ConWeb's Climate Change Deniers Get It Wrong on Arctic Ice Topic: The ConWeb
Reports of increased Arctic Sea ice brought out the usual climate change deniers in the ConWeb to trumpet the news:
NewsBusters serial misinformer Tom Blumer touted "the cold, hard fact of growing Arctic ice cover, as well as its possible implications," as reported by British newspapers like the Daily Mail, adding: "As is all too often the case, in certain matters affecting things here in the United States, if we didn't have news from Britain, we wouldn't have any real news at all."
Newsmax's Melanie Batley similarly promoted how "An unusually cold Arctic summer has resulted in almost a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice compared to the same time last year, bucking predictions that global warming would result in the disappearance of the ice cap by 2013." She also cited the Daily Mail.
But as Media Matters documents, Arctic ice was at a record low last year, so a large percentarge increase of the kind conservative outlets are reporting is not unexpected, and the recent historical trend shows that Arctic ice is in decline and this year's numbers still fall short of the average over the past 30 years. Neither Blumer nor Batley mentioned the historical trend.
Further, Blumer might want to widen his British newspaper reading horizons to include the Guardian, which points out that "When it comes to climate science reporting, the Mail on Sunday and Telegraph are only reliable in the sense that you can rely on them to usually get the science wrong." The Guardian adds: "Every year when the weather acts to preserve more ice than the previous year, we can rely on climate contrarians to claim that Arctic sea ice is 'rebounding' or 'recovering' and there's nothing to worry about."
CNSNews.com's Barbara Hollingsworth -- who we last saw at the Washington Examiner promoting bogus statistics about tea party rally attendance -- devoted a Sept. 13 article to attacking Al Gore for repeating a prediction that Arctic ice could disappear by this year, repeating claims that there is "a 60 percent increase in the polar ice sheet. "Hollingsworth made no mention of the Guardian's statement that given the historical trend, "an ice-free Arctic appears to be not a question of if, but when."
What The ConWeb Ignores About Fired Newspaper Editorial Writer Topic: The ConWeb
Drew Johnson -- the Chattanooga Times Free Press editorial writer who was fired after publishing an Obama-bashing editorial headlined "Take your jobs plan and shove it, Mr. President" -- has been making the tour of the right-wing media, where his unsubstantiated claim that political pressure caused his firing have found a receptive audience. WorldNetDaily and Newsmax have uncritically repeated Johnson's claims, and even the Daily Caller's Jeff Poor (a former Media Research Center staffer) has given Johnson a pass. The result: creation of the impression that Johnson is a victim of the "liberal media."
But these ConWeb sources have all failed to report a couple of pertinent facts that back up the Times Free Press' claim that Johnson was fired for violating newspaper policy, not because of politics.
First, the Times Free Press is one of the very few newspapers, if not the only one, that runs two separate editorial pages each day -- the liberal-leaning Times page and the conservative-leaning Free Press page. That's a legacy from when there were two separate newspapers in Chattanooga. Johnson was editor of the conservative page, and his departure does not mean any diminishing, let alone the end, of conservative opinion in the Chattanooga newspaper.
Second, the ConWeb has been utterly loath to mention who owns the Chattanooga paper. It's WEHCO Media, which also owns the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The head of WEHCO is Walter Hussman Jr., who made his biggest splash in the newspaper industry in the 1980s by engaging in a newspaper war in Little Rock, ultimately defeating and merging with his own newspaper the rival paper owned by deep-pocketted giant Gannett. It was under Hussman that the two newspapers in Chattanooga -- the Free Press and the Times, the latter formerly owned by the Ochs family of New York Times fame -- were combined and allowed to keep their separate editorial pages.
As the Arkansas Times points out, "Hussman's sympathies — indeed much of his game plan for his own newspaper building strategies came from the former Free Press owner — are not generally with those of the New York Times." Indeed, the Democrat-Gazette's editorial page is headed by Paul Greenberg, a conservative who's perhaps most notorious for his Clinton-bashing during the 1990s.The American Journalism Review has reported that Hussman says the best part of his day is "proofing the paper's stridently conservative editorial page."
It's lazy and dishonest for the ConWeb to shove Johnson's firing into its tired "liberal media" narrative. A conservative-leaning newspaper owner, after all, doesn't fit their agenda.
(Disclosure: I'm a former employee of the Democrat-Gazette.)
NEW ARTICLE: Getting Schooled On Context Topic: The ConWeb
The ConWeb takes President Obama's remarks on religious schools in Northern Ireland out of context -- and they find themselves getting called on it by an unlikely critic. Read more >>
ConWeb Takes Gay Marriage Decisions Poorly, As Expected Topic: The ConWeb
The ConWeb reacted to the Supreme Court decisions overturning the Defense of Marriage Act dismissing a challenge to the overturning of California's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 pretty much the way you'd expect.
Accuracy in Media chairman Don Irvine tweeted, "The country just went to hell in a handbasket.'
Purportedly objective CNSNews.com reporter Penny Starr ranted: "Sad day for our nation -- already on the path to a fallen civilization. If Obama gets another left-wing SCOTUS judge America is doomed."
WorldNetDaily responded with a heavily biased article by Bob Unruh, with the demeaning headline "Black robes 'delegitimize' Supreme Court," that quotes a plethora of anti-gay activists lamenting the decisions.It's not until the final four paragraphs of his 39-paragraph article that Unruh bothers to quote anyone expressing support for the decision.
In fact, there was no real effort at making a constitutional case against a duly enacted piece of legislation, passed overwhelmingly by the House and Senate with strong bipartisan support and signed by a Democratic Party president, Bill Clinton.
What actually happened at the Supreme Court was that five justices decided – and wrote in their opinion – that anyone who opposes same-sex marriage does so for no other reason than bigotry against homosexuals.
[...]
What’s next?
It’s obvious, isn’t it?
The Supreme Court virtually declared an open season on those with whom the 5-4 majority disagree.
We are no longer relevant. What we think no longer counts. We are, after all, bigots who only want to demean homosexuals.
But Farah is a bigot who demeans homosexuals (except for that one he hired to cheerlead for the Iraq War). Remember his paranoid rant about "the forced homosexualization of America" that came in response to a critic who called him out on WND's dishonest reporting on LGBT-related bills in California?
Farah appears to be demonstrating one again that there's no reasoning with a person who thinks anyone who issues a legitimate criticism of his and WND is out to get him.
The ConWeb Ignores, Buries Rand Paul's Flip-Flop on Civil Rights Act Topic: The ConWeb
During an April 10 speech at Howard University, a historically black school, Republican Sen. Rand Paul said that he has "never wavered" in his "support of civil rights or the Civil Rights Act." Which is simply not true. Paul has argued that the public acommodations clause of the Civil Rights Act shouldn't apply to private businesses -- in other words, he thinks that business should be able to discriminate by race.
But the ConWeb really doesn't want you to know about any of that.
A Newsmax article by Todd Beamon highlighted Paul statement on the Civil Rights Act, obliquely following that by noting, "He added that he did 'question some of the ramifications' of the act on business."
By contrast, a CNSNews.com article by Melanie Hunter made no mention whatsoever of Paul's statement or the fact that it contradicts his previous stance.
A WorldNetDaily article by Taylor Rose mentioned Paul's contradiction, but only in the final paragraph of his 24-paragraph article. For some reason, Rose devoted part of his article to Peter Brimelow, "financial journalist, author and founder of the immigration restrictionist website VDARE," calling Paul's outreach a waste of time because "Republicans will cut the programs so many blacks [and other minorities] are dependent on."
Rose's description of Brimelow's VDARE as "immigration restrictionist" is misleading -- in fact, it's basically a white supremacist website. The Southern Poverty Law Center notes that VDARE "regularly publishes articles by prominent white nationalists, race scientists and anti-Semites."
ConWeb Latches Onto Misleading Claim About MSNBC Topic: The ConWeb
The ConWeb readily embraced a too-good-to-check statistic from a Pew Research Center study of the media: that 85 percent of MSNBC's airtime is devoted to "opinion."
WorldNetDaily's Drew Zahn dishonestly rounded up the number to "nearly 90 percent" -- of course, it's equally near to 80 percent, but Zahn clearly didn't want to go there. Newsmax's Bill Hoffmann asserted, "If you’re looking for straight and unbiased news reporting, you may want to avoid MSNBC."
And the number was practically made for the Media Research Center, and indeed, Brent Bozell issued a snotty press release on the subject:
“Pick any Orwellian nickname you want: the Ministry of Truth, the Department of Agitation and Propaganda, but don’t dare call MSNBC a news organization. No legitimate news outlet spends 85% of its airtime pushing leftist commentary. Pravda would be proud.
“Both CNN and Fox News have close to a 50/50 news/commentary split. We have said time and time again that MSNBC in not a news network. Their absurd 15/85 split is a vindication of every single criticism we’ve leveled against them.
“MSNBC is a deeply unserious organization and should never have been placed under the ‘news’category on any cable system’s guide. They’ve Lean[ed] Forward right off the cliff of credibility. What a farce.”
Since that number was too good to check, the ConWeb couldn't be bothered to do one simple thing: find out how Pew made this determination. Salon's Alex Pareene did:
That’s a bit of a misuse of the word “opinion,” which does not, in this case, refer to liberal punditry, but rather to all interviews and other segments that involve people talking instead of live reports or reported “packages.” That kind of programming is common because it’s cheap, and MSNBC and Fox do not actually pay many people to do “reporting” — they are cable “talking about the news” channels, basically. But don’t assume reported pieces are intrinsically superior to commentary. Some of that “opinion” programming is informative and useful in a way that live shots of, say, poop boats are decidedly not. And some of that programming is “Morning Joe,” the talking head equivalent of a poop boat.
It also overlooks the fact that, even though Pew gives Fox News credit for 45 percent of its content being "factual reporting," that does not equal unbiased reporting. Fox's ostensible "news" anchors are prone to spoutingbiasedopinions, and it has a historyofshortchanging the Obama administration on airtime.
But thte ConWeb doesn't care about facts, not when it has an official-sounding number.
ConWebWatch On Reality Check Radio Tonight Topic: The ConWeb
Programming note: ConWebWatch's Terry Krepel will be on Reality Check Radio tonight starting at 9 p.m. ET, talking about WorldNetDaily's long record of failure in trying to destroy President Obama.
NEW ARTICLE -- Out There, Exhibit 57: The Jefferson Freakouts Topic: The ConWeb
The ConWeb just can't deal with the idea that Thomas Jefferson may have fathered a child with one of his slaves. Plus: WorldNetDaily's Ellis Washington embraces a discredited book about Jefferson. Read more >>
NEW ARTICLE -- 2013 Slanties: Oppa Slantie Style Topic: The ConWeb
Biased reporting, wild claims, bizarre conspiracy theories -- it must be time to review the year in the ConWeb. Hey, sexy lady, let's do this! Read more >>
Anti-Muslim Activist Victimizes Blogger With DMCA Complaint Topic: The ConWeb
Richard Bartholomew -- a friend of ConWebWatch who writes the excellent Bartholomew's Notes on Religion blog -- had a run-in with British anti-Muslim activist Charlie Flowers, and it temporarilly shut down his blog.
Bartholomew had written a blog about Flowers in which he quoted comments Flowers made on his Facebook page. In retaliation, Flowers contacted Bartholomew's U.S.-based hosting company and filed a complaint under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The host shut down Bartholomew's site, restoring it only after Bartholomew deleted the offending Flowers post. Bartholomew declined to file a counterclaim because it would make his home address available to Flowers, who has clearly demonstrated himself to be vindictive.
Bartholomew correctly points out, "The notion that someone should be able forbid any quotation of their words is manifestly absurd, and if applied generally would make any kind of journalism impossible."
What Would A ConWeb Writer Have to Do to Get Fired? Topic: The ConWeb
The ConWeb was, unsurprisingly, incredibly happy that Yahoo Washington bureau chief David Chalian was fired from his job for being caught on a hot mic saing that Mitt Romney was "happy to have a party with black people drowning." For example:
NewsBusters' Matt Sheffield, who broke the story (but originally falsely identified Chalian's voice as that of an ABC News employee) declared that Chalian's remark was "the perfect example of the pervasive anti-Republican bias Mitt Romney faces in his bid to unseat President Barack Obama." Sheffield later touted Chalian's firing, then bashed NPR's Gwen Ifill for defending him.
WorldNetDaily columnist Diana West called Chalian's remark "a race-bait too far."
The thing is, though: Such firings for making outrageous remarks very rarely happen in the ConWeb, where writers are simply not held to the same standards as those in the so-called "mainstream media." The most outrageous remarks and unprofessional journalistic behavior have not only gone unpunished but have been rewarded in some cases.
In 2009, CNSNews.com reporter Penny Starr called Harry Reid a baby-killer by likening him to King Herod. She's still employed as a reporter.
In 2005, WND was forced to retract a story by Aaron Klein that falsely smeared the charity group Islamic Relief by claiming it is linked to terrorism and accusing it of making a fraudulent appeal for money for orphans that don't exist. Not only is Klein still employed by WND, he now hosts a talk show on a New York radio station.
in 2009, WorldNetDaily's Erik Rush likened President Obama to a cellblock rapist. Not only does WND still publish his columns, Rush was named "Vice President of Administration and Strategic Alliances" for Pink Pagoda Girls USA, a group that claims to be "involved in rescuing baby girls in the People’s Republic of China from infanticide as a result of that nation’s 'one child per family' policy."
In 2011, WorldNetDaily executive news editor Joe Kovacs utterly botched a story by claiming that Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan's name came up "at least nine times on [Supreme Court] dockets involving Obama eligibility issues" stemming from her connection as Obama's former solicitor general. In fact, none of those docket items has anything to do with "eligibility issues." Kovacs remains employed at WND, still dutifully transcribing pearls of wisdom from his idol, Rush Limbaugh.
In 2006, NewsBusters blogger Dan Riehl led a personal attack on a Democratic campaign tracker who was the target of Virginia Senate candidate George Allen's notorious "macaca" remark, falsely accusing him of making racial slurs. Riehl remained a regular blogger at NewsBusters for the next year and a half; he later became a regular blogger at Breitbart.com. Earlier this year, he hurled sexually explicit tweets at Salon editor Joan Walsh, which has not affected his blogging status at Breitbart.
In 2001, WND published a column by Anthony LoBaido in which he blamed America for the 9/11 attacks: "All that is evil in the world can be found in New York: MTV, the United Nations, the U.N. abortion programs, the Council on Foreign Relations, New Age Church of St. John the Divine, WallStreet greed, Madison Avenue manipulation and of course more confirmed AIDS cases than the rest of America combined. Let's remember the filthy sodomite gay parade last summer in New York." WND editor Joseph Farah defended LoBaido's right to say what he did, and WND has continued to publish him ever since. (That column, though, was mysteriously deleted without explanation.)
The only direct dismissal for a beyond-the-pale statement we can recall in our 12-plus years of monitoring the ConWeb is Newsmax columnist John L. Perry, who was dropped after a 2009 column in which he rooted for a military coup to resolve the "Obama problem."
For anyone in the ConWeb to chortle over Chalian's dismissal is utterly hypocritical, since none of these right-wing "news" organizations holds their employees to the same standards.
UPDATE: Remember, the head of the MRC, Brent Bozell, has set the extremist bar pretty high by calling Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead." If nobody at the MRC was outraged by that, it's no wonder that Penny Starr is feeling a lot of job security.
ConWeb Ignores Reality on Firing Back At Aurora Shooter Topic: The ConWeb
Various ConWeb outlets have been pushing the idea that had someone with a gun been in the audience at the Aurora, Colo., theater where James Holmes allegedly killed 12 people and wounded dozens, they could have stopped Holmes before the carnage became too much:
A WorldNetDaily article by Chelsea Schilling highlights how the company that operates the theater where Holmes allegedly carried out his massacre bans all handguns. She quotes Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert as saying, “Well it does make me wonder, you know with all those people in the theater, was there nobody that was carrying that could’ve stopped this guy more quickly?”
Lowell Ponte wrote in a July 19 Newsmax column: "What the mainstream media will not speculate about is that this shooter could have been stopped immediately if most law-abiding Colorado citizens in that movie theater had themselves been armed."
Ron Meyer wrote in a July 21 CNSNews.com blog post (boldface is his): I cannot help but think, if one person in that audience was carrying a gun with them, that person could have saved lives. Unfortunately - despite what some of the Left have said - this tragedy is an example of the importance of our Second Amendment Rights."
All of these people are ignoring the reality of the circumstances of the Aurora shooting. As Slate's David Weigel details:
[Holmes] wore a bulletproof vest, helmet, and gask mask, and entered a movie theater that was playing The Dark Knight Rises—so the room was dark and loud. He tossed a "gas canister" that went off and would have obscured the vision of anyone looking back at him.
[...]
You've got dark, panic, an enclosed space, and some kind of painful gas. No one's in any position to get the jump on the shooter. No one has a place to hide from him—he has a perfect vantage point of every seat. And he's wearing protective gear.
So, I think the answer for Gohmert is: No. No one was in an ideal position to pull a Dirty Harry on the man shooting at him/her in a panicked theater.
Any chance the ConWeb will acknowledge these factors in calling for wider firearms availability in theaters? Probably not.
Flashback: When John Derbyshire Advocated Killing Chelsea Clinton Topic: The ConWeb
John Derbyshire's column in which he recommended that parents tell their children to be wary of black people -- which has been universally denounced and resulted in his firing from National Review -- is hardly the first time he's gotten in trouble for his writing.
In 2001, we reported on Derbyshire's National Review column in which he argued that Chelsea Clinton should be killed to remove "the taint" of her father. He later insisted that his column was "partly tongue in cheek."
NEW ARTICLE -- 2012 Slanties: The Tree of Slants Topic: The ConWeb
It's time once again to honor the very special ConWeb achievements in bias and insanity. Who will win this year? Read more >>
ConWeb Is OK With Making Fun of Michelle Obama's Looks Topic: The ConWeb
For all the conservative whining about liberal incivility (see Sheppard, Noel), they certainly feel no need to keep their own incivility in check (see Bozell, Brent). Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner's comments about Michelle Obama's "large posterior" set off a whole new round of it on the ConWeb.
Accuracy in Media's Don Irvine tweeted in Sensenbrenner's defense: "Butt she does."
In a later tweet, he linked to a video of the song "Baby Got Back," adding, "All this talk about Michelle Obama's rear has me thinking of this."
NewsBusters, meanwhile, seems a bit put out that it's considered rude to make fun of another's supposed looks. In a Dec. 22 "open thread" post headlined "No Joking About Michelle's 'Posterior,'" the anonymous writer mused, "Would these sites be this solicitious of the FLOTUS when she belongs to the Other Party?" If so, would NewsBusters be as blase about it as it is about Obama's looks?
And then there's Mychal Massie, best known these days for frothing at the mouth over Michelle Obama, a.k.a. "Buttzilla." Massie ranted in twitterese: "cngrsman is spot on moose-chelle does have fat arse she shud keep it in mind whn she tells us wat 2 eat."
Massie followed that up with: "spkg of flotus buttzilla's tractor butt I'm tired of my tax$$ paying $15K a day 2 her makeup person i wud feel same even if makeup helped."
Something tells us that Massie is a lonely single man -- we can't imagine any woman putting up with such misogyny.
Reports of increased Arctic Sea ice brought out the usual climate change deniers in the ConWeb to trumpet the news:
Drew Johnson -- the Chattanooga Times Free Press editorial writer who was fired after publishing an Obama-bashing editorial headlined "Take your jobs plan and shove it, Mr. President" -- has been making the tour of the right-wing media, where his unsubstantiated claim that political pressure caused his firing have found a receptive audience. 
