Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com covered the presidential debates the way you'd expect it to: a pro-Trump, anti-Biden slant with extra damage control after Trump failed to explicitly disavow white supremacists. Read more >>
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
NEW ARTICLE: CNS Brings Its Bias To The Debates
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com covered the presidential debates the way you'd expect it to: a pro-Trump, anti-Biden slant with extra damage control after Trump failed to explicitly disavow white supremacists. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:14 PM EST
More Fauci-Bashing At WND
Topic: WorldNetDaily Columnist Joel Hirschhorn's imaginary grand jury indictment of Anthony Fauci was the most bizarre attack on the government infectious disease expert published by WorldNetDaily. But there have been other recent ones as well. An Oct.. 12 column by Elizabeth Lee Vliet -- a doctor affiliated with the fringe-right Association of American Physicians and Surgeons -- once again shilled for hydroxychloroquine, asserting: "The failed Fauci model –telling patients to go home, self-quarantine, do nothing and go to the ER if they get sicker – exacerbated by the FDA's statements discouraging HCQ use, has caused the U.S. COVID death rate to be in the world's top 10." This was followed by an Oct. 16 rant by Brent Smith:
Smith waited until after asserting that "Trump was actually quite clear" to actually directly quote what he said, declaring that "Trump went on to do what a leader should – instill confidence, not fear, and trust in the American people." And he wasn't done with his Fauci-bashing:
Since then, of course, it was Trump who has been fired, not Fauci.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:03 AM EST
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
MRC Lets Mark Levin Rant That Facebook 'Censored' His Falsehoods
Topic: Media Research Center Right-wing radio host Mark Levin was mad that Facebook put a block on the falsehoods he published on his page there. And his buddies at the Media Research Center was eager to give Levin a platform to vent that anger. Alexander Hall did tthe stenography job in a Nov. 2 post:
Notice Hall's framing there. In his telling, the Grenell post that Levin reposted wasn't objectively, indisputably false; it's just that fact-checkers "claimed" it was false. Despite that framing, Hall offers no evidence to contradict anything the fact-checkers found. Hall let the whining continue: Levin tweeted about another fact-check he had received earlier on November 2 as well:
The Hot Air article “Biden Stumbles Through Another Campaign Speech: ‘America Is Dead Because Of COVID-19’” included a link to a clip of Democratic nominee Joe Biden speaking about COVID-19 at a rally, proclaiming: “America is dead because of COVID-19.” But that Hot Air article now begins with an editor's note correcting the record: "The original version of this article stated that Joe Biden had said 'America’s Dead' during a campaign speech. In reality, Biden said 'Americans dead' in reference to the number of deaths caused by COVID-19. The incorrect references have been removed." And, yes, fact-checkers concur. In other words, Levin was lying about what Biden said. Despite the fact that Levin is 0-for-2 here and Facebook was entirely justified to limit the exposure given to his false claims, Hall still had to push the MRC's dubious victimization narrative. So he huffed that "Big Tech has been doing everything it can to protect Biden as the 2020 election approaches" -- while not explaining how shutting down Levin's falsehoods equated to "protecting Biden" -- and spent the rest of his post rehashing how social media limited the spread of the still-unproven New York Post story about Hunter Biden's "alleged scandalous dealings" with Ukraine. Then again, the narrative is more important than the truth as far as the MRC is concerned -- perhaps even more so when it comes to its buddy Levin.
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:08 PM EST
Updated: Tuesday, November 10, 2020 6:09 PM EST
WND Bad Takes, 'Trumpslide' Division
Topic: WorldNetDaily
-- Oct. 12 WorldNetDaily article
-- Art Moore, Nov. 2 WND article
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:17 PM EST
CNS Kept Pushing Pro-Trump Poll Findings Before Election
Topic: CNSNews.com We documented how CNSNews.com was interested in reporting on pre-election polls only if they showed President Trump winning. It kept that pattern up all the way to Election Day. Indeed, the day after we published our original report, an Oct. 19 article by managing editor Michael W. Chapman gushed over another poll by the very Trump-leaning Trafalgar Group having "place[d] Trump slightly ahead of Joe Biden in Michigan and Florida, and gives Biden a slight lead in Pennsylvania." As before, Chapman added that Trafalgar was "the only group to foresee a Donald Trump win in Michigan in 2016, and one of the few groups to forecast a Trump win in Pennsylvania in 2016." Two days later, Chapman pushed more Trafalgar polling that "currently places Trump ahead of Joe Biden in Arizona and in Florida." On Oct. 28, Chapman was Trafalgar's PR person again: "The Trafalagar [sic] Group polling firm, the only pollster to accurately foresee a Donald Trump win in Michigan in 2016, and one of the few groups to forecast a Trump win in Pennsylvania in 2016, currently places Trump ahead of Joe Biden North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania." And on Election Day, Chapman wrote as if he was drawing a check from Trafalgar:
Of course, as it turned out, Trump appears to have lost at least four of those states, suggesting there was something wrong with their model, which weights its polling to account for the "social desiriability bias" of purportedly shy Trump voters. Chapman hasn't written a thing about Trafalgar since the election. For all of this love toward a shiny new polling firm, CNS didn't completely forget its first love, the Trump-skewing Rasumussen. On Oct. 22, Craig Bannister touted how "Rasmussen’s daily presidential tracking poll released Thursday shows that the percentage of U.S. likely voters approving of President Donald Trump’s job performance has risen above fifty percent for the first day this month," adding that "Black voters registered 37% approval." On Oct. 27, Bannister served up another piece of Rasmussen's biased polling:
Chapman even tried to frame a finding from normally reputable pollster Gallup as somehow pro-Trump:
If job approval ratings are an indicator of election performance, it's clear that Gallup was much more correct than Rasmussen. Chapman and Bannister won't admit that, of course. UPDATE: Chapman got in one more pre-election poll to fit his template, using a Nov. 2 article to tout how "a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows that Trump has pulled into the lead with a strong 48% support compared to Biden's 41% support."
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:35 AM EST
Updated: Wednesday, November 11, 2020 10:05 PM EST
Monday, November 9, 2020
After Trashing Inaccurate Election Polls, MRC Touts Dubious Finding Based On ... Trump's Pollster
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center spent the days immediately after the presidential election gloating that the polls showing a Biden blowout were wrong. Jeffrey Lord proclaimed that "the media and the polls blew it. Big time," and Tim Graham devoted an entire column to ranting that pollsters "are damaging the legitimacy of our democracy, not helping it. When they’re this off base, they lead to both sides of the divide feeling the system is rigged. What's obviously rigged are these polls, easily categorized as an alternative reality. It’s hard not to see intentional rigging, not some kind of accidental bias." So it might be a little surprising to learn that an anonymously written Nov. 9 piece under the headline "FACT: Big Media and Big Tech Stole the 2020 Election" is actually based on ... a poll:
Obviously, the MRC is not going to mention that McLaughlin has long been a notoriously unreliable pollster -- receiving a C/D rating from FiveThirtyEight.com, perhaps best known for a 2014 poll for then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor that showed him up by 34 points two weeks before a Republican primary against opponent Dave Brat; Brat ended up defeating Cantor by 11 points. But there's one other thing the MRC is not telling you: As we documented when the MRC used the company to advance another right-wing anti-media narrative, McLaughlin & Associates worked for Trump's re-election campaign. That's a blatant -- and undisclosed -- conflict of interest. Despite bering on record denouncing the entire polling process as shoddy and biased, MRC put out a statement from Brent Bozell proclaiming the results of its own poll as "indisputable fact":
It cannot be true that all polls are inaccurate except the ones bought and paid for by the MRC. But that's the fiction the MRC is going with. UPDATE: The promotion of this story at the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, similarly censored the fact that McLaughlin was Trump's pollster and failed to explain why this poll should be trusted when it has attacked the entire polling industry and shoddy and inaccurate.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:10 PM EST
Updated: Tuesday, November 10, 2020 11:03 AM EST
CNS Published Op-Ed By Admitted Criminal Before Election
Topic: CNSNews.com How desperate was CNSNews.com to see President Trump get re-elected? It published an op-ed by an admitted criminal that it pulled from a far-right conspiracy site. The Oct. 27 op-ed was by Michael Flynn, the onetime Trump national security adviser who admitted to lying to the FBI, though he has since been trying to retract that admission. CNS' parent, the Media Research Center, falsely claimed that Flynn was "exonerated" after the Trump Justice Department decided to stop pursuing the case. His rant is a pretty standard right-wing screed:
Needless to say, CNS made sure not to mention Flynn's criminality. At the end of his op-ed, an editor's note stated, "A version of this article originally appeared on The Western Journal." That's the website that seems to be running WorldNetDaily these days,and it's a descendant of the right-wing nonprofit journalistic group that WND founder Joseph Farah created back in the 1990s. It was so into pushing right-wing conspiracies that it got blacklisted by social media, and it has been trying to act somewhat more legit under a slightly altered name. CNS sullied what little journalistic reputation it has by publishing this, and Trump lost anyway.
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:01 PM EST
Updated: Monday, November 9, 2020 3:15 PM EST
WND's Elizabeth Farah Still Invoking Christianity To Get Trump Re-Elected
Topic: WorldNetDaily In her husband's stead, WorldNetDaily's Elizabeth Farah has been keeping up the website's far-right poliltics, including sycophantic love of President Trump and vicious hatred of Joe Biden. Farah kicked off her Oct. 30 video by declaring that a Biden presidency will bring "wickedness, tyranny, destruction that is unimaginable, at least to me." She then went off on an article by pastor John Piper bashing Trump by pointing out that since he "models self-absorbed, self-exalting boastfulness, he models the most deadly behavior in the world. He points his nation to destruction," and that Trump's support of anti-abortion policies aren't enough to warrant his support. (WND columnist Michael Brown also attacked Piper over this.) In her lengthy response -- the video runs an hour and 40 minutes -- Farah declared that Piper's comments "to not only be unconvincing, but -- I'm going to say it -- incoherent, dangerous, harmful and without proper and sufficient Biblical foundation," adding that "if Piper's influence wit Christians affected the outcome of this election negatively for donald Trump's re-election, I believe Piper would be guilty of doing great harm." She accused Piper of "erasing the distinction between greater and lesser sins, which is a form of Christian or Biblical relativism. ... I'm asking myself, how many dead babies outweigh a boastful comment on Twitter by our president?" The ranting continued:
Farah listed a group of Democratic politicians and huffed: "All these men and women, to a greater or lesser degree, have been complicit in attempting a coup d'etat of our country. they've been bearing false witness, devising conspiracies, slandering, perverting justice, speaking lies and hypocrisy, oppressing and persecuting innocent people in their vicious desire to circumvent the law and will of the American people who put Mr. Trump in to office, all to achieve the overthrow of our government and to eject President Trump from his presidency under the color and fiction of law." But isn't that same thing what Farah's WND did to Barack Obama throughout his presidency? Where's her sincere repentence for that? Nowhere that we've seen. Farah laughed as she noted that Trump "tweets things that would fall under the Sermon on the Mount admonitions by our Savior, to say it lightly. Then she played dumb about Farah's amorality: "I don't really know about Donald Trump's supposed vulgarities and his boastulness and his so-called divisiveness." Responding to Piper's contention that "It is naive to think that a man can be effectively pro-life and manifest consistently the character traits that lead to death — temporal and eternal," Farah huffed, "the most pro-life president since there was such a thing needed. Mr. Piper, give me the name of one president in our history that was more effectively pro-life than Donald Trump. ... After the appointment of three pro-life justices, I believe that Donald Trump's tweets have not led to more death than the life that will be -- that has been lost and the live will be saived if he continues in office, assuring good things in the courts." Farah then conducted a Nov. 2 interview Farah did with the messianic rabbi who was at one time WND's would-be cash cow, Jonathan Cahn. Cahn asserted that Trump's election meant that "God gave us a window ... an extension of time," asserting that "it's not about the personality, it's not about the tweets, it's about the issues," which for both Cahn and Farah boils down to abortion. Cahn's feed cut out during Cahn's rant that Trump is "turning back death" while Democrats have "pledged to strike down the Hyde Amendment." If Trump doesn't get re-election, Cahn asserted, it could bring "not only a fall of the nation but also judgment." Farah once declared that it's "Christian moral relativism" for Christians not to support Trump, to which Cahn responded by depicting Trump as a jerkass fireman who "might break a few things but he's going to save your house." Farah then went the Divine Donald route: "Going on your analogy, if I were literally going get my life saved from drowning, would I stop to say, are you a Sermon on the Mount kind of a guy, do you turn the other cheek? I want to make sure before I allow you save me and my children who are drowning next to me that you are right with God." She later proclaimed that Trump is "God's blessing on America." Cahn also ranted against the proposed Eqality Act, misleadingly insisting that it means "government is officially not going to recognize gender, male and female. ... Once this goes through, forget about Christian bakers, forget about Christian florists, forget about Christian photographers, that's all gonna be wiped out. Also, there will be men, boys in girls' rooms and in girls' sports. ... And it may come down to telling ministries and churches -- ministries, you must hire those who are living blatantly against God for your ministry, which could mean the destruction of ministry." Needless to say, neither of them think Trump might have been sent by God as a harbinger, not a blessing.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:08 AM EST
Sunday, November 8, 2020
MRC Tries To Dismiss Revealed Identity of 'Anonymous' Author
Topic: Media Research Center When the New York Times published a 2018 op-ed by anonymous Trump administration senior official who claimed he was part of a group in the White House keeping President Trump from acting on his worst instincts, the Media Research Center hated it. Nicholas Fondacaro whined that the author "pompously painted them self as part of a secret, superhero-like team in the White House keeping the wildly unstable President from harming us all," Kyle Drennen cheered how Megyn Kelly "blasted the article for trying to 'subvert the President' and 'dripping with sanctimony,'" and Jeffrey Lord argued that the Times was "a Deep State co-conspirator against a sitting President of the United States" for publishing a "self-righteous idiot." A few days before the election, the anonymous author revealed himself as Miles Taylor, then the deputy chief of staff (and later chief of staff) to then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Unsurprisingly, the MRC cranked out a bunch of posts on that too. Fondcaro returned to whine some more, insisting that Taylor's original allegations against Trump were "unsubstantiated," that he was a "serial liar" since he denied he was Anonymous, and that his first interview after revealing himself "was filled with unsupported accusations of 'Nazi-like' policies and delusions of grandeur with comparisons to the authors of the Federalist Papers." Rich Noyes insisted Taylor was a "nobody" and a "low-level flunkie." Kayla Sargent complained that Taylor later took a job at Google, "as if we needed any more proof of Google’s leftist leanings." Joseph Norris groused that "the timing of this announcement was suspicious. Instead of reprimanding him for having lied to CNN on-air about whether he was Anonymous, they've brought Taylor on to further bash Trump," adding that during an interview CNN "did not ask for evidence of the allegations, documents, conversations, or witnesses to bolster his claims about the President." Curtis Houck sneered that Taylor "became 2020's media equivalent of Al Capone’s vault." Tim Graham quickly cranked out a column calling the Taylor reveal an attempt by the media to distract from Hunter Biden's alleged scandal, denigrated him as "someone barely old enough to be elected to the Senate," huffed that his anonymity was a "smelly veil" and complained that the book Taylor wrote wasn't given away: "Taylor’s publisher, Hachette, churned out a first print run of 500,000 copies. Such public-spirited anonymity was going to make some people a tidy profit." But none of Taylor's MRC detractors offered any evidence that Taylor was wrong, which is really all you need to know -- and which is why Noyes returned to attack the Times for originally describing Taylor as a "senior administration official," huffing that it used "those magic words to confer a sense of knowledge and authority on its otherwise anonymous sources who may hold a position few would consider 'senior.'" He further complained that "A Nexis search of Times articles shows the phrase 'senior administration official' or 'senior White House official' was used 1,104 times from January 20, 2017 through October 29, 2020." Noyes didn't tell you that his employer has a wildly inconsistent record on the use of anonymous sources.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:51 PM EST
Updated: Sunday, November 8, 2020 9:57 PM EST
CNS' Jeffrey Whines Biden's Victory Speech Interrupted A Football Game
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey is a bit of a football fanatic -- so much so that, for some unexplained reason, today's CNS front page includes a link to a 2012 column by him gushing that the Princeton-Harvard game that year was "football as it was meant to be." But that love -- on top of his apparent seething hatred for all things liberal -- led him to post what may already be the worst take on Joe Biden's defeat of President Trump. He actually felt the need to write an entire article to petulantly whining that Biden's victory speech interrupted a football game:
That's the caliber of "news" coverage we've sadly come to expect from CNS. Expect much more petulance as the Biden administration proceeds.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:31 AM EST
Saturday, November 7, 2020
MRC Does An Ad For Biden Accuser's Book
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center never cared about Tara Reade and her sexual misconduct accusations against Joe Biden -- it hypocritically used her as a cudgel to bash Biden, though it smeared or outright censored women who made similar (or worse) accusations against Donald Trump. So it's unsurprising that the MRC basically did an ad for Reade's new book. Scott Whitlock gushed in an Oct. 31 post:
Whitlock is surely pleased that Reade is parroting the MRC's own rhetoric about "liberal media titans." He followed with lots of blockquoting from Reade's book and a declaration that "Reade ended with a message of hope, despite the trauma she suffered, despite the corruption of the mainstream media." Needless to say, Whitlock is not going to tell you about Reade's history of manipulative and deceitful behavior, nor the dozens of Biden staffers who dispute Reade's accounting of events. Nor did he breathe the names of E. Jean Carroll and Amy Dorris, who are merely the latest Trump accusers. Whitlock concuded his ad with the expected link-filled sales pitch: "The e-book version of Left Out is available now and can be ordered here and on Amazon here. The hardcover will be available January 1, 2021. (Also available for pre-order here.) If you want the truth that journalists have hidden, read this book." Whitlock will never say the same about any Trump accuser. Hypocrite.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:45 AM EST
Updated: Saturday, November 7, 2020 11:10 PM EST
Fake News: WND Spreads Lie About Biden
Topic: WorldNetDaily Remember how WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian keeps insisting that WND publishes the truth, despite all evidence to the contrary? Well, we caught WND lying again. An anonymously written Oct. 26 article claimed:
WND is lying. As actual news outlets reported, Biden was talking to interviewer George Lopez. And there's no evidence Jill Biden actually "muttered 'Trump' under her breath." Kupelian once huffed, "the truth – what a concept!" He might want to try it sometime, particularly if he wants WND to survive.
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:14 AM EST
Updated: Saturday, November 7, 2020 3:15 AM EST
Friday, November 6, 2020
MRC Frets Over Newspaper Endorsements
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center, it seems, can't agree on the importance of newspaper endorsements for presidential candidates -- even from post to post. On Oct. 20, Scott Whitlock raged against the very first presidential endorsement made by the country's largest newspaper, USA Today, because it was for Joe Biden:
By contrast, Tim Graham spent an entire Oct. 26 post dismissing the importance of the New Hampshire Union Leader, a longtime conservartive newspaper, endorsing Biden. He started by attacking CNN's for getting something wrong regarding the endorsement, then admitting he was right after all:
Graham then complained that Cillizza's statement that "It's hard to overstate the influence of the Union Leader in conservative circles" was "false" because it had endorsed Chris Christie in the 2016 Republican primary and not Trump. We would remind Graham that his boss, Brent Bozell, supported Ted Cruz in 2016 before he and the rest of the MRC did the big Trump flip. Does he think his boss lacks influence? When the Union Leader editorial pointed out that Trump was "forcing a reexamination of what words like "Republican" and "conservative" even mean, Graham went all ranty:
We would also remind Graham that Terry Jeffrey, editor in chief of the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com, is such a Trump fanboy that he can't quite bring himself to criticize the person who's most responsible for running up that $7 trillion debt. The MRC flipped back to caring about newspaper endorsements three days later, when Geoffey Dickens complained about all the newspapers endorsing Biden:
Dickens avoided mentioning the relevant that all of those newspapers have an explicitly conservative agenda and/or conservative owners.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:23 PM EST
CNS Touts Pre-Election GDP Numbers To Help Trump
Topic: CNSNews.com The Trump-fliuffers at CNSNews.com put in one last pre-election effort to boost his campaign, managing to get a whopping four articles out of a relatively good-looking GDP number. "GDP Grew at Record 33.1% in 3rd Quarter," proclaimed the headline of Susan Jones' Oct. 29 article, complete with photo of a grinning, thumbs-up Trump to reinforce the message that he should be given credit. Jones reinforce it further in the copy:
Jones followed that with a full five paragraphs of Murtaugh shilling for his boss. That was followed by an anonymously written article that tried to dunk on Nancy Pelosi for criticizing the economy the day before the GDP number came out:
Craig Bannister checked in with a blog post about Trump-loving Fox News personality Geraldo Rivera complaining that Trump won't getcredit for the GDP growth because "Big Media is so toxic." Bannister also gave space to Rivera to spin away the growth in coronavirus cases in the U.S. because his critics "they should realize that the virus has surged in other countries, too – and they can’t blame Trump for that." Finally, CNS sent an intern to Capitol Hill to ask Pelosi, "The economy grew at an annual rate of 33.1 percent in the third quarter. Does President Trump deserve any credit for that?" Pelosi responded with the argably more accurate point that the CARES Act, which pumped billions into the economy, deserved the credit for the GDP post. CNS loves to send interns to pester members of Congress.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:17 AM EST
Thursday, November 5, 2020
Bozell's Conspiracy Theory: Polls Showing Biden With Big Lead Were Faked
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center' Brent Bozell is not taking the possiblity that Joe Biden may win the presidential election very well. He issued a statement concocting a conspiracy theory that polls about the election were "deliberately wildly wrong" in order to "suppress the vote" for Trump:
Needless to say, Bozell offers no evidence to back up his paranoid conspiracy theory. Bozell also issued a video claming that the MRC is "going to show the supression that took place," as well as other conspiratorial claims to be made in an upcoming "explosive report" that will purport to prove that "the national news media stole the 2020 campaign." The creeping WorldNetDaily-ization of the MRC continues apace.
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:10 PM EST
Updated: Thursday, November 5, 2020 3:17 PM EST
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