DID CNS Spend Only One Day Covering Gosnell Trial In Person? Topic: CNSNews.com
We've detailed how the Media Research Center has been haranguing other media outlets to cover the trial of Kermit Gosnell while not sending its own reporter to cover the trial until weeks after it began. But it appears the one day a reporter from the MRC-operated CNSNews.com attended the trial may be the only day an MRC employee was there.
Gosnell's trial began in Philadelphia on March 18. MRC writer Matt Philbin indicated to ConWebWatch that the first day an MRC attended the trial in person was April 17, as described in an April MRC Culture & Media Center item. That day, a CNS article by Elizabeth Harrington ablout the trial carried a Philadelphia dateline, an indicator that she was there.
But Harrington had not covered the Gosnell trial before that article, and all of her subsequent articles on the trial (including twopublished on April 18) carry no datelines, which indicates that she is apparently covering the trial from the MRC's offices in Alexandria, Va., not from Phihladelphia.
Indeed, Harrington managed to find time away from her Gosnell coverage to write up an April 23 article complaining that the government "is spending $152,000 to study 'voice therapy' for transgenders." That follows in Harrington's obsession with portraying the government as wasting money to benefit gays.
You'd think that an organization with a $12 million budget could afford to send someone to drive 2 1/2 hours away, give them a laptop and put them up in a motel room to cover a trial that it has deem so important. But apparently not.
On top of being cheap, it's hypocritical. The MRC has been screaming that the Gosnell trial is so important that it demands national coverage, but it couldn't be bothered to send its own reporter to cover it in person for more day? Puh-leeze.
The MRC did not respond to a query from ConWebWatch about how many days an MRC employee covered the Gosnell trial in Philadelphia.
UPDATE: Harrington has responded, saying that she has been covering the trial from Philadelphia since April 17.
An April 28 WorldNetDaily article by Dave Tombers is basically a regurgitation of American Life League's anti-Planned Parenthood jihad, framed around the New York Times' rejection of an ALL ad designed to smear Planned Parenthood.
Tombers uncritically repeats ALL's assertion that the ad, which purports to show "the methods Planned Parenthood uses to target young kids," was rejectedas "'too graphic' and 'shocking' for their adult readers," ignoring the common-sense fact that graphic images have a place in sex education but not in a general-circulation newspaper.
Tombers also uncritically repeats the wildly hateful anti-PP rhetoric from ALL and its president, Judie Brown:
“Parents tax dollars are being used to turn their own children into Planned Parenthood’s future sex customers,” says Brown. “Their abortion business is based on exploiting young minds and filling those minds with all manner of sex instruction.
“It is a grisly trail, but it leads from sex instruction to contraception to abortion when contraception fails,” she says. “That is the Planned Parenthood recipe, and the media likes it.”
[...]
“For the past 40 years we have faced a media hostile to telling the truth about Planned Parenthood and specifically about the manner in which they literally rape the minds of our children,” Brown told WND.
Tombers made very little effort to fact-check anything he regurgitated from ALL; at the bottom of his article is the brief note "Messages to the New York Times for comment were not returned."
MRC Upset CNN Described Historic Event As Historic Topic: NewsBusters
Matt Hadro devotes an April 29 NewsBusters post to complaining that "After NBA player Jason Collins came out as gay on Monday, CNN hyped the announcement as a 'bombshell,' a 'big deal,' and one for the 'history books.'" Hadro didn't explain why Collins' coming out is not historic.
Hadro also complained that "CNN's open support of gay rights advocates is no secret, as it has already picked sides in the gay rights debate." But Hadro's main job at the Media Research Center is to be upset every time a gay person is not disparaged on CNN, so he would say something like that.
An unbylined April 27 WorldNetDaily article uncritically repeats a claimfrom the right-wing Judicial Watch that "the U.S. Department of Agriculture is working with the Mexican government to promote the U.S. food stamp program to illegal aliens." The article goes on to quote Judicial Watch head Tom Fitton asserting, "The revelation that the USDA is actively working with the Mexican government to promote food stamps for illegal aliens should have a direct impact on the fact of the immigration bill now being debated in Congress."
But what Judicial Watch is claiming is false. The program being referred to was begun under the Bush administration, and only legal immigrants who have been in the U.S. for at least five years are eliginble for it.
A little simple fact-checking would have proven this story false, but that's not what WND does -- if a false story hurts the Obama administration more and the truth can be ignored, WND will go with the falsehood.
Newsmax Takes Obama Joke A Little Too Seriously Topic: Newsmax
Paul Scicchitano and Todd Beamon take a joke by President Obama at the White House Correspondents Dinner a little too seriously in an April 28 Newsmax article:
It may have been the first time President Barack Obama acknowledged what must have been a painful truth in front of an audience of millions.
“How do you like my new entrance music?” the president said gleefully after making his way to the podium of the Washington Correspondents’ Association gala on Saturday with rap music thumping in the background.
“Rush Limbaugh warned you about this — Second term baby,” he conceded to a wave of laughter.
Scicchitano and Beamon ultimately concede that "it was all good fun in an annual tradition that brings Hollywood to the Potomac and humbles not only the opposition, but also the jokester in chief in what can best be described as a uniquely American political experience."
Obama Derangement Syndrome, Larry Klayman Division Topic: WorldNetDaily
We hardly know where to begin with Larry Klayman's April 26 WorldNetDaily column -- all of it's pretty insane. But here are a few highlights:
In sum, Obama is actually in practice and in his “heart” a Muslim “turned inside out.” As president of the United States and leader of the free world, he is thus potentially even more dangerous than al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, the mullahs in Tehran, or any terrorist group or nation state, combined. That is why I have not lightly labeled him “our” “Mullah in Chief.”
Note to Klayman: Putting things in scare quotes doesn't make them any less libelous. Also: Really? Obama is "more dangerous than al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, the mullahs in Tehran, or any terrorist group or nation state, combined"?
Klayman also clings to his utterly baseless theory that Muslims blew up that Texas fertilizer plant:
Given that former President George W. Bush is perhaps the most hated man in “Obama’s Muslim world” of the Middle East, and among mosques here in the United States, and that West, Texas, where “W” grew up is only 30 miles as the crow flies from his Crawford ranch, how is it that even the possibility of Muslim terrorism was again not raised? Indeed, during yesterday’s dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, “W” remarked about this closeness to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, where one must have surely felt the massive explosion. And, the explosion at the fertilizer plant in West, Texas, comes on top of the proximity in time to the Muslim terrorist bombings in Boston.
Couple this with the historic fact that fertilizer bombs are widely used in the Middle East and have also been used here in the United States by Muslim terrorists, and Obama’s silence becomes even more deafening and frightening.
As one commenter points out, Bush did not grow up in West, Texas. And if Muslims blew up the fertilizer plant to send a message to Bush, 30 miles is still pretty far away. Why wouldn't they have picked a location closer to the ranch, or the ranch itself?
Those are the kinds of questions that further demonstrate how Klayman is a failed lawyer.
NewsBusters Decides: Only Positive Things Should Be Reported About Bush Topic: NewsBusters
Apparently, the media was not supposed to say anything bad about President Bush on the occasion of his presidential library dedication -- the folks at NewsBusters had a fit any time the media strayed from being less than fawningly positive.
Jeffrey Meyer set the narrative: "Previewing the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library on Thursday, rather than positively reflect on the legacy of the Bush presidency, MSNBC unsurprisingly chose to mock and minimize his eight years in office." In short, no criticism of Bush was going to be tolerated (like it ever has been at the MRC).
Kyle Drennen complained that "On the eve of the dedication of George W. Bush's presidential library, NBC's Meet the Press moderator David Gregory appeared on Wednesday's Nightly News to tear down the former president's legacy, beginning the report by remarking that it was 'difficult to remember' Bush's popularity after the September 11th attacks."
Paul Bremmer huffed about "the media’s rampant anti-Bush attitude" and how an ABC reporter unleashed "an onslaught of negative questioning" about Bush to Karl Rove. Bremmer added:
What’s more, President Bush’s reputation is already on the mend. A recent ABC News / Washington Post poll showed that Bush’s job approval rating has risen from 33 percent when he left office to 47 percent now. So if anything, the “early indication” is that history may end up being kinder to President Bush than many of today’s commentators are.
Bremmer seems to have overlooked the fact that Bush has not been president for four years, so perhaps that "job approval rating" is an expression of approval that he wasn't doing it.
Tim Graham also got in on the act, asserting that the Bush Library dedication should have only been about "dignity":
One might think the opening of George W. Bush’s presidential library in Dallas was an occasion for dignity. But Bill Clinton didn’t think so. On CNN yesterday, Jake Tapper asked former Bush chief of staff Andy Card about “an interesting moment” in Clinton’s remarks.
What's so dignified about demanding that only positive things be reported about Bush?
WND Is Still Whitewashing Scott Lively's Anti-Gay Activity Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has long been an apologist for anti-gay activist Scott Lively, pretending he really doesn't viciously despise gays. That includes whitewashing the facts about the lawsuit filed against him by Sexual Minorities Uganda accusing Lively of fostering an atmosphere that led to the creation of a proposed law in Uganda that would permit the death penalty for mere homosexuality.
WND keeps up the whitewashing in an unbylined April 17 article that again uncritically repeats Lively's defense against the lawsuit while misrepresenting the claims SMUG has made.
The unknown WND writer claimed that "SMUG alleged Lively criticized homosexuality and that constituted 'crimes against humanity' in violation of 'international law' and his speech must be punished." In response, according to WND, Lively's attorneys at the right-wing Liberty Counsel "explained that SMUG would allow people to express an opinion against homosexuality, but they would not be allowed to take any action."
But the issue is not Lively merely having "criticized homosexuality." As SMUG's response to Lively's request to dismiss the lawsuit states, Lively, "through his coordinated campaign tosilence, criminalize and eradicate the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex ('LGBTI') community in Uganda, who violates fundamental constitutional and human rights norms, bydenying to this group one of the most sublime benefits of free and equal speech – the right tochange people’s minds."
SMUG's response also points out that Lively's defense is disingenuous in portraying Lively as an ordinary citizen merely expressing his personal opinion:
Far from merely contributing fairly and honestly to the marketplace of ideas, Defendant has actively sought to implement a concrete and coordinated strategy via real legislation, policy and practice to deprive LGBTI persons of their elementary human right to equal coexistence. His protestations are also ironic in light of his leadership role in implementing this long-term, multi-faceted strategy to criminalize the expression of viewpoints because they are contrary to his own, and to strive for a regime of de jure or de facto forms of discrimination and oppression of a disfavored group.
Further, according to SMUG, Lively is on record denouncing homosexuality as "'evil,' pedophilic, fascist, genocidal and as a 'highly organized army," continuing: "These theories are not merely the ravings of an idiosyncratic editorialist – they are deployed specifically as part of a broader campaign to repress LGBTI persons – a central premise in his push for concrete mechanisms to deprive LGBTI persons of their right to equality and equal expression.
Unsurprisingly, WND mentions none of this. Also unmentioned by WND is Lively's relationship with Martin Ssempa, who has played a key role in whipping up anti-gay sentiment in Uganda and a supporter of the proposed "kill the gays" law. Lively considers Ssempa a friend -- so much so that Ssempa delivered a letter from Lively to the Ugandan parliament. In that letter, ironically, Lively makes clear that he opposes the capital punishment provision of the bill not out of personal beliefs but because it will make Uganda look bad: "Advocating the 'death penalty' for 'mere' sexual crimes evokes such a severe negative reaction in most Western nations that all other aspects of the law, and the rationale for drafting it is ignored, and very 'gay' movement we seek to oppose is strengthened by public sympathy they would not otherwise enjoy."
WND, of course, won't tell you that either -- it would rather have you buy a copy of Lively's discredited anti-gay screed "The Pink Swastika," a link to which WND helpfully embeds in the article.
CNS Calls Floyd Corkins -- But Not Scott Roeder -- A 'Domestic Terrorist' Topic: CNSNews.com
An April 25 CNSNews.com article by Fred Lucas asserts that Floyd Corkins, who has pleaded guilty to shooting a security guard at the Family Research Council headquarters, is a "domestic terrorist" who "found the Family Research Council as a target because they were listed online as an 'anti-gay' group by the Southern Poverty Law Center."
That's a change of pace from how CNS treated another domestic terrorist -- Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion zealot who murdered abortion doctor George Tiller during a Sunday church service in 2009.
As we noted at the time, CNS labored intensely to disassociate Roeder from the "mainstream" anti-abortion movement. CNS also played down Roeder's ties to the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, which were much stronger than those of Corkins to the SPLC. (The father of Brent Bozell, leader of CNS parent Media Research Center, led an early anti-abortion crusade of the kind that Operation Rescue would become known for.)
CNS' Penny Starr insisted in 2010 that Roeder is "a mentally unstable man" despite the fact that Roeder did not mount an insanity defense at his trial and a psychologist hired by the defense found Roeder competent to stand trial.
So why won't CNS portray Roeder as the domestic terrorist that he is? Perhaps because he was doing what Brent Bozell and Co. secretly wanted to do to Tiller.
WND Puts Words In Holder's Mouth Topic: WorldNetDaily
The headline on John Bennett's April 25 WorldNetDaily article reads, "Holder: Amnesty is a 'civil right.'"
But that's not what Holder said -- at no point does Bennett quote Holder using the word "amnesty." Bennett does accurately quote Holder discussing "a mechanism for [illegal immigrants] to earn citizenship."
Nevertheless, Bennett repeatedly describes proposal for immigration reform as "amnesty." But that's inaccurate as well. As Sen. Marco Rubio has pointed out, his "Gang of 8" reform plan is not amnesty because "Amnesty is the forgiveness of something" and his plan would require illegal immigrants to pay back taxes, a fine and an application fee as well as having a job and waiting for at least 10 years.
Bitter Ex-CIA Guy Returns To Newsmax Topic: Newsmax
We've detailed how Kent Clizbe is a bitter ex-CIA man who likes to lash out at President Obama by invoking birtherism. Newsmax has given him another opportunity to be a crank, this time in the form of an April 24 column in which he agrees with Rush Limbaugh that the sheer liberalness of Boston turned the Tsarnaev brothers into radical Islamists who bombed the Boston Marathon:
Recently, talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh came under liberal media attack for linking the bombers’ behavior to the “liberal elite intellectual thought” that infects the Boston community.
Limbaugh explained to a caller on his show how such a mindset harms young kids.
“They hang around people that don’t like America, they get inspired or influenced by it somehow, and it’s no wonder,” Limbaugh said.
“And if you end up around the wrong people long enough and you’re young enough and impressionable enough, then that kind of thing can happen,” Limbaugh said.
With the questions swirling of why two upwardly mobile young people in America could commit such acts, a good place to start would be the “educations” the two Tsarnaev brothers received.
Younger brother Dzhokhar graduated from the celebrated Boston high school Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS). A graduate of CRLS has had years of anti-American claptrap crammed down his throat.
The only evidence Clizbe provides of this is that one teacher at the school likes "liberal elite darling" Howard Zinn, which apparently makes the teacher a "weenie."
No wonder Clizbe's an ex-CIA guy -- if he was making such sweeping generalizations based on a single example, that's sloppy sleuth work of the highest order.
I am prepared to argue that the only reason white liberals bow before Obama is because he is half-Kenyan with a Muslim name who harbors the deepest of resentment for traditional America. I would further argue that the only reason they embrace his wife is because she behaves in a way that is commensurate with their low opinions of blacks.
The biggest laugh Obama has handed me recently wasn’t, as you may have guessed, his sinking just two of the 22 shots he took, trying to show off for the kids on Easter Sunday. Rather, it was his announcement that he wants to teach America’s youth how to budget responsibly.
Is the man so completely oblivious that he doesn’t realize that with his cavalier approach to a $17 trillion national debt and an annual trillion dollar deficit, it would make far more sense if he announced he was going to teach our young people how to shoot baskets?
I don’t expect anyone in Washington to heed this advice – certainly not Barack Obama, who hates his tepid critics at Fox News more than he detests foreign dictators who starve their own people and threaten neighbors and the U.S. with nuclear annihilation.
As Obama learned early in his candidacy for presidency, there was no reward to be had for identifying single motherhood as a problem to be solved.
In a turning point of his career, Obama told a large church congregation in Chicago on Father’s Day 2008 that too many fathers were “missing,” and nowhere was that “more true than in the African-American community.”
Jesse Jackson promptly used a hot mic on Fox News to let it be known that Obama spoke out of turn. “I want to cut his nuts out. Barack,” said Jackson with impunity. “He is talking down to black people, telling ni–-ers how to behave.”
Obama got the message. From that time on, he used his Father’s Day addresses not to chastise missing fathers but to champion single mothers and to applaud himself as a child of such a circumstance, even if he had to lie to make his point.
Some people, even some conservatives will take umbrage at calling Obama a moron. Like trained parrots, they will say, “I may not agree with his policies, but he is an Ivy League graduate, after all.” In rebuttal, I will say, he is merely the over-weaned product of affirmative action. Not only have generations of morons graduated from Harvard, Yale and Princeton, but generations of the mentally challenged have taught there and continue to teach there.
Informed of the Boston bombings, President Obama immediately told his Secret Service guards, “Inform the foursome ahead of us! We have to play through!”
Oh! How mean spirited!
But we intend only to counterbalance the fawning over our chief executive in the wake of the terrorist attacks.
Finally, in China, a man shoved a live eel up his butt after seeing some other dude do it in a porno film. As you might have guessed, he wound up having to undergo surgery after the creature ate its way through his intestine.
Now, I can’t tell you exactly why it is, but his experience reminds me in some peculiar way of all those people who voted to re-elect Barack Obama last November.
Haven’t we had just about enough now from the political correctness that leaves us as helpless as the sturdiest professional handcuffs? Obama didn’t invent political correctness, but he refined it to the point where Danish Lutherans are considered just as likely to attack us as Quran-thumping jihadists.
A person cannot know that President Obama is thick as thieves with radical Islamist factions such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the terrorist-affiliated Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and claim surprise that we are now beginning to live out the European nightmare vis-à-vis Islam.
MRC Cranks Up Factually Dubious Obsession With Soros Money Topic: Media Research Center
Presumably in an effort to justify its campaign to raise money by fearmongering about George Soros, the Media Research Center has been busy in recent days cranking out articles about the evil things Soros is funding:
The Earth Day article by Mike Ciandella is particularly absurd -- counted in that $20 million (which, by the way, is since 2000, not last year as the article starts off suggesting) is $4.4 million given to the NAACP.
But Ciandella offers no evidence that any of the Soros money went toward Earth Day activities. Indeed, at least $1 million of that went to the NAACP's Legal Defense & Educational Fund. Soros gave another $950,000 to that fund in 2011.
As we've previously pointed out, right-wing billionaires spend at least that much money per year propping up failing newspapers that the MRC has accused of spending since 2000 on media properties or Earth Day.
Ciandella is engaging in a lazy smear -- sadly, the kind of "research" the MRC has become known form.
WND's Erik Rush Calls Immigrants 'Human Garbage' From 'Third World Toilets' Topic: WorldNetDaily
The fact is that we have far more human garbage in this country than we ever ought to have tolerated, and this has nothing to do with ethnicity or religion; it has to do with what is in people’s hearts and minds. What we haven’t imported, the left has created. Liberals and radical Marxism in particular have inculcated a sense that we somehow deserve the antipathy of those around the world (and by extension, émigrés from Third World toilets) and so should endure it. The ongoing complaint of Muslims (radical and otherwise) is very much in this vein.
MRC's Graham Pretends Frank Luntz Isn't Really A Republican Topic: NewsBusters
When Republican pollster Frank Luntz was surretitiously recorded saying that right-wing radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin were "problematic" for the future of the GOP, you'd think it might stir a little soul-searching for the folks at the Media Research Center.
Fat chance. Tim Graham's response, in an April 25 NewsBusters post, is to pretend Luntz isn't really a Republican.
Graham's headline refers to "'GOP' Pollster Frank Luntz" -- yes, "GOP" is in scare quotes -- and he asserts that Luntz is "denounced as too conservative by liberals when he turns up on liberal networks." But that's utterly dishonest -- Graham's fellow NewsBusters haverepeatedlytouted Luntz's Republican ties.
Meanwhile, the MRC is too closely in bed with the right-wing radio figures Luntz criticized for Graham ever to bad-mouth them. Recall that MRC chief Brent Bozell launched an "I Stand With Rush" website last year rather than issue any meaningful criticism of Limbaugh's three-day misogynistic tirade against Sandra Fluke. And the MRC is currenly paying Levin to promote its anti-media campaign on his radio show.
Graham is too much of a company man to even consider biting the hand that feed him -- and he's too much of an ideologue to do anything other than fragging friendly critics simply for daring to criticize.
Presumably in an effort to justify its campaign to raise money by 
