Topic: The ConWeb
As the ConWeb contorts itself into pro-Trump state media, it's time once again to honor, as it were, the worst ConWeb reporting and craziest ConWeb opinions of the year. Read more >>
Thursday, January 18, 2018
NEW ARTICLE -- Slanties 2018: The Shape of Slant
Topic: The ConWeb As the ConWeb contorts itself into pro-Trump state media, it's time once again to honor, as it were, the worst ConWeb reporting and craziest ConWeb opinions of the year. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:56 PM EST
MRC Hires Right-Wing Ranter Allen West As 'Senior Fellow'
Topic: Media Research Center From a Jan. 11 Media Research Center press release:
Note that the only experience the MRC cites for West in the relevent area of media criticism is that, in Bozell's words, "he has witnessed the liberal media’s hypocrisy and bias first hand." In reality, this means West is mad that the media accurately reported the anti-liberal, anti-media, anti-Muslim and other various and sundry crazy things he says. And he has said a lot of them. (Remember when West bizarrely attacked President Obama as a "usurper" and a "charlatan"?) You might remember that West was one of the members of Accuracy in Media's little "Citizen's Commission on Benghazi" kangaroo court, best known for having Wayne Simmons -- an actual charlatan and fraud who invented an entire CIA career that got him on Fox News as a commentator -- as a fellow member than for any of the dubious conclusions it reached. We noticed that didn't make the MRC's bio for West. The same day the MRC made this announcement, its "news" division CNSNews.com published a lengthy column by West in which he ranted that "The left has an all-out assault to undermine and delegitimize the Judeo-Christian faith heritage and God the Creator in that faith heritage," spurred by a right-wing media report that an "elite liberal arts college" is hosting a class on "queering the Bible." The headline of the column sets the tone: "Who’s Gonna Stand Up, Denounce This Crap…Only Me?" Putting political screeds before relevant experience? Sounds like West will fit in just fine at the MRC.
Posted by Terry K.
at 5:53 PM EST
Updated: Thursday, January 18, 2018 5:56 PM EST
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
CNS Still Violating MRC's Standards On How A 'News' Outlet Should Behave
Topic: CNSNews.com Last April, we caught CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey making the argument that President Trump's proposed multibillion-dollar border wall cost only "0.035 percent of what the federal government will spend in total this year" -- despite Jeffrey's co-workers at the Media Research Center attacking liberals for making the same comparative-spending argument to preserve funding for arts, humanities and public broadcasting. Jeffrey trotted out that same argument again in a Jan. 9 CNS article:
Again, we see that the MRC has very different standards for the "news" operation it runs than for the "liberal media" it's constantly dictating to. If CNS actually followed its parent's standards, the MRC might have a little more credibility.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:47 PM EST
WND Pretends Its Lack Of Credibility Isn't To Blame For Its Financial Woes
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily's latest warning of an "existential threat" appears to have had the desired effect: It seems to have raised most or all of the $100,000 it claims it needed by the end of January to stay in business. WND editor Joseph Farah started his Jan. 11 column with a ridiculous "It's A Wonderful Life" analogy, then declared: "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I never realized I had so many friends – real friends, the kind that rush to your side when you’re in trouble. We thank God for you – and you are the answer to my fervent, tear-filled-eyes, on-my-knees prayers." He added, "Elizabeth and I could have cashed out when times were good, retired with millions of dollars in the bank and enjoyed our old age together. But we had a mission – to seek the Truth with a capital T, to bring you the news the fake media wouldn’t and to do it all within a Judeo-Christian worldview." A Jan. 15 email by Farah to WND's mailing list expanded on the reasons it claims are "the primary causes of our situation":
Farah is silent on what may very well be the actual cause of WND's situation: It doesn't care about the truth. It's not trusted, and it's not credible. We've recounted the false, misleading and utterly fake news WND has published in just the past few years. It does not tell the truth, in either the uppercase or lowercase varieties. It can't even be bothered to do something so simple and logical as to renounce Paul Nehlen, an author it published and promoted who has since been revealed to have white nationalist and anti-Semitic sentiments. That complete lack of credibility is directly linked to the first two problems Farah cites. Google is not ranking WND highly not because it's "independent" but because it's not trustworthy. Same for Facebook driving traffic elsewhere. It's telling that even with Facebook's problems with promoting fake news, WND couldn't get a toehold. Still ignoring those credibility problems, Farah says he needs more money:
Unless and until Farah can prove WND is worthy of being saved -- by apologizing for WND's legacy of fake news and publicly distancing itself from Paul Nehlen, to name just two easy things that would go a long way toward proving that -- readers should be wary of offering support.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:24 AM EST
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
CNS Managing Editor Pushes Dumb Statistical Comparison
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com has been unafraid to politicize American military casualties in the past -- remember that it repeatedly credited President George W. Bush for falling casualities (from a surge that he ordered) while blaming President Obama for increasing casualties in Afghanistan (made necessary because Bush largely ignored Afghanistan to focus on Iraq). Which brings us to a Jan. 2 CNS article by managing editor Michael W. Chapman headlined "2017: Chicago Homicides Outnumber U.S. Military Casualties 18 to 1." Yes, it's a stupid point, but Chapman is fully committed:
Of course, the U.S. military is not engaged in any major combat operations anywhere in the world. But that won't keep Chapman from pressing his dume analogy -- after all, his allegiance is to political ideology, not to journalism.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:46 PM EST
Leo Hohmann Leaves Cash-Strapped WND With A Flurry of Muslim-Hate
Topic: WorldNetDaily Leo Hohmann appears to be one of the WorldNetDaily employees editor Joseph Farah has intimated was laid off or let go due to its current financial crisis; his last byline was Jan. 7. Hohmann stayed true, though, serving as WND's resident Muslim-hater to the very end. A Dec. 26 article by Hohmann carried thet headline "U.S. woman stabbed 14 times by Somali migrant, media go dark." Hohmann latched onto an unsubstantiated description of the alleged assailant as a "Somali" and ranted that the media wasn't covering that angle, lashing out in particular at a local newspaper that "did not return WND’s calls Tuesday to inquire about why it went dark on such a brutal, unprovoked attack on a defenseless, unarmed woman walking home from work." Indeed, Hohmann initially only identified the assailant as "black" and did not explain how he made the leap from "bnlack" to "Somali," let alone what the supposed identifying characteristics of a "Somali" are. Nevertheless, he then served up a list of unrelated crimes that somehow proved in his mind that the stabbing incident "continues a pattern of Somali crimes being covered up, downplayed, lightly investigated and eventually falling off the radar in Minnesota." Hohmann followed up with a Jan. 3 article that included a clip of an TV interview with the victim, which according to him she described as "a black man in his early 20s, thin build, low-cut afro and a slight Somali accent." But according to the reporter in the TV interview, the description is of "black, mostly likely Somali with a slight accent" -- a slight but important difference showing that Hohmann's eagerness to impugn an entire country's immigrants over the act of a person who may not even be from there is driven by hate rather than any sense of justice. Hohmann went on to criticized supposed "sloppy police activity" and complain that "police have still not released a composite sketch of the suspect, which would seem to be a normal course of action in a case like this."Hwe then trots out fellow Muslim-hater and adulterer John Guandolo spitting that "Minneapolis police and the sheriff’s office there are so in bed with the jihadis they don’t know which way is up." Hohmann's most recent -- and, it appears, final -- byline for WND was a Jan. 7 article complaining that the name "Mohamed" came in third in the list of top baby names at one Minnesota hospital. Hohmann goes on to quote a man named Ron Branstner, whome he describes only as an "area resident," complaining about all the Somalis. In fact, he's a noted "anti-Islam and anti-refugee" activist so extreme -- he loves to rant that the United Nations sends Muslim refugees to the U.S. as "to divide and conquer, get rid of our Constitution, get rid of our way of life and implement it with another way of life called ... sharia law!" -- a speech he was to give was canceled when sponsors realized who he is. So, in the end, it appears that funding -- and not the fact that he hates Muslims so much he falsely blamed them for a measles epidemic and lied about the makers of Chobani yogurt and its hiring of mostly Muslim refugees to such an extent that his articles had to be corrected months after the fact following what we can safely assume was a not-so-friendly phone call from Chobani's lawyers -- has caused Hohmann's tenure at WND to end with a quiet whimper. Sorta ironic, dontcha think? UPDATE: Turns out Branstner isn't a Minnesota "area resident" at all -- he's from California. And he gets stuff wrong too. Hohmann won't be telling anyone at WND, or wherever he ends up, about that.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:52 PM EST
Updated: Tuesday, January 16, 2018 6:57 PM EST
MRC Is Weirdly Sensitive About Idea That Reagan Had Alzheimer's Symptoms While President
Topic: Media Research Center Last fall, the Media Research Center had a weird little freakout over the idea that Ronald Reagan might have been suffering from symptoms of Alzheimer's disease while president, calling anyone who would raise the issue "deranged" -- even though Reagan's son, Ron Reagan Jr., has said he observed possible early signs of the disease in his father. The MRC continues to be bizarrely sensitive about the issue, however. Curtis Houck put the word "disgusting" in the headline of his Jan. 8 post attacking a couple of people on MSNBC for talking about it:
Houck didn't mention that all of those deniers are Reagan hagiographers who have a vested interest in bending history to obscure the idea that Reagan might have had health problems while in office. And Michael Reagan insulting his half-brother is evidence of absolutely nothing. Then, in a Jan. 12 post, Kyle Drennen attacked CBS' Dr. John LaPook for accurately stating that "there are questions about whether Ronald Reagan had symptoms of Alzheimer’s while in office." Drennen retorted: "The claim about Reagan has been repeatedly dispelled by experts of his presidency. George Will denounced the notion as 'slander' in a 2015 Washington Post column. Reagan biographer Craig Shirley called it 'total B.S.'" Like Houck, Drennen didn't admit that Will and Shirley are Reagan hagiographers.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:30 AM EST
Monday, January 15, 2018
Irony: WND Columnist Complains About Media Deception
Topic: WorldNetDaily Larry Tomczak's Jan. 8 WorldNetDaily column is headlined "Why media deliberately deceive you." How ironic, giving that WND is one of the foremost peddlers of fake news and misinformation in America. Needless to say, Tomczak does not call out the publisher of his column, presumably because he would like to continue to be published. Instead, he complains that movies based on real people don't stick to what he thinks should be said about them. First, he huffed that "The Darkest Hour," the film about Winston Churchill, has a scene that "erroneously depicts him as uncertain of the direction to take and needing to poll citizens on a subway before deciding what to do. This is blatantly false because Churchill was a man of steely conviction who never wavered in his resolve to stop Hitler." Next, Tomczak complained that a new film about Tonya Harding tried to "sympathetically present her as a somewhat victimized woman who unfortunately got mixed up with the wrong crowd and subsequently fell short in her quest. The truth is, Tonya Harding was out-of-control and squandered her opportunities because she made deliberate choices to get involved with low-lifers who discussed killing her nemesis." Then he served up revisionist history on another story:
In fact, the Supreme Court found that the government failed to prove its case that publication of the Pentagon Papers harmed national security. Tomczak then grumbled: "In the coming days, I fully expect Hollywood to release a big budget film depicting the life of former President Barack Obama in the most glowing, flattering way imaginable. For those who 'have ears to hear,' I offer '10 Reasons Why Barack Obama Was Our Worst President' as a factual rebuttal." That article, on Tomczak's personal website, mostly attacks Obama as a "counterfeit" Christian who failed to hate gays as much as Tomczak does and repeats other right-wing Obama-hating talking points.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:35 PM EST
CNS Follows White House Marching Orders on Steve Bannon
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com these days is mostly about being faithful to the dictates of the Trump White House. And when Steve Bannon was quoted in Michael Wolff's book criticizing the Trump administration and its related scandals, CNS was there to eagerly help the White House make sure that Bannon is persona non grata. CNS' Melanie Arter dutifully transcribed official White House reaction in two articles on Jan. 3, the day book exerpts were released. The headline of the second article, though, sums up just how much being sucked up to means for this adminstration and inadvertently reveals the game CNS is currently playing: "White House on Steve Bannon: Going After President’s Son ‘Not the Best Way to Curry Favor’." The next day, Susan Jones wrote an flashback article on Bannon -- which was CNS' lead story for part of that day -- insisting last September that the current investigation into Trump's connections with Russia was a "farce,"the goal of which is to try and discredit Bannon's assertion in the Wolff book that there is something to the investigation. She followed that with an article touting how Trump tweeted that Bannon was "Sloppy Steve." On Jan. 7, CNS published an unusual weekend column by Tim Donner attacking Bannon and declaring, "Let's not mince words here. Bannon is toast." Donner added that Trump supporters with stick with their "game-changing president" over "a guy who rode the wave into the White House before imploding and turning on the man who put him there." CNS couldn't have followed the Trump agenda any closer if they had been told by the Trump White House what to publish -- which, for all we know, may have actually happened.
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:16 PM EST
WND Still Doing Joe Arpaio's Bidding
Topic: WorldNetDaily Perhaps one reason that WorldNetDaily is teetering on financial ruin is because of its unusually close relationship with unsavory types. WND was so tight with then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio that not only was it able to maneuver Arpaio into launching that bogus, biased "cold case posse" looking into President Obama's birth certificate, it was able to slip then-WND reporter Jerome Corsi onto it (who, as a birther dead-ender, did nothing to help the posse's credibility). Having finally lost re-election to his sheriff post after too much corruption, Arpaio is now running for the Republican nomination to a Senate seat in Arizona. And WND is there to lionize him some more. Cue stenography by WND's Bob Unruh in a Jan. 9 article:
Unruh whitewashed Arpaio's legacy of corruption by claiming that he merely "went too far trying to protect Americans from illegal aliens." Shortly after that article was published, it was followed by another one, this one anonymously written, declaring that "It took only a few hours after self-described “America’s toughest sheriff” Joe Arpaio announced his bid for the U.S. Senate to move into a statistical tie with the front-runner." This article was largely a rehash of Unruh's article, including his proud delcaration that Arpaio "was behind the only official law-enforcement investigation of Barack Obama’s birth certificate. His investigators concluded that the birth certificate Obama presented at the White House as an official government document almost certainly is a forgery." No mention, of course,of how WND worked with Arpaio to sleaze into existence, or how that so-called investigation's findings have been completely discredited. Of course, another reason WND is teetering on financial ruin is that it refuses to tell its readers the truth about Arpaio, his corruption and his bogus birther investigation.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:27 AM EST
Sunday, January 14, 2018
'Barf': MRC Researchers Get Even More Unprofessional
Topic: Media Research Center There's always been a streak of unprofessionalism running through the Media Research Center -- remember when MRC chief Brent Bozell called President Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead"? -- most recently reveling in the personal issues of people it hates. That snide unprofessionalism pops up again in a Jan. 3 post by the MRC's Scott Whitlock in which he rants about the new movie "The Post" for being positive about the power of journalism. The headline on his post actually starts out with the word "Barf." Yep, crude insults are a surefire way to argue a point about "media bias." Whitlock doesn't do much in the way of fact-checking in his post -- indeed, he challenges none of the history in "The Post" movie -- but does a bit of lame whataboutism in whining that ">there's no film exposing actions such as Barack Obama spying on Fox News reporter James Rosen or how the ex-president derailed a government effort to stop Hezbollah’s trafficking of cocaine. But, then, Obama is a Democrat." Whitlock also whined that "there are almost NO Republicans in The Post and the film is mostly a conversation between the left and the center-left." As if it mattered what political persuasion one was during the Pentagon Papers incident, which is what "The Post" is about. The "barf" comment, besides being unprofessional, shows just how little the MRC cares for the media, and its desire to silence any voice that does not spout pro-Trump talking points 24-7.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:03 PM EST
Updated: Sunday, January 14, 2018 10:16 PM EST
WND's Farah Hypocritically Complains About Intellectual Property Abuse
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah complains in his Jan. 7 column:
You know who else monetizes the stolen intellectual property of others? Joseph Farah. Virtually every day of WND's existence, employees of Farah's website copies and pastes the first few paragraphs of articles from other news organizations into articles at WND. While WND links to and credits the source article, there's no evidence that WND seeks permission from or compensates the sources for its use of the article, since WND is not a member of any news or information syndicator. In the past, Farah has insisted that WND is merely engaging in "fair use" through such practices. Still, as a copy-and-paste job done for the benefit of a private, pro-profit enterprise, the practice adds no value -- it's just straight theft, and announcing from whom it's being stolen is hardly a mitigating factor. It may not be illegal, but it is certain unethical to take another's intellectual property without permission for your own for-profit use. Farah's criticism of being plagiarized is ironic given how WND has had issues with plagiarism over the years -- the most embarrassing example being a 2011 WND-commissioned report attacking Obama, which it claimed was conducted by "trusted Kenyan professionals" but turned out to be largely plagiarized from news articles. WND has also been a promoter of alt-right figure Jack Posobiec, who has been caught plagiarizing the work of others. It might be possible to feel for Farah and WND over his intellectual-property issues, the thing we're feeling the most is karma.
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:43 PM EST
Saturday, January 13, 2018
Pro-Trump Newsmax Writers Defend Trump's Sanity
Topic: Newsmax As questions about President Trump's mental fitness began to swell in the wake of Michael Wolff's book, two of his biggest buddies and boosters -- both tied to Newsmax -- knew it was time to come to his defense. First, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy went on CNN to vouch for Trump's sanity, while also humble-bragging about how much he hangs out with the president:
Then Ron Kessler -- who helped build the foundation for Trump's political ambitions as a Newsmax writer -- went on Newsmax TV (while once again failing to be identified as a former Newsmax employee) to trash Wolff's book while promoting his own Trump-fluffing book:
Kessler later claims that his book is "the real story of Trump and his presidency, and it's something that you can bank on." Given the absurd amount of Trump-fluffing Kessler has done over the past two decades, we somehow doubt that. (Photo: Ronald Kessler and his wife, Pamela, with Donald Trump, from Kessler's 1999 book "The Season," in which he actually wrote of Trump: "His typical facial expression is to set his mouth in a moue, somewhere between a pucker and a pout. It says, 'I'm a handsome guy. I'm going to WIN.'")
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:09 AM EST
WND's Rush Doesn't Need Evidence To Call Trump Sex Accusers Liars
Topic: WorldNetDaily Erik Rush's Jan. 3 WorldNetDaily column is largely paranoid ranting about how President Trump, "as the consummate capitalist, represents a symbolic as well as an existential threat to the elite-run oligarchical collectivist model the political establishment is attempting to install in America." But the column is headlined "Trump sex accusers' crimes and the fake-scandal racket," and Rush makes sure to go there by, yes, claiming without evidence that Trump's accusers are making things up for money:
Rush, meanwhile, would never apply the same logic to Bill Clinton, given that some of Bill Clinton's accusers got paid off. He would never concede that many of the people promoting Clibnton's accusers were "liars, cheats and thieves with law degrees." He would never say that Clinton's sex scandals were never about Clinton at all but about a "political coup." It appears that Rush is pathologically devoted to protecting Trump, facts be damned.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:53 AM EST
Friday, January 12, 2018
CNS Editor Perpetuates Misinformation About Planned Parenthood
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com has a long, sad history of perpetuating a falsehood: that federal money to Planned Parenthood pays for abortions. CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey -- who has done this before -- is all too eager to perpetuate that misinformation. He writes in a Jan. 2 CNS article:
Jeffrey does not report, however, that money from Title X and Medicaid -- which is where the federal funding to Planned Parenthood comes from -- by law cannot pay for abortions. Then, in his Jan. 3 column, Jeffrey repeated his dishonesty:
Again, Jeffrey failed to report the inconvenient fact that Medicaid and Title X money does not and cannot pay for abortion. Instead, he rants that Republican spending bills "have permitted federal funding of Planned Parenthood to continue -- again, despite the fact that none of that federal funding pays for abortion.
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:07 PM EST
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