Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's thank-Trump e-card campaign shows just how far Joseph Farah and Co. will sell out and suck up to its favorite politicians. Not that it's actually helping WND's bottom line, though. Read more >>
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
NEW ARTICLE: WND, Your Pro-Trump State Media Outlet
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily's thank-Trump e-card campaign shows just how far Joseph Farah and Co. will sell out and suck up to its favorite politicians. Not that it's actually helping WND's bottom line, though. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:14 AM EST
Tuesday, February 6, 2018
CNS Pretends That Huckabee's Tweet Was Just A Joke, Censors Negative Response To It
Topic: CNSNews.com Michael Morris works hard to spin things in a Jan. 29 CNSNews.com blog post:
If Morris was a better reporter and writer -- though we know he's because 1) he works for CNS, and 2) he redundantly repeated Huckabee's full name twice, which is journalistically unnecessary -- he would have told the rest of the story: that a lot of people didn't the alleged humor in Huckabee's tweet, no matter how much Morris tries to sell it as him "joking" and "poking fun." In fact, the response to the tweet from outside CNS' right-wing bubble was pretty much uniformly negative. It was bad enough, in fact, that even another conservative media outlet was quoting a Republican congressman as calling Huckabee's tweet tasteless and despicable. Intersting that only the "joking" tweet was newsworthy at CNS -- not the reaction to it.
Posted by Terry K.
at 5:42 PM EST
Updated: Tuesday, February 6, 2018 8:17 PM EST
Pot, Kettle, Black: WND's Farah Frets Over 'Prima Facie Libelous' Claims (Not Published By WND)
Topic: WorldNetDaily Joseph Farah oozes concern about getting facts straight in his Jan. 29 WorldNetDaily column:
Farah seems to have forgotten that his WND has published numerous incendiary and prima facie libelous claims about the Clintons and Obamas. And that we've caught WND telling lie after lie, not to mention Farah himself telling lie after lie. For instance: In 2016, WND published a claim by Sally Miller, who claims to be a former mistress of Bill Clinton, that Hillary Clinton "is a lesbian" who wants to kill her. WND offered no verification of the claim, despite the fact that Miller has long been considered to be an unreliable source even in Arkansas. In other words, WND has published a prima facie libelous claim without performing due diligence as to its veracity. Would Farah want Clinton to sue him and WND over this? Or does he feel safe in his knowledge that the "extremely high" bar for public figures to sue over libelous claims he laments for Haley will keep WND out of the courtroom over this and other similar claims against politicians Farah despises? Another example: WND has repeatedly claimed without evidence that yogurt maker Chobani and its CEO, Hamdi Ulukaya, have a secret agenda to flood America with Muslims that it would employ at its manufacturing plants. It corrected the claim on its website months after the fact, though without public apology, presumably after contact from Chobani's lawyers. Should Chobani have gone ahead and sued WND for its prima facie libelous claim? And one more example: In 2000, WND libeled Tennessee car dealer Clark Jones by falsely portraying him as a "suspected drug dealer." It stood by the claim for seven years as it fought a defamation suit Jones filed against WND over the claim. Then, just before the case was to go to trial in 2008, WND abruptly reversed course and settled with Jones, the terms of which remain secret to this day. The press release about the settlement laughably claimed that "WorldNetDaily.com and its editors never intended any harm to Clark Jones," which is simply not true -- Jones had a connection to Al Gore, whose presidential candidacy WND was trying to destroy when it made the false claim, so Jones had to be part of the destruction as well. It's noteworthy that WND never apologized to Gore for publishing false claims that it claimed played a role in Gore losing the election. Of course, the difference between Jones and Gore, Clinton or Obama is that Jones was never a public figure who would have to meet a higher burden of defamation. Farah might want to be careful what he wishes for. If Wolff, Maher and HBO can be sued over Haley, WND can be sued for all the libelous claims it has published about the Clintons, Gore and Obama. And that would definitely put WND out of business.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:27 PM EST
MRC Misses the Point On Both Ends of the Cross-Dressing Spectrum
Topic: Media Research Center We know the Media Research Center hates transgender people, so it's probably not a surprise that it also freaks out about a much milder variant of that in the form of cross-dressing. First, it hates cross-dressing as played for laughs (even though it's been a comic trope since forever). When the Disney XD cartoon "Star vs. The Forces of Evil" has the main character cross-dress for an episode, NewsBusters blogger Matt Norcross could not find the humor in it:
On the other end of the spectrum, Lindsay Kornick watched an episode of the miniseries "The Alienist" and missed the point of the "several uncomfortable minutes of underage boys (some played by underage actors) wearing dresses with makeup and offering themselves for sexual pleasure":
Kornick was apparently too busy hate-watching the show to figure out that the scene was supposed to be uncomfortable. As an actual reviewer points out, the miniseries is set in late 19th century New York City around the murder of a transgender prostitute, and the cross-dressing boys selling themselves is emblematic of the bleak existence of the immigrant underclass doing what they had (or were forced) to do to provide for their families. If Kornick is squicked out by this, good. That's the whole point -- prostitution of this sort is supposed to be rather squicky.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:37 AM EST
Monday, February 5, 2018
WND Columnist: 'Feminism Is the Second-Greatest Seminal Threat to American Independence'
Topic: WorldNetDaily
-- David R. Usher, Jan. 24 WorldNetDaily column (We've previously caught Usher likening feminists to the KKK, so the guy's got issues.)
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:09 PM EST
Updated: Monday, February 5, 2018 9:11 PM EST
CNS Unemployment Coverage Distortion Watch
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com's coverage of January's unemployment numbers managed to be even more dishonest than ever, thanks to CNS being desperate to put a positive pro-Trump spin on things. The main article, by Susan Jones, sycophantically starts:
Jones waited until the 10th paragraph of her article to mention that only about 200,000 jobs were created in January, but added revised numbers from November and December to come up with her pumped-uup 309,000 number. However, in a rare bit of honest reporting in her pro-Trump rah-rah piece, Jones did concede that "the number of Americans not in the labor force also set a new record at 95,665,000 – the fourth such record since Trump took office." It was up to CNS managing editor Michael W. Chapman to spin tha hardest regarding the most negative number: the spike in black unemployment from 6.8 percent in December -- a figure Trump was heavily touting over the past month -- to 7.7 percent in January, a huge increase CNS would be repeatedly highlighting if a Democratic president was in office. Instead, Chapman buried the spike and insisted that the high number is still pretty darn good, under the headline "Black Unemployment Still Low at 7.7%":
We hope Chapman got a bonus for his valiant effort to spin such bad news on behalf of the Trump administration. CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey contributed his usual pieces on government employment and manufacturing jobs. But even he couldn't resist the siren song of dishonesty, writing in the manufacturing-jobs piece:
Jeffrey convenient omits the inconvenient fact that the country was free-falling into recession when Obama took office. And the chart accompanying Jeffrey's article makese it clear that manufacturing jobs have been on an upward trajectory since about 2011, which undercuts Jeffrey's implicit credit to Trump for the increase over the past year that is simply continuing past trends.
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:58 PM EST
Updated: Sunday, August 19, 2018 12:58 PM EDT
WND Ever-So-Slowly Pulling Away From Paul Nehlen
Topic: WorldNetDaily On Jan. 26, we documented how WorldNetDaily has refused to publicly disassociate itself from Paul Nehlen -- a right-wing political candidate whose book WND published last summer -- after his turn to explicit white nationalism and anti-Semitism. WND is still not saying anything publicly, but it has quietly made one significant step: it pulled that book, "Wage the Battle" from its own online store. Both the book and its e-book edition now return "page not found" errors. A few weeks earlier, WND had discontinued Nehlen's anti-Muslim film "Hijrah" from its online store. Meanwhile, our speculation about the status of WND's book division having slipped into dormancy apears to have some merit. A Feb. 4 WND article announced the naming of a new editorial director for WND Books: Felicia Dionisio, who spent the past 15 years as a WND news editor. Now that someone's actually in charge of WND Books, perhaps Dionisio can make a definitive public statement about its current relationship with Nehlen -- and maybe address the fact that a promo for Nehlen's book and an author bio still remain live on the WND Books website. Surely WND can't be so cash-strapped that it can't take a couple minutes to formally and publicly distance itself from Nehlen -- if that is indeed what it wants to do.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:25 AM EST
Sunday, February 4, 2018
MRC Denies Russian Bots' Influence on #ReleaseTheMemo Campaign
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center really, really, doesn't want you to believe that the who #ReleaseTheMemo Twitter meme had no connection whatsoever to the Russian-linked Twitter bots that promoted it. In a Jan. 20 NewsBusters post, P.J. Gladnick dismisses a Rolling Stone story about how Russian-controlled Twitter accounts heavily promoted the hashtag as nothing but a "Boris & Natasha bot fantasy," adding: "Even if there were 500 'Russia-influenced' Twitter accounts posting that hashtag, it would only be an infinitesimally small number of the total. Of course, [Rolling Stone writer Bob] Moser could do what I did and check out at random the authenticity of those posting the hashtag but it would ruin the premise of his fantasy." Gladnick concluded: "So go ahead Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Investigate these supposed Russian bots tweeting on Twitter for evidence of collusion. Somehow I think he would be just as lucky proving Russian bot collusion as he has so far for proving Russian collusion in general." Tom Blumer followed up in a Jan. 26 NesBusters post, attacking the Rolling Stone article as "a bogus report from the far-left media fever swamp." He highlighted a Daily Beast report citing "a knowledgeable source" about Twitter's internal analysis who claimed that "authentic American accounts, and not Russian imposters or automated bots, are driving #ReleaseTheMemo." Blumer admitted that the Daily Beast noted "skepticism" about the finding, but he downplayed the extent that skepticism was stated. The Daily Beast pointed out that "Russian troll farms use cutout accounts to launder their message in order to appear authentically American" and that "Measuring engagement on a hashtag shows influence that may indeed be authentically American – but can simultaneously obscure the origin of that message." It also admitted that "Russian influence accounts did, in fact, send an outsize number of tweets about #ReleaseTheMemo—simply not enough for those accounts to reach the top of Twitter's internal analysis." Further, as Politico has since reported, the second Twitter account to retweet the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag is an apparent bot of undetermined origin, and the third account to retweet it as a suspected Russian bot. It also references an earlier Politico article about "Twitter rooms" in which pro-Trump activists coordinate messages and then retweet each other, creating an online groundswell that doesn't really exist. Politico makes it clear that, in its words, "#releasethememo is carried forward by automated accounts overnight after it begins to trend. It continued to do so from its appearance until the memo was released," adding that the bots target "key influencers with these messaging campaigns—media personalities, far-right brand names, and elected officials who might pick up the info or hashtag and legitimize it by repeating it." The Politico article concludes:
This is the truth Gladnick and Blumer -- and the rest of the MRC -- want to deny.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:44 PM EST
WND's Farah Embarrasses Himself Praising Trump, Promoting His Thank-Trump Website
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah's love for President Trump knows no bounds, as demonstrated by his thank-Trump e-card campaign. Farah's sycophancy reached new levels of embarrassing in his Jan. 31 column on Trump's State of the Union address:
This, of course, turned into a more emphatic than usual appeal for readers to partake of WND's thank-Trump campaign:
Doesn't Farah have anything better to do -- like, you know, revenue-generating activities that will help pull WND out of its current downward spiral toward nonexistence?
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:25 PM EST
Updated: Sunday, February 4, 2018 2:28 PM EST
Saturday, February 3, 2018
CNS Touts Walmart's Trump-Credited Bonuses, Censors Its Store Closings
Topic: CNSNews.com Craig Bannister, blogger for the pro-Trump stenographers at CNSNews.com, dutifully writes in a Jan. 11 blog post:
Notice that Bannister is relying on nothing but a statement from Walmart itself (which we can't access because the link he embedded is broken). It also means that Bannister doesn't tell readers that, on the same day those Trump-linked pay raises were announced, Walmart also closed 63 Sam's Club warehouse stores, eliminating thousands of jobs -- which would seem to undercut the message. But Bannister's mission isn't to report the full truth; it's to be a Trump suck-up and to ignore the truth when it conflicts with that mission.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:21 AM EST
Where Are They Now? Working At Breitbart And Buying Twitter Followers
Topic: WorldNetDaily We haven't heard much from Aaron Klein around these parts since he departed WorldNetDaily for Breitbart in 2015. We did notice he got shipped to Alabama last fall to pull a Weinstein on the women who accused Roy Moore of perving on them as teenagers by trying to dig up dirt on them, but that's about it. It turns out, however, that this wasn't the only shameful behavior Klein has engaged in. The New York Times recently reported on companies who sell Twitter followers -- at least some of which are stolen identities -- to clients willing to pay them for the privilege of pumping up their follower count, with particular focus on a company called Devumi. And guess who is among those clients? The Times reports that "Aaron Klein, a radio talk show host and the Jerusalem bureau chief for Breitbart News, bought at least 35,000 followers from Devumi, according to records. A Times analysis found that the majority of his followers were bots." The Times also charts the "unusual patterns" in how he accumulated his followers, particularly the presence of a known fake follower that appears in numerous accounts. As we noted when Breitbart hired him (without, apparently, looking very closely into his work for WND), Klein has a bad habit of playing fast and loose with the facts. It seems some things haven't changed.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:09 AM EST
Friday, February 2, 2018
With Its SOTU Coverage, CNS Is A Total Trump Suck-Up
Topic: CNSNews.com Being the loyal Trump stenographers they are, the crew at CNSNews.com turned the sycophancy on full-blast for its coverage of President Trump's State of the Union address. First, in a combination of padding and ego-stroking, CNS cranked out a whopping seven articles on the speech itself and things directly related to it when they could have been combined into one or two:
CNS followed this with an article parroting Paul Ryan's praise of the speech, followed by an article about how "conservative leaders" loved the speech. From there, CNS goes into attack mode, courtesy of a couple of sneering opinion pieces presented as "news" by Susan Jones, who's prone to this sort of thing. In the first, Jones takes a shot at the ACLU because "The American Civil Liberties Union -- note the word 'American' in its title -- complained Tuesday night about President Trump's repeated use of the word "America" in his State of the Union speech" because Trump's vision of America is dramartically different from that of most people. Jones' idea of a response is to rehash Trump's proposed immigration policy. This was accompanied by a reposting of a 2014 article by editor Terry Jeffrey complaining that President Obama "used the first person singular--including the pronouns 'I' and 'me' and the adjective 'my'--199 times" in a speech. (CNS had a thing about counting Obama's words.) In the second, Jones recounts a Fox News segment in which Tucker Carlson bashed a Democratic congressman who left the chair next to him at the speech empty in honor of an Ohio resident who was deported, cheering how Carlson was "cutting off [the congressman] with the video equivalent of a mic drop." That's the way "journalism" works at CNS these days.
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:09 PM EST
Updated: Friday, February 2, 2018 8:58 PM EST
WND's Farah: Evangelicals Will Ignore Trump's Personal Life As Long As He Delivers The Goods
Topic: WorldNetDaily We previously pointed out that WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah effectively abdicated any moral authority to pass judgment on the personal behavior of others by giving a pass to President Trump's alleged affair with a porn star. He doubled down on that position in his Jan. 23 column, effectively saying he doesn't care about Trump's sleazy personal life because he's delivering the political goods:
And here, we get to the part where Farah once again gives Trump a mulligan on his past, something he has never done for anyone named Clinton:
Just as Farah provided no evidence in his previous column for his claim that Trump "was a very different Donald Trump" when he had his alleged porn-star fling, he provides no evidence for his new claim that Trtump has "converted" from his previous views. Farah betrays a little skepticism by acknowleding that "whatever his past suggests, President Trump has demonstrated at least a public respect and reverence for the Creator of the universe and His ways" -- indicating that he at least suspects Trump is being insincere. But, again, Farah doesn't care Trump's personal life the way he cared about, say, Bill Clinton's, at least as long as Trump continues to do Farah's bidding. And that was the whole point of the Washington Post article Farah is attacking -- that evangelicals are placing access to power before character. Not only does Farah avoid actually engaging in that argument beyond saying, "Damn straight we're putting power before character!" he attacks anyone who makes it as a "Trump hater." Spoken like a true believer. That dogmatic attitude shows that Farah really is a Trump convert after all.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:56 AM EST
Thursday, February 1, 2018
CNS Tries to Credit Trump for Fewer Suicides Aat Golden Gate Bridge, Or Something
Topic: CNSNews.com How deeply is CNSNews.com in the pocket of the Trump administration? It seems to want to credit Trump for fewer successful suicides at the Golden Gate Bridge. A Jan. 22 CNS blog post by Craig Bannister carries the baffling headline "Golden Gate Bridge Suicide Attempts Set Record in Trump’s First Year, But Police Ensure Fewer Succeed." Baffling because the article itself doesn't mention Trump, and also because we're not sure exactly what Bannister is trying to credit Trump with. Is he blaming the higher suicide attempts on Trump, or thanking him for fewer successful ones? Bannister notes that "In May of last year, construction began on a $211 million project to build a suicide deterrent system," but he offers no evidence that Trump had any role in that. In the press release to which Bannister links as part of that statement highlights the commemoration ceremony to start contruction of the deterrent system featured Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Jared Huffman -- all Democrats. Bannister clearly could not give them any credit. So, it appears that all we have here is an attempt by Bannister to create some clickbait by putting Trump in the headline for no reason at all. Is this what CNS has come to?
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:51 PM EST
Obama Derangement Sydrome Forever!
Topic: WorldNetDaily
-- Joseph Farah, Dec. 27 WorldNetDaily column
-- Bob Unruh, Jan. 19 WND article
-- Barry Farber, Jan. 23 WND column
-- Craige McMillan, Jan. 26 WND column
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:04 PM EST
Updated: Thursday, February 1, 2018 2:10 PM EST
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