Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com's main job when President Trump abruptly pulled U.S. troops out of Syria, allowing Turkey to attack U.S. allies in the region, was to portray Trump as correct and downplay criticism. Read more >>
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
NEW ARTICLE: Spinning for Trump on Syria
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com's main job when President Trump abruptly pulled U.S. troops out of Syria, allowing Turkey to attack U.S. allies in the region, was to portray Trump as correct and downplay criticism. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:19 AM EST
Monday, November 25, 2019
AIM Misleadingly Attacks Wash. Post Article
Topic: Accuracy in Media Brian McNicoll wrote in a Nov. 15 Accuracy in Media post:
McNicoll is trying to frame the Post's story as relying on allegedly unreliable anonymous sources whom the Justice Department had to "refute." Actually, the Post article detailed that the Justice Department reversed its earlier instructions to witnesses and allowed written feedback per department policy after intially declining to comment when the story first appeared:
At no point did the Justice Department ever deny that witnesses were told they couldn't leave written feedback. Thedepartment was also given a chance to comment before the article first appeared but it refused. Those are important details that McNicoll didn't tell his readers. Instead, McNicoll complained that "the media" was trying to "dirty up" the report and hype its alleged contents, gushing that "Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), said the findings would be 'stunning' and 'damning' and indicative of a “system being off the rails,” and most suspect he is on the mark." "Most suspect"? Wasn't McNicoll just ranting about anonymous sources making dubious claims? In reality, it appears the opposite is true: The report has apparently found that investigations into the 2016 presidential election had a proper legal and factual basis, and the only apparent serious offense involved a low-level FBI lawyer caught altering a document and fired afterwards.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:12 PM EST
MRC Tries To Delegitimize Impeachment By Claiming It Has Low Ratings (Compared To The O.J. Trial)
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center has a new way of downplaying the impeachment hearings against President Trump: highlight their allegedly low ratings. In a Nov. 14 post, Kristine Marsh touted how an appearance by Donald Trump on ABC's "The View" got better ratings than ABC's coverage of the impeachment hearings:
Marsh then sneered: "To get some perspective, the ratings ABC got Wednesday, were lower than the lowest rated daytime soap opera on television, Days of Our Lives, averaged on NBC. Those numbers were so concerning for the network they fired the entire cast and put the show on an indefinite hiatus this past week." Actually, the article to which Marsh linked stated that production of the show is so far ahead of schedule that the normal holiday hiatus came earlier this year; the soap hasn't been canceled and episodes are still airing. Rich Noyes then picked up the talking point, huffing on Nov. 18 that the impeachment hearings must suck because (we're not making this up) O.J. Simpson's trial got much higher ratings:
Noyes isn't going to tell you that the hearings still got more viewers than pretty much every prime-time network TV show that isn't a football game. Noyes followed two days later with another ratings update:
Noyes didn't mention that many of those adults have jobs they must be at during the day that prevent them from watching daytime hearings. It's also likely millions more Americans watched the hearings online, which wouldn't have been measured in the TV ratings Noyes and Marsh focused on. The following day, Noyes offered even more of the same, under the headline "Day 4: Nearly All Americans Continue to Skip Dem Hearings." Tim Graham and Brent Bozell piled on as well with, yes, another ancient O.J. ratings comparison:
When CNN's Brian Stelter dared to make the point that in the internet age, young people watch online while old people watch TV, Graham and Bozell decided to mock instead of offering a cogent response:
The two concluded by writing that "the liberals were actually interested in democracy, they would let the elected president finish his term, and try to defeat him at the polls, instead of trying to ruin him before there's any chance for reelection." Funny, we don't remember the folks at the MRC being concerned about whether President Clinton would finish his term as they agitated from his impeachment. P.S. None of these MRC writers explained why these purportedly low ratings for the impeachment hearings means, as they are suggesting, that the evidence being presented is somehow illegitimate. Would they support Trump's impeachment if the ratings were higher?
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:47 PM EST
Updated: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 12:28 AM EST
Will WND Apologize For Attacking Omar's Claim That Trump Official Is A 'White Nationalist'? (No.)
Topic: WorldNetDaily Back in April, WorldNetDaily's Joe Kovacs was quick to take offense at Rep. Ilhan Omar's claim that Trump White House adviser Stephen Miller is a "white nationalist," complaining that "the Minnesota Democrat added to her personal tempest" by doing so, then filling out his article with mostly anonymous attacks on her copied from social media:
[...]
WND columnist Lowell Ponte was similarly offended, citing her having "attacked Mr. Trump's White House adviser Stephen Miller, who is Jewish, as a "white nationalist" as an example of her "extremist words" that have "elicited rage.," going on to rant that "Rep. Omar makes no secret of her hatred of the United States." But it turns out that Omar appears to be right. Earlier this month, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported on leaked emails showing that Miller "promoted white nationalist literature, pushed racist immigration stories and obsessed over the loss of Confederate symbols after Dylann Roof’s murderous rampage," and in those emails the group "was unable to find any examples of Miller writing sympathetically or even in neutral tones about any person who is nonwhite or foreign-born." If you thought WND would be moved to apologize to Omar for falsely attacking her over a claim that has since been proven correct, you don't know WND. But WND is editorially decimated enough that its response has been farmed out to other outlets, mainly to the right-wing clickbait site Western Journal, into which WND is apparently in the process of being slowly subsumed into. A Nov. 16 Western Journal article by Jack Davis at WND lamented that "Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is demanding the resignation of White House aide Stephen Miller on the strength of a report that claims Miller is a "white nationalist" based on emails from 2015 and 2016," repeating a tweet by Omar stating that "As I said earlier this year: Stephen Miller is a white nationalist. And now we have the emails to prove it" but not otherwise acknowledging previous WND attacks on her over the statement. David uncritically repeated White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham's attack line that the SPLC "an utterly-discredited, long-debunked far-left smear organization" but did not deny the accuracy of the emails. After another SPLC report came out detailing how Miller "frequently gave editorial instructions to Breitbart News," WND published a harsher attack by Davis on those criticizing Miller over his white nationalist sympathies:
Again, Davis did not dispute the accuracy of the supporting emails. WND also published a syndicated column by white nationalist-leaning Michelle Malkin complaining: "The New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, CNN, PBS and MSNBC have all regurgitated SPLC's release of leaked emails between senior White House adviser Stephen Miller and a former editor for the conservative Breitbart website. Miller, who is Jewish, has been attacked repeatedly as a "white nationalist" for recommending immigration restrictionist books and websites that the powers that be don't want anyone to read. Miller's frank discussions of 'demographic Armageddon' wrought by mass, uncontrolled migration have been deemed beyond the pale." WND has tried to defend Miller against the now-proven-accurate white nationalist allegation before. A February 2017 article by Paul Bremmer complained that "the left" was claiming Miller was "closely associated with white nationalists,"and an anonymously written April 2017 article repeated the claim. Both articles were in service of promoting the WND-published book "No Campus for White Men" by Scott Greer -- who, it was later revealed, wrote white nationalist and anti-Semitic articles under a pseudonym for the white supremacist Radix Journal.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:04 AM EST
Updated: Monday, November 25, 2019 12:08 AM EST
Sunday, November 24, 2019
MRC Goes Into Freakout Mode Over Disney's New Streaming Service
Topic: Media Research Center For some reason, the Media Research Center decided it needed to feel triggered by ... a streaming video service. We'll concede it's arguably not just another streaming service -- it's Disney+, the new service from Disney. Still, the freakout mode was nothing short of strange. The first attack came from Lindsey Kornick, decrying the "progressive" leanings of the service's very meta series-long take on "High School Musical," which appears to mostly involve having too many gay or possibly characters (which is to say, any gay characters at all):
Kornick conlcuded by whining that the show is "basically Glee with a smaller budget." Then under the nasty headline "ABC Whores Out News for Disney+ Push," Scott Whitlock complained that Disney-owned ABC used "Good Morning America" to promote the new service. Does that mean we can call the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, "whores" because it frequently promotes the activities of the MRC and its boss, Brent Bozell, under the guise of "news"? This was followed by Alexa Moutevelis grousing that "political correctness" made Disney cut a song filled with painfully outdated Asian stereotypes from the service's version of the animated movie "Lady and the Tramp." Tim Graham and Brent Bozell did much the same thing in a column huffing about "'Experts' from the enlightened side of the tracks ... unscrolling their grievances about how the Disney film catalogue is full of racism, sexism, and loathsome bigotry of all sorts," unironically adding, "These people just hate -- everything." Finally, Matt Philbin decided that "diversity pimps" were responsible for Disney warning viewers about "racist or otherwise offensive elements" in some of the older films and shows on the service, ranting about activists who want more. That's a lot of digital ink about someone's streaming service that not only is nobody is forced to watch, one must pay for the privilege of doing so.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:22 PM EST
CNS Writes Around Criticism of Rand Paul
Topic: CNSNews.com In a Nov. 11 CNSNews.com article, Susan Jones touted how Republican Sen. Rand Paul, on NBC's "Meet the Press," "said it's not fair to impeach President Trump for doing "the same thing that Joe Biden did" -- threatening aid to Ukraine if some kind of corruption was not investigated":
An hour later, Jones wrote another article based on the same edition of "Meet the Press," this time focusing on Democratic Rep. Jim Himes saying that testimony in the impeachment hearings would feature "immensely patriotic, beautifully articulate people telling the story of a president who -- let's forget quid pro quo, quid pro quo is one of these things to muddy the works -- who extorted a vulnerable country by holding up military aid"and arguing that Trump "acted criminally and extorted in a way a mob boss would extort somebody, a vulnerable foreign country." Jones added: "Himes argued that "what the president did was wrong and impeachable," nothing at all like Joe Biden holding up a loan guarantee until Ukraine fired the prosecutor-general; and nothing at all like Hillary Clinton using foreigners to do opposition research on Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign." Jones did not, however, write an article on what happened between those two segments: Himes destroyed Paul's argument that Biden acted no different that Trump is alleged to have done, specifically articulating why that's the case in a way that Jones' one-paragraph summary glossed over, and criticized Todd for not pointing out that fact:
If Jones was a fair and balanced reporter, she would have provided this information to her readers in the same manner that she gave Paul an uncritical platform to spin his bogus claims. But, of course, we know she's not.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:06 AM EST
Saturday, November 23, 2019
Actor's Opinion on Brexit Triggers MRC Writer
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center's Gabriel Hays unleashed a snide, condescending Nov. 11 rant:
It appears Hays is another MRC staffer whose job it is to feel triggered when a celebrity expresses a political opinion he doesn't like. Looks like he needs to retreat to the safe space of the MRC's "news" division, which though that Ringo Starr's opinion on Brexit was so newsworthy that it did an article on it two years after he said it. Of course, Ringo's opinion was the conservatively correct one, so Hays has nothing to fear.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:51 AM EST
WND Columnist Attacks A Congressman's Non-Lie, Ignores Trump's History of Lies
Topic: WorldNetDaily Craige McMillan huffed in a Nov. 9 WorldNetDaily column:
In fact, Schiff never represented his verision of the transcript as a fully "true account"; he introduced it as outlining "the essence of what the president communicates," and said afterwards that it was a "parody." In other words, McMillan is the one who's lying here by falsely claiming Schiff represented his reading as something other than it was. Also in point of fact: For all his whining about "elitists" who "think it is their God-given right to lie to the rest of us" and should perhaps suffer capital punishment for doing so, at no point does he mention the name of perhaps the most prolific liar in an elitist position in America today: President Trump.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:09 AM EST
Friday, November 22, 2019
MRC on Politicians Insulting Reporters: Compare and Contrast
Topic: Media Research Center
-- Tim Graham, Nov 14 NewsBusters post (By the way, Tim, James Rosen's question did, in fact, invoke a Republican talking point.)
-- Kyle Drennen, Nov. 14 NewsBusters post
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:56 PM EST
CNS Reporter Loves Her Pro-Trump Boilerplate
Topic: CNSNews.com We've documented how CNSNews.com's most aggressive defender of President Trump, Susan Jones, has copied-and-pasted her pro-Trump defenses, heavy on transcript excerpts from the notorious phone call between Trump and Ukranian President Volodomyr Zelensky. But she does good condescending pro-Trump boilerplate too. In a Nov. 14 article, Jones hurls pro-Trump talking points at Nancy Pelosi after reporting her statement that Trump engaged in "bribery" in withholding military aid to Ukraine in exchange for a promise that the country would conduct an investigation into the Ukranian company Joe Biden's son worked for:
Unfortunately for Jones' boilerplate, it's since been revealed that Trump moved to withhold the aid as early as the beginning of July, and that Ukraine was likely aware of it at the time of the Trmp-Zelensky phone call -- making the question of whether that was discussed during the call irrelevant. Jones had some more talking points to spread around after repeating another quote from Pelosi:
Jones conveniently leaves out the fact that the aid "eventually flowed" only after a Politico story revealing that Trump had blocked the aid, which blew up the negotiations with Ukraine to get an investigation announced. And it turns out Zelensky may not have been telling the full truth about the call; it's since been reported that he did indeed feel pressure from the Trump administration even before the call, and it's likely that Zelensky is publicly denying feeling pressure in an attempt to not upset Trump and keep U.S. aid flowing. But as with its parent, the Media Research Center, perpetuating Trump-friendly political narratives comes before reporting the full truth at CNS.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:58 AM EST
Thursday, November 21, 2019
MRC Bogus Study Watch
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center's signature work of "media research" is a study purporting to gauge how "negative" coverage of conservatives and their causes in the "liberal media" whose methodology is so shoddy and narrowly constructed that it seems to have been devised to create a preordained result. And the MRC was sure to trot it out again as it works to defend President Trump over the ongoing impeachment inquiry. Cue Rich Noyes, in a Nov. 12 post:
As we've repeatedly pointed out, this study, like earlier ones in this genre, 1) focuses only on a tiny sliver of news -- the evening newscasts on the three networks -- and suggests it's indicative of all media; 2) pretends there was never any neutral coverage of Trump by explicitly rejecting neutral coverage in favor of dishonestly tallying only "explicitly evaluative statements"; 3) fails to take into account the stories themselves and whether negative coverage is deserved or admit that negative coverage is the most accurate way to cover a given story; and 4) fails to provide the raw data or the actual statements it evaluated so its work could be evaluated by others. What the MRC measured cannot be extrapolated into an evaluation of coverage across the entire broadcast meda -- it excluded cable news, and the MRC never does these kinds of studies on the work of Fox News -- it can't even be extrapolated into an accurate evaluation of the coverage on the three networks since, again, it cherry-picks "explicitly evaluative statements" and ignores all other coverage. Noyes went on to complain about specific subjects about which Trump received especially "negative" coverage -- impeachment, of couse, as wellas Trump's withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, about which he groused that "journalists routinely framed it as “abandoning” an ally (the Syrian Kurds) in the fight against ISIS." But fair and accurate reserach isn't what this report is about; using those dubious numbers to get attention from Fox News empire is. Thus, MRC chief was granted two appearances on Fox Business -- to push those bogus numbers, which he talked about only as "coverage" and the narrowly tailored, cherry-picked numbers from selected sources they are in reality, falsely asserting at one point, "Almost 100 percent of the media coverage is against Donald Trump." Similarly, the MRC's Nicholas Fondacaro referenced the study's finding of "96 percent negative coverage" without the numerous qualifiers that would have made that statement accurate, as did Joseph Vazquez in a later MRC post. Needless to say, Bozell and Tim Graham devoted their Nov. 13 column to the findings, lying that the numbers reflected the "tone of overall coverage" when it did nothing of the sort; they too omitted a complete listing of the study's bogus methodology. The latest version of this stock study shows once again that at the MRC, the facts aren't important -- the narrative is. UPDATE: Speaking of perpetuating the narrative, the MRC's "news" division CNSNews.com contributed to it by devoting an article to a glowing review of the study by the MRC's favorite right-wing radio host, Mark Levin, who absurdly gushed that the the MRC is "a solid organization, come hell or high water." Did the MRC pay Levin to say that?
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:14 PM EST
Updated: Thursday, November 21, 2019 10:18 PM EST
CNS Lazily Recycling Repubican Attack Lines
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com is so slavishly devoted to the pro-Trump narrataive on impeachment that it's just lazily rehashing the same Republican talking points. For instances, an Oct. 31 article by Melanie Arter is headlined "McCarthy: This Is an Attempt to Undo the Last Election and Influence the Next One" and states:
Then, on Nov. 4, Susan Jones wrote an article headlined "McCarthy: Democrats Trying to Change Outcome of 2016 Election and Influence the Next One," stating:
That's right: CNS devoted two articles five days apart to pushing the same exact talking point by the exact same Republican politician, albeit in two different places. That's some serious dedication to pushing a narrative. Or is it just that CNS editors don't actually read the website they work for before posting stories to it?
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:43 PM EST
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
Alveda King Now Shilling for Trump Over Impeachment
Topic: Newsmax We've detailed how anti-abortion activist Alveda King is desending into pro-Trump worship and outright shilling. She went further down that path in her recent Newsmax columns. On Oct. 25, she wrote:
She repeated more pro-Trump talking points: "The illegitimate impeachment proceedings lack due process for the president and transparency, as standing members of Congress have been shut out of the hearings, and U.S. citizens are being denied facts while POTUS is denied due process. King then gushed in her Nov. 8 column:
King's prayer for Trump included this bit of worship: "God bless humanity and America with four more years with Donald J. Trump in your hands as our president." In her Nov. 14 column, King bizarrely framed the impeachment in biblical terms:
It's almost cute how King thinks that an inveterate liar like Trump is a "Truth Seeker."
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:45 PM EST
MRC Defends The Honor Of A Politically Motivated Investigation
Topic: Media Research Center A while back, Attorney General Robert Barr assigned U.S. attorney John Durham with the quest of investigating the origins of the investigation that resulted the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to look in to possible Russian collusion with the Trump presidential campaign among other possible crimes -- part of the Republican conspiracy theory machine, complete with blatantly obvious political motivation. But the Media Research Center wants you to believe it's all on the up and up and totally not politically motivated. Alex Christy complained in an Oct. 22 post:
Christy then pointed out that the investigation has the Fox News stamp of approval, since that channel's Bret Baier reported that "John Durham [is] expanding his investigation, the timeline, getting more federal agents, more resources. He then defended Durham's honor insisted the probe was necessary:
Christy didn't mention that the conservative-lauded Whitewater investigation into President Clinton during the 1990s found no wrongdoing by the Clintons regarding titular land deal, and it wasn't until the investigation moved far afield from its origins that Clinton was busted for lying about sex. A few days later, Mitchell dismissed the Durham probe again, and this time Kyle Drennen was on board for the lecture and Fox News shout-out:
The same day, a column by Jeffrey Lord attacked MSNBC's Rachel Maddow for calling Durham's probe "embarrassing":
The MRC is as invested in this probe the way it loved to claim liberals were invested in the Mueller investigation.
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:29 PM EST
WND's Lively Pushes Bogus Film
Topic: WorldNetDaily Scott Lively wrote in a Nov. 4 WorldNetDailiy column:
Lively also appended a link to the film on YouTube. Actually, the film that Lively claims is "a work of compelling scholarship" ... isn't. One reviewer wrote: "Unfortunately, nearly everything in the video is untrue—both historically and biblically. There are some facts in the presentation—it is nearly impossible to talk for over an hour without some facts slipping in—but the way it is put together makes us look at the wrong direction." The reviewer, Marko Joensuu, pointed out that there's "very little if no historical evidence" to support the film's claim that the Pergamum (or Pergamon) Throne is the "Satan's Seat in Revelation 2:13." He then wrote regarding the film's references to the rape of Europa:
About the Lively-embraced claim about the Pergamum altar, Joensuu wrote:
Joensuu also blows apart the film's argument that Hitler's third Reich and the European Union were extensions of the Holy Roman Empire:
Joensuu went on to write that "There are so many historical errors and falsehoods in Hathaway’s presentation that it seems clear that his main sources have been the internet conspiracy theorists." Lively, of course, loves his conspiracy theories, especially anti-gay ones -- he did, after all, write a WND-loved book that bizarrely portrayed the German Nazi Party as "a neo-pagan, homosexual cult" -- so this film is very much up Lively's alley. Indeed, he highlights the postwar period in Germany "when the United States had de facto ownership of the Seat of Satan as the dominant power of the Allied occupation of Germany until the Berlin Wall went up," adding: "That 1945-61 window is precisely when America was shifted by our Supreme Court under the control of anti-Christian Justice Hugo Black from a biblical to a humanist foundation, and an army of freshly legally empowered militant atheists began systematically dismantling our Judeo-Christian infrastructure from coast to coast." Yeah, totally not a surprise that Lively would embrace this film.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:37 AM EST
Updated: Wednesday, November 20, 2019 9:18 AM EST
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