In a June 5 WorldNetDaily column, Jane Orient goes far afield from her stated profession of medicine (though she's not exactly in the mainstream there, either) to opine on President Trump pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord. As befits the leader of a group of fringe-right doctors, she approves.

She calls the accord an "economic suicide pact" and claims without evience that "The average U.S. family would have to pay $30,000 more for electricity over the next decade." (That apparently comes from the right-wing Heritage Foundation.)

Orient then finally stumbles upon a health-related angle: "What about heat waves and people perishing from heat-related illnesses? The physicians tout the health benefits of walking and bike-riding, but say nothing about turning off the air conditioning in Miami." She names nobody who has actually demanded that the air conditioning in Miami be turned off.

Orient also complains that supporters of the Paris accords are "leaving out some 31,000 scientists who disagree." That's a reference to a petition promoted by climate denier Art Robinson; as we've pointed out, that number is a tiny fraction of the millions of scientists in America, and the vast majority of those signatories have no confirmed or demonstrated expertise in climatology.

That's the kind of that that happens when opine on things you don't know that much about.

Posted by Terry K. at 6:27 PM EDT

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After President Trump's "covfefe" tweet, the Media Research Center fired off indignant post after indignant post about all the coverage it got:

• Nets Spend 10 Mins on Trump Typo Tweet
• MSNBC’s Katy Tur Lost Sleep Over Trump’s Twitter Typo, Fears Nuclear War
• CNN Journalists Pretend to be Psychiatrists Overanalyzing Trump Typo
• Great Job, Humanity! ‘Covfefe’ Twitter Mentions Over 50 Times Larger Than Griffin

The author of that last post, Curtis Houck, complained: "If people aren’t going to have a serious debate about actual issues, perhaps not obsessing over dumb things like the President’s typo would give the media and their fans more credibility."

Houck seems to have forgotten that he too obsessed of someone's dumb typo. In fact, he devoted an entire April 21 post to it:

Folks, you can’t make this up. Typo of the year? I think so!

In a Tuesday story about a Jewish Republican Congressman responding to White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s comments about Adolf Hitler and chemical weapons, The Hill’s Cristina Marcos referred to Spicer as Hitler (yes, you read that right).

Houck did eventually admit that we all make mistakes and the article was corrected 20 minutes after it first was posted.

And a June 8 post by Mike Ciandella needlessly highlighted another quickly corrected typo:

While live tweeting the Senate hearing for former FBI Director James Comey, NBC News Chief Global Correspodent accused Attorney General Jeff Sessions of telling Comey to call the Russia investigation a “matter” instead of an “investigation.” Except, Comey had been talking about former Attorney General Loretta Lynch telling him to call the Hillary Clinton email investigation a “matter.”

This tweet has since been deleted, but not before it could be screen captured for posterity.

If Trump's "covfefe" tweet wasn't news to the MRC, tweets from reporters that are quickly corrected shouldn't be either. But nobody has ever claimed the MRC's standards are equally applied to both conservatives and non-conservatives.

Posted by Terry K. at 1:22 PM EDT

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It appears WorldNetDaily is fully committed to its fake news about the reconstruction of the Arch of Palmyra.

Two days after we published our summary of WND's conspiracy theories about the arch, WND appeared to feel the need to rebut it with a June 3 article headlined "Historic artifact replica, or demonic harbinger?" The anonymous WND writer continues:

It’s back!

The replica of the arch of the Temple of Baal has been on a world tour the past few years, having been put on display in London, New York and then Dubai for a global summit. And it was recently rebuilt for yet another global summit, this time the G7 meeting of the leading industrialized nations held in Florence, Italy.

The arch, a reconstruction of an ancient Roman building destroyed by ISIS in Syria, has been promoted by its creators at the Institute of Digital Technology as a symbol of defiance against terrorism and a tribute to world heritage.

But why is a reconstruction of a gateway to a temple of a pagan god whose rites were marked by child sacrifice and ritual prostitution being so persistently publicized at globally important gatherings?

One rabbi, a member of the nascent Sanhedrin attempting to recreate the ancient Jewish legal body, sees dire implications in the repeated use of the arch. Rabbi Daniel Assur told Breaking Israel News the arch is a harbinger of the “New World Order.” He declared the arch’s repeated appearances at prominent locations indicate “a pattern moving toward a specific goal – Messiah.”

As usual, WND can't be bothered to actually talk to the Institute of Digital Technology for their thoughts about the arch. It once again goes to its coterie of end-times pastors, like birther Carl Gallups:

Gallups also said it is profoundly interesting – and worrying – that the arch always seems to be in a location of deep significance to the elite-driven movement to create a global government.

“It is a heavily documented fact that when the Palmyra arch was reconstructed, the places chosen for the display of the arch, complete with ceremonious activities of dedication and honor, were indisputably centers of globalistic power,” Gallups observed.

“Each of these locations had direct connections to the United Nations, the World Government Summit, the G7 Conference and the major economic engines of the world. And this tour started in London, perhaps the world’s most important financial capital, during the pagan festival of Beltane – during a time specifically dedicated to Baal worship. From there, it went to New York City and then to global governance meetings.

“How could anyone, with any spiritual discernment at all, miss the demonic message being audaciously broadcast to the world?” Gallups asked.

He warned that the global leaders are meddling with dark forces.

“In the spiritual realm, it is as if Satan is ‘marking’ his territory,” the pastor said. “And the leaders of the world are gladly doing his bidding – even summonsing his presence and ‘blessings.’ We are living in extremely prophetic times. The demonic realm is engaged in an unprecedented outpouring, just as the Bible said would happen. We are living in the most prophetic times since the first coming of Jesus Christ.”

Or, you know, sometimes an historical arch is just an historical arch. None of WND's interviewees acknowledge that  the temple to which the arch was an entryway also served as a Christian church and a mosque. Nor do they offer any commentary on ISIS' destruction of the arch and other historical artifacts in the Middle East.

It seems WND has found even more people who have found some behavior by ISIS they can totally get behind.

Posted by Terry K. at 2:14 AM EDT

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It looks like the Media Research Center has gotten the first scalp of its revenge campaign: Reza Aslan had the second season of his CNN show "Believer" canceled following the shrill, partisan attacks by the MRC for comments made on his private Twitter account and not on CNN's air.

A June 9 MRC post by Curtis Houck was quick to cheer the news, slamming Aslan as "an anti-Christian, far-left pundit." Only in the right-wing world of the MRC would a scholar who wrote a book about the life of Jesus be considered "anti-Christian" and simply criticizing Persident Trump be considered "far-left."

As expected, MRC chief Brent Bozell was also quick to spike the football:

America has sent an unmistakable message to CNN. We will not stand idly by while their so-called "religious scholar" smears the president of the United States and conservative leaders with obscenity-laden insults. MRC supporters  generated an avalanche of over 7,000 phone calls to CNN this week demanding Reza Aslan’s removal. CNN paid attention and  ultimately did the right thing -- which they should have done immediately. When left-wing pundits and journalists use social media as a platform to slander those with whom they disagree, including President Trump, there will be consequences. It is reckless, sophomoric and unprofessional. Our campaign to hold the liberal media accountable does not end here. This is just the beginning.”

The "unmistakable message" we're seeing, though, is that the MRC's shrillness has been rewarded and it's out for more blood. And that the MRC will never hold, say, Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbuagh to same standards it held Aslan. And that the MRC's goal is not to "hold the liberal media accountable" but, rather, to censor any criticism of Trump, no matter how justified.

The MRC is obsessively seeking out its next scalping victim as we speak. There's no need to pretend there's any principle behind it -- it's just a power play.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:21 PM EDT

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Bob Unruh laments in a June 5 WorldNetDaily article:

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear the case of a U.S. Marine who was court-martialed for posting Bible verses at her desk.

The Marine Corps’ chief argument is that it has the authority to decide whether or not a particular religious practice is important enough to be protected by the First Amendment, said the non-profit legal group First Liberty, which represents Lance Cpl. Monifa Sterling.

Unruh is lying -- Sterling was not "court-martialed for posting Bible verses at her desk."

As we've noted and Chris Rodda doucumented at the Huffington Post, the charges against Sterling at her court-martial included failing to go to her appointed place of duty, disrespecting a commissioned officer, and disobeying direct orders from her superiors to wear the proper uniform. The Bible-verse charge was the least of her offenses.

Unruh doesn't mention any those inconvenient facts, presumably because he's simply taking dictation from Sterling's lawyers at First Liberty instead of acting like a real journalist and seeking out all the facts.

In dishonestly focusing on a single aspect of Sterling's case in order to falsely portray heras a victim instead of the run-of-the-mill violator of Marine standards she actually is, First Liberty is lying too. But, again, Unruh is not being paid by WND to tell that truth to his readers.

Posted by Terry K. at 3:52 PM EDT

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Dylan Gwinn and "Bruce Bookter" may have departed NewsBusters, but the Media Research Center has someone new to rant about sports being too liberal: Jay Maxson. But that, like "Bookter," could be a fake name as well for all we know, because his archive page includes no photo or related Twitter account and vaguely describes him only as a "Contributing Writer for MRC Culture."

He knows how to parrot the right-wing line as well as his predecessors, and like them he takes glee in attacking NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick for taking a principled stand on an issue.

In a March post, after Kaepernick became a free agent, Maxon wrote a sneering "letter" for Kaepernick to send to interested teams:

Any time I couldn’t find an open receiver and it looked like I was going to get clobbered, I ran like a kid in Ferguson getting chased by cops for no good reason – rushing for 2,300 career yards. As you can see, I will be a great double threat as a passer and runner as your QB.

[...]

I believe in coming out of my gated community now and then giving back to the people who buy my #7 shirts. So I will be available work with the Jets’ community outreach department to help spread Black Lives Matters  power principles. When I’m not busy doing BLM fundraisers, I will be available to speak to school groups and to urban journalists friendly to the cause.

In fact, Kaepernick has put his money where his mouth is, donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to charities. We suspect that Maxson -- if that is, in fact, his real name -- cannot say the same.

A couple weeks later, Maxon cheered that Kaepernick hadn't been immediately signed, even though there was months to go before the NFL season starts:

No matter the reasoning of the general managers, Kaepernick is learning a hard lesson. In your free agent year, you might want to think twice about showing disrespect for the symbol of freedom and the sacrifice of those who fought and died for our country. Now he’s paying the price for activism that evoked strong opposition from fans across the nation. He’s learning that NFL executives don’t appear to be among those who supported his radical stand and the distractions it brought to his team.

The next day, Maxson still wouldn't acknowledge that Kaepernick is backing up his words on charitable donations, instead promoting "the many good things happening through the Tim Tebow Foundation."

Maxson wasn't done with the irrational anti-Kaepernick tirades:

• He attacked commentators who said Kaepernick is being "whiteballed" as engaging in "sports fantasy" with their "unique ability to read the minds of NFL owners and general managers" -- never mind that mind-reading is exactly what Maxson himself did in his sneering fake-Kaepernick letter.
• He criticized everyone defending Kaepernick as "liberal media apologists."
• He even bashed a writer who pointed out that Kaepernick has better character that a couple recent NFL draft picks accused of violent crimes, insisting that "it's not an either/or choice between Kaepernick and the new draft picks with the heavy baggage" -- thus bizarrely equating taking a knee for the National Anthem with rape and assault.
• He ranted in a May 16 post: "can all the teams in the NFL be wrong about the distraction Kaepernick will bring to the table? They know that signing the guy is a blatant endorsement for hatred of public safety officers."
• In promoting an obscure blogger's attack on Kaepernick, Maxson ranted further that Kaepernick "gets a ton of press only because left-wing media are using him to advance their own political beliefs."

Maxson's well of biased animus toward Kaepernick is apparently bottomless. In a June 5 post, Maxson attacked the "left-stram sports media" (whatever that is) for noting that the Seattle Seahawks didn't pick up Kaepernick, screeching that "Seattle is already loaded with hyper-active leftists and it appeared that by corralling the flag/cop-hating Kaepernick the Seahawks would create the greatest assortment of far Left athlete-activists ever."

A June 7 post by Maxson once again whines about the "media bias" on Kaepernick and once again cheering that Kaepernick hasn't yet found a job because he "offended millions of veterans, police officers and patriots by refusing to stand for the national anthem last season. Responding to a New York Daily News writer's claim that he'll boycott the NFL this fall if Kaepernick doesn't find a quarterback job, Maxson huffed: "Now that a representative of the New York Daily News has admitted his contempt for a majority of Americans and elevated bias and activism over good principles of journalism, a boycott of this bigoted rag is more than justifiable."

But is that writer really more filled with contempt that Maxson?

Posted by Terry K. at 10:03 AM EDT

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Climates have always changed throughout history. That’s not the issue that has prompted President Trump likely to withdraw this week from the United Nations Paris climate agreement. The issues involve these key questions:

• Is human activity causing catastrophic climate change?
• Is there any evidence human activity is substantially contributing to detrimental climate change ?
• Should the world’s economic activity be reordered with the central goal of reducing man’s production of carbon dioxide, a natural gas essential for all life on the planet?

The unequivocal answer to all three of those questions is no.

The bigger question is why so many world leaders, cultural institutions, multinational corporations and governments have been eager to embrace a lie, to perpetrate a hoax, to propagate a global fraud.

The answer is simple. There are always powerful people in the world who want to retain and maximize their wealth and authority by lying, deceiving, prevaricating and misleading.

[...]

Paris represented a massive global wealth transfer that would result in widespread suffering throughout the world – like any gigantic, unsustainable international welfare program administered by unaccountable global elitists would.

It really comes down to this.

Whom do you trust more – nameless, faceless lying bureaucrats working at the behest of wealthy international socialists or your Creator God?

If you trust your Creator God more, is there any reason to believe He is concerned about how much CO2 you produce? Or, is He more concerned about how much sin we commit?

Rejoice! It’s springtime in Paris.

-- Joseph Farah, May 31 WorldNetDaily column

Posted by Terry K. at 12:40 AM EDT

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CNSNews.com has always had a pronounced pro-Trump bias, but former FBI director James Comey's testimony before Congress has sent the Media Research Center "news" operation into new heights of pro-Trump fervor (if only to distract from the growing scandals around Trump).

After Comey released a copy of his opening statement, chief Trump fangirl Susan Jones served up a hilariously creative interpretation of it -- presented as "news" -- that portrays Trump as a victim, claming that Comey's statement "shows that President Donald Trump became increasingly frustrated by the ongoing Russia investigation, not because he had anything to hide, but because the leaks and media speculation were interfering with his ability to get things done for the country."

Jones counterfactually insisted that "Comey's statement does not back up the liberal media speculation that Trump may have obstructed justice by asking Comey to drop or back-off the Russia investigation or the investigation of Michael Flynn." Jones also referenced the notorious Trump dossier claiming that "Trump had engaged in perverted sexual acts with prostitutes during a trip to Russia"; Jones called the dossier "unsubstantiated and frankly ridiculous." We'll agree with the former; the latter is opinion not backed up by reality that has no business in a "news" article.

Jones followed that with a pre-hearing screed -- also falsely presented as "news" -- under the headline "Liberal Media That Are Out to Get Trump Run Eager Headlines on Thursday":

With the Comey circus in town on Thursday, Washington is a-quiver with anticipation that the former FBI director might/could, will-he/won't-he (please-oh-please) hand investigators evidence of criminality on the part of President Trump.

Former FBI Director James Comey's written statement to the Senate intelligence committee, released on Wednesday, drew cries of somber outrage from Democrats -- "Obstruction of justice!" "Crossing a line!" "Unethical!" "Unprecedented!" "Inappropriate!" -- but no calls for handcuffs just yet.

Several Democrats on Thursday morning stopped short of saying Trump's conversations with Comey amount to obstruction of justice. They told cable news shows they'd leave the legalities to federal prosecutors.

Here are some of the headlines and front-page blurbs from newspapers and cable channels that have been trying to undermine Trump since his election:

Jones used yet another purported "news" article to whine: "As Congress and the liberal media chase Russia-Trump conspiracy theories, the people’s business languishes."

CNS was on post-hearing spin patrol as well, focusing heavily on doing stories that claim to clear Trump and make Comey look bad:

• Comey Debunks NYT Report About Trump Campaign Having Repeated Contacts With Russians
• Senator Asks Comey: Do You Believe You Would Have Been Fired If Clinton Became President?
• WH: 'I Can Definitively Say The President's Not a Liar'
• Comey Contradicted Sworn Testimony on Memo Leak, Trump’s Lawyer Says

Jones then passed the ridiculously-biased-commentary talking stick to blogger Craig Bannister. First, he parroted a Republican congressman's silly parsing of Trump's reported statement that he hoped Comey would drop the FBI investigationinto former national security adviser Michael Flynn, cheering that the congressman "got Comey to admit that 'hoping' is not a crime - yet." But as observers less slavishly devoted to protecting Trump have noted, a threat does not have to be explicit to be clear, and people have been convicted of obstruction charges for making an "I hope" statement.

Bannister followed that up with a crude smear job relying on out-of-context words to portray Comey as an incompetent FBI director:

In Senate testimony Thursday, James Comey portrayed himself as someone who was “confused,” “stunned,” lacking “presence of mind” and not “strong” enough during his tenure as FBI director.

Comey also pleaded ignorance, declaring “I don’t know” on 45 different occasions during his appearance in the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing looking into his dealings with President Donald Trump regarding Russia and the 2016 election.

While Comey repeatedly said he was “confused” by his firing, he painted a picture of himself as an FBI director who was unsure of himself while in office. Nine times in his testimony, Comey referred to himself as “confused.” Twice, he called himself “stunned,” and he twice said he didn’t have the “presence of mind” to do his job properly.

Surprisingly, CNS did not play this as "news" but as a blog post. But as we've seen, that's a diestinction without a difference at CNS.

Posted by Terry K. at 3:09 PM EDT

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We've detailed how WorldNetDaily freaks out when Muslims use the same religious discrimination laws its praises Christians for using. That hypocritical double standard has extended to school accomodations for religion.

Muslim-hater Leo Hohmann intones in a June 4 WND article:

High schools across America are being pressured to offer time off school, in-school prayer rooms, and special dietary demands by Muslim students observing the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

One campus in Brooklyn has agreed not to serve food at its prom until after sundown while another school in upstate New York is setting up prayer rooms to satisfy the demands of students who observe Ramadan.

Among the Muslim groups agitating for special privileges for Muslim students are the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Student Association and Sound Vision.

But the day before Hohmann's article was published, WND's Bob Unruh was praising a right-wing Christian group for forcing a school to make time for Christian instruction:

A public school district that dropped a plan allowing students to be excused from school for a short period for religious teachings now has reversed course.

WND reported last month the practice of “released time” is authorized in Michigan state law and has the endorsement of both the Michigan Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court, but the district in Fremont, Michigan, was banning the activity.

Mlive.com reports, however, the district has changed direction.

[...]

WND reported the Alliance Defending Freedom had written a letter to the Fremont, Michigan, school district about the cancellation.

“Public schools shouldn’t defy the law simply to appease an ill-informed person’s complaint,” Timothy Denney, the author of the letter and one of nearly 3,200 attorneys allied with ADF, wrote at the time. “If a parent provides a permission slip, release of a student for religious instruction is mandatory, not optional.”

Hohmann went on to bring his fellow Muslim-haters to attack schools for accomodating Muslims:

The advancement of Islam in public schools is not going to slow down unless non-Muslim parents take an active stance against it, says anti-Shariah activist Pamela Geller.

“We need to hit this on all fronts. This should be a multi-pronged effort,” Geller told WND. “I hope the Trump administration will get involved, but we will never overcome this without energetic grassroots activism.”

University and college campuses have long been compromised and bought off with jihad millions. Now grade schools, junior and senior high schools are in the sights of the enemy. Common Core proselytizes for Islam, and the real history of jihadi wars, land appropriations, annihilations and enslavements is scrubbed from school textbooks. High schools offer senior electives called “Islam and the Modern World,” requiring students to purchase the notorious Islamic apologist John Esposito’s The Straight Path.

[...]

Robert Spencer, author of the Jihad Watch blog for the David Horowitz Freedom Center, agrees that short of greater parental engagement with school officials, the Islamization of American schools will march forward.

Meanwhile, WND is actively encouraging the Christianization of public schools. Just last month, Unruh was cheering that a substitute teacher "fired for giving a student a Bible" got his job back.

WND's hypocrisy would be appalling if it weren't so despressingly routine.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:44 AM EDT

Updated: Friday, June 9, 2017 12:55 AM EDT

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You gotta love it when the Media Research Center inadvertently gives away the game. Tim Graham does just that in a June 5 post when he complains that "Liberals generally avoid any reference to a 'far left,' since that would unfairly make Democrats sound synonymous with communists."

Unfairly making Democrats sound synonymous with communists, though, is precisely the point of the MRC's promiscuous use of "far left" to label anything and everything it doesn't like.

Ironically, in addition to coming after he had already labeled the Southern Poverty Law Center "far-left," Graham's complaint comes in the midst of whining that NPR is doing the same thing the MRC does in alleged overuse of a descriptor: "NPR had no problem using 'far right' to describe murderous white nationalists on Sunday and the 'Texas Freedom Caucus,' a group of conservative Republican state legislators in Austin, on Saturday."

Of course, Graham never explains the difference between conservative (in further irony, a label the MRC has also railed against) and "far right," or why the Texas Freedom Caucus is not the latter.

If Graham did that, he would then also have to explain why the MRC insists on labeling any remotely non-conservative person or group "far left." But he's a terrible media critic, so he doesn't want to have to defend his methods -- or explain why he's hypocritically bashing someone else for something he himself does.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:30 PM EDT

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Erik Rush writses in his May 31 WorldNetDaily column:

An aspect of the political left’s modus operandi that has been articulated by conservatives for quite some time is that of their inability to be forthright regarding their true agenda. The reason for this is the fact that such candidness would result in all but their most ideological supporters heading for the proverbial hills; in such a scenario, Democrats would have a very difficult time getting elected anywhere, at least at the national level.

By way of an object lesson, one can handily point to the spate of preposterous allegations leveled against President Donald Trump by liberals on an almost hourly basis since his election last November. From the utterly baseless claim that the Trump camp colluded with the Russian government to fix the election, to the alleged significance of a tweet by the president that contained a typographical error, it is clear that the left is prepared to glom onto absolutely anything that has the potential to diminish Trump in Americans’ eyes.

Preposterous allegations leveled against the president? Rush knows all about that, since he spent the past eight years making preposterous allegations against President Obama. We remember when Rush likened Obama to a "cellblock rapist," insisted that Malcolm X is Obama's real father and claimed that Obama himself orchestrated the attack on Benghazi.

So, yeah, Rush is projecting bigly here. But he's not done:

Like the Nazis, Soviets and other oppressive regimes, the political left (liberals, progressives, socialists) knew they had to rely on abject falsehoods and other dirty tricks their political opponents were too principled to employ in order to advance their malignant designs.

[...]

So, how can those on the left reconcile using such patently immoral tactics “in good conscience”? It is because they possess a deep-seated belief that their political opponents (conservatives, libertarians, constitutionalists) are so fundamentally evil that any and all measures must be employed to neutralize them.

In other words, the ends justify the means.

We also remember that Rush advocated the armed overthrow of Obama, so he speaks from experience on that count as well. He's also been a Putin progandist, so his complaint about the tactics of "oppressive regimes" is highly ironic.

In short, Rush is complaining that others are doing to Trump what he did to Obama -- the latest WND writer to do so. How ironic is that?

Posted by Terry K. at 3:04 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, June 8, 2017 3:05 PM EDT

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Oh, look, it's another bogus "study" from the Media Research Center! Take it away, Mike Ciandella:

Just this year alone, more than 50 people have been killed protesting the heartbreaking malpractice of Venezuela’s socialist dictatorship. According to the IMF, inflation will surpass 700% this year, while unemployment will hit 25%; shortages of necessities such as food and medicine are rampant. The socialist president has cracked down on any opposition, and used the Venezuelan Supreme Court to nullify the election of an opposition-controlled Congress.

Yet the Big Three evening newscasts have tried to pretend this crisis does not exist, offering virtually no coverage as the situation has deteriorated over the past four years. A new study by the Media Research Center found that from March 2013 (after the death of strongman Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez) through May 29, 2017, the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news shows have aired a mere 25 stories, totaling 28 minutes, 39 seconds of coverage — barely 30 seconds per month — to the rapidly worsening situation in Venezuela. In this same time period, approximately 50,000 individual news stories on other topics aired on these broadcasts (our Bias by the Minute database shows a little more than 1,000 stories per month, and the time frame looks at slightly more than 50 months).

The networks have also been reluctant to attach the “socialist” label to Venezuela’s government, and have utterly failed to criticize liberal politicians and celebrities who have praised the Chavez and Maduro regimes.

Despite calling himself a "research analyst" for the MRC, Ciandella apparently failed to do the most basic bit of analysis for this piece: whether socialism is, in fact, to blame for the crisis in Venezuela.

As we've pointed out before when the MRC made this argument about the increasingly dire situation in Venezuela, actual economic experts say that the fault lies more with a plunge in oil prices in an economy based on oil exports, a mismanaged economy and rampant corruption and cronyism in the Venezuelan government than with socialism in and of itself.

Ciandella offers no evidence to back up his contention that socialism is the sole cause of the Venezuelan crisis. Instead, he seems to think that because the government there called itself socialist, it must be and, thus, must be the reason it failed.

Ciandella is simply assuming that his very narrow selection of media failed to sufficiently mention "socialism" in regard to Venezuela because it's biased. Since Ciandella failed to do his basic homework for this study, he does not consider the possibility that they did and, thus, they know that socialism is not the sole cause.

And that is how the MRC uses its kneejerk right-wing bias to botch another "study."

Posted by Terry K. at 12:44 AM EDT

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WorldNetDaily's cynical, politically motivated exploitation of Seth Rich's death has now reached the non-story phase, where WND is trying to play up anything -- no matter how devoid of news value -- just to keep the conspiracy going. And WND reporter Alicia Powe has been the responsibility to flog this story into the ground.

First up, Powe was apparently forced to bulk-email members of Congress for comment on the Rich non-story:

WND has asked 125 members of Congress to weigh in on the unsolved murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich, and not a single representative has agreed to address the case.

Only five members replied to WND’s request for an interview. All five declined.

The next day, Powe wrote of a White House petition in which "nearly 50,000 Americans are now urging President Trump to press for an official investigation into the unsolved murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich. Powe makes sure to point out that 100,000 signatures are needed to get a response from the White House, and her article is littered with links to the petition.

The petition, by the way, says it was "created by J.F." Is that WND editor Joseph Farah? He's not above doing such self-promotion.

In her latest article, Powe writes a second story whining about the fact that Rich's hospital records are sealed under federal law and that no matter how much she harasses local hospitals about it, they won't tell her where Rich was treated after the apparent botched robbery attempt that killed him. Still, Powe is in full conspiracy mode anyway:

It’s perhaps the simplest question in the Seth Rich murder mystery that everyone involved in the case won’t answer: What hospital admitted and treated the DNC staffer before a physician pronounced him dead on that fateful morning of July 10, 2016?

Now emergency responders, along with police and two local hospitals, are refusing to answer that basic question.

And the D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has reportedly refused to release Rich’s autopsy report.

Because it's none of your business, Alicia. You (and your bosses) don't seem to undersdtand that basic fact of privacy.

Local officials' refusal to violate federal law in order to placate malicious conspiracy-mongerers is not a story, and Powe and WND should stop pretending otherwise.

Posted by Terry K. at 10:52 PM EDT

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The Media Reserarch Center is still raging at CNN host Reza Aslan for criticizing Donald Trump, sending out tweets every hour on the hour demanding that CNN fire him. (As we've detailed, the MRC was much more chill about Rush Limbaugh being just as vulgar toward Sandra Fluke.) But manufacturing outrage just isn't getting the job done, so the MRC has decided to be even more shrill.

A June 5 post touts how the MRC's Tim Graham made a "must-see joke" -- touted on the front page of NewsBusters as a "funny joke" -- about Aslan and CNN's failure to capituate to the MRC by immediately firing him during an appearance on (of course) Fox Business. Pro tip: If you have to sell your joke by telling people that it's "funny," it probably isn't. Indeed, we watched the segment and didn't laugh once.

Meanwhile, MRC chief Brent Bozell gets all ranty again in an open letter to CNN president Jeff Zucker:

For CNN to continue to do business with someone so vile as Mr. Aslan after Kathy Griffin's sickening stunt is tantamount to announcing to conservatives that you consider them nothing more than a basket of deplorables.  If, Mr. Zucker, you want to do the right thing and correct this notion, you must immediately end CNN's relationship with Mr. Aslan and apologize for the disgrace he has brought to your network. 

Bozell didn't make any similar appeal to dignity to Rush Limbaugh's syndicator.

Graham and Bozell then combine their rantiness for a June 7 column rehashing their previous rants and whining that Aslan "really doesn't like conservative Republicans." Limbaugh doesn't like liberal women, but Graham and Bozell are totally down with Limbaugh being vile toward them.

Posted by Terry K. at 2:04 PM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, June 7, 2017 2:24 PM EDT

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