MRC Whines That Cesar Chavez Made Groceries More Expensive Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Reserarch Center's Culture & Media Institute weighed in on the silly controversy over Google marking Cesar Chavez's birthday over Easter by ... complaining about the price of groceries. A March 31 tweet stated of Chavez, "He isn't risen, but he did make sure the cost of our groceries have."
This tweet was apparently written by theMRC's Matt Philbin, since he has the exact tweet on his Twitter feed. If so, Philbin is a massively ignorant person. Here's how Biography.com summarizes Chavez's work:
In early 1968, Chavez called for a national boycott of California table grape growers. Chavez's battle with the grape growers for improved compensation and labor conditions would last for years. At the end, Chavez and his union won several victories for the workers when many growers signed contracts with the union. He faced more challenges through the years from other growers and the Teamsters Union. All the while, he continued to oversee the union and work to advance his cause.
As a labor leader, Chavez employed nonviolent means to bring attention to the plight of farm workers. He led marches, called for boycotts and went on several hunger strikes. He also brought the national awareness to the dangers of pesticides to workers' health.
Apparently, Philbin has no problem with farm workers being poorly paid and working in harsh and dangerous conditions just so he could pay a few cents less for a head of lettuce. How selfish and nearsighted.
Then again, Philbin happily joined Rush Limbaugh's campaign of misogyny against Sandra Fluke, so being a selfish jerk must come easy to him.
WND Touts Birther Challenge Reaching Court of Judge Whose Book WND Is Selling Topic: WorldNetDaily
An unbylined March 30 WorldNetDaily article touts how failed lawyer Larry Klayman is appealing a birther lawsuit in Alabama to the state's supreme court, which is headed by right-wing favorite Roy Moore.
The gist of the lawsuit, according to the article, is to demand that Alabama's secretary of state "to verify that all candidates on the state’s 2012 ballot were eligible to serve." Never mind that, as Dr. Conspiracy points out, at least two states have for and received certifications of the facts of Obama’s birth from Hawaii, and there is no statutory requirement for the Alabama Secretary of State to verify eligibility of candidates.
In the middle of the article, WND sticks this in:
Get Judge Roy Moore’s classic book about his battle for liberty, “So Help Me God: The Ten Commandments, Judicial Tyranny, and the Battle for Religious Freedom.”
The funny thing, though: When you click on the link, it takes you to a WND online store page that states, "This item is no longer available."
There's another reason that WND is excited about Moore's court getting this case:
Moore is on the record questioning Obama’s eligibility.
In an interview with WND in 2010, he defended Lt. Col Terrence Lakin’s demand that President Obama prove his eligibility as commander in chief as a condition of obeying deployment orders.
Moore said he had seen no convincing evidence that Obama is a natural-born citizen and much evidence that suggests he is not.
Moore said Lakin “not only has a right to follow his personal convictions under the Constitution, he has a duty.”
“And if the authority running the efforts of the war is not a citizen in violation of the Constitution, the order is unlawful,” he said.
Doesn't the fact that Moore is a birther mean that he must recuse himself from this case for having expressed an opinion on the underlying issue?
MRC's Gainor: Media Engaging In 'Fascist Propaganda' For Gays Topic: Media Research Center
On the heels of his freakout over a newspaper photo of two men kissing, Media Research Center vice president Dan Gainor ratchets up his anti-gay rhetoric at OneNewsNow's Instant Analysis site, in which he accuses the media of engaging in "full-blown fascist propaganda" on behalf of gays by airing shows in which gays aren't vilified:
Dan Gainor, vice president of business and culture for MRC, said from the Post to the big three broadcast networks, the mainstream media is actively lobbying the American public (see earlier related article).
“They even talk about the media component, how the media have propagandized our ‘media culture,’ in the words of [NBC news anchor] Brian Williams,” notes Gainor. “So they talk about it and they show Ellen DeGeneres, they show Modern Family clips, they show Will & Grace. They show a very tiny snippet The New Normal, which conveniently is NBC’s propaganda show.”
[...]
And Gainor tells American Family News that NBC has been the biggest violator of pushing its own gay agenda, citing its report that he says was “filled with images of TV’s gay icons.”
“That’s their strategy,” he remarks. “They’re going to have almost no voices [from the other side] because they don’t believe that anybody should have a right to think otherwise. It’s beyond bias; it’s actually I would even say beyond censorship. It is full-blown fascist propaganda.”
It's ironic that Gainor would complain about pro-gay "propaganda" to what is essentially a propaganda website. OneNewsNow is operated by the anti-gay American Family Association.
Bradlee Dean Wants You to Think He's Telling the Truth Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bradlee Dean's March 21 WorldNetDaily column is headlined "Today's youth: dying for the truth." That may be so, but they shouldn't expect it to come from Bradlee Dean.
As we've documented, Dean is little more than a lying preacher who peddles falsehoods and smears about his political enemies, mostly President Obama and homosexuals. A real preacher would have corrected his falsehoods and asked forgiveness -- something Dean has never done in regard to his WND columns.
This particular column is dedicated to puffing himself up and denigrating anyone who objects to his dubious school presentations as "socialist-minded teachers who can’t handle the fact that the students are glued to the message." Is this the way a real preacher behaves? Not that we're familiar with.
The fact that Dean is a liar who is so willing to denigrate anyone who stands in his way should be a red flag to school administrators who are thinking about inviting him to speak.
NewsBusters' Double Standard on Shame Topic: NewsBusters
Matt Vespa devotes a March 29 NewsBusters post to ranting about how the website Slate is trying to shame Americans by accurately reporting the number of firearm-related fatalities since the Newtown massacre:
The liberal website Slate has taken post-Newtown commentary to a new low by tracking the amount of deaths via firearm that have occurred since December. It’s purely an emotional ploy to show how awful America, our right to bear arms, and gun owners really are, and how the perpetuate carnage. Hence, we must act, and pass ineffectual policies like an assault weapons ban. What’s odd is that this interactive map was posted yesterday, when President Obama testily chastised the country for Congress's failure thus far to enact his anti-gun agenda.
Furthermore, its seems Chris Kirk and Dan Kois, the two men compiling this butcher’s bill, are lusting for more macabre news, urging readers to help them "draw a more complete picture of gun violence in America" by tweeting "@GunDeaths with a citation" of "gun death[s] in your community" that "[aren't] represented here."
Tragically, murders occur everyday, but when did we decide to make it a science project to track the dead? Is it because the president said we should act? Kirk and Kois should know that violent crime has gone down astronomically over the past decade. So, this attempt to paint our society as a bloody hellish abyss is craven to the extreme.
[...]
If we’re going to track murders, why just track the ones where a gun was involved? What about knifes, baseball bats, cars, alcohol (drunk driving/vehicular manslaughter), arson, torture, rape, or strangulation?
Far from seeking to illuminate and inform, the objective here is to ghoulishly capitalize on tragedy in service of legislation that undercuts Americans' fundamental 2nd Amendment rights. It's tasteless, classless, and cynical, but sadly par for the course for online liberal media outlets.
The very same day, by contrast, fellow NewsBuster Paul Bremmer was lamenting that women who have abortions aren't being shamed enough, which he tried to make up for with a large dose sneering contempt:
On Wednesday, ABC News posted a story on its website that is sure to send chills of horror down the spines of women all across the northern Great Plains. The state of North Dakota only has one abortion clinic – and it may soon be forced to shut down if the state’s restrictive new abortion law goes into effect. (Read the full story here.)
The story, written by political reporter Chris Good, was a ridiculously one-sided plea for sympathy for North Dakota women who have to travel great distances to kill their unborn children.
[...]
Wow. Hundreds of miles is a long way to travel to kill your unborn baby. These women must be dedicated.
[...]
It gets tiresome to see abortion-seeking women constantly portrayed as victims in the media. Forgive me if I shed no tears for these women who have to travel hundreds of miles to get to an abortion clinic. After all, the media shed no tears for the lives these women eagerly snuff out.
WND Columnist Invents A Secret Conspiracy That Got Obama Elected Topic: WorldNetDaily
Unlike most WorldNetDaily columnists, Marisa Martin at least begins her March 27 column with the warning that something crazy will follow: "Though based on actual events, portions of this column are dramatized to fit speculation."
Of course, what follows is much more heavy on speculation than it is on facts:
On May 1, 1958, a group of 32 Marxist sympathizers met in a Chicago hotel, planning the future disintegration of the American States. Organized by Soviet operatives, they were artists, writers, Hollywood producers, social theorists, professors, politicians and miscellaneous, hardcore Marxists.
Somehow they managed to evade the keen eye of CIA counterintelligence head James Angleton, who had been tracking members of the operation relentlessly, revealing moles and snagging spy networks like a spider in his web. He warned of Soviet disinformation and deception campaigns, which he believed reached into the U.S. government even then – but this one, far under the radar, went undetected.
Hours and many arguments later their plans ran aground as they concluded the U.S. military was too strong for any direct assault and the nation’s mindset was decidedly anti-communist. This would all have to change.
Hashing out a long-range plan decade by decade, they hoped to change public perception, weaken American resolve and install their man in the White House within 30 years. It took 50.
[...]
But the big prize kept ripening on the stem just out of reach for decades, an open, unapologetic communist in the White House. This required intense planning and a virtual convergence of factors in their favor: willing accomplices in media and Congress, voters equally ignorant of history and the Constitution and a flexible, change agent of their own creation.
9/11 opened the gates of destabilization and national soul-searching while several guerilla-Marxist art collectives saw their chance and rushed in. Quebec-based Deoconiste led the charge aided by the disarmingly named MASS-x, Angry Fishwives, Voxb#x and TuT-tUt.
[...]
Needing a blank canvas on which to cast their collective vision, they searched for a human Tabula Rosa, and many fingers pointed to Barrack Obama.
He was young and photogenic, a necessity for the massively visual Hollywood, blockbuster-style public relations campaign they planned. Neither black nor white, Obama could play the race card both ways and read a speech well.
The best part of Obama was his formlessness, the votes he never bothered to cast as an Illinois senator, the missing Selective Service and other records and the multiple personalities and pseudonyms he amassed by a young age.
Promoted through college by wealthy Saudi benefactors and the relentless, Chicago political machine, his tutors and benefactors Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn recognized Obama’s potential to spread Marxist power even then. You could do anything with a man like that.
The 2008 presidential campaign was a giant, ongoing, social experiment on America’s citizens. Could their perception and emotions be controlled using new media, mindless slogans and repetition? Would mass public disapproval and primitive psychological punishment, shame relatively conservative citizens into electing an unknown man primarily because of his color?
Hyped through Internet experts in social trust and deception, Obama’s empty phrases and patchy background were crafted into a solidly real man. The mass of citizens were tired of war and trouble and searching for a savior. Open ended “hope” and undefined “change” were filled in by individual minds who set aside rational thought and went with along with the highly entertaining program of the first design president.
Martin then spends the rest of her column defending her Obama derangement:
The assertions I make here are largely factual, but not all the details are. Consider it fictionalized history. Guerilla art collectives, some persons, dates and meetings are speculated details, while major action and background of the recent elections are historic fact.
Why create fictionalized scripts concerning Obama’s past when there is already so much damning evidence of his split loyalties? Won’t this just be assigned to the scrap pile of conspiracy theories already clogging the blogosphere? Yes, and that’s the point.
The very blankness of the man, his interchangeable histories, religions, names and identities, work against anyone who accuses him. It’s all a “conspiracy theory,” and who could prove otherwise? A thinking person of integrity and curiosity will attempt to fill in the gaping blanks and connect the dots, coming up with any number of speculations, which can all easily be denied.
Mindless masses aren’t the Obama administrations’ concern. The people who projected all their hopes for a better future on one human being have proved they are weak and easily manipulated by media hype and propaganda.
Ah, yes, the old WND lament that anyone who voted for Obama is either brainwashed or an idiot (or both). Or, as it's known in the real world, sour grapes.
MRC's Graham Unhappy That Climate Change Deniers Exposed As Unscientific Topic: NewsBusters
Tim Graham, in a March 27 NewsBusters post, is unhappy that NPR's Jennifer Ludden reported on conservative-driven "academic freedom" laws designed to force schools to teach the idea that climate change is not happening:
On Wednesday’s Morning Edition, reporter Jennifer Ludden was disturbed by what’s happening in science classrooms. Climate change “has been politicized,” and conservatives are pushing “so-called academic freedom bills” to teach both sides of that public-policy controversy.
“But critics point out there is no controversy within science. Climate change is happening and it's largely driven by humans,” Ludden announced. So then why is Ludden reporting a story on this so-called non-controversy?
Graham went on to write: "This is also NPR's rationale for liberal bias across the range of political issues: bringing in a conservative viewpoint is confusing to the public, so it's better to slant it toward the 'educational' advocates." Graham seems to have missed that schools should not be forced to teach a "conservative viewpoint" when that viewpoint is contrary to nearly every other credible scientific analysis of the issue.
Graham also overhooks the fact that his calling climate change deniers' arguments the "conservative viewpoint" instead of the "scientific viewpoint" pretty much shoots down his suggestion that deniers aren't trying to politicize the issue.
Obama isn’t going to say or do anything in Israel that will cause any concern to Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan and the rest of his cabal. No doubt they are rubbing their hooves in glee at how he plans to humiliate Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu even more than he has already done.
If the ambition of the communist in the White House was to wreck America by reckless borrowing, he has succeeded. The sole reason why the United States is not in the same dire straits as Cyprus is that the markets cannot quite believe just how quickly what was once the world’s most prosperous nation has been brought down.
Back in the 1980s, a fictional pitchman named Joe Isuzu made a series of TV commercials promoting Isuzu cars and trucks. A fast-talking, smarmy-looking guy would make outrageous claims along the lines of “It has more seats than the Astrodome” and “It goes faster than a speeding bullet,” and everyone knew it was a takeoff on every overly zealous, ethically challenged salesman who had ever tried to sell you a lemon.
Today, it seems to me that we have his cousin living in the White House. I mean, is there anything our commander in chief says or does that doesn’t remind you of the cheapest sort of huckster? Instead of being the leader of the greatest nation on earth, this guy was born to work a carnival midway. He would clearly be right at home trying to con you into trying to knock iron ten-pins off a pedestal or blow several dollars trying to win a 10-cent Kewpie doll by shooting at mechanical ducks.
This week the world witnessed a shameless dog and pony show put on by President Barack Hussein Obama and the president and prime minister of Israel, Shimon Peres and Benjamin Natanyahu – a display that sought to effectively defraud the Israeli people, as well as Jews and Christians in the United States and throughout the world.
Traveling to Israel on his “new charm offensive” with his leftist and Botox-injected secretary of state, John Kerry, our so-called president sought to keep the coffers of Jewish money and votes flowing for the Democratic Party by making it appear that he is a reliable friend of the Hebrew state, such that the United States will come to Israel’s defense should the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and other hostile terrorist states and groups attempt soon to annihilate, as they have vowed, the land of Moses, King David and Jesus.
However, undercutting the “mullah in chief’s” sincerity even before he arrived in Tel Aviv was Obama’s televised interview with Israeli television, during which he claimed that his fellow Muslim mullahs in Tehran were over a year away from building an atomic bomb, which they have threatened repeatedly to use to annihilate Israel and the great Satan, the United States.
Media of ours and friends of mine are hailing the “success” of Obama’s visit to Israel as if it were as joyous as the liberation of Paris, as game-changing as the nuclear bomb and as important as the unconditional surrender of the bad guys in World War II. Me? I thought it was pretty cool.
There was an overhang in the atmosphere that, though we didn’t like to talk about it openly, Obama hadn’t really passed his deity exam yet to qualify as God, but now, finally, he did and we can all unlimber and rejoice. Well, as Hollywood’s incomparable Sam Goldwyn once said, “Include me out!”
Barack Obama until just the other day was the most anti-Israel president in America’s history. His idolaters wail, “What a leader we’ve got! He was anti-Israel, then suddenly he changes and, wow, look how hopes for the Middle East are spiraling upward!"
I know that Obama said that his primary concerns for his second term were major immigration reform and gun control. It’s probably just a coincidence, but despots often feel compelled to deal with those two issues. They usually deal with guns by confiscating them, while their immigration policy generally involves box cars headed off to Siberia or Auschwitz.
Give BHO credit for one thing: He sticks to his guns by insisting that the U.S. has neither a debt crisis nor a spending problem. As a result, most Republicans think he’s delusional, but, again, that’s only because of their perspective. They view him through the same lens as most of the conservative media, believing he is nothing more than an inexperienced, incompetent, naive guy, who, despite good intentions, is simply in over his head.
If one begins with the false premise that Obama is a well-meaning guy with good intentions, the conclusion that he is an inexperienced, incompetent, naive boob is perfectly understandable.
But therein lies the rub. No doubt BHO is well meaning, but only in the sense that he genuinely believes that Marxism will make America a better country. His own words make it clear that he is a lifetime, anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-liberty nihilist brimming over with anger toward those who work hard and succeed.
Have they no shame! Another month, another lavish vacation for the Obama clan.
No, I don’t begrudge the first family a little down time, but considering our current economic situation, their choice of venues is just plain tacky.
Obama won the 2008 election, not because he was the most qualified, but because the populous largely believed he cared about them.
It was the same in 2012. Despite a dismal record, Obama was returned to the White House because of his ability to make people believe that he genuinely cares about the average Joe.
Terry Jeffrey's Stupid, Link-Bait Spin On Venereal Infections Topic: CNSNews.com
Yes, CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey really did write this in a March 27 article:
According to new data released by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 19.7 million new venereal infections in the United States in 2008, bringing the total number of existing sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the U.S. at that time to 110,197,000.
The 19.7 million new STIs in 2008 vastly outpaced the new jobs and college graduates created in the United States that year or any other year on record, according to government data. The competition was not close.
Jeffrey doesn't even bother to find any correlation between venereal diseases, the number of college graduates, and new jobs created -- probably because he knows there isn't one. This ridiculous comparison was done almost certainly as a click-gathering exercise, which Jeffrey succeeded at by making the top of the Drudge Report.
But shouldn't a real news organization be about reporting news instead of generating link-bait? The fact that said link-baiting comes straight from the top tells us news is not a priority at CNS.
WND Pushes False Claim Obama White House Won't Enforce DOMA Topic: WorldNetDaily
In a March 27 WorldNetDaily article, Taylor Rose asserted and uncritically repeated claims that the Obama administration is refusing to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act:
A Supreme Court decision striking down of the Defense of Marriage Act could lead to the precedent the president could act like an “autocratic dictator,” said Matthew Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel and dean of the Liberty University Law School.
By striking down DOMA, Staver said in an interview with WND, “It would set the precedent that the president can pick and choose which laws he wants to enforce and which ones he does not.”
[...]
Ken Connelly, a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund told WND in an interview that he “would not characterize it that way,” but yet said, “There is an inherent contradiction” today because the executive branch is refusing to enforce and defend the law of the land.
He said that is “incorrect” from a legal standpoint.
Staver and Connelly are not the only ones with concerns over the role of the president and the federal government’s power. Reuters today said Justice Anthony Kennedy expressed concern over the president’s decision to no longer enforce the laws of DOMA and called his behavior “very troubling.”
In fact, the Obama administration never claimed it would refuse to enforce DOMA. Rather, it has stated that it would no longer defend the constitutionality of DOMA in court.
NewsBusters Repeats False Claim About Unsafe Gun Handling Topic: NewsBusters
Ken Shepherd used a March 25 NewsBusters post to uncritically repeat a claim by the Washington Times' Emily Miller that an actor in a commercial for Mayors Against Illegal Guns "is handling a shotgun in an irresponsible manner, violating three cardinal rules of gun safety." Shepherd added: "It's perfectly legitimate to hire an actor for political campaign ads, but actor or not, is it too much to ask of a gun control group that insists it doesn't have a problem with guns, just guns in the wrong hands, to run an ad that exhibits some rules of common sense gun safety."
But Miller got it wrong, Shepherd's description of her as a "gun aficionada" aside. Miller claimed that the actor "has his finger on the trigger, as if ready to shoot," adding, "To make an ad demonstrating actual gun responsibility, the man would put a straight forefinger above the trigger guard to make sure he doesn't accidentally touch the trigger."
In fact, as Media Matters demonstrates, the actor's trigger finger is well forward of the trigger:
Don't look for a correction from either Miller or Shepherd -- that's not what they do.
Over the past few months, my e-mail inbox has been filled with the same viral video. Sent by friends, obviously shared many times over, the video depicts a lonely security guard near Underground Atlanta attempting to maintain a modicum of order so some level of commercial activity can exist at the Metro Mall.
With a video camera strapped to his chest, Darien Long has broadcast to the world the type of day-to-day tasks and demeanor necessary to provide security in what amounts to Third World conditions not far from Olympic Centennial Park.
There’s a reason the recently retired Neal Boortz lashed out that Atlanta needed a “few more dead thugs” a couple of years back, only to be excoriated by the compassionate left for doing so. When you watch Darien attempt to keep loiterers out of the Metro Mall in downtown Atlanta – in one case, having to use a taser on one woman as her three young children taunt him using foul language (warning: explicit language) – it’s only natural that you side with his version of “law and order.”
[...]
But it is in the actions of one man, Darien Long, that you see the type of mentality necessary to restore order from the chaos and anarchy of these urban areas.
MRC Silent on Unraveling of Menendez Prostitution Scandal It Demanded Coverage Of Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center sure wanted people to know about allegations of underage prostitution involving Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez when they first surfaced:
MRC chief Brent Bozell whined that ABC's Martha Raddatz didn't ask Menendez about the allegations during an interview: "If there were even a whisper that a Republican Senator had been sleeping with underage prostitutes, the very first question from Martha Raddatz would have been about those allegations. When it surfaces that a Democrat may have done something tawdry, the liberal media suddenly lose their journalistic curiosity."
Scott Whitlock huffed that a CBS reporter "suggested the allegations have 'all the earmarks of an orchestrated smear campaign,'" adding that "when lewd details came out about Republican Congressman Mark Foley in 2006, the networks filed an amazing 152 stories in just the first 12 days."
Kyle Drennen was upset that NBC accurately quoted Menendez calling the allegations a "false attack" by "political enemies."
Jeffrey Meyer grumbled that one Washington Post story on Menendez "omitted that the FBI is also investigating allegations that Menendez paid for underage prostitutes with girls in the Dominican Republican [sic]" and that it was instead mentioned in another Post story in the style section.
Geoffrey Dickens lamented the lack of coverage of Menendez's alleged "solicitation of prostitutes."
Dickens further complained that when the "Big Three" networks (apparently, those are the only television outlets that the MRC tracks, all the better for not having Fox News screw up their metrics) reported on Menendez at all, they failed to label him as a Democrat.
Bozell devoted a column to complaining that the media covered 'Marco Rubio taking a swig of water" but not that Menendez purportedly "enjoyed prostitutes."
Well, it seems that the media's caution was the correct decision, because the story has been falling apart for the past month, around the time the MRC stopped trying to hector the "liberal media" into covering it.
The collapse accelerated when it was reported that Dominican authorities have determined that three women who said they had sex with Menendez for money were actually paid to make the false accusations. This was followed by an allegation by one of the main sources for the right-wing Daily Caller's reports on the allegations -- which the MRC had been relying on -- asserted that he had been media outlets, including the Daily Caller, to fabricate the whole affair.
But not only has the MRC stopped hectoring the media, it's ignored the story completely -- not a peep about it has been mentioned at NewsBusters or any other MRC website since Feb. 21. That mean MRC readers haven't been told that the story has fallen apart like a cheap suit.
This kind of failure to update a story that no longer fits an outlet's ideological agenda is the kind of thing the MRC likes to call out others for. Now that it's guilty of doing the same thing, it's gone totally silent.
Is anyone surprised at the blatant double standard? We're not.
George Zimmerman's Brother Backpedals After WND Interview Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Michael Thompson seemed to have a nice scoop on his hands when he scored an interview with the brother of George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon Martin, over a racially charged image he tweeted:
The older brother of George Zimmerman, the man accused of killing Trayvon Martin, says a controversial Twitter posting comparing Martin with an alleged baby killer was his attempt to correct the establishment media’s false portrayal of the Florida teen in the racially charged case.
Robert Zimmerman, who spoke with WND in an exclusive interview, ignited a firestorm of debate on the Internet when he juxtaposed a Facebook photo of the 17-year-old Martin flipping off the camera alongside a Facebook photo of alleged killer DeMarquise Elkins, also 17, doing the same.
[...]
Robert Zimmerman argues that the Facebook photo was Martin’s “digital footprint,” the “way he wanted to be portrayed.”
“He knew he was doing when he took that picture and posted it to social media,” Zimmerman said.
“I did something on social media, and now I’m in trouble. That’s fair game. But look what Trayvon Martin had posted – an image that the media actively hid. Why isn’t that fair game? That was his self-portrayal, which is the most ethical way to portray him,” said Zimmerman.
[...]
“The way he is portrayed by attorneys and media strategists is the way we are introduced to him – a picture of Trayvon Martin skiing when he is in the eighth grade is not the person [my brother] encountered in February 2012,” he said.
“More than a year after the incident, the media still uses flattering images of Trayvon Martin as the person who George Zimmerman encountered. We thought the media would do its job, and that Travyon Martin 2.0 would emerge.”
If Robert Zimmerman was unrepentant in his WND interview, he was much less so a few hours after Thompson's article was posted, when he appeared on CNN:
Speaking on CNN's Piers Morgan Live on Wednesday night, he apologized for the messages, saying they weren't the "right thing to do."
"I realize those were controversial and offensive and I did publicly apologize for them," he said. "I'm a human being. I'm being upfront about what I did. I made a mistake ... Unfortunately (it) may not have helped George."
CNN added that George Zimmerman's lawyer has furiously been trying to distance his client from Robert:
Attorney Mark O'Mara told CNN's "Starting Point" Thursday morning that Robert Zimmerman doesn't represent his brother or his defense.
"Having said that, I'm not sure where (Robert's) heart was, but I've always said for the past year that we have to have a conversation about race, and the Zimmerman case has brought it to the forefront, particularly the way young black males are treated in the system," O'Mara said. "These type of tweets ... were insensitive to that, and quite honestly are the opposite of what I hope the conversation would be to try and figure out what's wrong with the system and maybe a good way to fix it."
O'Mara said he worries about how Robert Zimmerman's tweets will affect George's case.
"Everything that happens in this case is, if not overblown, hyper-focused upon, so that everything that George says or does is important," O'Mara said "... And certainly when a family member of my client says something that comes across as totally insensitive -- if not much, much worse -- (it) has an effect, and now we have to deal with it."
Robert Zimmerman did a nice job of playing into WND's race-baitingefforts to portray every black person as a mob-prone thug, only to change his tune in a TV appearance. Will WND report his flip-flop?
AIM Tries to Spin Away Bachmann's Falsehoods Topic: Accuracy in Media
Right-wingers like the employees of Accuracy in Media love Rep. Michele Bachmann, and they don't like it when she's held accountable for what she said. Thus, we have a March 22 AIM column by Roger Aronoff desperately trying to spin away Bachmann's falsehoods in her CPAC speech.
Aronoff begins by channeling what Bachmann said to CNN's Dana Bash after Bash pursued a briskly walking Bachmann to confront her with her falsehood about the White House having a dog walker:
In a clear case of the media’s double standard, CNN has been chasing Congresswoman Michele Bachmann around regarding her CPAC comments on the President’s lavish lifestyle. This, when the majority of her speech focused elsewhere: on Benghazi, the federal debt, medical innovations, and cyber attacks.
Aronoff doesn't explain Bachmann should get a pass for making a false statement because it wasn't the main focus of her speech.
Aronoff goes on to complain that the Washington Post's four-Pinocchio takedown of Bachmann's claim didn't quote Bachmann conceding that the president and his family "deserve the best security and the very best protection that we can get them." That's because it's irrelevant to Bachmann's false claim -- including it doesn't make her claims less false.
Aronoff is further annoyed that both the Post and CNN's Anderson Cooper dismissed a book Bachmann's office cited as a source for her claims because "it is self-published and without sources." Isn't that enough reason to dismiss it? Apparently not for Aronoff.
Aronoff then tried to parse Bachmann's claim about the dog walker, insisting that "Bachmann didn’t say 'he has a dog walker'" but, rather, "We are also the ones who are paying for someone to walk the President’s dog," which is true because the White House groundskeeper also walks the dog: "In other words, she never asserted that someone had been hired for this purpose, but that they were paid to do it." It's a distinction without a difference -- if you're paying someone to perform a job, doesn't that mean you've hired them? Bachmann's statement can easily be interpreted as describing a White House position consisting solely of walking the dog.
That's the kind of ideology-before-facts approach that makes AIM a lousy media watchdog.
