Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center felt the need to blame Dr. Seuss for the Dayton massacre, amid other odd rants and misfires -- plus a pre-massacre post that didn't age well. Read more >>
Wednesday, September 4, 2019
NEW ARTICLE -- MRC on Massacres, Part 2: Freakout Mode
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center felt the need to blame Dr. Seuss for the Dayton massacre, amid other odd rants and misfires -- plus a pre-massacre post that didn't age well. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:37 PM EDT
WND's Farah Briefly Returns -- And Is More Pro-Trump Than Ever
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Either Farah's back to normal -- though he hasn't written a column since -- or he needs a little more recuperation time.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:22 AM EDT
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
MRC Is Mad Facebook Won't Validate Its Anti-Facebook Narrative
Topic: Media Research Center
One of those caves to Bozell was that Facebook hired former Republican Sen. Jon Kyl to conduct an "audit" of whether the company is biased against conservatives, in which more than 130 conservatives were interviewed. An interim report issued Aug. 20 noted consrevative complaints about Facebook and conceded the company has work to do to gain their trust, but it did not document any conservative bias. Naturally, that failure to bolster the right-wing narrative enraged the MRC. Corinne Weaver complained about the report's "non-endorsement of conservative complaints" and that "very few of conservatives’ actual concerns were voiced in the audit," adding that "the wording of some of the concerns was made to look as if conservatives believed things that were not true." Bozell ranted that the report "refuses to publicly acknowledge that conservatives have been disproportionately affected by their content policies" -- though, again, he offers no evidence that's actually the case. Bozell further ranted about the failure to support his narrative: "We have waited over a year for Facebook to properly address the long list of issues raised by the conservative movement, but have received nothing of substance in return." So his mob will ramp things up: "We are set to meet with a group of distinguished attorneys to discuss issues relating to Big Tech's standing under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, along with other possible responses, including anti-trust proposals." This was followed by a letter from Bozell's Free Speech Alliance huffing that Kyl "shockingly left us with a hollow report devoid of substantive policy proposals" and adding: "No conservative leader or organization should accept this as a legitimate response to the undeniable issues we have raised." The letter's signatories include fringe right-wing figures as WorldNetDaily's David Kupelian, Floyd Brown of the Western Journal (an orgagnization founded by WND's Joseph Farah) and anti-Muslim activist Brigitte Gabriel (whom Bozell inexplicably graces with the "Lady" title). When Kyl responded to the criticism coming from the likes of the MRC, Weaver went on the attack again, grousing that "The report was full of the same kind of language that made conservatives lose trust in Facebook. It treated the blatant censorship of conservatives on Facebook as a myth, without addressing any of the issues. " Che was particularly incensed that Kyl stated that "censorship of conservatives is a 'belief,' as opposed to a fact. He said that people who complained about Facebook 'felt that they were discriminated against.'" Weaver highlighted that "76 percent of conservatives already don’t trust Facebook" without noting the time and money spent by the MRC and other right-wing organizations to further that impression -- indeed, that particular finding came from a poll bought and paid for by the MRC. Bozell repeated that poll finding in an Aug. 28 column for Fox News, dishonestly attributing it only to "one national survey." He went on to rant that the Kyl report "cleansed of the evidence and downplayed their criticisms. It didn’t even acknowledge conservative complaints as legitimate." But the narrative is more important to Bozell than the facts:
Bozell also cited anecdotal examples of what he framed as anti-conservative bias. But liberals can do that too; the liberal website Wonkette has pointed out how Facebook is refusing to let its subscribers see its posts by claiming it violated a policy against "clickbait." Funny how Bozell and Co. are not terribly up in arms about that -- particularly since it undermines their victimization narrative. Meanwhile, the MRC is attacking Facebook on other fronts. Alexander Hall bashed Facebook's plans to reintroduce a curated news feed because an algorithm-driven feed run by journalists (and you know how much the MRC hates journalists) might exclude conservative-friendly items. Hall even tried to co-opt a liberal argument that an algorithm can be programmed for bias, albeit with a not-terribly-helpful example: "If a programmer trains an algorithm to filter out an opinion as extreme or hateful for example, a critical story could be made to never see the light of day." Weaver returned to criticize Facebook for failing to make some data sets available to researchers -- laughably ironic because the MRC consistently refuses to make public the full data that backs up its so-called studies claiming "liberal media bias." The narrative must be preserved, after all. Facts are secondary.
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:49 PM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, September 3, 2019 6:50 PM EDT
WND Rents Its Mailing List to Muslim-Hater Laura Loomer
Topic: WorldNetDaily
But WND hates Muslims too, and it needs the money. Thus, Loomer's Aug. 6 email headlined "Help Put Ilhan Omar Behind Bars" asking readers to sign a petition to "Report Ilhan Omar for Immigration Fraud."She goes on to rant "I have spent years investigating Omar at a tremendous personal and financial cost. and repeated the yet-to-be-proven right-wing conspiracy theory that Omar married her brother.She went on to huff that "Islam and Socialism go together like peas and carrots" and baselessly claim that "Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi couldn't officially condemn Omar's clear anti-Jewish statements because Omar has become too powerful." It seems WND and Loomer have a lot in common, and WND does what it can to whitewash her, given that hating Muslims is basically her brand. In July, for example, WND treated with seriousness her ridiculous $3 billion (yes, with a B) lawsuit against Facebook for banning her (represented by terrible lawyer and WND columnist Larry Klayman, natch), calling her simply a "conservative commentator and activist." WND taking money from a notorious Muslim-hater is not a good look, no matter how much it needs that money.
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:10 PM EDT
CNS Branded Obama As Narcissist, But Trump's 'Chosen One' Claim Is 'Sarcastic'
Topic: CNSNews.com
Despite the fact that Donald Trump has proven to be much more narcissistic than it has ever accused Obama of being, CNS has pargely ignored it. And when Trump does engage in a narcissistic display that can't be ignored, it will try to pass it off as something else. Thus, an anonymously written Aug. 21 article spinning Trump's "I am the chosen one" claim -- which CNS would immediately brand as narcissistic if it came out of Obama's mouth -- into an example of how he is a leader: In a press conference outside the White House today, President Donald Trump looked to the sky, spread his arms, and told reporters: “I am the chosen one.” The president was making the case that he is the one president who has been willing to take on China over the issue of trade. The headline had a different spin, declaring that "Trump Looks to Sky, Spreads Arms, and Sarcasticlly [sic] Tells Reporters: ‘I Am the Chosen One’" -- portraying the remark as a joke instead of narcissism. Just another example of the Trump sycophancy at CNS -- which includes suggesting that Trump's election was ordained by God.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:36 AM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, September 3, 2019 6:14 PM EDT
Monday, September 2, 2019
Newsmax Columnist Likens Democrats to Nazis, Stalin
Topic: Newsmax
Case in point: Wayne Allyn Root wrote in his Aug 15 Newsmax column:
Not that at no point does Root offer any substantive evidence that any of this happened. Then again,Root has had a years-long case of Obama Derangement Syndrome; while not an official birther, he praised Donald Trump for having "brilliantly brought up" birtherism, and he pushed the bogus conspiracy theory that Obama likely didn't attend Columbia University because nobody remembers seeing him there at the time. He has also likened Obama to Hannibal Lecter. And here comes the Nazi part (again):
If Root didn't have a history of dishonesty and derangement against Obama, he might have a point.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:46 PM EDT
MRC Writer Atacks Antifa, Censors Violent Nature Of 'Right-Wing' Protesters
Topic: Media Research Center
At no point in his piece does Fondacaro prove that all, or even any, of the counter-protester violence was caused by members of Antifa (which isn't even an organized group anyway). Meanwhile, by his own definition, Fondacaro is carrying water for the violent far-right extremists Antifa was protesting. Fondacaro repeatedly puts "right-wing" in scare quotes and never describes them any further, and he certainly never admits they're "extremists" on a par with what he calls Antifa. In fact, those "right-wing" protesters who organized the protest in the first place are members of the Proud Boys, a far-right, white nationalist (skewing neo-Nazi), Islamophobic and misogynistic group that's prone to violence. It was founded by Gavin McInnes, whom the MRC has refused to criticize because he used to work for longtime MRC friend Mark Levin at his CRTV. Perhaps Fondacaro didn't say a word about the Proud Boys because he shares at least one of their goals: to get Antifa labeled as domestic terrorists. That was the Proud Boys' expressed goal for the Portland protest: to draw out Antifa and hope some counter-protesters engage in violence. But the Proud Boys are no different; as one writer put it, "The Proud Boys are threatening violence to achieve political change. That is the textbook definition of terrorism." We've already caught Fondacaro lying by commission. This time, he's lying by omission.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:00 PM EDT
Updated: Monday, September 2, 2019 4:02 PM EDT
WND's Gets Story Wrong On Drag Queen Story Hour Arrest
Topic: WorldNetDaily
In an anonymously written June 29 article, WND claimed that "A pastor in Washington state who wanted to observe a "drag queen" stunt being staged by his local public library was arrested, thrown in the back of a police van and held there for hours." It uncritically repeated a claim by the right-wing Pacific Justice Institute, which is representing the pastor, Afshin Yaghtin, that he "carried no signs, didn't preach and didn't even consider himself a protester, but officers ordered him off the public property," and that when Yaghtin "asserted his First Amendment rights," police arrested him. That's simply a lie. An article from an actual news organization about the arrest reports that Yaghtin is "known for preaching that homosexuality is a choice and drag is a perversion" and tells what PJI and WND are hiding:
The WND article also reported PJI's complaint that "the police presence was significant, with snipers even staged at strategic points." But as the non-stenographical news article reported, that was because police cited reports of "several members on both sides indicating they planned to bring guns to the event." The news organization further reported on Yaghtin's vicious hatred of drag queens:
None of that is mentioned in the WND article -- presumably because PJI didn't want it reported. Indeed, WND quoted only PJI for details on the incident. That bias and lazy stenography continued in an Aug. 18 WND article called the reading a "mind-boggling, perverse event." WND again uncritically repeated PJI's false claim that Yaghtin did nothing provocative: ""Yaghtin did not physically interfere with or touch police, nor did he make threatening movements toward the police or use threatening words at any time. ... He was arrested for questioning the police’s favorable treatment of supporters and unfavorable treatment of anyone they perceived to be non-supportive." WND also quoted PJI claiming that "Some of the event supporters carried provocative signs depicting Jesus in a dress reading to children. Other supporters dressed like angels with oversized wings." But as the newspaper reported, the protesters on Yaghtin's side were yelling slurs in the presence of children, quoting the organizer of the event and the drag queen who read to children as saying, "I’m sure a lot of children are going home and asking what a sodomite is. ... That’s not common language for a 4- or 5-year-old." Putting a right-wing legal group's biased, less-than-factual spin before the truth tells us that WND still hasn't shown that it deserves to live.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:10 AM EDT
Sunday, September 1, 2019
MRC Denies Right-Wing Think Tank (Which Shares A Board Member With The MRC) Is Islamophobic
Topic: Media Research Center
Never underestimate the extent to which the Media Research Center will defend President Trump's record of false and misleading statements. Waters was even more put out by a description of the right-wing Gatestone Institute as an "Islamophobic think tank" that pushes "disinformation." He huffed in response: "Judge their “Islamophobia” (a word the paper irresponsibly tosses around to rope in its political enemies) for yourselves if the stories are hateful and misleading or not." Other people have read the Gatestone Institute's website and found that it does, in fact, peddle anti-Muslim misinformation -- us, for one. We've caught WorldNetDaily repeating a bogus Gatestone story claiming the number of new mosques in France outnumbering the number of new churches. We're not the only ones. NBC News reported that Gatestone "has promoted misleading and false anti-Muslim news, some of which was amplified by a Russian troll factory." The Intercept added:
The Intercept reported one other interesting tidbit: Right-wing donor Rebekah Mercer, was reportedly a Gatestone board member in 2017, when her name was scrubbed from the website after her presence was reported, and her family foundation has donated at least $150,000 to Gatestone. You know what other right-wing organization's board Mercer sits on? The Media Research Center. What a coincidence. Needless to say, Waters did not disclose this connection to its readers.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:50 PM EDT
CNS Touts Poll Showing Trump More Admired Than Pope (But Less Than 13 Other People)
Topic: CNSNews.com
That point is rehashed in the lead paragraph: "A survey of more than 42,000 people in 41 different countries conducted by YouGov.com revealed that President Donald Trump is more admired than Pope Francis." That emphasis would seem to be a subtle dig at the pope, whom the right-wing Catholic CNS editors think they can lecture to about Catholicism. From the way the headline and first paragraph are written, you would think that Trump and the pope were the top two vote-getters in the poll. As the article eventually admits, neither of them were even in the top 10:
That's right -- CNS thought the 14th most-admired man was more worthy of an article than the other 13. That's Trump sycophancy, folks.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:40 PM EDT
Saturday, August 31, 2019
What LGBT Stuff Is The MRC Freaking Out About Now?
Topic: Media Research Center
Annie Piper sneered in a post attacking a TV show that touched on LGBT issues:
Alexa Moutevalis Coombs rejoiced over the cacnellation of gay-themed TV show "Will & Grace," disdaining its alleged "self-indulgent liberal lectures" and wasoffended that the show "seemed to love to make jokes about Christians and Republicans being gay." Jorge Plaza conflated cross-dressing and transgenderism in yet another MRC rant about cartoons depicting characters that aren't heterosexual:
Plaza huffed that while an earlier episode of the show was an coming-out allegory where "animators’ politics had to be hidden in metaphors to avoid explicitly indoctrinating children," the new story "blatantly bashes kids over the head with gender ideology." Gabriel Hays ranted that "Hollywood movie database IMDb.com has become the latest casualty in the trans war on reality, having been bullied by the LGBTQ community into refraining from posting trans people’s birth names on their site without 'consent.' Apparently publishing trans movie industry workers’ original names is just another arrow in the quiver of patriarchal oppression." Hays went on to call transgender folks "make-believe people" and blamed the "gay police" for all this hullabaloo. Hays followed that with a meltdown over stories about same-sex penguins raising hatchlings, mocking "woke zookeepers" and asserting, "Score one for the queer flightless aquatic bird community, and for the gang at The New York Times!" Indeed, Hays was having anti-gay meltdowns all over the place. Another post mocked "non-binary, LGBTQ fashion" -- "It’s all the rage with the kids and you 'finger wagging, clueless' parents best get used to it" -- insisting this focus was simply to "stick it in more traditional readers’ eyes" and that "tacky trends that have usually characterized weird subcultures have been anointed with a progressive purpose." Sure, Gabe. This is all about you, who hate-reads stuff like this solely for the clicks you can generate from similarly anti-gay right-wingers. Tim Graham and Brent Bozell had a "Gender Unicorn" freakout, whining about a handout in a single school that address issues that didn't involve heterosexuality. The two warned: "This will not stop until the nuclear family is destroyed. Or until parents stand up as one and declare a commitment to destroy this movement." Hays returned to defend Dave Chapelle's transphobic jokes as him merely deciding to "refuse to kiss the ring of every insane progressive cause on the market," declaring that "It’s more that the left has a 'basic misunderstanding' of humor, or in other words, liberals can’t take a freaking joke." (The MRC has previously defended Chappelle's unfunny trans-bashing humor.) Hays seems to have forgotten that he and his employer are regularly unable to take a freaking joke when those jokes target President Trump.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:17 AM EDT
Updated: Sunday, September 1, 2019 10:48 AM EDT
WND Finally Admits That Alyssa Farah Is Joe's Daughter
Topic: WorldNetDaily
In an anonymously written Aug. 14 WND article on Alyssa Farah's new job as press secretary in the Department of Defense, it's admitted -- as far as we know for the first time at WND -- that she is the "daughter of WND founder Joseph Farah." It's unclear what caused the change of heart. Joseph Farah remains sidelined from day-to-day operations at WND while recovering from a stroke, so presumably his wife, Elizabeth -- who along with David Kupelian are running things at WND these days -- had to sign off on it. Or perhaps it was decided that admitting her family connection to a conspiracy theory-filled "news" operation is no longer the liability it could have possibly been at the start of Trump's presidency. Or it could be a grab for credibility to pull WND from financial ruin. Whatever the reason, it's good to see WND finally confirming what we first reported nearly two years ago.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:25 AM EDT
Updated: Saturday, August 31, 2019 12:39 AM EDT
Friday, August 30, 2019
NewsBusters Blogger Laments Sidelined CNN Conservatives, Buries The Reasons Why
Topic: NewsBusters
But when it came to the actual reported resons for these two conservatives -- Ben Ferguson and Steve Cortes -- to be sideline, Gladnick a lot less forthcoming. He let pass without comment excerpts he inserted from The Hollywood Reporter that explained things way down in his post. In the 16th paragraph, he repeated a Reporter statement that "Ferguson's absence seems to have followed a March 6 story by the progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters for America called 'CNN commentator Ben Ferguson’s Facebook page is a cesspool of bigotry, false info and fabricated quotes.'" Media Matters pointed out that Ferguson "regularly uses his Facebook page to post memes with false information and fabricated quotes" and engages in anti-black bigotry. He had even used his Facebook page to promote "vitriolic and conspiratorial attacks" against CNN, the network that employed him. Does Gladnick think this sort of thing is perffectly fine coming from a conservative commentary. Gladnick's cut-and-paste of the Reporter's statement on Cortes appeared slightly earlier -- in the 10th paragraph -- but went similarly unremarked upon. The Reporter stated that Cortes' benching appeared around the time he appeared in a PragerU video insisting that media claims that President Trump praised white supremacists as "very fine people" were false. Except, well, it wasn't. But who needs facts when there's a narrative to reinforce? Gladnick does his duty here, huffing that "Apparently that commitment to 'ideological diversity' by [CNN chief Jeff] Zucker at CNN is true but only if it runs from far left to merely very liberal" and that "Liberals can't stand a serious opposing view. They can only stomach never-Trump Republicans that sound like Democrats, like Max Boot." That's the point of Gladnick's post. The facts are purely incidental.
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:38 PM EDT
WND's Rush Prefers Civil War Over A Democratic President
Topic: WorldNetDaily
-- Erik Rush, Aug. 14 WorldNetDaily column
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:15 AM EDT
Thursday, August 29, 2019
'Media Technology' Org Teams With MRC To Push Idea That Google Is Biased Against Conservatives
Topic: Media Research Center
It appears that AllSides' work dovetails so closely with the MRC's anti-media mission that it granted AllSides space at NewsBusters to push a similar study. Co-founder John Gables and editor Henry Brechter write in an Aug. 9 NewsBusters post:
AllSides has a chart that conveniently places major news outlets as the New York Times, CNN, CBS, ABC and Politico in the "left-leaning" category -- something it even admits is subjective, which is made even more so by including public opinion into the calculation.Then again, that's the kind of less-than-objective methodology and reinforcement of the MRC narrative that earned AllSides a place at NewsBusters. (It also earned AllSides a space at the conservative Washington Examiner last year.) Gable did concede that "This analysis shows no direct evidence that Google is intentionally suppressing voices from the center or right on the shootings," but added that "there was a clear and overwhelming bias in Google’s results covering these shootings, intentional or not." Gable seems to be mistaking ideological bias for credibility and popularity bias, which appears to be the actual bias Google has. CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post are well established and have a long track record of credible reporting, which in and of itself is not indicative of a "left-leaning" bias, as Gable seems to be suggesting. Gable and Brechter also don't explain why the fact that Trump's anti-immigration rhetoric reflected that contained in the El Paso shooter's manifesto should be deemed solely an interest of "media outlets on the left." By contrast, there's no direct link between anything Elizabeth Warren ever said and the Dayton shooter's actions -- though, yes, a search for that link would bring up many right-leaning media outlets who are specifically highlighting it to advance a political agenda, an accusation much more difficult to make about mainstream media outlets reporting on Trump's rhetoric. Indeed, it seems AllSides have bought into the MRC's narrative that simply to bring up the issue of the tone of Trump's rhetoric is to express "liberal bias" -- another reason it got that NewsBusters space. The article concluded with more bias confusion from Gable:
Again, Gable seems to think ideological bias is the issue when it's really about credibility and popularity. That's reinforced in the full study as well, which states: "Not every story published by a left-leaning outlet is biased. But they often provide similar narratives that align more with the left-wing than other political tribes. Consuming articles like this is part of a healthy news diet, but a 70% left-wing bias is not balanced." One of the tags on the study, listed at the bottom of the page, reads "Bias Against Conservatives." The study does not prove that such bias actually happened. Gable and AllSides are falsely conflating "left-leaning" with "left-wing," as if the New York Times was the same thing as, say, Mother Jones. That sort of sloppy labeling also helps AllSides get in good with the likes of the MRC -- even though doing so hurts its credibility as a supposedly objective, nonpartisan organization.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:09 PM EDT
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