Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joel Hirschhorn uses his WorldNetDaily platform to lobby for dubious coronavirus treatments and to carry out a bizarre vendetta against Anthony Fauci. Read more >>
Monday, July 19, 2021
NEW ARTICLE: WND Adds To Its COVID Misinformer Army
Topic: WorldNetDaily Joel Hirschhorn uses his WorldNetDaily platform to lobby for dubious coronavirus treatments and to carry out a bizarre vendetta against Anthony Fauci. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:56 PM EDT
CNS Cheers Another Anti-LGBT Law In Authoritarian Hungary
Topic: CNSNews.com One of CNSNews.com's favorite countries is Hungary, because it's filled with right-wing authoritarians led by Viktor Orban who hate LGBT people as much as CNS does. So whenever Hungary promotes a new anti-LGBT initiative, CNS is there to praise it. That happened again in an anonymously written June 15 article:
The anonymous CNS writer turned quite gushy about Orban's party and his anti-LGBT crusade:
Sounds like a press release for Orban, doesn't it? The anonymous writer that, even according to CNS' own reporting, Orban is an authoritarian whose party has rigged the country's laws to ensure he stays in power, even granting him powers to rule by decree. Hedoesn't sound like a person who cares about election results. That's not the only defense of Hungary CNS has served up. In a July 12 article, Elizabeth Nieshalla went after United Nations "LGBT czar" Victor Madrigal-Borloz for standing up for LGBT rights and singling out Hungary for being hostile to them:
Nieshalla also weirdly suggested that Hungary wasn't as anti-LGBT as portrayed because "Hungary supported the creation of the position Madrigal-Borloz now holds as LGBT Czar of the U.N. in 2016." But she didn't cite what Hungary has done to further anti-LGBT sentiment, even though the "news" organization she's writing for has previously reported on and praised them.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:29 PM EDT
Updated: Monday, July 19, 2021 1:32 PM EDT
WND Is STILL Blaming People's Deaths On Clinton
Topic: WorldNetDaily The Daily Beast highlighted how some "ghouls" in the right-wing media pounced on the death of a Georgia reporter to further hoary old "Clinton Body Count" narratives. The Daily Beast didn't mention it, but another one of those ghouls was WorldNetDaily, in a June 13 article by Joe Kovacs:
Of course WND has a compiled "Clinton Body Count" list -- back in the day, editor Joseph Farah bragged that he was the first to compile one -- but it will not tell you that the list has been long discredited. And despite the fact that Bill Clinton hasn't been president for more than two decades, WND has spent years trying to add to it:
That's how WND rolls. And that's what Farah wants you to give him money to continue to do.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:59 AM EDT
Sunday, July 18, 2021
MRC's Houck Buries Doocy's Screw-Up
Topic: Media Research Center Curtis Houck hates President Biden so much that it's apparently worse than his abject loathing for CNN, upon which he's been waging a petulant war against for years. So much so, in fact, that he actually defended a CNN reporter from Biden in a June 16 post:
It wasn't until the 11th paragraph of his item that Houck got back to his man-crush, Doocy, and this is all he wrote about it:
Because Houck buried the transcript in an expansion box, it takes some work to find out that Doocy rather stupidly asked Biden if he would talk to Chinese leader Xi Jinping "old friend to old friend," to which Biden retorted, "Let’s get something straight. We know each other well. We’re not old friends. It’s just pure business." Houck clearly knows Doocy screwed up because he buried this exchange so far in his item. Instead, Houck whined that other reporters were "were given preapproval to ask the elderly Biden relatively benign and/or unobjectionable questions." Did Houck ever call Trump "elderly" though he's only a few years younger than Biden? Not that we know of. But then, Houck is such a Doocy fanboy that he'll never admit he does anything wrong, as we saw in his defense of Doocy against a profile that didn't fawn over the reporter the way he would. Meanwhile, when Biden took additional questions from reporters later on in his Geneva trip, Kyle Drennen claimed that Biden "bitterly complained that they weren’t being supportive enough of his foreign policy agenda," adding, "According to Biden, the leftist media are not sycophantic enough for his liking." Biden never said that, of cousre -- that's Drennen's active, and biased, imagination kicking in. And it's telling of Drennen's (and the MRC's) extreme bias that he thinks any media outlet not as right-wing as Fox News is "leftist."
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:12 PM EDT
Updated: Sunday, September 12, 2021 3:43 PM EDT
CNS' Hot Pestering Intern Summer, Round 2
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com kicked off its summer of sending its interns to pester members of Congress with gotcha questions by asking them about federal deficits (while not really caring about them when Donald Trump was president and Republicans controlled half of Congress). For the next round, the interns invoked the hot-button issue of abortion: "The Supreme Court this fall will review a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Is an unborn baby at 15 weeks a human being?" They also asked a follow-up gotcha for those -- namely, Democrats -- who did not give the conservatively correct answer: "If an unborn baby is not a human being, what species is it?" Democrats who declined to give a direct yes-or-no answer to CNS' questions -- undoubtedly recognizing the gotcha nature of these questions -- got the headline accusation that they "dodge[d]" the question. Here are the senators wwho were the victims of this ambush:
Again, these questions are nothing a biased partisan exercise, designed to give Republicans a platform to virtue-signal on the evils of abortion and to shame Democrats for not restricting the rights of women or being eager to overturn a half-century of Supreme Court precedent. CNS thought this was such an important question to attack Democrats with that it widened the scope of its targets. An intern was sent to Nancy Pelosi's weekly press conference to ambush her:
The goal of that exercise was to get bigger play out of the gotcha, and that's exactly what happened. Another media outlet noted the question, and Cruz bashed Pelosi for not answering the question, and CNS got an article out of that too. CNS even sent what passes for an actual reporter, Melanie Arter, to White House press secretary Jen Psaki's daily press briefing to ask the question, wich got Psaki slapped with the "dodge" label:
This is the first time in recent memory that CNS has sent a reporter to a White House press briefing. The fact that it used that rare appearance to ask a politicized gotcha question says much about the state of journalism at CNS these days.
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:01 PM EDT
Saturday, July 17, 2021
How Is The MRC Hating LGBT People On TV Now?
Topic: Media Research Center The rampantly homophobic Media Research Center reliably melts down anytime the non-right-wing media refuses to hate LGBT people the way it does. Let's look at how it's been doing that lately, shall we? Veronica Hays lashed out at Nickelodeon in a June 4 item:
Meanwhile, Hays clearly wants to destroy transgender people by keeping them from holding jobs and to make the world hostile (if not violent) to them. Dawn Slusher did some hate-watching on June 7:
Slusher didn't explain what this supposed "LGBTQ agenda" is. Gabriel Hays, meanwhile, was mad that Fox Broadcasting, unlike its news division, doesn't hate LGBT people:
Hays also referenced the "LGBTQ agenda," but like Slusher didn't explain what it supposedly is. Does it stop being a threat that scares the MRC's readers if it's explained? On June 21, Eiise Ehrhard fretted about what is apparently an even bigger threat than the "LGBTQ agenda," -- the "LGBTQIA agenda" -- as she complained about a show on Hulu: "No doubt in the ideal radical activist LGBTQIA world, Christian rituals and theology would be replaced by the almost ritualistic celebration of homosexual activity that accompanies gay pride month, often without any regard for children present." Unspoken by Ehrhard: In the radical right-wing homophobic world she clearly wants, LGBT people would be suppressed, if not punished for their behavior. And even though the MRC has no audience in Australia, Veronica Hays hates LGBT people enough to spend a June 22 post complaining about a show Down Under that failed to hate them:
Hays offered no evidence to support her assertion that drag queens are "mentally ill." And it's more than abundantly clear that she wants children to be taught to think they are -- and to hate them for it.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:20 AM EDT
WND Lets Hirschhorn Push More COVID Misinformation
Topic: WorldNetDaily Joel Hirschhorn spent his June 21 WorldNetDaily column the way he usually does: raging at Anthony Fauci for purportedly blocking approval of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 as part of some grand conspiracy theory. He went on to write:
We've already written about how Zelenko's methods were questionable and poorly documented. But who is Didier Raoult? Well, he published a study touting hydroxycholoroquine early in the pandemic that President Trump latched onto. Soon after, however, other scientists raised questions about how it was conducted and other ethical issues, which resulted in revelations about Raoult's own dubious scientific background, which resulted in him facing disciplinary action over the study. Which, ultimately, resulted in Raoult suing one of the scientific whistleblowers for exposing his shoddy research whiile also doxxing her online. So: the kind of person Hirschhorn would trust, which means the rest of us shouldn't. Nevertheless, Hirschhorn went on to rant:
In his July 5 column, Hirschhorn touted a "citizen petition to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to stop the full approval of COVID vaccines until many serious concerns and issues are genuinely addressed," adding: "There has been no significant coverage of this historic petition by mainstream and corporate social media. This cancel action is itself as remarkable as the petition itself. This is a concerted effort to keep the public uninformed about the many problems with the COVID vaccines. Any person who spends the time to peruse the 20-page petition would most likely have a very negative view of the vaccines." Which, of course, is Hirschhorn's goal. He went on to tout how "the biggest name on the list of signatories is the esteemed Dr. Peter McCullough of Baylor University. He has been very outspoken and honest about many pandemic issues. He has said that, considering the high numbers of deaths and serious health impacts associated with taking the vaccines, FDA should do what it has done in the past when new medicines and vaccines had high negative impacts. Take them off the market." But as we've documented, McCullough is a major misinformer about the vaccines (where WND lets him do so without question), falsely portraying that deaths and other adverse effects to a government reporting system as indisputable evidence of the effects to the vaccines; in fact, no deaths have been linked to any COVID vaccine. Hirschhorn then engaged in his usual whining:
He's just mad people are listening to the truth instead of his propaganda. And WND is irresponsible for giving him space for a column that is apparently not fact-checked.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:56 AM EDT
Updated: Saturday, July 17, 2021 10:50 AM EDT
Friday, July 16, 2021
MRC Psaki-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Watch, Guest Writer Edition
Topic: Media Research Center Curtis Houck took a break from his biased reviews of Jen Psaki's White House press briefings in mid-June, so we were spared his usual sanctimoniousness. But not entiresly, since Scott Whitlock pinch-hit for a couple days. on June 22, Whitlock pretended to read the minds of reporters to make the headline claim that "SULKING White House Press Whine About Implosion of Voting Bill, Nasty Red States":
No, Scott: A reporter repeating what a person's or group's viewpoint is on an issue does not equal endorsement of that viewpoint. That's just laziness on Whitlock's part. The next day, Whitlock echoed Houck's man-crush on Fox News reporter Peter Doocy:
Houck was back the following week, meaning the Doocy man-crush could resume in full. Stay tuned.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:46 PM EDT
WND's Front-Page Smear Of Schumer
Topic: WorldNetDaily A June 14 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh lectured Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer for using the word "retarded" to describe people with developmental disabilities:
Unruh wrote an article the next day noting Schumer's apology for using the word. There was no apology from WND for its smear of Schumer. As you'd expect from WND, this piety is utterly hypocritical:
There's no reason to expect anything less of WND.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:49 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, July 16, 2021 7:50 PM EDT
MRC Melts Down Over Racist History of Birdwatching Being Exposed
Topic: Media Research Center How much of a snowflake is Matt Philbin, the Media Research Center managing editor for culture? We've already seen him freak out over plastic bricks refusing to hate LGBT people as much as he does. In a June 7 post, he has a total meltdown over exposure of some of the racist history of birdwatching and the people some birds are named after, a screed that includes a bizarre, fact-free fantasia of how conservatives actually think newspapers work:
Thoush not as bird-brained as Philbin's utterly serious belief that racist birdwatchers are too important to be held accountable for their racism -- or that racists shouldn't be head accountable, period, simply because they're long dead and must continue to be honored no matter what.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:34 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, July 16, 2021 1:41 PM EDT
CNS Ramps Up Word Police Action Against Biden
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com loves to play word police with President Biden, busting him for omitting selected words from his speeches. No less than editor Terry Jeffrey serves as chief of word police in a June 16 article:
Actually, according to the transcript Jeffrey attached to his article, Biden acquitted himself quite well in explaining the American system of government to Putin and pointing out U.S. concerns about Alexei Navalny (whom Jeffrey weirdly described only as someone "whom the Congressional Research Service says is an imprisoned Russian ‘anti-corruption activist’"). But Jeffrey doesn't care about that, as he would if Trump had said it. CNS has an anti-Biden agenda, and Biden must always be targeted with negative coverage -- even if he has to nitpick over a single missing word. This is CNS -- a partisan talking-point factory, not news.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:20 AM EDT
Updated: Friday, July 16, 2021 9:00 AM EDT
Thursday, July 15, 2021
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Psaki-Bashing, Doocy-Fluffing Parade Marches On
Topic: Media Research Center Media Research Center writer Curtis Houck spent the month of March sticking to his template: trashing White House press secretary Jen Psaki while cheering Fox News' Peter Doocy and other hostile right-wing reporters. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:30 PM EDT
MRC Cries Again When It Gets Fact-Checked
Topic: Media Research Center As we've documented, the Media Resarch Center loves to lash out at fact-checkers, but it can't deal with its own content getting fact-checked. Kayla Sargent served up the whining in a June 14 post:
At no point did Sargent explain what, exactly, was "unfair" about Health Feedback's ruling -- but also notice that she didn't directly quote what Hughes said that got her in trouble with the fact-checker. Here's what Hughes ranted:
Sargent also failed to tell what, exactly, Health Feedback said about the claim that Fauci was lying about the effectiveness of masks:
In other words: Hughes is attacking Fauci for old guidance that evolved as new facts about COVID were uncovered. She's mad he changed his mind as the situation changed. So, yes, there's nothing unfair about this fact-check -- it's well deserved. Because Sargent doesn't have a case, she decided to attack Facebook and its fact-checkers, rehashing old talking points:
Hughes is not known for her honesty. We caught her a few years back making a Fox News appearance in which she hyped a claim that illegal immigrants committed a crime, but she refused to apologize when the claim turned out to be false.
Posted by Terry K.
at 10:38 PM EDT
Updated: Sunday, August 1, 2021 10:19 PM EDT
WND Still Misinforming Readers About Ivermectin Study
Topic: WorldNetDaily We've detaiied how WorldNetDaily reporter Art Moore promoted a study promoting the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19, conducted by an organization formed to promote treatments like ivermection -- and continued to promote it after the journal that originally had the chance to publish it ultimately declined due to the authors' clear conflict of interest. It turns out Moore promoted the study at a different journal that ultimately decided to publish it without telling readers about the controversy over it. Moore wrote in a May 10 article:
In fact, those studies are the same study -- Frontiers of Pharmacology rejected it, then it was picked up by the American Journal of Therapeutics. In a May 31 article promoting a study claiming to show that ivermectin was a successful treatment in Mexico City -- while omitting the facts that the study is based on a database analysis, not clinical study, and it was a preprint that had not been peer-reviewed -- Moore wrote:
Moore got his facts wrong here as well. The study originally surfaced in February at Frontiers of Pharmacology as a preprint -- where studies appear before they're peer-reviewed -- but never formally published there. It was published by the American Journal of Therapeutics in May. Moore promoted the study again in a June 23 article: "Worldwide, more than 50 peer-reviewed studies have shown the effectiveness of ivermectin as a treatment and prophylaxis against COVID-19. A recent study by the American Journal of Therapeutics that analyzed 18 randomized controlled treatment trials found ivermectin elicited 'large, statistically significant reductions in mortality, time to clinical recovery, and time to viral clearance' in COVID patients." He added:
Moore didn't report that Kory was one of the co-authors of that study, or that the FLCCC paid for that study. Moore repeated his false claims again in a June 30 article:
Again, the study was not published in the American Journal of Therapeutics in February. Such misinformation and false claims are just more reasons thats WND can't be trusted.
Posted by Terry K.
at 8:16 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, July 16, 2021 11:14 PM EDT
CNS Attacks Pelosi For Not Being Catholic Enough
Topic: CNSNews.com As they have with President Biden, the uber-Catholics who run CNSNews.com have -- as part of their multi-pronged war on her -- have deemed Nancy Pelosi to be insufficiently Catholic and hare taken numerous potshots at her faith. Despite the fact that it utterly failed in playing gotcha on her by refusing to understand that epiphany is more than a Catholic religious day, CNS labored to try to own her on her religion. An anonymous CNS writer seemed upset with Pelosi in a January article in which she "expressed her view that pro-life Catholic and Evangelical voters had been responsible for electing Donald Trump president in 2016 after responding to Trump’s 'dog whistle' about Supreme Court justices." The anonymous writer didn't dispute that but instead got nitpicky by noting that Brett Kavanaugh wasn't originally on the list of judges Trump said he would appoint. CNS also trotted out the Catholic archbishop of San Francisco, where Pelosi is from, to attack Pelosi:
CNS also got mad that Pelosi had opinions about her faith and how she practices it. Craig Bannister complained in a May 14 article that "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who supports legalized abortion, said at her press briefing on Thursday that she can use her "own judgement" on whether to take Holy Communion at a Catholic Mass," adding that "she was “pleased” with a recent letter on the subject of pro-abortion Catholic politicians receiving communion the Vatican sent to U.S. bishops" urging them against a blanket refusal to Communion to Cathollic politicians who support abortion rights. (The May 17 Chapman article was in response to this.) CNS even got upset at Pelosi for merely referencing her faith. An anonymously written April 9 article carried the headline "Pelosi: ‘Here It Was Good Friday…as a Person Who Is Catholic–and in California--the Most Holy Time’" -- even though it was just a passing reference in an article about Pelosi's commenta on security issues at the U.S. Capitol in the wake of the shooting death of a Capitol Police officer on Good Friday. CNS even takes stealth potshots at Pelosi over her support for abortion rights. An anonymously written Jan. 22 article noted that Pelosi issued a statement "celebrating the 48th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that declared abortion a constitutionally protected right" -- while including an undated file photo of Pelosi holding a baby. An anonymous June 21 article noting that Pelosi "put out a statement on Sunday to mark World Refugee Day and note that every 'precious life torn apart by violence and catastrophe is a tragedy'" is illustrated with the same photo.
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:07 AM EDT
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