MRC Has A New Wealthy Liberal To Fearmonger About
Topic: Media Research Center

For years, the Media Research Center has attacked George Soros as an evil spectre for his donations to liberal causes -- so vicious is their hatred, in fact, that it has used anti-Semitic "puppet master" imagery against hi and even portrayed him as a Jew right-wingers are allowed to hate. Now there's a new rich liberal donor the MRC has decided to fearmonger about. Joseph Vazquez wrote in a May 4 post:

It turns out that the left has no problem taking “dark money” when it benefits their own political ends.

The New York Times published an explosive report naming liberal Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss as “one of the most important donors to left-leaning advocacy groups and an increasingly influential force among Democrats.”

New tax filings showed that two of Wyss’s organizations “donated $208 million from 2016 through early last year to three other nonprofit funds that doled out money to a wide array of groups that backed progressive causes and helped Democrats in their efforts to win the White House and control of Congress last year,” according to The Times. Officials from Wyss’s organizations reportedly worked on President Joe Biden’s transition team or joined his administration.

Wyss’s organizations have reportedly donated “tens of millions of dollars since 2016 to groups that opposed former President Donald J. Trump and promoted Democrats and their causes.”

Vazquez tried to make an issue about Wyss' citizenship status -- only U.,S. citizens are allowed to donate directly to political campaigns but may give to advocacy groups. No evidence is offered that Wyss broke the law.

Vazquez went on to huff: "Wyss’s organizations 'do not have to disclose many details about their finances,' so it isn’t clear 'how they have used the money originating from Mr. Wyss’s operation,' according to The Times. Wyss’s organizations also don’t have to disclose 'which donations are used for which projects,' The Times said." Vazquez has expressed no similiar concerns about dark money in conservative politics.

Vazquez found a way to work Soros into this conspiracy in a May 12 post:

A leftist “dark money” group funded with millions of dollars from both liberal billionaires George Soros and “foreign national” Hansjörg Wyss is attempting to make the atrocious and un-American H.R. 1 election overhaul bill a reality.

In addition, the group is also trying to sway lawmakers on “ D.C. statehood” and the “Voting Rights Act Amendment.”

Fox News reported yesterday that the leftist Sixteen Thirty Fund “has spent $1.3 million on internal lobbyists to push the reforms while dishing out $480,000 to outside firm Keefe Singiser Partners between 2019 and 2020, according to disclosures.” In addition, “ Maura Keefe, the former chief of staff for Democratic New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, heads up the shop.” The Fund also “paid $100,000 to Kountoupes Denham Carr & Reid to advocate on democracy reform and election integrity, including H.R. 1,” according to Fox News. Soros gave at least $16,568,483 to the Fund between 2016 and 2019. Wyss, who is of Swiss origins and has not disclosed publicly if he is even a U.S. citizen, gave a whopping $135 million to the Fund between 2016 and 2020.

Dark-money groups have been working to push Republican-backed laws across the U.S. that hinder voting rights, but Vazquez has said nothing about that.

Joseph Farah's Fauci Derangement Syndrome
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah loves his conpsiracy theories, so it's no suprrise he would latch on to some of the most noxious one regarding the coronavirus and Anthony Fauci. Farah ranted in his May 12 column:

Thanks to the excellent work by Fox News host Steve Hilton, we now know a lot about Dr. Fauci, our own Dr. Frankenstein, and the coincidence of the origins of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China. He'd been involved in the controversial gain-of-function research beginning 10 years earlier in that Dutch research lab.

The gain-of-function research quickly spread to labs all over the world, and the money was flowing in from all corners of the globe, including the United States. At the forefront, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Except that didn't actually happen. An actual news organization talked to the folks who acctually got the money Fauci OK'd:

But Robert Kessler, a spokesman for the nongovernmental organization EcoHealth Alliance that NIH funded, said claims about funding gain-of-function research are based on a misunderstanding of the grant’s role in the research. He said EcoHealth provided WIV $133,000 a year, except for $66,000 in 2020 (when the grant was terminated by the Trump administration), for a total of about $600,000.

“The NIH has not funded gain-of-function work,” Kessler said in email exchanges. “EcoHealth Alliance was funded by the NIH to conduct study of coronavirus diversity in China. From that award, we subcontracted work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to help with sampling and lab capacity.” He said the citation in the paper was mainly the result of researchers’ desire to cite any possible research that contributed to the findings, with much of the funding coming from the National Natural Science Foundation of China. (Another funder listed was USAID’s Predict program, which helped collect animal viruses and also funded EcoHealth.)

“As described in the paper, all but two of the viruses cultured in the lab failed to even replicate,” he said. “None of them had been manipulated in order to increase their ability to spread, all the researchers did was insert S [spike] proteins in order to gauge their ability to infect human cells.”

Kessler added that “much of that work [described in the grant] wasn’t done because the grant was suspended. But GoF was never the goal here.” As he put it, “gain of function research is the specific process of altering human viruses in order to increase their ability (the titular gain of function) either to spread amongst populations, to infect people, or to cause more severe illness.”

But Farah doesn't care about facts -- he has an enemy to try and destroy from his diminished, financially challenged platform. So he ranted some on in his May 25 column:

It's time for him to go.

The man in charge of finding out to truth of how the deadly COVID-19 virus came to be.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the highest paid man on the U.S. government's payroll.

[...]

Fox's Tucker Carlson Monday provided shocking details of Fauci's "lies."

They are legion.

He knows China has been hiding the truth as he has.

Meanwhile, those of us that pursued the truth have been vilified, shunned, canceled.

The Chinese-controlled World Health Organization abruptly lost funding from the U.S. government during President Trump's reign. But it was reinstated by Joe Biden, without preconditions and with full funding, ensuring the cover-up would continue.

Is there something that needs investigation more?

The virus played such an important role in the U.S. election. Should we start by investigating that?

Think of all the disinformation that has been spun since Trump left office.

Heaven help us!

Farah is making the mistake of trusting a fellow conspiracist in Carlson, whose attacks on Fauci have fallen apart.

The next day, Farah tried to make a big deal out of Fauci saying in 2017 that he expected President Trump to have to deal with a surprise disease outbreak during his presidency -- a threat all presidents have had to face. But Farah downplayed that part, instead adding: "Can anyone think why it would not be a surprise to Fauci? He helped develop it!"

On June 4, Farah went on a tirade about Fauci being an evolutionist:

I don't believe in evolution. I believe it's a fairy tale. I believe God made us in His image – just as the Bible describes. Why should we not believe God about the way mankind was created but believe He sent a Messiah who could give us eternal life and forgive our sins?

Evolution is not a theory worth science's time – and time is what it needs, desperately.

But Fauci gave it all away. He was a phony from the beginning. And Trump tolerated him. Every president makes mistakes. This one was a doozy.

It's not surprising that Fauci got away with it – citing, as it were, "evolutionary theory."

This disease, COVID-19, the China virus, came out of the Wuhan Lab. That's where it was birthed. But Fauci very much wants to blame God for his mistake. And Fauci helped invent the virus with his funding of research at the lab. Whether it was a mistake or not, Fauci was hoping it would be a Frankenstein monster he helped to create.

He got his wish.

He was in on it – the whole enchilada. The Big Steal – everything. He gave it away – plus his career.

But there's something else he gave away. His humanity – even his very soul, unless I'm wrong and he plans to repent of his ghastly sins.

When a doctor turns into a villain whose actions lead to the death of millions to get his way, it's beyond sick.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Fauci should be prosecuted. They would look good together in a prison cell.

That's our Joseph Farah:thinking everyone else is evil, but the lies he has published at WND are totally justified.

MRC Psaki-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Watch
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck is always knives-out against White House press secretary Jen Psaki and always man-crushing on Fox News reporter Peter Doocy. that's demonstrated yet again in his so-called review of Psaki's May 21 press briefing, in which he bragged in the headline that Doocy and other reporter had been "eating their Wheaties":

Friday’s White House press briefing was quite a doozy as numerous reporters offered either challenging, interesting, or yes, lefty questions to Press Secretary Jen Psaki on boycotting next year’s Beijing Winter Olympics, Egypt’s role in the Hamas-Israeli ceasefire, and government spying on reporters.

As usual, Fox News’s Peter Doocy played a leading role with two rounds of Q&A. Round one started on what Doocy had tried to make into a light-hearted moment as he noticed Psaki use the phrase “the art of seeking common ground” to describe infrastructure negotiations, so he quipped: “At some point, does that become the art of the deal?”

Initially, Psaki didn’t seem to completely catch his drift: “I don't know. I think you're the professional here, Peter.”

Doocy noted he was making “a joke,” so Psaki channeled Fox-obsessed CNN host Brianna Keilar: “You're the TV star, you know? What's the Fox chyron gonna be?”

Thankfully, Doocy played along, noting that “[a]rt of seeking common ground does take up a lot of characters,” so he’ll “have to check with the control room” and only then did Psaki joke about how “art of the deal” sounded great as long as it was one “for the working people.”

We don't recall Houck cheering that reaporters ate their Wheaties when they questioned his beloved Kayleigh McEnany.

Houck was man-crushing on Doocy again over the May 24 briefing:

While Monday saw a change in the White House Briefing Room with an increase in capacity from about a dozen reporters to two dozen reporters, other aspects remained the same with Fox News’s Peter Doocy setting the tone in battling Press Secretary Jen Psaki over a bombshell Wall Street Journal story about a possible origin of the coronavirus.

And as we’ve seen on occasion, Doocy’s lines of questioning drew follow-ups from his more-liberal colleagues.

[...]

Doocy closed by asking Psaki whether the White House would assign “any amount of casualties from COVID in this country” as a red line for when they would decide to go it alone.

Clearly not amused, Psaki lectured Doocy that “the family members of the loved ones whose lives have been lost — and deserve accurate information, data, not the jumping to a conclusion, without having the information necessary to conclude the origins” and the administration shared that belief.

Like a good right-wing activist, Houck became obsessed with the issue of the source of the coronavirus in China, using the headline of his May 25 review to irrationally scream, "Answer The Question!":

With little in the way of an answer on Monday about whether the Biden administration was taking the possibility of a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology seriously, Fox News’s Peter Doocy was back on the case during Tuesday’s White House briefing asking Press Secretary Jen Psaki about Wuhan. Just as he did on Monday, he received help coming in the form of Team Biden suck-up Annie Linskey of The Washington Post.

And on another topic, Doocy also made a second attempt at seeking comment on the rising crime across major U.S. cities.

[...]

Seeing as how he wasn’t going to get anywhere, Doocy moved to crime and cited a rise in homicides over the last year of “113 percent in Minneapolis, up 38 percent in Philly, up 22 percent in Chicago” as a way to have Psaki restate what she had appeared to have done on Monday in blaming it on the volume of guns.

Psaki seemed to imply she wasn’t sure Doocy’s numbers were accurate and when she tried to pass the buck to the Trump administration, the FNC reporter interjected.

Did Houck ever demand so forcefully that McEnany answer a reporter's question Not that we can recall.  And did Houck ever give a non-right-wing reporter the pass he gave Doocy on whether his information was accurate? Again, not that we can recall.

Houck even whined when someone other than Psaki gave the briefing. Apparently angry he didn't have Psaki to kick around for a day, Houck sneeringly dismissing deputy press secretary as both a diversity hire who may not be qualified to hold the job and -- even worse by MRC standards -- a former MSNBC contributor:

The Psaki Show took a break on Wednesday from the White House Briefing Room and instead gave way to a guest episode led by her top lieutenant in Principal White House Deputy Press Secretary and former MSNBC contributor Karine Jean-Pierre. Naturally, this led more than a few liberal journalists and pundits to wax poetic about her becoming the second Black woman to lead a briefing and the first lesbian to do so.

In other words, it was quite the day for the liberal media and their never-ending guest to play diversity bingo.

The briefing itself was fairly routine, but ABC senior White House correspondent Mary Bruce gleefully asked “a personal question” about how Jean-Pierre’s “presence here today is making history,” so she wanted to know“if you could share your reflections with us.”

Way to show that you care about the plight of minorities, Curt.

WND Writer Makes Even More Bogus COVID Claims
Topic: WorldNetDaily

As much as we hate to pile on WorldNetDaily writer Art Moore, he has been a fake-news machine on the issue of coronavirus. And another one of the articles in which he falsely claimed that an article promoting ivermectin had been published in a journal that rejected it has other bogus claims as well.

The main thrust of Moore's May 10 article was to tout an interview Fox News' Tucker Carlson did with Dr. Peter McCullough, an aggressive promoter of questionable treatments like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, in which he attacked COVID vaccines, claimed thousands of people have died from them, and insisted that immunity obtained from having coronavirus is better:

He insisted it's a "false narrative that you can get the infection twice."

After 17 years, people who had the first SARS virus are still immune, and that virus is about 80% the same as the current SARS virus. And of the 111 million people in the world believed to have had COVID-19,  there have been only about 100 cases of claimed reinfection.

But in nearly every case of claimed reinfection, McCullough said, it's turned out to be a misintrepretation of a PCR test, which commonly delivers false positives.

[...]

All of the vaccines produce a viral spike protein that is pathogenic and can cause blood clotting and damage blood vessels, he explained.

[...]

Noting the risk the vaccines pose to COVID-recovered people, he said a clinical diagonosis of COVID-19 should be enough to confirm immunity.

"I hope some rational thinking comes down in America to say, Listen, proof of having COVID or proof of being a survivor recovered will be good enough," he said.

[...]

People say: "Oh, there are studies out of Denmark where there were some ambient antibodies here and people got COVID here. You must be able to get reinfected."

But those are "little red-herring cases."

"I said, Look at your nursing homes, is grandma going in the ICU over and over again? No. Does it seem like everybody gets it one time? Yes.

There's a lack of common sense. we just have to use our clinical common sense. The immunity is robust, complete and durable. Let's move in."

WND has already had to walk back the bogus claim that PCR tests are prone to false positives. Meanwhile, a fact-checker has pointed out how misleading McCullough's claims are (as well as other claims he had that Moore didn't note):

But what McCullough didn’t tell viewers is that acquiring immunity through infection comes with the risks associated with the illness. The relatively low mortality rate of COVID-19 is commonly cited as a reason not to worry about catching the virus. But this focus on mortality rate alone doesn’t account for the fact that the virus is highly contagious, and can therefore still cause many deaths when it spreads widely. To date, more than 590,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19, while COVID-19 deaths worldwide have exceeded 3.6 million.

Furthermore, COVID-19 can lead to other outcomes besides complete recovery and death. For example, a proportion of COVID-19 survivors have persistent health problems even after recovering from the infection. Some of these problems include difficulty breathing, cognitive deficits, joint and muscle pain. This condition is termed long COVID.

[...]

As explained above, natural infection does produce protective immunity in most cases, but reinfection can and does happen. This suggests that not all survivors develop protective immunity from infection alone. It’s unclear how many COVID-19 survivors experience reinfection, as there isn’t enough data to make conclusions, although reinfection is thought to be uncommon.

Vaccination can help enhance COVID-19 survivors’ protective immunity. Firstly, vaccine boosters designed to target variants can further improve the immune system’s ability to respond to an infection by a variant, as Cassandra Berry, a professor of immunology at Murdoch University, explained in this article published by The Conversation.

Secondly, reinfection is difficult to predict, but individual variability in immunity can arise due to factors such as genetic susceptibility, age, and the amount of virus a person was exposed to (also known as infectious dose). Since vaccines are designed to produce optimal immunity, as Berry explained, vaccination can help to bridge the immunity gap in a survivor that didn’t generate protective immunity from infection alone.

[...]

Overall, McCullough’s claim that vaccine-induced spike protein poses a danger to people isn’t substantiated by evidence. In fact, the available evidence contradicts his claim.

Don't look for Moore to correct his article -- it has already served its purpose of instilling fear into WND readers.And it's clear that for Moore, pushing the right-wing talking point du jour is more important than basic fact-checking.

CNS Unemployment Coverage Distortion Watch, Good-News-Is-No-News Edition
Topic: CNSNews.com

Last month, CNSNews.com had a field day with April's lower-than-expected job growth numbers, happily hyping the low numbers and falsely blaming generous unemployment benefits for it. When May's numbers came up not only much better than April's but also much closer to expectations, CNS really didn't want to talk much about it. Susan Jones' story about it was about as straightforward as CNS gets, while also sniping that the numbers still didn't reach some estimates and still aren't as good as they were under President Trump:

Following a disappointing employment report in April, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday produced an improving picture as the nation continues to emerge from its COVID slump.

The economy added 559,000 jobs last month, below Bloomberg's median estimate of +661,000, but easily beating the lackluster 266,000 added in April (the April number fell far short of estimates as high as 1 million).

The unemployment rate, after rising a tenth of a point last month to 6.1 percent, dropped three-tenths of a point to 5.8 percent; and the number of employed Americans increased for the 13th consecutive month.

In May, 151,620,000 Americans were working, 7,115,000 fewer than the record 158,735,000 employed in December 2019 when Donald Trump was president. As COVID crashed the economy, the number of employed Americans fell to 133,370,000 in April 2020, a number not seen since 1999.

Interestingly, that was the only story CNS did. For someunexplained reason, no sidebars on government employment or Hispanic employment -- regular CNS staples until now -- never appeared. Perhaps CNS decided the numbers were so good that it didn't want to draw additional attention to them; after all, that would run counter to its aggressively anti-Biden editorial agenda.

Caitlyn Jenner Is So Right-Wing, The Transphobic MRC Is Defending Her
Topic: Media Research Center

It was just a couple years ago that the viciously transphobic Media Research Center hated Caitlyn Jenner so much that a post attacking her -- promoted under a headline insulting her as a "trannie" -- was deemed so offensive that it was deleted without explanation. Now that Jenner is running for California governor as a conservative Republican, the MRC has been forced to do the unthinkable: defend a transgender woman.

It started out dismissive of her chances, of course. In a April 7 post, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg complained that "It’s interesting that she thinks she is qualified for a role like governor. For crying out loud, she’s never had a place in the political sphere but her drive for transgender activism as a Republican is apparently enough credibility," adding, "But honestly, when are celebrities going to stay in their own lanes?" Did Mandelburg (or anyone else at the MRC) ever say that about Donald Trump?

But as Jenner's conservative leanings became more apparent, the MRC decided she was worthy of defense, as Veronica Hays did in an April 26 post:

A celebrity with no political expertise who is also a transgender woman running for California Governor? That’s a match made in heaven. But add in the inconvenient fact that she’s running as a Republican and this liberal fantasy is destroyed.

On Friday April 23, Caitlin Jenner, former Olympian and Kardashian stepfather, now trans woman, confirmed her run for Governor of California. The potential election of the first trans woman Governor of California should be a shining moment for the LGBTQ community, however Jenner’s conservative leanings immediately disqualified her from gaining their endorsement.

[...]

Funny how these heterosexual individuals have the gall to condescend to a trans woman and tell her what to do. Where is the moral outrage? Even worse is the hypocrisy of the LBGTQ community which prides itself on inclusivity, to disown one of their members for having forbidden political views. Truly, these people are deranged.

Um, doesn't the MRC condescend to non-conservatives and insist on telling them what to do?

In a May 1 post, Scott Whitlock complained that "The View" co-host Joy Behar "denounced the reality TV star as an inexperienced Trump stooge," adding that she also Jenner has got this "guy Brad Pascal [sic] running his campaign. ... I mean that guy was accused of using campaign funds to enrich himself." Whitlock didn't explain who Behar was referring to; perhaps that's because it was actually Brad Parscale, former manager of Donald Trump's re-election campaign, who has indeed been accused of pocketing millions of dollars from both Trump's campaign and the Republican National Committee. We can see why Whitlock wouldn't want to bring up that unpleasant history.

When Jenner strangely came out against transgender youths taking part in sports, she felt even more MRC love. Mysterious (and transphobic) sports blogger Jay Maxson complained on May 4 that a sports blogger declared that "Jenner is trash because the California gubernatorial hopeful says it’s unfair for boys to compete in girls’ sports." The same day, Curtis Houck lumped Jenner among "minorities who refuse to be pigeon-holed" when MSNBC's Joy Reid criticized her stance, then without a shred of irony attacked Reid as "someone whose entire show has existed to prime viewers to hate those on the opposite side the of spectrum and rage about how they are to blame for what ails the country." Houck might as well have been talking about himself.

On May 6, Veronica Hays gushed over Jenner and her right-wing views following a Fox News interview:

As if the Hollywood left didn’t have reason enough to hate Caitlyn Jenner, the former man, Olympian and reality star now running for California governor gave Sean Hannity an hour-long interview on Wednesday night.

In her first exclusive interview as gubernatorial candidate, the transwoman discussed her political stances on a wide range or topics; from immigration and covid restrictions to taxes and transgender persons in sports.

When asked directly to assess Trump, Biden and Kamala Harris, Jenner told Hannity that what she liked about the former president was that he was a “disrupter,” and that what Biden’s doing “scares me.”

[...]

Jenner was once considered a brave champion by the left after her transition but has since been ostracised by both her own LGBT community and other Hollywood elites for her past Republican affiliations and stance against biological males performing in women’s sports. Her interview with Hannity has revealed her conservative vision for California and will likely face the betrayal of liberal backlash once more, perhaps even more severely this time.

Hays returned on May 11 to complain not only that comedian Sarah Silvermancriticized Jenner on her stance on transgender athletes but that Yahoo News backed her up by pointing out that the bans "are backed by no real-world evidence, with Republican lawmakers unable to give examples of this issue outside their own heads." She concluded by whing, "Will any of the LGBT community stand up for Jenner? No." Weird, Hays and the rest of the MRC hates the LGBT community whever it stands up for anything. Two days later, Hays touted how right-wing commentator Dave Rubin "ripped into comedian Sarah Silverman on Tuesday for dragging Caitlyn Jenner during her podcast," adding, "The rest of intelligent society is likely to agree."

Of course, the MRC would be trashing Jenner the way it complains  "the LGBT community" is trashing  her if her political views were even remotely liberal.

WND Pushed Bogus Claim That 'Trump Drugs' Cut COVID Cases In India
Topic: WorldNetDaily

We've documented how WorldNetDaily writer Art Moore has repeatedly promoted a biased study advocating thte use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19, falsely claiming it was published in a medical journal that ultimately rejected it because of unsubstantiated claims. But that's not the only problem with one of the articles Moore used to push the bogus claim. Moore wrote in a May 17 article:

India has become the center of the novel coronavirus pandemic, but a drop in cases has coincided with the national health ministry's promotion of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine treatments.

The India Ministry of Health and Family Welfare updated its guidelines on April 28 for treating the asymptomatic and those with mild symptoms of COVID-19

Since then, the data show cases have plunged in some areas, reported a leading promoter in the United States of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19, Dr. Pierre Kory, the COVID blog reported.

On Monday, Indian officials announced the country's daily COVID-19 cases fell below 300,000 for the first time in 25 days.

In fact, as PolitiFact pointed out, there is no proven link between the decline in cases and use of vermectin and hydroxychloroquine:

Daily COVID-19 cases in India decreased in the days before May 17 —  but only after a nearly vertical rise that started in April and peaked May 8. The Indian government has recommended limited use of the two drugs for COVID-19, but there is no evidence that their use led to the drop in cases.

[...]

Confirmed new COVID-19 cases in India declined in the days before the article was posted, based on a seven-day rolling average — but only after reaching a peak following a sharp increase that started in April. 

The seven-day average of new daily cases was 319,497 on May 17, the date of the post, down from a peak of 391,232 on May 8, according to Our World in Data. The U.S. average was 32,036 on May 17.

Many experts caution that the Indian government’s official tallies of confirmed cases likely vastly underestimate the actual infection figures because testing remains limited and the volume of cases has crippled the health care system in some areas. So the actual extent of the decline is not clear.

Hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin are being widely used in India for COVID-19, according to news reports. But there is no evidence they led to the recent decline in confirmed cases, given the lack of clear scientific evidence that they are effective at all in prevention or treatment.

Nevertheless, Moore has clung to his coronavirus conspiracies. He asserted, without evidence to back it up, that "there are 219 peer-reviewed studies indicating the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment and prophylaxis against COVID-19. And 54 peer-reviewed studies show the effectiveness of ivermectin as treatment and prophylaxis against COVID-19."

So in thrall is Moore to the propaganda he must believe as an employee of rabidly pro-Trump WND that the headline of his article laughably calls the medications "Trump drugs." It's actually kind of sad that he feels he must do that.

NEW ARTICLE: Curtis Houck's War On Jen Psaki (And Man-Crush On Peter Doocy)
Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center writer flip-flops, turning his love for Kayleigh McEnany into seething hatred for the current White House press secretary -- and hatred of the "liberal media" into gushing over biased, hostile Fox News reporters like Doocy. Read more >>

Fake News: CNS Tries To Manaufacture Political Motivation For Mask Guidance Change
Topic: CNSNews.com

Because its right-wing ideology makes it assume nefarious motives with everything the Biden administration does -- something it never did during the Trump administration -- CNSNews.com tried to manufacture a fake narrative about the Biden administration's abrupt reversal on mask policies last month, insisting that it was an attempt to distract from otherwise negative news in the country.

Susan Jones explicitly stated it in a May 14 article:

Joe Biden called Thursday a "great day" for fully vaccinated Americans who no longer need to wear a mask indoors or outdoors. The unvaccinated must still wear a mask, under the sudden new guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Not only did Thursday's announcement distract from the multiple crises facing the White House (war in the Middle East, a gasoline supply disruption, rising inflation, a falling stock market, an overwhelmed southern border where babies are dropped alone in the desert) -- it also serves as incentive to boost vaccinations.

Jones offered no evidence to support her little conspiracy theory, which was even more explicitly pushed in the article's original headline, as revealed by the article's URL and another website that reposted it: "Poof! Suddenly, On a Mostly Bad-News Day, CDC Lifts Mask Mandate for the Vaccinated (Incentive to Get Shots, Says Fauci)." The headline was changed to the much more bland (and factually accurate) hed "CDC Lifts Mask Mandate for the Vaccinated; Fauci Says It May be an Incentive for People to Get Shots."

Melanie Arter pushed the unsubstantiated narrative later that day, though she did give Press Secretary Jen Psaki space to explain to hostile Fox News reporter Peter Doocy that wasn't the case:

The White House denied on Friday that politics was behind the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) decision to update its guidance on mask-wearing indoors for political reasons.

Fox News White House Correspondent Peter Doocy asked White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki what the big medical or scientific breakthrough was for the CDC to update its guidance on Thursday.

“I know that Dr. Walensky did an extensive number of interviews yesterday to answer exactly that question, but as we’ve talked in here quite a bit about, the CDC – not just Dr. Walensky, but her entire team of health and medical experts - are constantly reviewing the data to ensure that they can provide accurate and up-to-date guidance to the American people, so based on three factors as she talked about yesterday,” Psaki said.

“Vaccines work in the real world. We’ve seen a lot of studies done on that, including internally in the federal government. Vaccines stand up to the variants, which at various times has been a concern about the need to continue to mask even as you—after you’re vaccinated, and vaccinated people are less likely to transmit the virus. That’s how they came to the decision, and that’s what she conveyed yesterday when she announced the decision,” the press secretary said.

As an actual news operation reported, the the abruupt change set off "antagonists" of Biden -- like, you know, CNS -- and reported that their conspiracy theory wasn't true:

The abrupt timing of Walensky’s decision also smacked of politics to Biden’s antagonists, who noted that the president benefited from the announcement during a difficult week when many Americans queued up in gas lines, tensions in Israel flared and markets roiled amid inflation fears.

The White House vigorously denied any interference in the decision. Instead, administration officials said, part of the communications stumble arose from the White House’s hands-off policy toward the CDC as it seeks to restore public trust in the agency after it faced unprecedented political interference under the Trump administration.

“As they have done throughout the Biden administration, the CDC operates and makes decisions based on the science and data, free from political influence,” White House spokesman Chris Meagher said in a statement. “That is what they did in this case and that is what we believe they should continue to do.”

This account of the administration’s surprise mask reversal is based on interviews with more than 15 senior administration officials, outside advisers and health experts, some of whom requested anonymity to candidly discuss internal policy deliberations.

Needless to say, CNS hasn't told the actual truth about the policy change to its readers, nor has it admitted its conspiracy theory was false.

MRC Loves To Defend Fox News By Playing Whataboutism
Topic: Media Research Center

Since the Media Research Center is the de facto PR division of Fox News, it not only praises the channel for reliably pushing right-wing talking points, it runs to the channel's defense whenever anyone in the "liberal media" criticizes it. But as it usually does, the MRC's "defenses" of Fox News are actual defenses at all -- it simply plays whataboutism.

In February, Tim Graham complained that a National Public Radio show criticized Fox News, but rather than actually respond to the criticism, Graham attacked the critics: "We like the hashtag #DefundNPR, but that means removing its taxpayer subsidies, which they always implausibly claim is some miniscule fraction like two percent. These NPR people want Fox 'radically ostracized.'" Forcing NPR to go out of business by cutting off funding because you disagree with opinions it airs is apparently not "radically ostracizing," according to Grtaham.

A March 5 post by Donovan Newkirk comlained:

On Friday, CNN’s Brianna Keilar and her Republican-loathing colleague, Brian Stelter, took turns bashing their competitor, Fox News Channel, for the crime of allowing  the expression of conservative thought. Abandoning even the pretense of being objective journalists, the two left-wing hosts condemned Fox executives and hosts for actually pledging to practice adversarial journalism and hold the new administration accountable.

Seemingly unaware that they work for one of the most liberal broadcast companies in the world, Stelter and Keilar audaciously derided Fox’s level of objectivity. 

Of course, the MRC is highly biased, which by Newkirk's definition should disqualify it from critiquing non-right-wing media.

Scott Whitlock took another shot at Stelter -- who wrote a book on Fox News that the MRC predictably trashed -- in an April 19 post:

CNN’s Brian Stelter is obsessed with Fox News. He can’t stop talking about his news competitor and now the Reliable Sources host is turning to... an ex-Australian prime minister for proof of the network's terrible influence?  Malcolm Turnbull was supposed to be a conservative. Yet, as the country's former Prime Minister, he veered left on abortion and other issues. Ultimately, he was removed by his own conservative party.

But he hates Fox News and that’s good enough for Stelter! On Sunday, the host touted him sliming Rupert Murdoch’s “market for crazy.”

He too offers no actual defense of Fox News, instead of whining that "Stelter’s obsession with trashing Fox News is like if Pepsi put out a press release to tell the world how awful Coke is." And isn't hating CNN a key requirement that makes one a good-enough MRC employee?

Anyone who offers even the most mild (and accurate) criticism of Fox News gets trashed as a "rabid Fox hater," as Nicholas Fondacaro did in an April 25 post that does no actual Fox defense but is filled with personal attacks on the critic:

Over the course of the Trump presidency, Baltimore Sun media critic David Zurawik had become steadily more and more unglued. Now, during an appearance on CNN’s so-called Reliable Sources on Sunday, Zurawik was teed up by fill-in host John Avlon to attack Fox News. And Zurawik didn’t disappoint, suggesting CNN’s heavyweight competitor was a “danger to democracy” and needed to be targeted by either federal government abuse of power, or by repeated smears from the rest of the liberal media.

“[W]hen we saw also in recent days Fox News host trying to double down on the big lie, but also change its definition. Laura Ingraham in particular, saying that the big lie is that the existence of systemic racism itself,” Avlon questioned the rabid Fox hater.

Brad Wilmouth also brought the whataboutism in a May 6 post:

On Tuesday's New Day, CNN's war on Fox News continued by bringing on liberal professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson and promoting her new study that conservative media like Fox and the Rush Limbaugh program were spreading unproven conspiracy theories about COVID-19 last spring.

But wait, that's weird -- one of these so-called conspiracy theories about the origins of the virus in Wuhan was recently promoted by New Day.

Jamieson's findings were perfectly pitched for the liberal media: conservative media are bad, while "Mainstream broadcast and print media usage correlated with higher levels of correct information and lower levels of misinformation."

Just like Wilmouth's whataboutism is perfectly pitched for right-wing outlets like Fox News?

On May 7, Kristine Marsh responded to "The View" criticizing Fox News with this blatant piece of whataboutism: "It’s always hilarious when the hosts of one of the most partisan and fact-free shows on television pompously lecture others about the importance of truth telling in the media." Again, by that same standard, the MRC has no business criticizing the media.

Wilmouth followed up with this slab of whataboutism on May 15:

On Friday's CNN Newsroom, weekend host Fareed Zakaria came on to promote his Sunday night special on Republicans titled A Radical Rebellion, and it quickly became another hit job on Fox News. Former Fox News host Alisyn Camerota dismissed them as "trying to pass themselves off as news," and Zakaria called it a "propaganda arm of the most extreme wing of the Republican party."

Zakaria claimed "It becomes impossible to deny the Republican Party today has been infected by a series of crazy conspiracy theories." 

After co-host Victor Blackwell noted that 70 percent believe the election was "stolen" from President Donald Trump, Zakaria cited an online poll -- which outfits like Pew Research Center have argued are unreliable -- to allege irrational fears by Republicans over vaccines: "I think that it's that statistic -- it's the one I mentioned -- 40 percent believe that Bill Gates is trying to control them by implanting microchips in their brain....I think something like a third of Republicans still believe that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, not the United States."

[...]

Not mentioned is that there has also been polling over the years suggesting that many Democrats have also believed in questionable conspiracy theories -- like the more than half of Democrats who believed President George W. Bush might have deliberately allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen to justify going to war. 

[...]

If any news outfits act as partisan propaganda, CNN would have to be one that wears that label for the liberal side. CNN's New Day show -- which Camerota used to co-host until recently -- has misinformed viewers for years to the benefit of Democrats on a variety of issues ranging from abortion, gun control and illegal immigration, to the role of race in questionable cases of police violence.

That "online poll" that Wilmouth insisted was unreliable came from YouGov -- whose polls the MRC has promoted when their results meshed with its agenda.

Graham served up even more whataboutism in a May 28 post:

New York Times media reporter Michael Grynbaum is projecting bad publicity into one cable-news network for narrowing the diversity of its opinions. Rick Santorum’s firing at CNN? Don’t be silly. The headline is “Fox News Intensifies Its Pro-Trump Politics as Dissenters Depart.” 

Nobody at Fox is being fired after Twitter lobbying campaigns. Grynbaum sounded like former Times media reporter Brian Stelter: “Onscreen and off, in ways subtle and overt, Fox News has adapted to the post-Trump era by moving in a single direction: Trumpward.”

[...]

Now compare that to the Times story on Santorum getting canned, by breaking-news reporter Jesus Jimenez, The headline was “CNN Drops Rick Santorum After Dismissive Comments About Native Americans.”

That's nowhere close to “CNN Intensifies Its Pro-Biden Politics as Dissenters Are Fired.”

The same day, Marsh returned to grouse that "CNN anchor Jim Acosta hasn’t checked his pompous attitude at the door since leaving his role as White House correspondent. On Friday's New Day, Acosta came on for the sole purpose of trashing Trump supporters, the Republican party and CNN’s competitor Fox News as brainless extremists," insisting that "attacking Fox News and ignoring virtually all else to hype the GOP "civil war" has been CNN's pathetic agenda for quite some time.

That's how the MRC gives Fox News a pass, by lazily judging as a reaction to so-called "liberal media," not on its own.

CNS Parrots MRC Parent In Gloating Over Lower-Than-Expected Employment Growth
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com's coverage of the April employment numbers didn't end with its skewed reporting on the numbers themselves. Like its Media Research Center parent, CNS pounced on the lower-than-expected job growth figures to push right-wing narratives about too-generous unemployment insurance supposedly discouraging people from getting jobs. A May 7 article by Melanie Arter highlighted how "Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Friday that the extra unemployment compensation funds were not a factor that made a difference in last month’s jobs numbers." Taht was followed by Craig Bannister gloating over how "liberal media" predictions of robust job growth didn't come to pass:

Confident that the Biden Administration’s policies would produce a robust jobs report for April, liberal media ran headlines and stories promising job growth numbers that proved to exceed reality by more than seven hundred thousand, and as much as 1.7 million.

As CNSNews.com reported, Friday’s U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report reveals that the unemployment rate increased slightly in April as the ranks of the unemployed grew by 102,000, with the month’s job growth failing to reach even half that of recent months:

Bannister then linked back to an even gloatier NewsBusters post on the same subject.

A May 10 article by Susan Jones, meanwhile, again highlighted "the disappointing April jobs report" and noted that Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said "there is 'anecdotal evidence' but 'nothing in the data' to suggest that higher unemployment benefits, passed by Congress as part of COVID relief, are hurting the job market."

CNS also offered plenty of opinion on the subject:

• A May 12 column by Tony Perkins complained that "The Democrats' COVID welfare -- a mix of generous unemployment benefits and stimulus checks -- is turning the country's workforce into a bunch of highly-paid couch potatoes" (never mind that both stimulus checks and higher unemployment benefits began under President Trump).
• Pat Buchanan huffed in his May 14 column: "Workers might reasonably ask: Why go back to work when we can take the summer off, with full unemployment, plus $300 a week?"
• David Limbaugh whined: "You don't increase productivity and jobs by injecting play money into the economy and continuing to pay unemployment benefits that disincentivize people from returning to work, a reality he cynically denies."
• Stephen Moore complained: "President Joe Biden made the laughable observation that he saw "no measurable evidence" that the super generous unemployment program is a deterrent to working. He needs to get out more."
• Craig Bannister grumbled that White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that "It’s not that federal subsidies to unemployment insurance benefits have made it more attractive for people to stay home than to return to work, it’s that other factors, such as the low pay being offered, are discouraging would-be workers."

Acutally, numerous studies have shown that unemployment benefits do not keep people from seeking work. But CNS never reported that perspective to its readers -- the right-wing narrative comes before the truth.

Newsmax Touts Disgraced Ex-Governor Running For Missouri Senate
Topic: Newsmax

We've already noted how Newsmax columnist Bernard Kerik endorsed a fellow disgraced politician, Eric Greitens, for a Missouri Senate seat. Greitens, if you'll recall, was forced to resign as Missouri governor after allegations of an abusive sexual affair and campaign improprieties. But Newsmax has tried to rehabilitate Greitens during this campaign (ironically, not unlike the way it tried to rehabilitate Kerik after the improprieties that sent him to prison came to light).

Kerik also wrote a Feb. 26 column declaring Greitens had been "fully exonerated" (he wasn't) and that he "earned enemies by doing the right thing" (ask the woman with whom he was in an abusive relationship about that).

An April 12 article by Marisa Herman gushed that Greitens "sprang into action to help save the life of a man who collapsed near the Navy SEAL at Mar-a-Lago’s beach club," adding that "In July, he helped provide first aid to two men who were shot near St. Louis University." Herman curiously made no mention of the numerous scandals that cost him his job as governor.

An anonymously written April 19 article touted how "Kimberly Guilfoyle — the former prosecutor, Trump campaign adviser, and television personality — was tapped as national chair of former Missouri governor Eric Greitens’ newly launched Senate campaign." That was followed four days later by a column from Guilfoyle carrying the headline "Kimberly Guilfoyle Endorses Eric Greitens for Missouri Senate Seat" -- but didn't disclose until the very end that she works for his campaign. She spun Greitens' corruption by blaming "a crooked prosecutor, financed with PAC money by liberal billionaire George Soros," for trying to "tear down a man who was willing to expose the Missouri establishment and liberal mob."

Newsmax also gave Greitens space for a May 15 commentary in which he declared that "it was disgusting to see what happened to President Donald J. Trump during the 2020 elections" -- though he cited no evidence of fraud -- and praised the GOP-led audit of ballots in Arizona. He asserted that "in what appears to be a brazen attempt to undermine this audit, election officials deleted entire databases days before handing over computer drives. The files deleted include one labeled, “Results Tally and Reporting.” If there’s an explanation, let’s hear it. If not, there should be significant consequences for this obstruction." As we've documented, there is an explanation: audit investigators screwed up, and the databases were never deleted. Newsmax has yet to correct Greitens' work.

Surprisingly, the most balanced coverage of Greitens has come from Newsmax writer John Gizzi. In an April 2 article, Gizzi admitted that Greitens is "highly controversial." And in a May 24 article, Gizzi pointed out that Greitens has not been as "fully exonerated" as he claims, noting that the Missouri Ethics Commission required Greitens' campaign to pay a $178,000 fine for improprieties, qutoing a newspaper editorial noting that it's "an eye-popping dollar figure from a body more accustomed to levying penalties in the $100 range." Gizzi also got other opinions beyond Greitens regarding his abusive affair with a hairdresser:

Newsmax spoke to 3 Republican House Members who served on the committee. They stood by their report, saying that Greitens' criticism of the committee was groundless.

"The witness [the hairdresser] testified under oath," said a House member who requested anonymity. "Gov. Greitens never appeared before our committee to testify under oath."

That's an unusual break from the right-wing propaganda Newsmax is largely known for.

WND Contiues To Promote Ivermectin Study Rejected By Medical Journal
Topic: WorldNetDaily

In February, we caught WorldNetDaily's Art Moore promoting a "new, peer-reviewed study finds that one of the cheap, widely available drugs that has been dismissed by the left, establishment media and many in the health establishment as a treatment for COVID-19 reduces infections, hospitalizations and deaths by about 75%," to be published in the journal Frontiers of Pharmacology. But a week after Moore's article appeared, the journal withdrew the article -- manufactured by a group called the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, which was formed to push unapproved treatments like ivermectin -- before actual publication, stating that it contained unsubstantiated claims and violated the journal’s editorial policies.

Despite the fact that the study was never actually published, Moore has continued to falsely promote the study as "peer-reviewed" and published.

In a May 2 article, Moore largely copied-and-pasted from his original (and now false) Feb. 25 piece:

In February, a peer-reviewed study found that ivermectin – which has been shown to inhibit the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in cell cultures – reduces infections, hospitalizations and deaths by about 75%. In more than 30 trials around the world it caused "repeated, consistent, large magnitude improvements in clinical outcomes’ at all stages of the disease," according to the study published in the U.S. journal Frontiers of Pharmacology

The evidence is so strong, the researchers believe, the anti-parasitic drug should become a standard therapy everywhere, hastening global recovery.

"The data is overwhelming – we are in a pandemic, and this is an incredibly effective way to combat it. If we use ivermectin widely, our societies can open up," said study co-author Professor Paul Marik, director of emergency and pulmonary care at Eastern Virginia Medical School.

Moore did another false plug in a May 10 article:

In February, a study published in the U.S. journal Frontiers of Pharmacology found ivermectin reduces COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths by about 75%. In more than 30 trials around the world, the drug causes "repeated, consistent, large magnitude improvements in clinical outcomes’ at all stages of the disease," according to the study.

The latest study was led by the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, or FLCCC, a group of medical and scientific experts who are researching and promoting drugs such as ivermectin and hydroxycloroquine as an effective prophylaxis and treatment for COVID-19.

"We did the work that the medical authorities failed to do, we conducted the most comprehensive review of the available data on ivermectin," said Pierre Kory, president and chief medical officer of the FLCCC.

"We applied the gold standard to qualify the data reviewed before concluding that ivermectin can end this pandemic."

Those quotes from Kory actually come from a FLCCC press release announcing publication of a version of its study in the American Journal of Therapeutics, which is where it landed after Frontiers in Pharmacology rejected it.

Moore was still repeating the false claim in a May 17 article:

In February, a peer-reviewed study found that invermectin reduces coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths by about 75%.

Ivermectin, in more than 30 trials around the world, causes "repeated, consistent, large magnitude improvements in clinical outcomes’ at all stages of the disease," according to the study, which was published in the U.S. journal Frontiers of Pharmacology.

Moore's reporting has been factually inaccurate and dishonest. It's what we've come to expect from WND, but it's not what WND needs if it wants people to pay for its so-called reporting.

MRC Cheers Israeli Bombing Of AP Office In Gaza
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center hates (non-right-wing) journalists so much, it effectively roots for them to be hurt or killed. So it's no surprise that a May 16 MRC post by Nicholas Fondacaro defended Israel from blowing up offices in Gaza that contained offices for the Associated Press and other media organizations on the pretense that terrorist group Hamas also had offices there, by cheering then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for ordering the bombing:

In a Sunday appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called out The Associated Press for lying about the Saturday bombing of the building they willing shared with Hamas terrorists. He also schooled CBS fill-in moderator John Dickerson by noting the extra measures Israel took to reduce the number of civilian casualties in the areas they were targeting.

During the course of their interview, Dickerson seemed to scoff at the idea that Israel had proof that Hamas was using the media as human shields. Asking: “It’s inconceivable you would have talked to [President Biden] and not shared proof of Hamas in those buildings that housed the journalists. Did you share that with him?” Dickerson seemed uninterested in why Biden had not condemned the bombing.

Netanyahu noted that they passed the information along through the proper intelligence channels and then went after the AP for their lies suggesting they had only just escaped the building before it collapsed:

In fact, occupants of the building were given as little as 10 minutes to evacuate the building before it was blown up, which is not very much time at all and, thus, not the "lie" Netanyahu (and, by extension, Fondacaro) wants you to believe it is.

Fondacaro then declared that "Many have pointed out that there was no way that the AP didn’t know Hamas was using the same building as them; they would be very poor journalists otherwise or lying." He didn't identify who this "many" were or if any of them were not right-wing media-haters or MRC employees. Indeed, the Israeli government was forced to walk back a claim by an Israeli military official that AP and Hamas employees drank coffee together each morning, claiming he was only speaking figuratively.

Likewise, Fondacaro also huffed that "Dickerson wanted to see the 'smoking gun' proof that The Jerusalem Post had reported was shown to the United States" without offering evidence that everybody should trust Netanyahu's word on its face.

It's apparently easier for Fondacaro to believe that AP employees are terrorist sympathizers than human beings whose lives have inherent value even if they don't share his rigid right-wing ideology.

Fake News: WND Forced To Correct Another Bogus Election-Fraud Article
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily publishes a lot of falsehoods that it doesn't correct, so when it does issue a correction, that's meaningful -- and it indicates that it's a screw-up so bad that even the notoriously fact-averse WND can't let it stand. Bob Unruh -- one of WND's chief misinformers on election issues -- wrote in a May 12 article:

A lawyer fighting an election-fraud case in Antrim County, Michigan, has revealed that the voting machines there contained a software program that could have been used to manipulate vote totals.

In fact, lawyer Matthew DePerno said in a podcast interview that with the MySQL program installed on the machines, and them all being linked, someone with access could "do whatever you want."

DePerno, just a day earlier confirmed in a court hearing that there were 1,061 "phantom votes" in the county during the 2020 presidential election, because while a recount of ballots tallied 15,962, the Michigan secretary of state's database showed only 14,901 votes were cast.

His latest concerns were raised during an interview with JD Rucker at the NOQ Report.

Rucker said the bombshell that DePerno delivered was that all of the voting machines were connected to each other through an intranet, that itself was not connected to the internet. However, he said a laptop computer with access to the intranet and access to the internet was left on during the Election Night counting.

But this apparently isn't true. WND later added a correction, which it euphemistically called an "update[] with additional context":

UPDATED WITH ADDITIONAL CONTEXT, May 13, 2021, at 2:45 p.m. ET: A fact-check by LeadStories indicates some of the claims made by attorney Matthew DePerno in the story below are in dispute. At issue, according to LeadStories, are "the safeguards in place to protect against fraud, including hand counts and audits" and "explanations provided by election officials."

"Michigan uses paper ballots, which have been preserved, meaning the accuracy of voting machines can be verified. Since the 2020 election, the state completed more than 250 audits, including a hand-tally audit of all the votes cast for president in Antrim County. According to the Michigan secretary of state's office, 'every one of them confirmed the integrity and accuracy of the 2020 general election.'" 

Publishing falsehoods that you have to correct -- and other falsehoods that are left uncorrected -- is not the way to instill trust in a "news" organization, WND.