Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has so far refused to respond to our documentation of how its racially charged rhetoric may have influenced Charleston shooter Dylann Roof. Is that an admission that we're right? Read more >>
Thursday, July 9, 2015
NEW ARTICLE: Silence Equals Assent
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily has so far refused to respond to our documentation of how its racially charged rhetoric may have influenced Charleston shooter Dylann Roof. Is that an admission that we're right? Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:12 PM EDT
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
At CNS, 'Honky' Is Unprintable
Topic: CNSNews.com In a July 1 CNS blog post, Melanie Hunter highlights a "Nightly Show" clip in which "actor Joe Morton, who plays Rowan Pope or Papa Pope on ABC’s 'Scandal,' used a racial slur to describe Confederate flag supporters during an impromptu in character monologue." That slur? It's apparently so offensive to Hunter and CNS that she can't even bear to type out the word. In her transcription of Morton's monologue, she notes that he (in character) referred to white supportersd of the Confederate flag as "h---- m----- f-----." We'll grant Hunter the "m----- f-----" -- CNS does claim to be a family publication, after all -- but what's that other word that she apparently thinks rises to the level of the N-word in unprintability? Honky. The MRC-doctored clip of Morton rather clumsily drops the audio on the offending phrase, but the clip at Comedy Central confirms that Morton did indeed say "honky." Sure, "honky" is a racial slur, but is it really so offensive to white people -- or anyone, really -- that it must be relegated to H-word status? Who even says the word these days in a manner other than invoking 1960s black radicalism or channeling George Jefferson? We're not aware of anyone who puts the word on that kind of footing -- including CNS itself. CNS published the word in its full glory in a July 2014 column by Matt Barber in an anti-liberal rant over the Hobby Lobby decision:
So, in CNS' eyes, is "honky" a word only white people can use, like some complain that the N-word can only be used by blacks? And as Wikipedia notes, "honky-tonk" can be considered a derivative of the "honky" insult. So does that mean at CNS, honky-tonks are now known as "h---- -tonks"? Or "caucasian-tonks"? And conservatives complain about alleged liberal political correctness.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:49 PM EDT
Gay Marriage Derangement Syndrome, Mychal Massie Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily
-- Mychal Massie, July 6 WorldNetDaily column
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:24 PM EDT
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
WND Dances to Arpaio's Birther Tune Again
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily and Sheriff Joe Arpaio have long been in cahoots when it comes to promoting birther conspiracy theories. After all, it was a birther lecture by WND's Jerome Corsi to a tea party group in Arizona that was designed to manipuate Arpaio into launching a "cold case posse" to examine Barack Obama's birth certificate -- a posse that included Corsi as one of its members, thus guaranteeing it could never be fair or comprehensive. While both WND's birtherism and the posse's activities have dropped considerably after Obama's re-election -- which WND's birther obsession was intended to prevent -- It's never stopped completely, WND has never admitted its birther conspiracies have been completely discredited, and the posse's incompetence has been demonstrated by former posse member Brian Reilly. WND has no problem playing up the birther conspiracy when it feels like doing so, and a radio interview with Arpaio by WND re[porter (and birther) Aaron Klein provided the perfect opportunity, as a July 5 WND article documents:
The clip Kelin and Arpaio accompanying the article is a short one, so we can assume that Klein couldn't be bothered to ask Arpaio about the following:
But Klein, being the birther that he is, is sticking to WND's policy of not admitting the birthers were ever wrong, even as the evidence continues to pile up. And he no doubt helped Arpaio convince a few more suckers to donate to Arpaio's campaign. As always at WND, agenda supercedes the truth.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:34 PM EDT
Monday, July 6, 2015
CNS Managing Editor's Obsession With (Most Of) Franklin Graham's Words Continues
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman's obsession with reprinting the anti-gay, anti-Muslim and anti-Obama tirades of Franklin Graham hasn't abated. We've previously documented how in the first three months of 2015, 25 of the 69 articles Chapman wrote were Franklin Graham regurgitations. The sycophancy continues: In the three months from April 12 to June 30, of the 62 articles Chapman published, 21 were transcriptions of Graham's rantings -- a full one-thrid of Chapman's written output. In addition, three more articles by Chapman repeated the rants of Franklin's sister, Anne Graham Lotz. That means of the 131 articles Chapman has written in 2015, 46 of them, or 35 percent, were dedicated to uncritically repeating Franklin Graham's words. For all of Chapman's dedicated Graham sycophancy, there are words of his he won't repeat -- the ones where Graham isn't denigrating people he despises. We've already noted that Chapman didn't think Graham's denunciation of the Muhammad cartoon contest where two would-be gunmen were killed as an uncalled-for mocking of Muslims was worth repeating. In a June 22 Facebook post, Graham said it is time to "set aside" the Confederate battle flag in an effort to boost American unity:
While Chapman has devoted four CNS posts to Graham's words since June 22, none of them are his words on the Confederate battle flag. Apparently, if Graham isn't attacking gays, Muslims or the president, Chapman doesn't want to hear about it -- and, more importantly, doesn't want to tell his readers about it. Is that responsible behavior for the managing editor of something that claims to be a news organization?
Posted by Terry K.
at 5:37 PM EDT
Sunday, July 5, 2015
WND Still Doesn't Want To Talk About Dylann Roof's Manifesto
Topic: WorldNetDaily If WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah was an honest journalist, he'd be reflecting on how the views promulgated by his website have apparently influenced more than one mass murderer -- first Anders Breivik, now Dylann Roof -- and his website would be accurately reporting on its contents. But he's not, so he isn't. And WND keeps trying to make sure discussion of Roof involves anything other than the closeness of the racial views in Roof's manifesto to WND's editorial agenda. The latest attempt to change the subject comes in a July 3 WND article by Leo Hohmann in which he falsely suggests that liberal professor Juan Cole is somehow anti-Semitic for pointing out that the Islamophobia promoted by WND faves like Pamela Geller and Daniel Pipes is reflected in Roof's manifesto. Hohmann plays up a reference by Cole to Geller and Pipes as "right-wing Jews." But Hohmann takes the phrase out of context; in the blog post Hohmann is attacking, Cole points out that it's ironic that Geller and Pipes are Jewish because Roof "went on heartily to hate Jews, as well. Many American Jews, he held, are pro-African-American, and so he abhorred them, as well." Hohmann makes no mention of the details of Roof's manifesto in which he reflects WND's concerns about black-on-white violence and the Trayvon Martin Case. Instead, he contacts Geller and Pipes for predictably outraged quotes that anyone would link them to Roof. If Leo Hohmann were an honest journalist, he'd get into the details of Roof's manifesto. But he isn't, and Farah isn't paying him to be one. So unless one or both of them mans up and faces the truth (or at least do better than Jack Cashill), our take on WND and Roof will remain the accurate -- and damning -- one. They say silence equals assent. Should we take WND's silence as assenting that its editorial agenda contributed to Roof's mindset?
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:34 PM EDT
Saturday, July 4, 2015
CNS Unemployment Numbers Distortion Watch
Topic: CNSNews.com It's a new month, and you know what that means: Time for Ali Meyer and the rest of the CNSNews.com crew to cherry-pick statistics to make the latest unemployment numbers look as bad as possible and ignore positive news. And they do what they're paid to do: Record 93,626,000 Americans Not in Labor Force; Participation Rate Declines to 62.6% 19.8% of U.S. Workforce Was Foreign-Born in June 56,085,000 Women Not in Labor Force; Participation Rate Declines to 56.7% None of these stories mentioned that 223,000 jobs were created. The first story is the only one to note that the unemployment rate dropped to 5.3 percent, but not until the sixth paragraph.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:47 PM EDT
Friday, July 3, 2015
How The MRC Defends Trump's Smears of Mexicans
Topic: Media Research Center From the beginning, the Media Research Center has worked to downplay Donald Trump's smears of Mexican immigrants. In a June 18 NewsBusters post, Ken Oliver-Mendez spun hard by insisting that Trump's characterization of Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists "was not unqualifiedly negative, as he also immediately added 'and some, I assume, are good people.'" Oliver-Mendez then touted how "On the campaign trail after his announcement speech, Trump actually upgraded his assessment somewhat." Oliver-Mendez grumbled that on Spanish-language networks, "Trump’s opening campaign statement effectively morphed from a condemnation of the perceived prevalence of undesirable elements among unauthorized immigrants entering the country to an offensive statement against immigrants in general, particularly Mexican immigrants." Of course, when you are falsely branding Mexican immigrants as mostly criminals and rapists as Trump did, that's an entirely reasonable reaction. Also spinning hard is Kevin Gibbons, who uses a June 25 NewsBusters post to keep up the complaint that people were elevating Trump's offensive remarks and ignoring the "positive statements" about Mexico he made:
Gibbons goes on to declare that Univision's dumping of the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant was "rash" and "akin to ESPN cancelling their NBA contract because of racist comments made by former Clippers owner Donald Sterling." Well, no; it's more akin to ESPN cancelling their NBA contract because the NBA commissioner made racist comments. On June 27, Jeffrey Lord laughably asserted that Trump's smears were "accurate," adding: "Trump is surging in the polls on the very basis of his blunt criticisms of the Obama administration’s conduct of foreign affairs and the GOP Establishment’s woeful performance on issues - dealings with Mexico over the southern border and on trade but two of those issues." Thge MRC also gave a platform to Jorge Bonilla to defend Trump in a June 28 post. Bonilla proclaimed that Trump "laced blunt truths with Trumpian hyperbolic bombast, adding: "Opinion on Trump aside, reasonable people can agree (or disagree) that perhaps not every undocumented immigrant will be a valedictorian or a hard-working incarnation of the American Dream with an immaculate criminal record, or that our seriously deficient immigration model is in dire need of actual reform." But does Bonilla agree with Trump that most are criminals and rapists? Apparently so. By this time, however, it was time for a distraction, which the MRC found in a Univision executive's posting a picture to his Instagram page comparing Trump to Chalreston shooter Dylann Roof. The MRC happily promoted Fox News criticism of it, and Tim Graham whined that the media was ignoring the "scabrous" image in its coverage of the Trump-Univision conflict. Of course, Graham ignores his employer's promotion of a similarly scabrous image comparing President Obama to Satan in which which the MRC blogger giggled, "Spoiler alert: Barack Obama is the one on the right." MRC chief Brent Bozell dutifully pounded the Trump-roof image, but he failed to mention the anti-Mexican smears by Trump that provoked the image (and, needless to say, his own organization's promotion of an image that's just as "unacceptable" as he claims the Trump-Roof image is). It's what you'd expect from an organization that finds holding a conservative accountable for his words to be more offensive than insulting an entire race of people.
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:09 PM EDT
Thursday, July 2, 2015
MRC Mad That Historic Court Ruling Is Accurately Described As Historic
Topic: Media Research Center Curtis Houck complains in a June 25 MRC NewsBusters item:
Houck doesn't explain how describing a historic ruling as historic, or a conservative justice as conservative, constitutes the liberal bias he implies is happening here. Houck is the latest MRC worker to fulfill the Stephen Colbert principle that reality has a well-known liberal bias.
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:29 PM EDT
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Gay Marriage Derangement Syndrome, WorldNetDaily Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily
-- Larry Klayman, June 26 WorldNetDaily column
-- Joseph Farah, June 26 WND column
-- Matt Barber, June 26 WND column
-- James Dobson, June 26 WND column
-- Barbara Simpson, June 28 WND column
-- Joseph Farah, June 29 WND column
-- Phyllis Schlafly, June 29 WND column
-- Jerry Newcombe, June 30 WND column
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:56 PM EDT
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
MRC Writer Thinks Musicians Get Paid By The Hour
Topic: Media Research Center For someone whose job it is to write about business, the Media Research Center's Joseph Rossell doesn't know much about it. Take this opening paragraph from Rossell's June 26 MRC Business & Media Institute item:
Wow -- so much wrong in one paragraph. We'll skip the fact that Rossell offers no evidence to claim Apple is "left-wing," and we'll take a educated guess that a not-insignificant number of Rossell's MRC employees use Apple products, which undermines his sneering at the company's supposed politics. Instead, we'll move right to his complete ignorance of how musicians are paid for their music. Rossell's claim that Apple's new music streaming service pays "per hour" is utterly wrong. No streaming service does that. He later concedes that streaming services pay on the basis of how many times a song is streamed, but he clings to the per-hour claim to push his apples-to-rutabagas comparison with the salaries of Chinese workers, insisting that "it was far stingier with musicians than some Apple suppliers were with their Chinese employees." But musicians do not work for Apple on a salaried or even a contract basis the way a factory worker does for his or her employer, and Apple paying a royalty to musicians for streaming their music is not even remotely the same as someone being paid to work several hours a day at an Apple supplier. Rossell doesn't seem to understand that, unlike that Apple supplier worker, musicians have multiple streams of revenue. Rossell portrayed musician Pharrell Williams as kind of poor because of the paltry streaming revenues he receives. But as Forbes details, he will make $32 million this year; he makes money from not only his music sales and touring but also from his clothing line and appearances on the TV show "The Voice." If Rossell is so concerned about the revenue of musicians, he might want to focus his ire on radio stations, which pay nothing to musicians for the songs they play. But then, the National Association of Broadcasters, the lobbying group for radio stations, opposes paying royalties, and the contributions of its PAC appear to skew Republican. But that would require knowing something about how business works, which, again, Rossell doesn't.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:39 PM EDT
Monday, June 29, 2015
NEW ARTICLE: CNS' Barely Managing Editor
Topic: CNSNews.com Michael W. Chapman is in charge of CNS' news operation, and he makes sure the news is extremely biased. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:38 PM EDT
Sunday, June 28, 2015
MRC's Bozell & Graham Throw Pope, Cardinal Under The Bus Over Encyclical
Topic: Media Research Center Pope Francis' encylical on climate change, "Laudato Si," poses a challenge to people like the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell and Tim Graham, who present themselves as uber-Catholics who try to bully anyone who dares criticize the church. But the pope's encyclical forwards the horrible (to Bozell and Graham) concept that climate change is manmade and that efforts must be made to counter it. After all, the MRC has long misled its readers about climate change while serving as a shill for fossil fuels (and failing to disclose that it receives donations from the oil and gas industry). Thus, we have the uncomfortable-looking attempt to split the baby, in which Bozell takes on the encyclical in a June 22 NewsBusters item by ... defending Rush Limbaugh. Because, apparently, Limbaugh ranks above even the pope or his fellow Catholics as someone who warrants defense no matter what stupid thing he says (as the Sandra Fluke episode amply demonstrated). Bozell was upset that none other than D.C. Archbishop Cardinal Donald Wuerl shot down Limbaugh's attacks on the pope's encyclical as "saying is that every Catholic should vote for the Democrat Party" by noting that even people who don't know what they're talking about can speak their mind. That was apparently too much for Bozell, who is simply shocked that anyone could accuse Limbaugh of not knowing what he's talking about, so he throws a cardinal under the bus and insist that he's the idiot, not Limbaugh:
But as we all know, Bozell is simply the mouthpiece through which Graham's words flow; thus, the subject gets recycled for the syndicated column for which Graham gets co-credit (at last!). They play the Rush-is-right card again but refrain from throwing the cardinal under the bus once more. Instead, the pope gets the under-the-bus treatment. They sneer at the pope's "numerous unnecessary and annoying genuflections to liberal political ideology," dubiously insist "tere never was scientific consensus" on climate change, laughably claim that the term "climate change" was invented by the left when, in fact, it was popularized by right-wing linguistic guru Frank Luntz. You can almost hear the bones crunch as the bus backs up for another swipe when Bozell and Graham huff, "Francis is now the poster child for radical environmentalism the world over." The authors then try to clean up their mess by praising the part of the pope's encyclical "that could be interpreted as endorsements of the social conservative agenda." Then they close by taking another shot at the pope's "confounding incoherence," calling his encyclical "a beautiful tapestry marred by political graffiti." But aren't Bozell and Graham the ones playing the poltical graffiti game by dismissing the parts of the pope's encyclical they personally don't like? What makes them think they know better than the pope on this subject? And doesn't being a cafeteria Catholic on the encyclical run counter to the orthodox brand of Catholicism they claim to follow? And they can't deflect from their own fossil-fuel ties by tossing out George Soros or Tom Steyer as bogeymen to counter the pope, as they typically do. So ultimately, Bozell and Graham's attempt to blunt the message and impact of the pope's encyclical is as confoundingly incoherent as they claim the pope is.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:12 PM EDT
Saturday, June 27, 2015
WND Can't Prove Us Wrong
Topic: WorldNetDaily My blog post on how WorldNetDaily's black-bashing and pro-white-South African content may have inspired Charleston shooter Dylann Roof -- which was updated for the Huffington Post -- got a significant number of likes and pageviews. Response from WND has been, shall we say, tepid. Colin Flaherty, in an email to readers, merely notes that the Huffington Post says my new book my be responsible for the Charleston murders." Of course, I didn't say that at all; we simply noted that Flaherty and Roof appear to share the same obsession with "black mob violence." Jack Cashill devoted part of his June 24 WND column to a response of sorts:
Gotta love the subtle threat of a legal action against me and the Huffington Post, even though Cashill identifies nothing false that I wrote. Indeed, Cashill confirms my claim that his book portray Cashill as a thug in training,stating that "Had Zimmerman not shot Martin, it is likely that Martin would be in prison today." The rest of Cashill's column is dedicated to rather lamely trying to prove that Roof didn't actually write the manifesto attributed to him, dismissing him has nothing more than "a drug-addled, ninth-grade dropout" who was incapable of having the "style, syntax and vocabulary" used in the manifesto and articulating his racist thoughts as well as he did. Cashill also suggested that the website the manifesto was found on is a fake, designed to "set [Roof] up and/or discredit the political right." He conveniently ignores the fact that the Washington Post article he cites as proof of the "far-left" leanings of the people who discovered also points out that Roof's website "been confirmed by law enforcement as legitimate." Meanwhile, conspicuous by his silence thus far is WND editor Joseph Farah. If there was a way he could have proven me wrong, he would have done so by now. And even if he couldn't prove me wrong, he would have still tried to publicly denigrate me in his usual thin-skinned manner -- after all, his reaction to my 2008 history of WND (also published at HuffPo) was to call me a "talent-challenged slug." (And, no, he couldn't prove me wrong then, either.) Then again, Farah may simply be keeping uncharacteristically quiet ito keep from calling attention to it and hoping that the thing will blow over. Near as we can tell, the only reference to Roof's manifesto in a WND "news" article is a June 20 article featuring a few stolen paragraphs from the Daily Mail website. UPDATE: Cashill targets me more specifically in a June 23 column at American Thinker -- which, ironically, is the same level of right-wing commentary outlet his fellow race-baiter Colin Flaherty can only get published at these days. He again hints that I've libeled him but again can't prove it. He also hurls more names around, calling me a "veteran propagandist" who "forced [his] hand" in commenting on the Charleston shootings. Cashill claims that my noting the indisputable fact that WND has published writers like Cashill and Flaherty who are so quick to demonize blacks is evidence of my having a "pathology." One might respond that Cashill's record of aggressively defending murderers who kill those he considers a blight on society -- gays, abortion doctors, black teens -- is pathological as well. Curiously, Cashill repeats the statement in Roof's manifesto about how he was "truly awakened" by the Trayvon Martin death and how "It was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right" without reflecting on how close those statements coming from a mass murderer come to his own views. If this does give him pause, Cashill makes sure not to show it. Cashill also takes my description of Zimmerman as a "habitual criminal" out of context, deliberately ignoring the fact that I was pointing out that Zimmerman now has a longer criminal record that Martin did. Cashill appears to be so outraged at being called on his track record that he has no intention of reflecting on why that is -- or why a mass murderer is echoing his own views.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:28 AM EDT
Updated: Saturday, July 4, 2015 10:17 PM EDT
Friday, June 26, 2015
MRC Offended By Trump-Roof Photo -- But Found Obama-Satan Photo Hilarious
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center has the outrage machine cranked up again. A June 26 NewsBusters post by Tim Graham touts how "Fox News host Megyn Kelly led with a 'vicious' stunt pulled on Instagram by an official with the Spanish-language network Univision – a network that plans to host a presidential debate next year. Alberto Ciurana, the network’s president of programming and content posted an image of Donald Trump next to Charleston racist mass murderer Dylann Roof." The next day, MRC chief Brent Bozell cranked out a press release declaring that it's "unfathomable" that Univision could be "comparing a candidate for President to a cold-blooded murderer without consequences" and demanded that"Univision must remove Ciurana from his current position immediately and salvage what credibility it has left" and that "If he cannot apologize, and Univision will not discipline, the GOP should cancel its planned presidential debate on that network." The MRC plays down the fact that nobody at Univision itself had no role in the image; the executive in question posted it to his personal Instagram. We also remember that the MRC had a much different view on defamatory comparisons when the person being compared is a Democratic president. IN a March 2013 NewsBusters post, Howard Portnoy thought that comparions of President Obama to the character of Satan as portrayed in a miniseries was absolutely hilarious:
Bozell's buddy, Rush Limbaugh, found it hilarious as well, as WorldNetDaily documented at the time:
Kelly has a bit of employer hypocrisy to deal with as well: Fellow Fox News host Bill O'Reilly devoted a segment to the comparison, and he wasn't terribly outraged at all. Not a shred of outrage to be found at the MRC at the time. This makes its current outrage over the Trump-Roof picture to be more than a little hypocritical.
Posted by Terry K.
at 5:19 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, June 26, 2015 5:21 PM EDT
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