Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Brad Wilmouth doggedly defends President Trump over a muddled message regarding whether he supported the death penalty for the later-exonerated Central Park Five. Read more >>
Wednesday, May 16, 2018
NEW ARTICLE -- Out There, Exhibit 70: Denial of Reality Attack, Trump Propaganda Division
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center's Brad Wilmouth doggedly defends President Trump over a muddled message regarding whether he supported the death penalty for the later-exonerated Central Park Five. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:40 PM EDT
Tuesday, May 15, 2018
WND Can't Stop Hyping Right-Wing Legal Group's Non-Story
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily keeps trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, as this May 7 article by Bob Unruh shows:
As we pointed out the last time WND hyped the right-wing ACLJ's dubious claims about this non-scandal, it's been public record since 2003 that Abbas' son was an adviser to OneVoice -- as were Israeli politicians from across the political spectrum, including Netanyahu's Likud party. And the ACLJ's hyperventilating and heavy implication about this non-scandal doesn't change the fact that the money paid to OneVoice by the State Department paid for a separate project, a Senate subcommittee found that OneVoice fully complied with the terms of the original grant, no grant money was used in the election, and the State Department placed no limitations on the post-grant use of infrastructure the grant paid for. As expected, Unruh quotes only the ACLJ and can't be bothered to contact OneVoice or anyone else involved in this non-story for a reaction.
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:56 PM EDT
Updated: Thursday, May 17, 2018 11:13 PM EDT
CNS Promotes Bogus Attack on Calif. Bill Banning Conversion Therapy
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman is no stranger to the CNS culture of stenography. Thus, he kicks off an April 27 article -- headlined "Liberty Counsel: CA Bill Against Gay Conversion Could Ban Christian Books, Speech" -- with some dedicated stenography:
Interestingly, Chapman actually includes alternative views that shoot down Liberty Counsel's alarmism; several paragraphs later, he quotes the head of the group Save California as saying that it is "not likely" that the bill would ban the Bible. Yet the fact that the article contains differing views is not reflected in the headline. Chapman never bothers to seek out the sponsor of the bill, Evan Low, who has specifically stated that the bill does not ban book sales, let alone that of the Bible. Interestingly, while Chapman labels a California assemblyman who supports the bill as a "liberal Democrat" and the Human Rights Campaign, which also supports the bill, as "a pro-homosexuality advocacy group," he does not provide any ideological labels for Liberty Counsel and Save California -- both of which are right-wing anti-LGBT groups. Chapman did go on to try and rebut the HRC:
Chapman provides as an example of "some doctors" a link to the biography of Joseph Nicolosi, a psychologist and a founder of the notoriously anti-gay group NARTH who championed conversion therapy. And the link on "reparative therapy" goes to a YouTube video of a 1974 TV appearance by fellow anti-gay psychiatrist and NARTH co-founder Charles Socarides, whose son is gay. Chapman doesn't seem to understand that critical thinking about homosexuality has evolved over the past 40 years. And that's the closest Chapman ever comes to providing any evidence to back up the view of himself and his right-wing anti-gay buddies that conversion therapy works.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:47 AM EDT
Monday, May 14, 2018
WND Gives Perpetual Candidate Another Platform
Topic: WorldNetDaily Art Robinson is such a perpetual candidate for the Oregon congressional seat held by Peter DeFazio -- and such a buddy of WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian -- that Kupelian simply reruns his endorsement columns for Robinson (and the attendant whitewashing of controversies regarding the homeschool curriculum Robinson developed and the climate denier petition he started) with only minor tweaks to fit the appropriate year. Well, Robinson is at it again, trying for a fifth time for the Republican nomination to run against Democrat DeFazio, which means Robinson is sorely testing the rule about repeating the same behavior and expecting different results (after having been soundly defeated the previous four times, receiving more than 40 percent of the vote only once). And WND has given Robinson a forum to tout his campaign. Robinson's May 8 column is centered around thatthe idea that if elected, Robinson "would replace the political staffers in the Oregon office with real people. In this way, our office could have a much greater influence on wisdom in the Congress." That falsely assumes that the staffers who currently work there aren't "real" and, thus, somehow evil because are familiar with the political process. That's just lame populism, which Robinson feeds into with an highly unrealistic image of how one of these "real people," a hypothetical timber faller, would operate in his would-be office:
At this rate, Robinson's campaign will go about as well as his previous ones.
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:10 PM EDT
MRC Is Unhappy That A TV Show Insufficiently Retracted A Story It Never Aired
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center's Kyle Drennen grouses in a May 4 post:
First: This is a strange complaint to make given that the original claim never appeared on the "Today" show and, indeed, was made on a completely different channel. "Today" was not obligated to correct reporting that was never made on the show. Second: We would remind Drennen that his employer breathlessly promoted a false story by Fox News before the 2016 election claiming that an indictment of Hillary Clinton was imminent -- so much so that MRC chief Brent Bozell declared that "We will report developments on this continuing cover-up every hour from here on out." None of those hours, though, were devoted to telling MRC readers that Fox News retracted the story. If the MRC can't be bothered to tell its readers that a story it heavily promoted has been retracted, it has no moral authority whatsoever to demand that a TV show retract a story that it never aired.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:29 PM EDT
Ministry 'Adopts' Farah Book (Whatever That Means) For the Tax-Deductible Contributions
Topic: WorldNetDaily We highlighted that when WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah launched his crowdfunding to publish his new religious book that there was an option for a tax-deductible donation through a small ministry called Gospel for All Nations. WND has now shed a little more light on that:
The way WND puts scare quotes around "adopted" tells us there's something more going on -- which neither WND nor Gospel for All Nations (which simply reprinted the WND article) want to talk about. Itappears that it's a business deal of some sort in which Gospel for All Nations agrees to lend its tax-deductible status to WND for unspecified things in return. Shouldn't they publicly disclose the nature of this relationship before anyone donates money to it? As before, Farah and WND never prove that there is "overwhelming public demand" for Farah's book (beyond the blurbs they solicited through those "special VIP advance reader copies" it sent out) or why they need $200,000 for a massive first printing of it, instead of doing what many small publishers do by starting small and using the profits from those sales to publish more books. They also don't explain why, if the book is such a sure thing, why WND can't get a bank loan for the initial printing. Is it because WND's credit is so shot that no bank will lend to them? There's still a whiff of shadiness to this entire venture -- something that could be dispelled if WND would be more forthcoming about its financial situation and its arrangement with Gospel for All Nations.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:36 AM EDT
Sunday, May 13, 2018
Your Monthly CNS Stenography Tally
Topic: CNSNews.com It's that time again -- time for us to do our monthly tally of the stenography work CNSNews.com did for its favorite sources, covering its work in April. Judicial Watch: 6
Mark Levin: 8
(Plus an article touting how Levin has been nominated for the National Radio Hall of Fame.) Franklin Graham: 2
White House press secretary, by Melanie Arter: 9
Our year-to-date tally so far:
Well, stenography is easier than reporting.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:51 PM EDT
WND -- Which Portrayed Obama As A Narcissistic Psychopath -- Complains When Trump's Mental Health Is Questioned
Topic: WorldNetDaily Bob Unruh complains in an April 27 WorldNetDaily article:
First: Unruh is lying when he claimed that Obama "tried to cancel the First Amendment religious rights of nuns around the world and demand they pay for their employees’ abortions." This is an apparent reference to the Little Sisters of the Poor case, in which the order is suing to prevent being associated with providing birth control, even though the Affordable Care Act provides for an accomodation allowing a third-party provider to offer such coverage -- which the Little Sisters of the Poor has refused to sign up for. In other words, the nuns aren't being forced to do anything. (Also, since the First Amendment is an American principle, it does not apply to anyone else "around the world.") Second: WND's writers and columnists have previously not had any problem with armchair diagnoses of a president's (or a presidential candidate's) alleged mental state. For example:
WND also sells a book by Lyle Rossiter that makes a blanket armchair diagnosis of all liberals as mentally ill, suffering from "a massive transference of neurosis acted out in the world's political arenas, with devastating effects on the institutions of liberty." That's just another flip-flop of WND's standards regarding Trump compared with its treatment of Obama.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:49 PM EDT
MRC's Double Standard on 'Bitter 'Complaints About Anonymous Sources
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center's Kyle Drennen writes in an April 27 post that "In a statement to The Washington Post on Thursday, disgraced former Today show anchor Matt Lauer bitterly went after his sexual harassment accusers, dismissing the “many false stories” about his behavior “from anonymous or biased sources.” The comments came amid a lengthy Post report on NBC’s poor handling of such allegations, which also detailed new accusations of harassment against former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw." So you're "bitter" if you complain about anonymously sourced reporting? In that case, the MRC is very bitter. Tim Graham and Brent Bozell complained in a Martch 2017 column that "It’s beyond irony that the press that champions transparency also advocates relying on completely opaque sources on a daily basis," adding, "wouldn’t it help to know if these liberal newspapers are relying on Obama holdovers and granting them all the benefits of anonymity?" They also grumbled: "But we never know the donation records of 'senior U.S. officials' placed anonymously on the front page, do we? The liberal media merely insist 'Trust us.'" Graham and Bozell bashed anonymous sources again in a May 2017 column attacking the Washington Post: "How many times must we attend the same movie? As we've seen so many times since Trump became president, these are anonymous leaks coming from nameless, faceless people whose motives might be pure, or could be poisonous." They added:
Graham reinforced his bitter argument in a TV appearance that same month (on Fox News, natch), grousing that "the news media today gets to use these anonymous sources, and the anonymous sources can say all sorts of terrible things about Trump" and repeating the "stenographers to anonymous power" talking point. This bitterness is doubly hypocritical, given that just before the 2016 election, the MRC expended lots of time and energy promoting an anonymously sourced Fox News story suggesting that Hillary Clinton's indictment was imminent. But Fox News later had to retract that story -- something the MRC never told its readers about. So it seems the MRC is bitter about anonymous sources only when they fail to advance its right-wing agenda.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:34 AM EDT
Updated: Sunday, May 13, 2018 12:09 PM EDT
Saturday, May 12, 2018
WND Columnist Is Sad God Won't Help Him Hate Gays
Topic: WorldNetDaily
-- Larry Nevenhoven, April 27 WorldNetDaily column
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:49 AM EDT
Friday, May 11, 2018
CNS' Jeffrey Toadies to Trump On GOP Russia Report
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey is rather desperate to keep a pro-Trump bias at the website he operates. In service of that, CNS loves to push the idea that no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, even investigations into it have not been completed. So when the Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report echoing that same talking point, Jeffrey pounced on it:
Jeffrey did not tell his readers that this report came from the Republican side of the committee, which has a vested interest in protecting Trump by downplaying accusations of collusion. He also did not mention that the committee's Democrats issued a separate report, which claimed that Republicans ended the committee's work prematurely. That was accompanied by another article from Jeffrey highlighting how "When former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper met with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on July 17, 2017 as part of the committee’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Clappers aid he had no evidence of collusion between the Russian and the Trump campaign." Jeffrey didn't mention that Clapper ceased being DNI at the end of President Obama's term, and therefore he would likely have no knowledge of findings of government investigations launched in the six months between his departure as DNI and his committee testimony or from any probes launched before he left. These article appear to be more about Jeffrey sucking up to Trump than they are about reporting useful, balanced information to CNS readers.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:16 PM EDT
Thursday, May 10, 2018
WND Claims Christian School Was 'Banned By City' (It Wasn't)
Topic: WorldNetDaily Under the screaming headline "Christian school banned by city and Supremes let it happen," WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh huffs:
Unruh doesn't explain to his readers that First Liberty's argument is effectively bogus. As we explained when WND first pushed this case, the school was never "banned" from the city; it had other options for a location, and it had been utilizing them while this bogus case wound through the court system. Indeed, the entire lawsuit is actualy completely moot -- another thing Unruh failed to report -- because the school submitted an amended plan for the Nazarene site last fall and the township approved it. So it has its site after all, and school and its right-wing legal team wasted taxpayer time and money -- $100,000 of township money, by one estimate -- trying to falsely turn a zoning dispute into a religious freedom case, presumably in an attempt to raise money for First Liberty. And because Unruh and WND care nothing about the journalistic principle of telling both sides of the story, they have effectively published a press release for First Liberty. Which means the fake news at WND hasn't stopped.
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:06 PM EDT
Reminder: MRC's Tally of Trump's 'Negative' Media Coverage Is Bogus
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center is at it again, as Rich Noyes writes:
But as we've pointed out every time the MRC promotes this so-called study, it's utterly bogus and meaningless, and here's why:
Noyes even manages to mislead about Trump's poll numbers. As FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver points out, the 43 percent approval that Noyes cites is close to Trump's ceiling; his approval rating has never ventured out of the range of 36 percent to 44 percent -- the narrowest range in the first 500 days of a presidency in the history of modern polling. But then, providing an accurate record of media coverage of Trump is not the MRC's goal -- promoting a pro-Trump, anti-media agenda is. Which means that MRC chief Brent Bozell couldn't be prouder that Trump referenced his bogus "research" in a tweet.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:34 AM EDT
Wednesday, May 9, 2018
WND Columnist Seems To Think Only Americans Should Be Allowed To Play Baseball
Topic: WorldNetDaily Yes, Andy Schlafly really does complain there are too many foreigners playing baseball in his May 1 WorldNetDaily column:
Actually, Major League Baseball is a meritocracy in which the best players play no matter where they're from. One gets the impression that 50 years ago, Schlafly would be complaining there were too many black players in baseball.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:48 PM EDT
CNS Unemployment Coverage Distortion Watch
Topic: CNSNews.com As it did last month, CNSNews.com's coverage of April's job numbers downplays the number of new jobs created -- a sign it doesn't consider that number impressive enough -- in favor of cherry-picked stats that make President Trump look better. Instead, Susan Jones' main story touts how "Not since May 2001, 17 years ago, has the number of unemployed Americans been this low." It's not until the ninth paragraph that Jones mentions that there has been no real change in the labor force participation rate under Trump -- a number it heavily emphasized when Barack Obama was president when it was similarly stagnant. The jobs-created number didn't get mentioned until the 10th paragraph. This story joined by the usual Trump-era sidebars by Terry Jeffrey on government employment and manufacturing jobs. The latter attacks Obama for "a one-month decline of 289,000" in manufacturing jobs the month he took office but doesn't mention that the economy was in the midst of cratering into a major recession at the time; Jeffrey also credits Trump for 304,000 manufacturing jobs since he took office but not the hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs created under Obama since the end of the recession -- a fact illustrated by the chart accompanying his article. An article by Michael W. Chapman touts how "The national unemployment rate for blacks in April 2018 was 6.6%, the lowest it has been since the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) started compiling such data in 1972, some 46 years ago," but he fails to mention that the rate decline is merely the continuation of a trend begun under Obama. Tellingly, Jones waited three days to do an article offering a closer look at the labor force participation rate and how it hasn't really changed under Trump -- something she would never have waited to do under Trump. The article's headline is quick to hype that the stagnant participation rate is driven largely by baby boomers retiring -- also a fact CNS was reluctant to admit during the Obmaa years.
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:08 PM EDT
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