MRC's Double Standard on Vandalism Topic: Media Research Center
In March 2017, Tom Blumer, the departed contributing editor to the Media Research Center's NewsBusters blog, was offended that a Washington Post report on "far-left environmental vandals" defacing a Donald Trump-owned golf course called it "a daring act of defiance." "In a sane world, reporter Peter Holley and anyone else who reviewed the post before it went live would be severely and publicly disciplined," Blumer complained, adding that "The original report did not characterize the actions as "vandalism" until its fourth paragraph." Blumer further huffed of the vandals: "They and their destructive sympathizers are surely thrilled to see their handiwork given such prominent national visibility."
But the MRC has since found some vandalism it can get behind and give prominent national visibility to. Gabriel Hays cheerfully wrote in a Jan. 14 post:
It turns out there are still a few good-humored, politically-incorrect folks in Hollywood after all. Over the weekend, lefty-bashing street artist provocateurs publicly slammed HBO’s Bill Maher with a satirical billboard depicting him not as the thought leader he imagines himself to be, but as a rote purveyor of mainstream liberal propaganda. Specifically he was made fun of as being an “NPC.”
On Sunday pranksters from conservative street artist group “The Faction” decided to point out the fact that Maher might actually belong to this category, going after a Real Time with Bill Maher billboard located at the corner of La Cienega Boulevard & West Holloway in West Hollywood. “The Faction” spray painted a gray, expressionless face over Maher’s and changed the image’s tagline from “The Whole Truth and Nothing But” to “The Whole Narrative and Nothing But.” They also changed “HBO” to “NPC.”
Hays never uses the word "vandals" to describe the perpetrators -- they're "street artist provocateurs" -- or the word "vandalism" to describe what they did -- it's just "satirical" (though he did complain about Trump's Hollywood Walk of Fame star "being vandalized multiple times since his election."
Clearly, Hays and his editors were not "severely and publicly disciplined" for endorsing vandalism the way the MRC was demanding of others not too long ago, even though we can assume that The Faction and their destructive sympathizers are surely thrilled to see their handiwork given such prominent national visibility by the MRC. (Of course, the MRC couldn't even do that with the editors who let the white-nationalist links in Blumer's NewsBusters posts get through whatever editing process it claims to have, and then to stand unchallenged for years before it was pointed out to them).
Snowflakes At WND Also Triggered By Criticism of 'Toxic Masculinity' Topic: WorldNetDaily
The Media Research Center wasn't the only group of right-wing snowflakes to freak out over the guidelines from the American Psychological Association and a Gillette commercial that challenge negative aspects of traditional masculinity. WorldNetDaily columnists were triggered as well.
The last thing American males need today is less masculinity.
If you need proof, ask women who are looking for a husband whether the men they date exhibit too much masculinity, too little masculinity or just the right amount. I have talked to hundreds of women on my radio show (every week I have a “Male/Female Hour”), at speeches and in private who are dating to find a spouse. Not one has said men today are too masculine. Virtually all of them have said men today lack masculinity.
Also, he wrote, this somehow proves that "The left ruins everything it touches," adding that "Any therapist who cannot unequivocally condemn the APA statement is unworthy of your time and your money, let alone your psyche."
Erik Rush similarly denounced the APA guidelines: "Given the APA’s track record in contributing to the normalization of deviant behavior in recent years, I’m not quite sure why many who should know better continue to validate the organization as an arbiter of healthy psychological paradigms."
For starters, since when does anyone – in this case, a manufacturer of men’s shaving and body products – have the right to tell an entire gender how to act or, even more intrusively, how to raise their sons? Alluding to its own slogan, the company degradingly asks in the ad, “Is this the best a man can get?” Last time I checked, raising children is a parent’s job, not the purview of a disposable razor company whose products, after a few uses, get thrown in the trash – exactly where its male-bashing ad belongs.
[...]
Perhaps the company has forgotten that alpha male “boys being boys” were who fearlessly stormed the beaches at Normandy and led Allied forces to ultimate victory in World War II, putting an end to the Holocaust and Adolf Hitler’s satanic grip on Europe. Boys being boys dressed in New York Police Department and New York Fire Department uniforms bravely rushed into collapsing buildings at ground zero during 9/11, rescuing lives while risking – or losing – their own. And let’s not forget the brave boys being boys on United Airlines Flight 93 who charged the cockpit and battled with terrorists, thereby diverting the hijacked plane from its target, the U.S. Capitol – saving countless lives.
If that kind of masculinity – that “let’s roll” bravado and heroism – is what “boys being boys” is all about, someone should tell the “woke” crowd we need more of it, not less.
WND devoted a "news" article to the "serious backlash" Gillette has received over the ad, citing such supposed paragons of masculinity as Piers Morgan and Rush Limbaugh. It also [published syndicated columns by Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin bashing the ad.
CNS Managing Editor Obsesses Over Possible Presidential Candidate's Sex Life Topic: CNSNews.com
So South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg is considering a run for the Democratic nomination for president. But filtered through the homophobiclens of CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman, the only thing that matters is that Buttigieg is gay.
The headline on Chapman's Jan. 24 article on Buttigieg is headlined "First Openly Gay 'Married' Man Announces 2020 Democratic Presidential Exploratory Committee." The scare quotes around "married" persist in Chapman's head paragraph:
Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., who is openly gay and "married" to another man, announced on Jan. 23 that he has launched a presidential exploratory committee to determine whether he will run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
The stuff about Buttigieg being a military veteran who served in Afghanistan, a Rhodes Scholar and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard? Chapman waited until the second paragraph to mention it.
Scare quotes abounded in Chapman's piece: He noted that "On June 16, 2018, Buttigieg 'married' Chasten Glezman at the Cathedral of St. James' Episcopal Church in South Bend, Ind. ," and he included a picture of Buttigieg and his spouse with a caption stating that it showed him "and his 'husband,' Chasten Glezman."
He even suggested that Buttigieg was deceitful by claiming that he "came out of the closet as homosexual in June 2015, a revelation he did not make to South Bend voters back in 2010-11 when he first ran for mayor." Chapman did not explain why this was important.
MRC Ignores Facts (Again) in Attacking ProPublica Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center's Julia A. Seymour groused in a Jan. 14 post:
The liberal journalism non-profit ProPublica is expanding again — this time to Washington, DC so it can do even more anti-Trump administration investigations.
Of course, that wasn’t how the group framed it, but it’s doubtful it’ll be doing a lot of investigations of liberals considering its donor base and the articles it chose to showcase this expansion.
Seymour groused burther that ProPublica receives "money from a host of liberals and their foundations" -- read: George Soros and Tom Steyer -- then uses this as an excuse to paint ProPublica's content as "liberal." But the only example she notes is a list of three stories that "were obvious attacks on Trump, Trump 'associates,' or the people he chose to lead government agencies." At no point does Seymour dispute the accuracy or those stories or or even identify anything in them that she considers to be biased.
Fursther, as ProPublica president Richard Tofel detailed in a previous attack on the organization (which Seymour underreported on in December), ProPublica covers many stories that target liberal and Democratic politicians.
But Seymour is not trying to report fairly; she's trying to perpetuate a right-wing narrative.
CNS Denounces Appropiating King For Political Purposes -- While It Does Exactly That Topic: CNSNews.com
When Planned Parenthood issued a tweet honoring Martin Luther King Jr. on his birthday, CNSNews.com enlisted his niece, anti-abortion activist Alveda King (whom CNS, for once, refrained from giving her the unearned honorific "Dr.") for a Jan. 21 article denouncing Planned Parenthood for approprating King for a political cause: "To dishonor a prophet by raising a political banner which supports killing innocent babies on MLK’s birthday is so inhuman. To dishonor a prophet by raising a political banner on his birthday is so inhumane."
Elsewhere the same day, CNS was, um, appropriating King for its own political causes.
A column by Media Research Center "senior fellow" Allen West appropriated King for the anti-abortion cause:
Last week was the National March for Life, and potentially hundreds of thousands, not just 1,000s, gathered to be the voice of life for our unborn. The march is going on 45 years, and I believe that Dr. King would have been part of this march. Why? Put simply, Dr. King was an impeccable man of faith, and watching now, some 18 million black babies having been killed in the womb of black mothers would undoubtedly bring tears to his eyes. In that number, how many could have been the next man, or woman, from the Old Fourth Ward, a leader and a visionary, not just for the black community, but for freedom and liberty for all?
CNS also reposted an October column by editor in chief Terry Jeffrey placing Ronald Reagan on the level of King, declaring them "two of the greatest leaders in American history not only because of the struggles they won but how they won them." Jeffrey equated Reagan's1987"tear down this wall" speech at the Berlin Wall to King's Letter from Birmingham Jail, then declared:
Reagan and King believed that human freedom depends on faith in God and respect for His laws.
Reagan led America in defeating an evil that threatened us from abroad by standing up for and righteously speaking that truth. King led America in defeating an evil that threatened us from within by using the very same means.
Today, as in other eras, there are forces that would like America to abandon this ultimate truth that King and Reagan embraced and acted upon. To these forces, the principle enshrined in the Declaration of Independence is like the sign of the cross shining off the tower at Alexanderplatz. It needs to be eradicated.
We should teach our children that these forces are wrong, and that King and Reagan were right.
So, apparentl, it's OK at CNS to appropriate King for political purposes after all.
NEW ARTICLE: MRC's Years of Kaepernick Derangement Syndrome Topic: Media Research Center
Mysterious Media Research Center blogger Jay Maxson just can't stop ranting about the existence of former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Read more >>
Newsmax's Ruddy Still Defending Trump Topic: Newsmax
As a good friend of Donald Trump, Newsmax chief Christopher Ruddy has been a staunchapologist for the president. Now he's venturing toward ridiculous-defense territory.
Ruddy's Dec. 29 column is devoted to trying to shoot down the idea that Trump is acting like a mob boss. He insists that "Over many years of speaking privately with the president, in the most unguarded of moments, I don’t recall him ever referencing" mob-related films like the "Godfather" movies or "Goodfellas." He then tells us all the reasons Trump mob-esque behavior are really just the opposite:
If he emulates guys in movies, I think he sees himself as more John Wayne in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” or George C. Scott in “Patton.”
Trump does value strength. And loyalty.
But I don’t see the president’s view here as too different than other business and political figures I have known that value the same.
The president does like to vent against critics and old enemies.
Much of it can be over-the-top. He would rise higher in the polls if he kept such resentments to himself.
But that’s not Trump. He likes the shtick.
Remember that more than half of the senior staff in the White House and the Cabinet have, at one time or another, said critical things about the president.
Is this the government of a mafia don?
[...]
Or what about after 9/11?
When most folks in New York were evacuating the city, Trump raced down to the site of the World Trade Center in the aftermath of the attacks.
He asked Trump Organization staff to join him and help first responders.
As others fled to safety, Trump ran to danger. I talked to people that were at Ground Zero and saw him up close.
Is this mobster behavior?
[...]
OK, so I give you permission big media. Accuse Trump of many things, but admit he isn’t a mafia man.
Because if he really was, you wouldn’t be talking.
Ruddy spun hard again in his Jan. 28 column, insisting that Trump's cave on the border wall during the government shutdown he forced wasn't a cave at all:
The press spin these days is that President Trump lost to Nancy Pelosi on the government shutdown.
But Trump has a way of winning when he loses, and this will prove to be one of those cases.
[...]
So, did he get wall funding?
No.
But he has moved the needle.
By the end of the shutdown, the Democrats were signaling they would give him the full $5.7 billion in border security funds he asked for, though they don’t want the word “wall” used in the appropriation.
OK, let’s call it a “protective barrier.” That works for me.
[...]
My view is that Schumer and Pelosi are starved for deals they want to see happen.
The president is actually sitting quite pretty.
The White House should not tie border funding to the CRs.
But tying border funding to any and all legislation is fair game.
Those betting against President Trump on border funding should take their chips off the table.
Ruddy clearly knows on which side his bread is buttered.
CNS Labors to Downplay Roger Stone Indictment, Touts Trump's CNN Conspiracy Theory Topic: CNSNews.com
It's telling of the right-wing bias of CNSNews.com that its first reaction to the arrest of longtime Trump friend Roger Stone was to distance him from President Trump and allegations of Russian collusion and to spread a conspiracy theory about how Stone's arrest was covered by CNN.
Susan Jones kicked off the distancing in her initial story on the arrest:
The charges against Stone do not involve Russian collusion; they involve his alleged obstruction of, and false statements to, the congressional and FBI investigations into Trump-Russia coordination.
However, in what may be a preview of future legal cases, the indictment mentions the "Trump campaign" or "Trump campaign official/officials" 28 times, mostly in connection with Stone's attempt to get information from Wikileaks that would be damaging to the Clinton campaign.
Jones used the last paragraph of her article to play some partisan whataboutism demonstrating that she's not a fair and objec ctive reporter:
It should be noted that while Stone allegedly was seeking damaging information about the Clinton campaign from Wikileaks, the Clinton campaign and the Democrat National Committee were paying Fusion GPS, through a law firm, to gather information damaging to the Trump campaign. The so-called Steele dossier contained salacious and unverified information gathered by Christopher Steele from Russian sources; and eventually the FBI used the dossier to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on a Trump campaign volunteer.
Jones didn't mention that nothing in that paragraph was a crime, unlike Stone's dealkings with Wikileaks and lies under oath.
Jones followed up later in the morning by uncriticallly repeating what White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders had to say:
"I can tell you the specific charges brought against Mr. Stone don't have anything to do with the president," White House spokewoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told CNN’s “New Day” on Friday morning, shortly after longtime Trump associate Roger Stone was arrested at his Florida home on charges of obstruction, making false statements and witness tampering.
Asked for her reaction, Sanders said, "Real simple, this has nothing to do with the president and certainly nothing to do with the White House. This is something that has to do solely with that individual, and not something that affects us in this building."
By midday on Jan. 25, Jones was doing her best to promote Trump's conspiracy theory about CNN's presence at Stone's house at the time he was arrested:
In a mid-morning response to the indictment of his friend and former campaign adviser Roger Stone, President Trump tweeted: "Greatest Witch Hunt in the History of our Country! NO COLLUSION! Border Coyotes, Drug Dealers and Human Traffickers are treated better. Who alerted CNN to be there?"
[...]
In an early morning tweet, CNN's "New Day" explained how a TV crew just happened to be in Stone's neighborhood before dawn: "CNN's @davidgshortell was on the ground when Roger Stone was arrested in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., this morning. He says he was monitoring the situation because of 'unusual grand jury activity in Washington D.C. yesterday.'"
Back to Trump's question: "Who Alerted CNN to Be There?"
Attempts to reach the FBI press office during the shutdown were unsuccessful.
But some suspect that Mueller's office or someone in the FBI or even the grand jury tipped off CNN, a liberal media outlet that Trump has blasted as "fake news."
Journalist Greta van Susteren tweeted: "CNN cameras were at the raid of Roger Stone...so FBI obviously tipped off CNN...even if you don’t like Stone, it is curious why Mueller’s office tipped off CNN instead of trying to quietly arrest Stone; quiet arrests are more likely to be safe to the FBI and the person arrested."
Jones spent one paragraph on how CNN pointed out it had been alerted to a possible Stone arrest because of "unusual grand jury activity," and nine paragraphs of random conservatives falsely speculating that CNN was somehow tipped off by special counsel Robert Mueller himself.
Promoting presidential conspiracy theories is no way to present yourself as a legitimate "news" organization.
WND Peddles Alveda King's Lies About Margaret Sanger Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jerry Newcombe writes in his Jan. 22 WorldNetDaily column:
Does Planned Parenthood target blacks? That is what Dr. Martin Luther King’s niece thinks.
Recently, I spoke on my radio show with evangelist Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She is the director of Civil Rights for the Unborn with the organization Priests for Life. The focus was on Planned Parenthood and the African-American community.
[...]
Alveda King told our listeners: “Margaret Sanger, the founder of the Birth Control League [later, Planned Parenthood], said, that ‘colored people are like weeds,’ and they need to be eliminated. They need to be exterminated. We don’t want the word to get out, so let’s not package it that way. So that’s why they began to make a lot of propaganda and marketing materials, saying that abortion is a woman’s right. It will help her to finish college, get a job, do this or do that.”
But King is lying. As we've documented with others have made the same claim, there is no record of Sanger describing "colored people" as weeds. And since Newcombe is being a sympathetic host, he has no interest in fact-checking King as long as she keeps spinning the anti-abortion narrative he had her on his radio show to peddle in the first place.
(WND is not the only right-wing outlet to give King's lie a pass; a 2016 CBN article also uncritically quotes her making the same bogus claim.)
King is not the only misinformation peddler that Newcombe privileges and fails to fact-check. He also repeats right-wing historian Paul Kengor's biased, inaccurate framing of Sanger's speech to a women's Ku Klux Klan auxiliary: "Why would the KKK be so interested in Ms. Sanger? The reasons are obvious, a natural fit. It was because Sanger was a passionate racial eugenicist with grandiose dreams of 'race improvement.'"
As we've also documented, the KKK in the 1920s had a broad appeal beyond racism, to the point where it could almost be considered a mainstream conservative organization today. Further, Sanger spoke to a women's auxiliary of the KKK, not the KKK itself, and seemingly contrary to Kengor's portrayal of the speech as a "smash hit," she later called the speech "one of the weirdest experiences I had in lecturing." There's also no evidence that Sanger had any special fondness for the Klan, and it's clear from her writings that she would speak to any group that would have her. (Kengor walked back his portrayal of Sanger as a racist after we called him out on it.)
Newcombe also wrote:
Sanger did not want it known that she believed blacks should be targeted for a significant reduction in their population. She wrote, “We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” (Margaret Sanger, letter to Dr. Clarence J. Gamble, Dec. 10, 1939.)
That's another right-wing distortion. Anti-abortoin activists love to take that statement -- made in reference to a so-called "Negro Project" to target black women for birth control efforts -- out of context; in fact, it refers to an attempt to recruit black leaders for the effort in order to allay suspicions blacks might have had about whites like Sanger being involved.
But Newcombe wasn't done with pushing misinformation. He also writes: "To see for yourself the ongoing racism of Planned Parenthood in action, notice how often their clinics are still in very poor neighborhoods. Alveda notes some of those Planned Parenthood neighborhoods have streets nearby named after her uncle."
As we also documented, the Guttmacher Institute found that 60 percent of abortion providers are, in fact, located in majority-white neighborhoods. Newcombe seems to be alluding to an anti-abortion group's claim that a majority of abortion providers are "within walking distance" of a minority neighborhood -- which is defined as two miles.
Newcombe also refers to King at one point as "Dr. Alveda King," which is yet another bit of false privileging. As we've pointed out, King's doctorate is honorary, not earned.
You'd think that WND would have learned by now not to publish so much fake news.
MRC Snowflakes Traumatized By Challenges To 'Toxic Masculinity' Topic: Media Research Center
Conservatives love to mock liberals as "snowflakes" for allegedly being unable to handle points of view that differ from their own. By that definiton, the Media Research Center is an organization filled with snowflakes who freak out over any view that counters their right-wing agenda.
When challenges to the harmful side of traditional masculinity appeared earlier this month -- in the forms of a list of guidelines from the American Psychological Association and a Gillette commercial -- the MRC went into full snowflake mode.
Gabriel Hays sneered that the Gillette ad was "brimming with PC condescension" and "held men in general accountable for the existence of 'toxic masculinity,'" further huffing: "The most insulting part of the whole thing may be that a razor blade manufacturer believes men -- especially fathers raising boys -- need its advice on masculinity." Hay also insisted that Gillette wants "to join every bitter feminist and cosmopolitan soyboy who wants men to be something more acceptable in faculty lounges, big city newsrooms and, it seems, the offices of razor manufacturers."
Hays weirdly based his rant on a BBC article about the Gillette ad, despite the fact that it was targeted at an American audience.
Kyle Drennen tried for an irony angle, twisting an NBC report on the Gillettte into claiming that the network morning show that employed an alleged sexual harasser for 20 years thought it was great that shave company Gillette produced a commercial condemning 'toxic masculinity.'" Drennen linked to a Fox News article about the ad -- presumably because outrage about challenges to "toxic masculinity" is more on-brand for the channel whose male employees seem to be nothing but sexual harassers.
Drennen also complained that initial coverage of tte ad on NBC was limited to "two female co-hosts and female reporter" and that "it wasn’t until the 9:00 a.m. ET hour that the male hosts were given the chance to react to the story."
The MRC got mad at the APA guidelines as well, with Clay Waters deliberately issuing an overbroad assessment that "courage, risk-taking, and achievement are now black marks on a man’s character under the APA's guidelines" and that a in New York Times article on the guidelines, "liberal academics put positive spins on the controversial guidelines, and let them criticize the conservative point of view without rebuttal." Waters also played a bit of anti-elitist elitism, grumbling that "The guidelines themselves are suffused with sex-blurred 'non-binary' terms de rigueur in today’s intelligentsia circles."
Here’s an outside-the-box -- not to say crazy (are you allowed to say crazy anymore?) -- suggestion for the gang at the American Psychology Association: If you’re going to issue what Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse calls an “an indictment … of rigid, traditional masculinity,” you might want to talk to some “traditional” men first.
That way, you won’t be blindsided when some folks think your research belongs under the scientific classification of “crap.”
[...]
Rulers and the ruled. Hesse thinks social organization and the relationship between the sexes is a zero-sum power game. And if you’ve spent your time at Bryn Mawr and the Washington Post, who could blame you?
[...]
Think about the reaction to the APA Guidelines: Single mothers raising sons is one of the biggest contributors to violence and lawlessness in huge swaths of society, but we’re not allowed to stigmatize out-of-wedlock birth or suggest boys need fathers. Meanwhile the elites eschew the religion that has traditionally tempered and helped tame masculinity, while they celebrate homosexuality and the other 31derful flavors of sexuality popular this week.
Of course, MRC bigwigs Tim Graham and Brent Bozell couldn't help but and their two cents in a column-length rant:
So who is the mastermind at Gillette who came up with the idea that the best way to sell men's razors is to insult the customers with condescending liberal propaganda about "toxic masculinity"? Is pandering to the perpetually angry feminists in the media the way to grab positive "news" coverage? Is online buzz the goal? If so, it must also be Gillette's goal to have its customers rush over to the Schick display.
[...]
There's a word for these ad campaigns: vomit. Go buy a Schick, where men are men; women are women; and all they want is a shave.
If an academic paper and a razor company's ad triggers right-wingers so ferociously, who are the real snowflakes here?
WND's Kupelian Repackages Ancient Interview As 'News' Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Jan. 21 WorldNetDaily article by David Kupelian, tagged as a "WND Exclusive," carried the proud headline "My interview with the doctor who gave America legalized abortion: David Kupelian's revealing conversation with NARAL co-founder Bernard Nathanson." And it is indeed pretty lengthy -- of course, the right-wing Kupelian would not devote so much space to the co-founder of NARAL if had hadn't flipped and become an anti-abortion activist. He even gave Nathanson space to defend the misleading anti-abortion film he made, "The Silent Scream," with Kupelian lamenting that the film "provoked a massive campaign of defamation on the part of the pro-abortion movement."
But Kupelian obfuscates a bit on the newsworthiness of his interview with Nathanson. It's not until the fifth paragraph that Kupelian gets around to mentioning that the interview actually took place in 1990 -- almost 30 years ago. And it's not until the very end of his article that Kupelian makes clear that "Bernard Nathanson passed away on Feb. 21, 2011, at the age of 84." This is followed by an editor's note: "The preceding interview with Bernard Nathanson, M.D., is excerpted and adapted from David Kupelian’s bestselling book, 'The Marketing of Evil.'"
In other words, Kupelian's interview is not only ancient, it's effectively copied-and-pasted from a book he wrote more than a decade ago. It has no news value whatsoever beyond its appearance around the time of the anti-abortion March for Life.
It may be very old news, but to WND's credit, it's not fake news.
Shocker: CNS Reports Actual News Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com is so dedicated to pro-Trump stenography that it's news when CNS reports actual news -- and even bigger news when CNS reports original news that isn't reflexively pro-Trump.
So, it's worth noting that a Jan. 10 article by Emily Ward found a State Department message marking Pride Month in June 2018 and expressing support for LGBT rights didn't appear on the websites of U.S. embassies in countries that are notoriously hostile to such rights. Unfortunately, Ward wasn't able to pursue the story much further; the State Department declined comment because much the department was closed because of the government shutdown.
It's not a lot, but it's something, and it shows that CNS actually has a bit of talent and can accomplish something when it chooses to act like journalists instead of stenographers.
That’s the Democratic Party’s elitist modus operandi when it comes to casting aspersions and judging President Donald Trump’s character, marital issues and moral compass – but not their own.
Take the recent revelations surrounding the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com and owner of the anti-Trump Washington Post. Bezos announced via Twitter this week that his 25-year marriage has gone bust, stemming from reports of a salacious affair the billionaire businessman allegedly had with a friend’s wife. Although both Bezos and his paramour have denied the illicit affair, according to reports their steamy sexts speak otherwise – indicating that the Washington Post’s owner could very well be no angel when it comes to marital fidelity. But that hasn’t stopped his newspaper from writing round-the-clock hit pieces against the president for the past several years highlighting Trump’s amorality.
Cohen goes on to complain about "the cesspool of liberal Hollywood hypocrites" and "President Bill Clinton’s numerous affairs – including with Monica Lewinsky, a young, impressionable intern he engaged in extramarital sex acts with in the Oval Office" that purportedly get less attention than Trump.
But while Cohen apparently concedes Trump's "amorality," she says nothing more about it -- nor does she explain why conservatives who were vocal about Clinton's affair with Lewinsky are silent about Trump's three marriages and his paying off a porn star to cover up their affair. Further, skimming through Cohen's WND archive, we could find no column that she devoted to addressing Trump's amorality.
It seems that Cohen is pushing the flip side of her opening line: Immorality for Trump, but not for thee.
MRC Embraces Trump's Scary-Illegal-Immigrant Crusade Topic: Media Research Center
President Trump has been pushing the idea that all illegal immigrants are scary, if not actively coming to kill you, and the Media Research Center wants to help that narrative along.
A Jan. 17 post by Brad Wilmouth complained that "CNN senior political analyst John Avlon presented another of his infamous "Reality Check" segments, which is more akin to liberal spin than an actual effort to clearly inform viewers about the issues. The CNN analyst argued against a border wall as he cited Politifact to dismiss claims of 2,000 homicides being committed by illegal immigrants in one year being reported by ICE for FY2018." Wilmouth went on to convolutedly rant about the PolitiFact fact-check:
If one takes a look at the Politifact article he cited, it reads like another lame fact check that the site has become famous for that spins for liberals. The analysis has a point in that the 2,000 homicides cited do not actually come from 2018 since illegals who commit homicides are usually deported after they have spent years serving their sentences in prison, so the total number of homicides committed by illegal aliens in 2018 or any particular year is still unclear.
But the fact-checking site also bizarrely tried to suggest that many homicides were not so bad since not all homicides are actually murders. But legal justifiable homicides tend to make up only a small portion of total homicides, and manslaughter cases are still serious matters in which someone died even if they do not fit the legal definition of murder.
Additionally, if the site had bothered to check numbers for previous years, there were at least a couple of years -- 2011 and 2012 -- when the Obama adiministration reported a number of homicide cases processed by ICE as being well over 1,000, suggesting that numbers between 1,000 and 2,000 may actually be typical and reflective of how many homicides are committed by illegals each year.
And, in FY2017, ICE processed illegal immigrants who had similarly committed almost 1,900 homicides.
And, in a country where over the past 20 years the total number of homicides nationwidetends to vary between 14,000 and 17,000 a year, such numbers from illegal immigrants would represent a substantial chunk -- and probably a disproportionately high portion -- of the nation's homicides.
Actually, the PolitiFact article debunks the claim a lot more than Wilmouth would admit, further explaining that "those offenses could have been accumulated over many years — not just 2017 — and didn’t necessarily happen the same year ICE arrested these people. In addition, a homicide could be a murder, but it could also be an accidental killing. Finally, ICE didn’t pick any of these folks up for murder; it picked them up for being in violation of the nation’s immigration laws." The number also doesn't reflect when homicide charges are dropped.
The next day, the MRC dropped any subtlety on the issue with a headline screaming "Seven Horrific Crimes by Illegal Immigrants that Networks BURIED." In it, Bill D'Agostino insisted that all crimes by illegal immigrants demand national news coverage -- no matter how minor, apparently -- because, duh, they're illegals:
Crimes perpetrated by illegal aliens deserve attention because, by their very nature, all of them theoretically could have been prevented with sufficient enforcement of existing laws. Even if the crime rate among illegal aliens were a fraction of that among the native population, those few offenses still committed would be otherwise avoidable if the culprits had been either deported or prevented from entering in the first place.
MRC analysts examined Nexis transcripts of all network evening news coverage from 2018 and compiled the following list of some of the most heinous crimes committed by unlawful residents over the past year. None of these stories received even a second of evening news coverage – with the exception of the Colorado Spring Wildfire, which the networks briefly covered without mentioning the accused’s immigration status.
As usual, the MRC "study" is limited only to CBS, NBC and ABC -- because it's easier to monitor only a half-hour of programming a day -- and ignores its favorite channel, Fox News, completely.
WND Unhappy With Call To Impeach Trump, Forgets It Demanded Obama's Impeachment Topic: WorldNetDaily
An anonymous WorldNetDaily writer appears upset in a Jan. 17 article:
Special counsel Robert Mueller has yet to issue a report on his probe of alleged Trump-Russia collusion, but the new issue of The Atlantic features the word “IMPEACH” in large, red letters.
The cover story by Atlantic senior editor Yoni Appelbaum argues Congress has the authority, through impeachment, to “rein in a president who is undermining American ideals,” The Hill reported.
The title subhead reads: “It’s time for Congress to judge the president’s fitness to serve.”
Appelbaum asserts Trump has “repeatedly trampled” on the Constitution through his policies, resistance to investigations and attacks on political opponents.
“These actions are, in sum, an attack on the very foundations of America’s constitutional democracy,” he writes.
We would remind WND that it didn't even wait the two years the Atlantic did, or that there was no special counsel investigation whose results needed waiting for, before calling for the impeachment of President Obama.
As we documented, WND promoted a call for impeachment of Obama in October 2009 -- less than a year after Obama was elected -- then teamed up with the Brown-operated Western Journalism Center (which WND editor Joseph Farah had founded in the 1990s) the following year to churn out "The Case for Impeachment," a shoddily written screed filled with misleading claims and outright falsehoods -- and, of course, birther conspiracy theories -- that purported to make the case for Obama's impeachment.
In other words, one could argue that the Atlantic is following in WND's footsteps. Shouldn't WND be proud of that, or something?
In March 2017, Tom Blumer, the departed contributing editor to the Media Research Center's NewsBusters blog, was offended that a Washington Post report on "far-left environmental vandals" defacing a Donald Trump-owned golf course called it "a daring act of defiance." "In a sane world, reporter Peter Holley and anyone else who reviewed the post before it went live would be severely and publicly disciplined," Blumer complained, adding that "The original report did not characterize the actions as "vandalism" until its fourth paragraph." Blumer further huffed of the vandals: "They and their destructive sympathizers are surely thrilled to see their handiwork given such prominent national visibility."
The 
So South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg is considering a run for the Democratic nomination for president. But filtered through the 
The Media Research Center's Julia A. Seymour groused in a Jan. 14 
When Planned Parenthood issued a tweet honoring Martin Luther King Jr. on his birthday, CNSNews.com enlisted his niece, anti-abortion activist Alveda King (whom CNS, 
As a good friend of Donald Trump, Newsmax chief Christopher Ruddy has been a 
It's telling of the right-wing bias of CNSNews.com that its first reaction to the arrest of longtime Trump friend Roger Stone was to distance him from President Trump and allegations of Russian collusion and to spread a conspiracy theory about how Stone's arrest was covered by CNN.
Jerry Newcombe writes in his Jan. 22 WorldNetDaily 
A Jan. 21 WorldNetDaily 
CNSNews.com is so dedicated to pro-Trump stenography that it's news when CNS reports actual news -- and even bigger news when CNS reports original news that isn't reflexively pro-Trump.
Adriana Cohen complains in her Jan. 13 
President Trump has been 
An anonymous WorldNetDaily writer appears upset in a Jan. 17 
