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Monday, July 31, 2017
NEW ARTICLE: The Trump Flip on Unemployment Reporting
Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com goes from cherry-picking negative numbers about jobless figures under Obama to focusing on the positive ones now that Trump is president. Read more >>

Posted by Terry K. at 2:24 PM EDT
Fake News: WND Claims 'Obama Holdovers' At State Scrubbing ISIS Genocide
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh thinks he has a scoop, according to a July 28 article:

The Obama administration repeatedly fudged on the issue of Islam.

Barack Obama himself said Muslims were a key to the founding of the nation and after all, the U.S. wasn’t a Christian nation.

Muslim advocates, including some fairly radical, were installed in influential positions in Washington.

Never were the words “Muslim” and “terrorist” to be used together, it seemed.

Now, a report is confirming that those left in the government, and there are many, from Obama’s tenure are busy trying to erase the references to ISIS’ “genocide” of Christians in the Middle East.

It is the American Center for Law and Justice that is, well, a little upset.

“In a startling revelation, news is breaking this week that Obama holdovers within the State Department are actively attempting to scrub its records to remove any mention of the ISIS genocide against Christians,” the organization reported.

“This is outrageous and the ACLJ has had enough, so we are preparing a new set of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to find out why – and to expose deep state operatives who would use the delay of confirming new State Department officials as cover to strip legal protections from Christians facing genocide.”

Unruh's introduction includes at least one blatant lie, that Obama said "the U.S. wasn’t a Christian nation." He did no such thing.

But it appears Unruh's larger claim -- that "Obama holdovers" at State are eliminating any reference to genocide by ISIS -- is, shall we say, fake news. He's simply regurgitating press releases from the right-wing ACLJ, who apparently does not name any of the alleged "Obama holdovers" purportedly doing this.

How do we know? Even the Obama-haters at Breitbart wouldn't back up the story. Former CNSNews.com reporter Penny Starr, now at Breitbart, writes that the State Department said the claim was "categorically false," adding:

There is no evidence on the State Department website suggesting the removal of references to genocide. One report titled “The Global Coalition – Working to Defeat ISIS” does mention genocide and explicitly states that holding the Islamic State accountable for genocide remains a priority for the department.

“Internationally, coalition partners are exploring ways to also hold ISIS members accountable for international crimes such as genocide and crimes against humanity with international investigative mechanisms,” the document states.

Looks like this is another piece of fake news from a "news" organization that has published so much of it.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:06 AM EDT
Sunday, July 30, 2017
MRC, CNS Diss Caitlyn Jenner By Mangling Her Name And Gender
Topic: Media Research Center

It is the style policy of most major news organizations that transgenders are identified by the name they prefer and the gender by which they live publicly.

The Media Research Center's purported "news" division, CNSNews.com, does not follow that policy, mostly because it hates the LGBT community. Thus we have a July 17 article by Annabel Scott repeatedly referring to "Bruce 'Caitlyn' Jenner" and identifying Jenner as "he."

Scott did not explain why she deviated from standard journalistic practice.

Even less bound to standard journalistic practice is the MRC itself. Transphobic sports blogger Jay Maxsonmangled Jenner's identity further in a July 27 NewsBusters post in which he referenced "Olympic decathlon champion Bruce (nee Caitlyn) Jenner."

Maxson appears not to know that "nee" means formerly, which means Maxson is falsely claiming that Jenner changed her name from Caitlyn to Bruce, instead of the other way around.

That's not the only thing Maxson got wrong, though; he also claimed that Jenner was among "lefties" who criticized President Trump's declaration of a ban on transgenders in the military. In fact, according to Scott's CNS article, Jenner has been a Trump supporter and says he believes in limited government.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:43 PM EDT
Updated: Sunday, July 30, 2017 9:44 PM EDT
AIM's Newest Writer Follows in Kincaid's Conspiratorial Footsteps, Declares Media Literacy Is 'Liberal Indoctrination'
Topic: Accuracy in Media

Cliff Kincaid has disappeared from Accuracy in Media.

An AIM employee for more than 30 years, Kincaid hasn't written an article for AIM in a month, but near as we can tell, neither AIM nor chairman Don Irvine has made any statement regarding his job status. Curiously, though, it has been begging for "freelance writers to write about media bias for our website" on its Twitter account. Kincaid is no longer listed as employee on AIM's website, though he was in June (editor Roger Aronoff has similarly disappeared)

If Kincaid is gone, though, AIM has an apparent replacement in Brian McNicoll (though it appears he too is a freelancer and not a full-time AIM employee).McNicoll proves he's following in the conspiratorial steps of Kincaid with a July 25 column in which he rants that libraries are engaging in "liberal indoctrination" by teaching people how to understand the media and be on the lookout for fake news:

Sponsored content can be hard for anyone to tell apart … most is written to look like news copy and contains information that can be relied upon as long as the sourcing is indicated. And questioning the source of a photo is a second-level operation for most journalists, let alone middle schoolers.

But this test is being used as a pretext to dramatically expand K-12 teachers’ ability to influence children on how to pick sources, which to rely on, what constitutes authority and which affiliations compromise objectivity.

There are workbooks and programs. There are grants and curricula. The Agency of Education’s 2014 Quality Standards now call for one full-time library media specialist and sufficient staff” to implement such programs.

There’s a new app from Google called Internet Awesome that uses games to “get kids thinking about what makes the best password, how to behave online and how to sort real from fake information.”

It even has a name – media literacy. The people who bring you declining educational results despite increased spending now want to teach our children their version of how to interpret content on the Internet. Given their political predilections, this bears watching.

[...]

Why is this even a question when we’re talking about a presidential election? Isn’t it up to voters to decide which information is useful?

Besides, according to a study out last week from the Newseum Institute, Americans’ trust in what they read on the Internet is declining anyway. Amazingly, people have begun to realize all on their own that those Nigerian bank scams are not real.

There’s a reason two entities firmly on the left – educators and Facebook – suddenly have decided to help us improve our media literacy. It wants us to learn to discern the truth as they see it.

“We want students to come to conclusions that are not only true but personally meaningful and relevant,” one of the librarians said.

And now they want to guide them to that conclusion. What could go wrong?

Probably a lot less than what could go wrong if the likes of McNicoll and AIM try to do so.


Posted by Terry K. at 8:06 PM EDT
Saturday, July 29, 2017
With Transgender Decree, CNS Is Back on the Trump Plantation
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com may have briefly left the Trump plantation over the president's attacks on Jeff Sessions, but it came running back when Trump decreed that transgenders should no longer serve in the military.

As longtime LGBT-haters themselves, CNS quickly embraced Trump's decision. Susan Jones' article on Trump's tweets did surprisingly include reaction from critics, although she wrongly labeled Tom Perez as head of the "Democrat National Committee" (using "Democrat" instead of "Democratic" is a longtime conservative insult of Democrats, even though "Democratic National Committee" is the official name and Jones is actually violating journalistic standard practice by not using the actual name).

Gage Cohen followed up with a blog post noting that Trump's decree "has the potential to save taxpayers up to $8.4 million dollars per year" in military medical costs. He didn't mention that the military already spends five times that amount on Viagra pills alone and 10 times that mount on erectile dysfunction treatments in general.

CNS published a column by self-proclaimed ex-transgender-turned-anti-transgender activist (but who was actually just misdiagnosed) Walt Heyer and also a blog post by Craig Bannister redundantly summarizing Heyer's column.

CNS also published a column by the right-wing Heritage Foundation's Ryan Anderson praising Trump and bashing transgenders, asserting that "biology isn't bigotry, and we need a sober and honest assessment of the human costs of getting human nature wrong."

And of course, no CNS gay-bashing would be complete without managing editor Michael W. Chapman quoting his favorite bigot, Franklin Graham, ranting that we don't need people in the military "who are confused about their gender" and insisting that "President Trump is laser focused on making our military better and stronger. ... Pray for him as he faces critics and opposition."


Posted by Terry K. at 10:52 AM EDT
WND Reporter Ramps Up the Trump-Fluffing
Topic: WorldNetDaily

The editor's note at the top of Garth Kant's July 16 WorldNetDaily article, gushingly headlined "The 5 pillars of Trump foreign policy unveiled," stated that it would be the "first in a series of special reports by WND White House reporter Garth Kant examining President Donald Trump’s foreign policy." This being WND, of course, there was not of lot of "examining" and much more defense of -- and praise for -- Trump.

To give an example of his fealty to Trump, Kant begins by prominently citing none other than dubious Trump toady "Dr. Sebastian Gorka" to baselessly assert that Trump would "fill the vacuum created by eight years of feckless Obama lack of leadership." Kant knows how to suck up to Gorka and help him overcompensate: by calling him "Dr." even though he has only a Ph.D., not a medical degree, and that Gorka's doctoral thesis for a Hungarian university has been widely mocked as unworthy of a undergraduate student in the U.S.

Kant's article was filled with more gushing, delcaring at one point that Trump's "moral clarity means returning to such basic concepts as an objective right and wrong, and good and evil. And the imperative to confront evil." The fact that Trump apparently has no personal sense of right and wrong doesn't seem to bother Kant.

Regarding Trump's speech in Poland, Kant slobbered that the president "was not afraid to defend Western values, again and again" and that "The speech was hailed as soaring and inspirational by the president’s supporters." (Kant himself included, presumably.) He huffed regarding the speech's critics:

In marked contrast, the president’s critics in the establishment media took his unabashed defense of Western civilization as an ethnocentric and religiously bigoted defense of racist white nationalism.

However, the president did not denigrate other cultures. He lauded the accomplishments of the West. He even described Muslims as partners in combatting the terrorist threat to the West.

Kant didn't mention that his own employer effectively agreed with the ethnocentric bent of Trump's speech.

Kant concluded with even more gushing:

Trump is brash. But he is also the most successful businessman to ever lead the nation. He is unlike any other president, ever. That makes him a mystery. But it also makes him something that may portend great potential.

Perhaps the most apt word to describe the man is unique.

Gorka has stressed that Trump is “a very different kind of president.”

A look at that, and just how important it is, in the second part of this series.

Needless to say, that July 18 follow-up continued the gushing, with Kant complaining that the media won't fawn over Trump the way he does:

Indeed, as the six-month-old administration forges ahead in its efforts to reverse Obama-era failures and implement a broadly appealing “America First” agenda, the media, especially in the White House, are constantly trying to apply the brakes.

The average American might be stunned to witness in person just how transparently top White House reporters in daily press briefings are dedicated to probing for anything possibly detrimental to the president, constantly looking for an opening and a line of attack to damage the administration. And how visibly upset they become when stymied. It’s more than being a watchdog – more like an attack dog.

The visceral dislike of the administration briefly boiled over after the White House made a series of subtle adjustments that eventually did turn down the heat, including making networks occasionally turn off the cameras during daily press briefings.

This from a so-called reporter whose dislike of President Obama and his administration was so visceral that he used WND to spread lies about Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

This time around, the Trump suck-up Kant is quoting is Newt Gingrich, to whom Kant gives an uncritical platform to tout how he "came up with a series of principles to help explain Trumpism, which may be equally useful in understanding the president’s foreign policy strategies.

Kant gushed even further about Trump's "uniqueness," declaring that "Trump had effectively turned the overwhelming liability of an intimidating adversarial press into an asset by feeding the networks’ hunger for ratings. Yet his appeal was so unique, the major media could not understand it."

Sounds like there's a certain White House Kant is auditioning to get a job in.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:01 AM EDT
Friday, July 28, 2017
MRC Tries to Play The Clinton Equivocation to Defect From Trump Jr.'s Scandal
Topic: Media Research Center

The Clinton Equivocation to deflect from Republican -- and now Trump -- scandals will never die at the Media Resarch Center, apparently. Geoffrey Dickens writes in a July 13 MRC post (boldface his):

The Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) evening news shows, in the last four nights, have been dominated by Donald J. Trump Jr.’s 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower – a meeting in which apparently no favors, money or meaningful information was exchanged – but those same shows all but ignored Hillary Clinton’s Russia-Uranium scandal back in 2015. 

Author Peter Schweizer, in his 2015 book Clinton Cash, broke the story that a Canadian uranium company, seeking approval of a sale to the Russian government from then Secretary of State Clinton’s State Department, had donated millions to the Clinton Foundation.

At the time, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was considered the favorite to win the Democratic nomination but the networks couldn’t care less. Total amount of Big Three evening news network coverage of that story in over two years? Just 3 minutes and 1 second. 

However, in just four nights the Big Three networks have swamped their evening news shows with 62 minutes and 18 seconds of Donald Trump Jr. coverage, or 20 times more than what they devoted to the Clinton Foundation uranium deal scandal.

Dickens leaves out a few inconvenient facts in recounting this -- namely, that this has since been revealed to be a partisan attack. As we've noted, Schweizer's book was funded by a group called the Government Accountability Institute, which was headed by one Steve Bannon, who later joined the campaign of Hillary Clinton's opponent, Donald Trump, and is now a top aide to Trump in the White House.

Dickens asserts that, according to Schweizer, "Bill Clinton was in Moscow for a particularly well-compensated speech" around the time that the deal was being considered. But as PolitiFact points out, the amount of money paid for that speech was not out of line with similar Clinton speaking engagements.

Dickens did concede that the uranium deal had to be signed off by "a committee, including Clinton’s State Department, but also including the Departments of Treasury, Justice, Defense, Homeland Security, Commerce, and Energy, plus the U.S. Trade Representative, and the Office of Science and Technology," as well as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which meant that Clinton by herself could not either approve or stop the deal. But Dickens then claimed that Schweizer "countered that argument" during an interview; in fact, all Schweizer did was more conspiracy-mongering.

In other words, there's no actual scandal here, no matter how much the MRC quotes a Trump-associated hitman to claim otherwise.

The MRC's Clinton Equivocation is becoming a crutch to use instead of conducting genuine "media research."


Posted by Terry K. at 3:26 PM EDT
Dubious WND Doc Rants About Filthy, Disease-Ridden Immigrants Again
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Elizabeth Lee Vliet -- a doctor affiliated with the far-riught-fringe Association of American Physicians and Surgeons -- plays the filthy-immigrant card (as she loves to do) in a July 21 WorldNetDaily column:

Since 2005, Americans have been warned about microscopic border crossers carried in with refugees and illegal immigrants, bringing diseases previously eradicated or rarely seen here. When not simply ignored by media and health officials, physicians and others sounding the alarm have been attacked as xenophobes.

Now we’re seeing these prescient predictions come true, most prominently in Germany, since 2015 when Angela Merkel began allowing more than 2 million migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East to flood into her country.

U.S. and German citizens are put at significant risk by the politically correct acceptance of unscreened immigrants from countries with a high prevalence of infectious diseases, many difficult or impossible to treat. Yet authorities in both countries have failed to fully inform the public of the dangers.

According to the July 2017 Infectious Disease Epidemiology Annual Report by the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, Germany has seen a surge in chicken pox, cholera, dengue fever, tuberculosis, leprosy, measles, malaria, meningococcal diseases, hemorrhagic fevers, hepatitis, HIV/AIDS, paratyphoid, rubella, shigellosis, syphilis, typhus, toxoplasmosis, tularemia, trichinellosis, whooping cough, and many fungal and parasitic infections.

Vliet mentions nothing about vaccinations, which if done to the level recommended by the vast majority of medical experts not affiliated with the AAPS, would provide herd immunity that would protect Americans from many of these diseases. Perhaps that's because the AAPS opposes mandatory vaccination. Indeed, as we've documented, some disease outbreaks in immigrant communities are caused by outsider anti-vaccine activists spreading fear about vaccines.

Perhaps Vliet should address that issue -- and confront the AAPS about it -- before going on another anti-immigrant tirade. Ah, who are we kidding? She's totally dedicated to immigrant-bashing to address that issue:

Even healthy immigrants burden the system with social costs, such as housing, education and food stamps – costs borne by taxpaying workers whose own wages are depressed by competition from a glut of low-paid foreigners. Illegal immigrants are estimated to cost U.S. taxpayers $17 billion per year. That $17 billion is in addition to the costs for those allowed here legally under “refugee” status, for which we do not have reliable public estimates.

Liberal and progressive politicians like to say, “America is the land of immigrants.” In the past, this meant legal immigrants who follow our screening procedures for illness and other laws and who are coming to America to be part of our culture.

Medical screening was one of the core purposes of the Ellis Island immigration center in New York. New arrivals were examined, quarantined if needed, or sent back to their country of origin if they posed a risk to Americans.

To protect the health and safety of American citizens, we must reinstate our prior customary medical screening as outlined on our own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website.

For national security and medical concerns, President Trump is correct to enforce our immigration laws, with careful vetting of those seeking to come to America to live and work.

Vliet doesn't mention that Trump wants to cut the CDC's budget by 17 percent.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:43 AM EDT
Updated: Friday, July 28, 2017 10:17 AM EDT
Thursday, July 27, 2017
SHOCK: Trump Stenographer CNS Defends Sessions Against Trump
Topic: CNSNews.com

So it appears there is a limit to which CNSNews.com will serve as a servile stenographer and cheerleader for President Trump.

Trump's repeated Twitter attacks on his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, got CNS' attention, and it fell in line with the rest of the right-wing media to let Trump know that this was a bridge too far for them by hurling "news" articles and columns at the issue:

There's also a story about the White House press secretary being asked about "the conservatives rallying behind Sessions," and not one but two pleas from the MRC's favorite radio host-slash-business partner, Mark Levin, for Trump to leave Sessions alone.

Why, it's almost as if CNS has a highly partisan editorial agenda dictated from outside the organization that has nothing to do with actual news and everything to do with advancing its right-wing ideology.

UPDATE: So committed to defending Sessions is CNS that editor in chief Terry Jeffrey penned an entire column on it, asserting that "American [sic] needs an honorable person leading the Justice Department, which is why Attorney General Sessions needs to stay."


Posted by Terry K. at 8:41 PM EDT
Updated: Saturday, July 29, 2017 10:22 AM EDT
Fake News: WND Spreads 'Satanic' Smears
Topic: WorldNetDaily

In a July 23 WorldNetDaily article, Alicia Powe spreads false and unsubstantiated smears of purportedly "Satanic" behavior against various and sundry people in entertainment and politics.

For instance, she quotes somebody named Christopher Everard, in the midst of accusing the entertainment industry of having "an anti-Christ thread," ranting that "Singer Katy Perry’s latest album cover is brazen with satanic iconology." This claim is never substantiated.

Powe also writes:

Americans are now witnessing music icons using occult imagery on album covers and even selling perfume and face cream containing blood and human body parts. During the 2016 presidential election, they learned that Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta had been invited to an occult “spirit cooking” event.

[...]

During the 2016 presidential race, WikiLeaks released stolen emails belonging to Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta revealing an invitation by his brother to a “spirit cooking dinner” at the home of artist Marina Abramovic.

Practitioners of the bizarre and gory ceremony mix blood, breast milk, urine and sperm together and use the mixture to paint messages on the walls.

Powe is lying. As an actual news organization, the Washington Post, explained, while "spirit cooking" was the name of an art installation by Abramovic in which some of those things happened, the actual dinner was normal and involved none of that stuff Powe wants to fearmonger over.

Do Powe and WND have the integrity to honestly and forthrightly correct their false smear against Podesta and baseless attack on Katy Perry? History suggests otherwise.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:45 AM EDT
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
MRC's Double Standard on Insulting Comments About The Looks of Others
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Katie Yoder rants in a July 24 post:

With incessant coverageon everything from slut-shaming to the Women’s March, the liberal media claim to stand for all women. All women, unless they disagree with a liberal agenda, that is.

So much for diversity and tolerance.

On Friday, The Daily Beast and Culture Writer Ira Madison III attacked the looks of newly appointed White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Twitter.

“Butch queen first time in drags at the ball,” he tweeted alongside a picture of Huckabee Sanders at a White House press briefing.

In other words, Madison called Huckabee Sanders a gay male (“butch queen”) dressed as a woman (“in drags”).

It seems Yoder has forgotten that her boss, MRC chief Brent Bozell, said President Obama looked like a "skinny ghetto crackhead." That seems relevant if Yoder wants to further express any kind of moral superiority over Madison. 

By the way, Madison later apologized and deleted his tweet (as Yoder later noted in an update). By contrast, Bozell has never apologized for his ugly, racially charged smear of Obama.

Yoder might want to keep that in mind as well the next time she attacks someone else for mocking the appearance of another.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:07 PM EDT
WND Still Attacking 'Bible Answer Man' for Not Being Christian Enough
Topic: WorldNetDaily

In April, we wrote about how WorldNetDaily's Art Moore effectively declared that the only acceptable form of Christianity is evangelical Protestantism by attacking Hank Hanegraaff, who hosts a radio show called "Bible Answer Man" but also recently converted to the Greek Orthodox faith, which Moore doesn't really elucidate is also a form of Christianity.

Well, Moore is keeping up the attack on Hanegraaff for apparaently not being Christian enough in a July 22 article:

Can Hank Hanegraaff continue to be the “Bible Answer Man,” daily answering questions about faith and practice posed by a largely evangelical Protestant audience of radio listeners after converting to the Greek Orthodox Church last spring?

Hanegraaff believes so, contending that in the spirit of “mere Christianity,” he remains a defender of the essentials of the faith.

But family members of the founder of the organization he leads, the Christian Research Institute, are calling on him to resign. They argue in a statement it is “fundamentally dishonest” for Hanegraaff on CRI’s call-in radio show to try to reconcile Protestant doctrinal principles such as “sola scriptura” — the Bible is the sole rule of faith and practice — with the Eastern Orthodox belief in the on-going, Spirit-led authority of church tradition.

Moore doesn't explicitly state that the family members attacking Hanegraaff have no authority over him since they're no longer involved in the ministry, though he does concede that one daughter "whose husband ... is CRI's webmaster, did not sign the statement.":

Moore stacked the article against Hanegraaff to ensure he couldn't properly respond because he's ill, as Moore effectively admits:

WND asked for an interview with Hanegraaff, but his spokesman, Stephen Ross, said he has been unable to respond due to his health. Hanegraaff revealed in May he has mantle cell lymphoma, a rare form of cancer, and has been undergoing aggressive treatment.

Ross gave WND a previous statement by Hanegraaff addressing the question of whether or not his conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy is in conflict with the mission of CRI.

Much of the rest of Moore's article consists of repeating parts of that statement, countered by attacks on Hanegraaff's faith.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:45 AM EDT
Tuesday, July 25, 2017
MRC Promotes Levin's Temper Tantrum Over Book Sales
Topic: Media Research Center

We've documented how the Media Research Center and right-wing radio host Mark Levin have had a mutual promotion agreement -- Levin touts the MRC on his radio show, and the MRC touts Levin on its network of websites. As far as we know, that business deal is still in force; at least, the MRC promoting Levin's latest book like it is.

On July 6, MRC chief Brent Bozell and lieutenant (and ghost-writer) Tim Graham penned a column complaining that the media (well, the media outside the right-wing bubble) was ignoring Levin's book. There was no disclosure of their history of business deals. That got the attention of CNN's Brian Stelter, who invited Levin on his show "Reliable Sources." Levin petulantly declined, essentially saying he didn't want to be on stupid CNN anyway.

The MRC indulged Levin's petulance further with a July 21 CNSNews.com article by Gage Cohen featuring Levin whining that the New York Times' nonfiction bestsellers chart bumped his book down from No. 1 to No. 2, while Nielsen Bookscan kept him in first place.

Bozell then followed up, doubling down on the hate on his Twitter account, in which he huffed that the Times was "shameful losers" for accurately reporting its numbers, then screeched that  the Times was publishing "leftist 'Fake Book Lists,'" -- all despite offering no evidence that there is anything fake or falsified about the Times' data.

Oddly, Bozell didn't link to his own website's article as backup; instead, he used an article by the Washington Examiner's right-wing lackey Paul Bedard (with whom the MRC also has a promotion deal).

Perhaps Bozell and the MRC could act a little more like the media watchdogs they claim to be and a little less like the self-dealing promoters they appear to actually be.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:20 PM EDT
Fake-News WND Editor Bashes 'Fake News' CNN
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah whines in his July 19 column:

There’s an imminent attack being prepared in the God-forsaken fake newsrooms of CNN Investigations.

I thought I’d alert you to this and prepare you for what I believe will be an all-out campaign by the network to discourage advertisers from working with independent news operations such as WND.com. Breitbart.com, DailyCaller.com and others.

How do I know?

I have it on good authority.

I’ve even heard from CNN Investigations in an email that strongly suggests the approach these fake, phony con men will be taking on their “story.”

[...]

Here’s my public response to this private solicitation: No thanks! I do not covet being quoted or misquoted by fake news CNN. I am not going to participate in your propaganda designed to squelch different points of view from being expressed in our nation. I have no desire to be a part of your nefarious and mischievous standard-less smut-peddling.

How ironic that Farah is raging at CNN for being "fake news" when his own website is one of the most notorious peddlers of fake news. Indeed, the signature story in WND's history -- Barack Obama's "eligibility" to be president -- was nothing but fake news.

Farah goes on to rant against CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, whom he claims went into an undefined earlier interview  with Farah with the intent "to vilify, to defile, to slander and to ruin":

I had figured as much going in. Today everyone knows what Jim Acosta is about. He’s a highly partisan political activist – mean-spirited to the core – posing as a “newsman,” literally playing one on TV. In two hours, I never gave him a single soundbite he could use for the hatchet job he had planned. Thus, nothing ever aired.

Of course, "highly partisan political activist posing as a newsperson, with an intent to vilify, to defile, to slander and to ruin" is an accurate description of every single WND employee, including Farah. Remember how WND tried to personally destroy Obama, up to and including portraying him as the Antichrist.

Farah also complains that CNN is on a "search for selective facts to buttress a pre-conceived narrative" -- again, what WND does pretty much all the time.

In other words, Farah is projecting -- ascribing faults to CNN that are really about his own operation. If Farah has no problem being the founder and leader of such a biased "news" operation, why should he care what CNN does?


Posted by Terry K. at 4:22 PM EDT
Monday, July 24, 2017
MRC Censors News About Withdrawing Its Own Award From Hannity
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center was in a little bit of a controversy in recent weeks.

In early June, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens used his column to attack the idea of  the MRC bestowing its annual William F. Buckley Award for Media Excellence. Stephens declared that while neither Hannity nor the MRC were "particularly noteworthy," giving an award named after Buckley -- who had nourished a brand of conservatism that was "fundamentally literary -- to a conspiracy-monger like Hannity ushers in the "post-literate conservative world."

When Stephens ushered in his move to the Times from the Wall Street Journal a month before with a column questioning climate change, the MRC touted how Stephens made "liberal snowflakes" upset by it. But it stayed silent aout Stephens' diss of the MRC's planned award. A June 29 NewsBusters post by Randy Hall praised MSNBC for adding Stephens as a commentator -- but he stayed silent about how Stephens bashed the MRC's award.

Last week, however, CNN's Jake Tapper broke the news that the MRC has decided not to give the award to Hannity, reportedly after Buckley's son, author Christopher Buckley, "expressed great dismay" at the idea and contacted the MRC to express his disapproval. The MRC, meanwhile, was spinning it as a "scheduling conflict," and Hannity had a Twitter meltdown over the revelation, insisting that he was "unable to attend."

This is big news in the conservative world. But you won't read about it on any MRC-operated website.

We found no reference to the controversy on NewsBusters, CNSNews.com or MRCTV. The main Twitter feed for the MRC, as well as the NewsBusters feed, also ignored it. The only mention we found was a single tweet by MRC chief Brent Bozell, in which he advanced the questionable scheduling-conflict storyline: "MRC awarded Hannity the Buckley award. Hannity subsequently told us he couldn’t make it. We chose not to hand out the award this year."

In other words, the MRC got scooped on its own story and is trying to keep the truth from its own readers. It's a reminder that the MRC hates the truth when it involves something unflattering about its fellow conservatives -- and especially itself.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:52 PM EDT

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