Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's stable of fringe physicians -- plus a couple new ones -- serve up the usual questionable advice (about hydroxychloroquine) and fearmongering (about a possible vaccine). Read more >>
Wednesday, June 3, 2020
NEW ARTICLE -- WND's Coronavirus Conspiracies: The Dubious Docs
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily's stable of fringe physicians -- plus a couple new ones -- serve up the usual questionable advice (about hydroxychloroquine) and fearmongering (about a possible vaccine). Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:25 AM EDT
Tuesday, June 2, 2020
MRC Still Treating Lara Logan Like A Real Journalist -- But She Repeated Antifa Hoaxes
Topic: Media Research Center Since she re-emerged last year as a conservative darling, the Media Research Center has been trying to make Lara Logan a thing again, largely by ignoring the thing that made her not a thing in the first place: the "60 Minutes" story in which she promoted the story of a purported witness to the Benghazi attack who was later discovered to have been lying about the whole thing. The MRC tried to portray Logan as a credible journalist again in a June 2 post by Kristine Marsh:
But the "Antifa document" she was reading from was a list of "points of action" from a group called the Revoluationary Abolitionist Movement, which she also posted on her Twitter account. But Logan did not explain in her Fox News appearance how this particular group is a part of Antifa or otherwise represents Antifa, or even that it has any constituency of any size. But as Marsh posted this item presenting Logan as credible, Logan was getting destroyed on Twitter for posting two things she claimed were Antifa-related but turned out to be hoaxes. As Media Matters' Parker Malloy summarized, Logan posted a document claiming to prove that Antifa "have infiltrated LE (Law Enforcement)" and which detailed "communication channels, secrecy levels, codes and PROFESSIONAL AGITATORS." In fact, as Snopes documented, this document first surfaced in 2015, well before the police-custody death of George Floyd, and we can safely assume it's a hoax because "an organization that secretly organized and masterminded protests, then produced and distributed confidential documents outlining such illegal activities as their use of tax authorities and accounting firms in order to conceal their funding of those protests, would be so foolish as to emblazon the incriminating evidence with their name and logo." Logan also retweeted a Twitter post from someone claiming to be "ANTIFA America," stating, "Tonight's the night, comrades. Tonight we say 'F--- The City' and we move into the residential areas... the white hoods.... and we take what's ours ." But as NBC reported, that account, which has since been shut down, was linked to white nationalist group Identity Evropa. Touting a reporter who tends to get suckered by hoaxes is not the best way for the MRC to prove the credibility of the right-wing media.
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:05 PM EDT
CNS Censors Stock Scandal Involving GOP Senators
Topic: CNSNews.com In April, it was revealed that Republican Sen. Richard Burr, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sold off much of his stock holdings -- up to $1.7 million worth -- in mid-February, a couple weeks before the stock market crashed due to the coronavirus shutdown. At the same time, he was expressing public optimism about how the country would handle coronavirus while making much more dire assessments in private. Federal investigators have since seized Burr's cell phone on the same day he stepped down as intelligence committee chairman due to the investigation. CNSNews.com has reported none of this -- perhaps because Burr is a Republican who has been Trump-friendly on occasion. In February 2019, managing editor Michael W. Chapman repeated Burr's proclamation that based on all the facts available, there is no evidence of "collusion by the Trump campaign and Russia" which Chapman echoed in another article that month. CNS did, however, publish a May 2019 column by David Limbaugh huffing it was "nauseating that RINO Sen. Richard Burr, as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is doing the bidding of vindictive Democrats in issuing a subpoena to Donald Trump Jr." CNS even reported on Burr after the scandal broke, yet still stayed silent. In an anonymously written April 22 article -- a week after the scandal was first reported -- highlighted how Burr "put out a statement" agreeing with an intelligence community assessment that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election -- albeit buried in the ninth paragraph of an article that began with House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi invoking the report to wonder what Vladimir Putin has on President Trump. CNS performed the same see-no-evil service for another Republican senator caught up in the same scandal. Sen. Kelly Loeffler sold nearly $20 million in stock in the weeks before the coronavirus pandemic broke and is also under investigation. Yet in an April 17 article, Melanie Arter touted how Loeffler, "who serves on the bipartisan task force to reopen the economy, told Fox News on Friday that she’s concerned that China might be holding up test kits." Arter did not mention Loeffler's stock controversy. If it's bad news about Republicans, it appears that CNS will not live up to its billing as a "news" organization and report facts; it will censor that news.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:06 AM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, June 2, 2020 1:45 AM EDT
Monday, June 1, 2020
Newsmax Columnist Clings To Conspiracy Theory Of Coronavirus As Chinese Bioweapon
Topic: Newsmax The idea that coronavirus is a Chinese-made bioweapon is one that has been long discredited. Still, it's one that some conspiracy theorists cling to. One of them is Clare Lopez, a right-wing activist whom we saw last among other biased right-wingers (and discredited fraud Wayne Simmons) on Accuracy in Media's "Citizens' Commission on Benghazi." for some reason, Newsmax gave Lopez a May 11 column to pursue her new conspiracy theory. Lopez ranted that "With CCP ["Commuinist Chinese Party"] propaganda efforts in full overdrive, it is important that USG [could be "U.S. government," but Lopez never explains the acronym] leadership speak openly and clearly about Beijing's advanced Biological Weapons Program (BWP). This particular coronavirus may have escaped a CCP lab accidentally, but its creation was anything but unintentional." She went on to quote speculation that a biology lab in Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus first appeared, "is linked to China's covert bio-weapons program," then concluded with more speculation and conspiracy theorizing:
No, thanks, we'll just stick with actual, authoritataive sources who aren't so much into baseless, discredited speculation.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:21 PM EDT
Double Standard: MRC Frets Over Heckling Of Fox News Reporter -- But It Cheered 'CNN Sucks' Chants
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck was in high dudgeon in a May 30 MRC item, fretting that "Just before 1:00 a.m. Eastern Saturday, Fox News Channel’s America’s News HQ co-host Leland Vittert was chased, harassed, and heckled by violent, far-left rioters outside the White House and was forced to abandon the scene, having to toss back to Fox News @ Night host Shannon Bream." Houck followed up later that day, stating that Vittert was "viciously targeted and harassed than physically assaulted by far-left, Fox News-hating, rioting mob, their equipment, solely because they worked for Fox News[.]" But Houck and his MRC colleagues would like you to forget that they are totally cool with journalists being harassed and heckled -- that is, when their employer is not Fox News. For instance, MRC writers were amused to no end when Trump supporters chanted "CNN sucks!" at CNN correspondents covering Trump events. Let's look at how the MRC has hypocritically condoned and reveled in this threatening behavior over the years:
but Houck somehow forgot to mention that time when, yes, that effectlvely was a death threat. When a man who drove a van plastered with anti-media bumper stickers that in part echoed the MRC's anti-media narrative -- including one that said "CNN Sucks" -- Houck and the MRC couldn't work hard enough to try and separate the hateful rhetoric from the hateful bombing:
In addition, Nicholas Fondacaro got mad when the hosts on "The View" pointed out the "CNN Sucks" bumpter sticker and added, "Can you honestly say President Trump's words and actions didn't inspire this guy?" Houck and the MRC are crying crocodile tears over the treatment of Vittert -- Fox News is its favorite channel, after all -- even though it egged on heckling and attacks on CNN reporters. A clear double standard if we've ever seen one.
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:20 PM EDT
WND Mysteriously Deletes Alyssa Farah's Article Archive
Topic: WorldNetDaily Alyssa Farah -- daughter of WorldNetDaily founder Joseph Farah -- has been working her way up through the Trump administration, first as Vice President Mike Pence's press secretary, then as Pentagon press secretary; last month, she was named White House director of strategic communications. We were the first to report Farah's connection to the birther and conspiracy theory site, noting stories she wrote for WND while studying journalism at homeschooler-friendly Christian school Patrick Henry College. But a strange thing has happened recently: Alyssa Farah's name has been all but purged from WND. Farah's archive was intact as recently as July 2019, showing dozens of articles with her byline. But sometime between July and December 2019 -- based on links in the Internet Archive -- her archive was purged, leaving just an author page with only her name and her onetime status as a "special Washington correspondent for WND." For instance, a 2013 article by Farah in which she channeled anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists by claiming that a vaccine against the human papillomavirus that has been shown to reduce the incidence of cervical cancer "has caused thousands of adverse reactions ... and even death" now carries only a generic "WND Staff" byline. Similarly, a 2010 article in which Farah pushed misleading claims about then-Supreme Court candidate Elena Kagan also carries a "WND Staff" byline. It's easy to speculate on why this happened -- her dad runs the joint, after all, and even if he is continuing to recover from a stroke, her stepmother, Elizabeth, was her husband's lieutenant and could easily make that happen. One can easily presume that Alyssa is treating this as an old shame now that she's a Whtie House bigwig and would rather not remind people that she once worked for her dad's (questionably run) conspiracy-theory operation. But she and WND forget that the internet is forever, and not only do old shames get memorialized, attempts to scrub them do as well. (Thanks to an alert ConWebWatch reader who informed us about this.)
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:36 AM EDT
Updated: Monday, June 1, 2020 12:56 AM EDT
Sunday, May 31, 2020
No, MRC, Michael Flynn Was Not 'Exonerated'
Topic: Media Research Center Last year, we pointed out how the Media Research Center hypocritically proclaimed that the lack of proposed charges against President Trump in the Mueller investigation meant that he was completely exonerated -- despite years of lecturing the media (and yours truly) that the fact that the Clintons have never been charged with anything doesn't mean they're guilty of something. The MRC is indulging in that hypocrisy again in the Michael Flynn case. The MRC is actually promoting the idea that Flynn, President Trump's ever-so-brief national security adviser, was "exonerated" on charges of lying to the FBI -- even though he admitted twice to doing so -- when all that happened was that Trump's Justice Department asked to stop pursuing the case. Nicholas Fondacaro privileghed the falsehood in a May 7 post:
Perhaps because Flynn was not, in fact, "exonerated." The next day, Curtis Houck uncritically quoted White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany touting "the exoneration Michael Flynn got today," gushing that McEnany "ended her passionate defense of Flynn and torching of the Deep State with a quote from Montesquieu and a nod to" the above Fondacaro post. Jorge Bonilla, however, went fully in on the falsehood in a May 10 MRC Latino post, starting with his headline: "Univision, Telemundo Uninterested In Covering Flynn Exoneration- Covered Plea Deal 26X As Much." He continued (needless bold italic in original):
Bonilla concluded by insisting that "the market continues to cry out for an alternative" for a Spanisgh-language network that, apparently, is a Spanish-language Trump sycophant like Fox News. One could also say the market is crying out for a conservative "media research" organization that doesn't spread lies.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:33 PM EDT
CNS-Mark Levin Stenography Watch
Topic: CNSNews.com It seems that CNSNews.com was so busy playing defense for the Trump administration over the coronavirus pandemic that there wasn't much time to provide its usual fawning stenography of right-wing radio host Mark Levin. It found time to do only eight articles on Levin or his guests during March and April:
That's a total of 21 articles for the first four months of 2020, a little bit off CNS' usual pace, publishing at least 96 Levin articles annually the past three years. CNS will have to step it up to demonstrate the one-sided and un-fact-checked love Levin has come to expect (per a possible cross-promotoin deal) from his favorite "news" outlet.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:53 AM EDT
Saturday, May 30, 2020
What LGBT Stuff Is The MRC Freaking Out About Now?
Topic: Media Research Center Just because there's been a global pandemic doesn't mean that the Media Research Center has stopped hating on the LGBT community. They made sure to create space for that. Alexa Moutevelis cheered the end of the TV series "Will & Grace": NBC's obnoxious LGBTQ sitcom Will & Grace has somehow lasted two iterations over 11 seasons and 22 years. Along with pushing homosexuality mainstream, the show has demonstrated a deep antipathy towards Republicans and conservatives. Thankfully, at long last, it is over." Moutevelisthen made her deep antipathy toward people who don't think like her quite abundant. Moutevelis returned to rage against the purported existence of too many gay characters on TV:
Thanks for making your bigotry so unambiguous, Alexa. Mysterious sports blogger Jay Maxson is relieved that coronavirus disrupted the baseball season, otherwise "LGBT advocates were about to engulf minor league baseball with their propaganda this season. The number of pride nights was going to explode to an all-time high, and the resultant 'service to humanity' by LGBT pressure groups was going to be off the charts." After noting someone stating that the purpose of pride nights was to "hook a younger LGBTQ generation on baseball," Maxson conspiratorially added: "Or is that to hook baseball fans on the LGBT? No answer needed." Maxson didn't explain exactly how that's supposed to work. The latest installment in MRC writers freaking out over the mere existence of gay cartoon characters was enacted by Elise Ehrhard, who melted down over the character of She-Ra being an "open lesbian." Of course, she couldn't do so without a condescending lecture over how children should be shielded from the existence of gay people:
Maxson returned to rant about Nike "turning running shoes into symbols promoting the LGBT agenda," further whining that "Adidas is also jostling for position in the rainbow market, offering 22 Pride products, including the NMD R1 Pride shoes. So is New Balance. And Moutevelis served up one more tantrum, in which she once again complains there's too many gay people on TV:
Of course, Moutevelis is the one who's pandering to the MRC's gay-hating audience by spewing such venom.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:16 AM EDT
Dubious WND Doc Clinging To Hydroxycloroquine
Topic: WorldNetDaily The last time we checked in on WorldNetDaily's coterie of dubious docs linked to the fringe-right Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, they had thoughts about coronavirus, which leaned heavily on pushing hydroxychloroquine to cure it despite the fact it hadn't actually been proven to do so. One of those docs has continued to cling to the unproven drug. In an April 29 column, Elizabeth Lee Vliet touted how chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine have been "FDA-approved for safety and effectiveness in 1934 and 1955, respectively," though not for coronavirus. She went conspiratorial (and randomly italic) pretty quickly:
On May 7, Vliet attacked a competing drug that shows promise against coronvirus, remdesivir, for having been quickly given emergency use authorization by the FDA, declaring that "such rapid authorization is quite unusual with the FDA." Again, Vliet went conspiratorial, attacking remdesivir's maker, Gilead Sciences:
Vliet spent her May 20 column having a fit that an "FDA bureaucrat," Rick Bright, had tried to delay broad use of hydroxychloroquine against coronavirus due to lack of scientific evidence that it worked.And it was quickly rant time:
Vliet's AAPS compadre, Jane Orient, turned her attention to trying to undermine the efficacy and safety of a possible coronavirus vaccine. She complained in a May 7 column: "What to do now? Let the collapse continue until "we have a vaccine"? Does that mean "until (unless?) everybody is vaccinated with a safe and effective vaccine"? There is NO vaccine for most viruses. The influenza vaccine may be only 30% effective, and many serious side effects are reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)." In a May 18 column, Orient freaked out over President Trump's "Operation Warp Speed" to quickly develop a vaccine and,as befits the AAPS executive director, went conspiratorial:
Of course, we have vaccines now, which all much larger swathes of humanity to survive pestilence. (Vliet also fearmongered about vaccines in her April 29 column: "Dr. Fauci's focus has been that we need to wait for a vaccine to safely re-open the country. Why? He knows vaccines take months to years to develop. Surely, he is also aware of the safety issues of vaccines rushed to market without adequate testing.") Meanwhile, WND has been giving space to another (though apparently not AAPS-affiliated) doc, Scott Magill, to opine about coronavirus despite his being a retired gynecologist and obstetrician. We previously noted his May 5 column, in which he ranted about infectious disease expert (which Magill is not) Anthony Fauci, asserting that "Fauci, in his role as longtime federal immunology bureaucrat, paid $3.7 million to the Wuhan laboratory for coronavirus development after the U.S. declared a moratorium on such funding." That's a lie; the money -- which was renewed by the Trump administration last year -- was granted to a research group called the EcoHealth Alliance, which was doing research on coronaviruses in bats and working with, among others, the Wuhan Institute of Virology; the institute receoved only $600,000 since 2014 for its role. Magill also asserted that China owns the patent for remdesivir; that's not true either. He further portrayed coronavirus as a bioweapon that escaped from the Wuhan lab; that's also false. Magill also asserted that Fauci "and his pharmaceutical partners stand to make huge profits from any expensive COVID-19 vaccine developed later, while they earn nothing from cheap hydroxychloroquine cure available right now." Again, not true. Lies and conspiracy theories? That's our WND! And the reason, David Kupelian, why WND continues to get tagged as "harmful misinformation" on social media.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:47 AM EDT
Friday, May 29, 2020
The Latest MRC Narrative: Bashing Facebook's Oversight Board
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center has to keep up its failing jihad against Facebook somehow -- an utterly hypocritical fight, by the way, since MRC chief Brent Bozell just loves using Facebook Live -- so it's latched on to Facebook's proposed oversight board, attacking for not being stacked with conservatives. The MRC kicked off its attack with a statement from the "Free Speech Alliance," the right-wing group it created to push the dubious narrative of rampant discrimination against conservatives in social media. It ranted that the board is "too international" -- despite the fact that Facebook operates in nearly all countries on the planet -- and would be "embracing an internationalist construct pleasing to the radical left and likely to make Facebook’s restrictive content policies even worse." The statement complained that one member “does not believe in eternal life, salvation or heaven and hell,” three "have ties to leftist billionaire George Soros," and most "are as left-wing as you might expect," finally huffing, "We find no one supportive of Trump." Corinne Weaver whined in a May 7 post:
If there's anything the MRC hates, it's "diversity." Weaver named no board member she thought was too "liberal." Indeed, a few days later, Weaver returned to attack one board member for being a Muslim, digging up a years-old interivew in which she allegedly "supported the Muslim Brotherhood." Weaver did, however, find someone who was apparently conservative enough there to mine for scoops: oversight board chairman Michael McConnell. She cheered when McConnell told her in an "exclusive interivew" that Facebook would audit its fact-checkers -- Weaver falsely attacked one of those fact-checkers earlier this year -- and pouted when McConnell pointed out in another "exclusive interview" that the oversight board would only get a couple more explicitly conservative members. She lied about one board member, Pamela Karlan, claiming that she "mocked 13-year-old Barron Trump during the House impeachment proceedings" (she didn't). Weaver then cranked out a hit piece on the purported "radical views" of oversight board members, in which she repeated her attack on the Muslim board member and her lie that Karlan "mocked" Barron Trump. Because no right-wing attack on Facebook would e complete without Brent Bozell weighing in, we have the MRC chief demanding in an "official press conference" (does Bozell ever appear at unofficial press conferences?) because it has only "five members from the United States" (again, Facebook operates in nearly every country on the planet). Bozell had right-wing members of Congress joining him, implying there would be Trump administration harassment if Facebook didn't cave to his demands. Weaver seemed to have soured on McConnell by the time of a May 19 post, in which she noted that, in an Aspen Institute forum, McConnell accurately pointed out that conservatives (like Weaver and her employer) were attacking the oversight board for being insufficiently conservative, further complaining that he "tried to dismiss conservative criticisms" by claiming that a commitment to civil liberties is more important than a "red and blue" debate. (Of course, the red vs. blue divide is everything to the MRC.) So Weaver typed up a new rant on May 22: "Facebook’s new Oversight Board promises to be committed to freedom of expression. But that principle might better reflect an international standard, rather than a First Amendment-based American one." Weaver didn't mention that Facebook operates in nearly every country on the planet, so international standards could perhaps supercede parochial concerns.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:32 PM EDT
Updated: Sunday, November 29, 2020 10:55 PM EST
Bad Coronavirus Takes: Blame The Hippies Somehow!
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com published a May 6 column by Jeffrey Tucker of the right-wing American Institute for Economic Research headlined "Woodstock Occurred in the Middle of a Pandemic," making a quick bend to the conspiratorial by comparing that to the coronavirus pandemic:
CNS, needless to say, did no fact-check. That was left to an actual news organization, Reuters, which pointed out that while there was a flu epidemic in the winters of 1968-69 and 1969-70, there was not one in the summer of '69:
Reuters even quoted Woodstock organizers, who pointed out there was no outbreak at the festival. A bad take getting proven false does not stop it from being repeated; thus, James Hirsen touted Tucker's op-ed in his May 18 Newsmax column, claiming that the media was "triggered" but it and asserted without evidence that "Tucker’s Woodstock article was not received well by the dominant media, likely because its content is at odds with the narrative that is being spun by a majority of the elite." Hirsen then attacked Reuters' factcheck. Both Tucker and Hirsen ignored the simple observation that coronavirus is not the flu and is, in fact, much worse, in part because we know so little about it. Hirsen went from there to bizarrely attack the Woodstock generation for trying to stop the coronavirus pandemic:
Which has nothing to do with trying to enforce public health measures, but you be you, Jim.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:26 AM EDT
Thursday, May 28, 2020
MRC Writer Is Apparently Too Cowardly To Criticize Trump Where It Counts
Topic: Media Research Center Media Research Center writer and NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck has been doing a lot of complaining about President Trump's tweets arguing that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough murdered an intern, Lori Klausutis, while serving as a Florida congressman -- on his Twitter account anyway, and mainly to insist that conservatives really do think he ought not be doing that. In one post, Houck tried equivocation and whataboutism:
Then, replying to CNN anchor Jake Tapper's claim that Trump supporters "sit silently" while Trump falsely and maliciously maligns a critic and harms the family of the dead intern, Houck huffed: "This is pants-on-fire lie and I'm betting Jake knows this. I've seen people from the following sites call Trump out: Blaze, Daily Wire, RedState, Twitchy, NRO, Resurgent, Free Beacon, the Examiner, and a few of my NB colleagues." Finally, Houck complained that the media newsletter put out by CNN's Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy "didn't note the droves of conservative media peeps who've expressed disgust with Trump." He later cited a Washington Examiner editorial criticizing Trump as evidence of this. But Houck is being very disingenuous. It may be true that Houck and his "NB colleagues" have criticized Trump's actions, but they didn't do so where it counted: in a NewsBusters post. The only actual criticism at NewsBusters of Trump is a May 26 post by Houck in which he called Trump's tweets "vile" -- but this came in the 16th paragraph of post that was otherwise smearing CNN's Dana Bash as a "lackey" for doing an allegedly "softball" interview of Joe Biden. Not exactly a profile in courage here. Meanwhile, the other NewsBusters posts that addressed Trump's tweets regarding Scarborough and Klausutis did the opposite of what Houck says he and his "NB colleagues" were doing -- they attacked anyone who criticized Trump. In a May 21 post, Alexander Hall began by being mad that Scarborough's wife and "Morning Joe" co-host criticized Trump, blaring, "MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski has called for Twitter to deplatform a sitting president." Hall did not criticized Trump's tweets. The next day, when Scarborough criticized Trump's tweets about him, Mark Finkelstein went full whataboutism:
Far from criticizing Trump, Finkelstein appears to be arguing that Scarborough deserves to be lied about; instead, he cheered that she got "torched by Ted Cruz." And a May 27 post by Corinne Weaver repeating Trump's whining that Twitter fact-checked one of his tweets noted in passing in the ninth paragraph that "According to the Washington Examiner, Twitter apologized Tuesday to the family of a former Joe Scarborough intern Lori Klausutis because of a Trump tweet that speculated MSNBC host and onetime Republican congressman had something to do with her death in 2001." Of course, Trum[ didn't just "speculate"; he unambigously declared that Scarborough "got away with murder." Houck is simply being a coward here. Not only won't he explain why he refuses to commit his thoughts about Trump and Scarborough to a prominent NewsBusters post (or, if he's prohibited by MRC management from criticizing Trump on its its websites, explain why he can't), the website he manages has attacked Trump's victims. If it seems like we're having a hard time understanding why Houck would be so utterly disingenuous, this is why.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:01 PM EDT
Updated: Thursday, May 28, 2020 9:07 PM EDT
Newsmax TV Hires The Increasingly Fringe Michelle Malkin
Topic: Newsmax Bill Hoffman gushed in a May 21 Newsmax article:
Hoffman, of course, didn't tell his readers that his employer's latest hire has been leaning hard lately into white nationalism and anti-Semitism. Or that she's a conspiracy theory-prone anti-vaxxer. Just two weeks ago, Malkin used her column to tout the notoriously misinformation-laden film "Plandemic" and conspiratorially accused infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci of being a liar. Newsmax, apparently, doesn't want its readers to know all about this craziness. Newsmax chief Christopher Ruddy seems weirdly proud of hiring Malkin. This is likely to end badly with Malkin embracing some even-more-fringe view that will damage the Newsmax brand. (And, no, we haven't forgotten that CNSNews.com still runs Malkin's column, including the above-mentioned one in which she endorsed "Plandemic." WorldNetDaily runs her column as well, but her white nationalism and conspiracy theories are more on brand for WND.)
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:42 PM EDT
Terry Jeffrey Trump Deficit Blame Avoidance Watch, Coronavirus Edition
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey made sure to stamp President Obama's name on every article he did on deficit spending during his presidency -- even when Obama was spending much of that money to pull the country out of a recession. But as we've documented, Jeffrey can't be bothered to work up that level of calling out regarding the deficit spending President Trump has racked up; not only has he not invoked Trump by name, the photos accompanying those articles included stock photos of both Trump and House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, falsely implying equal blame even though Pelosi controls only one-half of one branch of government while Trump and his Republicans control one and a half branches. Not even the massive stimulus bills designed to counteract the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic that Trump has signed has moved Jeffrey to send any explicit blame Trump's way. An April 9 article by Jeffrey complained that "The debt of the federal government topped $24 trillion for the first time on Tuesday, when it climbed from $23,917,212,663,857.59 to $24,011,523,316,653.36, according to data released by the Treasury Department." As per usual, Jeffrey doesn't breathe Trump's name, and the article is illustrated with yet another misleading stock photo of Trump with Pelosi. On April 23, Jeffrey groused that "passed a $483-billion spending bill to further aid Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic---with only six members of the 100-member Senate participating." Even though the Senate is controlled by Republicans, the image he used was of a Democratic senator, Chuck Schumer. Jeffrey huffed in an April 28 article that "The federal debt has increased by more than $1 trillion so far in the month of April, according to data released by the U.S. Treasury." Strangely, Jeffrey didn't mention cornavirus stimulus as being the reason for that. The article got a change-up for an illustration: a stock photo of Pelosi with Senate Leader Mitch McConnell. On May 8, Jeffrey complained that "The debt of the federal government topped $25 trillion for the first time on Tuesday, when it climbed from $24,948,983,700,916.84 to $25,057,924,023,406.80." Again, he didn't identify coronavirus relief as the reason for this. The stock photo this time was actually somewhat balanced, featuring Trump and Pelosi with Vice President Mike Pence. Jeffrey was in full lecture tone in a May 13 article:
Missing yet again was the fact that that deficit money was spent on coronavirus relief. He reverted back to an old favorite stock photo of Trump and Pelosi. None of these articles mention Trump by name, and none identify this deficit spending as belonging to Trump the way he blamed Obama for deficits under his presidency. By contrast, when Pelosi proposed a new $3 trillion stimulus bill, Jeffrey's CNS touted Republicans attacking that bill as unnecessary and fiscally irresponsible:
Jeffrey himself attacked one proposed provision that funded suicide prevention efforts among LGBT youth, while Melanie Arter attacked another provision that "would provide $1200 stimulus payments to illegal aliens" who pay taxes and have a federal taxpayer ID number. The hypocrisy is astounding.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:39 AM EDT
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