MRC's Debate 'Study' Confirms Nothing, And Certainly Not The 'Bias' It Claims Occurred
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has been found beating the "liberal bias" drum following the CNBC Republican debate, even though CNBC, as a financial news network, is not a "liberal" outlet by any stretch of the imagination. MRC chief Brent Bozell even asserted that the debate was "an encyclopedic example of liberal media bias." But neither Bozell nor any of his MRC employees ever bothered to provide that "encyclopedia" in support of the claim.

Now, finally, the MRC has issued what it claims is a "study" on the subject. The unsubtle headline: "MRC Study Proves It: CNBC Agenda Was to Undermine GOP Candidates." The unbylined "study" asserts:

A Media Research Center analysis of the questions posed by moderators John Harwood, Carl Quintanilla and Becky Quick at CNBC's Republican presidential debate found nearly two-thirds (65%) hit the candidates with negative spin, personal insults or ad hominem attacks.

In contrast, all of the questions posed by CNBC personalities Jim Cramer, Rick Santelli and Sharon Epperson focused on policy matters and were phrased in a constructive, respectful tone.

The MRC analysis examined the 43 unique questions posed by one of the three moderators. Nearly two-thirds of those (28, or 65%) included negative spin, personal insult or attack, such as Harwood's question to Donald Trump asking if his was a "comic book version of a presidential campaign," or Quintanilla's question to Ted Cruz asking if his opposition to a just-passed spending bill showed he was "not the kind of problem-solver American voters want?"

What you won't find: anything that resembles an actual study. The MRC provides no methodology for making such a determination about the questions, or any objective definition of what it considered "negative spin."

The MRC did not even provide a list of the questions to show how it categorized them.

The "study" went on to complain:

The remaining moderator questions involved personal questions without a negative slant, or policy questions that were phrased in a non-insulting way. While not outright disrespectful, many of these policy questions, such as Quick's question to Cruz claiming a large pay gap between men and women, or Quintanilla's question to Kasich about legalizing marijuana, were framed from a liberal perspective.

Again, the MRC did not provide a methodology for determining political "perspective" or explain why a "liberal perspective" in a question is problematic.

The only supplemental material provided with this "study" is a video compilation of "the most insulting questions posed."

Let's face it: This is not a "study," it's a political statement pretending to be "research." The MRC's  goal was partisan and it makes no attempt whatsoever to be objective. It seems that whatever personally offended MRC staffers was determined to be "negative" or an "insult."

The MRC hammered the partisan intent of its so-called "study" by replacing all that methodology stuff with a rant from Bozell:

The three main moderators, and in particular John Harwood, acted like petulant children trying to pick fights with the candidates. When nearly two-thirds of your questions are comprised of negative spin, personal insults or ad hominem attacks, your agenda is clear: undermine the Republican candidates at all costs. These CNBC "journalists" exposed themselves to the world as left-wing stooges jockeying for a position in Hillary Clinton’s campaign press shop. It was embarrassing.

Who's really being the petulant one? It looks like it's Bozell and the MRC for crying "bias" over questions it doesn't like and ginning up a bogus "study" as purported proof.

Contrary to the headline, the MRC's "study" does not prove an "agenda" -- or anything else it has been asserting about the debate. It does prove, however, that the MRC is little more than a group of hacks dedicated to churning out right-wing talking points without regard to the facts.

By contrast, the MRC did no such "study" on the questions regarding the GOP presidential debate hosted by Fox News, despite Donald Trump's loud complaining about their bias, nor does it make the effort to compare the questions in the CNBC debate with those of the Fox debate. Heck, even MRC friend Ann Coulter (whose anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic rantings the MRC is studiously ignoring) has argued that the questions in the debates were no different.

In fact, the MRC -- whose Bozell has a weekly spot on Sean Hannity's Fox News show -- ignored Trump's complaints of bias in the Fox debate.

We previously asked the MRC to do the "research" the organization's middle name suggests it's capable of. It still hasn't done any. This study has as much scientific legitimacy as Hannity's assertion that the debate was "the single worst example of media bias in a debate in like intergalactic history" -- a nonsensical assertion MRC "news" division CNSNews.com decided was worthy of repeating on its front page.

MRC Ignores Evidence, Denies NY Times Has A Grudge Against Hillary
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Scott Whitlock writes in an Oct. 15 NewsBusters post:

According to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, it’s shocking that the liberal New York Times would praise the liberal Hillary Clinton. While recapping the Democratic presidential debate, host Maddow seriously claimed, “... The New York Times has its knives out for Hillary Clinton more so than any other mainstream media outlet in the country.”

Speaking of the paper that hasn’t endorsed a Republican for president since 1956, the anchor accused the Times of having an “inclination to look for the worst in Hillary Clinton in every instance and to advance every negative story line they can get their hands on whether or not it's comporting with the facts, even so.”

Whitlock curiously edited out the part of Maddow's statement -- left intact in the video clip accompanying his post -- in which she conceded that the Times is "mostly liberal on its op-ed page" but the knives are out for Hillary "on its news pages." Which is very much true if one looks at the history of the Times' coverage of her.

Maddow is hardly alone in pointing this out. Media critic James Fallows observes that the Times has a "vendetta" out for Hillary, and a new book by David Brock (disclosure: my former employer) on the right-wing war against Hillary has an entire chapter on the New York Times' history of antagonistic coverage of Hillary and Bill Clinton.

Even Times public editor Margaret Sullivan concedes the Times has a particular obsession with Hillary:

Since 2013, a Times reporter has been assigned to cover the Clintons as a full-time beat. Other candidates were spared that particular blessing, and at times the whole thing has seemed excessive. For Mrs. Clinton, it has meant that her every move is tracked, often to a fault. Separately, readers objected last April to the way The Times, touting an “exclusive agreement” with the author, reported on aspects of a highly critical book, “Clinton Cash.”

Nevertheless, Whitlock chose to make an exceedingly narrow interpretration of Maddow's remarks:

Maddow’s complaints about the Times undoubtedly refer to the paper's decision to actually investigate Clinton’s e-mail scandal, though timidly. In July, the Times reported on a criminal inquiry into the controversy. After the Clinton campaign complained, the editors altered their reporting for the website.

Hardly a paper with the “knives” out for Hillary Clinton.

Again, Whitlock censors important information. There was, in fact, no "criminal inquiry," and the Times "altered their reporting" because their reporting was wrong.

We've previously noted that the MRC actually complained that the Hillary camp tried to correct this false story -- which, as the Times' Sullivan admitted, involved "too much speed in publishing the story, and too little transparency in correcting and revising it, and for the all-too-familiar reliance on anonymous government sources."

As Whitlock's post shows, the MRC is sticking with the false story and refusing to admit it's false. After all, it has a grudge against Hillary too.

Humorless MRC Writer Complains About 'Satire Smear'
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Katie Yoder finds absolutely no humor, it seems, in anything even tangentally related to abortion. Yoder grumps in an Oct. 16 NewsBusters post:

Sometimes things aren’t as funny as they seem.

ClickHole, a satirical site owned by the Onion, joked in an Oct. 13 piece that “Dunkin’ Donuts Has Just Announced That It Will Perform One Abortion.” To support a woman’s “right to choose,” the chain would offer a “complimentary abortion” at one of their locations. While media outlets readily shared the piece, Dunkin’ Donuts and business site Entrepreneur responded to the claim seriously.

Owned by the Onion, the year-old site, “strive[s] to make sure that all of our content panders to and misleads our readers just enough to make it go viral.”

The site attempted to do just that on Monday – by joking about abortion and smearing a business in the process.

Yoder seems to miss that the entire point of the ClickHole satire was to mock the idea of corporate involvement in political causes, or that ClickHole itself is a parody of the clickbait-y BuzzFeed style.

Yoder also makes sure we know that "Dunkin’ Donuts is neutral on life issues." Well, duh, that's part of the joke -- there's no reason for Dunkin' Donuts to get involved in the issue, let alone perform an abortion in one of its stores, which should have been a pretty obvious sign that this was satire. Still, she fretted that "Some Twitter users appeared to take the story seriously," again ignoring that the story is absurd on its face, hence its existence as a satire.

But what's Yoder's complaint about "smearing a business," which she identifies in the headline as a "Satire Smear"? Including a real-life business (or person) in a satirical pice is a "smear"? Perhaps someone should remind Yoder that her employer engages in a "satire smear" on a regular basis called "NewsBusted" (a name the MRC totally stole from us).

The main difference between the two is that Clickhole has actual humor. But Yoder and "NewsBusted" could take a few lessons in funny from professionals.

Where's The Beef? MRC's 'Liberal Bias' Cry About GOP Debate Lacks Substance
Topic: Media Research Center

Echoing the attacks by Republican presidential candidates on the moderators of the CNBC-hosted debate, Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell ranted: "The CNBC debate will go down in history as an encyclopedic example of liberal media bias on stage."

But there was one thing missing from Bozell's declaration: the encyclopedia.

Bozell's statement did not cite any specific examples of "liberal media bias" expressed at the debate. And in an appearace on Fox Business, Bozell denounced the CNBC moderators as "smarmy, condescending, arrogant" -- but he didn't cite a specific example. He did, however, creepily call the Republicans' ranting about bias "better than sex."

Thus, Bozell set the substance-free agenda for his MRC subordinates, who served as an echo chamber for the "liberal bias" charge while also not proving it:

• Scott Whitlock complained about the debate's supposed "obnoxious, left-wing questions," but he cited no examples. Instead, he linked to an earlier NewsBusters clip from the debate of Marco Rubio complaining about media bias. 
• Kyle Drennen asserted the MSNBC moderators were "incredibly biased," but he too cited no examples.
• Whitlock returned to assert that "the liberal bias of CNBC’s debate [was] so obvious that even Carl Bernstein and the left-wing Salon acknowledged the network’s failure."Actually, neither specifically criticized any "bias" in the debate; Bernstein was criticizing CNBC 's overall handling of the debate, and Salon did so as well, going on to assert that "Most damningly, the anchors frequently failed to call out the candidates on easily checkable misstatements.”

But who needs evidence when you have right-wing talking points to enforce? An MRC poll asked readers: "Who had the best media slam of the debate?"

Bozell finally got around to mentioning a couple of examples in another Fox Business interview. One of them: "Asking Ben Carson about his face on somebody's website." Bozell's fanciful rewording obscures the fact that the question was about Carson's relationship with nutritional-supplements maker Mannatech, which has a history of shady practices -- a relationship Carson dissembled about during the debate.

Bozell seems willing to give Carson a pass on an issue that goes straight to his character -- just like the MRC gave Carson a pass on his conducting research on fetal tissue, which is verboten under the right wing's new anti-Planned Parenthood crusade.

Bozell also denied that the Republicans' anti-media attack was planned in advance, despite Ted Cruz -- who issued the debate's first anti-media attack -- having a history of avoiding questions he doesn't want to answer by denouncing them as liberal.

Further, the candidates didn't really have to plan such an attack in advance; after all, people like Bozell have been inculcating this talking point into right-wing politics for decades. Bozell's mission is to destroy any media that doesn't uncritically repeat right-wing talking points, so he couldn't be happier with the debate, as his ewww-worthy "better than sex" remark demonstrates.

Still, it's interesting that the MRC is simply mouthing the anti-media rhetoric, making no effort whatsoever to back up the claim. To go all Clara Peller here, there's a distinct absence of beef.

It would be so simple for the MRC to post a list of all the questions asked by CNBC moderators at the debate (including Rick Santelli, who effectively inspired the tea party movement and is a good right-wing friend, but is bizarrely being lumped in as a liberal shill under this attack) and explain where in each of them the "liberal bias" resides. but it hasn't.

The middle name of the MRC is "research." It should try that sometime.

NEW ARTICLE: AIM's Month of Bad Benghazi News
Topic: Accuracy in Media
Accuracy in Media not only felt compelled to laughably insist the House Republicans' Benghazi committee isn't politically driven, a key member of its own Benghazi "citizens' commission" has turned out to be an apparent fraud. Read more >>

Dick Morris' Stint As WND Columnist Ends Quickly, Like His First One Did
Topic: WorldNetDaily

In August 2004, WorldNetDaily added Dick Morris as a columnist. It lasted less than five months, with Morris turning in his last column at the end of that year.

Eleven years later -- spending the intervening time utterly discrediting himself, shilling for questionable financial products and making wildly wrong electoral predictions to such an extent even Fox News wanted nothing to do with him for a long time -- WND felt it was the perfect time for Morris to return as a columnist, mainly for his obsessive hatred of Hillary Clinton, which WND spun as him being "uniquely positioned" to write about her.

And this return stint ended even quick as his first one.

Morris' first column appeared on April 24, and he hasn't written one since Aug. 10 -- meaning this stint lasted less than four months.

Meanwhile, Morris continues to write for Newsmax, which has spearheaded his image rehab efforts over the past couple years. In his latest effort there, Morris frets that Ben Carson wouldn't be able to stand up to Hillary in a debate.

Could it be that even Dick Morris isn't anti-Clinton enough for WND?

MRC's Bozell & Graham Put Words In Carville's Mouth
Topic: Media Research Center

Right-wingers like those who run the Media Research Center hava a complicated relationship with Rupert Murdoch. They love him for creating Fox News, but they're unhappy with Fox's entertainment offerings, which commit the offense of trying to appeal to people who aren't right-wingers and who may be (gasp!) liberal.

So the MRC serves up things like this little screed that kicks off Tim Graham and Brent Bozell's Oct. 23 column:

When James Carville rants that Rep. Trey Gowdy is a super-villain spawned by Rupert Murdoch, conservatives could reply by noting that Murdoch has much less of a financial connection to Gowdy than he does to gay leftist TV producer Ryan Murphy, who had one hit with "Glee" and an ugly garbage barge of other TV programs.

In June 2012, Murphy hosted a $25,000-per-person event at his Beverly Hills home for Barack Obama's re-election that included celebrity attendees Julia Roberts, Reese Witherspoon and "Glee" star Jane Lynch. He threw his own Murdoch money into that cause.

Murdoch's Fox Entertainment Group is presently airing two Murphy shows, a new horror show called "Scream Queens" in what used to be called the "family hour" on Fox, and a fifth season of "American Horror Story" (subtitled "Hotel") on their FX channel, starring outlandish pop diva Lady Gaga.

Graham and Bozell are presumably referring to an appearance by Carville on MSNBC -- in which he said no such thing. He did say that  Gowdy "is a creation of the Koch Brothers and the whole climate denial industry" and that the House Select Committee on Benghazi headed by Gowdy "was nothing but a creation of Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Brothers."

Graham and Bozell don't mention the evidence Carville cited to back up that last claim: Fox News has aired more than 1,000 segments on Benghazi before the select committee was created. Which is absolutely true.

They also don't mention that Carville dared anyone to fact-check him. Why? Perhaps because, given that invitation, the MRC chose not to take him up on it; it simply posted the clip, complete with unfulfilled fact-check dare. by contrast, liberal blog Crooks & Liars did the fact-check that the MRC wouldn't, noting that Carville is not entirely correct about Gowdy being a creation solely of Koch interests.

So, instead of telling the truth that Carville is mosly correct in his assertions about Gowdy, Graham and Bozell invent something Carville never said.

Notice also how Graham and Bozell abruptly pivot from the good Benghazi-creating Murdoch to the bad liberal-entertainment Murdoch by bringing up a "gay leftist" creator who purportedly has a greater "financial connection" to Murdoch than Gowdy. Graham and Bozell apparently never counted (or, more accurately, had their MRC employees count) the number of times Gowdy has appeared on Fox News or calculate the value of that free media to Gowdy, the Benghazi committee and Republicans in general.

Just keep clicking on the "Load More" button on Fox News Insider's page on Gowdy to get an idea of those appearances.

The rest of Graham and Bozell's column is whining about Ryan Murphy, huffing that "Every week, there's a political reference" on the shows he created. Which is to say, a political reference that isn't conservative. but the MRC boys would never devote an entire column to that.

WND and Cahn Try to Save the Shemitah By Moving the Goalposts
Topic: WorldNetDaily

As a part of trying to make money off its cash cow Jonathan Cahn, WorldNetDaily has been promoting his book "The Mystery of the Shemitah," which claims that every seventh year is a "Sabbath year" or “Shemitah” year linked to various cataclysmic events.
WND reported in 2014, when the book came out and when this Shemitah year began, that Cahn explains in the book that "nearly every major U.S. stock market collapse since the early 1900s has occurred during a Shemitah year, as did the terrorist attack and stock market collapse of September 2001 and the financial collapse of 2008." That year ended on Sept. 13, or "Elul 29" on the ancient Hebrew calendar.

WND honed in on that date to promote Cahn's books. As far back as 2012, WND was claiming that "a pattern of recent economic disasters based on the Hebrew calendar portends what some suspect we will be the biggest U.S. financial calamity yet Sept. 13, 2015." In May of this year, under the headline Countdown to disaster: 4 months to Shemitah," WND's Leo Hohmann touted the "climax" of the Shemitah year happening on Sept. 13, "the same biblical day of reckoning that brought record stock-market crashes in September 2001 and September 2008." But to give Cahn some wiggle room on his prophecy, Hohmann added, "Cahn remains cautious about making any specific predictions on how the Shemitah will play out over its final four months. He emphasizes that nobody can predict with absolute clarity what will happen as August turns into September and September into October."

Well, Sept. 13 came and went and, well, not much happened. Which means Cahn and WND had to explain it away.

First up was Cahn, who wrote a Sept. 24 WND column claiming what happened on Sept. 13 really wasn't that important: "And precisely because it is so precise and because it happened in the last two of the Shemitah’s cycles, many saw it as an absolute that a massive stock market day crash had to take place on the next such day, Sept. 13. Thus we have cautioned repeatedly that this particular manifestation and any particular manifestation does not have to occur in every or any one of the Shemitah’s cycles."

Cahn goes on to explain that as long as something bad happens within the "much larger template" of occuring sometime in or near the Shemitah year, his prophecy is fulfilled: "In many of the Shemitah years, the turbulence and collapse continue and may intensify past Elul 29, into the period of the Shemitah’s wake. In others, they do not. But whatever happens from this point forward, the Shemitah has already and again powerfully manifested."

That's some serious goalpost-moving there.

Then, in an unbylined Oct. 6 article, WND complained, "just as a new movie about Cahn’s life, “The Harbinger Man,” is about to be released," about a Right Wing Watch article -- which makes sure to tell us is "George Soros-funded" despite its lack of relevance to the subject -- calling out Cahn for nothing happening on Sept. 13:

Cahn has never made any such prediction or prophecy concerning dates or time periods but rather wrote about historic patterns of the seven-year cycle in his book “The Mystery of the Shemitah.”

All references to this pattern have been accompanied with a word of caution that God “didn’t have to do anything on Sept. 13,” or any other specific date, nor does God have to comply with anyone’s calendar or expectation.

The fact that WND didn't link to the Right Wing Watch item in question (which was written about three weeks before WND's article) tells us that it's hiding something. And despite WND taking issue with Right Wing Watch's assertion that Cahn predicted terrible things would happen on the "exact date" of Sept. 13, RWW backs it up by linking to a November 2014 Charisma magazine column by Cahn in which he appears to do exactly that (italics in original):

One of the most dramatic manifestations of this biblical phenomenon took place on Sept. 29, 2008. On that morning, the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange refused to ring. Then came the greatest stock-market point collapse in Wall Street history. Massive amounts of money were wiped out as financial accounts were nullified.

On what day did this greatest collapse take place? On the biblical day of Elul 29, the central day of the mystery of the Shemitah, the very day appointed to wipe out the financial accounts of a nation. And it was not only the day, but the year. The greatest wipeout of financial accounts in American history took place on the Elul 29 that only comes around once in seven years, the exact biblical day of financial nullification.

It is a mind-boggling phenomenon. And yet it's just the beginning. If you go back seven years earlier, according to the ancient seven-year mystery, you end up in September of 2001, the month of 9/11. But it was also the month of the other greatest crash in Wall Street history, up to that day. It took place on Sept. 17. On the ancient biblical calendar, this other greatest crash in American history took place on Elul 29, the exact same day—and the day that just happens to be appointed in the Bible for the wiping away of financial accounts!

On top of that, the crash of 2001 was caused by the terrorist-inspired events of 9/11. Thus, all these things only could have taken place on the exact date they did in accordance with the ancient mystery, if the timing of 9/11 was also in accordance with the ancient mystery. Thus, even behind 9/11 lay the ancient mystery of the Shemitah.

The WND article then devolves into an personal attack on RWW and the writer of the post, with Cahn asserting that, based on "looking on the web," that the author has been "cited in the past for a lack of truthfulness, the posting of what has been deemed to be slander, and for publishing a continual stream of vicious attacks on Christians." Cahn cited no examples of this.

So, it's good to know that Cahn thinks just like his friend, WND editor Joseph Farah, when it comes to handling criticism.

If Cahn and WND didn't want to be held accountable for its predictions and suggestions on what would happen on Sept. 13, perhaps they shouldn't have hammered that date so hard in the first place.

MRC Blames The Victim For Bill O'Reilly Cutting Off His Mic
Topic: Media Research Center

In an Oct. 25 NewsBusters post, Mark Finkelstein huffed over MSNBC's Al Sharpton having "shut ... down" a conservative guest, saying, "Don't know if we've ever witnessed such a blatant suppression of facts--even on MSNBC."

But just the day before, someone was being suppressed on Fox News -- and the MRC was blaming the person being suppressed, not the host.

 Randy Hall summed it up in the headline of his Oct. 24 NewsBusters post: "BLM Advocate Provokes Bill O'Reilly Into Cutting Off His Microphone." To hear Hall tell it, O'Reilly was mad that :

During Thursday night's edition of The O'Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel, host Bill O'Reilly tried to demonstrate the bad judgment of the Democratic National Committee allying itself with the Black Lives Matter movement, which has members who have called for violence against police officers in protests all across the country.

However, Keith Boykin, an African-American who once served as a special assistant to president Bill Clinton, aggressively asserted that none of the BLM leaders agreed with that concept -- so much so that the anchor had to turn off his microphone so the host and another guest could take part in the discussion.

Hall then complained that Boykin "tried to filibuster," glosses over the fact that Boykin said O'Reilly mischaracterized his opinion on Black Lives Matter. Hall then claimed "Boykin then tried to slam the anchor" but curiously did not quote what Boykin said, and seemed to be angry that Boykin fought back against O'Reilly likening of the Black Lives Matter movement to Nazis.

So: if a liberal cuts off a conservative's microphone, it's the liberal's fault. If a conservative cuts off a liberal's microphone, it's the liberal's fault. That's "media research" at the MRC.

Newsmax Wants To Remind Right-Wingers It Still Kinda Hates The Clintons After All
Topic: Newsmax

It seems that Newsmax wants to regain some of its right-wing Clinton-hating cred.

Newsmax publisher Christopher Ruddy has become buddies with Bill Clinton and his foundation, which has caused some backlash in certain right-wing circles where Clinton-hating is an unshakable tenet and who remember that Ruddy founded Newsmax in no small part as an outlet for anti-Clinton forces during his presidency.

Newsmax has apparently decided it wants some of that Clinton-hating mojo back. Its latest loss-leader book offer (for which you surrender your credit card number to receive a few "free" months of Newsmax's magazine, which you have to cancel before the end of the free period to avoid being charged for a full year's subscription) is Ed Klein's new Hillary-bashing book "Unlikeable." The promotion for it includes this fanciful text:

Hillary’s house of cards is crashing around her.

First she screamed at Obama in the Oval Office, “Call off your f---ing dogs!” 

Now Ed Klein is blowing the whistle on other stunning details of her shady political dealings and bitter feud with Barack Obama in a new book that just hit the streets.

Unlikeable: The Problem With Hillary hammers the final nails into the coffin of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s flagging presidential aspirations.

Highly regarded journalist and political analyst Ed Klein has thoroughly documented HRC’s decades-long trail of lies, deception, and conniving.

She even dropped an f-bomb on the president of the United States!

Hillary simply won’t be able to talk her way out of this one.

Especially considering the airtight sourcing and impeccable fact-checking Ed Klein has employed in what some are calling the must-read political book of the year.

You can claim your copy for FREE from the limited quantity Newsmax magazine has secured exclusively for our preferred readers.

In fact, the truth about on Klein is very much the opposite of what Newsmax claims. Far from being a "highly regarded journalist" who uses "airtight sourcing and impeccable fact-checking," Klein is considered a joke by actual journalists who point out his heavy use of anonymous and untraceable sources, factual errors and distortions, and lazy "cut and paste" writing.

There's no reason to believe this isn't also the case with Klein's new book, but don't expect Newsmax to tell you that.

Newsmax is also running an odd little poll of the opt-in kind (and, thus, scientifically meaningless)which it claims it will offer to "major outlets" at some undetermined point in the future. Here are the first two questions:

1) In your opinion, did Hillary Clinton violate the law by storing State Department and classified emails on her personal server?

2) Did Hillary violate the law by deleting all emails from her personal server?

But the determination of what is or is not legal isn't a poll or popularity contest, it's based on what's written in the law -- which means the poll is even more meaningless than usual.

Newsmax also doesn't mention that fact-checkers have determined that while Clinton's use of a private server is questionable, it's a legal area that's murky at best and it is unlikely she will ever be found to have violated the letter of any law regarding its use.

WND Hopes to Cash In Again On Jonathan Cahn
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily and editor Joseph Farah have been enamored for years with "messianic rabbi" Jonathan Cahn since he came out with his book "The Harbinger," which posited that the Bible contains a prophecy of 9/11 -- something that isn't quite true and is based on Bible verses taken out of context.

It helps that Cahn despises President Obama as much as Farah does; WND even tried to manufacture a mystique about an anti-Obama speech Cahn once gave.

Now, after having already made a film about "The Harbinger," WND is hoping to make some more coin off of Cahn by producing a documentary about his life, "The Harbinger Man." WND's self-promotion of the film has bordered on the ludicrous.

One article declares that Cahn is "known by many as 'America’s prophet,'" but doesn't identify any of those "many" who purportedly say that. But a later article gives us a clue that one of them is Cahn's own hype man, Joseph Farah: “He doesn’t like to be called a prophet, but if he is not a prophet for our time then I don’t know the definition of a prophet.”

Another article, by house propagandist Bob Unruh, lays the myth-making on thick:

The exploding gas tanks of the 1970s Ford Pintos are the reason Popular Mechanics designated the vehicle one of “The Top Automotive Engineering Failures.”

“Ford neglected to add reinforcements to protect the easily ruptured fuel tank, endangering drivers while earning the Pinto a reputation for catching fire that persists today. The automaker’s public relations black eye lasted for years,” the magazine said.

The problem, as PM explained, was that tests revealed that in low-speed rear-end crash testing, the fuel tank, just in front of the back bumper, was subjected to a series of potential problems that “combined to create a serious risk of fire.”

They exploded in even low-speed crashes with other cars. But the company opted to pay damages to victims rather than pay for the fix.

“The Harbinger Man,” messianic rabbi Jonathan Cahn, whose life story is told in a new movie by that name, was in one of those Pintos.

He wasn’t hit by a car.

He was hit by a train.

And he emerged without a scratch.

Of course, Unruh kinda had to undercut his story by admitting that "the train hit the car from the side," which would not have created the normal Pinto explosive impact.

Bu never mind the facts; yet another article tells us how "Cahn feels he was destined to serve as a kind of watchman" and "doing what he was meant to do," which appears to involve serving as a cash cow for Farah and WND.

The fawning culminates in Farah's Oct. 11 column, in which he declares there's "something supernatural" about Cahn's story, and he felt some sort of "burden" to tell it:

In 2012, I had a burden to make a movie version of “The Harbinger” story. “The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment” became the biggest faith movie of 2013 and 2014. It touched the lives of millions. Likewise, in 2014, I had a burden to make a movie version of Jonathan Cahn’s life story. My hope and prayer is that “The Harbinger Man” will be used by God to strengthen and embolden the faith of millions in 2015, 2016 and beyond.

Of course, Farah wouldn't be telling us that his previous Cahn film was "the biggest faith movie of 2013 and 2014" if he wasn't hoping for a similar performance from his new one, and that strongly suggests that Farah was feeling another "burden" as well: to make money. WND is a for-profit business, after all, not a ministry.

Farah insists that "a righteous transformation of America " can only come from "individual transformations of the hearts of people devoting their lives to the one and only Savior of the human race," and that "Nobody is a more effective witness to that urgent need than Jonathan Cahn." It probably doesn't hurt that he and Cahn see eye-to-eye on their vicious hatred for President Obama.

Or that Cahn is so agreeable to becoming a basis of revenue for Farah and WND.

CNS Writer Promotes Her Old Scientology-Touting Article
Topic: CNSNews.com

An Oct. 22 CNSNews.com article by Barbara Hollingsworth raises the issue of overprescription of antidepressants. She cites mainstream, peer-reviewed sources to do it. It's a legitimate issue.

But we noted that at the end of her article, Hollingsworth provided a "related" link to a CNS article she wrote a year ago promoting retired Army psychologist Bart Billings' claim that there is “a direct correlation” between the increased use of psychiatric medications to treat PTSD and the high rate of military suicides.

In that article, Hollingsworth tried to boost  Billings' credibility by noting that "Billings was the recipient of the 2014 Human Rights Award by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), which has produced a documentary, 'The Hidden Agenda,' on the use of use of psychiatric drugs in the military." She didn't report that the Citizens Commission on Human Rights was created by the Church of Scientology with the goal of attacking the field of psychiatry and is not a "human rights" organization at all.

Hollingsworth's Oct. 22 article, while using legitimate sources, do raise the issue, combined with her earlier Scientology-touting item, of what her agenda is and why she's using her CNS platform to try and discredit antidepressants. Her CNS superiors should discuss with her whether this is an agenda they want to be pursuing.

Mychal Massie Thesaurus Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily

When WorldNetDaily columnist Mychal Massie isn't spewing hatred, he's plundering thesauruses for five-dollar words to stick in his column.

He drops some more excess verbiage in his Oct. 19 WND column, in which he uses the phrase "pernicious camarilla of Erebusic marplots."

Now, "Erebusic" and "marplots" are two of Massie's favorite showoff words, but we don't recall him putting them together like that. We're not sure what a "pernicious camarilla" is, let alone a "pernicious camarilla of Erebusic marplots."

This superiority exercise by Massie, by the way, is directed at a year-old study arguing that twice as many drivers failed to yield for black pedestrians than those who were white. Massie declared -- in language used by actual humans -- that this "witch-hunt" was conducted by "white cultural Marxists" who were expressing their "personal bigotry."

Massie further argued that the behavior found in the study was justified because of "the high rate of violent behavior by blacks." No, really:

These white-hating racists and all like them never factor in the idea of self-preservation of the whites they are accusing. They did not factor in the number of car-jackings by blacks or the documented unprovoked attacks upon vehicles operated by whites in intersections and crosswalks by blacks. Did they factor the attacks by blacks such as the kidnapping, rape, sodomizing, torture and murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom? (See: “We Must Unite Against Black Racialists”; mychal-massie.com; Dec. 20, 2013)

Of course not, because that would mean holding blacks accountable for their actions. Neither these people nor their alleged researched studies are interested in truth; they are only interested in promoting white guilt, accusing whites and continuing the idea of blacks being treated negatively based on the color of their skin.

This wasn’t a study – it was an exercise in the “golem effect,” a phenomenon in which low expectations lead to decreased performance, which is a form of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Uh, yeah.We've detailed how Massie loves to invoke his black-conservative privilege to say things that would leave him branded as a racist were he not a black conservative.

Maybe Massie should stick to thesaurus-plundering.

MRC Clinton Derangement Syndrome, Benghazi Edition
Topic: Media Research Center

In keeping with the long, sordid history of Clinton derangement that animates the Media Research Center roared to life once again with Hillary Clinton's testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

TheMRC kicked things off with the Oct. 21 column by Tim Graham and Brent Bozel, which rather desperately tries to distract from the statements from Republicans -- not Democrats -- that the committee is designed to harm Hillary's presidential chances: "The Democrats have pushed heavily on the narrative that the House probe is transparently political — as if everything they say about Clinton is transparently ... nonpartisan?" See what they did there?

They even spun Republican Kevin McCarthy's statement to that effect by claiming he merely said Hillary was "untrustable," omitting the part about how he said it was the Benghazi committee that made her so.

The MRC displayed its full-derangement mode with the headline of this Oct. 22 post by Geoffrey Dickens: "Watch Hillary Gleefully Laugh As Andrea Mitchell Clip Played In Her Defense At Benghazi Hearing." That's right -- Hillary laughing is the only item of "media research" substance it could pull from the testimony.

Other items of MRC "media research" include complaining about commentary over the hearing that was insufficiently hateful of Hillary and a clip of MRC chief Brent Bozell whining on Fox Business that Republicans weren't asking Hillary tough enough questions.

Meanwhile, over at MRC "news" division CNSNews.com, here is what was considered "news" from the Benghazi hearing:

 

• An article by Melanie Hunder rehashing Rep. Trey Gowdy's assertion that his Benghazi committee is not about Clinton, but omitting the statements of two Republicans and a former committee staffer that the committee is designed to ruin Clinton's presidential campaign.
• Another article by Hunter fowarding the amazing right-wing spin that "of the more than 600 security requests related to Libya and Benghazi that came in in 2012 before the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack none ever reached her desk" yet "[Sid] Blumenthal’s 150 emails reached her desk." hunter did not point out the difference between personal messages from Blumenthal and requests for security that went to State Department personnel whose job it was to review.
• A lengthy rehash by Susan Jones of Republicn Rep. Jim Jordan's talking points for his questioning of Clinton, which is so skewed it reads like it was written by Jordan's congressional staffers.
• An article by Jones repeating testimony by Clinton, in response to a Republican representative's questioning, that "I did not conduct most of my business that I did on behalf of our country on email."
  
• A repeat of an article on Benghazi CNS first published in 2013.
• A blog post featuring Adam Baldwin's take on the Benghazi hearings. CNS' Mark Judge did not explain what special insight the actor has into Benghazi that made his views worthy of a blog post.
  

No original CNS story on the hearing referenced questioning from Democratic members of the committee.

WND Columnist Censors California Gov's Explanation of Right-To-Try Veto
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Barbara Simpson rants in her Oct. 18 WorldNetDaily column:

California Gov. Jerry Brown is giving thinking people in his state whiplash with his position on the “Right to Die” and “Right to Try” bills.

On the one hand, he signed the “End of Life Option Act,” allowing supposedly terminally ill people to legally kill themselves using doctor-prescribed drugs.

Then, within days, Brown vetoed the “Right to Try” bill, which would have allowed terminally ill people to have access to experimental drugs or devices not yet approved by the FDA but which might aid their condition.

Brown’s signature makes it impossible for patients to have a last-ditch chance to try treatment that may affect their survival – and have the opportunity to make that decision for themselves.

But terminally ill people do, in fact, have "a last-ditch chance to try treatment that may affect their survival" -- and that's why Brown vetoed the bill.

Brown said that "Patients with life threatening conditions should be able to try experimental drugs, and the United States Food and Drug Administration's compassionate use program allows this to happen. ... Before authorizing an alternative state pathway, we should give this federal expedited process a chance to work."

Simpson chose to censor Brown explanation from her column, presumably so it wouldn't interfere with the bashing of Brown she devotes her column to unleashing.