, one that would demonstrate in a very powerful way a desire to bring Hispanics into the Republican Party and a future Romney administration."
More Birther Stuff WND Won't Report Topic: WorldNetDaily
We already know that WorldNetDaily won't tell its readers about any inconvenient facts that disrupt its birther narrative. Here are a couple more.
On June 22, Salon's Irin Carmon reported that during a recent visit to Kenya, she paid a visit to Barack Obama's step-grandmother, Sarah. After asking a certain question in a straightforward manner -- unlike, say, a certain Anabaptist minister -- and got a straightforward answer:
I said, “Some people want to believe that the president was born in Kenya. Have these people ever bothered you or asked for his birth certificate?”
Mrs. Obama looked concerned, started to protest. But it turned out it was because the rabbits, post-coitus, had started to run away via a security guard’s carelessly ajar gate.
I repeated my question and it was translated. Mrs. Obama wrinkled up her face. Then the interpreter jumped in: “She says, ‘But Barack Obama wasn’t born in Kenya.’” That should settle it.
It won't settle things for WND, which has repeatedly pushed the claim that Sarah Obama said Barack was born in Kenya.
Also, the Obama Conspiracy blog notes that a complaint has been filed with the Internal Revenue Service challenging the Cold Case Posse's 501(c)3 status because of its alleged political activity in its "investigation" of Obama's "eligibility" -- posse leader Mike Zullo has indicated that the investigation has a goal of affecting the 2012 election -- as well as members of the posse using it for personal gain in the form of Zullo and Jerome Corsi keeping the profits from their e-book on the investigation.
You won't hear about any of this unless WND figures out a way to spin it.
