Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily is clinging to the notion that the Capitol riot was instigated by Antifa -- not far-right pro-Trump extremists -- and it's (mostly) not letting the truth get in the way. Read more >>
Monday, April 12, 2021
NEW ARTICLE: Fake News At WND, Capitol Riot Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily is clinging to the notion that the Capitol riot was instigated by Antifa -- not far-right pro-Trump extremists -- and it's (mostly) not letting the truth get in the way. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:04 AM EDT
Sunday, April 11, 2021
MRC Demands Biden Response On Cuomo, Then Dismisses It As 'Lame'
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center has been hypocritically hammering on sexual harassment allegations against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo despite its record ignoring or mocking similar claims made against President Trump. It even tried to drag President Biden into the story -- then deemed his response not good enough, as detailed in a March 15 item by Scott Whitlock:
Of course, the MRC was sounding like a Republican operative in attacking Biden and the media. The MRC is an arm of the Republican Party, after all, not a legitimate "media research" organization. Needless to say, Whitlock didn't explain exactly why Biden needed to comment on Biden in the first place, or what he thought would have been an appropriate response. (We don't recall Whitlock having any problem with the many "slimy" things Donald Trump has said.) His only goal was to attack Biden and try to link him to Cuomo.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:21 PM EDT
CNS Effectively Censors Gaetz Scandal
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com loved to quote Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, because he's so eminently quotable in pushing right-wing talking points. Some examples over the past year:
That last article appeared on March 25, a few days before it was revealed that the Department of Justice is investigating whether Gaetz had an inappropriate relationship with a 17-year-old giril and whether it constituted sex trafficking.CNS was initially quick to defend Gaetz, with a March 31 article by Susan Jones that uncritically recounted Gaetz defending himself in an appearance on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show: Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), an outspoken conservative and a supporter of President Donald Trump, says he's being smeared by The New York Times and extorted by a former Justice Department official over what he calls a false allegation of sex trafficking. But Jones buried the odd exchange in which Gaetz brought up a dinner he attended with Carlson and "a friend of mine, you'll remember her, and she was actually threatened by the F.B.I., told that if she wouldn't cop to the fact that somehow I was involved in some pay-for-play scheme, that she could face trouble." And that's the last time Gaetz has been mentioned in a CNS article. That means CNS readers don't know that the DOJ official has denied Gaetz's extortion claims, about reports that Gaetz showed photos of nude women he claims to have slept with, or that the House Ethics Committed has launched an investigation into Gaetz. It appears that if it's bad news about a conservative, it's not news at CNS.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:01 PM EDT
Saturday, April 10, 2021
MRC's Graham Still Trying To Insist Trump Had A Vaccine Distribution Plan
Topic: Media Research Center Two months after Donald Trump left the White House, the Media Research Center was still defending him and his dubious behavior. We've already documented how the MRC rushed to Trump's defense when the Biden administration accurately pointed out that the Trump administration had no plan forcoronavirus vaccine distribution beyond shipping the vaccines to state. Yet Tim Graham dedicated his March 17 column to attacking Vice President Kamala Harris for pointing that out. "Team Biden has a persistent lying problem when it comes to the Trump administration’s supposedly terrible record on vaccines," he asserted, then acted as the second coming odf Kayleigh McEnany:
Graham lept from that to rehash the MRC's old arguments:
Um, didn't Trump blame Obama for everything that went wrong under his administration> Remember: For Graham and the MRC, the narrative is everything, facts less so.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:18 AM EDT
Farah's Biden Derangement Syndrome Leads To Rant Against Biden Speech
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah has a raging case of Biden Derangement syndrome, and he served up a concentrated example of it in his March 12 column, in which he ranted about a speech Biden gave on the coronavirus pandemic. Farah purported to highlight the "lies and errors" in the speech, but instead just served up another anti-Biden rant, with a lot of declaring "Stop the tape!" to inject more ranting and petty personal attacks -- and serving up his own lies and errors in the process. Let's break it down, shall we?
(Actually, the suicide rate decreased last year.)
(You can find them right here, Joe.)
(When people of color have been the hardest hit by the pandemic, why not?)
(In fact, more than 20 percent went toward coronavirus-related public health efforts, and that "foreign aid" is targeted toward coronavirus relief efforts internationally.)
(Actually, Trump had no distribution plan beyond shipping vaccines to states.)
Well, at least Farah is acknowledging that Biden is president, which is a step up from him falsely claiming that Biden stole the election.
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:47 AM EDT
Updated: Saturday, April 10, 2021 2:48 AM EDT
Friday, April 9, 2021
MRC Lies Again About What Harris Said About Vaccines Before The Election
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Reserarch Center can't stop lying about Vice President Kamala Harris and what she said about the coronavirus vaccine before the election. IN a March 16 post, Kristine Marsh ranted that "Kamala Harris and other Democrats spent months leading up to the November election spreading dangerous vaccine misinformation with the media’s help," adding:
Marsh is being dishonest. As we've documented, Trump was cynically using the promise of a vaccine as a re-election ploy, an given Trump indisputable record of telling lies, there was ample reason to doubt him. Marsh also censored what Harris said at the time: that she "would not trust Donald Trump" given his reputation for muzzling health officials who spoke publicly about inconvenient facts, and that she would require "a credible source of information that talks about the efficacy and the reliability" of a vaccine. In other words, Marsh is lying when she claimed Harris and other Democrats spread "dangerous vaccine misinformation"; they pointed out that Fauci and other actual medical experts were the ones to be trusted on a vaccine, not Trump. Further: If Harris and Democrats really did spread "dangerous vaccine misinformation," why is the group most likely to reject getting a vaccine white Republicans? Were they listening to Harris? Unlikely. Harris was telling the truth; Marsh is not. That makes the MRC look like partisan hacks.
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:44 PM EDT
WND Falsely Suggests HuffPost Layoffs Tied To 'Deplatforming' Calls
Topic: WorldNetDaily Back in January, WorldNetDaily spread fake news by falsely trying to link a drop in a company's stock price to a boycott. Joe Kovacs tried something similar in a March 9 WND article, under the headline: "Massive layoffs at Huffington Post after it pushed to deplatform right":
Kovacs seemed to concede that there's no link between some HuffPost writers' calls for "deplatforming" others and the layoffs, but he stuck with that framing anyway. Of course, Kovacs wasn't going to mention that his own employer underwent massive layoffs at the start of its current ongoing financial crisis.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:28 PM EDT
CNS Loved Trump's 'Covfefe' -- But Bashes Omar's 'Obvious Grammar Mistake'
Topic: CNSNews.com Call it a tale of two typos. Back in May 2017, CNSNews.com reporter Susan Jones got quite the charge out of Donald Trump's "covfefe" tweet. "With six words – only five that make sense – President Donald Trump’s midnight tweet took the Internet by storm early Wednesday morning, even though no one is sure what he meant," she wrote, adding: "Before the tweet was removed, Twitter users had fun with 'covfefe,' some joking it's Russian for “I resign”; and others suggesting it may be the nuclear code." But on March 15, an anonymous CNS writer felt the need to devote an entire article to highlighting a typo in a tweet by Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar:
The anonymous CNS reporter then felt the need to mock Omar's education, which it didn't do to Trump: Omar earned a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and International Studies from North Dakota State University. In a question-and-answer sheet posted on the North Dakota State University website, Omar was asked: “How did NDSU prepare you?” She responded: “NDSU provided an open and tolerant learning environment in which I was able to form my own independent and informed opinions with the help of a great faculty, student body and curriculum.” CNS has previously given disproportionately negative attention to Omar before, hyping controversial remarks she made while downplaying similarly controversial remarks by a Republican congressman. It even put an inflammatory, negative headline on an article that was surprisingly fair to Omar.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:15 AM EDT
Thursday, April 8, 2021
MRC Psaki-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Watch
Topic: Media Research Center Curtis Houck's template for review White House press secretary Jen Psaki's briefings is a rigid one: Psaki is invariably evil, rude and deceptive, and the Fox News reporters asking her hostile questions are invariably heroes. On March 5, Houck didn't have his man-crush Steve Doocy, but another Fox News reporter was the hero with Psaki, of course, as the pinata:
Fortunately for Houck, he was able to crush on Doocy some more on March 10:
But rather than do a straightfoward presentation of the discussion that led to that, Houck buried most of it in a transcript and pretended to read Psaki's mind by declaring that she "made clear she was already tired of Doocy" while "Doocy waited her out," then accusing Psaki of "misdirection" and declaring that The next day, Houck was in full man-crush mode -- and full Psaki hostility mode -- gushing under the headline "Peter Doocy Wipes the Floor With WH, Schools Jen Psaki on COVID at the Border":
Houck's beloved Kayleigh McEnany played word games with reporters, but he never called her out on it like he does with Psaki. Houck gushed some more on March 13 that "Doocy again went toe-to-toe with Press Secretary Jen Psaki on the border crisis and school reopenings, but in a sign that patience might be wearing thin with some liberal journalists, Doocy had assistance from multiple reports on the border as well as hard-hitting questions of their own on the coronavirus and Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY)." And he more Pska-sneering, whining that "Psaki took the easy way out, refusing to deviate one iota from her previous talking points." Again, the same thing could be said of his beloved McEnany.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:03 PM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, July 6, 2021 9:35 PM EDT
WND Touts Book Of AAPS-Affiliated Fringe Pusher Of Dubious COVID Meds
Topic: WorldNetDaily You may remember Joel S. Hirschhorn for his imaginary "indictment" of Anthony Fauci by a "grand jury" impaneled in his own fevered brain. That craziness, though, may be the thing that keeps WND publishing him. Affiliated with the fringe-right Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Hirschhorn got WND to publish an excerpt from his new book which is also a screed against Fauci for failing to buy into the right-wing hype over dubious medications like hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for coronavirus. He conspiratorially declared:
Hirschhorn went on to cite what he claimed were "credible sources" on thealleged efficacy of hydroxychloroquine. They include Simone Gold of another fringe group, America's Frontline Doctors -- of which Hirschhorn is also a member -- and who we last saw taking part in the Capitol riot; and Zev Zelenko, an early pusher of HCQ that WND and AAPS heavily promoted last year. Hirschhorn then sounds like he's auditioning for a job at the Media Research Center:
Hirschhorn then went on to rant against studies showing that HCQ and ivermectin -- another dubious medication embraced by the likes of WND and AAPS -- are ineffective and, thus, interfere with his activism (and, presumably, his current income stream):
He added, "A website particularly useful for getting information on prophylaxis is COVID19criticalcare.com. It tends to focus on the use of IVM rather than HCQ." This website is operated by something called the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, which was formed to push unapproved treatments like ivermectin and HCQ. In other words, if you've read Hirschhorn's rantings at WND, it seems you've pretty much already read his book.
Posted by Terry K.
at 5:02 PM EDT
Updated: Thursday, April 8, 2021 6:51 PM EDT
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Post-Riot Cleanup
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center labored hard to distance conservatives from the right-wing, pro-Trump Capitol riot -- even though MRC chief Brent Bozell endorsed the anger behind it and the election-fraud conspiracy theories that led up to it. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:48 PM EDT
CNS Somehow Gets 5 Stories Out Of Biden Tripping On Stairs
Topic: CNSNews.com It's part of CNSNews.com's editorial agenda to spread the narrative that President Biden is going senile. So when Biden tripped on the stairway to Air Force One, CNS was ON IT, somehow cranking out five stories' worth of related content, four of which appeared on March 19, the day of the incident. An anonymous CNS employee -- why is that employee withholding their byline for this apparently important story? -- breathless reported in the lead story:
Emphasizing Biden's age is another way CNS tries to feed into the right-wing Biden-is-senile narrative. This wasw followed by another anonymously written story highlightig that "A video posted on YouTube by the Reagan Library, shows then-President Ronald Reagan walking down the stairs from Air Force One—while not holding the railing—and then walking back up the stairs, while occasionally not holding the railing, and responding to reporters yelling questions at him. The video was made on Aug. 10, 1982 when Reagan was 71 years old." This anonymous writer also complained that "When Reagan was running for President at 69 years of age, the New York Times repeatedly reported on assertions that he was 'too old' for the job." A third anonymously written story went back to the senility angle:
the anonymous writer did not explain how these tywo events are connected. The fourth story that day did, surprisingly, carry a byline, that of Craig Bannister. He's apparently proud enough of his attempt to dunk on Biden to put his name on it, unlike his fellow CNS employee[s]:
Bannister concluded: "Biden will turn 79 years old on November 20." Bannister returned on March 23 to uncritically help Donald Trump try to dunk on Biden:
Given that Trump traversed that ramp in June, the claim that it was icy doesn't hold water (or ice). The ramp, despite Trump's claims to the contrary, was not particularly steep. By contrast, a search of the CNS archive reveals that it devoted exactly zero articles about Trump's awkward walk down the ramp at West Point or his even more awkward attempt to drink water there. It did get a passing mention in an article four days after the incident that quoted Nancy Pelosi referencing it.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:30 AM EDT
Updated: Thursday, November 18, 2021 11:49 PM EST
Wednesday, April 7, 2021
MRC Writer Pushes Biased Economists To Attck 'Liberal' Claims About Economy
Topic: Media Research Center You know you've ticked off the Media Research Center in making a logical point when it essentyially does duplicate posts to attack you. Back in February, New York Times columnist David Leonhardt made the logical observation that the econom, as judged by GDP growth and job creation, does better under Democratic presidents than Republican ones, adding that "the pattern is so strong and long-lasting that coincidence alone is unlikely to be the only explanation." Enter MRC writer Joseph Vazquez, who huffed in a Feb. 4 post:
Vazquez, however, failed to disclose (beyond embedded links on their names) that these economists are not objective but, rather, quite biased. Mitchell is co-founder of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a conservative think tank that loves flat taxes and offshore tax havens; Edwards is with the libertarian Cato Institute; and Riedl works for another right-wing think tank, the Manhattan Institute. In other words, these are exactly the positions anyone would expect them to take. For some reason, Vazquez was so annoyed by Leonhardt's op-ed that he attacked it again a month later in a March 11 post, apparently because he scored an "exclusive interview" with Riedl, one of the (biased) economists he had previously cited:
While Vazquez did identify Riedl's employer, he did not explain its political slant and, thus, Riedl could just as easily be described as living in his own ideological cocoon. Vazquez concluded by whining that "Leonhardt has not been the only one to advocate on behalf of the Democrats, however," citing other assessment reaching the same conclusion. Of course, Vazquez would never describe himself or Riedl as "advocating on behalf of the Republicans," even though that's exactly what they're doing. This wasn't the only time Vazquez called on biased economists to attack a viewpoint deemed "liberal." In January, he trotted out Mitchell to help him rant against Washington Post article he ripped as "propaganda that former President Donald Trump’s economy was terrible for minorities." In a March 3 post, he called on Cato's Edwards to bash Times columnist Paul Krugman for having "attacked capitalism for promoting 'too much choice' for American consumers,'" touting how "Edwards ripped Krugman for blaming American capitalism while ignoring that government deserves much of the blame for making life more complicated for American consumers." As before, Vazquez didn't explain the bias from which Edwards and Mitchell are operating.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:00 PM EDT
CNS Continues To Hide Pro-Trump Columnist's Links As Trump Adviser
Topic: CNSNews.com We've documented how CNSNews.com has allowed Ken Blackwell to advocate on behalf of President Trump while rarely disclosing that he was an official Trump surrogate and adviser to his re-electrion campaign. Trump may be gone, but Blackwell is still defending him -- and CNS is still not disclosing his ties to Trump. In a Feb. 8 column, Blackwell attacked "Democrat Sen. [sic] Pat Leahy" for presiding over Trump's second impeachment trial, declaring that "Leahy’s usurpation of [Chief Justice John] Roberts’ role in the second impeachment trial of Trump highlights how this whole affair is unconstitutional." The end-of-column bio described him as "a Distinguished Fellow for Human Rights and Constitutional Governance at the Family Research Council, and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission." In a column the next day, headlined "Election Integrity: The Case For Trump's Acquittal," Blackwell did actually admit he was a Trump adviser, if only because he was complaining that Trump didn't take his advice not to use the term "law and order" because it turned off black voters and "suburban white voters" and hoping Trump takes his advice on how to argue that the presiential election may have been stolen from Trump by focusing on "massive irregularities" and not "wide-eyed conspiracy theories." Blackwell spent his March 16 column huffing that the New York Times was using "its hatred of all things Trump" to fight against Republican-led "election integrity" efforts:
CNS returned to not mentioning Blackwell's Trump ties, with the end-of-column bio stating only that he "is a senior Fellow for Human Rights and Constitutional Governance at the Family Research Council" and "former Secretary of State of Ohio."
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:55 PM EDT
Newsmax Columnist Has Fauci Derangement Syndrome
Topic: Newsmax You know you're in for a doozy when Newsmax feels compelled (as it has before) to top a column with the disclaimer "The following is authored by a non-clinician." And indeed, Bill Robinson's March 9 column is little more than a screed against Anthony Fauci:
Ah, yes, the Great Barrington Declaration, which argued against lockdowns and in favor of promoting herd immunity against coronavirus -- even though nobody can predict exactly who would die from what would essentially be a global chicken pox party. But Robinson has more anti-Fauci hate to spew:
Not sure what coronavirus has to do with the "Marxist left," but then, we've never spent any time with Robinson to find out.
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:42 PM EDT
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