CNS Censors Bad News About Another Official It Touted
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com loves to censor negative information about people it promotes, such as Candace Owens or Marjorie Taylor Greene. Add another one to the list.

Mnaging editor Michael W. Chapman wrote in a July 2 article:

Florida Sheriff Darryl Daniels criticized the liberal media for misrepresenting law enforcement as the "enemy," and pledged that if radical protesters become overwhelming, he will "make special deputies of every lawful gun owner" in the county to ensure the civil order. 

"That's what we're sworn to do, and that's what we're gonna do," he said. "You've been warned."

Chapman then transcribe the entirety of a video Daniels made that "explains his office's approach to the radical protests being perpetrated in the United States in recent times."

That attention to detail from Chapman, however, didn't extend to reporting on the scandal Daniels embroiled himself in. As an actual news outlet reported:

Darryl Daniels, the sheriff of Clay County, Fla., dialed his deputy from the quiet suburban road with an urgent plea for backup: He was being followed by a stalker in a Jeep and appeared to be in “imminent danger."

But Daniels knew exactly who was behind him on that day in May 2019, prosecutors say: It was Cierra Smith, his former employee and mistress of six years, on her way to meet him at their regular spot. Filming the whole thing was his wife, to whom he had recently confessed the affair.

Now, Smith has resigned from her job, Daniels’s wife has filed for divorce, and the sheriff is the one who ended up behind bars. On Thursday, following a year-long investigation, Florida authorities filed four charges against him and booked him into jail.

After that was revealed, the Florida governor removed Daniels from his post, and he lost his bid for re-election.

Yet all this wasn't considered newsworthy to Chapman -- presumably because he presented himself as a Trump-esque law-and-order type and Chapman doesn't want to shatter the illusion.

MRC Cheers That Homophobe Can Make Money At YouTube Again
Topic: Media Research Center

Last year, the Media Research Center was eager to portray right-wing "comedian" Steven Crowder as a victim of social media bias when YouTube demonitized his channel over the homophobic slurs he hurled at liberal commentator Carlos Maza, giving him the "it's just a joke" pass it will never give to a comedian who makes a joke about President Trump. Earlier this year, the MRC ramped up the conservative victimhood for Crowder while downplaying his homophobia.

The MRC's Kayla Sargent served up some good news for Crowder in an Aug. 14 post, while still managing to keep his victimhood intact:

It’s a win for free speech. Conservative comedian and political commentator Steven Crowder will once again be allowed to draw ad revenue on his YouTube channel.

YouTube lifted the restrictions against Crowder on August 12, more than a year after he was originally demonetized.

Crowder was originally restricted on the platform in June of 2019 after Vox contributor Carlos Maza accused Crowder of making homophobic and racist statements towards him in a since-removed tweet. 

Maza’s accusations came to light on May 31, 2019, and YouTube promised that they would review Crowder’s flagged videos. On June 4, the platform tweeted a reply to Maza’s initial post, stating, “while we found language that was clearly hurtful, the videos as posted don’t violate our policies.” 

Although YouTube did not take any initial action against Crowder, the pressure from the left and the media only increased, and some in the press called for Crowder’s channel to be “shut down completely.”

Sargent did concede that it was the fact that Crowder took down his homophobic videos, and not "YouTube's good graces," that got him re-monetized.She then warned: "The battle is never over, though. YouTube is still able to demonetize individual videos, and at any point, the platform could change its community guidelines again and restrict or even remove Crowder’s channel at any time."

As is MRC tradition, Sargent was quiet about the homophobic details of Crowder's videos that got him demonetized in the first place, and she left unspoken that the main thing Crowder can do to keep from getting restricted in the future is not be such a homophobe.

Sargent went on to push Crowder's victimhood in later MRC posts. An Aug. 20 post on how a poll found that "73 percent of U.S adults believe that social media companies censor political viewpoints of their users" was an excuse to mention how "Until recently, YouTube had demonetized conservitive comedian and commentator Steven Crowder." That was followed by an Aug. 26 post complaining that "YouTube chose to censor more content on its platform during its second quarter than it had in any previous quarter" similarly referenced how YouTube had "demonitized [Crowder's] channel a year." 

In neither of those posts did Sargent point out that it was Crowder's homophobia that got his channel demonetized.

NEW ARTICLE: Hoaxsters Push A 'Trayvon Hoax'
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Conspiracy-obsessed WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill joined forces with charlatan filmmaker Joel Gilbert to make a film that once again trashes Trayvon Martin -- but Cashill won't tell you about Gilbert's factually challenged past. Read more >>

MRC Can't Stop Exploiting Tara Reade (And Censoring E. Jean Carroll)
Topic: Media Research Center

As we've documented, the Media Research Center doesn't actually care about Tara Reade -- it only cares that her dubious accusation that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her a few decades ago. If the MRC took sexual assault allegations seriously, it would have denigrated E. Jean Carroll for making one against Donald Trump. Nevertheless, the MRC persists in exploiting Reade for its political agenda.

Duncan Schroeder huffed on July 27 that a CNN guest "praised Joe Biden for his to plan to choose a woman as his running mate without mentioning that Biden has been credibly accused of sexual assault," adding that if the guesdt "was not a Democratic shill, he would have mentioned that Joe Biden was credibly accused of sexual assault by Reade. But CNN does not actually care about combating sexism or holding all politicians accountable, it cares about propping up Democratic candidates." Schroeder's post appeared under the ironic headline "Silence is Violence" -- after all, the MRC hasn't mentioned Carroll's credible accusations against Trump since April.

On Aug. 12, the MRC's Scott Whitlock  got an "exclusive interview" with Reade (that it also translated into Spanish), in which she "spoke out about the selection of Kamala Harris as his vice presidential running mate." The MRC apparently did not ask Reade about E. Jean Carroll's accusations against Trump, nor did they ask her about her history of manipulative and deceitful behavior.

The same day, Whitlock whined, "Just how long can HBO stand by the radical HBO host John Oliver?" citing as evidence of his "radical" behavior: "In May, he promised to cover the Tara Reade sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden. He lied." Whitlock threw a massive fit about this in June.

A couple days later, Whitlock complained that an interview of Kamala Harris on MSNBC "censored any mention of the Democrat previously saying she thought Tara Reade, who accused Joe Biden of sexual assault, should be heard."

We should probably mention again that Whitlock and the rest of his MRC buddies have censored any mention of E. Jean Carroll for months.

Perpetual rage-bot Nicholas Fondacaro took things in a weird direction in an Aug. 17 post:

Democratic Party mouthpiece and CBS political correspondent Ed O’Keefe was so nervous about the enthusiasm gap between former Vice President Joe Biden and President Trump, that he spent part of his Monday segment on CBS Evening Newsboasting about Biden (an accused sexual assaulter) paling around with rapper Cardi B, who has admitted to drugging and robbing men (with accusations of rape).

Of course, this happened while the liberal media were ignoring the demands of Biden sexual assault accuser Tara Reade, who wanted the press to grill his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) on whether or not she believed his accusers.

Whitlock returned in an Aug. 25 post to grouse that "Last week during the Democratic National Convention, journalists and media outlets did their best to bury the 1993 sexual assault accusations against Joe Biden," going on to tout how Reade "told Fox News she would be willing to speak at the Republican convention if asked."

Whitlock's obsession with Oliver continued in an Aug. 30 post, in which he whined, "Oliver is the same Democratic hack who promised to cover Tara Reade and then hasn’t. Basically, he’s just a HBO shill for the DNC." And Whitlock is a shill for the Trump campaign.

Once more, let's remember that Whitlock and the MRC hasn't written a thing about E. Jean Carroll since April. That shows you just how empty its obsession with Reade is.

Terry Jeffrey Trump Deficit Blame Avoidance Watch
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com editor in chief just can't stop complaining about the deficit run up under a Republican-controlled Senate and a Republican president -- though he's become slightly more vocal about that fact than he has in the past.

In his July 29 column, Jeffrey actually called out the Trump administration for noting that an administration official touted President Trump's purported "commitment to fiscal responsibility" while noting that the federal debt increased by $1.2 trillion under Trump last year and that deficit spending increased by more than $4 trillion this year driven by Trump-signed coronavirus relief bills. Then, because Trump alone can't be blamed for the deficit even though he's the one who ultimately signs off on it, Jeffrey then attacks House Democrats for wanting to spend even more on coronavirus relief:

But now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would like to see Congress enact the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act, an additional COVID-19 relief bill that the Democrat-controlled House approved in May. According to the CBO's estimate, this bill would increase the deficit by $3.445 trillion.

Thus, with just one bill, Congress could increase the deficit by more than all the money the federal government borrowed in the first 214 years of this republic.

[...]

If the speaker gets her way, Americans born this year will be paying interest on the additional trillions of dollars she hopes to add to the debt this year — for their entire working lives.

Jeffrey used harsher language to bash Pelosi over a proposed bill that will almost certainly never be approved for that amount after negotiations with the GOP-controlled Senate than he did the actual bills that Trump signed.

By the time Jeffrey's mid-month stories rolled around, however, he wasn't so intersted in assigning blame. In an Aug. 12 article, Jeffrey wrote:

The federal government set records for the amount of money it spent and the size of the deficit it ran up in the first ten months of fiscal 2020 (October through July), according to data released today in the Monthly Treasury Statement.

In fact, the $5,630,859,000,000 the federal government spent in the first ten months of this fiscal year is more than the government has ever spent in any previous full fiscal year.

Jeffrey didn't mention the words "Trump" or "Republican" in his article. And, as per usual, the stock photo includes Democrats as if they were equally responsible for the spending approved by a Republican-controlled Senate and signed by a Republican president.

Jeffrey is also being doubly dishonest here. He, nor anyone else at CNS, have reported to their readers that CNS' parent, the Media Research Center, contributed to this growing federal deficit Jeffrey is decrying by accepting more than $1 million in Paycheck Protection Program money.

In other words, at least part of Jeffrey's salary this year is being paid in part from the federal debt. As far as we know, he hasn't turned it down due to concerns over federal overspending.

MRC's Graham Tries, Fails To Play Gotcha On A Fact-Checker
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Tim Graham continued his tilting at fact-checking windmills in an Aug. 8 post:

Matt Palumbo at Bongino.com took issue with the extremely biased nature of PolitiFact's "Truth-O-Meter" in assessing "facts." The controversy? This week, President Trump signed an executive order to prevent illegal immigrants from being counted for the purposes of re-apportioning congressional districts after the 2020 census.

PolitiFact's Tom Kertscher decided to warn America that the following claim was "Mostly False."

“California has six extra” congressional representatives “because illegals are counted” in the census.

After noting that PolitiFact contacted an expert in demography who noted that the state has, at best, two to four extra seats due to undocumented immigrants -- whom Graham dismissed as biased because he has "been a repetitive small donor to the Democratic National Committee," though he didn't explain how such small donations equals lying about demographics to PolitiFact -- Graham huffed:

This takes us back to the obvious point we have to make over and over again when it comes to these "fact checkers." They are taking exception to an estimate, which is not a hard fact. To disagree on an estimate on this scale should not rise to the level of "false news and misinformation." 

Except that the Bongino item and the Facebook post it's based on said nothing about the number being an estimate; it was stated as "hard fact" and claimed to be based on the 2010 Census and "the number of people illegally there."

Graham then serves up his usual whine about purported bias of PolitiFact: "A search of 'Bongino' at PolitiFact locates four 'fact checks' in the last year or so....all of them Mostly False or worse."Well, it's not like Graham or the MRC would ever be moved to fact-check Bongino, right? Their job is to ampllify right-wingers, not fact-check them.

WND's Cashill Has An Anti-Obama Book To Promote
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Jack Cashill's new book, "Unmasking Obama," is out now, though not at WorldNetDaily's online store -- as near as we can tell, the floundering operation has not added any new products of late beyond new monthly editions of WND's sparsely read Whistleblower magazine. So Cashill must supply the Amazon link to the book in his WND columns promoting it. The premise of the book is that "While the major media were spinning their collective fairy tale about the Obama presidency, the alternative conservative media — America’s 'samizdat' — were telling the truth."

That is manifestly false. WND spent the entirety of Barack Obama's presidency pushing the lie that the birth certificates Obama released were inaccurate or outright faked, and Cashill himself was caught falsely claiming that a photo of Obama with his grandparents was fake because Obama was photoshopped into it when, in fact, a photo in which Obama was photoshopped out of that he portrayed was the "real" photo is actually the fake one. (It was this column, which WND refused to tell readers a correction was made on even as it scrubbed the false information from it, that caused then-editor Joseph Farah to effectively brag about how WND publishes misinformation.) 

In excerpting his book in his WND columns, Cashill demonstrates once again why he can't be trusted. On Aug. 16, he rehashed yet again his biased, racially tainted interpretation of the Trayvon Martin case, asserting that Obama's sdtatement that "if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon" to be the most destructive moment of his presidency." He also rehashed the film about the Martin case made by Joel Gilbert, while making sure to hide the fact that Gilbert is a lying charlatan whose film about Obama pushed the malicious lie that Obama's mother posed nude for Frank Marshall Davis.

On Aug. 18, Cashill ranted that "the mischief surrounding the passage and implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – also known as 'Obamacare' – puts Obama in the Harding-Grant strata of scandal-plagued presidencies" and tried to make Obama's not-entirely-inaccurate statement that people can keep their doctors under the plan to be some kind of massive conspiracy.

Cashill's Aug. 20 column totally buys into the conspiracy tyheory that "President Barack Obama had been using an anomalous and possibly fraudulent SSN for more than twenty years." He made sure to elide the fact that releasing Obama's Social Security number as one "samizdat" member did without Obama's permission is likely illegal, despite his insistence that the random right-wing person's poking around the number was "perfectly legal." He bashed teh fact-checkers at Snopes for debunking the conspiracy, huffing that it"seemed to have no greater purpose during Obama’s presidency than to kill stories potentially harmful to the president." Cashill rejected the obvious explanation -- some clerk apparently mistyped Obama's zip code so that he was given a number normally given to those who live in Connecticut rather than Hawall, where Obama lived -- instead complaining: "Journalists who shied from learning the truth about Obama’s Social Security number were not about to ask him where he was on the night the Benghazi consulate was attacked, what he knew about the IRS war on the Tea Party, or how he came to authorize 'Fast and Furious,' let alone what role he played in protecting Hillary Clinton from prosecution or in spying on Donald Trump’s campaign."

Cashill also referenced Obama's birth certificate, "whose legitimacy may never be certified." On Aug. 26, Cashill dove into the birther issue from a different angle. He first asserted that "Barack Obama resisted sharing his birth certificate at considerable cost and very nearly to the point of political self-destruction. This much is undeniable." This is a lie; Obama released a state-generated birth certificate in 2008 and another in 2012 only after birthers like Donald Trump repeatedly pushed the issue by falsely portraying the original certificate as somehow not authentic enough. He slagged Obama's mother as once having "a crush on the eponymous Afro-Brazilian of the movie 'Black Orpheus'" -- apparently trying to dogwhistle to the more racist Obama-haters out there -- and posited that Obama was born a few months earlier than the date on his birth certificate, arguing that "the Dunham family might have claimed a home birth and called it in to the authorities in August."

In other words, Cashill's book appears to be nothing more than another highly speculative hit job from a longtime Obama-hater. Treat it accordingly.

Is MRC's Fondacaro Enabling Right-Wing Vigilantes?
Topic: Media Research Center

One of the shrillest and most dishonest voices at the Media Research Center belongs to "media analyst" Nicholas Fondacaro. Over the summer, he has been ranting about media coverage of racial unrest and accusing outlets who don't limit themselves to a fowarding his right-wing agenda blaming everyone but conservatives ahd President Trump of "enabling" the unrest by the "terrorists" of Antifa and Black Lives Matter. This culminated in a July 24 column written not for the MRC but for the Daily Caller -- yes, the Tucker Carlson-founded operation that loves to hire white nationalists -- that summarized his narrative. He began by ranting:

With Portland and Seattle being inundated with waves of chaos and violence at the hands of extremist leftists Antifa and Black Lives Matter, the silence from the liberal media is deafening. Despite nightly clashes in both cities (and murders in Seattle’s CHOP zone), there was nary a word from the cable and broadcast networks. But this is by design. Seeing as how the media spent years covering up, downplaying and even normalizing their base’s radicalism and the resulting violence.

Sadly, such behavior was entirely predictable after the press spent the 2016 general election blatantly suggesting one of the candidates would be the new Adolf Hitler and his supporters are modern-day Klansmen. And thus, a movement to “resist” was born.

Fondacaro then comnplained that one media outlet had on "Antifa apologist Mark Bray, allowing Bray to romanticize the terrorist group’s violent history, ignore their ties to communism and promote violence as a legitimate form of political dissent," emphasizing how "Bray was publicly disavowed by Dartmouth, where he was a lecturer at the time."

In fact, that disavowal came after a right-wing website distorted Bray's views on antifa -- he's an academic who has argued that violent protest can be appropriate response to violent actors on the right, like white supremacists and neo-Nazis -- and other Dartmouth instructors objected to the disavowal because Bray was not given a chance to make his case to the university beforehand. Bray recedived death threats afterward; we don't recally Fondacaro speaking out against that.

Meanwhile, one can arguing that Fondacaro is helping to enable violent terrorism on his end of the political scale.

When Trump-supporting teenager Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people in altercations in Kenosha, Wis., killing two of them, Fondacarto rushed to his defense based on incomplete video of the incidents, despite the fact investigations into them are far from complete and no official conclusions have been reached.

In an Aug. 26 post, Fondacaro huffed that "the viewers of ABC, CBS, and NBC were treated to lies and misinformation"in their coverage. But instead of identifying what "lies" were told, Fondacaro insisted that "Video evidence from multiple angles show 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse running into a parking lot as a violent rioter chased after him and threw something at him. As the assailant got closer, Rittenhouse turned and fired his rifle. The 17-year-old was then chased down the street as a violent mob attacked him. He fell to the ground and was beaten with a skateboard by one assailant and another brandished a handgun at him. Again Rittenhouse defended himself with his rifle."

Fondacaro refused to concede that his bias-influenced narrative is not the only possible interpretation of what was captured on those videos. Another interpretation is that people were chasing Rittenhouse because he shot a guy, then shot two of the people who were trying to stop him. Nevertheless, he arrogantly continued to push his narrative:

The next day, Fondacaro argued that one of Rittenhouse's victims deserved to die because, according to another right-wing website, "He has a criminal history that includes charges of battery & repeat domestic abuse" and was hitting Rittenhouse with a skateboard when he was shot. Fondacaro didn't consider that the victim might have been a little angry because he had just witnessed Rittehnouse shoot and kill someone.Fondacaro also justified thte shooting of another Rittenhouse victim because he "has a long rap sheet whcih included weapons charges."

Despite cheering the shooting of Rittenhouse's victims, he complained in another post that CNN's Jake Tapper "appeared to call for Rittenhouse to be assaulted" and that he pointed out that Rittenhouse was "a Trump supporter."

With such lionizing of a shooter and callous disregard for the lives of his victims, it could be argued that Fondacaro is enabling right-wing vigilantes to be violent against those whose views they oppose. He'll never admit that, of course -- he's too wedded to the right-wing pro-Trump agenda to admit any fault in his thinking.

CNS Does Damage Control For Parler
Topic: CNSNews.com

We can't prove there's a link, but it does seem a bit odd that just a few days after we detailed how the Media Research Center has embraced Parler as a "free speech" Twitter alternative even though it too has odd restrictions on speech and is turning into a right-wing echo chamber, the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, went into damage-control mode.

An Aug. 5 CNS article featured an interview Rob Shimshock -- CNS' commentary editor, by the way, not an actual reporter -- conducted with Parler's CEO. It sure reads like damage control:

John Matze, CEO of social media company Parler, committed not to ban users for "hate speech," stated that his company would fix an "awkward" "fighting words" clause in its community guidelines, and called the decision by Big Tech companies to censor the America's Frontline Doctors video "ridiculous," in an exclusive interview with CNSNews.com.

"We refuse to ban people on something so arbitrary that it can’t be defined," Matze said when asked whether Parler has banned or ever will ban users for "hate speech." "You see these sites trying to enforce these arbitrary rules and you notice that people are getting kicked off for the most random and arbitrary things like misgendering people. It's absurd. So no, we won't be pursuing that policy."

The Parler CEO also commented on the subjective nature of the "Fighting Words or Threats to Harm" portion of the company's community guidelines, which, as of press time, gives as an example "any direct and very personal insult with the intention of stirring and upsetting the recipient—i.e., words that would lead to violence if you were to speak in that fashion in person."

"We just hired a chief policy officer who's a real lawyer," Matze said. "She's actually overhauling that specific clause that you brought up because she said it's a really awkward clause to have online....Our goal here is to maximize free speech, maximize online discussion, while maintaining an actual community feel."

[...]

The Parler CEO discussed with CNSNews a variety of other topics, including the platform's content moderation system, its recent growth from 1 million to 3.3 million users, its plan to implement a "groups" feature, the dropping of an indemnification clause in its user agreement, and the company's plans to combat other kinds of tech censorship.

Shimshock makes sure to gloss over the fact that Parler is only now having a "real lawyer" review its policies doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the company, as does its walking back of certain policies that contradict its reputation in right-wing media as a "free speech" platform, like not allowing users to sue Parler and forcing users to pay Parler's legal fees.

Shimshock also pushed the false idea that the only reason the America's Frontline Doctors video was taken down by other social media sites was because "a doctor posited [hydroxychloroquine] as a cure for the coronavirus." In fact, the video included several other pieces of false or misleading information; as one actual doctor summarized, video participants claimed "that there is no need for masks, and that schools can open right away without any effect on viral spread. In addition, they continue promoting the false claim that this virus is less deadly than the flu, and that tracking its spread and numbers is unimportant."

MRC Rants Some More About 'Leftist Fact-Checkers' At Facebook
Topic: Media Research Center

In addition to hypocritically bashing Facebook for purportedly discriminating against conservatives while censoring the fact that Facebook has repeatedly sucked up to those very same conservatives (including secret dinners between Mark Zuckerberg and Brent Bozell), the Media Research Center also kept up its war on fact-checking through attacking the fact-checkers Facebook employs.

An Aug. 12 post by Alexander Hall literally declared that it's not "fair to conservatives" to fact-check them:

Two massive announcements from Facebook have revealed just how much Facebook has given up all pretense at being fair to conservatives.

Facebook announced new rules this week clarifying its hate speech policy and stating that it may even fact-check opinion pieces on the platform. Facebook sent a statement to the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) Monday night, declaring that opinion pieces may not be immune from the scrutiny of fact-checkers. The next day Facebook’s VP of integrity Guy Rosen vowed that the platform will launch a new crackdown on “certain kinds of implicit hate speech” in an August 11 blog post.

Facebook’s devastating announcement about fact-checking was a turning point for the worse for any hopes that Facebook would be “moderate” in its moderation practices.

Hall went on to huff that "What conservatives and Christians know is that from Facebook’s clear record in recent weeks, opinions that are contrary to the leftist narrative are not allowed in this 'inclusive' vision of a diverse future." Hall's example of "Facebook's clear record" was a link to a post two days before complaining that a pro-Trump group's Facebook page was "censored" -- which downplayed the fact that the page was restricted for repeatedly promoting false content. Hall apprently believes that "diversity" must include the freedom to spread lies.

Hall also lamented: "Under the guise of cracking down on the most egregious forms of bigotry, this may instead lead to more censorship of the right. Indeed, it is conceivable that Facebook could begin censoring criticism of liberal billionaire George Soros as some kind of anti-Semitic canard." Hall failed to note that his employer has, in fact, used anti-Semitic imagery in criticizing Soros. He also did;t mention that the MRC has also attacked the International Fact-Checking Network as a "Soros-funded" project and, therefore, "liberal" and untrustworthy.

Hall has moved so far right on the issue of fact-checking that he's even lashing out at the Anti-Defamation League. After noting that "ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted his support for the changes" at Facebook, he then ranted:

Greenblatt served as “special assistant to President Obama,” and before that “directed an initiative at the Aspen Institute, a George Soros-financed, left-leaning nonprofit.”

As far as hate speech is concerned, Facebook would be better off if it ignored the advice of the Anti-Defamation League, whose very purpose appears to be defaming conservatives. The ADL has even alleged that the “OK” hand gesture and imagery “directed against antifa” are signs one may be a white supremacist.

Well, given that white supremacists have, in fact, labored to turn the OK symbol into a symbol of support and that they also use anti-antifa symbolism, the ADL is correct to highlight these things. Of course, Hall has complained about both of them.

It's clear that Hall wants conservatives to be able to lie on Facebook and other social media with impunity. Otherwise, there's no reason to lash out at fact-checkers.

WND Columnist: 'Democrats' Nuked Nagasaki To Stop Christianity In Japan
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Lowell Ponte has always had a case of Democrat Derangement Syndrome. He took that to another level in his Aug. 6 worldNetDaily column, in which he pushed the evidence-free conspiracy theory that the U.S. dropped a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, during World War II because it was a center of Christianity in the country and the "leftist Democratic ruling elite in 1945 Washington, D.C." were "anti-Christian":

Such violence happened 75 years ago – Aug. 9, 1945 – when President Harry Truman unleashed the second atomic bomb, on the Japanese city of Nagasaki.

Nagasaki had little military, but vast cultural and religious, significance. Nagasaki had been Japan's only port open to foreign ships and influence. It is the setting of Puccini's opera "Madame Butterfly," a star-crossed romance between a Japanese woman and an American sailor.

Nagasaki was home to Japan's only Roman Catholic cathedral. The carefully aimed plutonium bomb "Fat Man" detonated within a quarter-mile of that cathedral.

Thousands of Japan's secret Christians went to Nagasaki, believing that Christian America would never destroy Japan's most "Christian" city. More Japanese Christians died in that atomic blast than during centuries of Japan's persecution of Christians.

They did not know that the leftist Democratic ruling elite in 1945 Washington, D.C., as now, were anti-Christian.

[...]

Who targeted Nagasaki at the last moment? This is uncertain, although pro-New Deal historians claim that FDR's globalist token-Republican Secretary of War Henry Stimson crossed out the original target, Kyoto.

Godless New Deal leftists had both opportunity and motive to destroy this center of Christian influence in Japan. If Nagasaki and its faithful survived, Japan might have become more Christian, closer to America, and stronger foes of global communism.

As actual historians point out, Nagasaki had a major shipbuilding industry and munitions factories, and the intended target that day, Kokura, had to be rejected because of poor visibility over the city.

MRC Melts Down Over A Cartoon Lesson On Racism
Topic: Media Research Center

In the grand tradition of the Media Research Center melting down over cartoons, we have an Aug. 10 post by Gabriel Hays enraged that the PBS cartoon "Arthur" dared to attempt the utterly benign thing of teaching a lesson about racism:

Apparently Elwood City, Arthur the aardvark’s hometown, has a racism and police brutality problem. 

During a recent episode of longtime PBS Kids favorite Arthur, two of the show's central characters discuss seeing a video of police killing a black person and discuss their feelings of anger and confusion over it.

PBS’s embrace of Marxist Black Lives Matter propaganda involved the publicly-funded network producing a three-minute clip of Arthur chiding our “racist” country on August 4.

During the clip, Arthur the aardvark and his best friend, Buster the rabbit, talked candidly about the horrors of “racism” against “black people” because of a recent viral video of police brutality. They spoke about how “scary” it was to witness the George Floyd video, essentially, and then get a lesson from one of their adult mentors how racism “boils” their “blood.”

The fun kids’ show opened their anti-racist lesson with a distressed video chat between Arthur and Buster. The titular character asked the rabbit, “Did you see that video?” to which his friend replied, “Yeah, I just watched it. It was awful! I can’t believe someone would be hurt like that, just because they’re black.”

Uh, what? Isn’t every single character in Arthur some sort of woodland critter? Hearing Arthur and Buster talk about “black people” makes no sense.

Hays leaned into his employer's utter hatred of the mere idea that black lives matter, insisting that "we’d recommend that the characters and animators at PBS watch this universe’s version of the George Floyd body cam footage to see that the victim resisted arrest for a long time and realize it offers no evidence that racism was involved either.  And there are also a few crime stats these young'ns could look at to dispel their fear at the great BLM lie."

Hays then huffed that the school lunch lady, Mrs. MacGrady, "touted divisive BLM mantras, like telling the boys, 'it’s not enough to say, ‘I’m not racist, it’s not my problem,'" but he didn't explain how such a phrase was "divisive." He concluded by ranting, "We don’t know, PBS, but you seem only a hair shy from telling kids to go to “peaceful” protests. Why are we the people funding this garbage?" He then demanded that his readers "contact the PBS public editor" to "let them know how you feel about this."

Why doesn't the MRC make linksfor readers to complain about MRC content so readily available? Because Hays' ludicrous meltdown over teaching that racism is bad certainly warrants one. (We'd do it, but they hate us so much that we're blocked or muted on much of their social media.)

"Arthur" is a major MRC target for some reason; last year, it raged that the show featured a teacher marrying his same-sex partner meant it pushed "the gay agenda," whatever that means.

CNS Pushes Outlier Polls Claiming Huge Black Support for Trump
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com loves to report on dubious outlier polls that make President Trump look good, particularly from Rasmussen, which FiveThirtyEight rates as skewed toward Republicans and graded at a middlling C-minus. Now CNS writer and chief poll-touter Craig Bannister has found a new pro-Trump Rasmussen poll to tout. He wrote in a July 31 article:

Approval of President Donald Trump’s job performance hit its highest level in more than five months, aided by a majority of Black and other minority voters voicing approval, Rasmussen’s daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday reveals.

The national survey of likely voters shows that 50% approve of Trump, the highest level reached since approval hit 52% on February 27. However, while 39% “strongly approve” of Trump, 43% “strongly disapprove.” Total disapproval was 48%.

A slight majority of Black voters and an even higher percentage of other minority voters approve of Trump, the poll shows.

Among Black voters, 51% said they approve of Trump – topping the president’s 47% approval among Whites. Sixty percent (60%) of voters of all other races said they approve of Trump’s job performance.

If that black approval rating for Trump sounds wildly out of line with most pollsters, you're correct.  For instance, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal found that black support for Trump has consistently polled in the low teens, and a June Washington Post/Ipsos poll found a mere 9 percent approval rating for Trump.

Nevertheless, CNS pushed this highly dubious narrative again in an Aug. 10 article by Andrew Davenport on, yes, another Rasmussen poll:

A recent poll from Rasmussen shows that 36% of black voters approve of Donald Trump’s job as president. 

According to the Rasmussen poll for July 2020, 36% of black American likely voters approve of the job President Trump is doing while 48% of white voters and 51% of non-white voters approve.

[...]

As president, Trump has touted economic numbers in the black community, especially highlighting low unemployment numbers. Before the Coronavirus pandemic, the White House released numbers in November 2019, showing black unemployment at a record low of 5.4%.

Davenport didn't mention the earlier poll citing 50 percent approval, nor did he note other mainstream polls showing a much lower black approval rate for Trump. Instead, he touted how "the Trump campaign launched the Black Voices for Trump program, which focused on increasing black turnout in the 2020 election."

The MRC's Very Dumb 'State-Affiliated Media' Rant
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Alexander Hall wrote in an Aug. 6 post:

In an era where governments use news outlets to launder their state propaganda as objective news, one Big Tech company is now beginning to take a decent stand by labeling government and state-affiliated media. 

Twitter Inc. announced that going forward, the company “will label some state-backed media accounts, as well as accounts belonging to ‘key government officials’ for certain countries, to create more transparency when governments and their leaders use the social-media platform to discuss important geopolitical issues,” Bloomberg reported August 6.

So far so good. But then Hall takes it to a very stupid extent:

It remains to be seen what other state-affiliated outlets Twitter will label. How about NPR, which, as NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham observed, “takes our tax dollars and then attacks adding the balance of our viewpoint as racist”? What about the PBS? BBC? Those three outlets fall within the United States and the United Kingdom, and none of them, as of the publishing of this piece, have labels.

What Hall doesn't admit: Graham and the MRC want NPR and PBS to be state-run media, at least when a Republican is in office. Graham and the MRC want "our viewpoint" -- in this case, conservative pro-Trump propaganda -- to be the only viewpoint heard on these outlets.

The Graham piece Hall linked to to support his claim was a June 11 post in which Graham whined about an NPR segment discussing journalistic objectivity.  If you want to see what the MRC really thinks about journalistic objectivity, you only need to look at its "news" operation, CNSNews.com, which is very much the right-wing, pro-Trump propaganda outlet they want NPR and PBS to be.

Hall's evidence for his attack on PBS, was a link to the MRC's short-lived attempt earlier this year to push for defunding of public broadcasting by complaining about how many medical supplies could have been bought with the $75 million it got from one of the coronavirus relief bills passed by Congress. But as we pointed out, at least some of that money went toward responding to the pandemic and protecting its employees -- meaning that the MRC was effectively rooting for public broadcasting employees to get sick and die. (And it ignores the fact that the MRC itself got more than $1 million in coronavirus relief, making its complaint doubly hypocritical.)

The funny thing: If the MRC got its wish to turn PBS and NPR into the pro-Trump propaganda operations they desire, Hall would be attacking Twitter's "state-affiliated media" designation. Because the MRC cares nothing about journalism and cares everything about making sure its pro-Trump propganda dominates.

NEW ARTICLE: CNS' Intern Antics
Topic: CNSNews.com
It seems the main activity of student interns at CNSNews.com is pestering members of Congress with biased gotcha questions. PLUS: Why has CNS let its interns from Liberty U. write fawning articles about the school and its Trump-supporting president? Read more >>