MRC Selectively Decides When Context Matters Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Brad Wilmouth went off on people in the media he said were "smearing Fox News host Laura Ingraham as someone who uses her show to promote 'racist' and 'white supremacist' views as they reacted to a commentary she gave on The Ingraham Angle show in which she advocated for merit-based immigration and lamented 'massive demographic' changes." Wilmouth further huffed:
As the various hosts showed skepticism that she was telling the truth in her clarification, they all neglected to inform viewers that even in her original monologue from Wednesday, August 8, she declared that "it's not about race or ethnicity" and quoted President Donald Trump's assertion that "merit-based legal immigration is fantastic."
Instead, it appeared that none of the hosts who were so eager to weigh in and condemn the FNC host could be bothered to actually watch her 13-minute commentary, instead relying on one 30-second clip in which she referred to demographic changes and "in some cases, legal immigration" being a problem.
So context matters, huh? That's usually not the argument the MRC makes when ignoring context advances its right-wing agenda.
For instance, the MRC's Tim Graham recently assailed a PolitiFact fact-check on a Republican challenger to "ultraliberal Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin" claiming that she "opposed displaying the flag and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance or singing the National Anthem in our classrooms,"calling it "mostly false" because the claim ignores the context that the bill in question was narrowly tailored and never made it into law: Graham insisted the claim was true on its face, whining: "The website doesn't call itself PolitiContext. It claims to be a Fact Checker."
WND's Crowdfunding for Movie of WND-Published Book Remains A Failure Topic: WorldNetDaily
More than a year ago, WorldNetDaily started a crowdfunding campaign to raise $120,000 to finance pre-production on a film -- not actual production, mind you; this is in part for materials to lure someone to finance production -- based on Anita Dittman's WND-published Nazi-era memoir "Trapped in Hitler's Hell." That included a couple of promotional misfires, like encouraging WND readers to give up their lattes from Starbucks to donate (though the typical WND reader is likely not a Starbucks customer) and stealing another's glory by insisting the film would be just like last year's movie "Dunkirk" (but without Christoper Nolan and the $100 million budget).
Well, WND is still at it. A WND article last month takes a slightly different tack by likening its would-be film to "Unbroken," the 2014 film that told the story of Louie Zemperini's survival in World War II concentration camps, arguing that making films about heroic figures "can sometimes take decades." In doing so, WND basically cribbed from, if not outright plagiarized, the Wikipedia page on "Unbroken.".
Wikipedia: "Universal Pictures purchased the rights to the book in January 2011, having already acquired the film rights to Zamperini's life story towards the end of the 1950s."
WND: "Universal Pictures bought the book rights in January 2011 to augment the film rights to Zamperini’s life story, which it had already acquired at the end of the 1950s."
Wikipedia: "The film received some criticism for omitting Zamperini's fight against alcoholism and PTSD, as well as his Billy Graham-inspired religious conversion."
WND: "What you didn’t see was Zamperini’s fight against alcoholism and PTSD, and most significantly his conversion to Christ after attending Billy Graham evangelistic crusade."
The point of invoking "Unbroken" is for WND to claim that "The team behind 'TRAPPED' does not want God’s work in Anita’s life ignored or set aside as was done for 'Unbroken.' That’s why it wants 'TRAPPED' to remain an 'independently' financed film."
Note the scare quotes around "independently," meaning that it knows nothing of the sort will happen. Why else would it feel the need to spend $120,000 to attract someone to fund the actual film?
The article went on to tout how the film is allegedly "well advanced in its successful script development phase" and howDittman an Jan Markell, who co-wrote the book WND is basing the movie on, are among the film's "biggest supporters" and have "not only provided moral support and prayers but have brought early funding for the movie, helping to finance its script development." It also notes George Escobar, vice president of WND Films, claiming that "All the critical issues Anita faced in the 1930s and 40s are coming back," among them being "Fake news being perpetrated like Nazi propaganda, undermining our freedoms."
In the middle somewhere was the admission of failutre: "a GoFundMe campaign for 'TRAPPED' has raised just over $16,000 out of the $120,000 required for film funding expenses that will be used to raise the millions it will cost to make the movie."
That's right -- more than a year of fundraising got the campaign only one-eighth to its goal. And in the three weeks since this article first appeared, it didn't do much better -- the total as of this writing stands at a mere $16,810, raising just $210 in those three weeks.
After begging readers to keep WND alive and finance its promulgation of Seth Rich conspiracy theories -- which after 15 months hasn't even broken the $5,000 mark -- it seems that WND's target audience is suffering from fundraising fatigue. WND's pet project may not survive.
In July, CNSNews.com not only parroted the Trump White House line of attack against former CIA director John Brennan for speaking out against President Trump over his infamous press conference, it also joined in the right-wing call for Trump to pull Brennan's security clearance.
So when Trump did indeed pull Brennan's security clearance, CNS couldn't have been happier.
Melanie Arter's article on the revocation -- as you would expect from the unofficial Trump White House stenographer -- contains statements only from Trump and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders reading from a statement by Trump. That was followed by an even more fawning post from Susan Jones transcribing an anti-Brannan rant by Mark Levin cheering his revocation because "he has a big mouth, he will never shut up, he'll go on TV and be the kook that he is."
Surprisingly, CNS also offered alternative points of view, albeit in an attempt to portray Brennan as a spiteful Trump-hater. An Aug. 16 article by Jones summarized a Brennan op-ed claiming that Trump's claim there was no collusion with Russia was "hogwash," then does something neither she nor Arter did in their other articles: offering an alternative point of view by dedicating several paragraphs to what Trump has said on the issuse "as a reminder." Arter touted a Republican congressman who called Brennan a "butthead."
A separate article by Patrick Goodenough highlighted for director of national intelligence James Clapper saying that pulling Brennan's security clearance and threatening the pull the clearances of other former intelligence officials like himself for being critical of Trump will help them "sell more books." And Arter finally got around to serving up her version of balance in an article quoting a former National Security Council executive secretary criticizing the revocations.
WND's Farah Attacked Kavanaugh -- Until Trump Nominated Him Topic: WorldNetDaily
Last year, we noted how WorldNetDaily editor went on a tirade against Brett Kavanaugh for "his role in leading the badly flawed investigation into the death of Vincent Foster in July 1993" and purportedly ignoring "smoking-gun information" that purportedly "blows holes in the government’s conclusion that Foster’s body had a single self-inflicted gunshot wound." Farah was worried because Kavanaugh was one candidate for a potential Supreme Court seat and further fretted: "Does the president really understand who it is he’s considering for a U.S. Supreme Court nomination?
When that SCOTUS opening did, in fact, open up, Farah penned a July 4 column asserting that Kavanaugh "should be removed for consideration – too risky for such a pivotal swing-vote position." Farah rehashed his Vincent Foster conspiracy theory again, adding that "President Trump has shown he believes there was something 'very fishy' about Foster’s death and the ensuing cover-up by the Starr commission." Farah concluded: "There are too many super-qualified candidates for this position who would do a fine job without the specter of a whitewash in the matter of Vincent Foster’s untimely and unexplained death. President Trump’s instincts are right about Foster. He should follow them and look elsewhere for his best pick next week."
Trump did end up nominating Kavanaugh. Curiously, Farah has not devoted a single word to Kavanaugh in his column in the two months since.
Granted, Farah has been busy begging for money to keep WND from going down the tubes (again) and obessing over the conspiracy theory that the "Digital Cartel" of Google and Facebook are out to get him (and not, say, WND's shoddy, fake news-laden content). But even with the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings kicking off this week, Farah has stayed silent on the candidate he opposed. But it seems that Farah is intent on demonstrating the state-run media aspect of WND by being so slavishly devoted to being pro-Trump that he won't criticize a decision he knows is wrong. What Trump wants, Trump gets, and it seems Farah has decided that he will help Trump get what he wants.
How silent has WND been about this after the fact? Even Art Moore's "news" article on Kavanaugh's nomination touted how he "led the investigation into the suicide of Clinton aide Vince Foster" -- but made no reference to his boss' attacks on Kavanaugh over that very thing.
We already knew that the first two components of WND's new "Credible. Indepdendent. Fearless." slogan were bogus. Now it's clear the final one is as well.
As we saw with its coverage of the latest Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal, the news isn't "news" at CNSNews.com -- only the right-wing spin is.
Here's another example. Any news junkie -- and anyone working in the news business should be one -- would agree that Aug. 21 was a big news day. After all, it was the day that former Trump presidential campaign manager Paul Manafortwas found guilty on eight counts of fraud, and it was also the day that President Trump's former attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to eight criminal counts.
Those stories warrant coverage by any news organization. But CNS is not any news organization -- it's a pro-Trump state media outlet.
The first story CNS did on Cohen's plea deal was spin, a stenography piece by Melanie Arter uncritically quoting White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisting that "just because Michael Cohen made a plea deal doesn’t mean that that implicates the president on anything." This was followed by two blog post quoting CNS' favorite right-wing radio host and Trump loyalist, Mark Levin (95 articles on him this year and counting!): The first featured Levin asserting that the media "don't know what they're talking about" in the Cohen plea deal, and the second on Aug. 24 on Levin's desperate rant that Cohen's plea deal is "nothing, nothing, nothing."
Manafort's criminal conviction, meanwhile, didn't warrant a headline story of any kind at CNS. The only mention it received in a "news" story is in the last four paragraphs of Arter's story on thte White House reaction to Cohen, in which she quotesSanders' declaration that "The Manafort case doesn’t have anything to do with the president, doesn’t have anything to do with his campaign, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the White House" and her denial that Trump was thinking about pardoning Manafort.
It's not as if CNS didn't know Manafort was on trial. A June 28 blog post by Craig Bannister touted how the judge in the trial said that "any blind person can see" that the trial was really about getting Trump.
So CNS clearly knows what's going on. It's simply choosing not to report news unfavorable to its favorite president until it can find a way to put a positive spin on it.
Perhaps it's time for CNS to take the "news" out of its name, since that's no longer what it does.
Has Farah Considered That Nobody Wants To Read WND's Shoddy Content? Topic: WorldNetDaily
After we highlighted WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah's complaint (well, conspiracy theory) that Google includes WND in so few search results that it's hurting WND's revenue (and that it's doing so to punish WND for bashing Google), we heard from blogger Richard Bartholomew, who pointed out one reason for the dearth of traffic to Google -- which is not Google's fault.
Bartholomew showed a screenshot of a Google search regarding the 2017 death of former Haitian government official Klaus Eberwein, in which a WND article was listed among the "top stories":
As we reported at the time, WND's reporting on Eberwein's death is what we would call fake news. WND hyped claims that Eberwein "was expected to testify against alleged Clinton Foundation corruption and malpractice" and that he "reportedly told acquaintances he feared for his life for his fierce criticism of the Clinton Foundation." In fact, Eberwein was set to testify in a case unrelated to the Clinton Foundation, and there's no independently sourced on-the-record evidence to back up anything he purportedly said about the Clintons.
So, rather than Farah's conspiracy theory, it appears the real problem is that WND reports stories that are either fake news or that nobody cares enough about to search in any significant quantity on Google.
Which all goes back to the thing we've been pointing out all along, and which Farah and WND have aggressively refused to discuss: that WND's perpetually imminent demise is being caused not by a grand conspiracy against it by the "Digital Cartel" but by bad, biased, fake news-heavy content that fewer people want to read.
MRC Mocks Another Reporter For Being Concerned About Her Safety (Again) Topic: Media Research Center
The last time the Media Research Center mocked reporter April Ryan for being concerned about her safety at a time when President Trump has declared the media to be the "enemy of the people," we pointed out that Ryan felt sufficiently threatened to need bodyguards.
The MRC's Kristine Marsh address the issue of Ryan's bodyguard in a sneering Aug. 24 post -- only to argue that she ought to feel threatened:
In a laughably obtuse interview with The Hollywood Reporter published August 21, April Ryan, the White House correspondent for American Urban Radio and CNN contributor, griped about needing to pay for security because of how often she is approached or heckled in public. This comes just a few weeks after Ryan complained that White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders shouldn’t need security guards.
According to the media outlet, Ryan said she feared for her personal safety at times because she is approached in public and complained that the White House should fund her bodyguards:
[...]
She added:
There is a concern now. I mean, I've had death threats, I've had craziness, so I have a real concern. An honest, real concern.... Do I have a bodyguard? Yes, I do. Am I paying for it? Yes, I am. And, I think [Sanders] should have to pay for it, especially if she's stirring it up with her boss [Trump].... I did not sign up for this. I was just doing a job.
Sound familiar? Isn’t this exactly what Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters explicitly ordered liberals to do to Republicans? The media didn’t care about public harassment then, as long as it wasn’t happening to them. In fact, many journalists went on television and defended the abuse of Trump Administration officials and Republican party members. But suddenly it’s a different story when the shoe is on the other foot.
So Ryan should feel threatened because some people in the White House feel threatened? Tallk about utter hatred for -- and the desire for vengeance against -- journalists doing their jobs.
The MRC's callousness toward the safety of journalists continues to be appalling.
Yet Another WND Author Turns Out To Be An Anti-Semitic White Nationalist Topic: WorldNetDaily
What is it with WorldNetDaily authors who turn out to be white nationalists and/or anti-Semites? First we had Paul Nehlen, who turned so egregiously hateful after WND published his book and promoted his right-wing candidacy for Paul Ryan's seat that WND was forced to ever-so-slowly stop selling his book (Nehlen, by the way, came in a distant third in the Republican primary to replace Ryan; WND still has yet to make a public statement about its business relationship with Nehlen). Then there's Walid Shoebat, the self-proclaimed ex-terrorist-turned-"Christian Zionist" who was the star of a WND-published book about people leaving Islam who has become rabidly anti-Semitic.
Now comes word from reporter Rosie Gray at the Atlantic that Scott Greer, a former editor at the conservative Daily Caller, wrote anti-Semitic and white nationalist articles under a pseudonym for the Radix Journal, published by white supremacist leader Richard Spencer.
Last year, WND published Greer's book "No Campus for White Men," which WND Books claims "shines a bright light on the growing obsession with diversity, victimization and identity politics on today's college campuses, and shows how it is creating an intensely hostile and fearful atmosphere that can only lead, ultimately, to ever greater polarization in American society." Milo Yiannopoulos, the right-wing provocateur who was abandoned by most conservatives (and, maybe, WND) after he was caught defending pedophilia, wrote the foreword.
WND had been giving Greer a platform for his racial grievances as early as 2013, when he cited none other than WND columnist Jack Cashill -- whose best know foray into racial relations is to denigrate Trayvon Martin as a thug and George Zimmerman a hero for shooting him -- in claining that the fim "12 Years a Slave" could "heat up racial tensions." We caught WND promoting Greer complaining that some Trump White House aides "are closely associated with white nationalists" -- not because it wasn't true, but because the label is "menacing" to conservatives.
WND has made no public statement yet about Greer as of this writing, his pro-white, anti-Semitic past has not been reported on the WND website, and his book is still for sale at the WND online store.
CNS Cheers Franklin Graham's Insults, Ignores That He Went Godwin Topic: CNSNews.com
One of CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman's favorite right-wing clergymen (who's not Catholic, anyway) is Franklin Graham, who hates gays and Muslims as much as he does. Chapman loves publishing Graham's rants, and will never criticize him for going to far or for contradicting himself.
For instance, in a Aug. 9 blog post, Chapman touted Graham's attack on New York Times columnist Frank Bruni for being critical of Vice President Mike Pence's right-wing Christianity, which he called "slanderous" and "vile." Chapman himself piled on by claim tha Bruni was making "tawdry claims" (though he cites only one complete sentence from it and fragments and single words elsewhere, which is journalistically tawdry) and tried to denigrate Bruni as "openly homosexual and a militant promoter of the LGBT agenda (his proof for the latter is a column of Bruni's in which he argues that Christians shouldn't hate gays -- what a sinister "agenda"!).
Just 11 days later, an Aug. 20 blog post by Craig Bannister detailedGraham's freakout over Chelsea Clinton claiming that abortion has added money to the economy because women were able to work: "What a lie. Hitler probably also claimed that killing the Jews would be good for their economy."
Isn't likening someone -- and not just anyone, the daughter of a former president -- to Hitler just as slanderous and vile as and what he claimed Bruni wrote about Pence? Is going Godwin a good idea for someone who claims to be a man of God (not to mention an admission that he had no better argument)?
Chapman and Bannister will never ask those questions. Graham served up the conservatively correct goods, and that's all that matters.
Fundamentally Unfair Farah Complains About Unfairness Topic: WorldNetDaily
As part of the past month of ranting in order to keep his website from going down the tubes (again), WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah served up this little Aug. 22 sermon on fairness:
I don’t. I’ve worked in the media all my life – about half in what we euphemistically call “the mainstream,” and the last half in the alternative or independent media, as I call it. As a reporter, I never worked in a newspaper that wasn’t dominated by leftist bias. I’ve never been covered by one that didn’t inject that bias into the story. There is no restraint on leftist bias in the media today, nor is there any restraint on leftist bias among their Overlords in the “Speech Code Cartel.”
Without restraint, leftist ideology will always dominate. Without competition, leftist ideology will always dominate. And, believe me, when people like Jack Dorsey admit their leftist bias, there is no restraint and no competition in sight.
[...]
And this is what we’re up against at WND and the rest of the independent, alternative media. It’s why we are all fighting for our professional lives, our very existence, our very survival in the battle to counter the lies and “fake news.”
You cannot trust leftists to be fair. And leftists control the media and the means of distribution. If left unchallenged, if not forced to play by the rules, they will reset the rules. And resetting the rules means the First Amendment is null and void for all intents and purposes.
The unspoken claim of Farah's column is that he and WND are eminently fair -- which couldn't be further from the truth.
WND wasn't fair to Clark Jones when it lied about him being a drug dealer. It took nearly eight years and a defamation suit -- and an undisclosed out-of-court settlement that involved an abject apology and, presumably, no small amount of cash -- before WND was fair to him.
WND wasn't fair to Barack Obama, refusing to publish all the things that discredited its birther consipracy theories. Farah even refuses to acknowledge that Obama was president -- how fair is that?
WND wasn't fair to the Chobani yogurt company when it published false and malicious claims about it. WND corrected the record months later, presumably after Chobani's lawyers demanded a little fairness.
WND wasn't fair to Muslims when it blamed Islam for a measles outbreak in a Somali-American community in Minnesota when, in fact, it was WND's anti-vaxxer friends who had been lobbying the community.
And we haven't even gotten to all the rewritten press releases and one-source wonders WND has published over the years that are unfair for their lack of an alternative view or failure to give the targeted person a chance to respond.
And now Farah is complaining how others aren't fair? Fix your own house first, Joe -- after all, whether you admit it or not, WND's shoddy reporting and fundamental unfairness is one big reason it's going down the tubes (again).
The latest love letter to McAleer and his film is an Aug. 15 piece in which Katie Yoder gushes over the film's trailer:
On Tuesday, The Hollywood Reporter (THR) broke the news that filmmakers had released a trailer for the anticipated Gosnell film, which stars big name actors.
In the moving video, actor Michael Beach’s character, district attorney Dan Molinari, warns those investigating Gosnell that, “When you get to the courthouse, you are going to be swarmed by reporters.”
But as they walk past empty rows of seats with signs reading “This row reserved for press,” actor Dean Cain, who plays a detective, asks, “Where is everybody?”
Yoder is in full PR mode, declaring that "the film isn’t just for pro-life audiences, as one scene in the trailer stresses."
Since she's doing press for the film instead of being even remotely objective, Yoder never gets around to asking McAleer an unanswered question from her last post on the film, despite getting access to an "exclusive statement" from him: How did McAleer settle the defamation lawsuit filed against him by the judge who presided at Gosnell's trial over his portrayal in McAleer's book on Gosnell and his presumed treatment in the film? That would seem to be an important, newsworthy issue, given that the lawsuit had stalled production on the movie and settling it allowed the film to move forward.
But Yoder isn't interested in reporting -- this is PR, remember? Thus, she concludes by gushing even further, "With big names involved, the film promises to be a success."
It's almost as if McAleer paid Yoder to say that.
Yoder's fawning promotion for McAleer's film -- which doesn't even open until October -- is doubly hypocritical given that a couple weeks earlier, her MRC colleague (well, intern) Peter Sifre was complaining that CNN was "devoting an entire segment to the promotion of an anti-Trump book that hasn’t even come out yet," huffing that "reporting of non-news stories should not be tolerated," adding: "[B]ecause the book has not come out yet, we don’t know what it contains. Thus, there is no news to report. This segment is nothing but book promotion of an obviously anti-Trump book that hasn’t even come out yet."
WND Columnists Love That Trump, Fox News Put Spotlight on 'White Genocide' In S. Africa Topic: WorldNetDaily
Shortly after we wrote about how WorldNetDaily columnists were once again fretting about the "white genocide" of farmers in South Africa (which isn't actually happening), President Trump tweeted about it. (Coincidence? You decide.) And WND's writers -- particularly Ilana Mercer -- loved the spotlight Trump put on the issue.
Mercer -- a South African native who still pines for the days of apartheid -- spent her Aug. 23 column ranting about the proposal by the black-majority government in South Africa to seize land from whites and give it to blacks (an admittedly controversial issue). She praised Fox News' Tucker Carlson (who actually did inspire Trump's tweet) as a "superhero" for highlighting the story, adding: "If anyone can make the thuggish African National Congress and its leader, Ramaphosa, reconsider their plot to simply steal privately owned land from whites and gift it to the clamoring black citizens of South Africa – it’s President Donald Trump."
Mercer also cited "Dr. Philip du Toit, a farmer (with a doctorate in labor law) and author of 'The Great South African Land Scandal,'" as having "traversed the 'beloved country' from the Limpopo to the Cape, from Natal to the North West to document the transfer and consequent trashing of the country’s commercial farms." Mercer doesn't mention that du Toit is a white nationalist and a bit of a fraud.
The Mail & Guardian newspaper in South Africa reports that du Toit's doctorate is from Pacific Western University, an unaccredited school that was considered to be a diploma mill. Du Toit has also spoken to the American white nationalist group American Renaissance, and one of the researchers he used in writing "The Great South African Land Scandal" is a known far-right activist.
In her Aug. 30 column, Mercer serves up some whataboutism regarding apartheid, arguing that "apartheid South Africa sustained far more critical scrutiny for its non-violent (if unjust) resettlement policies than did the U.S. for its equally unjust but actively violent mass resettlement agenda, say, in South Vietnam." After invoking the Wounded Knee massacre and the Japanese-American internment during World War II, she added: "Nothing in Afrikaner rule, even at its least enlightened, can match such episodes in American history."
She also blamed the British for starting black oppression in South Africa, insisting that "the Afrikaners fought Africa’s first anti-colonial struggles, are native to the land and not colonists in any normal sense,' and that "while the honing of apartheid by the Afrikaner National Party started in 1948, after Daniel Malan assumed the prime minister’s post, elements of the program were part of the policy first established in 1923 by the British-controlled government."
That reads more like excuse-making than anything else.
Hanne Nabintu Herland then took a shot at it in her Aug. 29 WND column, doing her own for of whataboutism by suggesting that what happened in the Belgian Congo is likely to happen in South Africa:
Before independence, primary education was provided for all in Congo, including uniforms, school books, etc. There were functioning roads, airports, hospitals built, universities begun by the Belgians. This, of course, is not mentioned in most books today; rather we are notoriously and chronically presented only one side of the Congolese reality, namely the atrocities by the Belgians.
It is true that there were atrocities committed by the Belgians. Yet, has there not been atrocities done to black Africans by their own black leaders post-independence?
[...]
Remarkably little critique is put forward toward black African leaders – a consequence of the 1960s neo-Marxist thought: If you criticize a black man, you are automatically “a racist.” Thus, if anything goes wrong in an African country, it has to be the white man’s fault. The complaint that several Western companies exploit Africa is absolutely true – but is it not African leaders that allow them to do so? It is the African population who are suffering from it.
Now, much the same process is happening in South Africa, horrifying atrocities are being committed and apartheid is being reinforced. And the Western elites, including the United States, say nothing.
Herland also cheered that "Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson recently addressed one of the minority issues that are not so popular to speak about: racism against whites in South Africa."
We last wrote about Herland fretting that abortion was killing too many white, Christian fetuses.
MRC Just Can't Stop Denigrating Anita Hill, Stormy Daniels Topic: Media Research Center
When confronted with a sex scandal involving a conaservative, the Media Research Center's default mode is to go into Clinton whataboutism mode. And as the MRC continues to insist that teh likes of Paula Jones and Juanita Broaddrick must be believed because they accused a Clinton, they also believe that all accusers of conservatives must be discredited.
The MRC continues its quarter-century-longquest to bash Anita Hill for committing the offense of accusing conservative darling and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment in a July 31 post by Isaac Cross complaining that HBO's John Oliver interviewed Hill, calling her an "old liberal hero" who achieve notoriety because "Thomas is a strong conservative and one of the media’s favorite targets." Cross sneered:
Oliver painted Hill as a victim of “character assassination.” (Clarence Thomas called himself the victim of a “high-tech lynching,” for what it’s worth). The interview quickly turned into an Anita Hill pity party as Oliver listened to her talk about her misfortunes.
[...]
Other than helping Hill claim victimization, Oliver asked questions about how to address sexual harassment and even had time to talk about his previous innaction and failings regarding assault. This last part the newsite Salon gawked over as an “extraordinary … moment of self-reflection.”
Oliver’s show was a big hit across the media as Vanity Fair called the interview “a must watch”, and USA Today headlined a piece “John Oliver tackles sexual harassment, Les Moonves with help from Anita Hill.” The interview also got hits on sites like Rolling Stone, Huffington Post, and Time magazine, among others.
The media simply fell over themselves trying to give voice to their fallen hero, Anita. Who knows? Maybe with the #MeToo movement, Hill will be able to tople that terrible conservative Clarence Thomas after all.
As for Stormy Daniels, who has credibly accused Trump of paying her hush money to conceal an affair with her, the MRC is even more dismissive. It has tagged articles about her as "pornography" (because she was a porn star, you see, which should raise questions about Trump instead of her), and its "news" division CNSNews.com had trouble speaking Daniels' name.The MRC has launched several attacks on her just the past month alone.
On Aug. 1, Gabriel Hays huffed that Daniels had been invited to take part in a satirical awards show designed to mock sexism created by comedian Lizz Winstead:
Ms. Stormy appeared grateful for the invitation. She claimed that she was “surprised and honored when I was invited to be a presenter at this year’s Golden Probe Awards and I’m very much looking forward to the exciting evening.”
And in case you were hoping a porn actress would show more class than Winstead, you were wrong. “With reproductive rights under assault in Washington, there’s never been a more important time to shine a light on the assholes trying to take our rights away.”
Hays weirdly didn't mention Trump at all in his piece, let alone that Trump is credibly accused of paying hush money to Daniels.
In an Aug. 28 post, Tim Graham describes Daniels as a "porn star" and "liberal stripper" as well as a "#Resistance mascot and plasticized container of impeachment fantasies-- again, no mention of the hush money, and again, no mention of how this reflects on Trump rather than his critics -- as he whines about Vogue magazine "trying to glamorize" Daniels.
Graham was also triggered by Daniels' lawyer, Michael Avenatti, complaining that he's quoted in the Vogue article as saying that "Stormy is 'really f---ing smart' three times...like it's a porn version of Beetlejuice."
The same day, Curtis Houck was similarly triggered by the appearance of the "liberal journalist" who wrote the Daniels profile for Vogue appearing on TV calling Daniels the "perfect adversary" to Trump.Houck also complained that the writer "passed her off as just [a] 'working mom' with 'a family to support'" even though "Daniels doesn’t have full-time custody of her child and makes money that most Americans could only dream of making."
The MRC would never treat Broaddrick like this, even though she's a documented liar.
NEW ARTICLE: The Slow Death Of A WND Conspiracy Theory Topic: WorldNetDaily
As its insistence that Seth Rich was murdered because he leaked Democratic emails to WikiLeaks either collapses or gets even more ludicrous, WorldNetDaily slowly retreats to the sidelines -- but refuses to admit that it was wrong. Read more >>
Your Monthly CNS Stenography Tally Topic: CNSNews.com
August is a slow month, so some of the folks for whom CNSNews.com most enthusiastically does its stenography saw a little less attention this time around. But not all of them.
Arter apparently took the final week of August off, so that monthly total is lower than usual. But CNS had summer interns to help do Levin stenography, which put in far into the lead.
The Media Research Center's Brad Wilmouth went off on people in the media he said were "smearing Fox News host Laura Ingraham as someone who uses her show to promote 'racist' and 'white supremacist' views as they reacted to a commentary she gave on The Ingraham Angle show in which she advocated for merit-based immigration and lamented 'massive demographic' changes." Wilmouth further huffed:
More than a year ago, WorldNetDaily 
In July, CNSNews.com 
Last year, we 
As we saw with 
The 
What is it with WorldNetDaily authors who turn out to be white nationalists and/or anti-Semites? First we had 
One of CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman's favorite right-wing clergymen (who's not Catholic, anyway) is 
As part of the past month of ranting in order to keep his website from going down the tubes (again), WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah served up this little Aug. 22 
For years, the Media Research Center has been hyping. and 
Shortly after we 
When confronted with a sex scandal involving a conaservative, the Media Research Center's default mode is to go into 
August is a slow month, so some of the folks for whom CNSNews.com most enthusiastically does its stenography saw a little less attention this time around. But not all of them.
