Cruz Supporters At MRC Give Cruz A Pass On CNN And Ben Carson Topic: Media Research Center
It's no secret that Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell is a supporter of Ted Cruz (and a hater of Donald Trump), and that attitude is bleeding into his organization as the MRC is working hard to shield Cruz from media criticism.
During the Iowa caucuses, Cruz's campaign spread a false claim that CNN reported Ben Carson had dropped out of the caucuses, encouraging Carson supporters to cast their votes for Cruz instead. While Cruz apologized to Carson, he also insisted that CNN reported that Carson was quitting the campaign -- which CNN did not do.
But don't expect to read about Cruz's blunder at the MRC, though. It has, however, complained that the media reported it, though -- Curtis Houck groused that news outlets reported on Donald Trump "accusing Ted Cruz of “stealing” the Iowa caucuses" through the false Carson claim.
A Feb. 4 post by Scott Whitlock touted how Cruz "school[ed]" an ABC reporter who asked him about it by retorting, "Is it a dirty trick to pass on your news stories?" Whitlock didn't mention that the information Cruz passed on was wrong.
And when Cruz falsely claimed again during the Feb. 6 GOP debate that it was CNN, not his campaign that got the Carson information wrong, the MRC remained silent on the issue, and Bozell didn't even highlight it on his Twitter feed.
By contrast, the MRC has published numberous posts defending Cruz. These include a couple apparently done to hide the controversy over his false statements about CNN's reporting on Carson -- a Feb. 4 post detailing what Geoffrey Dickens calls "the Worst Media Attacks on Ted Cruz (so far)" -- which misleadingly conflates news reporting with statements by opinion commentators -- and a Feb. 6 post by Tim Graham complaining that the Washington Post did an article about what Canadians think of Cruz, given that he was born there.
At one point Graham writes, "Birtherism is a viciously racist mental disorder when used against Barack Obama, but it’s an amusing exercise in needling when it’s used against a conservative." If that's what Graham really thinks about Obama birtherism, that's a change from the MRC's normal policy of letting the president twist in the wind on the issue by refusing to aggressively denounce it (at least until it became an issue for Cruz).
FBI Video Shoots Down WND's Attempt To Build Oregon Shooting Conspiracy Theory Topic: WorldNetDaily
Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall writes that it was smart for the FBI to release video of the arrest of several people involved in the Oregon standoff, which resulted in the death of standoff spokesman LaVoy Finicum -- in which it's pretty clear that Finicum ran a roadblock, tries to make a run for it, and appears to reach for the gun on his waist before he's shot -- because it short-circuited attempts to construct conspiracy theories about what happened.
How true. WorldNetDaily, which was trying to go there before the video was released, has largely abandoned the story.
WND columnist Jeff Knox, in a Jan. 27 column, touted the "very credible" account of a passenger in one of those vehicles of standoff perpetrators authorities stopped and arrested, who insisted that "none of the protesters fired a shot or even touched a gun during the encounter." Knox added that Finicum was "a soft-spoken rancher and father of 11 from Arizona" and that "The death of LaVoy Finicum is a needless tragedy" taking place "in circumstances that some are calling murder," although he conceded that Ammon Bundy should have "negotiated a peaceful end to the situation and sent his supporters home to their families weeks ago." WND also posted audio of the passenger's account -- twice.
On Jan. 28, WND's Cheryl Chumley gave a platform to right-wing radio host (and friend of WND) Michael Savage to rant that Finicum's shooting was a "murder" and that if the feds don't investigate it, the United Nations should. Savage went on to rant that “We’re going to fight this dirty, evil government" as Chumley noted that "The details of Finicum’s death are fuzzy."
The next day, the FBI released the video. WND posted the video -- but the same day posted an article by Chumley somehow blaming the entire Oregon standoff on Hillary Clinton. No, really:
Call it a conspiracy theory – or not. But a curious investigative reporter, Jon Rappoport, posted an interesting angle to the Oregon standoff between protesting ranchers and feds that left one of the former dead, with this headline: “The Clintons: Is the Oregon standoff really about uranium?”
That article was, in fact, a followup to a previous story he wrote that was titled, “The Clintons: How Putin grabbed a fifth of all U.S. uranium.” And in the most recent, he simply looked at the information he presented in the first – how a deal approved under Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state transferred 20 percent of U.S. uranium production to Russia – and tied it to the geographical location of a proposed uranium mine in Oregon.
Coincidentally, the mine development was proposed for the same general area of the widely reported standoff between protesters and federal and police forces, Rappoport wrote.
It seems WND had to give up one conspiracy theory and had to try another. And, actually, that one's a bust too: Quartz explains that the issue at hand -- that Hillary Clinton was part of a committee that signed off on a purchased of a Canada-based uranium mining firm, an investor in which donated heavily to the Clinton Foundation, by Russia's atomic energy agency -- isn't really a controversy because that committee, which signs off on foreign investments in the U.S., had eight other members who also had to sign off on it. As FactCheck.org adds, there's no evidence Clinton took any action regarding the sale, and the Washington Post notes that the Clinton Foundation donor had sold his interest in the company before its sale to the Russians.
WND, however, hasn't done much of anything on either conspiracy since, though WND columnist and lying preacher Bradlee Dean screeched that the Clintons were "promising the Hammond ranch and other 'publicly owned lands' to Russians with one-fifth of our uranium ore." Except, you know, they didn't.
CNS Hides 'Duck Dynasty' Guy's Threat Against Gay Marriage Supporters Topic: CNSNews.com
Eric Scheiner writes in a Feb. 2 CNSNews.com blog post:
Phil Robertson of ‘Duck Dynasty’ fame called same sex marriage “wicked” and “sinful” over the weekend.
Robertson addressed the crowd at a Ted Cruz rally in Iowa City on Sunday.
“Don’t you understand when a fella like me looks at the landscape and sees the depravity, the perversion – redefining marriage and telling us that marriage is not between a man and a woman, c’mon Iowa, it’s nonsense,” Robertson said.
“It is evil. It’s wicked. It’s sinful,” he continued.
Robertson previously caused controversy in 2013 by telling GQ magazine that homosexuality is a sin and immoral.
Scheiner curiously omits what Robertson says next, even though it's in the video attached to his item: "We have to run this bunch out of Washington, D.C. We have to rid the earth of them."
If a liberal said "we have to rid the earth" of people he or she disagreed with, CNS (and its Media Research Center parent) would be all over it. But if a conservative like Robertson says it, CNS will give him a pass and even helpfully bury the threat.
WND's Corsi Quick to Baselessly Blame Zika Virus on Illegal Immigrants Topic: WorldNetDaily
As we've seen with his obsession with Hillary Clinton's health, WorldNetDaily's Jerome Corsi doesn't actually know a whole lot about medicine, so any medical-related judgment from him is specious at best. Yet he perserveres in making medical-related judgments, like in this Feb. 1 article:
In the wake of the World Health Organization’s decision Monday to declare the Zika virus outbreak in Brazil an international health emergency, a glance at available evidence suggests open borders contribute to the vulnerability of the United States to the virus.
In November 2014, WND reported dengue hemorrhagic fever had joined Chagas disease, Enterovirus D-68 and Chikungunya – as well as drug-resistant tuberculosis and malaria – on the list of diseases brought to the United States by illegal aliens, including through the several surges of “unaccompanied minors” that the Obama administration had admitted without health screening.
Note that Corsi is admitting to just taking "a glance at available evidence" -- which is basically code for rehashing right-wing xenophobia. Needless to say, Corsi offers no evidence to back up his claim.
Indeed, in the very next paragraph after the ones quoted above, he notes that "he WHO director-general, Dr. Margaret Chan, made clear the outbreak of the Zika virus in Brazil had been declared an international health emergency because of a suspected causal relationship" to microcephaly in newborns. Corsi fails to note that Brazil is not a leading contributor to illegal immigration in the U.S.
As for the other diseases Corsi names as "diseases brought to the United States by illegal aliens," that's not true either. Corsi later repeats his false claim that the "unaccompanied minors" from Central America who flooded into the U.S. were responsible for bringing dengue fever across the border; we've previously documented that the disease was in the U.S. years before. We've also pointed out that the Centers for Disease Control have found no evidence of a link between illegal immigrants and enterovirus outbreaks in the U.S.
Corsi also offers no evidence that illegal immi grants are responsible for chikungunya outbreaks in the U.S. The CDC points out that outbreaks occurred in Africa, Asia and Europe prior to 2013.
Given that WND fearmongersaboutvaccines and is also home to variousrepresentatives of the far-right, anti-vaxxer Association of American Physicians and Surgeons -- who also like to fearmonger about filthy, disease-ridden immigrants -- it's no surprise Corsi is joining a long, dubious line of quack medical information.
UPDATE: Corsi continues baselessly suggesting illegal immigrants are to blame for Zika virus in the U.S. in a Feb. 3 WND article.
NewsBusters Anti-Abortion Screed Isn't Interested In The Facts Topic: NewsBusters
Bryan Ballas devotes a Jan. 31 NewsBusters post to ranting that somebody defended Planned Parenthood -- after all, right-wing dogma dictates that nobody is allowed to. In the process, he repeats a few false right-wing anti-abortion canards in the process.
Ballas seems pretty happy that Planned Parenthood has been the target of violence since the anti-abortion Center for Medical Progress' videos were made public. He complains that the Yahoo Health article he's attacking points out that "In October the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that the organization had seen four incidences of arson in 74 days.” Ballas then huffs: "Note there’s no 'alleged' arson."
We suspect that, like the MRC's CNSNews.com, Ballas took anti-abortion activist Jill Stanek's claim to be a victim of vandalism at face value -- CNS' Barbara Hollingsworth uncritically repeats Stanek's claim that "An unknown vandal had thrown a plastic Target bag containing a chunk of cinder block through her front window." If the MRC is going to be fair on the subject (which, of course, it's not), shouldn't it have described Stanek's claims to be "alleged" just as Ballas demands any claim of vandalism and arson made by Planned Parenthood be described?
Ballas continues his whine-fest, complaining further that the Yahoo Health article describes the CMP videos to be "heavily edited," adding: "Of course, she conveniently neglects to produce proof that the unedited version absolves the abortion giant of offering to sell baby parts." Of course, as we've noted, there's plenty of evidence that those videos were, in fact, "heavily edited" to the point that they don't show what CMP claims they do.Why didn't Ballas bother to look for it?
Because he's too busy ranting to care about the facts, that's why. He goes on to respond to the grand jury indictment of CMP officials for apparent crimes in conducting their anti-Planned Parenthood jihad by asserting that "Lauren Reeder, the assistant district attorney and prosecutor in the Harris County District Attorney’s criminal family law division, is a Planned Parenthood board member." Ballas didn't mention -- or couldn't be bothered to find out -- that, as the Washington Post's Eugene Volokh reported, Reeder is one of 300 prosecutors in the Harris County Harris County District Attorney’s office, she disclosed her involvement with Planned Parenthood before the investigation, and was not involved in it.
Finally, upset that the Yahoo Health harticle lamented that Planned Parenthood is being damaged by the dishonest CMP videos, Ballas goes off on one last rant:
Everyone should take a moment of silence for the “damaged” reputation of Planned Parenthood, a corporation that literally makes money off the blood of children. An organization founded by Margaret Sanger, an unrepentant racist who advocated the forced sterilization of minorities she considered inferior. Its loss of face will be mourned by all.
Oh, this again. As we've documented, nobody who has actually studied Sanger with any degree of honesty believes she was an "unrepentant racist," and she did not "advocate the forced sterilization of minorities she considered inferior."
But, again, Ballas is too busy ranting to be bothered with little things like facts.
WND Uses Logrolling To Boost What Little Credibility It Has Topic: WorldNetDaily
Nobody believes WorldNetDaily, so WND is desperate to boost what little credibility it has any way it can. Its latest attempt is engage in a little bit of logrolling -- getting folks it has boosted in the past to say good things about WND and even give it awards.
In December, WND featured Donald Trump's upcoming appearance with numerous right-wingers at March's Western Conservative Conference. After noting that Floyd Brown, president of the Western Center for Journalism, is one of the conference co-hosts, WND touted its own upcoming recognition:
In addition, WND founder and CEO Joseph Farah will receive the Western Center for Journalism’s Hero of Freedom Award during a dinner gala celebrating the 25th anniversary of Farah’s founding of the WCJ. Rush Limbaugh has been invited to present the award.
Brown praised Farah for his “unwavering commitment to news without bias and an agenda.”
What? Has Brown ever read WND? It's hard to find anything on the website that doesn't have bias and an agenda.
But, yeah, the WCJ is Farah's creation (under the less highfalutin name of the Western Journalism Center), and is so irrelevant to the right-wing media agenda that we don't even bother monitoring it. It has tried to out-birther WND, and it even collaborated with WND on an error-ridden "case for impeachment" that WND is currently unloading for a mere $4.95. This is just one longtime collaborator giving the other an shiny, meaningless award.
From there, WND is reduced to hanging out at county Republican banquets.From a Jan. 31 article:
WND founder, editor-in-chief and CEO Joseph Farah will return to familiar territory on Feb. 13 as the keynote speaker at the Josephine County, Oregon, Republican Central Committee’s 2016 Lincoln Day Dinner.
He will speak about the state of politics in America and the state of the press.
“As a former resident and business owner in Josephine County, I look forward to returning to visit some old friends and to share insights on the 2016 campaign as well as the state of the press in America, an institution in which I have toiled for the last 40 years of my life,” Farah said.
WND Vice President and Managing Editor David Kupelian will also speak at the event.
The county is indeed where WND originated, at a ranch owned by talk-radio mogul and accused cult leader Roy Masters. But you have to read down for the key information:
Also in attendance will be noted research scientist Art Robinson, co-founder of the Linus Pauling Institute and the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. Robinson, who is [county Republican chairman] Joshua Robinson’s father, is the former chairman of the Oregon Republican Party and three times ran for Congress, unsuccessfully, against U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, co-founder of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Art Robinson will also speak during the event.
And for each of Art Robinson's failed runs against DeFazio, Kupelian wrote a column for WND -- essentially the same one with minor updates through the years -- touting Robinson while spinning or ignoring inconvenient truths about him -- like how his homeschool curriculum teaches public-domain 19th-century adventure novels that are a tad racist, or how the climate-denier petition his Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine has promulgated iskind of a joke, or the right-wing sugar daddy who bought hundreds of thousands of dollars in ads to benefit his campaigns.
Farah and Kupelian are effectively getting rewarded for their loyalty to the Robinson family by getting this (very tiny) boost of credibility of hanging out at a county GOP banquet and hanging out with friends. A nice jumket, perhaps, but a rather desperate stab at credibility.
Dr. Joseph Berger, a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, states that from “a scientific perspective,” being “transgendered” is a psychological issue – “emotional unhappiness” – and “cosmetic surgery” is not the “proper treatment.”
Dr. Berger, who also is a past president of the Ontario District Branch of the American Psychiatric Association, presented his remarks before the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights when it was considering a bill (C-279) in 2013 to “include gender identity as a prohibited ground of discrimination.”
That's right -- the testimony Chapman is citing took place three years ago. Chapman does not explain why he only now finds it to be newsworthy.
Chapman goes on to pump up Berger's psychiatric and medical credentials, but he omits that Berger is affiliated with with the notoriously anti-gay National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, and that Berger actually recommended that transgender youth be bullied.
Chapman has a fondness for old, outdated transphobia. In 2014 he rehashed a two-month-old anti-transgender commentary, which he lazily re-rehashed a year later by slapping a new publication date on it.
As with that old rehashed commentary, Chapman made no attempt whatsoever to reach out to transgender advocvates to provide balance, even though CNS' mission statement insists that the organization "endeavors to fairly present all legitimate sides of a story."
Apparently, hating transgenders is more important to Chapman than following sound journalistic practice.
Dr. Corsi Is Suddenly Concerned About Hillary's Drug Use Topic: WorldNetDaily
Now we're seeing why Jerome Corsi can't be bothered to exert much energy investigating the issue of Ted Cruz's eligibility (other than the fact that Cruz is not his political enemy, like Barack Obama is): He's suddenly concerned about Hillary Clinton's health.
For the past week, Corsi has been obsessing over Clinton's use of an anticoagulant called warfarin, also sold under the brand name Coumadin. In a Jan. 27 article, Corsi was concerned that warfarin "may have side effects that are hazardous to her health, according to medical literature." Corsi displayed his medical ignorance by referring to the drug as "Coumadin – also called Warfarin." Warfarin is not a brand name; it's the generic name of the drug. Remember, Corsi is not a medical doctor; his Ph.D. is in history.
Indeed, most people take warfarin as a generic, as the Coumadin patent expired a couple decades ago. And despite Corsi's suggestion that warfarin is some kind of secret nefarious drug, it's popular; by one count, there are more than 25 million prescriptions written for it every year in the U.S., and by by another count, 2 million people taking it at any given time.
Corsi ratchets things up in a Jan. 31 article touting how "A California physician who had his license to practice medicine revoked in the state because he refused to administer the anticoagulant medication Coumadin, believes Hillary Clinton’s use of the drug could be more life-threatening to her than the possibility of a recurring blood clot."
Corsi then rushed to defend his doctor, David K. Cundiff, over the 1998 incident that led to the revocation of his medical license, asserting that "Cundiff stopped administering Coumadin to the patient, who had an alcohol problem the doctor believed could trigger internal bleeding." In fact, according to the California appeals court that upheld the denial of reinstatement of his license -- after "accusations of gross negligence and incompetence were sustained against him" -- Cundiff made the decision to stop treating the patient with warfarin unilaterially, failing to consult with other doctors, to alert the patient or his family, or to provide any alternative treatment. The court further noted that the standard of care for a patient with a blood clot in the vein in which the patient had one is anticoagulants. The court also noted that Cundiff failed to read the patient's chart completely and relied entirely on verbal representations of his interns and residents for information vital to the patient's care and treatment.
The court pointed out that since his license was revoked, "Cundiff appears to have devoted the vast majority of his professional efforts to research and writing aimed largely at establishing that his actions in 1998 were within the standard of care, or that the standard of care has changed since then (or must change). What he fails, and has repeatedly failed, to understand is that the only relevant medical standard at issue in these proceedings was that which was extant in February 1998."
Then again, Corsi is a guy who relies on the incompetent and deceitful likes of Joel Gilbert, so it's not surprising he'd take the word of a doctor stripped of his medical license.
Unencumbered by the facts, Corsi penned a third article on the subject on Feb. 1, in which he highlights the fact that "The blood-thinning medication Hillary Clinton has been taking for years under the pharmaceutical brand name Coumadin was initially introduced and marketed in 1948 as a pesticide designed to kill rats and mice." Which may be true, but it's irrelevant to the issue. In fact, the original headline on Corsi's article, which remains in the artaicle's URL, read "Doctor: HIllary taking rat poison for blood clots"; WND didn't explain why it changed the headline.
But even Corsi had to conced that according to the guy who brought up the stuff about it starting as rat poison, "Despite the severe risks of taking Coumadin ... it may be the better alternative for some patients."
Corsi is not a doctor, and to our knowledge he has not talked with Clinton's doctors. Heck, he doesn't even know if Clinton is still taking warfarin. This is all fearmongering that's part of WND's anti-Hillary jihad. Remember, Corsi is a key component of this, which so far has generated an article falsely claiming that Hillary said she hates Israel (which WND quietly deleted after it apparently decided it had standards after all).
By the way, WND claims that "The Hillary Clinton Investigative Justice Project has reached its first threshold, having raised sufficient funds to continue its investigative series into the presidential candidate for illegal activities and to prepare a series of hard-hitting reports for WND that will lead to criminal charges being filed against her at the state level, if the Justice Department fails to indict her."
Nowhere does WND state it's interested in reporting the truth about Hillary -- it's trying to destroy her. It did the same thing to Barack Obama, and look how that turned out.
The MRC's Deliberately Incomplete Trump-Coverage Analysis Topic: Media Research Center
Rich Noyes trumpets in a Feb. 1 Media Research Center "Media Reality Check":
For months, one of GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s major advantages has been the establishment media’s decision to cover his candidacy to the near-exclusion of his Republican competitors. A new analysis by the Media Research Center finds Trump continued to receive the vast majority of TV news coverage throughout the month of January, leading up to tonight’s crucial Iowa caucuses.
Actually, Noyes' analysis is deliberately incomplete -- and, thus meaningless. His definiton of "TV news" is very tiny -- just "the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts." He has apparently forgotten there are three major and several minor cable news channels that also qualify as "TV news."
Of course, Noyes' job is a lot easier if all he has to do is monitor three half-hour network newscasts instead of the approximately 18 hours of original coverage cable news networks typically generate per day. But there seems to be more than lazineess going on here.
The MRC has long been buddies with Fox News -- Brent Bozell and his minions make regular appearances on it and sister channel Fox Business, almost always in solo interviews, not panels where someone from a different ideological viewpoint might challenge their opinions -- and it regularly plays apologist for acts by Fox News that would receive vicious condemnation were they conducted by a channel with which the MRC is not ideologically aligned.
The MRC's historic exclusion of cable news channels may stem from a simple refusal to hold Fox News to its own standards. And in this particular case, there's a goldmine of evidence to support denouncing Fox News as a promoter of Trump.
As Media Matters points out, Fox News loves Trump -- for instance, he spent a total of 24 hours on Fox from May 2015, whenhe announced his candidacy, thorugh the end of 2015, which added up to about $30 million of free airtime for Trump. Fox is so dependent on Trump, in fact, that when Trump pulled out of last week's Fox-hosted GOP debate, Fox host Bill O'Reilly devoted much of an interview with Trump to begging him to reconsider.
But you won't see the MRC pointing this out, and you won't see Bozell aggressively calling Fox News out for its fealty to Trump -- he wants to keep that weekly "Hannity" segment, after all. The closest he got was an appearance last week on Fox Business, in which Bozell meekly averred that Fox, "with all due respect, is slightly responsible" for the Trump frenzy "because I think it's catered to this man."
Only "slightly responsible"? That's what happens when he refuses to let his employees do actual media research. He knows what side of his media-appearance bread is buttered, after all, and he's not going to jeopardize things by pushing the issue any farther than that.
WND Can't Stop Fearmongering About Gardasil Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has been fearmongering about Gardasil and other HPV vaccines for years, uncritically repeating anti-vaxxers' distorted or outright false claims about it. Even though much of WND has claimed about HPV vaccines has not come to pass, let alone proven true, WND just can't stop the fearmongering.
WND's Bob Unruh -- who has promoteddubiousGardasilfearmongering in the past -- tries again in a Jan. 18 article highlighting Dr. Sin Hang Lee, "director of the Milford Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory of Milford, Connecticut," who alleges in an open-letter complaint to the head of the World Health Organization that top physicians engaged in 'gross misconduct, malfeasance' and potentially 'criminal behavior' to 'mislead the global public regarding the safety of HPV vaccines Gardasil and Cervarix.'" Unruh continues:
“I have come into possession of documentation which leads me to believe multiple individuals and organizations deliberately set out to mislead Japanese authorities regarding the safety of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines, Gardasil and Cervarix.”
His letter to Dr. Margaret Chan, chief of the WHO, expresses “grave concerns” regarding statements by members of the Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety, the WHO, the Centers for Disease Control and others in a 2014 public hearing on HPV vaccine safety in Tokyo.
He asks for her to “act quickly and decisively” on the issue.
What he reportedly uncovered, according to an analysis from the Weston A. Price Foundation, which is critical of the vaccines, was that certain chemicals in the vaccines “have been demonstrated to trigger the release of cytokines or proteins called tumor necrosis factors (TNF) in the body.”
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“TNF cytokines can cause cell death,” the foundation said. “The release of TNF can also result in a wide range of reactions such as tumor regressions, septic shock (serious whole-body inflammatory response that can result in dangerously low blood pressure and death), and cachexia (a wasting syndrome where the body loses weight, becomes fatigued, and muscles atrophy).”
The details were gleaned from emails exchanged among several officials, Lee said.
Unruh doesn't mention the fact that Lee has historically worked with anti-vaxxer groups to attack Gardasil, and his work is based on "a nonexistent understanding of molecular biology. One writer points out that Lee's research on HPV vaccines has not been replicated by others, and that they "just don’t qualify as good science."
But Unruh didn't mention Lee's dubious history in his article, nor does he bother to talk to any actual experts on HPV for a response to Lee's fearmongering. Instead, his idea of following boss Joseph Farah's purported mandate to "seek out multiple sources and contrary viewpoints in news articles" is to contact -- and predictably fail to get a response from -- WHO regarding Lee's letter.
Promoting a medical quack isn't exactly helping WND's current campaign to be taken seriously after destroying any credibility it had trying to destroy President Obama.
MRC Silent On Ted Cruz's Compaints of Bias In Fox News Debate Topic: Media Research Center
We've already seen that the Media Research Center ignoring Donald Trump's complaints about bias at Fox News-hosted debates -- after all, MRC chief Brent Bozell hates Trump and would like to keep appearing on Fox.
In an email sent out before the Jan. 28 Republican presidential debate hosted and moderated by Fox News, the MRC declared that it "will be on high alert for media bias surrounding tonight’s debate, as it's yet another opportunity for the media to openly attack conservative candidates and their proposals, instead of reporting on them fairly and letting voters decide."
Well, actually, not so much. Ted Cruz -- who Bozell and the MRC crew like much better than Trump, and who has parroted right-wing media-bias complaints, much to the pleasure of the MRC -- actually threatened to quit mid-debate over the Fox News moderators' bias: "The last four questions have been 'Rand, please attack Ted,' 'Jeb, please attack Ted' ...Gosh, if you guys ask one more mean question, I may have to leave the stage." He then added, "I would suggest let's stay focused on those issues rather than just attacks directed at each other."
What was the response from the MRC to Cruz's media bias accusations? Crickets.
Bozell mentioned nothing about Cruz's complaint on his Twitter feed, and his MRC ignored it entirely. The only bias-related complaint the MRC lodged about the debate carefully avoided directly criticizing Fox News debate moderators like Megyn Kelly; it huffed that "Fox News allowed a Bernie Sanders supporter to grill GOP candidates on anti-Islamic “hate” within the United States."
Randy Hall did write a NewsBusters post on Megyn Kelly referring to Trump, who refused to take part in the debate, as "He Who Must Not Be Named," but given that the boss has publicly rejected Trump -- Bozell has since called Trump a "petulant brat" for skipping the debate -- that was likely intended as a compliment.
Bozell, by the way, made that attack on Trump in an appaearance on Fox Business, where he frequently appears. It seems Bozell knows exactly on which side his bread is buttered, and would clearly like to continue appearing on Fox.
NEW ARTICLE: Suddenly Reluctant Birthers At WND Topic: WorldNetDaily
Donald Trump finally forces WorldNetDaily to pursue -- very unenthusiastically -- the issue of Ted Cruz's eligibility, and it gives him benefits of doubt it never granted to President Obama. Even birther extraordinare Jerome Corsi flip-flops to protect Cruz. Read more >>
MRC Pretends Anti-Abortion Activists Are Real Journalists Topic: Media Research Center
Mike Ciandella writes in a Jan. 27 NewsBusters post regarding thte indictment of anti-abortion actiivsts at the so-called Center for Medical Progress for deceptive tactics in their secretly filmed anti-Planned Parenthood videos:
Undercover journalists from both sides of the political spectrum could be severely limited by a Texas grand jury indictment against pro-life activists. The charges are so sweeping that they could affect the entire journalism industry, everything from the network news to environmental activists.
Yet, out of the three broadcast evening news shows, only CBS Evening News has noticed the “dangerous precedent” that this indictment could have for journalism. NBC Nightly News devoted 70 seconds to the ruling, but failed to mentioned any negative consequences for the industry.
Ciandella went on to repeatedly assert that "this ruling wasn’t just bad for pro-lifers or conservatives, it was bad for all undercover journalists" and that there would be "repercussions against undercover journalism" if the indictment stands.
Yes, this would be an issue -- if David Daleiden and the CMP were actual journalists. But they're not.
Right Wing Watch points out that CMP "did not originally describe itself as a journalistic outlet. It was only around the time the group started releasing its videos that it updated its website's 'About Us' page to say that it was comprised of 'citizen journalists.'" Further, CMP officials have publicly stated that its goal is to destroy Planned Parenthood, not to tell a story fairly or objectively, and Daleiden himself said his goal was "obtaining criminal prosecutions" against Planned Parenthood officials and ultimately to "put an end to the abortion industry in America." That's not journalism.
Right Wing Watch sums up: "Daleiden is not an 'investigative journalist.' He is an anti-abortion activist who is now trying to pose as a journalist." That's a big difference -- not that Ciandella is himself objective enough to explain it to his readers.
It’s time to let fly with an American “Huzzah!” What used to be called a “white paper” or a “manifesto” is a way a nation can tell the world something it ought to know. The American manifesto I have in mind should be signed by everybody not surgically connected to Obama or his team. Round up the old Democratic patriots, Republicans left to right, every American who’s an elected official to state legislatures and all the mayors willing to join.
This manifesto will tell the world, “You may be wondering what happened to America. The good news is, we’re still here, albeit no longer audible or visible, smothered underneath the most self-destructive leadership in our history. You have every right to think we’re over-with and done-for. But dismiss us at your peril.
[...]
“If any of you, anywhere, harbor any plans for pushing America out of the way so as to crush the hope of freedom for oppressed peoples or to extinguish democracy in countries that have achieved democracy, we advise you to wait until our election next November. If the candidate being inaugurated one year from today – Jan. 20, 2017 – is not one who was recommended by Barack Obama, your adventuresome plans will not be worth the risk.
“You are not seeing the real America at this time. Sorry, but we regard our current leader as a kidney stone who will take one year to pass. Iran has proven we can stand the pain.”
To an extent, I am somewhat surprised to see the issue of eligibility for the office of president of the United States rearing its head at this point in time for reasons that shall become evident presently. On the one hand, in light of the fraud perpetuated by Barack Hussein Obama and his surrogates in this area, it is easy to understand that those for whom the rule of law still carries weight would want to to ensure that such a thing never occurs again.
Perpetrating another one of his Saul Alinsky scams on an ever-increasing dumbed down American public, the president of the United States and his gang of America-hating cronies are overly confident that there are enough Americans clueless to his freedom-hating agenda and his intentional deception on the relationship between crime and guns that he can actually get away with more and more criminal oath-violating infringement.
But, frankly, listening to the most divisive president in American history prattling on about returning civility to political discourse was sheer torture. This is the man who based his re-election campaign in 2012 by lying about a video, insisting that al-Qaida was on the run, and creating divisions among the electorate between rich and poor, white and black, young and old, men and women – scapegoating half of us and sliming a decent man like Mitt Romney – all in order to win a second term. To me, it was a lot like listening to King Henry VIII deliver a lecture on table manners.
It’s not exactly news that President Barack Hussein Obama harbors a deep-seated disdain, if not hatred, for Jews and Israel. While keeping a few ultra-leftist Jews around him in the White House for the last seven years for political cover, he has done everything possible to harm the Jewish state and advance the cause of Islam both at home and abroad.
CNS Reporter Promotes Anti-U.S. Propaganda From Iran Topic: CNSNews.com
How much does CNSNews.com hate President Obama? It's publishing anti-U.S. propaganda from Iran in an attempt to smear him.
In a Jan. 21 CNS article, Patrick Goodenough touted how "The head of the Iranian regime’s notorious Basij militia claimed Wednesday that Iran had received $1.7 billion from the U.S. in exchange for the release of imprisoned Americans, contradicting the Obama administration’s denial that the settling of a decades-old legal claim amounted to a ransom." Goodenough then quoted a Republican member of Congress saying somesthing similar in an apparent attempt to bolster Iran's allegation.
An act of God” was responsible for U.S. Navy sailors entering Iranian waters, leading to their arrest at gunpoint, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday told Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members who detained the Americans.
“Your job was excellent, interesting and timely and, in fact, we must consider this incident as an act of God, who brought Americans into our waters so they would be arrested through your timely action and in that manner, with their hands held above their heads,” Khamenei told the group in a face-to-face meeting, according to a report on the supreme leader’s office website.
The site said Khamenei had “heaped praise” on the IRGC Navy personnel “who had courageously taken action against the entry of U.S. troops into the Islamic Republic of Iran’s territorial waters by arresting the trespassers.”
We suspect Goodenough wouldn't be credulously repeating Iranian propaganda if there was a Republican president.
Goodenough has also quoted Iranian propaganda in a critical context; on Jan. 27 he noted that "the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's official website posted a video quoting the supreme leader’s questioning of the Holocaust," and on Jan. 29 he reported that "A U.S. Navy warship which Iran claims to have chased away from a naval exercise in the Persian Gulf this week was at the time more than 7,000 miles away – in its home port of Norfolk, Virginia."
It's interesting that Goodenough can be critical of Iran in those contexts, but Iranian propaganda is completely credible when it attempts to make Obama look bad. That's one thing CNS and Iran appear to have in common.
It's no secret that Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell is a supporter of Ted Cruz (and a hater of Donald Trump), and that attitude is bleeding into his organization as the MRC is working hard to shield Cruz from media criticism.
Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall 
Eric Scheiner writes in a Feb. 2 CNSNews.com 
As we've seen with his obsession with Hillary Clinton's health, WorldNetDaily's Jerome Corsi doesn't actually know a whole lot about medicine, so any medical-related judgment from him is specious at best. Yet he perserveres in making medical-related judgments, like in this Feb. 1 
Bryan Ballas devotes a Jan. 31 NewsBusters 
Nobody believes WorldNetDaily
And now, this 
Rich Noyes trumpets in a Feb. 1 Media Research Center "
WorldNetDaily has been fearmongering about Gardasil and other HPV vaccines 
We've 
Mike Ciandella writes in a Jan. 27 NewsBusters 
Barack Obama is either a consummate liar, or he truly believes the American people are stupid.
How much does CNSNews.com hate President Obama? It's publishing anti-U.S. propaganda from Iran in an attempt to smear him.
