MRC Writer Mad Someone In Media Is Doing Exact Same Thing His Boss Does Topic: Media Research Center
Chris Reeves huffs in a Dec. 8 Media Research Center post:
On Friday’s Morning Joe, the MSNBC show’s hosts and guests spent most of their broadcast mourning the announced resignation of Minnesota Senator Al Franken from Congress in the wake of over half a dozen allegations of sexual assault against him. In a stunning display of hypocrisy, MSNBC’s liberal morning pundits went to extraordinary lengths to cast doubt on the women who have accused Franken of sexual misconduct, violating the network’s own oft-repeated standards for Republican and conservative politicians.=
New York Times writer Bari Weiss was even brought on to complain about how “some innocent people are going to go down” as a result of what co-host Mika Brzezinski dubbed a “sex panic.” With so many liberal media and political figures biting the dust career-wise in recent weeks, the co-host also explicitly questioned the accuracy and honesty of Franken’s accusers, wondering repeatedly “if it happened” and whether “all women need to be believed.”
Reeves didn't mention that his boss, MRC chief Brent Bozell, has tried to cast doubt on the women who accused conservative Republican Roy Moore of sexual misconduct.
We noted as part of our documentation of how the MRC downplayed the accusations against Moore, Bozell and Tim Graham argued in their Nov. 17 column that the accusations against Moore be treated less seriously than those against Franken, if they should even be considered at all, because "there's no photograph" or "admission of guilt."
Then, in their Dec. 8 column, Bozell and Graham sought to grade sexual harassment scandals, making sure to place Moore's in the lower tier while moving on to Clinton whataboutism and working in a conspiracy theory to boot:
Make no mistake: Franken's ouster is in part a Democratic Party maneuver to clean house in the event Judge Roy Moore is elected to the Alabama Senate. The former Franken-promoting Washington Post got the Moore ball rolling with a disturbing article that included Leigh Corfman's claim that Moore initiated sexual contact with her in 1979, when she was 14. She expressed her displeasure at the contact, and he drove her home.
This accusation is more serious than Anita Hill's and, as distasteful as it is, much less serious than Juanita Broaddrick's rape charge against President Clinton or Mary Jo Kopechne's death. But the Mitchells and Brokaws grade sex scandals by checking the party label first. If Corfman had accused Clinton with a similar tale, the media elites would have felt sick and dragged their feet, just as they did with Jones and Broaddrick.
These, by the way, are the only two times Bozell and Graham -- two top leaders at the MRC -- have mentioned Moore in their column. If Moore was a Democrat, they would undoubtedly be saying much more about it.
If Reeves is so upset about people downplaying and casting doubt on sexual harassment accusers, he might want to have a chat with his boss before he writes further.
WND's Farah Again Hypocritically Denounces Attacks On A President Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah devoted his Dec. 5 column to a big ol' whinefest:
CNN’s Jim Acosta’s is in a huff about President Trump dissing him and his network as purveyors of “fake news.”
Acosta has claimed “this kind of rhetoric, this kind of behavior is going to lead to a journalist being hurt. That’s the thing I worry about.”
I would suggest that Acosta’s brand of rhetoric and his kind of behavior is going to lead to his entire profession being hurt. That’s what I worry about.
But Acosta and others like him are disingenuous phonies.
Did Acosta express outrage when his colleagues at Newsweek, over the course of 21 days, compared Trump to Charles Manson and labeled the president of the United States a “hate group”?
If so, I must have missed that.
Acosta probably regrets getting scooped by Newsweek.
Now which characterization do you suppose truly endangers lives – calling a reporter a “fake news” purveyor or comparing the president to Charles Manson and smearing him as a walking, talking “hate group”?
Which of those characterizations are more volatile, inflammatory, incendiary and dangerous?
One: As we pointed out the last time he whined about this, we don't recall Farah's concern when the website he leads was hurling volatile, inflammatory, incendiary and dangerous attacks at President Obama -- up to and including likening Obama to the Antichrist and, yes, Hitler.
Two: Farah might want to look into the experience of NBC reporter Katy Tur, who required Secret Service escorts after the Trump rallies she covered because of Trump's direct attacks on her from the podium. She was obviously worried about being hurt due to Trump's anti-media rhetoric -- as was the Secret Service.
Farah went on to huff:
Is it an “attack” on all journalists to call into question the credibility of certain reporters?
Of course not. It comes with the territory. Reporters need to earn credibility. It’s not something with which they are endowed by their Creator.
[...]
"The label “fake news” is not a slur if hurled at Acosta or the network for which he works. It’s an accurate characterization.
After a blip last month in which it was forced to acknowledge reality, CNSNews.com is back to its old pro-Trump bias when reporting on monthly unemployment statistic.
Susan Jones' main story on November's jobless numbers was in full rah-rah mode, cheering that "The economy added 228,000 jobs in November and the employment rate stayed at 4.1 percent -- a 17-year low." The inconvenient fact that the number of people out of the labor force hit another record high under Trump didn't get mentioned until the fourth paragraph. She then empahsized a different cherry-picked number, claiming that the number of people working part-time but desiring a full-time job "was down by 858,000 over the year."
The only other story was the usual Terry Jeffrey sidebar on manufacturing jobs vs. government jobs, cheering that "Employment in manufacturing in the United States has increased by 189,000 in the year since Donald Trump was elected president" while "employment in the federal government has declined by 3,000 since Trump was elected." No mention of what it claimed was the "real" employment rate, a staple of CNS reporting under President Obama.
WND Pushes Pro-Moore Framing of Accuser As A Liar Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's double standard in its treatment of those who accused Roy Moore of perving on teenage girls vs. accusers of non-conservatives of sexual harassment continues in a Dec. 7 article by Art Moore eagerly embracing the pro-Moore narrative that a woman who says she wrote an annotation of the date and place Moore wrote in her high school yearbook -- but still stands by her claim that Moore wrote that note -- is a liar:
Pointing to a TV interview broadcast Friday in which Beverly Young Nelson admitted she annotated the yearbook inscription that she offered as the best evidence of her claim that Senate candidate Roy Moore sexually assaulted her 40 years ago, the Moore campaign told reporters they should conclude Nelson has undermined her credibility and that nothing in her story should be believed.
“The voters are going to have to decide, were they lying then or are they lying now?” said Moore attorney Philip Jauregui, referring to a Nov. 13 news conference in New York in which Nelson made her claim with celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred.
Moore is now in a tight race for a normally safe Republican seat with Democratic opponent Doug Jones ahead of next Tuesday’s special election.
[...]
Jauregui noted that Nelson and Allred declared at the time that everything in the yearbook inscription was written by Moore.
“Today, it’s a different story, isn’t it?” he said Friday.
The text in the yearbook states: “To a sweeter more beautiful girl, I could not say Merry Christmas, Christmas, 1977, Love, Roy Moore, D.A., Olde Hickory House.”
The lawyer renewed his demand that the yearbook be released to an independent handwriting expert to determine, for one, how old the ink is.
Earlier Friday, Moore tweeted, referring to Nelson: “Now she herself admits to lying.”
Contrast that to WND's treatment of evidence that Juanita Broaddrick -- who has accused Bill Clinton of sexually assaulting her -- has lied. In 1998, Broaddrick submitted a sworn affidavit to independent counsel Ken Starr stating that nothing happened between them.
A January 2016 WND article reprinting a chapter from a WND-published book about women of have accused Clinton of misdeeds -- a book WND will never give Moore's accusers the opporunity to write -- author Candace Jackson complained that Clinton's lawyers "smugly pointed journalists" to the affidavit uncritically repeated a quote from Broaddrick that she signed the affidavit because "I didn’t want to be forced to testify about one of the most horrific events in my life." Jackson added: "But signing the affidavit hadn’t called off the hounds and there she was, reliving it all over again on national TV." Jackson continued to portray Broaddrick getting caught in a lie as somehow normal, asserting that a Clinton lawyerswho noted that Broaddrick has a credibility problem over flip-flopping on the affidavit "might have been a bit more convincing if we hadn’t watched a similar affidavit signed by Monica Lewinsky go up in smoke just six months earlier."
Jackson then tries to justify Broaddrick's lying, in part by invoking her own claimed experience of having been sexually assaulted:
Juanita Broaddrick had to live in a country where her rapist’s face, voice, and image surrounded her all through the ’90s. That kind of constant reminder might have pushed me over the edge to full disclosure, too. She admits to lying under oath, denying the rape in an affidavit for the Paula Jones case. I wasn’t under oath, but I once lied to protect the person who raped me – to a federal investigator doing a background check on this person for a job.
Being triggered by her attacker's rise to political prominence is a defense WND will grant to Broaddrick -- but not Moore's accusers. That's the very definition of a double standard.
CNS Takes Longer To Write About Franks' Resignation Than Franken's Topic: CNSNews.com
Around 1 p.m. ET on Dec. 7, Democratic Sen. Al Franken gave a speech in which he announced his resignation from his Senate seat over allegations of sexual harassment. About five hours later, it was announced that Republican Sen. Trent Franks would resign his seat over a surrogacy controversy. CNSNews.com reported on one with a little more urgency than the other.
Melanie Arter's CNS story on Franken's resignation was posted at 9:52 p.m. ET, about 10 hours after the resignation speech was given. It's a surprisingly straight story, given Arter's history of being a pro-Trump stenographer.
Arter also wrote the story of Frank's resignation -- but it wasn't until 2:30 p.m. on Dec. 8, more than 21 hours after his resignation was announced. Unlike with Franken, Arter did try to spin things for Frank.
On top of highlighting that Franks is "pro-life" and "most recently sponsored the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which bans abortions at 20 weeks of pregnancy or greater with exceptions when the mother’s life is in danger or if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest," she also gave space to a former Franks aide to insist that Franks "never put the question to them if they would be surrogates for him" and that she’s never "been made to feel uncomfortable by the congressman” and “never seen any slightest bit of sexual harassment or intimidation." Arter also uncritically pushes Franks' later abrupt explanation of his decision to change his resignation from January to immediately, claiming he was motivated by his wife's illness.
But as WorldNetDaily did, Arter censored evidence that Franks' staffers were unconfortable with the surrogacy conversations because they thought he personally wanted to impregnate them, and that one staffer said she was retaliated against for rebuffing Franks' surrogacy advances.
Apparently, CNS needed all that extra time on the Franks story to figure out how to put the best face on a scandal surrounding an ideological ally.
WND Tries to Spin Away Trent Franks Surrogate Scandal By Pretending It Wasn't Sexual Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily reporter Alicia Powe's Dec. 8 article on the resignation of Sen. Trent Franks over asking his female staffers to be a surrogate mother for his child goes to great lengths to frame the controversy as not a sexual issue. Not only did Powe portray Franks as "adamantly denying anything sexual, either in word or deed," she recruited an anonymous lawyer to try to whitewash it:
Thus, while one news report Friday suggested the two aides were “concerned that Franks was asking to have sexual relations with them” – adding “it was not clear to the women whether he was asking about impregnating the women through sexual intercourse or in vitro fertilization” – a lawyer representing a surrogacy law firm explained to WND that surrogacy has absolutely “nothing to do with sex.”
“There is nothing sexual about it,” the attorney, who asked that her name be withheld from publication, told WND. “If someone claims they felt sexually harassed [by the conversation], it’s just a simple matter of maybe both parties aren’t educated or even knew what they were talking about.”
“I don’t even know about this congressman,” she said of the Franks controversy, but “if an individual feels sexually harassed by someone asking for them to be a surrogate, that would mean they didn’t understand what being someone’s surrogate or gestational carrier really means. There’s a lot of people who don’t even know what surrogacy means, so that wouldn’t be super shocking.”
Surrogacy is a strictly clinical procedure, explained the attorney, who handles contracts with egg donors.
“If somebody is going to be your surrogate, that absolutely does not mean that you are going to have sex, or even any physical contact whatsoever, that’s just a fact of the matter. A clinic would be involved and they would go through psychological screening. Whoever is going to be the surrogate would have to go through extensive screening to actually be cleared to enter into an IVF clinic where the embryo would be transferred. And she is literally just the carrier of that baby.”
Most couples reach out to family members, or individuals they feel close to, to become surrogates, the attorney explained, or else they find surrogates among friends because finding gestational carriers through an agency can be extremely costly.
“There’s many ways that people can find surrogates. If somebody is going through infertility and they want to find someone that will carry a baby for them, you can ask a family member, a friend. People go online. Most people use an agency that is very versed in surrogacy and can help the process so it’s handled professionally and properly. There are so many people that work independently.”
One: What's the purpose in granting anonymity to someone for what is basically non-controversial background information? Powe provides no reason for doing so. Perhaps the lawyer is a Franks-backing conservative who doesn't want to be seen publicly defending him by name.
Two: If there was "nothing sexual" in Franks' conversations with his staffers about potential surrogacy, that message apparently didn't reach the staffers. Politico reports:
The sources said Franks approached two female staffers about acting as a potential surrogate for him and his wife, who has struggled with fertility issues for years. But the aides were concerned that Franks was asking to have sexual relations with them. It was not clear to the women whether he was asking about impregnating the women through sexual intercourse or in vitro fertilization. Franks opposes abortion rights as well as procedures that discard embryos.
A former staffer also alleged that Franks tried to persuade a female aide that they were in love by having her read an article that described how a person knows they’re in love with someone, the sources said. One woman believed she was the subject of retribution after rebuffing Franks. While she enjoyed access to the congressman before the incident, that access was revoked afterward, she told Republican leaders.
Powe didn't mention any of that in her story.
Powe then posted tweets from "top conservative commentators" who were "arguing the congressman should not be forced to stop down for inquiring about a medical procedure." One of those "conservative commentators" is Mike Cernovich, a discredited conspiracy theorist who peddled the bogus "Pizzagate" conspiracy.
CNS Columnist: Manson Was The Ultimate Progressive Topic: CNSNews.com
Think of how Charles Manson could rightly be seen as the penultimate expression of the progressive’s worldview: He was his own God. In fact, he sometimes claimed to be God. Manson rejected organized religion, claiming he was both Jesus Christ and/or the Messiah. When he did quote the Bible, Manson misquoted it, twisted the words, and handled it selectively and self-servingly. Manson bragged he could start wars, purge and remake the culture, and preside over a world-wide reckoning.
Commentators are exhausting their vocabularies in describing the vile nature of Manson’s deeds and legacy. But Manson’s agenda was simply secular progressivism faithfully lived out: Manson, nor today’s liberals/relativists, bow to any deity other than themselves. They invent “truth” to suit their needs, hold unflinching confidence in their own importance and are willing to exploit others to advance their ideas.
It was moving that Sharon Tate’s sister said she had, “prayed for Manson’s soul.” News of the cult leader’s death caused most to think God and divine retribution: If evil is to be judged and if some go to hell—well, you connect the dots. But here is reality, folks: If there isn’t some divine judgement for those complicit with abortion-on-demand, like the presidential candidate we almost elected one year ago this month, then God will owe Charles Manson an apology. Planned Parenthood has murdered millions of times more humans than Charlie’s “family.”
The shedding of innocent blood didn’t faze Charlie. Manson, complicit with seven murders, is vilified. Secular progressives fight for the government subsidy of thousands of abortions each week. He is the personification of their worldview. No, secular progressivism by its very nature doesn’t do what we think of as “church.” But if they did, Charles Manson should quickly be canonized in their pantheon. Over a decades-long, pervasive scale, Charlie simply decreed, “My will be done.”
WND's Double Standard on Sexual Harassment Accusers Topic: WorldNetDaily
Not only has WorldNetDaily repeatedlypublishedwriters who have defended Roy Moore against allegations he perved on teenage girls, it has given a platform to Moore's team to trash his accusers.
Take. for instance, a Nov. 21 article by Art Moore, who allows Moore attorney Ben DuPre to hurl sleaze at accuser Leigh Corfman (pictured right). DuPre denounced her as a liar who was troubled teen:
Noting Corfman alleges she was with her mother at a court hearing in 1979, DuPré pointed out that the Etowah County document signed by Corfman’s parents asked for custody to be changed from the mother to the father.
While Corfman claims her life spiraled out of control after the alleged contact with Moore, DuPré said the parents indicated in a joint petition to modify custody that they were already concerned about behavioral problems by the child. The father was better equipped to deal with the already existing disciplinary problems, according to the petition, he said.
Further, Corfman claims she had telephone conversations with Moore using a phone in her bedroom at her mother’s home. But Breitbart reported, DuPré noted, that the mother said there was no phone in her bedroom.
The lawyer also disputed the claim that Moore picked up Corfman around the corner from her mother’s house. The supposed pickup place, he said, was actually about a mile away and across a major thoroughfare.
By contrast, a Nov. 29 WND article by Paul Bremmer touts a press conference featuring women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment and assault. Bremmer told only one side of the story; he did not mention that, for instance, Juanita Broaddrick -- who has accused Clinton of sexually assaulting her -- signed a sworn affidavit saying that the claim is "untrue." Broaddrick uncritically quotes Clinton accuser Kathleen Willey hyperbolically claiming that "Bill Clinton is a rapist and Hillary Clinton is his enabler."
He also quotes press conference organizer and right-wing activist Melanie Morgan huffing, "Today I want to challenge former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and all other feminist leaders to look these women in the eyes – Juanita, Kathleen, Leslie, who have joined us today – we challenge Nancy Pelosi to tell them that they don’t believe their stories after all these years." Bremmer does not note if Morgan has ever demanded the same of conservatives credibly accused of sexual harassment, such as Roy Moore and Donald Trump.
MRC's Graham & Bozell Can Only Respond To Their Critics With Insults Topic: Media Research Center
Ranting about "liberal media bias" is so much easier when you pretend there's no conservative media bias.
That's what the Media Research Center's Tim Graham and Brent Bozell have done in their Nov. 22 column ranting about a piece by an actual longtime journalist, James Warren -- who is not a political activist like Graham and Bozell -- for the journalism training and ethics group Poynter pointing out how the "liberal media" isn't really a thing.They whine:
Rupert Murdoch is looking at unloading some of his Hollywood assets, and among the suspected potential buyers are The Walt Disney Co. (ABC) and Comcast Corp. (NBC). To Warren, this somehow heralds a new era of "not just unceasing consolidation but the unceasing influence of folks of distinctly conservative ideology." The Murdochs explore selling off assets, and that's conservative consolidation?
Not only that, Warren says the "caricature" of a liberal media is "dubious" and can be rebutted by the fact that the "aggressively conservative" Sinclair Broadcasting Group "is primed to become the biggest local TV broadcaster." Yet Sinclair stations are routinely airing network news and entertainment content from ... ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox.
But Murdoch is not selling his right-wing news channel. And Graham and Bozell conveniently omit mention of another key example Warren provided: David Pecker, pal of Donald Trump and owner of the National Enquirer and recent purchaser of Us Weekly. (It just so happens that the managing editor of Pecker's publications, Dylan Howard, was just accused of sexual harassment and being Harvey Weinstein's lackey in using Pecker's publications to undermine allegations of sexual harassment by the once-powerful Hollywood producer.)
And, as the MRC has done in the past, Graham and Bozell deflect the actual issue with Sinclair, which is highly biased local newscasts ordered to run conservative commentary, turning them into Trump boosters.
Graham and Bozell then moved to the childish-insult phase -- literally. They actually declared that one college professor who committed the offense of disagreeing with them "sounds dumber than a grade schooler." And they weren't done insulting anyone who won't adhere to right-wing dogma:
Warren then cites Danny Hayes, a political scientist at George Washington University who doubles down on the idiocy. "The debate about ideological bias in the media is not productive at all," he says. That's true ... if you're a liberal who wants the average (and, apparently, ignorant) media consumer to think the news is objective. Hayes insists "the social science research finds virtually no evidence in the mainstream media of systematic liberal or conservative bias."
Hayes should be teaching geology because, clearly, he is living under a rock. We've been churning out daily evidence of a dramatic liberal bias in the "objective" news media for 30 years, and this "scientist" in Washington, D.C., thinks there's "virtually no evidence"?
Anecdotal, incidental evidence -- which makes up the vast majority of what the MRC claims is "liberal bias" -- is not real evidence. And we've seen the dismal, slantedresults the MRC gets when it issues what it purports to be actual "media research."
If your go-to response to criticism is to hurl juvenile insults at your critics, you have no actual defense. Graham and Bozell just proved that.
Kaepernick (And Obama, And Muhammad Ali) Derangment Syndrome Topic: WorldNetDaily
Sports Illustrated named the ungrateful, disrespectful Colin Kaepernick “winner” of its 2017 Muhammad Ali Legacy Award. It’s very fitting.
Evil people honor their own – usually the worst among them. That’s how Barack Hussein Obama became the first black president. It’s why Obama invited wicked people like Al Sharpton and activists with Black Lives Matter (a hate group worse than the KKK) to the White House. Thank God that President Trump is cleaning out the trash now!
But the former football player Colin Kaepernick repeats the same lies and hatred toward whites, police and America that we heard from the late Muhammad Ali. Like Ali, Colin misleads young, black children who look up to him, and he calls it “love.”
For all of Muhammad Ali’s talent in boxing, and his charismatic front, he was an empty shell, consumed by anger and judgment that turned him away from his real identity, away from the truth. He became a pawn for evil.
[...]
Colin Kaepernick, another weak and impressionable male, leveled similar false accusations against the country and against police – in this case, cheered on by his phony “social justice”-oriented girlfriend. Kaepernick said he won’t honor a country that “oppresses black people and people of color.” He spreads the liberal mainstream media lie against police: “There are bodies in the street, and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.” Not true.
In his warped and misled mind, he thinks and pretends he’s doing good. But deep down, he knows he’s wrong. He’s driven by resentment and judgment. He gives money to “social justice” causes that pretend to help kids but push the lie of “racism.” When you’re angry, you believe a lie.
-- Jesse Lee Peterson, Dec. 3 WorldNetDaily column
CNS Forgets Trump Mocked A Disabled Reporter Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com reporter Melanie Arter goes into stenography mode once again in a Dec. 4 article to uncritically repeat the latest pearls of wisdom from Dear Leader:
President Donald Trump commemorated International Day of Persons with Disabilities on Sunday with a statement saying that “too many people around the world” believe that having a disability justifies “destroying precious human lives.”
“Too many people around the world hold the misguided view that disabilities justify degrading or destroying precious human lives or that people with disabilities should not be entitled to full participation in civic life,” he said in the statement. “This way of thinking will always be morally wrong and contrary to our Nation’s core values.
“As Americans, we must set the global standard for ensuring those with disabilities are treated with the dignity and respect that all people deserve. Working with other nations, we will advance the rights of people with disabilities around the world,” the president said.
Arter failed to mention that time when Trump did, in fact, degrade a precious human life by mocking a disabled reporter.
During the 2016 campaign speech, Trump mocked the movements of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski -- who has arthrogryposis, which visibly limits the functioning of his joints -- over claims that Kovaleski purportedly altered a story claiming that Muslims in New Jersey allegedly celebrated the fall of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11.
That would seem to undercut the sincerity of Trump's words, but Arter didn't think that was an important fact to relate to her readers.
WND Cheers Thank-Trump Promotion From Fellow Right-Wingers (And Alex Jones) Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's state-media campaign to thank Donald Trump for being president (now with more God!) has been stuck in its little fringe-right bubble, so it's also embracing any fellow fringe-right figure who will deign to promote it.
First up were Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, who got praise from WND for doing the bare minimum of tweeting about it.Then Breitbart wrote an article about the campaign, so WND wrote an article about the Breitbart article, giving Breitbart a pass for not getting WND's full name right (it's notthree words, guys) -- perhaps because the article also fed WND's delusions by calling it an "independent news agency."
By last week, though, WND editor Joseph Farah was reduced to appearing on extremist conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' show to plug this campaign. And, yes, WND did an article on that, too:
“I’m even more thankful than I was then, in the ’80s, when Ronald Reagan was around,” Farah said in an interview this week on “The Alex Jones Show.” “You know, for me, I thought we’d never see his likes again. What we’re seeing right now is even more exciting. Trump is a man of action, he’s a man of courage, he cannot be deterred, he doesn’t care what people say about him.”
Farah marveled at Trump’s many accomplishments in his first 10-plus months in office, which WND is tracking and compiling in a BIG LIST.
“We have not seen anything like this in our lifetimes,” Farah told Jones. “I mean, I was around for Reagan. In fact, Reagan was the guy, the personality, who took me from the far left to being a constitutional, limited government kind of guy. That’s what Reagan did for me, but what Trump is doing in his first year, the accomplishments are greater, they’re more stunning. I’m just amazed at how much he’s doing. He’s taken us completely off defense. He’s on offense all the time.”
[...]
“We’d better thank our lucky stars,” Jones said. “The Supreme Court we’ve got, what’s happened with the economy, all of it – they planned to sew it all up when Hillary got in – the censorship, the control.”
He added: “The answer is to get everybody doing what [WND] and Joseph Farah have done, and that’s what’s going to cause a hydrogen bomb explosion of thankfulness.”
(And, yes, Jones' Infowars website did a reciprocal story, and also misspelled WND's full name as three words.)
Farah went on to insist that "This is not a Joseph Farah show; it’s not a WND show,” even though every thank-you card states it was "brought to you by WND."
WND didn't give any ideological label to Jones -- perhaps because he's so off the charts as a conspiracy theorist that he makes Farah and WND look reasonable by comparison.
MRC Demands Brian Ross (But Not Bret Baier) Be Fired For Mistake Topic: Media Research Center
To nobody's surprise, the Media Research Center went all in on exploiting ABC reporter Brian Ross' error in a story on former national security adviser Michael Flynn for maximum partisan effect.
Curtis Houck touted the "embarrassing correction" that had to be made, which allegedly constituted "the latest epic fail by Ross." Houck was even more giddy when ABC announced Ross would be suspended for the error; under a headline that included the words "About Time," proclaiming it as "yet another reason why people dislike the media." And MRC apparatchik Dan Gainor wondered "how you can trust anything" from ABC.
(Last time we checked, Paul Begala and Erroll Southers are still waiting for their corrections and apologies from the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, for the false stories written about them.)
Also to nobody's surprise, this all culminated in an indignant column from the MRC's Tim Graham and Brent Bozell, in which they declare that Ross hasn't paid enough of a price and must be fired, huffing, "These supposed guardians against 'fake news' make it look like fact mangling isn't really a serious offense."
However, the MRC thinks some media errors are less deserving of punishment than others.
As we've documented, shortly before the 2016 election. the MRC went all in on relentlessly promoting a Fox News story citing anonymous sources to claim that an indictment of Hillary Clinton was imminent and that her email server was almost definitely hacked. So all-in was the MRC that Bozell declared, "We will report developments on this continuing cover-up every hour from here on out." Turns out that story was false, and Fox's Bret Baier had to retract it. For all those hours Bozell said his MRC would report on the story, none of them reported on the development that it was bogus.
The MRC never retracted or corrected all the promotion it gave to this false story. It never demanded that Baier be fired for reporting such egregiously false information. Bozell never dismissed Fox News as "fake news" over the story.
Heck, the MRC still hasn't corrected its false post from a couple weeks ago that confused Time Warner and Time Warner Cable.
The MRC needs to clean up its own house first if it ever wants to be taken seriously as a media critic instead of just being dismissed as partisan hacks.
UPDATE: As the Washington Post notes, ABC also reprimanded another employee of the news division -- Chris Vlasto, the head of the investigative unit for which Ross works -- for providing internal poll numbers to Donald Trump's presidential campaign. The MRC hasn't mentioned Vlasto at all. Wonder why...
Newsmax Touts O'Reilly's Views on Sexual Harassment Without Mentioning He Was Fired For It Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax's courting of Bill O'Reilly for its own little TV network is starting to turn into a full-fledged image rehab campaign, like it has done for other scandal-tarredconservatives. But in order to do so, Newsmax has to withhold certain information from readers.
Cathy Burke wrote of an O'Reilly appearance on Newsmax TV in a Dec. 1 article:
President Donald Trump will be the target of a "hellacious amount of accusations" by the "hate Trump media" if Congress passes a tax cut and the economy continues to grow, commentator and author Bill O'Reilly predicted Thursday.
In an interview with "Newsmax Now" host John Bachman on Newsmax TV, the best-selling author of "Killing England" said Trump "needs to prepare" for the attacks, especially if they "resurrect" allegations of sexual misconduct.
"The women thing is hot now," he said. "That's the big thing. They're going to resurrect that. They'll find more women. That's not hard to do in our society today. . . . So it's going to get very nasty, and I think President Trump himself needs to prepare for this."
Missing from Burke's article: the inconvenient fact that O'Reilly was fired from Fox News after he and it spent millions of dollars to settle allegations of sexual harassment against him. Indeed, at no point in the conversation between O'Reilly and Bachman does O'Reily's own history of sexual harassment get mentioned, beyond obliquely mentioning that Matt Lauer "was pretty tough on you when he interviewed you when 'Killing England' came out." Instead, Bachman proclaimed O'Reilly to be "the most successful cable-news anchor of all time" and plugged O'Reilly's latest book as "the perfect gift for Christmas." Not exactly a hard-hitting interview.
Burke did it again, and at length, in a Dec. 6 article:
O'Reilly said the growing sex harassment scandal in the nation has become, however, a "witch hunt."
"I think that you have to want one thing in all of these cases and that's justice, and each case is different," he said.
"We do have in this country now a witch hunt, no question about it," he said. "And the lawyers know it, so if somebody comes in and say 'I was abused' . . . lawyers know they can get a lot of headlines sympathetic to their client."
He added if someone is sexually abused and steps forward, "that takes an act of courage."
But, he said, "you can't say that everyone who lodges an accusation is a victim. That has to proven."
"The media is certainly not looking for the truth, they're looking for the headline, the sensationalism. The media doesn't care really what happened unless they don't like you, then they want to put you out of business.
"So the American people, they need to be cautious when evaluating these things and it comes down a lot along party lines . . . But I think, to be fair, if you want justice, you have to step back and evaluate each situation differently."
O'Reilly also weighed in on the sexual misconduct scandal enveloping Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore, predicting if the former judge gets elected Dec. 12, he will "walk right into" an ethics investigation in the upper chamber.
"In the meantime, he does vote Republican, which is why the [Republican National Committee] and President [Donald] Trump did what they did," he added. "They want the 52 Republican senators to stay intact. . . . But I do believe at this point it hurts the Republican Party in general to ally itself with Roy Moore."
Again, no mention was made of the fact that O'Reilly was fired for sexual harassment.
A clip on the segment featured an gushy introduction by Newsmax host Bill Tucker calling O'Reilly "the most successful cable-news anchor of all time, and you can catch Bill here once a week here on Newsmax TV, but you can catch him every day at billoreilly.com." At no point in the conversation between O'Reilly and host John Bachman does O'Reily's own history of sexual harassment get mentioned -- not even obliquely.
CNS Reporter Uses 'News' Article To Rush to Trump's Defense Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com doesn't just do stenography for Trump -- it runs to his defense and presents it as "news."
A Nov. 28 "news" article by Susan Jones begins with this lament
President Trump's many tweets criticizing "fake news" and the "dishonest" media are an exercise of his own free speech, but that's not the way his liberal critics see it.
Among those critics is James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence under President Obama, who told CNN Monday night that the president's "attack on the free press" is "dangerous and disturbing."
Jones offeres no evidence that Clapper is a "liberal" (being DNI under Obama is not evidence) or that every critic of Trump is a "liberal," as she appears to be suggesting.
After Clapper raised the specter of repressive regimes that suppress the media, Jones leaped into full defense mode: "Trump has never advocated suppressing acccess to the Internet. In fact, since he began his presidential campaign, Trump has used Twitter, an Internet platform, to get his message past liberal media filters."
Unmentioned by Jones: Trump has, in fact, advocated changing libel laws to make it easier to sue media organizations.
Jones uniroinically concludes her article by whining: "The nation's media outlets remain free, but objectivity has flown out the window in the Trump era." It's also flown away from CNS as a whole, and from Jones in particular, who uses a so-called "news" article -- traditionally the epitome of objectivity -- to attack the media and defend a politician she adores.
Chris Reeves huffs in a Dec. 8 Media Research Center post:
WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah devoted his Dec. 5 
After a 
WorldNetDaily's 
Around 
WorldNetDaily reporter Alicia Powe's Dec. 8 
Think of how Charles Manson could rightly be seen as the penultimate expression of the progressive’s worldview: He was his own God. In fact, he sometimes claimed to be God. Manson rejected organized religion, claiming he was both Jesus Christ and/or the Messiah. When he did quote the Bible, Manson misquoted it, twisted the words, and handled it selectively and self-servingly. Manson bragged he could start wars, purge and remake the culture, and preside over a world-wide reckoning.
Not only has WorldNetDaily 
Ranting about "liberal media bias" is so much easier when you pretend there's no conservative media bias.
Sports Illustrated named the ungrateful, disrespectful Colin Kaepernick “winner” of its 2017 Muhammad Ali Legacy Award. It’s very fitting.
CNSNews.com reporter Melanie Arter goes into 
WorldNetDaily's 
To nobody's surprise, the Media Research Center went all in on exploiting ABC reporter Brian Ross' error in a story on former national security adviser Michael Flynn for maximum partisan effect.
Newsmax's 
CNSNews.com doesn't just do stenography for Trump -- it runs to his defense and presents it as "news."
