Topic: WorldNetDaily
Hillary Clinton's purported health issues are the new Obama birth certificate at WorldNetDaily -- and as with its birther rants, WND won't admit they've been discredited. Read more >>
Thursday, August 25, 2016
NEW ARTICLE: WND Goes Birther on Hillary's Health
Topic: WorldNetDaily Hillary Clinton's purported health issues are the new Obama birth certificate at WorldNetDaily -- and as with its birther rants, WND won't admit they've been discredited. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:48 AM EDT
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Tim Graham's Hypocritical Bashing of NPR for Getting Rid of Comments
Topic: Media Research Center
Of course, by making this criticism, Graham is suggesting that his own employer is an avatar of providing "equal time" that NPR won't by providing full and free access to its forums. He's wrong. We can speak from experience. We've been banned from posting at both NewsBusters and CNSNews.com -- not because we violated any posted comment policy (there isn't one that we could find) or engaged in abusive language (the right-wing haters get a free pass on that) but because we expressed an opinion forum moderators disagreed with. Additionally, Graham, MRC chief Brent Bozell and the main MRC feed have blocked us from the benign act of following them on Twitter. Why? We have no idea.Besides, it's not like we're prohibited from reading their tweets -- between alternative methods of following them and retweets from MRC-related accounts we are following, we can keep up with what they say just fine. By aggressively blocking anyone who disagres with them, Graham, Bozell and the MRC are really the ones who are lessening the chance anyone can actually protest their fallacious right-wing content, and it reinforces the impression that the MRC is an insular network for like-minded right-wingers. Sound familiar, Tim? It should. If you and the MRC can't take criticism and actively block and censor opinions you don't like, you have no moral standing to criticize NPR for doing something only slightly analogous to that.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:58 PM EDT
WND Trying to Scare, Shame People Into Voting for Trump
Topic: WorldNetDaily It seems a little early in the general-election cycle for this, but WorldNetDaily is heavily going to scare-and-Shame mode to generate votes from Donald Trump. On Aug. 8, WND touted a video made by WND author Dan Bongino attacking any Republican thinking of voting for Hillary Clinton out of their general disgust for Trump:
Root didn't mention that he had just written a book touting Trump's candidacy. WND managing editor David Kupelian -- who has sold his soul to back Trump -- tries to rouse the evangelical vote in favor of an amoral, thrice-married Republican in his Aug. 21 column, and he lowers the bar considerably: "Whatever the Republican candidates’ shortcomings, taking the trouble to vote for a president who isn’t a known sex predator, Marxist or career criminal seems pretty sensible for a 'born-again Christian,' doesn’t it?" Kupelian concluded with a huge hissy-fit, declaring that anyone who doesn't vote for Trump is complicit in "our nation's suicide":
Says a guy who renounced his own principles to back Trump. Remember, it's still more than two months before the election. How insane will WND's pro-Trump rhetoric get as it gets closer to November?
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:52 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, August 24, 2016 1:39 PM EDT
MRC Dances On The Grave of 'The Nightly Show'
Topic: Media Research Center
The MRC never liked the Larry Wilmore-hosted show, of course, since it was not a regurgitator of right-wing talking points. But the show's cancellation has sent it into a fit of grave-dancing. Curtis Houck's Aug. 15 post announcing the cancellation was cheerfully headlined "Bye, Bye! Comedy Central Cancels Larry Wilmore’s ‘The Nightly Show’." Houck declared Wilmore to be a "far-left comedian" and groused the show's purpose was "mocking and smearing conservatives to the delight of television critics and other liberal journalists from coast-to-coast." He added, "NewsBusters readers should be more than familiar with the most heinous statements on the show as our newsroom has subjected ourselves to the show so you, the readers, don’t have to!" After the show's final edition, Houck took exception to show producer Jon Stewart's advice to Wilmore that he shouldn't “confuse cancellation with failure," and he whined that "Stewart spun for his friend that he did because his show (despite its horrid ratings, unfunny attacks on conservatives, etc.) did and shows like his in the future will succeed because he went first in making everything about race and insulting conservatives." Houck went on to confuse cancellation with failure by referencing "the failure of The Nightly Show." Clay Waters made his disdain for "The Nightly Show" clear in the headline of his Aug. 20 post -- "Liberal NY Times TV Critic Dances Around Why Larry Wilmore's Leftist, Humorless Comedy Show Failed" -- and he also confused cancellation with failure by calling Wilmore a "failed TV host" and asserted that "the show’s angry, humorless leftism did the show in." The next day, Waters returned the next day unironically complaining that "the far-left culture magazine Salon" did an article on the show "with a headline ripe for ridicule" -- doubly unironically since the headline for this item includes the words "Smug, Leftist Salon." Waters huffed that "Perhaps the fact that fans of the show consider “funny” to be an extraneous detail, even for a late-night talk show on a comedy channel, explains why the show failed." The word "smug" appears four times in Waters' item, including in the headline, though none of those usages were applied to himself.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:11 AM EDT
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
WND's Clinton Foundation Fail
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Just one little problem: That has nothing to do with Hillary's tax returns. As Media Matters points out, those charitable contributions went not to the Clinton Foundation that WND and other conservatives have been targeting throughout the election but, rather, to the Clinton Family Foundation, a completely separate entity that's a clearinghouse for the Clinton family's personal philanthropy. The fact that WND can't tell the two foundations apart is just another reason it's unlikely to regain the credibilty it's squandered anytime soon.
Posted by Terry K.
at 5:33 PM EDT
MRC: Norman Lear Isn't A 'Patriotic American' Because He's Liberal
Topic: Media Research Center
Is Nielsen really saying that Lear can't possibly be an "verage, patriotic American" because he's liberal? Sure looks that way. Nielsen went on to rehash a couple of bogus attacks on PFAW division Right Wing Watch:
As we documented when Nielsen first made these claims, that's a fair interpretation of Walker's words -- not "false" -- given that the context of the interview in which he made the remark was using the "cool thing" anecdote to justify the forced-ultrasound bill he signed into law. And the Benham brothers really are "anti-gay, anti-choice extremist[s]," however much Nielsen wants to pretend otherwise. Does she think it's somehow not extremist to call homosexuality "demonic" and rant outside abortion clinics that they are the "altars of Moloch"?
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:22 PM EDT
We Call BS on WND's Secret Jewish Poll
Topic: WorldNetDaily
The only thing more anonymous than the WND reporter who wrote this is the source of the alleged poll. "Internal polls by an outside group that supports" Clinton is a meaningless description that says nothing. WND has not earned the credibility (let alone regained the credibilty it has lost over the years) to not only promote an effectively anonymous poll but also to hide behind an anonymous writer in doing so. If it were a legitimate poll, WND wouldn't have to hide where it came from. It's a BS story about a BS poll. It's that simple. And it's yet another reason why WND is in deep financial trouble.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:03 AM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, August 23, 2016 8:50 AM EDT
Monday, August 22, 2016
Chuck Colson Sure Writes A Lot of CNS Columns for A Dead Guy
Topic: CNSNews.com
Another thing neither the bio nor the columns mention: Colson died in 2012. While the columns do note that they are reprints, and one shares a byline with Eric Metaxas, who does the foiceover for the Breakpoint daily radio show, they do not note why they are reprints: Colson isn't around to offer original material. CNS regularly publishes Breakpoint-affiliated writers like Metaxas and John Stonestreet, so it's not surprising that it would dig into the Colson archives. But let's not pretend the guy is still alive and cranking out the content -- dead men should get no bylines. Just an odd bit of dishonesty that raises questions about CNS' actual commitment to journalism.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:45 PM EDT
MRC Is Mad There's No Country Music On Obama's Summer Playlist
Topic: Media Research Center
Well, the MRC's Melissa Mullins -- who declared in that earlier post that the idea of Obama being praised as a good father made her want to vomit -- is at it again. And what heinous crime did Obama commit this time to incur Mullins' wrath? He issued a summer music playlist. "Who in the world decided that revealing Obama’s summertime playlist actually constituted as newsworthy?" Mullins rants in an Aug. 13 post. She continued: "You will notice there’s not a single country song on the list. But Obama is taking care of his own leftist base, throwing in a tune from the Bernie-Bros folk band Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros." Yep, Mullins is mad that there's no country music on the list, and she thinks there's such a thing as "Bernie-Bros." She whines again: "But seriously…this is considered news?" To which we have to wonder: This sort of overwrought hostility over somebody's playlist is considered legitimate media criticism at the MRC? Apparently it is -- otherwise the MRC wouldn't keep giving Mullins for her Obama-hate.
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:01 PM EDT
WND Now Promoting Chemtrails Conspiracy Theory
Topic: WorldNetDaily
So what do you do? You start promoting the chemtrails conspiracy theory. You know, the idea that contrails left by jets are really the government spreading chemicals on an unsuspecting populations. Oddly, the current chemtrail interest from WND comes from Chuck Norris. His Aug. 7 column insists that a recent speech by CIA director John Brennan in which he discussed geoengineering (which Norris concedes Brennan never admits the government has done) was an admission the feds use chemtrails: "Let’s be clear about at least one thing: Despite that those on the right and the left (including our president) have denied the government’s use of stratospheric aerosol spraying in the past, chemtrailing just collapsed as conspiracy. The climate cat is now out of the bag!" WND followed up with an Aug. 16 article noting a study in which 76 of 77 scientists interviewed debunked the idea of chemtrails, adding sarcasatically, "In other words, nothing to see up here. Move along." Two days later, WND published another article -- like the earlier one, minus a byline; presumably, no WND employee wanted their names associated with promoting chemtrail conspiracies -- noting that the study "is not convincing those who believe something more nefarious is at work in the skies overhead" and that "the blowback has been swift across social media, with opponents accusing the scientists of offering up a whitewashed report." The article even highlighted how "One critic took the time to email a full letter to lead scientist Steven Davis of University of California at Irvine, and he copied WND on the letter," and it included Davis' response, in which he points out that the scientists "were able to provide simple explanations based on chemistry and physics that do not involve a large-scale government conspiracy." This isn't really helping to fix WND's credibility issues, is it?
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:25 AM EDT
Sunday, August 21, 2016
MRC Fact-Checks the Fact-Checkers, Complain Facts Don't Fit Right-Wing Spin
Topic: Media Research Center
The MRC's Kyle Drennen gives it a shot in an Aug. 16 post, taking on PolitiFact editor Angie Holan's look into Donald Trump's assertion that President Obama was the founder of ISIS. Holan pointing out that "the terrorist group that we now call ISIS was forming right after the Iraq war, during the Bush administration." Gotcha, Drennen proclaims: "Notice how she hedged her commentary by remarking that the terror group 'had a number of name changes.' In other words, the 'Islamic State' didn’t exist until Barack Obama came into office." Well, no, that's not how that works, Kyle. Just like cigarette maker Philip Morris didn't suddenly become a completely different company when it renamed itself Altria in 2003, ISIS didn't become a completely different entity from its precessor groups simply by changing its name. Drennen is being utterly disingenuous here. When an MSNBC host noted that the decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 was based on an agreement President Bush signed with Iraqis before heaving office in 2008, Drennen huffed: "It’s amazing how President Obama was able to abandon just about every policy of the Bush administration but was somehow helpless to alter that one in any way." In fact, according to FactCheck.org (which means Drennen will have to impose his right-wing "fact-checking" on this too), the Obama administration tried to negotiate with the Iraqis to keep U.S. troops in the country longer, but then-Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki wouldn't yield on a U.S. demand that U.S. troops should be shielded from criminal prosecution by Iraqi authorities. Next up is Katherine Franklin, who uses an Aug. 17 NewsBusters post to go after a PolitiFact examination of a claim made by Ohio Right to Life against Ohio Senate candidate Ted Strickland accusing him of wanting to "force Americans to pay for abortion on demand, up until the moment of birth, with their taxpayer dollars," a claim PolitiFact found "mostly false." A few red flags are clearly noticeable: Franklin does not link to the offending PolitiFact fact-check (which is actually a state affiliate working with a local TV station, not the national PolitiFact organization, something Franklin does not note), she barely quotes from the fact-check in her attack on it, and she waits until the 13th paragraph of her post to disclose the salient fact that she is the communications director for Ohio Right to Life, meaning she's hardly objective on the issue. Franklin accuses PolitiFact Ohio of engaging in "obfuscation and spin" in rebutting her group's claim:
Franklin is the one spinning here. PolitiFact is pointing out that few abortions occur after viability and that Ohio Right to Life's claim that a woman would have an abortion at the "moment of birth" is rather nonsensical and a "hypothetical non-event," quoting a doctor as saying, "If the mother’s life was at risk, the treatment for that is delivery, and the baby survives." And contrary to Franklin's spin on the "abortion on demand," PolitiFact pointed out that due to waiting period and mandatory physician consultations supported by anti-abortion activists such as Franklin, there really isn't such a thing as "abortion on demand." Nevertheless, Franklin declared victory:
Of course, Franklin is the one spinning here, but neither she nor the MRC will admit it.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:51 PM EDT
WND's Farah Revises His Trump Landslide Prediction
Topic: WorldNetDaily
But after a month of Trump shenanigans, gaffes and outrages, Farah would like to rethink things a bit. In his Aug. 12 column, Farah began by writing, "As one of those who has suggested Donald Trump has the potential not only to win the 2016 presidential election, but to win in a landslide, it’s time for a note of clarification." He didn't link his earlier column as evidence of his "suggestion" -- which, in fact, was a declared "prediction," not a mere suggestion. Farah complained that "Trump is out publicly day after day commenting on too much," adding: "He needs to stop winging it in speeches. The comment about the Second Amendment folks was a gift to Hillary. He needs to stop giving his opponent gifts. It was sure to be magnified by his adversaries, both Democrat and Republican – and it was exploited indeed. Everyone knows Trump wasn’t suggesting assassination, for heaven’s sake, but why does Trump offer up such opportunities for his opponents to exploit?" Actually, Trump suggesting assassination is a reasonable interpretation of his "Second Amendment folks" comment, so it's ridiculous for Farah to claim what "everybody knows" Trump really meant. It's certainly much more reasonable than clainming that, say, President Obama saying "We are here today because we know this work is not yet finished" during a speech at the Buchenwald concentration camp meant that he was in favor of exterminating Jews -- which is exactly what Farah argued in a 2009 column. Farah echoed his "stop winging it" advice to Trump later in the column:
That's richly ironic, given how much Farah and WND have mocked Obama over the years for using a Teleprompter (here and here, for instance). Farah claims that if Trump followed his advice -- which also includes talking only about Obama and Hillary -- "he can still win this race and win it big. I’m sure of that. I’m just not sure he is disciplined to follow this advice."
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:17 PM EDT
Saturday, August 20, 2016
Dear Brent Bozell: Where Is CNS' Coverage on Trump Controversies?
Topic: Media Research Center
It's imporatant to point out just how utterly hypocritical Bozell is in claiming this. The "news" operation Bozell runs, CNSNews.com, has repeatedly failed to put negative articles about Trump on its front page. CNS published 17 original stories in three days about Hillary's email server while at the same time it was in a 12-day stretch of publishing no original articles at all about Trump -- even though this was a period in which Trump tweeted out an anti-Semitic image. CNS buried news of the plagiarized nature of Melania Trump's RNC speech, instead playing up how the speech was "well-received." CNS' initial reporting on a Trump press conference in which he invited Russians to hack Hillary Clinton's emails didn't even mention he said it. And just this week, CNS published two articles in one day by its reporters about an edited State Department video -- one of which is a rewritten press release from its new friends at Judicial Watch -- but revelations the same day about Trump campaign official Paul Manafort about his pro-Russian lobbying, and his subsequent resignation from the campaign, warrented no original coverage or even get a mention of any significance on its front page. Instead, CNS did publish an article in which Trump complained that "the establishment media doesn’t cover what really matters in this country." Clearly, it's Bozell who's circling the wagons around Trump and minimizing his scandals. If his own "news" operation can't fairly report the news, he has no moral standing whatsoever to dictate to others about fair reporting.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:21 AM EDT
Hillary Derangement Syndrome, Supersize WND Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily
-- Matt Barber, June 24 WorldNetDaily column
-- Linda Harvey, Aug. 2 WND column
-- Erik Rush, Aug. 3 WND column
-- Burt Prelutsky, Aug. 8 WND column
-- Larry Klayman, Aug. 12 WND column
-- Patrice Lewis, Aug. 12 WND column
-- Carl Jackson, Aug. 12 WND column
-- Craige McMillan, Aug. 19 WND column
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:39 AM EDT
Friday, August 19, 2016
MRC Mad Media Didn't Fall for Benghazi Lawsuit Publicity Stunt
Topic: Media Research Center
Whitlock, meanwhile, devoted zero seconds to explaining that the lawsuit is nothing more than a publicity stunt by a terrible lawyer, right-wing ambulance-chaser Larry Klayman. Even Fox News host Steve Doocy admitted that the lawsuit is "obviously just to inflict as much political damage onto Hillary Clinton as they possibly could," and Fox News' Andrew Napolitano added, "Quite frankly, I don't think either parts of this lawsuit are going to go -- they're certainly not going to go anywhere during the election campaign." Right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham concurred, saying that "I think it's going to be very difficult to demonstrate the causes of action they allege. ... I think it's very difficult to prove that Hillary's actions were the proximate cause or direct cause of the deaths of your sons." The fact that even the MRC's contemporaries agree the lawsuit has no legal merit makes Whitlock's insistence that there is news value to it highly suspect, if not completely ridiculous.
Posted by Terry K.
at 5:06 PM EDT
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