The Media Research Center's Scott Whitlock complained in a July 20 post:

The Washington Post on Friday couldn’t let old rivalries go, even in death. The paper’s obituary for long time Washington Times editor Wesley Pruden dripped with contempt for the “defiantly abrasive” conservative and his paper. In fact, the paper offered nicer coverage to Fidel Castro, hailing the dead dictator as a “romantic figure in olive-drab fatigues and combat boots.”

Whitlock didn't link to the Post obituary on Castro but, rather, his bosses Tim Graham and Brent Bozell's column complaining about it. They -- and, thus, Whitlock -- didn't mention that the obituary also stated that Under [Castro's] reign, Havana eventually became something of a Marxist Disneyland — a shiny, happy veneer over something much uglier," pointing out that "impoverished Cubans lived in crumbling homes on rationed food. Teenage prostitutes openly offered their services to tourists." It also stated that some Cubans "clearly feared a leader who imprisoned tens of thousands of his enemies over the years, often on little more than a whim. ... Many Cubans would not offer criticism of their leader for fear of being overheard by government informants, who lived on practically every block."

Anyway, back to Pruden. Whitlock complained that the Post obituary "had to warn readers of how dangerously conservative the Times is" --  in fact, all the obituary did is point out that the Times is a highly biased newspaper and that Pruden played a key role in that by editing stories to make them even further right-wing than they may have already been, a process that's been called "Prudenizing."

We though Whitlock and the rest of the MRC opposed media bias. Apparently, bias is OK as long as the MRC approves of the bias being offered.

Whitlock went on to grouse that the obit "cited notable liberal outlets and journalists." One of which was David Brock, who wrote for the Times as a dedicated conservative before turning liberal, so that was actually germane; the other he pointed out was the left-leaning journal The Nation, which had done an expose on the paper. Whitlock clipped a short ellipsis-beginning segment pointing out that The Nation found that Pruden and then-managing editor Fran Coombs "had fostered an atmosphere that was 'profoundly demeaning and abusive to women and minorities.'"

It seems that Whitlock decided that describing Pruden as a acting in a racist and sexist manner to subordinates was less damaging than describing him as a neo-Confederate.

But the part before the ellipsis, which Whitlock made sure not to clip, highlighted how The Nation echoed reporting from the Southern Poverty Law Center that Pruden ran a weekly Civil War page in the paper that the SPLC said helped "to popularize extremist ideas and neo-Confederate sympathy." Whitlock similarly ignored the obit's statement that Pruden's namesake father was a white supremacist in Arkansas who led a group that "tried to block the desegregation of Little Rock High School."

Whitlock by the way, did not challenge the accuracy of these claims -- only complained that they were reported. He did, however, complain about one other claim, that Pruden had been fired by a publication in the 1970s for manufacturing quotes, scoffing at the Post's attribution of this to "some accounts." If Whitlock had bothered to do a quick internet search, he would have found that this was apparently first reported by the SPLC in 2003.

Posted by Terry K. at 6:16 PM EDT

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The Catholic League's Bill Donohue complains in an Aug. 2 Newsmax column:

Imagine the following scenario.

A cardinal in the Catholic Church knows that for 20 years a priest in his archdiocese has sexually abused hundreds of young persons, yet he never once reported his crimes to the authorities. When this is disclosed to the public, the cardinal stands fast, refusing to budge. When a protest of angry Catholics forces him to resign, he is allowed to teach at a local Catholic college and is awarded the title "distinguished professor."

There's more. Imagine the cardinal being charged by prosecutors with two felonies and with lying to the police. Imagine further that the archdiocese agrees to award him $2.45 million over three years; he is also given medical and dental coverage. But he has to agree not to sue the archdiocese first! He agrees.

Contrast this with what happened on July 30 when the Board of Trustees at Michigan State University awarded former president Lou Anna Simon about $2.5 million (of taxpayers' money), plus benefits, after she was forced to resign. According to the Detroit Free Press, she is charged with two felony counts and two misdemeanor counts of lying to the police about Dr. Lawrence Nassar. Nassar is in prison for sexually abusing young athletes when working as a sports doctor at the university; hundreds of young girls are believed to have been molested by him.

Simon's payout follows her refusal to resign — she did so under protest. The school then awarded her the title "distinguished professor."

Does Donohue really want to go there? OK, let's go there.

Bernard Law was the cardinal of the Boston diocese for 18 years. Over that time, he was found to have extensive knowledge of sexual abuse committed by priests in the diocese, but he simply moved the offending priests to other parishes rather than contacting authorities. Unlike Simon, Law never faced criminal charges. But after he resigned fro the Boston diocese in disgrace, Law was awarded what is argably better than being named "distinguished professor": a ceremonial position at the Vatican. When he did, he was given a funeral Mass in St. Peter's Basilica.

In other words, Law appears to have been treated better than Simon.

When Law died, Donohue praised him as a "theological conservative" and virtually ignored his central role in the sexual abuse scandal. He didn't complain about a disgraced cardinal being given a funeral service in the revered St. Peter's. No wonder Donohue thought this was a good example to cite against Simon.

Instead, he whined that the Simon story didn't get the media attention the overall Catholic abuse scandal -- though he ignores the massive media attention given to Nasser, and despite the fact that even if Simon is foound guilty of lying to police (Simon's attorneys deny it, according to the article Donohue cites), it was only for a period of two years, compared with the 18 years Law mishandled numerous abusive priests and the 20 years in his hypothetical example.

This is ultimately just another example of Donohue trying to downplay the severity of the Catholic abuse scandal.

Posted by Terry K. at 8:22 PM EDT

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The Media Reserach Center loves to attack media outlets that put the blame on President Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric for the El Paso massacre, in which the whtie supuremacist suspect has expressed anti-immigrant sentiments and said he was targeting Hispanics. But the MRC weirdly has no problem going farther afield to assign blame -- namely, Dr. Seuss.

Corinne Weaver ranted in an Aug. 6 MRC post:

You can’t buy a Confederate flag on Amazon, but you can read literature that helped inspire one of the deadliest shootings in the United States. 

The Lorax, a children’s book by Dr. Seuss, was a recommended title in the El Paso shooter’s alleged manifesto. In fact, it was the only title referenced in the entire four-page document. And while an Amazon user can’t buy guns or Confederate flags, the book is readily available. 

That probably sounds ludicrous, banning a book because it was cited by a terrorist. But that’s the media mindset. Only they aren’t pressing Amazon over The Lorax.

USA Today wrote that “white supremacist ideologies” and “white power manifestos” are one click away on Amazon and Amazon products. The article never even referenced the only title mentioned in the manifesto. 

[...]

Nothing is sacred. But if the media and tech platforms are so interested in taking down the inspirations for mass shootings and crimes, then why aren’t Jodie Foster films like Taxi Driver banned? 

In a written statement to the MRC, Amazon stated, “We’re committed to providing a positive customer experience and have policies that outline what products may be sold in our stores. We invest significant time and resources to ensure our content guidelines are followed, and remove products that do not adhere to our guidelines-- which can be found here for books. We are always listening to customer feedback and evaluating our policy.”

8chan was taken down because it was called “lawless.” The platform where the shooter published his manifesto was punished on August 5 when two network providers refused to host the site any further. 

Yes, Weaver is really agitating for Amazon -- and, presumably, bookstores and libraries all over America -- to censor and ban "The Lorax." And she actually contacted Amazon for comment. (Weaver, by the way, doesn't understand that Google is not a retailer.)

Oddly, Weaver seems much more conciliatory toward 8chan, putting "lawless" in scare quotes and lamenting that it was "punished" for being chock full o' racists like the El Paso shooter. (Weaver also thinks that Gab, another haven for white supremacists, is merely about "free speech.")

The MRC is weirdly committed to this talking point, by the way. Joseph Vazquez huffed in a post the same day:

Following the murder of 20 people by a racist terrorist in El Paso, Texas, the liberal media cherry-picked portions of his alleged manifesto to connect him to the right. But some ignored portions that cited The Lorax as an inspiration for his views — a book and movie the liberal media used to love to promote because of its environmental agenda.

[...]

It cited the Dr. Seuss’ fable writing, “This phenomenon is brilliantly portrayed in the decades-old classic ‘The Lorax.’ Watersheds around the country, especially in agricultural areas, are being depleted. Fresh water is being polluted from farming and oil-drilling operations.” He attacked “consumer culture” for plastic and e-waste, complained about urban sprawl, the use of paper towels and the unwillingness of people to change their lifestyles.”

Many of those environmental attitudes are promoted by the liberal media. In 2012, it fawned over the updated Lorax movie adaptation was released. NBC’s Today, CBS New York, Huffington Post and others celebrated its environmental messaging.

Strangely (or maybe not so strangely), neither Weaver nor Vazquez cited any particular passage in "The Lorax" that could possibly be interpreted as encouraging a white supremacist to murder Hispanics. Perhaps because, you know, there isn't any and the MRC is just trying to spin away Trump's much closer connection to the attitudes in the shooter's manifesto. 

Posted by Terry K. at 5:27 PM EDT

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WorldNetDaily has spent nearly three years misrepresenting the facts surrounding the case of a mother who's trying to stop her estranged child from undergoing a transgender medical procedure --largely because it's beholden to the right-wing legal group that represents the mother. It is apparently not going to stop. An unbylined July 25 article states:

A mother whose juvenile son was assisted in sex-change procedures by authorities in Minnesota against her wishes is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review her case.

The Thomas More Society on Wednesday asked the high court to review the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling affirming the decision by county officials to shepherd the boy through a sex change.

The petition to review Anmarie Calgaro v. St. Louis County contends Calgaro’s due process rights were trampled when the county and its referred health providers ended her parental control over her minor son without her permission or a court order.

Erick Kaardal, special counsel for the Thomas More Society, said Calgaro’s right to supervise her child’s welfare, educational and medical care decisions were ripped away by St. Louis County authorities without even parental notice.

“It’s a parent’s worst nightmare,” he said. “Anmarie Calgaro’s child, while a minor, was steered through a life-changing, permanent body altering process, becoming a pawn in someone else’s sociopolitical agenda and being influenced by those who have no legal or moral right to usurp the role of a parent.

As befits an anonymously written article, WND tells only the side the Thomas More Society wants told, that of the mother whose parental rights were purportedly violated -- indeed, this is little more than a rewrite of a Thomas More Society press release. But as we've documented, the legal group ignores the fact that the child had been living apart from the mother for several months, was earning her own money, and the mother made no attempt to bring her home or contact her. The legal group never explained why such a neglectful mother was suddenly demanding that her alleged rights be respected -- or why the child is listed as a defendant in the case, meaning that the mother is suing her own child for acting on her own, which doesn't seem to be a very loving act.

Further, given that the child in question turned 18 in 2017, the lawsuit is moot and parental control is no longer an issue. It seems that either the mother or Thomas More is motived by a certain sense of vengeance.

It seems they're both in this together. The Thomas More Society published a testimonial by Calgaro that misgenders her child, gushing that "The Thomas More Society’s compassion for me and my son, combined with their outstanding legal work, has brought my case all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. Despite the governmental abuse of my family, I am thankful for the gracious work of everyone at this nonprofit public interest law firm."

Uncritrically rewriting press releases is pretty standard WND behavior, but it doesn't mean that it deserves to live.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:06 AM EDT

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Weeks before he was even subpoenaed, Special Counsel Robert Mueller signaled his testimony before two House committees would not go beyond the conclusions of his already-released report. If true, it will disappoint liberal journalists still hoping for smoking-gun testimony that might rejuvenate the faltering cause of impeaching President Trump.

But there’s at least one way this nationally-televised forum can make news, and that’s by a highly public airing of controversies that aren’t even addressed in the Mueller Report, namely, the lingering questions of bias regarding how the probe began in 2016 and how Mueller’s team subsequently handled the investigation.

Noyes goes on to serve up one of his extremely narrowly tailored "studies," complaining that the nightly network newscasts "have barely mentioned some of the crucial unresolved questions surrounding the investigation’s bias." These include "the Strzok-Page text messages," "the Democratic-funded dossier," and "allegedly misleading the FISA court." Noyes also cited "other accusations of bias," such as President Trump's complaint that "the investigation was the result of bias within the Obama Justice Department and FBI."

But Noyes is simply repeating Fox News-inspired right-wing conspiracy theories (whiich may be one reason why he didn't include Fox News in his "media reserarch"). Media Matters summarizes this very well:

But Fox’s counternarrative is based on falsehood and fantasy. It claims a dossier assembled by a former British intelligence officer and funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee kicked off the probe (it didn’t), cites a FISA warrant against a former Trump campaign aide as evidence of an anti-Trump conspiracy (it isn’t), misreads text messages between FBI officials to suggest they show an all-out effort to stop Trump’s election (they don’t), and smears Mueller and members of his team as having conflicts of interest (they don’t).

The MRC, however, isn't moved by the facts, only by the determination to prop up right-wing narratives. For instance, a post by Kristine Marsh after Mueller's testimony linked back to Noyes' post in whining that the media "kept ludicrously characterizing Mueller as an apolitical player, ignoring all the anti-Trump controversies attached to his investigation.

Marsh wrote another post bashing NBC's Andrea Mitchell for highlighting how Republicans are trying to attack Mueller's nonpartisan investigation as a partisan exercise: "Mitchell didn’t come up with this line of attack on her own. ABC and CNN journalists also employed the same tactic in their post-hearing analysis of deflect, deflect, deflect from the Mueller team’s partisan controversies to slam Republicans as the partisan ones."

To coin a phrase: Marsh didn't come up with that line of attack on her own.

Posted by Terry K. at 2:40 PM EDT

Updated: Sunday, August 11, 2019 6:54 PM EDT

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CNSNews.com has many flaws, but it -- along with its Media Research Center parent -- have largely stayed out of white nationalist territory (Tom Blumer notwithstanding). Which makes it curious why CNS would choose to publish a column defending a white nationalist website.

Michelle Malkin's July 31 column does exactly that. In it, she complains that an "educational nonprofit" saw its planned conference in Colorado Springs get canceled after local residents complained:

In spring 2017, award-winning journalist and former Hoover Institution media fellow Peter Brimelow and his educational nonprofit VDARE reserved the Cheyenne Mountain Resort for a conference on immigration and sovereignty issues. A local far-left gadfly who bragged about wearing her "pink pussy hat while driving (her) Prius" launched an online petition condemning Brimelow's organization as a "hate group." The petition threatened both the resort and the mayor, bellowing that "the residents of Colorado Springs will not support businesses that profit from hate groups and will not re-elect politicians hospitable to those hate groups!"

What exactly is "hateful" about VDARE's work? You can visit VDARE.com and read their wide variety of news and opinions yourself. My syndicated column, published in the Colorado Springs Gazette and hundreds of other mainstream newspapers over the past 25 years, is also published by VDARE. So is Ann Coulter's and Pat Buchanan's. VDARE hosts a vital and honest discussion of an "America First" immigration policy, long considered third rail by the establishments in both parties before President Donald Trump embraced it and won the White House. Of course, I don't agree with everything published on the site; neither do I agree with everything published on every op-ed page that has published my column. VDARE has never advocated violence or any illegal activity. The group counts foreign nationals, immigrants and members of racial and ethnic minorities among its strongest supporters, donors and contributors.

But Malkin is hiding the truth: VDARE, at its core, is a white nationalist website.

Brimelow is very much a racist and white nationalist -- he has claimed that "Hispanics do specialize in rape, particularly of chidren" and asserted that "the U.S. is a white nation" -- "and according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, VDARE publishes artilces by academic racists and hosts white nationalists like Jared Taylor and Richard Spencer who, in Brimelow's words, "aim to defend the interests of American whites." The racism is right in the name: VDARE is named for Virginia Dare, the first white child born in America.

In pretending that there's nothing "hateful" about VDARE, Malkin is dishonestly playing dumb about VDARE's unambiguous white nationalism -- indeed, she further's the whitewashing (heh) by purging the term "white nationalist" from her column. Of course, Malkin herself has been sliding further right over the years; her speech at this year's CPAC was an anti-immigrant screed that also defended the violent anti-Semite Gavin McInnes and vicious Islamophobe Laura Loomer as being on the "front lines for liberty," then afterwards had a softball interview with white nationalist Faith Goldy.

VDARE publishes Malkin's column as well, though it's unclear how long that arrangement will last if Malkin ever stops hating immigrants so much and VDARE's readers remember that she's not white.

Meanwhile, other branches of the MRC understood what Malkin's column was really about. NewsBusters publshes her column as well -- but the VDARE-defending column is notably absent from the archive. Apparently CNS has more tolerance for racism and dishonesty than the rest of the MRC.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:17 PM EDT

Updated: Sunday, August 11, 2019 12:22 PM EDT

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We've documented how the Media Research Center served as the unpaid (we think) PR agent for the lawyers for the Covington teens in their overheated, greedy $250 million defamation lawsuit against the Washington Post, despite said lawsuit being more of a right-wing manifesto than a credible legal action.

Well, that lawsuit got unceremoniously tossed out of court last month -- and, of course, the MRC whined about the purported injustice.

In a July 27 post headlined "Freedom of Smear," Tim Graham was unhappy that the First Amendment protects opinion: "This is standard First Amendment stuff: the Post is free to report false things to please their liberal readers, and claim that they're the truth."

You know who else has the freedom to smear people? The Media Research Center. And it does that all the time -- most notoriously when Graham's boss, Brent Bozell, called President Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead." Does Graham think Obama should have sued Bozell over that bit of defamation? Unlikely. Does Graham think the MRC should be sued because one of its writers told a delliberate falsehood about CBS it refuses to correct? Even more unlikely.

But the Post's statement after the victory was obnoxious.  "From our first story on this incident to our last, we sought to report fairly and accurately the facts that could be established from available evidence, the perspectives of all of the participants, and the comments of the responsible church and school officials." 

This is not true in the slightest. We gave the Post a grade of "Ugly" for its reporting:

The MRC is hardly an objective arbiter of others' reporting, and it has shown an unambigous hatred for everything Post-related.Indeed, one of the purportedly "ugly" things the MRC claims the Post did was that it "published a nasty blog post on 'The Catholic Church’s shameful history of Native American abuses.'" The MRC did not disprove the accuracy of that post, only complain that someone wrote it.

The MRC revels in that "freedom of smear" that Graham purportedly decries -- but only as long as nobody holds it accountable for doing so, even as it demands that others be sanctioned.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:59 AM EDT

Updated: Sunday, August 11, 2019 12:53 PM EDT

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Michael Brown -- who likes to pretend he has sympathy for the LGBT community but engages in rampant bashing of them anyway -- served up another entry in that genre with his July 26 column. It starts off by noting that Netflix sent a cease-and-desist order to the organizers of the straight-pride parade that used its logo to falsely portray it as a sponsor. That quickly led to Brown ranting about how there are too many non-heterosexuals on Netflix:

Personally, I have no interest in the Straight Pride parade, and none of my pro-family colleagues are involved with it.

That being said, it is clear that Netflix is the bully here. And it is even clearer that Netflix is proudly queer.

[...]

But it’s not just the Netflix legal team which is openly queer. The company as a whole has been blazing an openly queer path for years.

There is not only a plethora of gay-themed movies on Netflix, but a 2018 article pointed to “30 Netflix original shows with LGBT characters.”

Yes, “ Netflix has quite the history with LGBT representation, with two of their earliest shows (‘House of Cards’ and ‘Orange Is the New Black’) featuring queer leads. The company hasn’t shied away from these characters since, with LGBT characters appearing in the main casts of shows like ‘Sense8’ and ‘One Day at a Time,’ to name a few. Dramas, comedies, thrillers – whatever the genre, Netflix has featured an LGBT character in it.”

In keeping with this emphasis, now that “The Designated Survivor” is a Netflix production, it not only introduced the F- word to the show. But by the third episode, it focused on “transgender rights.”

And last year, Netflix released “Super Drags,” an “adult animated series” in which “three gay co-workers lead double lives as drag queen superheroes, saving the LGBTQ community from evil nemeses.” How delightful.

So Netflix, yes, we hear you loud and clear. You are here and you are queer. Quite so.

(Christian families looking for a very wholesome alternative might want to consider Pure Flix.)

That kind of gay-bashing is about par for the course from Brown.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:15 AM EDT

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Some right-wing attack pieces don't age well. For instance, a July 25 Media Research Center piece by Gabriel Hays attacking HBO's upcoming "Watchmen" series for focusing on white supremacy. Hays writes:

What’s one more woke comic book action series in the litany of woke comic book action series? HBO is set to premiere its new mainline superhero series based on the legendary Watchmen graphic novel in the fall, and guess what societal threat our crime fighters will be dealing with this time: White supremacy.

Good heavens, we get it.

The original Watchmen (written in 1986) was part crime-fighting action epic, part political commentary with its characters having to operate in a world dealing with the existential threat of nukes and Cold War politics. HBO’s new version of Watchmen is a reimagination of the crime fighting saga, set around the sociopolitical currents of modern America. Since this is the ever-woke entertainment industry, the main political struggles have to revolve around racism.

Hays then attacked Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose work apparently informed the writers for the series, as a "radical race author" and a "premier race-baiter" (and, for good measure, a "Trump-hater"). After the series' creator David Lindelof pointed out how the anti-black Tulsa race riots had been mostly suppressed from history, Hays huffed:

The power of being embarrassed by something he’d never done was so strong for Lindelof that he made sure the new iteration of Watchmen would be about the “formidable” power of white supremacy, a premise that makes older sci-fi/action villains look like kiddie material, apparently. Lindelof stated, “In a traditional superhero movie, the bad guys are fighting the aliens and when they beat the aliens, the aliens go back to their planet and everybody wins. There’s no defeating white supremacy. It’s not going anywhere, but it felt like it was a pretty formidable foe.”

How tense, how thrilling! White supremacy will never not be a viable strawman for these progressive showrunners. Their idea that “there’s no defeating it” allows for an eternity of depicting white men as brutal overlords.

Nine days after Hays dismissed the issue of white supremacy as a "strawman" invoked by "progressive showrunners," a man who cited white supremacist ideas murdered more than 20 people in El Paso, many of them Hispanics, for whom the killer declared his hatred.

Nope, this didn't age well at all.

Posted by Terry K. at 2:49 PM EDT

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The main story on July's employment numbers at CNSNews.com was done by editor in chief Terry Jeffrey instead of Susan Jones. Jeffrey kicked things off by cherry-picking numbers to make President Trump look as good as possible:

The number of people employed in the United States hit a record 157,288,000 in July, according to the employment report released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That was up 283,000 from the 157,005,000 employed in June.

The unemployment rate held steady in July at 3.7 percent, the same as it was in June.

Meanwhile, every other real news outlet reported a different number: 164,000 jobs created in July. That appears nowhere in Jeffrey's article, presumably because it didn't make Trump look good enough.

In addition to the new favorite sidebar about Hispanic employment by Craig Bannister -- which deviated from its usual pro-Trump rah-rah by admitting right in the headline that unemployment for Hispanics increased in July -- CNS brought back one it hadn't covered in a while: black unemployment. Managing editor Michael W. Chapman did the honors, touting how "the employment level for black Americans, age 16 and over, seasonally adjusted, was at a record level in July of 19,481,000 employed."

ONe thing Chapman didn't do was play up the fact that black unemployment is roughly twice that of white unemployment --  something he regularly did in covering black unemployment during the Obama years as a biased way to attack President Obama's handling of the economy, even though that gap has always existed as long as federal statistics have been kept. Chapman merely noted in passing in the final paragraph of his article that white unemployment was 3.3 percent -- a slightly narrower gap than usual but still in line with the historical numbers -- and he never pointed out how much higher black unemployment is by comparison.

CNS also added an unbylined article about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praising the "encouraging news" in the jobs report -- then bizarrely illustrated it with a stock photo of Pelosi with now-disgraced actor Kevin Spacey (whose name CNS manages to misspell). And Bannister served up a little snark by contrasting Joe Biden's comment that the economy is "collapsing" under Trump with a pro-Trump bullet list taken from the above CNS articles.

Remember, bias is Job 1 at CNS.

Posted by Terry K. at 1:08 AM EDT

Updated: Friday, August 9, 2019 5:37 PM EDT

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The Media Research Center is going off the deep end in its desperate campaign to protect President Trump and the gun lobby in the wake of the El Paso and Dayton massacres. So much so, in fact, it's actually spreading lies.

The MRC's Nicholas Fondacaro went on a tirade against CBS in an Aug. 5 post, attacking the CBS Evening News for featuring survivors of the Parkland massacre, then smearing the Parkland survivors as whiners for highlighting the lack of progress in "their efforts to push gun control."Fonbacaro's attack then devolved into outright falsehoods (extraneous bolding in original):

Diaz began by introducing the audience to Delaney Tarr, who she noted was a “Parkland survivor-turned social activist.” After Diaz reported that Tarr “helped start March for Our Lives, the national movement against gun violence that grew out of last year’s school massacre,” she erroneously declared that “566 mass shootings” have occurred since the group was founded.

That statistic was an absolute lie. By no reliable and/or reasonable measure have there been that many mass shootings. It was a statistic cooked up by anti-gun special interest groups trying to scare people into banning guns. If that number were true, then CBS News would be failing to do their jobs because they’ve only reported on a fraction of a fraction of them.

Actually, the absolute liar here is Fondacaro. The number is not a lie -- and it is a reliable and reasonable measure. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel details:

As lawmakers mulled over how to prevent more gun violence after 17 students and teachers were killed in Parkland early last year, 566 more mass shootings have devastated the country since.

Two of the deadliest incidents traumatized El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, this weekend when 31 people were shot and killed in the two cities in less than 24 hours.

The horrifying attacks brought to 608 the number of people who have died from mass shootings across the country since the Feb. 14, 2018, Parkland shooting — equal to more than one per day, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks gun-related incidents.

The data goes beyond the highly-publicized mass shootings at malls and schools, and includes accidental shootings, domestic disputes and gang violence. It defines a mass shooting as four or more people killed or injured. The casualty numbers include the shooter.

Since Fondacaro lied about the number, the rest of his screed discredits itself. It didn't have to be "cooked up," and the purported agenda is irrelevant -- indeed, contrary to Fondacaro's rant, the Gun Violence Archive says it "is not, by design, an advocacy group" and only seeks to provide "independent, verified data." Why does Fondacaro have a problem with such data?

Fondacaro's assertion that CBS failed to do its job by not reporting on every single one of those 566 mass shootings is a disingenuous, bad-faith attack. He might want to check down the hall with with the MRC's "news" division, which also didn't cover every single one of those shootings. Would he ever say out loud that CNS didn't do its job? Not if he wants to keep his.

Fondacaro is proving that the MRC has pretty much abandoned anything resembling "media research" and cares only about making partisan attacks and forwarding pro-Trump narratives.

UPDATE: In a Twitter exchange, Fondacaro defended his false attack, citing a lower number from another source that used a different formulation and failing to understand that this does not render the existence of the 566 number to be an "absolute lie."He then went on to demand that we issue a correction, even though we proved him wrong.

As of this writing, Fondacaro's false claim remains uncorrected.

Posted by Terry K. at 7:15 PM EDT

Updated: Friday, August 9, 2019 2:27 PM EDT

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When President Trump was in search of a new director of national intelligence in mid July, Newsmax helpfully suggested a replacement, in the form of a July 15 column by Peter Pry:

President Trump, according to recent press reports, is thinking of firing Dan Coats as Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and replacing Coats with former National Security Council Chief of Staff — Fred Fleitz.

If it happens, and I pray it does, it will be a giant step toward making America’s Intelligence Community great again.

[...]

Fleitz has extensive national security experience with the executive and legislative branches of government. His work for the CIA included serving as a political analyst, military analyst, analyst of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and intelligence collection officer (spy).

[...]

Fred Fleitz appears frequently on TV and has the gift — crucial in a DNI — of being able to easily and eloquently explain complex strategic and technological concepts to policymakers and the American people.

Perhaps most importantly, having known Fred Fleitz for many years, he is the worst enemy of “political correctness,” utterly unafraid of facing facts, and a lion for truth.

What Pry didn't mention: Fleitz used to work for Newsmax.

As we've noted, Fleitz used to head something called LIGNET, Newsmax's attempt to create a "global intelligence and forecasting" operation to which Newsmax readers could subscribe for a fee. It didn't last long; according to Fleitz's Wikipedia profile, he ran it from 2011 to 2013, when he jumped ship to the Center for Security Policy, and LIGNET apparently didn't survive much longer beyond that.

Anyway, Trump ended up choosing someone else as DNI, Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe -- but that nomination collapsed in a few days amid concerns about his lack of intelligence experience and charges that he padded his resume.For Newsmax, that meant it could once again push Fleitz as the next DNI.

An Aug. 2 article by John Gizzi touted how "Fleitz’s resume, several supporters told Newsmax, presents a striking contrast to that of Ratcliffe" and that Fleitz "was increasingly heard on Capitol Hill and at the White House as the likely successor" to outgoing DNI Dan Coats.

The same day, Newsmax posted a column by C.R. Anderson gushing over Fleitz, calling him an "ethical professional" and adding, "It doesn’t take Fox News, National Review, or Lou Dobbs Show excerpts to glean Fred Fleitz has the depth in service to assume the role of Director and hit the ground running. He has no learning curve; policy catch-up isn’t required."

Then, Ken Timmerman -- a onetime Newsmax regular who dabbled in Obama birtherism -- weighed in with an Aug. 3 column aggressively touting Fleitz:

The president doesn’t need someone who will grow the DNI, or who will become its defender in the White House. He needs someone who will tell him the truth about the perils our nation faces.

After its horrible — and possibly, treasonous — behavior during the 2016 election, the intelligence community needs to earn the trust of this president.

Fred Fleitz is someone this president knows he can trust. He is the best man for the job — not just for the president, but for our intelligence professionals who through him will have a chance to rebuild their reputation.

None of these writers disclosed that Fleitz used to work for Newsmax.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, Fleitz has also been popping up on Newsmax TV -- we counted three appearances in the past month.

Oh, and Fleitz also has one more quality that should make him an attractive candidate: he's a Trump sycophant. We've noted a January 2017 Newsmax column in which Fleitz effectively demanded that the intelligence community should be loyal to Trump over the good of the country.

Posted by Terry K. at 2:08 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, August 8, 2019 2:33 PM EDT

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We've documented how harshly CNSNews.com treated Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar over controversial comments she made while offering Republican Rep. Steve King a much more sympathetic treatment. Now it's giving Omar the bias-by-headline treatment it gives to other Democratic politicians.

A July 24 CNS article by Patrick Goodenough carried the headline "Rep. Omar Berates Questioner for Asking Her to Condemn Female Genital Mutilation." Conservatives love to attack Muslims for taking part in the practice even though most Muslims oppose it and is more of a cultural issue than a religious one. The headline suggests that Omar is defending the practice by being angry at the questioner.

In fact, the story itself shows the opposite. Goodenough eventually makes it clear that Omar is angry about the question because it's a stereotypical question that "as Muslim legislators we are constantly being asked to waste our time speaking to issues that other people are not asked to speak to, because the assumption exists that we somehow support" FGM. Goodenough did detail Omar's record on the issue, noting she has supported several anti-FGM measures as a member of Congress.

Goodenough noted that the questioner "drew attention to a Detroit judge’s ruling last November that a 22-year-old federal law making female genital mutilation (FGM) a crime was unconstitutional. As a result, charges against nine people accused of subjecting nine young girls to FGM were dismissed." But he didn't mention, as he had in his original article on the case, that the judge wh ooverturned the law stated that FGM is "'local criminal activity' which, in keeping with longstanding tradition and our federal system of government, is for the states to regulate, not Congress."  That's called federalism -- a longstanding conservative principle. (Goodenough's Media Research Center colleagues ignored that fact in attacking the decision.)

Putting a needlessly inflammatory headline on an otherwise relatively fair story harms CNS' credibility as the "news" source it claims to be.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:55 AM EDT

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